Books - What are you reading?

Nice!

I've been doing it for a few years. No judgement here! Hit my target of 30 this year and will also be going for 35 in 2019. Videogame time tends to cut into my reading a bit (as does the "having a job" thing, I suppose), but I'm trying to be more disciplined.

I find that if I read a bad book then it puts me off reading another one for months. Took me ages to get over the half of the evopsych meme bullshit one I read this year.

I know what you mean. It takes me forever to get through a book I'm not enjoying, I should probably just know when to give up and move onto something I'm going to get more out of. I've only ditched 1 book before the end this year.

Just started The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe, after finishing Nick Shou's Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love and Its Quest to Spread Peace, Love, and Acid to the World.
Presently on a late sixties Summer of Love historical trip. Will read Hunter S. Thompson's Hell's Angels after that.

The Brotherhood of Eternal Love was a really interesting group, someone needs to make a proper film about their exploits. An analogue for the Brotherhood, the Dead Presidents, were in Point Break (not much of a recommendation, I know). Apart from the robbing banks (BEL never did this) there were too many echoes between the two groups for it not to be deliberate. Bodie's anarcho-spiriruality (he was definitely an analogue for John Briggs, the leader of BEL), the wait for the once in a lifetime huge swell in Australia/Maui, the Californian surfer/criminal underground, the names of the Dead Presidents too.

Will also read Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Kesey was the lead guy in the Merry Pranksters, an anarchic travelling LSD performing group that had overlap with BEL, Timothy Leary, the Grateful Dead, etc.

I just finished reading The Devils of Loudun by Aldous Huxley. What a fucking ride. Ostensibly it's about a historic case of demonic possession of 17 nuns in an Ursuline convent in Loudun, France, circa 1630. NB: this really happened.

The priest of Loudun was a guy called Urbain Grandier, who was a serial shagger and all-round bastard who had managed to worm his way into the graces of the French nobility and figured he was untouchable. He ruined the reputations of all the pretty ladies around town and made himself lots of powerful enemies in the process, but they weren't able to get to him until one day the local Ursuline convent got a new Prioress. This new Prioress (also an all-round bastard, though less of a shagger) heard about Grandier's antics and developed this intense sexual obsession with him. She tried to get him to come to the convent so she could fap over him or whatever. But Grandier wasn't too interested in nuns (surprise!) and he refused to meet her. So she apparently decided to become possessed, and somehow the whole convent ended up possessed along with her by various demons, and they blamed Grandier for it, saying he was a sorcerer and in league with the devil. Holy shit, it's nuts. He got burned at the stake in the end.

The book itself describes everything that went on, but Huxley has surrounded it with this incredible rambling narrative that also takes in all his thoughts about politics, propaganda, drugs, spiritual enlightenment, buddhism etc etc etc. I've never read anything quite like it. Huxley lived through two world wars, and he's got a lot to say about how political narratives shape hysterical, violent, and barbarous behaviour.

Everyone now knows how to read and everyone consequently is at the mercy of the propagandists, governmental or commercial, who own the pulp factories, the linotype machines and the rotary presses. Assemble a mob of men and women previously conditioned by a daily reading of newspapers; treat them to amplified band music, bright lights, and the oratory of a demagogue who (as demagogues always are) is simultaneously the exploiter and the victim of herd-intoxication, and in next to no time you can reduce them to a state of almost mindless subhumanity. Never before have so few been in a position to make fools, maniacs or criminals of so many.

Oh, mate. Sort of wish you'd lived long enough to see Facetwit. Anyway, I give this book 10 writhing, shrieking nuns out of 10.

Great interview with William Gibson https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/12/16/how-william-gibson-keeps-his-science-fiction-real

That's a cracking read, thanks for that!

“What I find most unsettling,” Gibson said, “is that the few times that I’ve tried to imagine what the mood is going to be, I can’t. Even if we have total, magical good luck, and Brexit and Trump and the rest turn out as well as they possibly can, the climate will still be happening. And as its intensity and steadiness are demonstrated, and further demonstrated—I try to imagine the mood, and my mind freezes up. It’s a really grim feeling.” He paused. “I’ve been trying to come to terms with it, personally. And I’ve started to think that maybe I won’t be able to.”

Brrr. Have been feeling the same way myself a lot lately.

I read this story as a teenager. Not sure if it was Huxley's book or another. A lot of memories came flooding back reading your post. I just seem to remember a lot of utter filth underpinned by corrupt religious authorities.

Just bought this after watching Chomsky being interviewed by Laurence Krauss, looks fascinating. Basic premise: after Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire there was unleashed a terror upon the classical world of such savagery that the religious oppression by ISIL in the modern era would look puny by comparison.

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Just bought a bit of crimble reading matter. The Moor by William Atkins, and for a bit of lighter reading, Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman. Role on christmas eve, when I finish work for 10 days.

Got to say I wasn't much of a fan of Norse Mythology, it was just a bog standard retelling of norse mythology. Does what it says on the cover I guess but I wouldn't have guessed it was by Gaiman if I hadn't known.

Kind of agree, I read it, but is nowhere near his best book, but if you haven't read any Norse mythology then it is an very easy route into it. I do love Gaiman though and Neverwhere remains one of my favourite books.

just started Mr. Adams' Dirk Gently.....

a british journalist

In general I've found books written by journalists to be great. A few recommendations off the top of my head:

Richard Dowden 'Africa', the chapter on Somalia made a great impression on me.
Barbara Demick 'Nothing to envy', a family suffering through famine in North Korea.
Oscar Martinez 'The Beast', about Central Americans risking their lives trying to get to the US border.
Souad Mekhennet 'I was told to come alone', a German-Arab journalist writing about ISIS and violent jihadism.

Biography of Malcolm X, both recent uk editions so I can read the introductions by Gary Young and by Paul Gilroy.

Thanks that's reminded me to read more Ryszard Kapuscinski, great journalist/writer. I've not heard of any of those, will look into them. Thanks!

Just finished the first Hyperion book.
What a writer. Simmons breadth of genres and depth of historical knowledge that informs his writing is astounding.

The stories within stories (like Canterbury Tales) weave an engrossing experience.

On to The Fall of Hyperion now.

The scope of those books is pretty epic. I seem to remember reading the initial trilogy, then starting on the second trilogy but not finishing it. Some fantastic ideas going on.

I finally finished the audiobook of Perdido Street Station by China Miéville. Not 100% my thing but mostly enjoyed it. Will probably give the next book in the series a go at some point.

I’ve just finished “What goes around” by Emily Chappell. Is she still on here? It was a lovely fluent read.

I don’t think so @Emilia

Seven years since she was last active.

It’s on my book pile, looking forward to reading it.

It’s beautifully written, and quite a nostalgia trip for someone like me who has left London and misses the feel of knowing their way around.

Great tip!
I am listening to it as an Audible audiobook and am halfway through it now. Very good.

I managed to hit my reading target for the year. Target was 52 books, managed 53 with an average length of 396 pages.

I reckon Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovksy was the best I read last year.