Books - What are you reading?

I've just finished Unspeak by Stephen Poole

Unspeak: Words are Weapons: Amazon.co.uk: Steven Poole: Books

Has anyone ever read The Night Climbers of Cambridge?

The Night Climbers of Cambridge: Amazon.co.uk: Whipplesnaith: Books

Night Climbers of Cambridge is spiffing, had never come across a police described as a robert before. I was living opposite a load of railway sheds and other warehouses at the time, think i pissed off quite a few night watchmen in my short career.

Just finished this, picked it up to fill the Moby Dick shaped hole in my heart:

Meticulously researched and full of fascinating stuff but i thought it was clumsily written and kind of all over the place. Interesting and occasionally haunting though.

Someone lent me that Murukami "What i wank about when i'm wanking on about wanking" book and predictably i hated it.

Just had a haul in Waterstones. Continuing the theme of self-improvement though digestion of Penguin Classics I should have read years ago but just plain haven't, i' just picked up:

Frankenstein
A Poe anthology
and Crime and Punishment

I shall report back with findings in quite a long time.

^ That's one of the authors represented by the agency where I work. Philip Hoare - nice guy, if a little bit odd.

1. Balky
   2. The Dark River by JXIIH
   

@tomasito:

Orly? That's cool.

Yeah it was an odd book. Sort of scattershot mixture of natural and social history bigraphy (of Melville) and travel journalism... Some of the prose was a bit arch, quite often i'd find his phrases weirdly clunky. Like if there was an awesome metaphor screaming to be made and he'd sort of miss the mark and you'd be left thinking "Surely that would have made much more sense or had more impact if you'd put it like this?".

I did enjoy it though.

I know what you mean. He's a whale geek first and writer second. But then again it won the Samuel Johnson prize, so there are some people who admire him as a writer.

Quite a nice video on his site here: http://www.philiphoare.co.uk/

Frankenstein really made me want to visit the alps, still surprises me that a nineteen year old could write something so beautiful.

I know what you mean. He's a whale geek first and writer second. But then again it won the Samuel Johnson prize, so there are some people who admire him as a writer.

Quite a nice video on his site here: http://www.philiphoare.co.uk/

Lovely. Thanks tomasito. I love Orson Welles' voice. Ha! "unutterably other". I love it when someone trying to be prfound refers to something as possesing "otherness". Always reminds me of Woody Allen trying to look sophisticated in a gallery in "Manhatten".

Jorge Luis Borges' Labyrinths

Recently found out about this guy, then his story The Library of Babel ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_library_of_babel ) and now I'm checking out all of his short stories and essays. Brilliant stuff so far!

Try and read the translations by Norman Thomas di Giovanni. They're old Penguin editions but they are far superior to the new ones.

Basically, Borges worked side by side with di Giovanni over 6 or 7 years on the definitive translations. When he (Borges) died, his widow got all of the books retranslated for a flat fee so that she could have 100% royalties, cutting di Giovanni out of the picture.

This travesty (the new translations are pretty rubbish in comparison) is one of the reasons why borges has dropped off the literary map for English speakers.

Interesting.. cheers for that, I'll have a look for them.

1. Balki
   
   

Nah, you don't want to read anything by him.

I need some light in my sombre life...

The Secret Life of Salvador Dali.

He was a fucking looney even as a child, If he had been born later in the century he'd have been on Ritalin and diagnosed with Aspergers. Funny though.

'Why is sex fun' by jared diamond

Science not porn (just to clarify)

I need some light in my sombre life...

you're a photographer, use a flash and that should light up your life for a second ;o))

Just finished First Love by Ivan Turgenev, wonderful!

Total mindfuck

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel,_Escher,_Bach

baudri-fucking-llard rules

Yes! He does, just started reading Baudrillard - From Marxism to Postmodernism and Beyond

Baudrillard is a fucking literary and philosophical titan though, Mass Identity Architecture is a fucking mighty read, his work about the Pompidou centre is pyarly boss.

Just finished Edward Soja - Postmodern Geographies - very interesting analysis of urban space, hardly a laugh-a-minute read, but fascinating none-the-less.

Just a quick question. Are u still at uni? I used to read Emil Cioran and shit. And then I turned 30, and I found myself just going through the porn section of my newsagents ;-)

Baudrillard is a fucking literary and philosophical titan though, Mass Identity Architecture is a fucking mighty read, his work about the Pompidou centre is pyarly boss.

Own up. You write for the Times Literary Supplement, don't you?

Reading Bicycle Diaries by David Byrne at the moment, quiet interesting. More about the sociological changes in cities he's ridden through, and the things he sees when riding, than actual riding itself.

Jorge Luis Borges' Labyrinths

Recently found out about this guy, then his story The Library of Babel ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_library_of_babel ) and now I'm checking out all of his short stories and essays. Brilliant stuff so far!

Get hold of Borges's short story collection Fictions (the early Giovanni Trans.), if you can; *The Garden of Forking Paths section *holds an assemblage of inspiring short stories, with my personal pick of the bunch being the end story of the same title. [Edit. Just seen your input on this Tomasito - Sorry, I missed your post.]

Just finished Dino Buzzati's The Tartar Steppe, a somewhat abstract and enigmatic representation of self-examination and the unfathomable. If anyone else has read it I'd love to hear your opinion. Before that was Murakami's *South of the Border, West of the Sun *which I felt accommodates for a valued read just as much, if not more, than his more read titles.

Currently reading Frederic Raphael's The Glittering Prizes which was written for a BBC miniseries in the late seventies. It chronicles the lives of several cambridge students, namely Adam Morris: a satirically protrayed Jewish writer who iconoclastically characterises the sharp and witty intellect and pretensions of those from his generation. The first half of the book was enthralling but it only seems to be drifting further and deeper out from that point of high tide.

I'm regrettably dallying my way through the heavy likes of The Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and Buglakov's The Master and Margerita, but I'm afraid they will remain shelfbound a jaunt longer because I really want to read Jean-paul Sartre's Nausea. What a mess.

I"m catching up of fuff by Jeffery lewis. It's fantastic.