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    #51
    Current Reading - Books best thread

    I've started reading 'The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn'. I never seem to have time to read any more though. It does my head in.

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      #52
      Current Reading - Books best thread

      A recent documentary on the subject prompts me to recommend a wonderful non-fiction called Into The Heart of The Sea: the voyage of the whaleship Essex, by Nathaniel Philbrick. It's the true story that inspired Melville to write Moby Dick. Incredible tale of seafaring and survival.

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        #53
        Current Reading - Books best thread

        FH - have you read Sebastian Barker's The Dream of Intelligence? it's an absolutely fucking brilliant exegesis of Nietzsche, as well as masterful poetry
        I've not, no. I shall endeavour to do so, however.

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          #54
          Current Reading - Books best thread

          The small wormlike creatures are fascinating, though. They laid down (correct me if I'm wrong, academics) fundamental features/constraints like bilateral symmetry, the anteroposterior axis, Hox genes, and so on that have remained with us ever since.

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            #55
            Current Reading - Books best thread

            Oh, and welcome back, Mackstress.

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              #56
              Current Reading - Books best thread

              let me know how they turn out
              Black Man by Richard Morgan.

              Violence. Violence. Genetic engineering. Violence. Sex. Space flight. Mars colony. Sex. Violence. New world order. Violence. Violence. Religious fundamentalism. Sex. Violence. Conspiracy. Violence. Violence.

              Excellent stuff.

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                #57
                Current Reading - Books best thread

                Thanks to the praise it received over on Old OTF, I've just started on Vineland by Thomas Pynchon. I'll probably post on this thread next in about 6 months.

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                  #58
                  Current Reading - Books best thread

                  Cosa Nostra: A History of the Sicilian Mafia
                  by John Dickie

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                    #59
                    Current Reading - Books best thread

                    Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai

                    Some of the writing is fantastically beautiful but it's definitely not the sort of book you can read half-heartedly. It requires full and devoted attention - something which I don't think I'm quite giving it at the moment as I normally read when I'm half-asleep on the train on the way to work.

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                      #60
                      Current Reading - Books best thread

                      "The Satanic Verses" by Rushdie. I've always been curious about it. Very inventive, but quite dense. It reminds me of "100 Years of Solitude" (which took me two tries to finish...it can be done).

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                        #61
                        Current Reading - Books best thread

                        Welcome meltdown. I also found that to be a bit of a slog. Nice to see the Chicago contingent growing.

                        I also have a lot of sympathy for mnb's point, there are certain types of books that just don't lend themselves to "casual" reading.

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                          #62
                          Current Reading - Books best thread

                          I'm still reading Modesty Blaise: Night of the Morningstar, mainly because I've got Watchmen and The Complete Maus on the go and the same time.

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                            #63
                            Current Reading - Books best thread

                            I have just started reading "The Stolen Village: Baltimore and the Barbary Pirates" by Des Ekin.

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                              #64
                              Current Reading - Books best thread

                              I adored The Satanic Verses, though it really is tough going. Not as tough as when I first attempted it, at age nine, though.

                              I just couldn't get along with The Inheritance of Loss at all. It seemed deeply, deeply average to me, though for no reasons I could put my finger on. Marking essays, you sometimes feel as if the only honest comment/instruction you can make to tell the student how to get a better mark is "Be More Clever" - there's nothing in particular wrong with it, it just doesn't... pop. I felt a bit like that.

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                                #65
                                Current Reading - Books best thread

                                That was my reaction to Inheritance of Loss, too. Lots of little things bugged me about it, and there was nothing to raise it above the ordinary. I sometimes feel that if books about India, and particularly which reference Independence, are thought of as brilliant purely because of the association with Midnight's Children.

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                                  #66
                                  Current Reading - Books best thread

                                  I've started "Whutering Heights"...Emily Bronte invented "Emo" I think with that novel. The other night I was reading it by candle light, for authenticity purposes...

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                                    #67
                                    Current Reading - Books best thread

                                    Just finished the Elegant Universe and started Bill Bryson's Shakespeare.

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                                      #68
                                      Current Reading - Books best thread

                                      Reading Ruskin's memoir, "Praeterita", a title that will have Lyra cooing with the sense of warmth only Latin can bring. Wonderful stuff on the youth. Home educated, when he went off to Oxford, his mum moved there as well.

                                      It's the only book Ruskin ever intended to bring pleasure, written in breaks between his "brain fever" at the end of his life. Mostly very pleasant, he does have the occasional relapse, mostly when he comes across a Catholic priest or cathedral.

                                      Not expecting much on his wife or the Whistler trial.

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                                        #69
                                        Current Reading - Books best thread

                                        Awww, indeed, that's a lovely title.

                                        I'm reading The Conqueror, the follow up to The Seducer which I constantly bang on about as being one of the best books ever.

                                        It's as good as I expected it to be; taking a different look at the same subject as it were, which is basically the evolution of Norway into what it is today.

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                                          #70
                                          Current Reading - Books best thread

                                          I've just started Robert Ludlum's The Janson Directive which is, so far, surprisingly compelling. I must admit I'm a sucker for spy fiction and espionage stuff, but I prefer the slower pace of a Le Carré usually. This is the first Ludlum I've read (although he's got an extensive catalogue), and I approached it with a bit of trepidation because I recently read a Bourne book, but written by Eric Van Lustbader, and it was appalling, and I suspected something similar. In terms of action, setting, and plot there's not so much difference, but Ludlum is clearly a far superior writer.

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                                            #71
                                            Current Reading - Books best thread

                                            I'm 50 pages into Victor Pelevin's The Sacred Book of the Werewolf, and it's shaping up to be his best yet, an absolute corker. The atrocious The Helmet Of Horror (from a couple of years ago) seems to have been a dashed-off-for-the-money blip, I'm happy to to say.

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                                              #72
                                              Current Reading - Books best thread

                                              I finished Bill Bryson's Shakespeare yesterday, having found it rather inconsequential, really. Its problem is that it does exactly what it sets out to do and doesn't attempt to stray outside its remit, so we have a biography of a man about whom precious little is known and no analysis of the plays and poems save what scant illumination the texts might offer to the biographer. There's nothing whatever in the book that would help anyone, even the complete beginner, towards an appreciation of Shakespeare - and that's a woefully missed opportunity.

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                                                #73
                                                Current Reading - Books best thread

                                                Still mired in the Cantos, and accompanying commentary. Finished the Steiner, which was wonderful, and am now reading Nietzsche's Twilight of the Idols. Combined influence of FH and Sebastian barker.

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                                                  #74
                                                  Current Reading - Books best thread

                                                  That Norwegian book I was reading recently had some stuff about the Cantos in. Something about them being able to keep you reading and rereading forever.

                                                  I don't know what to read next.

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                                                    #75
                                                    Current Reading - Books best thread

                                                    What Sport Tells Us About Life by Ed Smith. Suprisingly good, though it would be better if each chapter were 5-10 pages longer and went into more depth.

                                                    The Koran as told to the Prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him. I hadn't realised the extent to which this book is lacking in narrative. It's really nothing like the Bible or the Torah at all - more like a field manual for how to keep a beleaguered desert religious community inspired and fighting fit while under attack from all sides. It's made me re-evaluate what a religious text is all about.

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