Current Reading - Books best thread
(Um, that's Snow, by the way.)
(Um, that's Snow, by the way.)
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Current Reading - Books best thread
Currently devouring the whole MC Beaton 'Agatha Raisin' canon (if I havent mentioned before). Miss Marple with laughs is about the size of it, and pretty good too. (Apparently there was a Radio 4 season with Penelope Keith doing the characterisations or something... sorry, I missed that).Comment
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Current Reading - Books best thread
Might be my maiden post in this forum, but hey you can't lurk for ever.
Gradually getting thru "Human Croquet" which is the one Kate Atkinson I hadn't read before. It's broadly like the others, intelligent, some nice structural tweaks, but really just a melodrama. A bit like Anne Tyler's stuff (and I can never remember the titles of those for some reason).
Before that I read one of those paperbacks with the TV Book Club sticker. Yes, I know. Called "Blacklands", the author is Belinda Bauer. It's not good but I couldn't quite hate it enough to quit reading. (I made it to within 40 pages of the end of 100 Years Of Solitude so I consider myself a "stayer".)
Prior to that a couple of much much better ones, Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger, rightfully acidic, and then The Damned United. Took 30 pages or so to stop finding the stream of consciousness intensely irritating, after that it just got better and better.
Various things in the pile of stuff to follow but reading back through this thread perhaps its time I went back to David Mitchell: not read Black Swan Green or number9dream yet. The other books (ie Cloud Atlas/Ghostwritten) were too structurally similar to make me want to jump in straight away, although both quite admirable.Comment
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Current Reading - Books best thread
I'm going through an NPS politics phase which would bore the pants off everyone here if I described it, so I won't.
Before that, finished Martin Jacques' When China Rules the World, which I found a bit meh. Lots of very good and clear-eyed analysis in there, but it's a bit weak on the synthesis. One of his key points is that China views itself as a "civilization-state" rather than a "nation-state", even though it was forced in the 19th Century to kit itself out as a nation-state, as was the fashion of the times. But, irritatingly, it's never entirely clear what the practical upshot of this might be. Similarly, the idea that East Asia might go back to some kind of "tributary" system with China at the centre is interesting, but how does this really work in practice given that the rest of the world is on a Westphalian system?Comment
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Current Reading - Books best thread
Martin Jaques is an awful writer, he's one of the main reasons I cancelled my subscription to the New Statesman.
Keeping with the trend of this thread, I finished the first 100 pages of "My Name is Red" by Orhan Pamuk this weekend. Not the easiest book to read but rewarding enough to continue.Comment
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Current Reading - Books best thread
Just finished China Mieville's City And The City. I didn't quite enjoy it so much as his New Crobuzon books - less room for the fantastic - but the central premise was intriguing. It's set in a decaying, fictional modern day Eastern European city, Besz, following a detective as he hunts the killer or killers of a young woman found abandoned. The central conceit is that Besz shares the same physical space and time as another city, Ul Qoma, the result of some ancient split, and the two cities' citizens assiduously avoid all interaction (studiously unseeing each other in the cities' many cross-hatched areas) for fear of invoking breach and disappearing at the hands of a shadowy police force responsible for maintaining the peace and the metaphysical border.
Very enjoyable, although the slightly by-the-numbers end to the main plot disappointingly lacked the imagination of the build-up (the whodunit much less interesting than the background story).Comment
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Current Reading - Books best thread
Almost done with Rick Perlstein's Nixonland. It's a bit meandering (and badly copyedited—lots of typos), but very interesting as an attempt to trace the history of the United States' seemingly endless "culture war" and how it plays out politically.
Nixon was a fascinating figure. I find him weirdly sympathetic in some respects (his introversion, his resentment of East Coast snobbery, his intelligence, his social anxiety), but of course as a politician and elected official he was in many ways an absolute monster.
Recommended if you're interested in the sixties in the U.S. or in what made Tricky Dick tick.Comment
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Current Reading - Books best thread
Just finished Iain Banks' Against a Dark Background, the last (for me) of his sci-fi novels. Not bad in parts and the imagination of the worlds was very good, but the ending left an enormous amount to be desired. Still, better than most of the non-Culture novels.Comment
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Current Reading - Books best thread
The China Mieville book sounds interesting, thanks Crusoe. Some recent reads: the last couple of Adrian Mole diaries (Lost Diaries and The Prostate Years). Both highly enjoyable. I read a couple of Sue Townsend's other novels (The Queen and I was one, Number Ten the other) but both were pretty bad.
2 or 3 years ago I'd enjoyed Dave Eggers' What is The What, and would recommend it. So too A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering [strike]Pretension[/strike] Genius. So I tried You Shall Know Our Velocity but wasn't much impressed. The schtick is that a young slacker type feels so burdened by this cash he has in his deposit account, and is so mourning one of his two best friends who died in a car crash, that he simply has to journey off at random and give the money away to people he decides are deserving. With inevitably hilarious consequences. Eggers doesn't allow enough ironic distance between himself and the characters, who are knobs. As a satire of how wealthy Westerners practice the art of tourism it wasn't much cop either. Not a bad book, just disappointing.
A M Homes Music for Torching: was just beginning to annoy me when it took quite an unexpected turn. Reminded me of Something Happened by Joseph Heller, and then it turned into We Need To Talk About Kevin at the end. Pretty good as dysfunctional family novels go.
Currently working my way, with some reluctance, through Ian McEwan's Atonement. Too much like hard work but I can sense the pay-off may be coming!
Added to the pile of soon-to-reads and likely to jump to the start of the queue GB84 by David Peace.Comment
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Current Reading - Books best thread
"I read a couple of Sue Townsend's other novels (The Queen and I was one, Number Ten the other) but both were pretty bad"
God, yeah they were awful. I finished the Queen and I simply because I had lived pretty near where the book was set (a council estate in Leicester) but I don't think I managed 50 pages of Number Ten.
Adrian Mole I don't think I've read since I was, well - 13 and three quarters. Are the later diaries any good?Comment
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Current Reading - Books best thread
I'm just crawling toward the end of Carlos Fuentes' Where The Air Is Clear, almost to spite myself. It's a great idea for a novel and starts strong; I really thought it was going to be a great city novel. But then it becomes almost heroically dreadful for long, long stretches. The characters' epically self-involved, meaningless cod-philosphising and Fuentes' disastrous poetic reverse-Midas touch (what could "She fell to the bottom of her own eyes" possibly mean?) make it a pretty unrewarding slog.
This was his first novel, written in his late 20s. Did he grow out of it, or did he stick to his guns?Comment
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Current Reading - Books best thread
The only Fuentes that I've read is The Death of Artemio Cruz, which is truly great.
Right now I'm reading John Fowles' The French Lieutenant's Woman. I'm about 50 pages in, and I have to admit, I'm debating whether to keep on reading, or give up. I've only heard great things about the book, and I'm struggling with it so far. The characters aren't interesting to me, I'm having problems with the language and the writing style, and well, mid-19th century England is pretty boring to me (no offense). If you've read it and liked it, should I keep on going? Or if I have these feelings now, should I just give up?Comment
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Current Reading - Books best thread
I liked it a lot, Inca, but I doubt it would be really your cup of tea. And if you admit that mid-19th century England isn't really your thing then I'd go no further than p50, it's only going to get a lot worse for you.Comment
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Current Reading - Books best thread
Sigh. That's what I was afraid of. Back to the library, then...Comment
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Current Reading - Books best thread
I read it at university as part of a module on existentialism in literature and really liked it. I read it back to back with "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" and I also had a really good tutor at the time, which also added to the experience.
I'm half-way through "My Name is Red" at the moment, enjoyable but hard work, Pamuk really likes to use 10 words when one would do the job quite nicely.Comment
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Current Reading - Books best thread
Just read JK Huysmans' With the Flow, a smart tale of work and loneliness in the city (19th century Paris in this case). It's published along with the superb M. Bougran’s Retirement, which is something like a cross between Kafka and Luis Buñuel, and really funny.
He was a true great, Huymsans. Everyone should read A Rebours (Against the Grain) and The Damned (La Bas) if they get the chance.Comment
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Current Reading - Books best thread
Returned the Fowles and checked out a few other things from the library last night. Right now I'm reading Tom Vanderbilt's Traffic, about the psychology of driving and road design interacts with it. It received great reviews when it came out.
Lately I've just been on an non-fiction binge. Novels haven't really held my interest at all.Comment
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Current Reading - Books best thread
"Lately I've just been on an non-fiction binge. Novels haven't really held my interest at all."
Yes, I know what you mean. I'm close to finishing Can't Stop, Won't Stop, which you recommended to me many moons ago. I don't want to comment on it too much until I've finished it, plus I really think it warrants a thread of its own which I will hopefully start once I finish it. Suffice to say I'm loving it so thanks for the recommendation, Inca.
It seems a shame that, in return, all I can do is unrecommend the French Lieutenant's Woman, especially as I really do like it a lot (I even went on a holiday in Lyme Regis because of it) but I stand by what I said; I really don't think it'd be your thing.Comment
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Current Reading - Books best thread
Looking forward to reading Anthony Beevor's book on the Spanish Civil War- I've always had an interest in the period and the different nationalities in Spain, and the book must be objective to be a best-seller there considering that 70 years on, the topic's still largely taboo.Comment
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Current Reading - Books best thread
Just received my latest consignment of books from Book Depository (oh, were would I be without ya?). I've bought "Erasure" by Percival Everett, "Falconer" by John Cheever and "Last Evenings on Earth" by Roberto Bolaño. I'm going to read them in that order once I've finished off the last 150 pages of "My Name is Red" which is currently building up to what appears to be a very good climax.Comment
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Current Reading - Books best thread
I managed to get through a whole book without putting it on here. I finished Viva South America! by Oliver Balch today, a travelogue round the continent in the footsteps of Simón Bolívar (sort of) which takes in some of José de San Martín's life as well - it has to, since he goes to Argentina, Chile and Paraguay - and a visit to Brazil.
Oddly and to me disappointingly, he totally ignores Uruguay, but then its politics could be said to be the dullest of Latin America's nations during the last century (this is not a bad thing) I suppose.
Overall I enjoyed it. It's whetted my appetite!
I'm starting The White Tiger tomorrow, four weeks before my flight to Buenos Aires - hopefully I can get in finished by then...Comment
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Current Reading - Books best thread
I've finally read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo at my wifes insistance (before we go see the film) and was disappointed by it really. I don't usuually read much modern crime (Campion please!) and the hype probably didn't help. The plot wasn't anything marvelous and I had some issues with the writing/translation. The language was very clunky in places and I really couldn't stand the constant mentioning of brands and consumer items. That's the sort of over the top detailing that niggles at me, why should I care that the main character uses a specific type of Freeware for his word processing? Do I need to know the processor speed of the Mac laptop another character wants to buy?
It really failed to grab me in the first hundred pages or so and while it's not a terrible book it wasn't anywhere near as good as everyone had told me it was.
I've also devoured The City & The City by China Mieville. It's criminal that this has been banished to the SF and Fantasy section of the bookshop purely on the basis of the author. Not that there is anything wrong with SF and Fantasy but more peopel would read it if it was on the same shelves as strict non-scifi like Margeret Atwood.
Again its a book about crime but in this case the crime isn't the purpose of the book but just a thing to give some shape to our perception of Beszel the city where we begin. I'm not very good a criticism, to the point where I wonder why I try to contribute to this thread, but The City & The City was a brilliant read.Comment
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Current Reading - Books best thread
Ricky Lenin wrote:
Of course you shouldn't, but the manufacturers have probably given the author a wedge of money to get their name in the book...why should I care that the main character uses a specific type of Freeware for his word processing? Do I need to know the processor speed of the Mac laptop another character wants to buy?Comment
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Current Reading - Books best thread
Yevgeny Zamyatin's We
Good, but - unexpectedly - my attention keeps drifting. His narrative intention was to capture events as you would through the window of a car (from the inside, presumably) which is a fine idea. But once you've taken in the futureshock it meanders like a Swindonwards trip out of London with added sex-panic, I think, despite being both short and concise. Fifty pages to go, though, so it could still pull it out of the bag.Comment
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