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What are you reading?

Started by Talulah, really!, October 04, 2017, 10:07:22 PM

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Ferris

Quote from: Small Man Big Horse on October 13, 2018, 12:26:23 AM
I read that whilst at university and absolutely loved it, and really should check out more Virgina Woolf, the only other book by her I've read is To the Lighthouse. Edit: Oh yeah, and Mrs Dalloway.

I wrote an essay on To the Lighthouse while planning on applying to Cambridge to do English (which I was always quite good at. I never submitted it because of extreme anxiety and I ended up studying economics at a red brick instead, which was much easier. Such is life.

Still makes me anxious reading that title though. Ugh. Being a teenager is shit.

Artie Fufkin

Quote from: Artie Fufkin on October 05, 2018, 12:40:24 PM
Shirley Jackson's The Haunting Of Hill House.
Mweh. Really enjoyed this until the 'final act'. I dunno. Seemed a bit of a cop out to me. "Shit, I've got 5 minutes left to get this book to my publisher" kind of thing.

I'm now reading a horror anthology which has a story in it written by one of you guys....

zomgmouse

Quote from: Small Man Big Horse on October 13, 2018, 12:26:23 AM
I read that whilst at university and absolutely loved it, and really should check out more Virgina Woolf, the only other book by her I've read is To the Lighthouse. Edit: Oh yeah, and Mrs Dalloway.

I've read nothing else by her but bloody well should. This was terrific.

Phil_A

Quote from: Artie Fufkin on October 13, 2018, 11:20:07 AM
Mweh. Really enjoyed this until the 'final act'. I dunno. Seemed a bit of a cop out to me. "Shit, I've got 5 minutes left to get this book to my publisher" kind of thing.


I really recommend the 1963 film adaptation if you've never seen it, it's a masterpiece of subtle unease, although just like the book the ending is a bit abrupt.

From what I've seen of the Netflix series it uses the opening of the novel as a jumping-off point, but retains nothing of the original plot apart from the house and character names. It's structured more like Stephen King's IT, with scenes taking place in the present day and in flashback.

zomgmouse

You Were Never Really Here. Very short but so brutal. Some stonking violence and some even more stonking existential agony. Can't wait to see the film.

Artie Fufkin

Quote from: Phil_A on October 14, 2018, 12:06:20 PM
I really recommend the 1963 film adaptation if you've never seen it, it's a masterpiece of subtle unease, although just like the book the ending is a bit abrupt.

From what I've seen of the Netflix series it uses the opening of the novel as a jumping-off point, but retains nothing of the original plot apart from the house and character names. It's structured more like Stephen King's IT, with scenes taking place in the present day and in flashback.

Thanks for the recommendation. I've heard it's a really good film, I will track it down.
Yes, saw a publicity shot for the series and was kinda put off by it, but I'll give it a go at some point. Will try and watch the film first.
I'm now having the vaguest of feelings that I may have already watched it many years ago.....

MoonDust

I've been devouring Murakami lately, but taken a break with some Pynchon. I read The Crying of Lot 49 which although I enjoyed at particular moments, I must admit I did not get at all. One of those books that makes you feel dumb if you're not "high brow" enough.

Currently about half way through Gravity's Rainbow, which although is better, still has the same drawbacks as Lot 49, although not as much. I'm actually enjoying it. It is a bit of a slog at first and takes a while to get going but once it does it's thoroughly entertaining. Its tone and humour kind of reminds me of Catch-22, which I loved reading. So if you like Catch-22, you'll probably like Gravity's Rainbow.

I have also been told A Little Life is good so might give that a go after. It would also be good for me to read a novel that was published in the last ten years so this might be a good start.

I did read The History of Bees by Maja Lunde, which is recent, and I thought was interesting, but also a bit dry. I couldn't really tell from the narrative if some of the characters were good or bad, but the American beekeeper in the story set in 2007 (the story has three parallel narratives at different times) I found to be a complete cunt and totally unlikable.

SPOILER ALERT BELOW FOR THE BEES







I didn't know if this unlikable aspect of his was intentional, because his son is portrayed as being suffering under his dad's controlling "you will do what I tell you" attitude of his dad (son wants to be a writer, whereas his dad wants him to take over the beekeeping business), and so I was a bit jarred and disappointed when the story transpires that his son ends up abandoning his dreams of being a writer and starts to work for his dad. I was a bit like "nooo, your dad's a twat. Why did you give in?" Whether or not this was the intention of the author I have no idea. Like I said, I couldn't tell who she intended to protray as good or bad. Also, her writing of sex scenes was atrociously funny, but in fairness, sex in most fiction is written awfully.

buttgammon

A bit late to the party here, seeing as it's just won the Booker Prize, but I'm reading Milkman by Anna Burns at the moment. It's really great, so strange and funny, definitely one of the best new novels I've read this year. It reminds me a lot of the play Cyprus Avenue by David Ireland, which is also set in The Troubles, is blackly funny, and has a similar line to Burns in creating characters who are comedically verbose in improbable circumstances.

holyzombiejesus

Ach, I really couldn't hack it. Found it annoying to the extent that I couldn't finish it.

I'm reading Melmoth by Sarah Perry.

What do people think about splitting the 'what are you reading? threads, maybe in to non-fiction, new/ 21st century fiction and old fiction? We'd probably get more discussion that way...

Famous Mortimer

Giving the Southern Reach series by Jeff Vandermeer a go, and just finished book 2. They're great man!

Also, it took me a fairly long while to make the connection that book 1 is the source of that Natalie Portman movie from earlier this year. Having loved the book I'm rather interested to see how closely they'll stick to it (EDIT: not very closely, apparently), and also if they're ever going to bother doing a sequel, given it's rather different, features almost no returning characters, etc (ALSO EDIT: bit of a box office flop, so probably not). .

amputeeporn

Quote from: Famous Mortimer on October 21, 2018, 11:31:40 PM
Giving the Southern Reach series by Jeff Vandermeer a go, and just finished book 2. They're great man!

Also, it took me a fairly long while to make the connection that book 1 is the source of that Natalie Portman movie from earlier this year. Having loved the book I'm rather interested to see how closely they'll stick to it

When Alex Garland adapted it, the sequels hadn't been written which accounts for some of the changes I think. He was making it as a very closed off world.

Re: box office flop - it's worth reading about the way it all went to shit. Namely, Garland made a challenging film with a particularly challenging ending and the producer demanded he change it. When he refused they slashed the release plans and out of stubbornness gave it I think a week in US cinemas and pretty much no time anywhere else. Total waste of an, at worst, well made and interesting film.

I must get on and read the second book. Think someone here described the first as like YA Tarkovsky and that summed it up quite nicely.

Artie Fufkin

Quote from: amputeeporn on October 22, 2018, 08:46:36 AM
When Alex Garland adapted it, the sequels hadn't been written which accounts for some of the changes I think. He was making it as a very closed off world.

Re: box office flop - it's worth reading about the way it all went to shit. Namely, Garland made a challenging film with a particularly challenging ending and the producer demanded he change it. When he refused they slashed the release plans and out of stubbornness gave it I think a week in US cinemas and pretty much no time anywhere else. Total waste of an, at worst, well made and interesting film.

I must get on and read the second book. Think someone here described the first as like YA Tarkovsky and that summed it up quite nicely.

Thought the film was wonderful, some real magically surreal moments, as was the (first) book. Have the second in my 'to read' pile. I also have his 'The World Is Full Of Monsters' book to read.

amputeeporn

Quote from: Artie Fufkin on October 22, 2018, 09:25:35 AM
Thought the film was wonderful, some real magically surreal moments, as was the (first) book. Have the second in my 'to read' pile. I also have his 'The World Is Full Of Monsters' book to read.

Likewise enjoyed both - a real shame that the film got dumped in the way that it did.

BritishHobo

Picked up 'The Sentence is Murder' the second book in Anthony Horowitz's crime series where he blends real details of his life and career with a fictional story in which he serves as hapless biographer/Watson to an ex-copper as they investigate crimes - not that you'd know it's a sequel, since they've bizarrely avoided ANY mention of it being related to the first book anywhere. Two unrelated books are used as 'by the author of...' titles on the cover, and neither back nor jacket blurb mention it being a sequel OR mention Horowitz's role as narrator/sidekick, despite that being the main hook. Weird.

After the self-indulgent slog of Rowling's doorstopper, this is lovely. It's nothing weighty, but it's fun, breezy, gripping stuff from a writer who knows and loves crime and knows how to spin a good mystery. The stuff with his career and TV production makes for a neat twist, and I'm proper intrigued by the ongoing attempts to unravel the background of the churlish, homophobic detective, which it seems will play out over the course of several more books.

grassbath

Have recently revived my Goodreads account to try and keep me reading and using my noggin. Just feel so lazy and stupid and overtired and overwhelmed by the banalities of the world at the moment.

So far it's working well in so far as book consumption goes, as I've finished in the last month:

Play it as it Lays by Joan Didion. Fuck me, this was brutal and depressing and absolutely brilliant. Hallucinatory Hollywood Hills sexual-politics counterculture-gone-sour nightmare. Interesting to read retrospectively with the #MeToo movement in mind.

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. Had never read any Steinbeck and it was great, even if the last quarter or so I felt like I was reading to finish it rather than out of total honest-to-god enjoyment. Big, clear themes and larger-than-life characters handled with a lot of heart. The socio-economic essayistic sections every so often were the best bits, some knee-weakening passages. As a tale of Depression-era migration from the dustbowl to California it made for an interesting 'prequel' to the Didion.

Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin. Sometimes I got a bit annoyed with the arch boho Parisian environment and dialogue in this, but it's obviously a fiercely brave and historically important work and Baldwin seems to have an uncanny knack for capturing the horrible bodily crises of affairs and sexual relationships that are one-sided, coercive, selfish, out of control or otherwise a bad idea.

Now reading Siddhartha by Herman Hesse. The simplicity is refreshing. I think I'm secretly hoping to feel enlightened at the end of it.

Dannyhood91

Colin Wilson's The Outsider. It's a bit dry and long winded if I'm being honest.

marquis_de_sad

Can't stand Wilson. He lives inside his own arse.

Dannyhood91

Quote from: marquis_de_sad on October 29, 2018, 10:38:07 PM
Can't stand Wilson. He lives inside his own arse.

You're not wrong. I watched an interview with him from about 2010 I want to say. He just name drops and talks about how other authors are a bit shit and just seemed like a bit of a windbag.

buttgammon

Yeah, tedious, self-obsessed arsehole.

QuoteIt struck me that I was in the position of so many of my favourite characters in fiction: Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov, Rilke's Malte Laurids Brigge, the young writer in Hamsun's Hunger: alone in my room, feeling totally cut off from the rest of society. It was not a position I relished...Yet an inner compulsion had forced me into this position of isolation. I began writing about it in my journal, trying to pin it down. And then, quite suddenly, I saw that I had the makings of a book. I turned to the back of my journal and wrote at the head of the page: 'Notes for a book The Outsider in Literature'..."


Dannyhood91

I finished that boring shite last night. I started reading Trainspotting on my bus this morning.

Dannyhood91

Update. Im liking trainspotting more than The Outsider obvs lol

Cuellar

Eichmann in Jerusalem

Just got to a bit regarding the industrialists using concentration camps for slave labour, Arendt mentions IG Farben a lot. Never having heard of them, despite them apparently being famous, I looked them up. Formed by a syndicate of chemical companies, it was split up into its constituent companies in the 50s. Turns out the company I work for does a lot of business with two of them who are still going, BASF and Bayer.

I know it must be hard to find established German firms that aren't compromised in some way. But these seem knee deep in it.

To be honest it made me feel quite sick. Am I being too sensitive?

Pingers

Quote from: Cuellar on November 05, 2018, 10:21:51 PM
Eichmann in Jerusalem

Just got to a bit regarding the industrialists using concentration camps for slave labour, Arendt mentions IG Farben a lot. Never having heard of them, despite them apparently being famous, I looked them up. Formed by a syndicate of chemical companies, it was split up into its constituent companies in the 50s. Turns out the company I work for does a lot of business with two of them who are still going, BASF and Bayer.

I know it must be hard to find established German firms that aren't compromised in some way. But these seem knee deep in it.

To be honest it made me feel quite sick. Am I being too sensitive?

I don't think so. I know it's all allegedly a 'long time ago' (it isn't really) and the people working in these companies now don't have anything to do with its past, but it's like buildings and infrastructure in British cities built on slavery and empire - individuals in the UK still benefit from them even if we didn't create them, they're still made of blood.

Pingers

I'm reading Dune for the 3rd time, but the first in over 20 years. Really enjoying it, as much as I did before. I'd never really seen it as a mystical political thriller before, but I think that's what it is, as well as an astonishing work of prescience.

Dannyhood91

Quote from: Pingers on November 05, 2018, 10:49:35 PM
I'm reading Dune for the 3rd time, but the first in over 20 years. Really enjoying it, as much as I did before. I'd never really seen it as a mystical political thriller before, but I think that's what it is, as well as an astonishing work of prescience.

I liked the Asimov foundation trilogy. Will I like Dune?

Pingers

I've not read any Asimov but if you're not averse to science fiction, as some people are, it's hard to see how you'd not like it. It's complex but exciting, as well as being a really far-sighted tale of resource scarcity and the politics surrounding it (it's an allegory for oil politics). Written in the late 60s it foretells the Gulf wars, suicide bombers, jihad in the Middle East, the emergence of climate concerns and more.


Pingers

No need, question asked, question answered.

Pranet

Another vote for Dune being really good here. For some reason didn't read it until a couple of years ago because of a vague feeling that it wasn't my sort of thing. Really loved it. I gather the sequels have a "mixed" reputation though. The opinion I've seen seems to be split between people who think the first two sequels are worthwhile but don't bother after that and people who think you shouldn't bother with any of them.

Small Man Big Horse

I finished Sara Pascoe's book a while back and thought it was pretty marvellous, and would recommend it to all.

Currently I've got two books on the go, Bridget Christie's A Book For Her when I'm using public transport as it's a brisk, fun read, and Jonathan Ames's The Extra Man for bath and bedtime reading and it's really enjoyable stuff too.