Current Reading - Books best thread

[Guest]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Lucia Lanigan wrote:

Anyway, Angela Carter - that's where it's at. I'm halfway through The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman right now and I swear to the non-existent god I don't believe in, it could be the greatest novel ever written by a human being.

It's a long time since I read this, but I remember starting at the end of Carter's work and coming to the earlier stuff was disappointing - I thought this was the reading equivalent of someone telling you all about their dreams.

The last two, though - Nights at the Circus and Wise Children, they're dazzlingly brilliant.

[Lucia Lanigan]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Wow, I'm completely the other way around. I abandoned both Nights... and Wise Children halfway through - too rambling, too much mugging to the audience. Whereas her earlier stuff's tight, rich and mind bogglingly inventive; there's nothing else like it.

[Guest]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Sounds like I shall have to go back and give it a second go, then.

[Lucia Lanigan]

Current Reading - Books best thread

The Magic Toyshop and ...Dr Hoffman I'd recommend to anyone. Several Perceptions and Love are quietly magical and discomfiting tales that capture dank sixties Britain in passing. The post-apocalyptic Heroes and Villains stumbles now and then but it's mainly spectacular. The Passion of New Eve is utterly demented and the opening passage captures late 70s New York decay better than any fiction I've come across. And pretty much all of her short stories are great.

[Guest]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Blimey. You know, I've read four of those, and I can't remember a damn thing about them...

[Edie St Pierre]

Current Reading - Books best thread

'Nights at the Circus' was the first one I read. It was one of the set books for a course I did for my degree. I read it out of desperation. The other two books were 'To The Lighthouse' by Virginia Woolf and 'The Golden Notebook' by Doris Lessing, both of which I struggling big-time to get into.

I loved 'Nights at the Circus' once i'd got past the first 40 page introduction. It's a slow build up, she's drawing you slowly in. Her other books, I agree are more immediate (you're bang-on about the opening section of 'New Eve', it's jaw-dropping stuff).

'Wise Children' is a bit rambling, I agree, but 'Nights at the Circus' is astonishing and is worth persisting with. After the opening intro, the story moves to the circus itself, and it's a bleeding trip mate. One of my favourite books ever. Give it another go.

[JtS]

Current Reading - Books best thread

I'm reading Stephen E. Ambrose's Band of Brothers

It's excellent.

[Guest]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Just this morning finished Nathaniel's Nutmeg by Giles Milton. A good, readable, well-researched bit of popular history (that's the kind of history I like.)

It's an account of the spice trade and the East Indies Company's ventures in the Banda Islands near Indonesia, particularly their constant conflict with the Dutch. The Nathaniel of the title is Nathaniel Courthope, who held the nutmeg island of Run against a hugely superior Dutch force. The subtitle - How One Man's Courage Changed the Course of History - is not too hyperbolic because (historical spoiler ahoy!) one outcome of the many Anglo-Dutch wars was that the Dutch were officially granted use and sovreignty over Run, in exchange for another Dutch island, namely Manhattan and the colony of New Amsterdam, subsequently New York.

Interesting as it is - and the book gives a hair-raising account of the manifold dangers of Elizabethan naval exploration - Courthope's undeniable courage (under siege from the Dutch, disease and malnutrition for just over 1500 days) is somewhat overwhelmed by the sheer scale of brutality and outright atrocity committed, largely by the Dutch but the English were hardly above a bit of piracy, theft and so on. It's a grim catalogue of suspicion, imperialism, greed, imagined conspiracies, oppression and torture. Proof, if proof be need be, of Marlow's observation that "The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much."

[Crusoe]

Current Reading - Books best thread

I'm really enjoying the new China Mieville, "Kraken". Very, very big debt to "Neverwhere" but with a nastier, grimier edge. Strangely, if anything the writing is nowhere near as rich and evocative as his New Crobuzon books, but the ideas are just as fascinating. Squid cults, the Met's Fundamentalist and Sect-Related Crime unit, vicious magical hitmen, a statue leading a picket line of familiars (Mieville's left-leaning politics interestingly realised in fantasy as usual).

[Anton Gramscescu]

Current Reading - Books best thread

It sounds a bit Jasper Fforde-ish. Is that a fair comparison?

[Crusoe]

Current Reading - Books best thread

I've read very little of his - always got the impression his was basically comedy, lots of literary puns. Mieville plays a straight bat - fantasy/horror/thriller - but with a noticeable left of centre, anti-authority edge.

[Anton Gramscescu]

Current Reading - Books best thread

So, let's see. Read Googled by Ken Auletta. Meh. Some of the first few chapters are interesting - it is kind of startling to realise how long it took google to figure out how to make money (it didn't work out the whole ad thing for about four years). But overall, too much padding. But what did I expect from a corporate bio?

Read Adam Roberts' New Model Army. A truly bizarre techno-military fantasy...sort of Cory Doctorow meets Heinlein meets Michael Moorcock. Absurd.

Oh, and The Great Brain Race, by Ben Wildavsky, which is about the emerging phenomenon of global universities. It's basically six 30-page magazine articles about universities. None of them are bad (most are breezy and whip along pretty well and are mercifully jargon-free), but it doesn't quite add up to a book, if you catch my drift.

[steveeeeeeeee]

Current Reading - Books best thread

I started 2666 yesterday and I'm about 100 pages in. So far, it's typical Bolańo stuff and really enjoyable. However, I didn't enjoy the part where they beat up the Pakistani taxi-driver. I get the impression you're meant to be repulsed by the Spanish character and I understand the importance of the event to the plot, but even still, the beating seemed unnecessarily severe. Not only that, but in all my time of living in London, I can't recall having a Pakistani taxi driver, not once.

[Levin]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Hah, I skimmed the thread and saw Antonio's mention of New Model Army and thought 'I don't remember posting that'. I have also read New Model Army and found it interesting enough, I really want to read the book he says is the inspiration of it, somethig about the Greek polis. It wasn't a patch on Yellow, Blue Tibia, that was a fantastic read. For some reason I always find Robert's first person narrative style distancing for the first part of his books and then somethign clicks about half way through and it just feels right. New Model Army has some great ideas but isn't as good as the above or Salt.

I've also read The Complete Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino. A bit hit and miss but when they are good they are really, really good. The Chase is excellent as is T Zero. I think I prefered the more mathematical/logical ones to the Qwfwq stories on the whole but then you get bits like The Blood Sea and Priscilla which are mind blowing. There is enough in that one book for an entire thread really.

I've just started The Black Jacobins, and I'm really getting in to it. It's really easy to read for a piece of history written in the 30s though that may be my own prejudices showing through there.

Ignatz: you should look out for Samurai William if you haven't read it, also by Milton and also about an Elizabethan sailor only this one focuses on William Adams who got shipwreaked in Japan as rose to be one of the Shogun's highest advisors.

[Guest]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Ah, thanks for that, Ricky. I'll get onto Amazon.

[hobbes]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Just ploughing through the Dark Tower series. Nearly finished book 6. It's entertaining enough, but not as strong as other Stephen King stuff.
Nice to have some pulp in your life though.

[Anton Gramscescu]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Ricky, I've heard good things about Yellow, Blue Tibia elsewhere, but you've convinced me to put it on my list. Cheers.

[Crusoe]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Another superb read recently: Burley Cross Postbox Theft by Nicola Barker. I liked Darkmans, although finding it a struggle in places, but this one's played more or less purely for comedy: boho West Yorkshire village played out in letters, all stereotypes but beautifully crafted. The epistolary style (I had to look that up) is very refreshing, and only occasionally feels forced (the two-faced emo teen queen's letters). Some of just brilliant - the original and Wingco-esque quasi-racist translation of the village's one black inhabitant's letters - and there are moments that had me tearing up (the two letters from unrequired and frustrated lovers, both unaware of the other's true feelings), and possibly the most fun I've had reading in some time.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Current Reading - Books best thread

ploughing through Millennium by tom holland, and as usual he's produced yet another ripping yarn. I like the way that he cites reported miracles as historical fact, largely because they were believed to be real at the time, and to be honest, most of the historical sources of the time seem to mention miracles as well.

i really loved rubicon, and persian fire was a great book as well, but I'd have to read it again, as it was very complicated, and difficult to follow because I wasn't familiar with the story beforehand, and there are a plethora of characters doing so many exciting things.

[Brandenburger Toro]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Crooisoe wrote:

Another superb read recently: Burley Cross Postbox Theft by Nicola Barker. I liked Darkmans, although finding it a struggle in places, but this one's played more or less purely for comedy: boho West Yorkshire village played out in letters, all stereotypes but beautifully crafted. The epistolary style (I had to look that up) is very refreshing, and only occasionally feels forced (the two-faced emo teen queen's letters). Some of just brilliant - the original and Wingco-esque quasi-racist translation of the village's one black inhabitant's letters - and there are moments that had me tearing up (the two letters from unrequired and frustrated lovers, both unaware of the other's true feelings), and possibly the most fun I've had reading in some time.

Oh cool, is this new? I adored Darkmans, but haven't generally liked her lighter stuff quite as much. Will definitely have to have a read of this, though...

[Anton Gramscescu]

Current Reading - Books best thread

TMK - I really enjoyed Rubicon but found Persian Fire a bit "meh" (mostly because the whole east/west terrorism metaphor didn't really work for me). Where would you put Millennium in a continuum between those two? More like the former, or the latter?

[Levin]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Like Antonio I found Persian Fire a bit "meh" too. In my case it was probably a combination of expecting too much after the brilliant Rubicon and being disappointed with the way that less evidence meant that Holland had to fill lots of gaps with supposition and best guesses. Mostly on the Persian side to be honest.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Hmm, well, I'm only halfway through the book, but I'd say it's a little closer to persian fire, purely because his source material is patchy. It would appear that most of the people who could write stuff down at the time seemed to be avid consumers of magic mushrooms and he has to work between the madness I suppose to weave a narrative. But that's not so bad because he's mostly dealing with how people felt about things like the imminent coming of the end of days.

But it's very interesting because I don't know anything about that period, and basically I'm going to have to read it again when I'm finished to get a better grip of who what where and when.

[Sam]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Finally, having read with glacial slowness since my arrival in Buenos Aires (although Sunnyside is a brilliant novel), I can update my reading status on this thread.

I am now reading La Invención De Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares, a very short novels whose cover proudly proclaims it to be 'the novel which inspired the TV series Lost.' Hmm.

[Lucia Lanigan]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Hehee, "Lost is only the TV series Last Year In Marienbad could have been."

I've been enjoying Julio Cortazar's Blow Up and Other Stories this week. They're seriously good.