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What are you currently reading?

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23:17 / 23.03.02

I'm winding down The Corrections, which I stared out hating and then began, slowly, to come around to bit by bit. I'm partial to one character, though, and am tending to breeze through the parts that aren't about her.

I have to proofread a 250 page novel for work by Monday morning, and with a brunch and the Oscars in between, I don't foresee sleeping a lot between now and then.

And at some point I have to make my way through Underworld, also, but I got a hundred-odd pages in and still felt like I was trudging. I promised a friend I would read it so we could discuss, but - and I am reluctant to tell him this - I think I'm just not getting it. But what, exactly, am I supposed to be getting?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

04:16 / 24.03.02

Just started Herodotus' "Histories", which a friend of mine got me a really nice edition of for my birthday last year, and always seems somewhat disappointed that I haven't read it yet...
And Joe Haldeman's "Forever Free", the (25 years later) sequel to "The Forever War", which was one of the best SF novels of all time, as far as I'm concerned.

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

13:28 / 24.03.02

im about 10 pages from the end of Heart of Darkness, and now i cant find the book
The Horror The Horror!

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

14:16 / 24.03.02

I know the feeling of misplacing a book when you are almost done. I have a house full of crap and I tend to read where ever I am at the time, so books are in my car, my coat, my briefcase at my job, etc...

Right now I am speeding through "April 1865" about the so-called last month of the Civil War and am amazed at how close we here in the states were to becoming a land of endless skirmishes, and I STILL don't understand how we didn't fall back into war after the assassination of Lincoln.

I also have a stack of books I am about to read which includes both crap and decent stuff. Anyone know why I'm reading so much history lately? Anyone?

15:10 / 24.03.02

Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln.

Amazing read. Chewy but thought-provoking. Apparently Jesus was just a very shrewd politician.

22:41 / 25.03.02

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John le Carre

perfect laundry room fare

04:35 / 26.03.02

I just finished The Master Builder by Henrik Ibsen (it doesn't have to be a book per se, does it?). Certainly not up there with Hedda Gabler & Enemy of the People. Nevertheless, I'll probably read "Ghosts" next.

I also just finished Cut 'n Mix: Culture, Identity & Caribbean Music by Dick Hebdige. Being a tyro to the different types of Jamaican music, it gave a pretty good overview of the history of Ska, Rocksteady, Reggae, Dub, Lover's Rock & Dancehall. Not too bookish & not too shabby either.

Also, I finished an abridged version of the Hagakure) about a month ago and before that, read about a quarter way through About A Boy by Nick Hornby before I realized it wasn't worth my time.

07:06 / 26.03.02

Empire, because I haven't read it yet.

Wild Horses, by Dick Francis, because I like Dick Francis.

Maigret et la Grande Perche in the forlorn hope that this will improve my French sufficiently for me to read Michel Serres in the original by the end of the year. Bwahahahahaha.

I have a big pile of Hannah Arendt, some Carl Schmidt, A Scanner Darkly and Jack the Modernist lined up waiting, and when I'm allowed a day off I'm going to go to Borders and read some Jacqueline Wilson in the cafe (current obsession but cannot afford to buy any books).

Haus, I can recommend both the 'Seniors' and the 'Couples' series wholeheartedly, though some of the 'Couples' ones are a little melancholy. Look out also for 'Class of '88', but don't bother with the Kelly Blake, Teen Model series.

07:56 / 26.03.02

well i'm still halfway through aldous huxley's biography but found myself re-reading clive barker's books of blood. i like a lot of the stories but find myself - get this - editing them to some degree, and having bizarre notions that my short stories are better than his.

Haus about we all give each other a big lovely huggle?

07:57 / 26.03.02

quote:Originally posted by Deva:
I Haus, I can recommend both the 'Seniors' and the 'Couples' series wholeheartedly, though some of the 'Couples' ones are a little melancholy. Look out also for 'Class of '88', but don't bother with the Kelly Blake, Teen Model series.

Hmmm...have just snagged "Doubleclick Cafe", a classic, and "Supermodels of the world" - presumably not the same as the evil Kelly Blake.

As for melancholy - "Winners All the Way", which was I believe "Seniors", did feature the heartbreaking death of Alex's brother and her subsequent depression, alleviated only 1) by the fact that said depression was cured by a good hard seeing-to (time and heterosexuality heal all wounds) ans 2) that the brother was called Noodle, making me think of the blank-eyed Gorillaz electronik.

But really, after Making Out 1-8 (also correctly referrable to as "Boyfriends/Girlfriends" to distinguish it from the still satisfying but less perfect 20 sequels), everything else just isn't as good...

The Return Of Rothkoid

08:08 / 26.03.02

After finishing Lewis' The Monk - which was suitably goth-trashy - I whipped through the Lynch On Lynch collection of interviews. Great stuff, but not enough of it, methinks.

This morning, though, I started Peter Ackroyd's Chatterton, which I nabbed for three quid the other day, which pleased me greatly. So far, nothing special, but I'm only about thirty pages into it. Overtones of his other fiction are here, though.

08:27 / 26.03.02

I'm currently enjoying "The Ethical Slut." Makes quite a lot of good points. Thanks plums!

10:35 / 26.03.02

Haus: no, 'Supermodels of the World' is another excellent series: far superior to Kelly Blake. And 'Doubleclick Cafe' is indeed a classic, but it disorients me slightly by being set in Britain.

I haven't read the one where Ally's brother dies, I don't think. But I'm due a good rummage round the charity shops in the next planet over so it may yet show up.

Just finished 'Wild Horses' and started on 'Scanner'. That's fucked-up shit. I'm also dipping in & out of Pat Califia's 'Public Sex'.

pointless and uncalled for

10:48 / 26.03.02

Just cleaned up on Iain M. Banks - Player of Games and started on Christopher Brookmyre's Not The End Of The World.

Ok so it's not up to the usual eclectic reading standards of the board but I only read for base entertainment with the exception of my occasional dips into scientific theory (recently chaos) and regular photograpic theory books.

11:22 / 26.03.02

I'm gonna start The Golden Bough today. Wish me luck.

12:11 / 26.03.02

*Finished* with the goddamned Windows ME book!

So here's my choices for the day:

How to Practice, by the Dalai Lama

OR

Ulysses

<laying hands over books, which to read...>

[Edited to say, good luck Rizla... I have always wanted to read that book, actually.]

[ 26-03-2002: Message edited by: Persephone ]

12:50 / 26.03.02

Now onto My Tiny Life, which I've wanted to read for a while, and found for two quid at the mighty Galloway and Porter. It's very interesting reading, especially as I spent about nine months on a MUD a few years back.

Fengs for the Memory

07:13 / 27.03.02

The Alchemists Apprentice - Jeremy Dronefield. Nice idea, writers stories becoming real, getting a little hazy towards the end though.

13:41 / 28.03.02

Reading David Mitchell's "Number9Dream"-great stuff & just getting into Samuel Delany's "Dhalgren"- ah good old Chip Delany in experimental mode! Plus some academic crap (Deleuze, Zizek etc)

After I am done with any of the two- it's "Ubik"'s turn...

can't wait

18:45 / 28.03.02

Wreckers of Civilisation by Simon Ford.
a potted history of Coum Transmissions and Throbbing Gristle. a little academic so far, but i'm reading it for ideas and i've got just one so far. i got it from my college libary for nothing, aren't i good.

wembley can change in 28 days

20:22 / 28.03.02

"The Beauty of the Husband" by Anne Carson. The only poet I've read over the course of this year who makes me get all hot and bothered about reading poetry.

22:49 / 28.03.02

In the midst of Automated Alice by Jeff Noon.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

02:31 / 29.03.02

I've just fucked up on the "currently reading" thing- I WAS in the middle of the two books I mentioned previously (both of which I'd interrupted other books to read, and so on), then I got drunk after work yesterday and splashed out on Ian Thompson's biography of Primo Levi, which I HAVE to read next, if only to justify the twenty-five quid I spent on it.

05:52 / 29.03.02

You spend that much on a book? Wow...I have given up buying expensive books. I try to go second hand from charity shops. You get a much weirder reading selection and it sooo much cheaper.

09:55 / 29.03.02

After growing increasingly panicked at my seeming inability to finish any book I started, I decided to stop reading every one of the six or so books I was trying to read simultaneously, and moved on to one book, just one, and read that. Which book was The Crying of Lot 49, by Thomas Pynchon, and which was completed to my utter satisfaction. So I moved along to Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, also finished.

So, relieved at the thought that I could still finish works of fiction, I appear to now be straying slightly again: Hermann Hesse's Beneath the wheel; Naomi Klein's No Logo; The Mathematical Universe by William Dunham; and Fictions, by Jorge Borges. Pathetic.

I think I had actually developed an addiction to books as objects; I'd buy armloads of them, line them up on my shelf, or next to my bed, or even, ridiculously, under my bed, and never read them. I've stopped buying, now I just need to curb my sporadic and aimless reading patterns. Bibliophiles Anonymous?

15:49 / 29.03.02

Finished My Tiny Life, as mentioned in another thread. Now back to number9dream, which is pissing me off... it's nowhere near as good as it thinks it is. Just done part 5, which was wanky in the extreme, though the next bit looks better. But it's annoying; still, I have to finish it now - it's not nearly bad enough to give up.

18:06 / 29.03.02

originally posted by Margin Walker: I'll probably read "Ghosts" next.

"Ghosts" is my favorite out of the bunch, love that play.

18:57 / 29.03.02

Finally finished The Corrections. It was okay, but not that great - I wouldn't recommend it. I got caught up in the story about half way through but in the same way you can get hooked by afternoon soaps - you know it's a load of nonsense but you want to see what happens.

And now I'm giving The Iliad another go.

00:09 / 30.03.02

Originally posted by Ariadne at 21:57 29.03.2002:

And now I'm giving The Iliad another go.

Whose translation? (Unless of course you can read ancient Greek in which case I have to do a whooole lotta foot kissing.)

08:47 / 30.03.02

Er, no, it's not in Greek - it's the Martin Hammond translation. I started trying to read it when there was a thread going here, but gave up - and now I'm trying again. I'm enjoying it more this time.

The Return Of Rothkoid

10:17 / 31.03.02

After whipping through Ackroyd's Chatterton (which is fucking great), I'm embarking on Norman Mailer's (pre-edit, that's the second time today that I've typed his name as "Normal")Ancient Evenings, which sounds pretty good so far; it's about resurrection and souls and stuff; set in Egypt. Chunky, but... we'll see.

Oh, and I'm still rereading The Invisibles...

hanabius yamamura

08:38 / 04.04.02

currently reading NECROSCOPE by Brian Lumley ...
fantastic book ... well worth reading and i intend to buy the next one in the series very soon !

10:14 / 04.04.02

Well, I made it through the Iliad, and loved it (though i did weary of the battles, with page upon page of A-killed-B, C-killed-D etc) and I'm now about to start the Odyssey. Oh, and in between, as light relief from the battlescenes, I read Ben in the world, Doris Lessing.

11:09 / 04.04.02

Having just finished Space by Stephen Baxter, I am starting Origin, the third and last in his Manifold series. It's sparking off eschatological thoughts, as well as boasting charming little green men, well - little green interstellar squid. And robots knitting giant sun eating blankets. Gloriously pessimistic.

Rothkoid, Good luck with Ancient Evenings. Started it when it came out first and (15 years later?) am still somewhere about 2/3 of the way through... Probably onto Incarnation Three or so. Thing is, I found some of it quite fascinating but then I'd lose the thread again. Perhaps you have a more disciplined mind to apply to the convoluted narrative. There's something counter-intuitive and iconoclastic about Normal-issimo Norman writing the graphic male male sex scenes.

The Return Of Rothkoid

12:15 / 04.04.02

ZoCher: heh. Thanks for the luck - it does feel like I'm gonna need it. I've already sensed the weirdness in Mailer writing about god-on-god action, too - something seems a bit... not stilted, but I can't quite put my finger on it. I'd be quite interested, though, to speak to someone with some grounding in Egyptian history and gods to see what they think of this thing, though. It's a bit like a more scat version of The Last Temptation Of Christ, I think - though probably not as profound...

And your problems with getting through it - that explains why my copy was only £1.79, and why I keep seeing it about!

Margin Walker: what'd you think of the Hagakure? I read it (after seeing Ghost Dog, natch) and thought it was great...

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