viktorvaughn

Well-known member
Gave up on 2066 in the murders section, found that I'd stopped caring.

Just finished Riddley Walker (gruelling in a way but amazing).

Now either The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin or Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Woolf. Not decided which any recommendations?
 
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Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Getting a kindle this year has been the best thing ever for me, I'm reading more books than ever at the moment. Theres a torrent floating about on the net with a collection of 5000 books or something (and another one with the same amount of books in Spanish), practically everything you can think of...ridiculous. I need never buy a book ever again.

I also love it because I can read Spanish books on it and look up the words I don't know in the dictionary on the same screen. Reading some Bukowski in Spanish at the moment, translates really well surprisingly!
 

jenks

thread death
Doing loads of re-reading this year - the Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies, Golding's Rites of Passage trilogy, Maus, Proust, Perec's Life: a User's Manual, along with Becoming Dickens and Shakespeare, Sex and Love - it's been a great couple of month's reading for me. And i'm reading Rimbaud for the first time - somehow I have always found a reason to put him back on the shelf in favour of others. Also reading A Maggot by Muldoon.

Dunno why I'd want a Kindle - i do like books and could only imagine using a Kindle if I were travelling and needed the suitcase space and, call me old fashioned, but I'd like writers to get paid and soaking up books for free off torrent sites is unlikely to make that happen.
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Dunno why I'd want a Kindle - i do like books and could only imagine using a Kindle if I were travelling and needed the suitcase space and, call me old fashioned, but I'd like writers to get paid and soaking up books for free off torrent sites is unlikely to make that happen.

I have bought a few things too. I take pretty the same approach to downloading music. I buy what I can afford and where I think (in my mind) most deserves the money, and pinch the rest! Not fully justified I know but...

I like books too but the kindle has been a godsend to me after moving country recently and having to leave them all behind. I thought i'd miss them more than I do, but the kindles great to read from, a million times better than reading off a laptop screen anyway.

Absolutely brilliant for reading in foreign languages too.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Seeing as Lovecraft has popped up again, and since it's just been his 75th deathday, I thought I'd post up a mix I've made which is loosely inspired by his writing. It's still a rough draft and there are a few cock-ups, so it's here for now, but I'll stick it in the Mixes sub-forum when I've done a final version. Enjoy!

 
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you

Well-known member
Dunno why I'd want a Kindle - i do like books and could only imagine using a Kindle if I were travelling and needed the suitcase space and, call me old fashioned, but I'd like writers to get paid and soaking up books for free off torrent sites is unlikely to make that happen.

I was a staunch critic of the kindle, I'm a bibliophile and love the book as book beautiful. However, I decided to get a Kindle because so much stuff I want to read never makes it to print - blogs, online journals, essays etc etc - So now I have a Kindle that is crammed with PDFs of online essays, so rather than wreck my eyes gawping at a harsh mac monitor I can read them off the Kindle - wherever I am.

Another great thing about the Kindle, a positive I didn't anticipate, is its portability and its capacity. I always carry 2 or three books, but can't carry 5-6 big books, and sometimes you just have to read whatever you're in the mood for.... So if I have a bag full of Sloterdijk or Deleuze and feel like reading Burroughs the Kindle is the answer, its also nice to carry large works, like Ovid, The Bible, Complete HPL etc that can be dipped into when at a whim. I am probably reading more tbh, but reading better, reading exactly what I feel like (or having greater freedom to do so) is fantastic.
 

luka

Well-known member
i would never own one becasue im such a snob but given that most books any sane person wants to read are by dead people i dont think we need worry about authors not getting paid. ovid, is he getting paid? who knows hes been dead a long time. i like this

HANG it all, Robert Browning,
there can be but the one "Sordello."
But Sordello, and my Sordello?
Lo Sordels si fo di Mantovana.
So-Shu churned in the sea.
Seal sports in the spray-whited circles of cliff-wash,
Sleek head, daughter of Lyr,
eyes of Picasso
Under black fur-hood, lithe daughter of Ocean;
And the wave runs in the beach-groove:
"Eleanor, Elenaus and Eliptolis!"
And poor old Homer, blind, blind as a bat,
Ear, ear for the sea-surge, murmer of old men's voices:
"Let her go back to the ships,
Back among Grecian faces, lest evil come on our own,
Evil and further evil, and a curse cursed on our children,
Moves, yes she moves like a goddess
And has the face of a god
and the voice of Schoeney's daughters,
And doom goes with her in walking,
Let her go back to the ships,
back among Grecian voices."
And by the beach-run, Tyro,
Twisted arms of the sea-god,
Lithe sinews of water, gripping her, cross-hold,
Glare azure of water, cold-welter, close cover,
Quiet sun-tawny sand-stretch,
The gulls broad out their wings,
nipping between the splay feathers;
Snipe come for their bath,
bend out their wing-joints,
Spread wet wings to the sun-film,
And by Scios,
to left of the Naxos passage,
Naviform rock overgrown,
algae cling to its edge,
There is a wine-red glow in the shallows,
a tin flash in the sun-dazzle.
The ship landed in Scios,
men wanting spring-water,
And by the rock-pool a young boy loggy with vine-must,
"To Naxos? Yes, we'll take you to Naxos,
Cum' along lad." "Not that way!"
"Aye, that way is Naxos."
And I said: "It's a straight ship."
And an ex-convict out of Italy
knocked me into the fore-stays,
(He was wanted for manslaughter in Tuscany)
And the whole twenty against me,
Mad for a little slave money
And they took her out of Scios
And off her course...
And the boy came to, again, with the racket,
And looked out over the bows,
and to eastward, and to the Naxos passage.
God-sleight then, god-sleight:
Ship stock fast in sea-swirl,
Ivy upon the oars, King Pentheus,
grapes with no seed but sea-foam,
Ivy in scupper hole.
Aye, I, Acoetes, stood there,
and the god stood by me,
Water cutting under the keel,
Sea-break from stern forrards,
wake running off from the bow,
And where was gunwale, there now was vine-trunk,
And tenthril where cordage had been,
grape-leaves on the rowlocks,
Heavy vine on the oarshafts,
And, out of nothing, a breathing,
hot breath on my ankles,
Beasts like shadows in glass,
a furred tail upon nothingness.
Lynx-purr, and heathery smell of beasts,
where tar smell had been,
Sniff and pad-foot of beasts,
eye-glitter out of black air.
The sky overshot, dry, with no tempest,
Sniff and pad-foot of beasts,
fur brushing my knee-skin,
Rustle of airy sheaths,
dry forms in the aether.
And the ship like a keel in ship-yard,
slung like an ox in smith's sling,
Ribs stuck fast in the ways,
grape-cluster over pin-rack,
void air taking pelt.
Lifeless air become sinewed,
feline leisure of panthers,
Leopards sniffing the grape shoots by scupper-hole,
Crouched panthers by fore-hatch,
And the sea blue-deep about us,
green-ruddy in shadows,
And Lyaeus: "From now, Acoetes, my altars,
Fearing no bondage,
fearing no cat of the wood,
Safe with my lynxes,
feeding grapes to my leopards,
Olibanum is my incense,
the vines grow in my homage."
The back-swell now smooth in the rudder-chains,
Black snout of a porpoise
where Lycabs had been,
Fish-scales on the oarsmen.
And I worship.
I have seen what I have seen.
When they brought the boy I said:
"He has a god in him,
though I do not know which god."
And they kicked me into the fore-stays.
I have seen what I have seen:
Medon's face like the face of a dory,
Arms shrunk into fins. And you, Pentheus,
Had as well listen to Tiresias, and to Cadmus,
or your luck will go out of you.
Fish-scales over groin muscles,
lynx-purr amid sea...
And of a later year,
pale in the wine-red algae,
If you will lean over the rock,
the coral face under wave-tinge,
Rose-paleness under water-shift,
Ileuthyeria, fair Dafne of sea-bords,
The swimmer's arms turned to branches,
Who will say in what year,
fleeing what band of tritons,
The smooth brows, seen, and half seen,
now ivory stillness.
And So-shu churned in the sea, So-shu also,
using the long moon for a churn-stick...
Lithe turning of water,
sinews of Poseidon,
Black azure and hyaline,
glass wave over Tyro,
Close cover, unstillness,
bright welter of wave-cords,
Then quiet water,
quiet in the buff sands,
Sea-fowl stretching wing-joints,
splashing in rock-hollows and sand-hollows
In the wave-runs by the half-dune;
Glass-glint of wave in the tide-rips against sunlight,
pallor of Hesperus,
Grey peak of the wave,
wave, colour of grapes' pulp,

Olive grey in the near,
far, smoke grey of the rock-slide,
Salmon-pink wings of the fish-hawk
cast grey shadows in water,
The tower like a one-eyed great goose
cranes up out of the olive-grove,
And we have heard the fauns chiding Proteus
in the smell of hay under the olive-trees,
And the frogs singing against the fauns
in the half-light.
And...

its pounds adaptation of ovid and its my favourite thing of pounds. pound said wasshisnames translation of ovid is the loveliest book in the english language.
 

luka

Well-known member
good question. i wil think about it as i wash the dishes and get back to you. loveliset is a very specific word. i have to think what counts as properly lovely.
 

viktorvaughn

Well-known member
yeah read this recently. fuckin brilliant!

Yeah, definitely. It's really demanding cos of the language, so when you have read even ten pages it feels really intense, gruelling so you kind of empathise with all the stuff he's going through, all the murk and filth, the dogs, the remembering of the times past, the relationships started and then broken, the strangeness and the violence...
 

faustus

Well-known member
I finally got around to reading V, and posted a little review on my blog that may or may not be of interest (it tied in with that thread here a couple of weeks back about colonial guilt)

I'd also like to read The Savage detectives soon

At the risk of provoking people's ire, I found this pretty boring. Can't remember the last time I had to force myself to the end of a book so much (I'm thinking the last 50 pages). I thought The Third Reich was great though, so I'm not giving up on Bolaño yet

I also love it because I can read Spanish books on it and look up the words I don't know in the dictionary on the same screen. Reading some Bukowski in Spanish at the moment, translates really well surprisingly!

Hmmm, that is a big plus, though I'm still resisting. Don't know what I'm going to do with my book mountains if I move back to Britain this summer.

Any Spanish-language book recommendations?
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Hmmm, that is a big plus, though I'm still resisting. Don't know what I'm going to do with my book mountains if I move back to Britain this summer.

Any Spanish-language book recommendations?

Nah not really, I was asking you this same question last year remember? Loved Sin noticias de Gurb btw, took me a while to read it because my Spanish isn't all that great and I was annotating the book as I went, but it was really funny. I plan to read it again sometime soon, should be much easier and flow better this time. I think I got all the Mendozas in that torrent so I might try another of his next, you read anything else by him?

I think Gurb might be the only novel i've read in Spanish by an actual Spanish author. Someone got me the paperback of Carlos Ruis Zafon's 'La sombra del viento' for my birthday but still only 50 pages in and I got tired of hefting that huge book (and a dictionary) around town on the way to work , went back to the kindle...

Sounds like the Kindle is the answer to your book mountain problem. Like You, I was a sceptic but I've not looked back since I got one.
 
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