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So, what's everyone reading? (The General Books Thread)

Started by surreal, June 11, 2007, 07:11:33 PM

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Anyone got any recommendations of really funny books, which are a great read? I think someone was recommending a Steve Martin book in an old thread once, I might have dreamt it.

Pseudopath

Quote from: Regular Chicken on June 11, 2007, 11:28:39 PM
Anyone got any recommendations of really funny books, which are a great read? I think someone was recommending a Steve Martin book in an old thread once, I might have dreamt it.

Cruel Shoes, wasn't it? You can read it here.

Santa's Boyfriend

I'm reading Judge Dredd - The Complete Case Files Vol 6.  And it rocks!  Absolutely perfect bedtime reading.  As for daytime reading, The Road to Sarajevo - a book all about the Balkans from about 1800s up to the asassination of Franz Ferdinand.

non capisco

Quote from: Regular Chicken on June 11, 2007, 07:32:57 PM
I've just got through the Derek Strange trilogy by George Pelecanos. He's a regular writer for The Wire and you can tell. Its not his best stuff but fans of the show should check him out.

I really like Pelecanos' stuff, and I agree the Derek Strange stories aren't his best books, as readable as they are. I prefer the earlier Nick Stefanos books (you can buy all those in one doorstop sized volume for about a tenner, really good value) and the 'D.C quartet' (I don't know if he originally intended those four books to be grouped together like that, it seems like a publisher's decision to invite James Ellroy comparisons to me, but they are his most satisfying novels, especially 'King Suckerman')

On more American crime fiction, I've recently been on a massive Walter Mosley binge, reading all the Easy Rawlins mysteries one after the other, which has been pure bliss. I haven't read 'Killing Johnny Fry', his most recent book, which got an absolute critical kicking and rejoices in the highly dubious subtitle 'a sexistential novel'. Has anyone read it and is it as bad as all that?

I also recently highly enjoyed 'The People's Act Of Love' by James Meek, a novel set in 1919 Siberia involving a town in the middle of nowhere under military rule just sat waiting  in dread for Bolsheviks to come up the Trans-Siberian railway and end everything. It manages to keep surprising you all the way through and goes off on all kinds of tangents.

Currently ploughing through 'Down And Dirty Pictures' by Peter Biskind, the guy who wrote the essential 'Easy Riders and Raging Bulls' about 1970s cinema. This one covers independent cinema in the 90's and is a great deal less interesting,it has to be said. It seems to be mostly about the Weinstein brothers and Robert Redford pissing people off, and dry details about mergers and acquisitions. Ah well.


All Surrogate

Just finished The Steep Approach to Garbadale by Iain Banks; similar to The Crow Road, and the incest theme crops again.  Nevertheless, a great book: seemingly effortless to read and engaging.

Still trying to get through Capital, the third volume, but I made the mistake of dipping into Dune, which I now can't stop reading (for the nth time).  It's simply an astonishingly good book; I can't think of any way I'd be able to write such quality.  Suffused with ideas, complex and simple at the same time, teasingly evocative, pure manna for a SF fan.

The Duck Man

Fuck all at present. Which is disgraceful, especially as an English student. Last book I read was Eliza Haywood's Love in Excess which I blasted through in about 6 hours for exam purposes. In fact, so far in 2007 I have read: Love in Excess, four plays and a bit of Chaucer for exams, a few poems for seminars, Slaughterhouse Five, Michael Atheron's autobiography, the first bit of Nasser Hussain's autobiography.

Conversely, today I put on my shelves all the books I brought back from Uni and, as I have bought so many over the last year, I filled them up entirely. CDs, books from my youth, ones that I never read, comedy scripts all had to be moved to make room. And some still had to lie on their sides - and they're all books I bought for pleasure, I didn't put any course books on there.

It's not as if I don't enjoy reading. But the Internet and television just seem easier and I just go to them on default. When I read before I go to sleep, or am in the car, it's the various magazines I get, as one doesn't start a book there. Still, I read 12 books in 14 days on holiday last year, so at least I'll get through a few more soon.

Sorry, derail over. This is interesting.

CaledonianGonzo

I'm getting to grips with Moby Dick at the moment, and it's fucking ace.  Yes, even the chapters on Cetology.

Quote from: Regular Chicken"Anyone got any recommendations of really funny books, which are a great read?

PG Wodehouse's Jeeves & Wooster, Uncle Fred and Blandings Castle stories are as good as it gets, really.  Funniest author ever.

For maximum hilarity they should be read in the correct order, but the first books aren't the best, so if you make it through them and think "Well, that was alright, but not great" you should stick with it.  They become better and better and they work as a kind of literary forebear of Seinfeld or Arrested Development in that knowledge of how the characters will react in certain situations and in-jokes become funnier than the jokes proper.

That, and the fact that the English language is his bitch.  Really.

So - start with Something Fresh for Blandings or The Inimitable Jeeves (I know its not really the first, but it seems to me like a good place to start).  By the time you get to Full Moon or Joy In The Morning you'll be an addict.

Or try What Ho!, which is a pretty decent collection of short stories and excerpts, with the caveat that its a bit piecemeal.

Murdo

I'm reading Derren Brown's 'Tricks of the Mind' at the moment. It's much better than his last series and I'd love him to make it into some kind of show for TV i.e. each week he could look at the history of a different subject through to modern day etc.

MojoJojo

Quote from: surreal on June 11, 2007, 07:11:33 PM
I also have a bookmark in "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell" by Susanna Clarke - but I'm only a hundred or so pages in and I found it pretty hard going... does it get better?

It picks up a lot in the second book when Jonathan Strange starts to do magic; his spells are fascinating. The third book ... is ok, better than the first.

Famous Mortimer

I finished the brilliant "Cryptonomicon" by Neal Stephenson a few months ago, using computers from two different time periods, WW2 and tons of other stuff to make a good chunky satisfying funny novel. So now I'm having a crack at his Baroque Cycle, starting with "Quicksilver" which is set mostly in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, and is full of characters like Newton, Leibniz, and the early members of the Royal Society. More importantly, it's really good.

Hobes

Currently finishing off 'The Physics of Superheroes' by James KaKalios. Which I'm enjoying - although I'm not sure if I've absorbed any more insight into physics (just more useless comic-book trivia).

Before that I read Pratchett's Mort (again), which is the first Discworld book I ever read, so I keep going back to it to remind me how good they used to be.

Next, I have Cofessions of a Drugstore Cowboy by Starbuck/Face. Not sure what to expect of that one. 

CaledonianGonzo

Quote from: MojoJojo on June 12, 2007, 09:38:02 AM
It picks up a lot in the second book when Jonathan Strange starts to do magic; his spells are fascinating. The third book ... is ok, better than the first.

I was very disappointed by this.  On paper the ingredients look fantastic.  The concept is genius, the setting is more-or-less unique and Gaiman's patronage boded well.  No book has ever seemed so up-my-street.  In practice, I felt Clarke dropped the ball completely.

Spoilers Beware!

Spoiler alert
The two most important relationships in the book - that between Strange and Norrel and that between Strange and his wife - are flat and unconvincing.  So much time is spent building up to a feud where nothing much happens.  Its been a couple of years since I read it, so may be misremembering here, but if you're going to spend 1000 pages on something, you need a bit of pay-off, not just one magician getting his rival's book remaindered.

An equal amount of time is spent on Strange's efforts to get back his wife when, for the limited amount of time they are depicted in the book as being together, there's no evidence that he gives a monkeys about her.  Thus the whole thing is rendered unconvincing.  As a reader, I just didn't care.

Likewise, the two protagonists were not that interesting.  Granted, in Mr Norrell's case, that's the point, but it seems like a bit of a shot in the foot to devote so much time to someone so boring.  The ending was also a mess.

I found the faerie explanation for magic unsatisfying, the Raven King a pretty scrappy concept and the Venice sections dull.  And don't get me started on that cunt with the thistle-down hair.  Even the Napoleonic war chapters seemed like missed opportunities - some interesting bits and pieces, but the part that initially spurred me into reading the book - stone hands coming out of the Earth to grab horses during the Battle of Waterloo - squandered.

Coupled with a very flat, will-this-do, prose-style, I felt like I'd been sold a lemon.

I may be in a minority, but I know a whole load of folk who've also read this and of those that finished it, not a one of them liked it.  Anecdotal, perhaps, but you think it'd have a fan somewhere.
[close]

surreal

Quote from: Charles Charlie Charles on June 11, 2007, 11:10:28 PM
There's quite a bit of Sci-Fi reading going on hereabouts. Does anyone want to start a proper Sci-Fi thread?

Go for it - get the thread started and we'll see where it goes....

Thanks for the Steve Martin link Pseudopath, and the PG Wodehouse recommendation CaledonianGonzo. I'm intrigued.

MojoJojo

Quote from: CaledonianGonzo on June 12, 2007, 10:02:10 AM
I was very disappointed by this.  On paper the ingredients look fantastic.  The concept is genius, the setting is more-or-less unique and Gaiman's patronage boded well.  No book has ever seemed so up-my-street.  In practice, I felt Clarke dropped the ball completely.

Spoilers Beware!

Spoiler alert
The two most important relationships in the book - that between Strange and Norrel and that between Strange and his wife - are flat and unconvincing.  So much time is spent building up to a feud where nothing much happens.  Its been a couple of years since I read it, so may be misremembering here, but if you're going to spend 1000 pages on something, you need a bit of pay-off, not just one magician getting his rival's book remaindered.

An equal amount of time is spent on Strange's efforts to get back his wife when, for the limited amount of time they are depicted in the book as being together, there's no evidence that he gives a monkeys about her.  Thus the whole thing is rendered unconvincing.  As a reader, I just didn't care.

Likewise, the two protagonists were not that interesting.  Granted, in Mr Norrell's case, that's the point, but it seems like a bit of a shot in the foot to devote so much time to someone so boring.  The ending was also a mess.

I found the faerie explanation for magic unsatisfying, the Raven King a pretty scrappy concept and the Venice sections dull.  And don't get me started on that cunt with the thistle-down hair.  Even the Napoleonic war chapters seemed like missed opportunities - some interesting bits and pieces, but the part that initially spurred me into reading the book - stone hands coming out of the Earth to grab horses during the Battle of Waterloo - squandered.

Coupled with a very flat, will-this-do, prose-style, I felt like I'd been sold a lemon.

I may be in a minority, but I know a whole load of folk who've also read this and of those that finished it, not a one of them liked it.  Anecdotal, perhaps, but you think it'd have a fan somewhere.
[close]

Yeah, I'd agree with all of that. For such a long book, not much happens. I don't just mean the narrative either; very little happens with the characters either.

But the descriptions of strange working magic were fantastic.

Borboski

Oooh, maby the Dune series wouldn't be a bad holiday read.  I'm off to Mexico for the honeymoon and am currenty thinking of some Mexican fiction (Octavio Paz?), Don Quixote, and some good polemic's like Christopher Hitchens most recent.  I've also got Run, Rabbit, Run to finish.  But I would like a great, page-turning story - the last one I read on holiday was Vargas "Feast of the Goat". a fiction setting out the horror of the Trujillo regime, and attempts on his life.

I just wonder whether, like Stephen King and Terry Pratchett - I'd go back to Dune (hmm, or Foundation and Empire?) and think - this RUBBISH.  Whaddya think?

Baltimora

Two very different books on the go at the moment - just depends on the mood as to which one gets picked up.
John Banville's The Untouchable is a roman a clef novel based on Anthony Blunt and the Cambridge spy ring of the 1930's - beautifully written tale of regret and betrayal. Powerful stuff.
Also Philip K Dick Dr Bloodmoney - I've slowly been working my way through Dick's work and while the quality of the writing is variable the ideas are always fantastic.


Shoulders?-Stomach!

I've just finished reading To Have And Have Not by Ernest Hemingway.

I decided to read a bit of 20th century American fiction after I realised I'd barely scratched the surface of it, and my mum's got a shedload of them due to her doing a degree in American literature.

It was pretty good. A little bit disorientating at first as it changes perspective about 3 times in the first 5 chapters before settling down on one. I did enjoy the atmosphere of the book though, set in the Florida keys during the great depression, that was great stuff to picture.

Don't know what I'll be reading next exactly, maybe an F. Scott Fitzgerald book.

the midnight watch baboon

Ham reading the Armando-approved 'The Tenderness of Wolves' by Stef Penney at the mo... quite enjoying it, has slowly built up a suspenseful tale with lots of lovely descriptive writing and turns of phrases outweighing some of the more tedious sentences.

Have been reading crime fiction by Jeffery Deaver and Mark Billingham lately, both enjoyable writers with differing strengths and weaknesses- Deaver's minuses being that in both the stories I've read they've had near-identical plots and twists, Billingham's that despite being apparently a stand-up comic, his characters have bog-standard wit and humour to them. Cracking story pacing, tho.

After Tenderness... going to finish off reading my unread Raymond Chandler novels.

Funny books.. Timoleon Vieta Come Home by Dan rhodes; Set up, Joke, Set up, Joke, by Rob Long and Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre I'd recommend.

Borboski

Mrs B's mum was upstairs in our spare room (where all my books are kept) and I mentioned that Linz had asked me to suggest some books for her on our holiday.

I mentioned that I'd thought maybe Steven King might be all-right, just some good pageturners to pass the time - and I mentioned that Vernon God Little was "a lot of fun".

Mrs B's mum pulled a face like she'd swallowed a chip doused not in vinegar but warm urine, "I don't think so, it was about a high school massacre."  (I know she read it, she ordered it when it won the prize).

Me: "Erm, I really don't think so, it's very light, I think it's actually supposed to be a comedy.  And, if I remember, it's all written in the way of a US boys adventure, like Huckleberry Finn."

Mrs B's mum: "Well [huff[, maybe it's just me but I don't find high school massecres very funny, I mean that's just my opinion."

After she went downstairs I turned the book over, puzzled, and saw that the reviewers on the blurb said not only that it was "the most laugh-out-loud funniest book this year", but also that it was a modern day Huckleberry Finn parable.

Obviously I was pleased with my literary sensors, and my fuzzy memory placing it alongside Finn - but I was just staggered by how she completely missed the point, and ruined her enjoyment of the book.  I suspect she probably did quite enjoy it, but then self-censored it, only remembering that it was about a high-school massecre (which it isn't, it's about someone being mistakenly arrested for a high-school shooting) and remembering HIGHSCHOOL SHOOTING = WRONG.

Which is abit like getting all uppitty everytime "I Don't Like Mondays" comes on, although not completely given Bob Geldof is such an unsufferable cock.

I'm going to start a thread with this, you watch me.

Mr. Analytical

I'm Reading Black Man by Richard Morgan which is better than I expected it to be.

And God is not Great by Christopher Hitchens which is complete shit about 100 pages in.

Borboski


Mr. Analytical

Nope... it is proper shit, and I have a lot of time for Christopher Hitchens.

Loved the stuff he said about religion in Letters to a Young Contrarian but at the moment it's waffly, shallow and directionless.  It feels as though he did no research whatsoever and isn't so much trying to construct an argument against god as talk a bit about the subject.  It's like the DVD commentary track on a better book.

Borboski

LALALALALALA!  I was looking at Young Contrarian last night, by chance.

Nah, I reckon it will be right up my street, it sounds like good fun to me, and the chapter I read was his usual jolly self.

drberbatov

Currently reading Thomas Wolfe's 'The Purple Decades' and Nasser Hussein's autobiog. which I picked up for 50p in a car boot sale

Marvin

Quote from: All Surrogate on June 12, 2007, 12:32:24 AM
Just finished The Steep Approach to Garbadale by Iain Banks; similar to The Crow Road, and the incest theme crops again.  Nevertheless, a great book: seemingly effortless to read and engaging.

Just read that, I do feel like he's just been coasting for years now, it is still as you say a great read but I long for him to write something like The Bridge again.

What is it with Iain Banks and incest? He seems obsessed with it, it's in this one, Walking on Glass, Song of Stone, Whit and probably others I've forgotten.

I've been reading a lot of non-fiction recently and I've got some long train journeys later in the week so want to take a few novels, thinking of trying The Time Traveller's Wife again because everyone raves about it, but when I last tried I found the opening really lousy and cliché-ridden. Is it worth bothering with?


Famous Mortimer

Quote from: Borboski on June 12, 2007, 01:55:54 PM
I bet it's not shit I bet it's mint.
Last I saw of Hitchens he was getting his ass handed to him by Ruby Wax in a Newsnight debate sparked off by some god-awful article he'd written claiming women just weren't funny. I hope this book argues its point a lot better than he did there.


Dark Sky

Quote from: Marvin on June 12, 2007, 08:13:30 PMI've been reading a lot of non-fiction recently and I've got some long train journeys later in the week so want to take a few novels, thinking of trying The Time Traveller's Wife again because everyone raves about it, but when I last tried I found the opening really lousy and cliché-ridden. Is it worth bothering with?

The Time Traveller's Wife is really popular, as it should be!  It's a wonderful little book.  A wonderful romance.  Easy to read, and yet the characters are well depicted and it's really emotionally affecting.  Can't recommend that highly enough.

I just finished Lanark by Alisdair Gray, which is one of those classics of modern literature you have to read or you're an ignorant fool, or something like that.  So saying, I grudgingly admit that it is probably one of the best books ever written.  It's a fusion of two stories; one is a science fiction tale about a man ostracised from the bizarre city he has found himself in, and the other (much better) story, is a very James Joyce-ian biographically inspired tale of a childhood and a young Glaswegian struggling to making a living as an artist and about his lost hopes and dreams and loved ones.  It's all gorgeous written, and goes all postmodern in the final section where Alisdair Gray and the main character start arguing about how the book is going to end, and literary criticism of the book starts appearing in footnotes and in the margins explaining where all the references in the book come from...  I guess it's where Danielewsky got the idea for House Of Leaves from.  Though House Of Leaves is insufferably dull, sadly, despite its amazing concept and execution.

Anyway, am now reading The Overnight by Ramsey Campbell, which is rivalling Joe Hill's Heart Shaped Box as the worst written book I have ever read.  I hope to whizz through it so I can stuck into some more Ian McEwan or Julian Barnes.  Or those novels based on the computer game Doom.  Mmmm.  I have far too many books waiting to be read.  It is literally absolutely excessively ridiculous.