Books - What are you reading?

I've been seeking comfort in The Lord of The Rings by JRR Tolkien.

Try the Silmarillion; it'll put you so far under you'll sleep through the ICBMs dropping.

I Just finished reading Less Than Zero, and am currently half way through The Rules Of Attraction.

I almost gave up half way through Less Than Zero, as it was just a bunch of spoiled rich kids doing too much coke and didnt really have a tangible plot, but glad i stuck it out as it really takes a turn towards the end. After finishing it i was thinking about how unexpectedly disturbing some of it was at the end, but then reminded myself that this is the guy who wrote American Psycho.

I only got about a third of the way through before I gave up.
Depressingly violent, just a spiral of doom for me.

Read Less Than Zero when I was about 15 and thinking it was the best book ever. I still drink Vodka and grapefruit based on this.

I went through a Hunter. S Thompson Phase around that age and thought the same of him. Never really read any Brett Easton Ellis before, so got a few of his books on ebay to read over christmas. Although i have since found a very old copy of Rules Of Attraction on my book shelves, so I must have already read it at some point in my youth!

Still not entirely sure what i make of Ellis, but may as well read the ones I bought.

They destroy the One Ring in the end and everyone apart from Frodo lives happily ever after

Glamorama is Ellis's best book. Change my mind

Such a tropester

Finished 'The Parisian' by Isabella Hammad, so that's the second novel of hers that I've read. Amazing stuff from someone so young, I reckon she might turn into a proper rock star eventually.

I'm going to redo the LOTR audiobooks on my commute over the next few weeks I reckon. Although I redid The Hobbit at the end of last year and didn't enjoy it as much as I remembered.

It's a kid's book, so it's not going to have the same magic in later life. I think it's the most successful thing he wrote judged on it's own terms and his ambitions for it; LoTR was supposed to be the reawakening of an ancient style of heroic literature, not the foundation of a genre beloved by men who paint their own tabletop miniatures, and the Silmarillion is mostly a collection of his notes that weren't intended for publication (at least, not in that state). But The Hobbit is a pretty good children's story.

Which makes it sound as if I don't like LoTR; not true, but I don't think it ended up what he hoped for.

Hiphop is History by Questlove. Very entertaining even if it gets a bit encyclopaedic in the middle. The depth of his knowledge and enthusiasm shine though and his ability put context and structure around the whole genre really draws you in.

Finished rereading Consider Phlebas - had forgotten about 90% of it, so it was like reading a fresh new book. Really glad I went back to it, absolute banger.

Going to read Look to Windward again now as I have similarly hazy memories of that and it's a very loose sequel to Consider Phlebas, which I'm not sure I was fully cogent of when I first read it.

Yes! I read them all once a decade and it's like reading them for the first time. A shitty memory can have it's upsides