Books - What are you reading?

I love wise blood! The violent bear it away is also very good. I have a collection of her short stories to read but haven’t made inroads on it yet.

There are some crackers in that pile.

I really liked Stoner, and I don't think I've disliked anything I've read by Graham Greene. The way he can do tension, action, heartbreak and comedy consistently well is so impressive.

I just started Wide Sargasso Sea, having watched the NT's production Jane Eyre on Thursday- I had no idea they were linked.

So far I both love it and find it uncomfortable. Anything post-colonial with "whites suffered too" overtones I find very hard to empathise with. But the language and description of the landscapes and atmosphere are great.

I don't think I've read a book by a man this year, and I might try and keep that up.

I love a bit of Graham Greene.
Talking of ex-spies...
I’m reading a Le Carrés latest fluff thriller about Brexit. It’s ok and funny because he’s set it now and the central character is mid40s but John is about a thousand years old and so it’s all a bit 1950s in mannerisms and there is no cultural coat hooks to hang the characters on. As ever it’s about someone getting utterly let down and someone failing to save the day despite playing with a straight bat. Bless him

^^It's the best known but it's really not her best book. In fact all her other books are better. She really should be better known than she is.

Is there a particular book you'd recommend?

Any of them; she kind of wrote the same book over and over (well, a few times, she didn't write that many), which suits me. If you like one you will probably like them all. Quartet was her first novel and her style is fully formed but it's slightly weaker than the ones that came after.

A slight reordering of https://lfgss.microcosm.app/api/v1/files/acc1934e28a17b3e9714c4cb577f4df296557268.png

Read the Huxley, Camus, Crouch and Stokes. Stoner got moved to near the end of the pile. Currently half way through The Spy Who Came in from the Cold which is awesome. After that it'll be Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow and the pile is already looking less daunting.

Lockdown is awesome for reading, getting loads done and got into a nice rhythm.

"> Lockdown is awesome for reading, getting loads done and got into a nice rhythm."

So true, I'm 1000 pages into War & Peace, by Tolstoi, a book I never thought I would be able to read

I really enjoy War and Peace, Ive read it a couple of times. Its meandering style is quite cool.

The tough thing first time around for me was keeping up with the names, so i made a little chart of everyones names and popped it into the front of my copy.

I've re-read a few 'classics' while in lockdown - Kitchen Confidential and the followup, Touching the Void, next I'll be starting on the James Ellroys

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Just started this is going to hurt by Adam Kay. Great read

Just finished Cider With Rosie by Laurie Lee. I read the loose trilogy of that, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning and A Moment Of War in reverse order (for no particular reason). He's a great writer but Cider With Rosie was still quite dull. Almost nothing happens. Would highly recommend the other two though. A Moment Of War in particular.

Also, despite not having anything to do I find I'm not reading a huge amount more than usual during lockdown for some reason. Maybe because I'm tending to spend all day doing things with my girlfriend and she's not a big reader at all. (Having said that, I set myself the target of reading 40 books this year and I'm on number 22 at the minute so it's not like I'm not reading at all).

Id be interested in what you think of invisible cities. I had to read it at uni, and found it a chore, however I have had it recommended to me several times for a re-read. Its sitting in my to read pile but keeps getting shunted down.

Started reading it this morning, currently halfway through. And holy shit, I think this has potential to be one of my favourite books. I'm really enjoying it, I think it's beautiful. I think if I had to actually study it and then write about what I'd studied, I imagine I'd be having less fun, but as a river of words washing over me it's just fantastic.

I play a text-based browser game called Fallen London, in which you navigate sequences of brief "storylets" that jumble together in a fragmentary, dreamlike sort of way to construct a narrative of sorts. The writers often riff off literature and poetry, e.g. there's a storyline where your character has various dreams, and all of the dreams are centred around the titles of the sections in T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland - so you'll have a dream about the Fire Sermon, and another one about What the Thunder Said and so forth. Anyway, I can really see the influence of Calvino and Invisible Cities in Fallen London.

I can see it even more in the spin-off game Sunless Sea where you go about on a little boat visiting different cities and learning their stories. The title of the game comes from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Kubla Khan ("Where Alph, the sacred river, ran / Through caverns measureless to man / Down to a sunless sea"), which seems to be another little nod to Calvino.

Anyway yeah, so am more than happy to recommend Invisible Cities. And also to recommend both of those games to anyone who likes both literature and casual gaming 💁

Thanks for this, I remember thinking it was a sort of word soup when I first read it. Maybe coming back to it from a different context might work well. Your description makes it sound so much better than my memory I will have to try again.

Just had a little notification from apple prompting me to buy another book as I had recently read...
Turns out on my kindle I had smashed through the entire rivers of london series in the last 2 weeks, an Ian M Banks, and a collection of Asimov short stories.
I hadn't given it any thought but that alongside the physical books I've been reading takes me back to how I used to read when I was at high school.

I used to fit reading as my main activity between sport and eating, to the point the school librarian used to leave a little pile of books to one side for me every friday and monday. Turns out all the projects I thought Id do in lockdown have been ignored, I spend almost all my time reading again. Its goingto be a wrench returning to real life.

I'm nearly finished with Stoner by John Williams. It took me a while to get in to it, I was nearly ready to give up but I'm really glad I didn't. It's all quite slow and meandering but it's so well written and really subtly melancholic. Would highly recommend it to anyone that's not read it.

Any suggestions for tablet apps (android) for reading PDFs and comics (cbr files I think)?

Requirements are pretty basic. Main thing is to remember what I was reading and what page I was on. The kindle app doesn't seem to do that.

+1 for Stoner, i read it based off a recommendation on here

I think I might have done as well. I can't remember who's recommendation though! Thanks whoever it was.

Is Walden, by Henry David Thoreau, any good?

It's 35 years since I read it. Let me know if you read it, have a feeling I didn't get much out of it at the time.

Been trying to diversify from my current trend of only reading really morose, melancholic stuff so have re-read Guards! Guards! By Terry Pratchett and The Man In The High Castle by Philip K Dick in the last week or so. I used to love Pratchett as a teenager, I'll have to pick up a few more old favourites of his, they're just great escapism but still well written enough to not feel like you're reading a book aimed at children.
I'm not enjoying The Man In The High Castle as much as I thought I would. It was one of the first things I read of his and I loved it at the time but I definitely wouldn't say it's one of my favourite PKD books anymore.