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    Current Reading - Books best thread

    Imp is going to have conniptions when he gets back here, isn't he?

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      Current Reading - Books best thread

      Tell you what else I've been dipping into lately: Tales from Ovid (the Ted Hughes-translated greatest hits). Friggin' brilliant they are.

      And for my concurrent Big Novel, I'm starting on Julio Cortazar's Hopscotch now. Already it's looking great.

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        Current Reading - Books best thread

        Reading the Treasure Island book now and finding it deeply unimpressive after three chapters. It's written in almost a parody of hand-wringing Guardianese ("this is really important! it affects all of us!"), and the chapter on Switzerland seems like a text-book drive-by smear in that it deals entirely with events of seventy years ago. I can see why this chapter was edited out of the American version of the book. Hope it gets better, becasue it's an important topic in need of some David Conn-like clarity - so far, Shaxson ain't that.

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          Current Reading - Books best thread

          Finished. It didn't get much better, largely because he's prepared to include almost any feature of capitalism he finds pernicious in his definition of "offshore". His stuff on bank secrecy was pretty good (and, re: conversation upthread, it's the secrecy stuff which is the *real* mark of a haven) and if he'd have stuck to just that stuff he'd have had a better case.

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            Current Reading - Books best thread

            Toto Gramsciddu wrote:
            Imp is going to have conniptions when he gets back here, isn't he?
            Thank goodness you've slowed down now. Nice word, 'conniptions', though I've never heard it before. I've a feeling I may have had them a few times, though.

            Reading 'Cloud Atlas', studiously avoided up to now through over-recommendation. But Jesus, what a fucking amazing book. I presume it's been the subject of previous discussions somewhere on here.

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              Current Reading - Books best thread

              I found it slightly clinical, tbh. So fucking good that a certain point you thought - ok, now he's just taking the mickey. Like when some Brazilian bloke starts dribbling with his shoulders, or some such.

              Number 9 Dream is still my Mitchell fave (though I have yet to read his latest).

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                Current Reading - Books best thread

                I got quite bored of Cloud Atlas less than half way through and gave it up as a bad lot. Which is unusual for me, usually I'll soldier on through a book I've started, regardless.

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                  Current Reading - Books best thread

                  When I picked up Cloud Atlas I knew nothing at all about it, and had even forgotten Number9Dream had been shortlisted for the Booker. I only bought it because it was sitting in a "Influenced by Murukami" rack and had the word Atlas in the title.

                  As such it was a spectacular surprise and breath of fresh air. If I'd read it after all the hype I'd have been very resistant to enjoying it - possibly even to reading it at all.

                  But yes, it's a fantastic book. I can see that it might annoy people because of the showy structure, but to me it's one of the rare novels enhanced by the silly showyness, perhaps because Mitchell's such a good writer that each of the novellas is independently hugely readable.

                  -

                  Right now I'm reading the very good, and very unshowy, Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson.

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                    Current Reading - Books best thread

                    Toto Gramsciddu wrote:
                    Finished. It didn't get much better, largely because he's prepared to include almost any feature of capitalism he finds pernicious in his definition of "offshore". His stuff on bank secrecy was pretty good (and, re: conversation upthread, it's the secrecy stuff which is the *real* mark of a haven) and if he'd have stuck to just that stuff he'd have had a better case.
                    So "it didn't get much better" but "the stuff on secrecy was pretty good".

                    It was pretty good.

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                      Current Reading - Books best thread

                      I can't give nuance to a negative review?

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                        Current Reading - Books best thread

                        I know this sounds OTT but I honestly believe Cloud Atlas is one of the best books ever written.

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                          Current Reading - Books best thread

                          Nicholas Blake 'The Beast Must Die'.

                          Really good. Written in the 1930's. It's about a crime writer looking for the hit-and-run driver who killed his 8 year old son. Not going to tell you any more than that.

                          Dorothy L. Sayers 'The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club'

                          I've been reading quite a lot of crime fiction written between the two wars recently. Loads that had completely passed me by. Lord Peter Wimsey is basically Bertie Wooster, the sleuth. This one has got stuff to do with Remembrance Day, old soldiers smoking in pubs, and a sub-plot involving the Bloomsbury Set.

                          Rosamond Lehmann ' Dusty Answer'

                          Um, it's a bit lame that the only thing I can say about a book is that it's really good, but again that's all I can say about this one too. It's a book that completely pulls you in and consumes you when you're reading it. Rosamond Lehmann (Beatix Lehmann's sister, DW fans) has the nack of describing someones emotional life convincingly and with the novel still reading like a novel, instead of a diary. She's a great prose stylist too and this is a brilliant book.

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                            Current Reading - Books best thread

                            I've finished my studies, so I'm back into the glorious world of reading books for pleasure.

                            First book has been generally poo-pooed on here "The Girl Who Played with Fire", just got 40 pages to go and I've loved it.

                            Next up will be Lydia Davis's translation of "Madame Bovary", followed by "Room", which will be my first Kindle book experience.

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                              Current Reading - Books best thread

                              Continuing on a China Mieville tip, this recent short story tickled me. Not his best, but enjoyably imaginative.

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                                Current Reading - Books best thread

                                Just read Marjane Satrapi's wonderful graphic novel Persepolis, and passed it on to my older daughter, who's also loving it (and anything that distracts her from manga and anime right now has to be good). A fine work about coming of age during the Iranian revolution, and being disconnected in exile.

                                Now reading Adam Hochschild's To End All Wars, because it's good to remind yourself about the collective bampot insanity that lead to World War 1, and which continued throughout the war and beyond. Big focus on the Pankhursts, Keir Hardie and conscientious objectors too, with useful background on the imperial campaigns preceding the war and how they informed the wrong-headed militarism and idiocy of military chiefs like Haig, French and Milner. Completely absorbing book.

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                                  Current Reading - Books best thread

                                  Does it mention that Germany weren't beaten?

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                                    Current Reading - Books best thread

                                    imp wrote:
                                    Just read Marjane Satrapi's wonderful graphic novel Persepolis, and passed it on to my older daughter, who's also loving it (and anything that distracts her from manga and anime right now has to be good). A fine work about coming of age during the Iranian revolution, and being disconnected in exile.
                                    Persepolis is great. I love the story of Marjane's dad buying an Iron Maiden poster while on vacation in Turkey and smuggling it back into Iran in the lining of his jacket so she could put it on her bedroom wall.

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                                      Current Reading - Books best thread

                                      imp wrote:
                                      Now reading Adam Hochschild's To End All Wars, because it's good to remind yourself about the collective bampot insanity that lead to World War 1, and which continued throughout the war and beyond. Big focus on the Pankhursts, Keir Hardie and conscientious objectors too, with useful background on the imperial campaigns preceding the war and how they informed the wrong-headed militarism and idiocy of military chiefs like Haig, French and Milner. Completely absorbing book.
                                      Interesting. I'm reading his King Leopold's Ghost which is utterly engrossing and incredibly readable history, also about astonishing wrong-headedism and barnpot insanity. It's brilliant and horrifying. I should read the WWI book, too, I guess.

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                                        Current Reading - Books best thread

                                        La Lanterne Rouge, that book is on my summer reading list and I cannot wait to get started on it.

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                                          Current Reading - Books best thread

                                          Leopold's Ghost is really good. if you want to find out how it really all panned out, follow that up with Michala Wrong's book on Mobutu In the Footsteps of Dr. Kurtz. Read any of her other books too, because they're all top-notch.

                                          This trip has been frutiful for reading, not least because I'm now being forced to wait in a fucking hotel room for two and a half days before a 15-minute interview which is my last step in getting the fuck home. read the last two Thursday Next books on my kindle...the first one, I read about 80% of it before realising I had actually already read it when it came out. That's the thing about Jasper Fforde - he;s both enjoyable and forgettable. It's an odd combination.

                                          Also read Louis Menard's The Marketplace of Ideas, which is a really interesting history of the humanities and universities in the 20thC. Too focussed on teh American tradition to the exlcusion of others, but still very interesting on issues like "breadth" of curriculum, the compromisies you have to make when you hand control of a core curriculum over to specialists, and the problems of interdisciplinarity. Excellent.

                                          Then there was Kuper's The Football Men, and Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad (reviwed elsewhere in the basement). And just before coming here, I read Shock of Gray, by Ted Fishman, which I picked up looking for something to help understand the politics and economics of demographic change. It is, unfortunately, unmitigated and badly-written tripe. One of the worst uses of my reading time ever.

                                          And currently plowing through Gideon Rachman's Zero-Sum Future, to which I give a solid "meh". If you know a bright and curious teenager who wants to better understand current events, this would be a decent book to give them. But it's not much more than that.

                                          My next book, I think, will be Adam Seagal's new book on Innovation, or possibly Jason Stearns' Dancing in the Glory of Monsters, which is also about the Congo (post-Mobutu) and has had absolutely ripping reviews.

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                                            Current Reading - Books best thread

                                            A Death in Summer, the latest in Benjamin Black's (John Banville's) Quirke series set in Fifties Dublin. Our antihero is an overweight, chain-smoking alcoholic doctor, who together with a police inspector, attempts to solve murders in the face of opposition from the Church, politicians, business and the underworld. Also Six Queens: The Wives of Henry VIII by David Starkey - Henry comes across as erratic and temperamental and Anne Boleyn as a devious, manipulative shrew obsessed with promoting the Protestant agenda, with only Catherine of Aragon and Catherine Parr coming out of the book with any positive credit.

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                                              Current Reading - Books best thread

                                              The Seagal book is fantastic. It does for the Congo what Gourevitch did for Rwanda in We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killied With Our Families - it's the same nice blend of solid political history and on-the-ground view of participants and victims. Only frankly Seagal's job is much tougher because there's so much more moral ambiguity in the Congo. It starts to grind a bit in the last third - could have done with less Kabila, frankly - but it's a great read all the same.

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                                                Current Reading - Books best thread

                                                Got around to reading One Day - enjoyable enough and the unusual concept draws you into the characters' lives, but you're left wondering what attracts Em to such narcissists and one-dimensional clowns. Any sympathy you have for her will evaporate when Keira Knightley plays her in the film, which guarantees it will be pure muck, in contrast to the book, which I'd give 7/10.

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                                                  Current Reading - Books best thread

                                                  Spent part of this weekend reading william Gibson's latest, Zero History. Finishes (I think) his latest trilogy, which includes Pattern Recognition and Spook Country. It's yer usual Gibson stuff - 50 pages of dense descriptive stuff with overuse of words like "interstitial" and "limnality" before accelerating into thriller territory. I suppose it's been his formula from the start, but it's starting to grate a bit. The man needs a new MO.

                                                  If you liked the others in this trilogy - set in the present day but still deeply techno-fetishist - you'll like this one too. I find the Hubertus Bigend character highly entertaining...it's sort of like crossing Tyler Brule with the non-martial-arty bits of Bruce Wayne. But, on the other hand, I'm finding it hard to imagine how much more he can milk out of the cooler-than-thou riffs on current-day marketing culture (much of the plot revolves around pop-up shops, ghost branding campaigns and the like). If he's not done with it, he should be.

                                                  Not a waste of time, but not a classic, either.

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                                                    Current Reading - Books best thread

                                                    Just finished Winner-Take-All Politics, which is about the development of the US party system over the past three decades and how it has skewed politics towards the concerns of the rich at the expense of the middle class. By a couple of allegedly big-name political scientists I;d never heard of and whose names I can't quite remember (hacker? pierson? something like that).

                                                    Not bad, but not great. It was at its most interesting when it was demolishing the "skill-based technological change" argument as an explanation for growing inequality in the US, and for its useful historical grounding showing that the big changes in the way politics functions in American began in the Carter years. At its weakest when trying to explain what in Christ anyone can do about it.

                                                    I kept thinking that it was right up NHH's alley, actually.

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