What are you reading?

[shagatha crustie]

I hope you like it, I'm a huge fan and I don't always click with Chabon, I'm very fond of Wonder Boys and The Mysteries of Pittsburgh but gave up on The Yiddish Policemen's Union after about twenty pages as I found it strangely annoying, though do plan to return to it one day.

Thanks! I'm reading it rather slowly but enjoying it so far - will report back when progress has been made and have some thoughts half-formed!

[Artie Fufkin]

100 Years of Solitude.

Another book I last attempted to read many, many years ago. It was the favourite book of my first girlfriend, so some complicated memories ahead.

Loved this book so much. Though I won't profess to know half of what went on.

[gilbertharding]

Loved this book so much. Though I won't profess to know half of what went on.

I'm mainly finding it very confusing that everyone seems to have the same name. I still haven't got as far as the point at which I gave up last time. And it's still sending me into distracting reveries about this girlfriend...

[Famous Mortimer]

Nicholson Baker - "The Mezzanine"

A bloke has a lunch break from his office job, and minutely interrogates every thought that wanders through his mind. Like a proto-Eggers or David Foster Wallace, with the benefit of only being 135 pages long. I respected that it didn't build to some mind-blowing revelation or crescendo, and really enjoyed the style of it.

It appears that nothing else he's written has been received as warmly, so I might not dig further into his work, but this one was really good and is definitely recommended.

[Twit 2]

Ah yes, have been meaning to read that since it was mentioned by Michael Foley in The Age of Absurdity.

Currently reading the poems of Yves Bonnefoy and JK Huysman's Parisian Tales.

[Small Man Big Horse]

I'm currently two thirds of the way through My Uncle Napoleon by Iraj Pezeshkzad, most of the time I've enjoyed it a lot but the amount of repetition sometimes drives me a bit mad, I know it's something he's deliberately doing and it often makes me laugh out loud, but once I've finished it I hope I never here the phrase ""Why should I lie...to the grave it's ah, ah..." ever again.

I've finished this now and did find it fascinating as an insight in to Iranian culture, at least how back when it was written, and it is very funny throughout, but the repetition is too much at certain points and I feel at 500 pages it could have been about 100 shorter. Not that I regret reading it, but if the author's written anything else I've no urge to seek it out.

[touchingcloth]

I've just cracked open Failure Is Not An Option by Gene Kranz, the buzzcutted, waistcoats one you will have seen hanging around in Mission Control on various documentaries or played by Ed Harris in Apollo 13.

I've read a lot of books about human spaceflight, but I think this will be the first I've read where the focus is primarily in the ground.

[Astronaut Omens]

Nicholson Baker - "The Mezzanine"

A bloke has a lunch break from his office job, and minutely interrogates every thought that wanders through his mind. Like a proto-Eggers or David Foster Wallace, with the benefit of only being 135 pages long. I respected that it didn't build to some mind-blowing revelation or crescendo, and really enjoyed the style of it.

It appears that nothing else he's written has been received as warmly, so I might not dig further into his work, but this one was really good and is definitely recommended.

I think the criticism his subsequent books like Vox and The Fermata got was from high-minded critics who suspected he was deliberately putting loads of sex scenes in to get sales, and that that just wasn't really on. Personally, I don't really see that there was a massive dropping-off in quality- and Vox, which is in its entirety one long phone conversation between two strangers is certainly as original as the Mezzanine, and has a very similar sense of humour. I would say that the sex scenes means it doesn't quite have the same 'deliberately slight and trivial' aesthetic as the Mezzanine

[Famous Mortimer]

Thanks for that, I might give em a go. Plus, I'm reminded that my shoelaces went untied a few hours ago and I just tucked them down the side of my shoe and forgot about them.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Ubik.

[touchingcloth]

Ubik.

This is probably the PKD book which has stuck with me most. It'll be close to 20 years since I read it, but I think it's the only one I've read of his where I could give you a rough synopsis from memory. Which I think means I liked it.

[Sebastian Cobb]

This is probably the PKD book which has stuck with me most. It'll be close to 20 years since I read it, but I think it's the only one I've read of his where I could give you a rough synopsis from memory. Which I think means I liked it.

Yeah I heard good things... I think the only full-length thing of his I've read has been Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (probably almost 20 years ago), but I've read a few of his shorts over the years.

[SteveDave]

I've just finished "A Confederate General From Big Sur" by Richard Brautigan which is (I think) the first non-music/biographical book I've read in about 15 years. I'm onto "Trout Fishing In America" next.

[Famous Mortimer]

"The Power" by Naomi Alderman. I'm liking it a lot, I hope it sticks the landing because so far it's been excellent.

[touchingcloth]

Having had it on my reading list for a while, I've made a start on Philippe Sands' East West Street, about the lives of two Jewish lawyers, Hersch Lauterpacht and Raphael Lemkin, who agitated for the Nuremberg trials to include their newly conceived charges of "genocide" and "crimes against humanity".

Sands interest in the pair is partly that he is a human rights lawyer himself,  but also that they both went to university in the same city, which is also the city where his own grandfather grew up. That city was Lviv, hence it bubbling right to the top of my reading list.

It's really well told so far. The story of the lawyers is much more in the background so far than the primary narrative about his grandparents, mother, and wider family being shunted from pillar to post around East and West Europe during the rise of Nazism.

A wonderful light bit of fluff for bedtime reading.

[Kankurette]

Vanity Fair, and loving it. Becky Sharp is exactly the kind of woman who, if the book had been written in the 21st century, would be going 'inbox me hun' to Amelia on Facebook while sending nudes to George Osborne and dealing coke on the side. And convincing suckers to sign up for Bitcoin/some MLM scheme.

Everyone in the book is either an arsehole or a wet dishrag, with the exception of Dobbin, who is a genuinely nice bloke who just exists to have bad things happen to him. On a more serious note, Jos Sedley giving it the big one about how the British will kick Napoleon's arse and swanning around with a moustache and military cosplay, only to freak out and beg his Belgian manservant to shave off his 'tache when the French invade Belgium, is a familiar sight.

[Famous Mortimer]

"The Power" by Naomi Alderman. I'm liking it a lot, I hope it sticks the landing because so far it's been excellent.

Narrator: it didn't.

My only problem with it was you could tell where it was going to end up with a fairly long way to go, and the characters / plot didn't really move enough from where they were at the two-thirds mark to make the last third all that exciting. It was still very good, though.

Next up, "Gun, With Occasional Music" by Jonathan Lethem.

[holyzombiejesus]

Narrator: it didn't.

My only problem with it was you could tell where it was going to end up with a fairly long way to go, and the characters / plot didn't really move enough from where they were at the two-thirds mark to make the last third all that exciting. It was still very good, though.

There's an Amazon series in the making, I think.

[Famous Mortimer]

There's an Amazon series in the making, I think.

I'm surprised it's taken them this long. Perfect fodder for it.

[Small Man Big Horse]

I Am Not Sidney Poitier by Percival Everett - Christened "Not Sidney" by his mother Portia Poitier, she dies when he's quite young and due to her owning a lot of shares in Ted Turner's company he ends up not only enormously wealthy but also living in the billionaire guest house, with Ted acting as a father figure without ever quite welcoming him in to his family. Everett himself appears as a Professor who teaches the subject of "Nonsense", in this really quite unusual study of race, class and an attempt at discovering what Not Sidney's place in life should be, which is often very funny and often very disturbing, as it doesn't flinch from the racism Not Sidney faces all too often and the way he is used and abused by others. 4/5

[Sebastian Cobb]

Enjoyed Ubik, I'd originally hopped that a couple of books I'd reserved at the library (Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man) would be ready by now but I think a lot of stuff is overdue due to covid closures, so I ended up getting Elmore Leonard's The Switch and Rum Punch.

[Zero Gravitas]

I wanted something really horrific so I went for Bury my heart at wounded knee of the class of histories that's a narrative experience over straight facts but god awfully harrowing read all the same.

[Fambo Number Mive]

Reading the autobiography of Graham Cole, who played PC Tony Stamp on The Bill. Well written, Graham's had a varied life and lots of insights into starring on The Bill.

[Ray Travez]

Brett Anderson- Coal Black Mornings
He writes well, but the story isn't hugely gripping. Near the end I realised that I wasn't going to get any drug tales because it's all in the second book. Ho hum.

Wild by Nature- Sarah Marquis
Marquis embarks on a  two-year walk through Asia, armed only with a tent and an international back-up team with doctors and helicopters. There are some beautiful, lyrical passages describing the desert landscapes, but by the end I found her annoying. At one point in Mongolia, she writes, "I cant wait to get away from all these nomads". You're the nomad, pal! Arrogant.

First You Write a Sentence and If You Should Fail - Joe Moran
Two books. First you write a sentence contains musings on how to write; it's 'a love letter to the sentence'. Apparently it's easy to create a sense of authority in your writing simply by alternating long, flowing sentences with shorter, punchier ones. Well fuck me. If you should fail is a more downbeat affair, but an enjoyable read. I've ordered 'Shrinking Violets' by the same author, a study of shyness. He's a sort of academic version of 1980's Morrissey isn't he?

[Mobius]

Child of God by Cormac McCarthy.

Bit grim, this.

[kalowski]

Reading the autobiography of Graham Cole, who played PC Tony Stamp on The Bill. Well written, Graham's had a varied life and lots of insights into starring on The Bill.

What's it called?
Stamp Duty?
Settling the Bill?

[Artie Fufkin]

What's it called?
Stamp Duty?
Settling the Bill?

The Truth, The Cole Truth, And Nothing But The Truth

[phosphoresce]

Child of God by Cormac McCarthy.

Bit grim, this.

Blood Meridian and The Road aren't laugh riots either.

I'm addicted to US history books atm. We didn't cover American history at all at school, not even brief spells about the great events.

Just finished This Republic of Suffering, about how America at the time coped with the tremendous death toll of the civil war. Also not the cheeriest of reads.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Enjoyed Ubik, I'd originally hopped that a couple of books I'd reserved at the library (Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man) would be ready by now but I think a lot of stuff is overdue due to covid closures, so I ended up getting Elmore Leonard's The Switch and Rum Punch.

Enjoyed these, and picked up my Invisible Man reservation this afternoon.

[Fambo Number Mive]

What's it called?
Stamp Duty?
Settling the Bill?

Apologies for the late reply. The book is On The Beat: My Story.