Books - What are you reading?

And just finished The Third Policeman

Strange. But enjoyable. Lots of bicycles.

I've read Brave New World years ago and enjoyed it, I need to give it another read actually. I've not read We, will check it out, thanks for the recommendation!

I really didn't like The Martian, it was too jokey and light hearted for me. I just wanted a super bleak account of a man dying alone on Mars.

I'd read that if you find it

It felt so amazingly unlikely he’d make it off mars alive, let alone seemingly in the same mental state as he arrived, that it kind of took the edge off some of the enjoyment for me.

I'm about 60 pages into We at the minute. I'm not that into it so far but not writing it off!

Thanks for the Jaroslav Seifert recommendation. I read and enjoyed The Plague Column. I've barely read any poetry so suggestions for similar stuff would be welcome.

I actually quite enjoyed We in the end. It took me forever to get through though, I really couldn't get into it for a while.
I made a start on The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov yesterday, I'm really enjoying it so far. It's a bit like Kafka but a bit weirder.

Finished Middle England by Jonathan Coe

It’s the third part of the Rotters trilogy. The Three books are basically British history against the backdrop of some middle class grammar school boys who met in the 70’s (or the other way round)
This is the Brexit one, back to form.

He wrote What a Carve Up! Which is similar in content but with a more comic twist.

Just finishing ploughing my way through the Cold Six Thousand. Genre snobs will get all sniffy but James Elroy is a fucking amazing author.

Yes! We is a banger. Shits all over 1984.

I'm reading "The Meme Machine" by Susan Blackmore. Fuck my tits, what a pile of garbage. It came strongly recommended by an individual for whom my respect is evacuating with every sentence.

I could probably get over the fact it's based on some idea that twat Dawkins had in the 70s, and the fact that she quotes that other twat Pinker on every other page, if only she had the least bit of rigour in her ideas. It's all flat statements of fact like "no other animal except homo sapiens is capable of imitation", and just as I'm about to eat my own face off in rage at her demonstrable bollocks, she'll devote an entire chapter to "well, yes, i know that actually there are all sorts of other creatures that are capable of imitation, but that doesn't count!".

Jammed with fucking woo and nonsense. It's basically a shit philosophy book masquerading as "Science". Get fucked. It's only 288 pages but it feels like I've been reading it forever.

Onto Lowboy by John Wray after this heap of shit. I hope it cheers me up.

I do need to read The Martian. Dammit read it years ago and recommended it, but I never got round to it. I could have been reading that instead of the Blackmore book! Fuck's sake, I've wasted a week of my life on this!

Big fan of Ellroy.

Dawkins...Pinker...

No and also no

I know right

I feel actively angry every time I pick it up. She says in one chapter that most gay people are really bisexual! I'm coming up to the chapter on religion that she's been saving up to the end. It's going to be balls-to-the-wall bigotry, no doubt.

She wrote a long, wounded blog post on Dawkins' website complaining about how when she gave a lecture about religion, some Muslim blokes quietly got up and left when she put up a slide mocking Muslims. Coz, you know, they were censoring her freeze peach by leaving, because that's what fundamentalists do.

God, I should just stop reading this and move on to something that hasn't been written for and by terrible people, shouldn't I.

God, I should just stop reading this and move on to something that hasn't been written for and by terrible people, shouldn't I.

Sounds like it! I do think there's value in reading things by people with totally different views to yourself, even if they're bigoted, if only to better understand how to counter that sort of thinking. However, knowing nothing about this particular author other than what you've just written, it sounds like a waste of time.

Also, I really didn't care for the Martian. It read a bit like a book for "young adults". I found all of the attempted humour really irritating. It wasn't anywhere near miserable enough either.

This sounds like self harm. Please stop.

I don't know about "shits all over 1984"! I haven't read that since I was a teenager but from what I remember they're very different (other than the subject matter being very similar). I do need to re-read that and A Brave New World at some point.

Orwell’s prose has its place (see E.g. Homage to Catalonia) but that place isn’t in a novel like 1984. The tone is too bloodless and journalistic, I find it lacks the necessary affect to make the book what it should be. Classic formal error.

I'm reading Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed at the moment. Probably been suggested numerous times but I'm really enjoying it! Frightening and enlightening!

I haven't read 1984 in at least 10 years I don't think. The stuff of his I've read recently that I've enjoyed the most has been Homage To Catalonia and Down and Out in Paris and London which are more journalistic so you might have a point!

If Orwell had cared more about his prose, he would have started his story in October, and made that first sentence of 1984 more musical.

halfway through Lord of the Rings after reading The Hobbit...my attempt at reading "Science Fiction(?)".......and no, I've not see then film.

lord of the rings...hobbit...science fiction

Swing and a miss, I’m afraid. You’ve landed in the Fantasy section, nerd.