Books - What are you reading?

He wrote that Tintin thingy right (forget the name)? Looked interesting.

Yup – and novels Remainder and Men in Space. I haven't read the new one yet (C), but that's because it's still hardback and I'm a cheapskate. The other two are great.

Just started freedom(tm) by daniel suarez
The follow on to daemon (which was aces)
Its good, you need to have read Daemon for it to make proper sense.
Next I have Planet of the Apes - Pierre Boule to read.
Love the film so should make the effort to read it (I know its different)

Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
Good book, only read from page 170 onwards and need to read the beginning and end but champion.

Love a bit of Foucault

There are thousands of authors (usually aimed at male audiences) who skim over the emotional aspects of their characters, and I believe that is why they sell so well with men.
My dad's groaning bookcases are rammed with Lee Child, Richard Stark, John Buchan, Sapper and Bernard Cornwell. Every hero a man's man, and emotional content wavering at the zero mark.
If these books were to contain any real human feelings and emotions he wouldn't buy them, and neither would the hundreds of thousands of men who slurp them up like pints of strong ale.
There are many men who haven't got the first fucking clue about how to handle emotional situations, and the last person they want to start harping on about it is Sharp or Jack Reacher!

Well, 'women's' weepies are arguably just as emotionally vapid as that, perhaps in a different way, but still total bollocks. Or take Enid Blyton--she purported to write for both boys and girls, but all of it is equally shallow.

Also, most children's literature is--you have to turn to great children's literature like Astrid Lindgren or Erich Kästner (although 'Emil and the Detectives' and his other stuff of 1930-1932 are very shallow, 'The Flying Classroom' or 'The Little Man' are not) to get something that actually dares to engage children emotionally.

You can label these books shallow, but to be honest I'm not always up to be emotionally challenged by a read. Books, like films or TV shows, fill a certain need. Sometimes I want to watch a documentary on the arts, sometimes I want to laugh at knob jokes. It doesn't make one show shit and another show superior, they are simply diferent.

When I was a kid I loved Secret Seven and Famous Five - these books got me reading - but I'd probably find them dull now.

I wouldn't disagree--I used to absolutely devour them when I was little. And even as an adult, sometimes the mind needs to relax. However, the books that have stayed with me, and which have proved to be of lasting value, are the others that I mentioned. I don't know if I could have used my time better than reading so much production-line shite, or if they enabled me to appreciate the really beautiful books more. Perhaps you need the dross at some level, but that doesn't much change my view of it.

Read these whilst touring, all brilliant. Hard Times was great, hadn't read Dickens for a long time and forgot just how funny he can be.

Also I started the Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino. Not really a book you just read the whole way through though. Very very strange. Kind of abstract short stories based around different scientific facts about the Universe.
I put it back on the shelf when I got home.

I read To Kill a Mocking Bird and Men Without Women this week. I liked both a lot.

Also I started the Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino. Not really a book you just read the whole way through though. Very very strange. Kind of abstract short stories based around different scientific facts about the Universe.
I put it back on the shelf when I got home.

Try "If on a winter's night a traveller"

very odd, but excellent.

Is that the one where you can choose the ending?

It's a while since i read it. It starts with a fairly ordinary chapter, then the second chapter is a totally different story, and the third chapter is about a bloke who buys a book which has been put together wrongly by the printer...

Oh Calvino you crazy bugger.

Reading the Stieg Larsson trilogy at the moment, quite enjoying them.

I've just begun Q, a novel by Luther Blissett (not a person, but a group of people).

I'd just finished Strangers**, **which is an unusual Japanese ghost story. Its short, and a refreshing change. It describes a middle-aged man's life well, and is quite a poignant piece. Recommended.

Previously to that, I'd read The Interpretation of Murder. I didn't like it, as the pacing was awry, as far as I was concerned, and too much happened at the end. Also, it spent too much time trying to be clever. But, parts of it were very good, and racy. Very well researched though, but disappointing overall. Sigmund Freud caught up in a murder mystery was too big an idea, to execute satisfactorily.

I've only read the first one (Steig Larsson), but I may be in love with the autistic pierced girl.

Now reading Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and The Code Book: The Secret History of Codes and Code-breaking both are amazing.

http://www.lfgss.com/thread4091.html

There are 2 books that I've read, that I'd like to mention. Both are tales fantastical in nature, and both therefore inventive.

THE SILMARILLION by JRR Tolkien (edited together by his son Christopher), was written after The Lord of the Rings, and The Hobbit. It was a tale of creation, and how the world of Middle-Earth came into being. It is extremely densely written, and took me possibly five fresh starts, till I could read past the first 20 pages. The leap required for the reader is chasm-like, due to the beginning being so opaque. But once past the very first pages, the novel races along. The story descibes the first God, giving tasks to the lesser gods, and one taking umbrage to this, and abandoning his task. This early rebellion leads the same lesser god to make a people, but because he was not forthright, the humanoids were deformed. It is glimpses at the imagination of JRR Tolkien, that shows an elementary class-driven and possibly even racist intellect, that towered above others. Stupendously imaginative. A fantastic book, but not for the faint-hearted.

The tale of Dr.STRANGE AND Mr.MORRELL regards two magicians, who begin as friendly acquaintances, but emerge as rivals. It tells of a world, where magic has been largely forgotten. One man's desire to see it regain its previous place in society is, over time, a success. It is the telling that is of note, insofar that the world is descibed as if you are sitting in front of it. One can smell and hear the woods, and fields, and old Georgian style houses. There is venom and kindness, decency and deceit. I loved it, though the end seemed written at a different pace from the main part of the book. Excellent, but not perfect.

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EDIT: Please note the error of my ways.

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, author Susanna Clarke
an absolutely withering [I][I]Thank You**[/I], to rive gauche[/I]

Just started reading 'Cooking for Geeks'
Absolutely great book for anyone who wants that kind of view on cooking.

was good.

I've only read the first one (Steig Larsson), but I may be in love with the autistic pierced girl.

Hmmmmmmmmm, me to.

Just read Bill Bryson's bio of Shakespeare. Corker as ever from the lad.

Seigfried Sassoon - Memoirs of an Infantry Officer

Makes me wish I could write anything half as eloquent, and makes me want to go and poke around on the Somme battlefields.

Seigfried Sassoon - Memoirs of an Infantry Officer

Makes me wish I could write anything half as eloquent, and makes me want to go and poke around on the Somme battlefields.

Ha

Lucky Jim

Kingsley Amis.

[ame="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lucky-Jim-Penguin-Modern-Classics/dp/0141182598/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1284759780&sr=8-1"]Lucky Jim (Penguin Modern Classics): Amazon.co.uk: Kingsley Amis, David Lodge: Books[/ame]

It's on offer on amazon at the mo.

So fucking funny.
I think it's one of those books you have to associate with, I reckon, but the characters are mint and it is really, really funny, even though the writing remains exquisite.

Purchase, like the wind!