what are you reading now?

[pattycakes_]

bad wisdom by bill drummond and mark manning

my 3rd time reading this one. so damn funny.

 

[STN]

Just started Ulysses. Really enjoying so far, very vivid.

Stupid question: why are they in a weird tower at the beginning?

 

[vimothy]

Wasn't that Joyce's house? I can't remember. Craner to thread!

 

[baboon2004]

I'm just finishing Dracula which I am reading for a book group I recently joined. Can't say I ahve enjoyed it much - overly plot based, all characters, except Dracula are priggishly good and almost no actual Dracula in it!

I was wondering of our 21st C reading of Dracula is actually more interesting than the book itself - the way we can use Dracula as a useful symbol for some dark Other - sexual, foreign, whatever.

Surprising, as Vlad the Impaler was, um, a bit nuts (I went to Transylvania last year).

Edit; Klaus Kinski could be a useful stand-in for that foreign, oversexed Other.

 

[jenks]

Wasn't that Joyce's house? I can't remember. Craner to thread!

I think Yeats lived in a Martello tower.

edit - not a Martello - http://www.irelandseye.com/aarticles/travel/attractions/castles/ballylee.shtm

 

[STN]

sorry, I've wikipediaed now - apparently Joyce did live in a Martello Tower, with the chap on whom Buck Mulligan is partly based.

a colleague said I should have read all this other stuff (portrait of the artist, dubliners etc) before attempting this. Was she correct?

 

[vimothy]

Of course not--it's a work of literature not the instructions to a fucking set of lego!

The only correct way to start these things is in media res, in any case. So you have done exactly as you should.

 

[vimothy]

Sorry, that was a bit pretentious.

No.

Stephen (who you've already met) is the main protagonist in Portrait. But he's a peripheral character in Ulysses. And Dubliners is a great book, but nothing to do with Ulysses per se, except for the fact that they're both about people who live in Dublin. I think the best way to approach Ulysses is to be prepared to do a lot of reading alongside it, though not necessarily anything by Joyce. In fact, almost certainly not anything by Joyce.

 

[STN]

what sort of reading?

 

[vimothy]

Have you got an annotated copy of Ulysses?

 

[STN]

no, but you are the second person to suggest I should.

 

[vimothy]

It is a very dense book.

 

[STN]

right, well I've arranged to borrow an annotated one.

 

[Corpsey]

The Ellmann biography of Joyce is fantastic, explains a lot of the background to his works and is generally fascinating.

I'm reading bits of Rabelais for Uni today, and then I've got three days to read 'Crime and Punishment'. Eep.

 

[vimothy]

Re Ellmann: good catch, Corpsey!

 

[Mr. Tea]

bad wisdom by bill drummond and mark manning

my 3rd time reading this one. so damn funny.

Ah, thanks for the reminder - IdleRich leant me The Wild Highway a couple of years ago, and I loved it to bits and have been meaning to get hold of the other books in that series (a trilogy, is that right?) but had forgotten.

 

[pattycakes_]

yeah, it is. i've been meaning to read the other ones too. how was the wild highway?

 

[Mr. Tea]

yeah, it is. i've been meaning to read the other ones too. how was the wild highway?

Just hilarious gonzo genius - a sort of demented Heart Of Darkness pastiche set against a backdrop of brutal civil war, heroic drug consumption and bumrape on an epic scale.

 

[jenks]

lots of phil roth - love the bloke but am aware this is not universal love

 

[crackerjack]

lots of phil roth - love the bloke but am aware this is not universal love

well it's universal in this flat of one. heard the latest aren't so hot, though...

last i read was Plot Against America, which was brilliant but ended badly, very badly. Got American Pastoral up on the unread shelf too.