Books - What are you reading?

I just stopped reading Herzog....Like some shit existentialist self-suckoff written for divorced American lawyers who've been to Europe on holiday once and quite like one too many pinacoladas down the private member's club before boring everyone by trying to show how erudite they are... wank.

On to Fallada. Which on the Nazi ^ angle should be interesting as he wrote it whilst locked up in a Nazi insane asylum and it was only found after his death.

I started it, but his writing style and staunch Nazi politics (not mentioned in the book, discovered while I looked up the author) made me stop reading. I wouldn't normally let such things cloud my views, but it just put me off...

Yeah. I heard that too. But.......but.......

i dunno what to think. The book is outstanding. Doesn't the art transcend the writers political view point?

I mean, the book doesn't impose anything of the sort.

hmmm.

On your recommendation, Hauska, I'm going to give it another go.

I agree that the piece should stand alone, regardless of the politics and inclinations of the creator, be it art, music or literature.

One of my favourite reads is Devil's Guard, and that was written by an ex- SS man who fled Germany after the war to join the French Foreign Legion, and describes the ruthless efficiency that turned the tables for them in Indochina.

Worth picking up a copy if you see it - Devil's Guard by George Robert Elford sells for big bucks, and the second installment shifts for silly money. My dad's ratty paperback edition is worth a hundred quid.

Hitch 22

Bike Snobs book.
is ok.

He wrote by instalments and was paid by the inch so lots of page skipping to get the story moving.

(one of the five books in the Musketeer trilogy)

(the third book in the trilogy is usually published as three separate books, making five)

Good month for reading.

Just finished "Grendel", now reading "Sacred Geometry: Philosophy & Practice"

False Gods, the second of the Horus Heresy books. Won't win any literary gongs but it's SO FREEEAKING GOOD*

*if you like gothic sci-fi from the distant future

Hunger. Knut Hamson.
..............................

Love this book

Just read Fup by Jim Dodge. Really, really good!

I'm starting Hunger again when I get home.

Currently reading Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell.

I read Number9Dream and loved it, and this one's brilliant too.

I really like the way he drops key sentences into large sections of writing, but you never seem to miss it, or maybe I've just got lucky.

Some pop Psychology - The Age of Absurdity by Michael Foley and How to be an Existentialist by Gary Cox

both enjoyable in a sunny day in garden way

I'm still ploughing through Ackroyds Blake biography.. It's like reading treacle... Pick it up.. Put it down.. I'm used to a more academic style of biography I guess and Ackroyd style is more like a novel..

This evening I intend to make a start on this:

^is Nicholas Crane that bloke who tootles all over England with a brolly? Was it 'Coast' that he did, and that other thing about maps?

Yeah I think that's the same guy.

This evening I intend to make a start on this:

I've had my eye on this for a while, is it any good?

I've just started 'Empire of the Sun' and I'm really enjoying it.

xxx

The Lady in the Lake by Raymond Chandler. Love Raymond Chandler.

The Forum

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, for the second time.

Picked it up second hand after borrowing it from a friend years ago. Not sure that the first 150 pages are worth it but I'm well past them now.

Greasy Slag's post. Then spybot's post. Then proof-reading mine. Then the next post.

Joy of Sex.

Chandler never wrote a bad book, IMHO.

I loved Empire of the Sun, too. Epic.

^^Pop-up edition?