what are you reading now?

[slowtrain]

I was right well pleased to find I had at least ten seperate female authors on my meagre little bookshelf (nearly 1/3 of all my books!) the other day.

Still about 90% white though.

 

[luka]

Default

I couldn't do the Pessoa in a onner, too dense.

is this scottish slang? what does it mean?
atwood i have pegged as prissy. is this unfair?

 

[grizzleb]

Onner means what it sounds like, 'in one go' so to speak. My usage was misleading anyway though, as I rarely or never read a book from cover to cover. Essentially I had to leave the Pessoa for breaks of a while before returning to it, as it was quite repetitious.

 

[grizzleb]

Agota Kyrstof is one female author I've read, perhaps the only. 'The Notebook' is an amazing novel, Hungarian modernist shizzle.

 

[Mr. Tea]

JK Rowling or GTFO.

 

[you]

In between Ovid, Plato, Dolar and Goodman I'm reading China Mieville - he's Warwick Cru right? Anyone else here have anything to say about him? The City and The City is pretty damn absorbing, loving it so far.

 

[IdleRich]

I'm reading Prick Up Your Ears the Joe Orton biography - years ago I read his diary which is drawn from extensively for this book and I'll soon have read as much stuff about him as I have of his own work.
I also read the first part of this book - http://www.justinquirk.com/writes/yellowman/ which was given to me by a friend. It's good as far as it goes and beautifully drawn and put together but the amount of story you get in the first issue is minuscule. I get the feeling that if I want to read the whole thing it's gonna involve a massive investment of money - to tell a whole story at this rate will need about a hundred issues and presumably they're gonna cost at least a fiver each. Is this how it always is with co.. sorry graphic novels?
Also just picked up The Perfumed Garden which is some kind of fifteenth century Arabian smut - looking forward to dipping into that one.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Phwoar, I'd dip into her perfumed garden, hur hur etc.

 

[faustus]

In between Ovid, Plato, Dolar and Goodman I'm reading China Mieville - he's Warwick Cru right? Anyone else here have anything to say about him? The City and The City is pretty damn absorbing, loving it so far.

Perdido Street Station was lots of fun. The new one (Embassy-something?) sounded good. However, I took King Rat out the library a few months back and it was incredibly, mind-numbingly awful. A mix of the Pied Piper fairytale and (cringe-inducing) descriptions of the 90s dnb scene

 

[empty mirror]

The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock

The Flannery O'Connor comparison is inevitable; who else mines small town religion/darkness/death territory well? Tough guy prose, I guess. To continue free associating, think: Natural Born Killers on mute and sloooooooowed down; a sober Faulkner; soundtracked by a backwoods Nick Cave. In short, the duende is strong with this one. Interesting author bio; laborer in a paper mill and in the third act he starts publishing novels. Scowling on the book sleeve.

Should say I'm halfway through it. Co-worker loaned it to me and said it flagged in the second half but he's also sort of... not the most motivated person.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Same here, though I've just started Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood. Any Atwood fans in da house? I quite enjoyed The Handmaid's Tale, which I read for Eng Lit A-level many years ago.

Nearly finished this. Pretty good, in the main. It's funny, Atwood is (I guess) often bracketed as a feminist writer but this book is mostly about how women (and young girls) judge, manipulate and betray each other, and like THT, where the main theme is obviously patriarchy and religion, it includes little digs at some of the excesses of 70s/80s radical feminism. It's written partly as a narrative of present events and partly in retrospect as the narrator character looks back on her childhood and adolescence (which neatly sidesteps what would otherwise be a rather jarring contrast between the narrative of a girl of 8 or 10 and the very adult, literary language it's described in). Some nice sardonically humorous moments, such as when the middle-aged artist is interviewed by a feisty, much younger female arts journalist and annoys her by refusing to come out with the standard feminist soundbites expected of her; the journalist then extracts a petty revenge in her article by scornfully describing the artist's scruffy clothes. Also Atwood is a bit of a self-righteous veggie which comes through in a few places, though not so often as to be too annoying.

Beautifully written, well worth a read.

 

[Slothrop]

Perdido Street Station was lots of fun. The new one (Embassy-something?) sounded good. However, I took King Rat out the library a few months back and it was incredibly, mind-numbingly awful. A mix of the Pied Piper fairytale and (cringe-inducing) descriptions of the 90s dnb scene

I thought Perdido Street Station was pretty boring - I'd be interested to hear what you liked about it. There were some interesting ideas, but it was basically spoiled by a ploddingly traditionalist "unlikely heroes have to save the world from bug eyed monsters". I guess I was a bit disappointed because a load of people had told me it was the radically exciting new approach that fantasy had been waiting for, and it turned out to be a reasonably well crafted tweak on a bunch of stuff that was getting hackneyed in cyberpunk 20 years ago...

The City & The City was fantastic, though.

 

[Benny Bunter]

wow, woebot's released an ebook!


Anyone else here get a kindle for xmas? Was always quite dismissive of them but now I've used one I love it.

 

[empty mirror]

My spoiled almost three year old girl got a Kindle Fire from my mother for Xmas. She loves it, plays Angry Birds and other games on it. Calls it her "candle". I have read magazines on it, but not a full length book. Watched some League of Gentlemen on it. Screen is a bit reflective. I am on-board with the eBook thing. I am beginning to feel encumbered by physical books. They are everywhere in our house. Suffocating. Wife's a librarian so it is something of an occupational hazard, I guess.

I copped Woebot's ebook. For that price, there's no reason not to. Would have paid double or triple. Looking forward to having a look if I can wrestle the "candle" from my daughter's clutches.

 

[viktorvaughn]

A wizard of earthsea - Ursula le Guin

Cool 70s fantasy (i guess for both kids and adults) more about the responsibility wizards have to use thier power properly, inner darkness that lies within us, the naming of things names/realities etc than big fights etc.

 

[luka]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/dec/13/cities-under-siege-stephen-graham

im reading this. i read wizrd of earthsea books as a child. they were amazing. i got the cartoon of it the otherr day. havent watched it yet tho. saw someoen here recommend it. cant rmember who. sorry.

 

[droid]

The earthsea cartoon is pretty underwhelming. Little or nothing to do with the books. The live action version is incredibly bad as well.

 

[bruno]

i've just finished an essay on montaigne by zweig and a perfect spy by john le carré. next up is a book on the war of the pacific between chile, peru and bolivia.

 

[slim jenkins]

Lost in the labyrinth of the Navidson household, having travelled it's corridors years ago and returned without finding the end. Silly me, there is no 'end', but this time I've gone further. Expect comprehensive notes, analysis, and whole books about my experience later.

 

[IdleRich]

House of Leaves? Still never managed to find anything that does what it does as well as it does.
Anyway, just started The Devils of Loudon by Aldous Huxley (the inspiration for the film with Ollie Reed of course) - the first few pages were disappointingly dry (it is a kind of historical account after all) but it quickly struck me that it's more of a dry humour at work here - I'm smiling at virtually every page and sometimes actually laughing out loud. Never thought it had a reputation as a humourous book.