What are you currently reading?

rick_chasey

It's funny.

I like to think I read a lot of books, and I know the areas I read very well, but you sometimes forget how many genres there are out there.

Anyone talking about sci-fi or fantasy stuff is totally beyond me - don't know a thing. No idea who the well known writers are, what's what etc.

The proper 1984 is about as sci-fi as I get.

You only know the stuff in your little bubble.

Kieran_Burns

davis wrote:

essex-commuter wrote:

Just finished 'You've Gone Too Far This TIme Sir' - Danny Bent. (Excellent)

Really didn't rate that one all that much.

Currently should be reading the first of the Game of Thrones books and the Call of the Wild by Jack London, except I dropped my Kindle at the weekend -- anyone know if the screen from the (cheaper) Kindle will fit my broken Kindle keyboard? Really rather annoyed with myself for the clumsiness

Missed this the first time - I got my v3 Kindle replaced for £40 from Amazon when I broke the screen.

rjsterry

Rick Chasey wrote:

It's funny.

I like to think I read a lot of books, and I know the areas I read very well, but you sometimes forget how many genres there are out there.

Anyone talking about sci-fi or fantasy stuff is totally beyond me - don't know a thing. No idea who the well known writers are, what's what etc.

The proper 1984 is about as sci-fi as I get.

You only know the stuff in your little bubble.

Read Brave New World not that long ago - some worryingly accurate predictions (amid some almost laughable mistaken predictions).

aeon

i'm part way through Zoo City, by Lauren Beukes, and it's feckin great.

davis

Kieran_Burns wrote:

davis wrote:

essex-commuter wrote:

Just finished 'You've Gone Too Far This TIme Sir' - Danny Bent. (Excellent)

Really didn't rate that one all that much.

Currently should be reading the first of the Game of Thrones books and the Call of the Wild by Jack London, except I dropped my Kindle at the weekend -- anyone know if the screen from the (cheaper) Kindle will fit my broken Kindle keyboard? Really rather annoyed with myself for the clumsiness

Missed this the first time - I got my v3 Kindle replaced for £40 from Amazon when I broke the screen.

And they've just agreed to replace mine for £50.

Just awesome customer service; really, every company could learn from that.

Paulie W

Gussio wrote:

Paulie W wrote:

Just finished 1984 by David Peace - pretty intense. Would recommend all of his books especially the Red Riding books.

GB84 is an outstanding book. I found it quite hard going and sometimes difficult to follow, but it really captured the misery of the miners strike. Well worth reading.

Enjoyed The Damned United and intend to read the Tokyo Trilogy at some point soon.

Yes, GB84! Mixing up my titles there.

Tokyo Year Zero is very good indeed but I struggled with Occupied City which is very difficult to follow. I think I read it too soon after Tokyo Year Zero. Peace's style is quite intense and needs to be read in small doses!

Cleat Eastwood

The kindles great for having few books on the go - at the mo i'm reading French Made Simple, The Delta of Venus, Outliers and best of all, as recommended by a mate Philip Pulmans Northern Lights - amazing book.

SmellTheGlove

sufferingpete wrote:

Just finished

Cherry-Garrard, Apsley (1922). The Worst Journey in the World.

absolutely awesome.

I Don't know what to read next.

I think I needed a lie down after reading that one. Terrific read.
Have you read Huntford's "The last Place on Earth"?

My current two:
The Morbid Age by Richard Overy (it explains - at least I think it does - why my parents have the outlook they do. Living a very impressionable time of their lives during the 1930s they must have seen their parents responding to what were thoroughly frightening, uncertain times).
Waltenberg by Hedi Kaddour - weird spy novel translated from the French.

My method for choosing books to read at present is this, when reading e.g. a newspaper if I come across something that looks faintly interesting I immediately look in the local library online catalogue and if it's there I reserve it. If not, move on. I might try this approach with some of the titles in this thread...
I keep a log of books that I read and have done for 7 or 8 years. My biggest annual score was 23; more recently I have managed only about 15.

(Ahhh Delta of Venus - you'll have the mods in Eastwood....)

clarkey cat

I keep a log of books that I read

glad its not just me that does this... I put * next to ones I really enjoyed. Sad, I know. But I always try and beat last years score (!) and sometimes I'll smash out a couple of easy thrillers just to get my numbers up. Silly Commuter Reading Stats.

I also have a log of books I want to read (broken down into Fiction and Non-Fiction - I like to have at least one of each on the go at a time) and books I want to get - currently on the look-out for 'Disturbing the Peace' by Richard Yates.

Try to complete one a week.

Gussio

SmellTheGlove wrote:

sufferingpete wrote:

Just finished

Cherry-Garrard, Apsley (1922). The Worst Journey in the World.

absolutely awesome.

I Don't know what to read next.

I think I needed a lie down after reading that one. Terrific read.
[/size]

Ordered The Worst Journey in the World on the strength of these literary reviews.

Keith47

I'm also about a third of the way through the last in the dragon trilogy. Would highly recommend them, even though they don't translate well to the big screen. Like The DaVinci code, great book but dire film.

el_presidente

Was struggling through Hawksmoor by Ackroyd but decided it was a little too intense for my current frazzled state of mind, so am now half way through Fleming's From Russia with Love, to be followed by The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie.

rick_chasey

Rick Chasey wrote:

Almost finished One Day I Will Write About This Place: A Memoir by Binyavanga Wainaina.

Getting very close to the end now - and is much better for it.

The ending seems to really tie it all up.

For those who don't know the background - it's a memior from a pretty famous writer originally from Kenya. It being African, he deals with the identity issue, but in a pretty real way - basically what it's like growing up in Africa, but then from the perspective of himself at that time - so when he's a kid it's pretty sporadic, child-like - and gets more continuous and prosaic as it goes on.

If you're interested in what it's actually like to grow up in Kenya - rather than what comic relief will tell you, it's really great.

The link I provided a few pages back about his rant on 'how to write about Africa' gives you an idea of what his book isn't.

I kinda feel I need to sell this book a bit, since it's very good from many different perspectives, and it will be overlooked because it's a) a memoir of a guy no-one really knows and b) it's in Africa.

It's not like any conventional version of either.

clarkey cat

cheers for the tip RC. just ordered that. sounds great.

EKE_38BPM

Ever read Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe?

Brilliant book about Whitey going to Africa and the end of the way things traditionally were.

clarkey cat

Things Fall Apart is an amazing book.

rick_chasey

EKE_38BPM wrote:

Ever read Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe?

Brilliant book about Whitey going to Africa and the end of the way things traditionally were.

Yeah, I did for my studies.

The perspective from which we were studying meant we took it apart (pretty much literally...literally).

clarkey cat

I did it for studies too but read it again recently. requires re-reading. Okonkwo is a classic literary character

EKE_38BPM

Rick Chasey wrote:

EKE_38BPM wrote:

Ever read Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe?

Brilliant book about Whitey going to Africa and the end of the way things traditionally were.

Yeah, I did for my studies.

The perspective from which we were studying meant we took it apart (pretty much literally...literally).

I assumed you would have.

GCSE English Lit nearly killed reading for me. Dissecting books just took all of the fun out of the books I read. I imagine that if I had to read Things Fall Apart for school I wouldn't have enjoyed it anywhere as much as I did reading it for my own pleasure. I'm sure I would have picked up more nuances and hidden meanings, but I probably would have read it grudgingly whilst day-dreaming about being out on my bike.

Or doing some other sort of riding.

rick_chasey

EKE_38BPM wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

EKE_38BPM wrote:

Ever read Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe?

Brilliant book about Whitey going to Africa and the end of the way things traditionally were.

Yeah, I did for my studies.

The perspective from which we were studying meant we took it apart (pretty much literally...literally).

I assumed you would have.

GCSE English Lit nearly killed reading for me. Dissecting books just took all of the fun out of the books I read. I imagine that if I had to read Things Fall Apart for school I wouldn't have enjoyed it anywhere as much as I did reading it for my own pleasure. I'm sure I would have picked up more nuances and hidden meanings, but I probably would have read it grudgingly whilst day-dreaming about being out on my bike.

Or doing some other sort of riding.

*shrugs* in the context of my REAL interests outside of cycling (identity), I massively enjoy deconstructing literature, especially when it's in Africa - since identity is a genuine issue in a post-colonial world, and touches on a lot of points from the kind of theoretical perspective I like to take - and I've been well trained to spot it pretty easily.

I genuinely miss being able to take apart a text that way with the consumate ease I did when I was at uni - gave me so much power and understanding from such a small amount of texts.

What's interesting about this book, is that he's taking life from a background of where that deconstruction has already occurred and something he's already been and done, making the text a bit meta in bits (especially later on, where he begins to contextualise the point of the book (implicitly).

rick_chasey

Meh, I make it sound bookish, but it's not.

Most of it is about growing up stuff - wanting to f*ck, eat, drink. Just like anyone - which is why it works.

Agent57

"The Cucumber Book"

byke68

Been trying to get through WAR AND PEACE for the last umpteen years. I can read, just never get the chance to although I did manage to flick through a few pages of Chicken Cycle-fit brochure earlier.

redjeepǃ

"Game Theory 101 : The Basics" by William Spaniel.

finchy

Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick

Open University T207 coursebook Static Structures.

John Bird's Engineering Mathematics

An old A-level maths text book.

EKIMIKE

Rick Chasey wrote:

You might like this: (it's short, honest!) by the chap who wrote the book I'm reading:

http://www.granta.com/Archive/92/How-to ... ica/Page-1

Going back a bit here, but strayed into this section/thread and really enjoyed that. Thanks.

Should really say what i'm currently reading but it's a fairly niche human rights law book (i'm a law student) that is ridiculously over-priced...... yeh, thought not.

BigJimmyB

Rick Chasey wrote:

BigJimmyB wrote:

Last of the Dragon Tattoo trilogy.
Would highly receommend.

They're ultra-graphic who-dunnits right?
Couldn't move on the tube without seeing someone buried in a dragon tattoo book last summer.

Hi Rick, to summarise:

Book 1 - Journo gets asked to look into disappeared neice of wealthy (old) man. Recruits GWDT as research assistant. Uncovers much nastiness.
Book 2 - expands on GWDT's back-story, ends with GWDT being buried alive
Book 3 - continuation of Book 2 (well, so far - I'm currently 1/3rd through)

Just very absorbing and well-written (IMVHO!)

I also like the Jack Reacher books by Lee Child. Not everyone's cuppa but they make the 50 mins on the train fly.

Paulie W

BigJimmyB wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

BigJimmyB wrote:

Last of the Dragon Tattoo trilogy.
Would highly receommend.

They're ultra-graphic who-dunnits right?
Couldn't move on the tube without seeing someone buried in a dragon tattoo book last summer.

Hi Rick, to summarise:

Book 1 - Journo gets asked to look into disappeared neice of wealthy (old) man. Recruits GWDT as research assistant. Uncovers much nastiness.
Book 2 - expands on GWDT's back-story, ends with GWDT being buried alive
Book 3 - continuation of Book 2 (well, so far - I'm currently 1/3rd through)

Just very absorbing and well-written (IMVHO!)

I also like the Jack Reacher books by Lee Child. Not everyone's cuppa but they make the 50 mins on the train fly.

I read and kind of enjoyed them when on a series of long train journeys but the writing style is a bit bizzare - although I'm talking about the translation so not sure that is entirely fair - not least the level of mundane detail he provides, e.g. contents of a fridge (including the brand of each item in the fridge), the exact types of Ikea furniture in a room and so on. A decent editor could have halved the length of each of the books!

MonkeyMonster

Just chomped through some odl school dragonlance "dragons of ...", then chrysalids plus have 2 open paper books at home I can't remember names of

ktaylor

currrently wading through Dostoevsky's "The Devils". I have just had to print out the Wikipedia page to keep track of who all the different protagonists are and their philosophical bent! It seems Russians can be referred to in an almost infinite number of variations of their name.

Just added some of the books suggested above (can't believe I've never encountered William Gibson) as some sort of relief from the slog.