Books - What are you reading?

Just started reading "Game of Thrones". They're on sale in Waterstones so thought I'd give it a read. Not really one for fantasy, usually a classic crime novel reader, but I'm finding it really gripping. Only about 10 chapters in (and it's a thicken!). Really recaptured my joy for reading. It's a great feeling all to easily forgotten when you put a book down after finishing it.

Anyway, I think there are four or five more books after this so should keep me busy over the winter months!

On offer you say - that'll be why my girlfriend bought it for me then...

I really enjoyed it too but then it's right up my street (I real a lot of fantasy). It's quite stark in it's descriptions at some points which was deliberate but sometimes felt like he was so excited/keen to get the next bit out he just threw down some words to get there. It really picks up after the first couple of hundred pages. Have bought the next one but have a long list to get through before I get to this one (especially 1q84).

2 hours a day

modern day luxury that!

Still reading the Magus, but just bought this...

Anyone read it? Was convinced by the review in the observer.

I've just finished The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas- I loved the vibrant, unmistakeable Australianness of it, and the basic plot premise, and the characters and relationships were all very real, human, rounded and flawed. But I couldn't shake a nagging disappointment in the writing- a but lazy and predictable in places?
Just starting Rabbit, Run (John Updike). Never read anything by him before- anyone?

The Slap is on tv at the moment. Stumbled across it the other day.

Just finished Racing Weight, Bill Bryson's Appalachian Trail book and have moved onto [ame="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Timebomb-James-Barrington/dp/0230014739"]Timebomb[/ame] by some ex-serviceman type. Tale of Two Cities by Dickens for when I have to resort to the phone.

^^This tune, which is marvellous, is I think loosely inspired by that very book;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Np4mAy-HlmQ

I've got this by Updike

a collection of essays and criticism, which ranges across too many topics for my puny brain to recall. He's got a vast knowledge which he can apply to any style of writing. He's definitely very good, but this book didn't grab me like I hoped it would. Never read a novel by him, but they're extremely well thought of.

Bill Bryson's Appalachian Trail book

This made me laugh out loud over and over again until I was banned from reading it whenever there was anyone else in the house.

^^will let you know how I get on with the Updike.

I read first three in the rabbit series. They depressed me to the extent that I new I couldn't face Rabbit at Rest.

Appalachian Trail book

“My particular dread--the vivid possibility that left me staring at tree shadows on the bedroom ceiling night after night--was having to lie in a small tent, alone in an inky wilderness, listening to a foraging bear outside and wondering what its intentions were. I was especially riveted by an amateur photograph in Herrero's book, taken late at night by a camper with a flash at a campground out West. The photograph caught four black bears as they puzzled over a suspended food bag. The bears were clearly startled but not remotely alarmed by the flash. It was not the size or demeanor of the bears that troubled me--they looked almost comically nonaggressive, like four guys who had gotten a Frisbee caught up a tree--but their numbers. Up to that moment it had not occurred to me that bears might prowl in parties. What on earth would I do if four bears came into my camp? Why, I would die, of course. Literally shit myself lifeless. I would blow my sphincter out my backside like one of those unrolling paper streamers you get at children's parties--I daresay it would even give a merry toot--and bleed to a messy death in my sleeping bag.”

Still reading the Magus, but just bought this...

Anyone read it? Was convinced by the review in the observer.

i've never heard of it but just read the review in the observer and am convinced. will go and buy it now.

good shout :)

Check on amazon, only a fiver.

That's the one. Bryson does have a way with words. #billbrysonaddict

ooh, forgot to report on the Updike.
Depressing, as tatty viking said, but so well written I'll go and read some more of his I think. Much better than some similar things I've read recently- I mean of the same era, notably Revolutionary Road (Richard Yates) and Americana (Don Delillo) which went right over my head.
I re-read some Petit Nicolas (any other francophiles love the children's stories?) and went to buy How to Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran today because everyone seems unable to stop talking about it (or everyone in the Observer yesterday anyway).
But,
it was £11.99! For a paperback! A paperback novel! For £11.99!
i don't know much about how inflation works but I think this is quite a jump, no?
It'd better be bloody good.

Flight of the Eisenstein

Just starting Rabbit, Run (John Updike). Never read anything by him before- anyone?

ooh, forgot to report on the Updike.
Depressing, as tatty viking said, but so well written I'll go and read some more of his I think.

I've read the whole 'Rabbit' series and I wouldn't advise continuing. The first one's all right (if nothing special) if you have some time to spare, but I don't think it gets better.

I gave up after the first Rabbit - agree with Oliver, it was ok, absolutely nowhere near good enough to inspire me to buy the next.

And the shocking thing isn't paying £11.99 for a paperback, it's paying £11.99 for a Caitlin Moran book full stop.

okido, will quite while i'm ahead on the updike-front then.
And I've just sat down with some toast and Ms Moran- keeping a twelve-quids-wortho of open mind

Recently read:

If not now, when? by Primo Levi, really enjoyed it.

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, amazing and just as heart breaking as I remember from when I read it at school.

The Hunted by Elmore Leonard, brilliant pulp. I love his style, his books pretty much read themselves.

About to read Indignation by Philip Roth. Recent, so it's probably been panned, but I've enjoyed everything I've read by him, and haven't even read any of his seminal works 'cos they're never in the library!

I read "If This is a Man" when I was 15. It was hard, hard work. And I was only reading it to impress a girl called Juliet.

Who I am now going to Facebook stalk, for making me read "If This is a Man" when I was 15.

Have you decided if she's a man yet?

^^man I've decided that Caitlin moran may be a woman but she's also a bit of an idiot, and misuses CAPITALS like an IDIOT.
£12? pah.

Katie,

It's well worth persevering with the Rabbit books. They are pretty downbeat- in the sense that life's a bit disappointing in the end. But just the scope of reading about someone's life from early twenties to death is amazing. Plus I love Updike's prose.

My recommendation would be 'Couples', probably my favourite Updike book. Also 'Marry Me' and 'Month of Sundays'. Unfortunately his last one 'Terrorist' wasn't great, but in his prime he was amazing.

I read Americana last year and it went straight over my head as well. I wanted to read Underworld, but couldn't get it on my kindle at the time. Still mean to read that.

Just finished Sex, Lies and Handlebar Tape, and started Slaying the Badger. Love both.

Apropos of nothing I also watched A Sunday in Hell the other day. So so awesome.

Still reading the Magus, but just bought this...

Anyone read it? Was convinced by the review in the observer.

Started reading- like immediately

Just finished Stargazing by Peter Hill

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Stargazing-Peter-Hill/dp/1841954993

Great read about the lost world of lighthouse keepers and the summer of going from boy to man (that sounded naff, it's better in the book)