What are you reading?

[Artie Fufkin]

Bit annoyed about the Dark Tower series. I loved the first three; the mythology and world-building, the links to his other works, it was absolutely my kind of thing. Then there seemed to be a long gap (was that around the time of his accident?) and then there was the spin-off/prequel Wizard & Glass which I hated; I think I read maybe one more, the end was in sight (two more books I think?)... and then somebody spoiled said ending for me. So I never bothered continuing.

The middle of the series was a bit flabby, but I enjoyed it overall.

Spoiler alert

Yes, the bit that had King actually in it was shit.

[close]

I particularly enjoyed the ending. Which is a rare thing.

[mothman]

OK, well the bit where I said Billy Summers was non-supernatural... not so much.

Spoiler alert

A sequence in Colorado is set across the valley from where the Overlook Hotel stood - one character thinks they see it actually still standing, but puts it down to an optical illusion. And also m there's a picture of the topiary animals outside the hotel - in which they've moved every time it's looked at.

[close]

Now, as previously stated, I've quite enjoyed some of the Easter eggs in his previous novels, but it doesn't mean they have to be a thing in literally everything he writes for fuck's sake. It adds nothing to the story.

Maybe I should give the Dark Tower another go. But as I get older I find my tastes for what I want to read have narrowed...

[bgmnts]

Jesus Christ the past two days slogging through The Brothers Karamazov have been a chore. He just pelts me with 20 pages of tangential gibberish a la Victor Hugo and then set up a teasing little plot point and then had the cheek to throw another 20 or so pages of utter pointless shite my way. I feel like Dostoevsky is actively trying to punish me for having the temerity to tackle one of his books.

I mean, I'm 500 pages in now and it's been over a year since I started so I HAVE to finish now, but fucking hell Fyodor you aren't half making it worse than it should be. The actual plot I'm interested in, it's just not literature made for people with short attention spans and an inability to leave things incompleted. There have genuinely been times where I have missed entire pages and realised I've just been making my eyes go through the motions. This happens with normal because I genuinely struggle to read but the writing style is so  convoluted it's making me feel even more obtuse.

[chveik]

i haven't read that one but i have a lot of love for The Idiot, The Demons and Crime and Punishment. Karamazov is notoriously the most difficult book of his to get into. they are quite convoluted though but it's all worth it in the end

[bgmnts]

The Brothers Karamazov was not worth it in the end. I cannot say in good faith I 'finished' it as I skimmed a lot of it and outright scanned the last 100 pages, so fucked was I. But zi read enough and will now supplement it with some wiki reading.

It taught me two important lessons, I probably won't learn.

1) It really isn't shameful to stop reading something that isn't good, and under no obligation are you to complete it.
2) These 19th century classics really are not essential reading for me, it is mostly bloated, convoluted rubbish that is overblown in our collective conscience.

I'd even go so far as to say it's probably put me off reading altogether and I feel like I've wasted my entire four day weekend. Granted I wouldn't be doing anything anyway, but i'd rather waste my time vegging out than just being constantly bored and/or frustrated.

However, it is an old book written by a famous author so I habe to give it 7/10.

[All Surrogate]

The christian bible (Revised Standard Version). I'm about a third of the way through, in the middle of the second book of Chronicles. It's very repetitious, mostly dull, occasionally repulsive. I've a feeling that the more interesting and beautiful parts are coming up, the poetry and songs and such. Here's hoping, anyway.

Well, I've finished it. A strange book, well, really a collections of books; difficult to summarise. It's quite repetitious and dull (Numbers is ... well-named), and often repulsive (I can only say that the temple in Jerusalem must have stunk of blood and burning meat). The New Testament is inevitably messianic, which I disliked more than I thought I would. I think I might actually prefer the Old Testament, where god is much more quid pro quo. Plus it has the Song of Solomon, which all about sex. The wisdom books in general are the best part, I think: Ecclesiastes is great if you're in a bad mood. I quite liked Isaiah as well.

The Apocrypha is next.

[Johnny Foreigner]

Finished William Hickey. The death of his beloved Charlotte was very moving. Interesting also how he ended up fathering a child with an Indian woman, given how much he had initiially been repulsed by darkies. Wasn't expecting that.

Next: The Essential Richard Jefferies, a book apparently last borrowed from Dunfermline on 31st December 1948. I got it for free; it would probably have been destroyed.

Jefferies (1848-1887) is rather a forgotten author, though highly acclaimed in his day. Never read anything by him. See how it goes.

[bgmnts]

Reading a collection of Kiplings Jungle Books. On the other end of the scale, too short! I want to spend more time in the jungle with baloo and bagheera and mowgli. 

[timebug]

Almost finished 'One,Two,Three,Four; The Beatles in Time' by Craig Brown. Weird book. Apparently he writes (wrote?) for Private Eye and considers himself a 'satirical writer', I only read it because I am a Beatles nut and was lent it by a friend, who suggested it was 'different' to the other fifty thousand Beatles books that we have jointly read. It is vertainly that. Just not sure who it is actually aimed at. I have learned nothing new from it, and can't honestly say its a book I have enjoyed reading!

[kalowski]

I really enjoyed it. Felt nothing like any other Beatles book I'd read.

[Johnny Foreigner]

Apparently he writes (wrote?) for Private Eye and considers himself a 'satirical writer',

I used to enjoy Craig Brown's Private Eye pieces greatly; he had a knack for making ridiculous people sound even more ridiculous.
He also occasionally used to write for The Daily Telegraph, though nothing political.

[mothman]

Back in the day[nb]Well, thirty years ago  [/nb] I used to read the Torygraph occasionally, it was marginally more bearable than any of the other right-wing papers back then. And Brown's columns were a highlight - I first became aware of him through them and not his PE pieces.

[Twit 2]

I'm having another crack at Moby Dick. Has there ever been a CaB read along?

[kalowski]

Wrong thread! This is not the wanking thread.

I'm having another crack at Moby Dick. Has there ever been a CaB read along?

[buttgammon]

I don't remember a readalong but I read it during a phase of 'filling in the blanks' with classics and had a whale of a time.

[Smeraldina Rima]

Would have liked to do a readalong of Moby Dick but can't at the moment as I'm busy with The Rainbow. Would like to hear how you get on with it though.

I've read two very different chapters of The Brothers Karamazov. Didn't like plunging in to "The Grand Inquisitor" but the chapter called "The Old Buffoon" worked well on its own and made me want to read the rest one day. It's about saying the wrong thing, making things up and playing the fool. Nathalie Sarraute singled it out as an example of Dostoyevsky's characters wanting to make contact with others and of his depiction of fugitive psychological motivations similar to what she called "tropisms".

A cheap little clock on the wall struck twelve hurriedly, and served to begin the conversation.

"Precisely to our time," cried Fyodor Pavlovitch, "but no sign of my son, Dmitri. I apologize for him, sacred elder!" (Alyosha shuddered all over at "sacred elder.") "I am always punctual myself, minute for minute, remembering that punctuality is the courtesy of kings...."

"But you are not a king, anyway," Miüsov muttered, losing his self‐restraint at once.

"Yes; that's true. I'm not a king, and, would you believe it, Pyotr Alexandrovitch, I was aware of that myself. But, there! I always say the wrong thing. Your reverence," he cried, with sudden pathos, "you behold before you a buffoon in earnest! I introduce myself as such. It's an old habit, alas! And if I sometimes talk nonsense out of place it's with an object, with the object of amusing people and making myself agreeable. One must be agreeable, mustn't one? I was seven years ago in a little town where I had business, and I made friends with some merchants there. We went to the captain of police because we had to see him about something, and to ask him to dine with us. He was a tall, fat, fair, sulky man, the most dangerous type in such cases. It's their liver. I went straight up to him, and with the ease of a man of the world, you know, 'Mr. Ispravnik,' said I, 'be our Napravnik.' 'What do you mean by Napravnik?' said he. I saw, at the first half‐second, that it had missed fire. He stood there so glum. 'I wanted to make a joke,' said I, 'for the general diversion, as Mr. Napravnik is our well‐known Russian orchestra conductor and what we need for the harmony of our undertaking is some one of that sort.' And I explained my comparison very reasonably, didn't I? 'Excuse me,' said he, 'I am an Ispravnik, and I do not allow puns to be made on my calling.' He turned and walked away. I followed him, shouting, 'Yes, yes, you are an Ispravnik, not a Napravnik.' 'No,' he said, 'since you called me a Napravnik I am one.' And would you believe it, it ruined our business! And I'm always like that, always like that. Always injuring myself with my politeness. Once, many years ago, I said to an influential person: 'Your wife is a ticklish lady,' in an honorable sense, of the moral qualities, so to speak. But he asked me, 'Why, have you tickled her?' I thought I'd be polite, so I couldn't help saying, 'Yes,' and he gave me a fine tickling on the spot. Only that happened long ago, so I'm not ashamed to tell the story. I'm always injuring myself like that."

"You're doing it now," muttered Miüsov, with disgust.

Father Zossima scrutinized them both in silence.

"Am I? Would you believe it, I was aware of that, too, Pyotr Alexandrovitch, and let me tell you, indeed, I foresaw I should as soon as I began to speak. And do you know I foresaw, too, that you'd be the first to remark on it. The minute I see my joke isn't coming off, your reverence, both my cheeks feel as though they were drawn down to the lower jaw and there is almost a spasm in them. That's been so since I was young, when I had to make jokes for my living in noblemen's families. I am an inveterate buffoon, and have been from birth up, your reverence, it's as though it were a craze in me. I dare say it's a devil within me. But only a little one. A more serious one would have chosen another lodging. But not your soul, Pyotr Alexandrovitch; you're not a lodging worth having either. But I do believe—I believe in God, though I have had doubts of late. But now I sit and await words of wisdom. I'm like the philosopher, Diderot, your reverence. Did you ever hear, most Holy Father, how Diderot went to see the Metropolitan Platon, in the time of the Empress Catherine? He went in and said straight out, 'There is no God.' To which the great bishop lifted up his finger and answered, 'The fool hath said in his heart there is no God.' And he fell down at his feet on the spot. 'I believe,' he cried, 'and will be christened.' And so he was. Princess Dashkov was his godmother, and Potyomkin his godfather."

"Fyodor Pavlovitch, this is unbearable! You know you're telling lies and that that stupid anecdote isn't true. Why are you playing the fool?" cried Miüsov in a shaking voice.

"I suspected all my life that it wasn't true," Fyodor Pavlovitch cried with conviction. "But I'll tell you the whole truth, gentlemen. Great elder! Forgive me, the last thing about Diderot's christening I made up just now. I never thought of it before. I made it up to add piquancy. I play the fool, Pyotr Alexandrovitch, to make myself agreeable. Though I really don't know myself, sometimes, what I do it for. And as for Diderot, I heard as far as 'the fool hath said in his heart' twenty times from the gentry about here when I was young. I heard your aunt, Pyotr Alexandrovitch, tell the story. They all believe to this day that the infidel Diderot came to dispute about God with the Metropolitan Platon...."

Miüsov got up, forgetting himself in his impatience. He was furious, and conscious of being ridiculous.

[Twit 2]

Sightlines by Kathleen Jamie.

Jamie is a Scottish poet also renowned for her essay collections about nature. I've read all her poetry, which is excellent, and her essay collection "Surfacing", which has an archeological focus and is a series of mediations on objects and memories that come out of the ground, especially as a result of melting ice and climate change.

I'm working my way backwards through her collections, so I have this and then "Findings" to read. Anyway, I'll just say her writing is SUPERB. Like, I read the first essay in this (Aurora), about going to see the northern lights off Greenland and at the end I wanted to stand up and applaud in an empty room.

The prose is so delicate, yet firmly sculpted. The insights and profundity are arrived at so deceptively casually that she makes it seem easy. The shifts from micro to macrocosmic are deftly handled. She takes you by the hand and shows you the universe in a handful of pages. Everything is the perfect length, perfectly weighted and judged. It's breathtaking writing. Joyous.

Here's Nicholas Lezard's spot-on review:

Far, far away from the shenanigans in east London, 40 miles out in the north Atlantic, lies the island of Rona, "inhabited once, but now the island is returned to birds and seals; grey seals breed in thousands there, many seemingly disinclined to leave. Every day, all around the shore, were rocks softened by the shapes of seals, watching us from the waters."

In Sightlines, Kathleen Jamie takes us, for the most part, to the northern fringes of human habitation, and then beyond. She looks at gannets in Shetland, whale skeletons in Bergen, petrels in Rona, the northern lights in Greenland. On Hirta she discovers that 70mph winds can knock her down. "The sensation is not of being tumbled like a leaf, but of being thumped by an invisible pillow. It doesn't hurt if you've got lots of clothes on; one just finds oneself on one's knees, as if beholding a miracle."

Well, as I've always said, if you want someone to deliver good prose, get hold of a poet. Or, perhaps, a harassed mother. Or, come to think of it, a Scottish woman writer. Jamie is all of these, and internal evidence suggests that she rather relishes the chance to go somewhere scant of human habitation.
On her first trip to St Kilda, which proves, because of the wind, abortive – they only get as far as the Monach Islands – she returns and writes this: "I'd been on the desert islands, my husband had been at home with the infants. He was the one who looked ravaged, like Robinson Crusoe." (There's a certain kind of first-rate writing, like Jamie's, which while not actually being funny, often suggests that there's a good laugh around the corner; but that gag precipitated a huge bark of recognition from me.)

So: 14 essays, of varying lengths, drawn to the north but not always there, characterised by great, but never overpowering, thoughtfulness. The idea is to look at nature; or the human interface with it. Sometimes the results are disturbing. Musing, after her mother's death, on what it means to "let nature take its course", and then mildly irritated at an environmental conference, she goes to see Professor Frank Carey, clinical consultant in pathology at Ninewells Hospital in Dundee. "I told Frank about the environmentalists' and writers' conference, and how the foreshortened definition of 'nature' was troubling me. I'd come home grumpy, thinking, 'It's not all primroses and otters.'" And so what she does is take a guided tour of our own bodies: most significantly, what can destroy them, from within. This can often mean cancer cells, and so Jamie gets to look at, and feel, a 10in stretch of cancerous colon.

Reader, when a reviewer confesses to not having completed a book it is usually an act of bravado (and probably not even true anyway): "This book stinks so badly that not only can I not discharge my professional duties, I am going to boast about it." Not in this instance. For here I have to say that Jamie's writing is so good that reading this particular piece in its entirety has proved impossible so far. The odd sentence penetrates: "Lymph nodes feel like lentils or grains of rice; they resist being squashed." But when a style is so good that it feels as though it can conjure up what it describes, then, if you are sensitive to it, reading about cancer makes you feel as though you will get it as a result. (I do know an oncologist but decided not to ask him if this was indeed the case.)

So I skipped on a few pages and went underground, to the subterranean cool of a Spanish cave, where the walls are covered with neolithic animal paintings older than those of Lascaux. Describing the weirdly formed stalagmites, she adds: "We have entered a body, and are moving through its ducts and channels and states of processes. The very chamber we stand in is streaked with iron-red; it's like the inside of a cranium, a mind-space, as though the cave were thinking us."
At which point I put the book down again and thought: "I wonder if I would actually kill to be able to write, or think, like that." It's like this pretty much all the way through.

[buttgammon]

That's a superb book. A long time ago, I did a module on what was loosely called 'creative non-fiction' and read Jamie's book alongside something by Robert MacFarlane during a week on nature writing.

[Artie Fufkin]

Medical Grade Music by Kavus Torabi & Steve Davis.

Yeah. They write alternate chapters about their favourite bands/albums etc., and what turned them on to 'alternative music'.
I'm preferring the Kavus side of things, writing wise.
He's 3 years younger than me, but when he writes about listening to Maiden's Number Of The Beast for the first time, and getting into 2000ad, well.....that's me! Takes me right back, so it does.
I enjoyed Davis' chapter on Gentle Giant, and I've been re-listening myself. Good stuff. He's a serious (not boring) record collector, that guy.
It's interesting (not boring) that while Kavus gets into music via Stray Cats & Maiden, Steve's way in is Magma!

[Ray Travez]

Ah, sorry about that, I think my copy of the book was published posthumously and I forgot that not all were. It must have been an insane experience for those involved in staging the one man adaptation of the book at the Soho Theatre too given that he died the day it opened, and I really wish I'd known about Horsley then as I'd have loved to have seen it.

Oh you have nothing to apologise for. Unless it was you who offed him?

I'm about halfway through now, might write more when I've finished. I was only vaguely aware of him before the book- he popped up on some documentary where he advocated the use of prostitutes; and he oozed charisma, but a charisma of a strange kind. He came across as someone who was drowning in depression, but with style. Like a man putting on a three-piece suit to go to the electric chair.

[Kankurette]

Just finished Murder on the Orient Express. Yes, we get it. Italians = stabby.

[buttgammon]

Currently midway through Dunfords Travels Everywheres by William Melvin Kelley. It's like nothing I've ever read, flitting from place to place and slipping into languages of its own creation that veer between a fake European language and a phonetic version of African American Vernacular. It also happens to be really funny, even though I don't always know exactly what's going on. It's one of those books that's an absolute pleasure to read.

[Artie Fufkin]

Have just finished Dreamland by Rosa Rankin Gee.
Genuinely loved this. Very grim, but beautifully written.
Set in Thanet, Margate mainly (just down the road from me), in the near(?) future. Dystopian kinda stuff. Love story kinda stuff. A UKIP like government sending all the poor people to Thanet with rising tides etc.,
I lived with an ex in Ramsgate for a while, and some of the scenes in the book took me right back there.
Yep. Highly recommended. Will deffo look out for other books by her.

[gilbertharding]

Back in the day[nb]Well, thirty years ago  [/nb] I used to read the Torygraph occasionally, it was marginally more bearable than any of the other right-wing papers back then. And Brown's columns were a highlight - I first became aware of him through them and not his PE pieces.

Yeah - I used to like The Agreeable World of Wallace Arnold* and Bel Littlejohn (The Independent and the Guardian respectively). He is a very good, funny writer.

*I have the book - I might re-read that next.

[gilbertharding]

I'm re-reading The Complete Richard Hannay by John Buchan. I'm not really enjoying it, to be honest. I last read it more than 10 years ago. I'm not sure it's got any more anachronistic and dated since then... I remember it being pretty bad for that kind of thing, but... I dunno.

[Smeraldina Rima]

I loved the first two parts of The Rainbow - and would like to hear any old thoughts of anyone who has read it - but I took a break and am struggling to get going again with the third part, Ursula's story. It's obviously deliberately retreading ground from the previous generations with variations, but in the emotional and religious descriptions so far it's similar to things I had felt more strongly when reading about Tom, Lydia, Anna and Will and now feel less vital to me. Also, the first and second part overlap a lot, whereas there's a cleaner break before the third part and I think Women in Love is a continuation of the same story, so it also feels like the beginning of what could be a different book. And the death at the end of the second part was hard and final. I've been wondering about visiting the places it's based on which aren't far away but I don't know if they'd be easy to get around or worth going to.

[chocolate teapot]

I don't know if this image will work but George didn't die in this version

[Small Man Big Horse]

Oh you have nothing to apologise for. Unless it was you who offed him?

Shut your whore mouth.*

The Mark And The Void by Paul Murray - A very meta novel where a surname-less writer called Paul befriends Claude, an investment banker, with the aim of tricking him in to helping him rob the bank without realising that they don't actually keep any money on site. I really liked Murray's other two books (Skippy Dies and An Evening Of Long Goodbyes) and this is pretty great too, yet though it's more ambitious it also a little flawed imho, at times it feels quite preachy when it comes to the insanity of the financial world (not that I in any way disagreed with what he was saying), and is repetitive on that front too. Murray also makes the writer too unlikeable, and his actions are sometimes so shitty that Claude's friendship with him seems implausible, while there's a lot of references to the publishing industry and commentary on whether or not events taking place are believable or not which mostly work but it's a bloody fine line. Despite all of that criticism it's still a book I enjoyed a good deal, one which is very, very funny in places and Murray's prose is nearly always impressive, but it's definitely my least favourite of his books so far. 4/5






*Because decade old Dexter references are the in thing, I swear.

[mr. logic]

Been racing through Simon Rich's short stories. Very addictive.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Glad you're liking them, I started a thread about him in Comedy Chat about a year ago as I was such a fan. Which ones have you read, out of interest?