What are you reading?

[Scarlet Intangible]

Ulysses - James Joyce


29 pages in, and I think I am done.

There are bits I like, but there are more bits I find boring.

It's something like being offered a bucket of mushy peas with Skittles stuck in it. Would you bother to eat through all the mushy green stuff just for the occasional Skittle, or would you just be like - You know what... I think I'll leave it. (This doesn't work if you really like mushy peas; or are prejudiced against Skittles.)

The feeling is - I would have to force myself to persevere with this. I'm going to go find something that drags me along with it, instead.

[buttgammon]

If you want to plod on, skip straight ahead to chapter 4 and see how you feel about that.

[Scarlet Intangible]

I might come back to that, but I am 'in' Woodcutters now, which is fitting my mood.

[Captain Crunch]

Then I read "Men Explain Things To Me" by Rebecca Solnit in about an hour. Made me angry and sad but ready to fight more for a better world.

I'd second that recommendation.  I found about 80% of it was amazingly clear, well written and really hit the nail on the head.  I found it crumbles a bit when she tries to find reasons to be cheerful which amounts to – using a hashtag?  Fuckssake come on.  But yes well worth reading and great pictures. 

[Artie Fufkin]

Robert W Chambers' The King In Yellow.
Wow.
This is freaky-deaky, man.
And the kindle version I have of it the layout is all fucked up.
I presume this is an error, and not intended?
It's brilliant stuff, anyway. Other worldly.
I'm always a bit dubious about 'olde worlde' books, but that's cos I'm an unschooled prick, I guess. But this is really hitting the mark.

Disappointing after a very promising start.
The last half is just some bullshit love story.
Kept waiting for people to go mad and it didn't happen.

I'm now reading M R Carey's Fellside.
It's started ok, but I'm not holding my breath after my last 2 books....

[Sebastian Cobb]

I started watching the film and got about 10 minutes in and decided I would love it but should probably read the book first.

Finally got round to reading The Palm Wine Drinkard as well, which was great.

[samadriel]

I feel like the movie paces the ending better, but of course, Persepolis the book is terrific.

[Neville Chamberlain]

I decided it was about time I started that copy of Gravity's Rainbow that's been sitting on my shelf for years.

I'm 70 pages in and would welcome any words of encouragement, telling me why the heck I should continue because, to put it politely, I'm not really feeling it yet as it is largely incomprehensible :-(

On a lighter note, I'm reading The Black Meadow Archive, which, in sharp contrast to the above, is written in sentences I can understand.

[Artie Fufkin]

I started watching the film and got about 10 minutes in and decided I would love it but should probably read the book first.

Such a great book! I love these kind of things. Brilliant.

[spaghetamine]

started on John Cooper Clarke's autobiography, only two chapters in and it's given me multiple laugh out loud moments which bodes well - prior to that I just finished The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien which was phenomenal, felt like some fucked up fever dream at points

[Sebastian Cobb]

Oooh, didn't know JCC had an autobiography, will need to check that out.

[buttgammon]

Having recently read (and loved) a few books by Máirtín Ó Cadhain, I'm into English translations of Irish language stuff at the moment. This has led me to get hold of a book called This Road of Mine by Seosamh Mac Grianna, which is a weird sort of fictionalised travelogue, in which a bloke - a writer and seemingly very unreliable narrator - travels around Ireland and then endeavours to walk across Wales unassisted, mostly sleeping outdoors and describing his daily mileage in terms that are sometimes entirely implausible. It's fun, but not as amazing as Ó Cadhain, who's fast becoming one of my favourites; unfortunately, a lot of his work remains untranslated, so I'm left asking my Irish-speaking girlfriend to summarise it for me.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I started watching the film and got about 10 minutes in and decided I would love it but should probably read the book first.

Finally got round to reading The Palm Wine Drinkard as well, which was great.

Really enjoyed this!

On this now as I saw a good interview from her and the book was (is) 1.99 on Kindle, less dry than I anticipated.

[Fambo Number Mive]

Reading A Quiet Word: Lobbying, Crony Capitalism and Broken Politics in Britain by Tamasin Cave and Andy Rowell. It's quite bleak reading about how much power lobbying firms have over UK politics, but it's very interesting. Currently reading the section on shale gas lobbying. I'd strongly recommend it.

[Artie Fufkin]

I'm now reading M R Carey's Fellside.
It's started ok, but I'm not holding my breath after my last 2 books....

Mweh. It was ok. In a change from my last few books, the ending was better than the start. Not as good as his Girl With All The Gifts.

[Captain Crunch]

I'm still trying to find short, unusual books so I've just finished In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan.  Reviews all tend to give it either zero or ten out of ten with a giddy "ohmigod this is the best book ever I love it I love it I LOOOOVE IT!" note beside it.  I really enjoyed the boldness and imagination of it but the Janet & John style did grate after a while. 

[buttgammon]

Just about to jump back into The Tunnel by William H. Gass, which I mostly read while getting sunburnt on my mum's patio during a heatwave around eight years ago. It's such a big bleak brick of a book, but reading Gaddis's The Recognitions really made me want to revisit it, partly just because the black cover reminded me of it. This might take quite a long time...

[jobotic]

Catch 22!

No idea why I haven't read this before, right up my street, particularly as characters like Scheisskopf and Captain Black could be straight out of Good Soldier Svjek, one of my favourite books. Really enjoying it.

[Fambo Number Mive]

100 pages through John Cooper Clarke's autobiography I Wanna Be Yours. Fascinating, funny, well-written and heartwarming.

Also on the second book of the Retrieval Artist novels by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, a really good series of sci-fi crime thrillers with a really well constructed world.

[Fambo Number Mive]

dp

[Artie Fufkin]

Catch 22!

No idea why I haven't read this before, right up my street, particularly as characters like Scheisskopf and Captain Black could be straight out of Good Soldier Svjek, one of my favourite books. Really enjoying it.

I'd like to read this. There are 4 books on Amazon; The Fateful Adventures Of Good Soldier Svejk book 1, 2 and 3&4 (combined), and also Good Soldier Schweik.

[buttgammon]

Just about to jump back into The Tunnel by William H. Gass, which I mostly read while getting sunburnt on my mum's patio during a heatwave around eight years ago. It's such a big bleak brick of a book, but reading Gaddis's The Recognitions really made me want to revisit it, partly just because the black cover reminded me of it. This might take quite a long time...

It's even grimmer than I remembered, but having a free afternoon, I found myself getting so into it I had trouble putting it down. Here's a good, if dated, little piece that says a lot about what Gass did https://www.nytimes.com/1999/03/13/books/still-at-war-new-fiction-still-has-a-champion.html

Omensetter's Luck is really good too and it would be a good starting point for Gass, but it seems hard to find in Britain and Ireland; I bought my copy in New York years after first reading The Tunnel, and almost immediately realised that it wasn't a good idea to have started with his biggest, densest, most difficult book.

[jobotic]

I'd like to read this. There are 4 books on Amazon; The Fateful Adventures Of Good Soldier Svejk book 1, 2 and 3&4 (combined), and also Good Soldier Schweik.

Do it, it's fantastic. The separate ones look like a newer translation than the one I've read. There's a thread (of Serge's) here

https://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=63231.0

[chveik]

I'm a big chveik fan

[Artie Fufkin]

Do it, it's fantastic. The separate ones look like a newer translation than the one I've read. There's a thread (of Serge's) here

https://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=63231.0

Fanx!
Do you know why there's a different spelling of the characters name?

[Johnboy]

Dipping into the world of audiobooks on the borrowbox app (library)

Did Moby's first memoir and now on Andrew Ridgeley's one. Read by the authors.

I only stuck with the Moby one cos i didn't want to abandon my first audiobook, it wasn't bad, wasn't great though.

Half an hour into Ridgeley's and it's way more interesting.

[Fambo Number Mive]

The Pentagon Papers (as published by the New York Times)

100 pages in and it's really interesting to see how much the US interfered in then North and South Vietnam before the Vietnam War.

There's a summary at the beginning of each section of documents which is handy.

[Glebe]

My dear Sister got me John Cleese's So, Anyway... and David Jason's A Del of a Life for Christmas, just finished the former and am onto the latter. My favourite anecdote in So, Anyway involves the prank he and Graham Chapman pull on an American director where Cleese places lots of stuffed toy animals peeking out of various nooks and crannies 'looking' in the direction of the seat in the room where said director is meeting them.

David Jason has an intriguing story involving a grapefruit pip in his book. It's weird to read him talking about the virus and the lockdown while we're still living through it too.

[jobotic]

"A Del of a Life".

Love these bad pun autobiography titles. I read a couple of nights ago that Beryl Reid's was called Roll Out the Beryl and I keep sniggering about it.

[Glebe]

"A Del of a Life".

Love these bad pun autobiography titles. I read a couple of nights ago that Beryl Reid's was called Roll Out the Beryl and I keep sniggering about it.

Actually chuckling at that!