what are you reading now?

[john eden]

Capital (abridged, thankfully) is looming, like purgatory, in my 'to read' pile. I got it free from work on a whim, but now I have it I have to read it.

I've been warned off the abridged version(s?), but doubt I'll bother with vols 2 and 3.

[mms]

mr rambler, are you a resident of tha' park then ?

[Rambler]

Muswell Hill, but Finsbury Park's the easiest way home.

[Baal's Eyes]

The History of Western Philosophy by B Russell - started with Nietzsche, the tw_t, and working backwards.
Persopolis 2 by Marjane Satrapi
Cathedral and Elephant by Raymond Carver
the new editions of Terrorizer and Cencrastus.
the collected poems of Adam Zagajewksi

......and the instruction manual for EA Cricket 2004.

[grimly fiendish]

hmm. i suppose having a pop at mick middles and not sharing isn't really in keeping with the spirit of this thread.

so, on the grimly bedside table at the moment are "what's it all about: philosophy and the meaning of life" by julian baggini and "nothing" by paul morley. the former is the first step on my long-overdue mission to fill in the myriad gaps in my knowledge of philosophers and philosophies. it's got a fucking dreadful title but so far it's zipping along nicely and giving me plenty of idea where to head next, which was the basic reason i bought it.

the latter is something i've been meaning to read for years and never got round to. having been disappointed by the patchy "words and music", i thought i might as well get this potential disappointment out of the way too. so far it's everything i'd expect: overwrought, overwritten, overanalytical and utterly beautiful.

[robin]

what's the bertrand russell book like?
i know virtually nothing about philosophy,is it a good place to start?
we have it for sale in the bookshop i work in so i was thinking of picking it up,does it assume any prior knowledge of the subject though?

[francesco]

uhm... just jumpin' between Olaf Stapledon Star Maker and Melville Pierre, wish i could read more actually... tons of books on the floor, so little time... ah, and re-reading From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell, best comic book ever, forgot the incredibly badly movie that has very little to do with the Alan Moore writing. Ciao.

[satanmcnugget]

Robin...i read the Russell back in my school days...it is a VERY good place to start for someone with not much in the way of prior knowledge of philosophy...it does assume SOME prior knowledge in that you have to know what phrases like a priori mean, etc....but not much...very readable

[Baal's Eyes]

Yes Bertrand is incredibly readable. Philosophy books usually arent my reading choice but its an area Ive neglected. He throws in a bit of history and what he calls 'social history' as well for context, when required. Its pretty darn good.

[Backjob]

What's Persepolis 2 like? I loved the first one.

I just finished Neal Stephenson's "System of the World" which was the last in the "Baroque trilogy". I loved those books, proper immerse-yourself massive chunks of writing and endless opportunities to geek out on the little period detail and sly cracks about Royal Society-era scientists. It's a horrifically ambitious thing to have written, and I dunno if he completely pulled it off, but it's still really good fun.

Got Gunther Grass - "The rat" and "The flounder" cued up to read next...

[Mister Lex]

Is anyone else here into Haruki Murakami?
I have become addicted to his work.
At the moment I am half-way through 'Dance, Dance, Dance' which is a kind of sequel to 'The Wild Sheep Chase', in that they share the same protagonist and the weird presence of 'The Sheep Man'.
I recently finished 'The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle' and now understand what my mum meant when she said "You will never look at a well in the same way again after you read this book".
Although he's an elusive author, in one of the few interviews I have found with him, he talks about an abiding sense of loss in his work, which is mostly melancholic.
There is a weariness with modern life which I find very attractive, as well as the poignancy of the dream-like sequences in many of his books.

[mind_philip]

I'm currently reading Al Franken's 'Lies and the Lying Liars...' (I'm visiting the US, glued to the car-crash that is FOX News); 'Battle Cry of Freedom' by James McPherson (In Virginia, cradle of the civil war), and browsing a copy of the Penguin Dictionary of American Folklore I got at one of Charlottesville's many excellent second hand bookstores.

[Backjob]

Yeah, Murakami is the don dada of current authors, nobody else really touches him. I see people reading his stuff everywhere from japan to singapore to thailand to australia - it's totally universal. People who haven't read a novel in years suddenly get hooked on his books and read all of them. Really genuinely a phenomenon...

[Grievous Angel]

Haven't read any fiction for ages. Other than Stewart Home's down and out..., but that doesn't count. And I recently finished one of the bound volumes of The Invisibles, which was really good, but nowhere as good as it would've been when it first came out.

Non-fiction: recently finished Hutton's triumph of the moon -- great, well researched history of pagan witchcraft by Bristol Uni's professor of history -- and am picking over his History of the Ritual Year. Read a couple of books about the invisible college around the time of (nd during!) Malachy's birth. I guess I mainly read tech magazines, but when I stay at Eden's, I tend to rifle through his extensive collection of seventies left wing tracts and pamphlets and fill in all the "e's" in blue biro.

Never black biro -- just blue.

A really good thread might be "what books do you keep going back to"...

[Pearsall]

Stiglitz 'Globalization and Its Discontents'. It's fucking boring, but it's the sort of thing you feel you should read. I find economics dull beyond belief, but it's important.