In Cold Blood was decent, I did like its documentary feel rather than sensationalising any of it.
Fahrenheit 451 I perhaps expected more, but I did enjoy some of its ideas and logic. I would have preferred it to be a bit wider reaching, though I shouldn't really be comparing it to other dystopian novels. I'll have to watch the Francois Truffaut film.
Kafka's The Metamorphosis I'm still not sure about. I guess it's 'take your own meaning,' it was cool and very unique but I've had to look up potential explanations. Also got three other short stories downloaded from him.
I way away at the weekend so didn't want to take my brand new Cannery Row copy, instead read To Kill a Mockingbird for the first time. I enjoyed it, will go down as one of my favourites in my attempt at reading 'classics'.
Started Slaughter House Five last night, too early to say much but it feels a bit Catch 22 so I have high hopes.
Just finished "Kill your Friends" by Niven. Story of an A&R man set in 1997 with a serious alcohol, hooker and cocaine addiction willing to do pretty much anything to keep his position. Very funny in places but not for the easily offended. I'm pretty broad minded but even I felt a bit sullied by the end of it.
Cannot recommend this book enough, the main character is some creation ain't he?
John Niven has done another two very funny books, the amateurs about an appalling yet enthusiastic golfer who gets hit on the head and becomes a master, along with some amusing side-effects
The other, the second coming sees the return of the protagonist from kill your friends and the return of the son of god. Well worth a read, neither are as as extreme as kill your friends but very good reads.
His last one 'cold hands' is average at best
Kill your Friends is being made into a film with Rafe Spall playing Stellfox
Loved Kill your Friends; Second Coming, less so. Anyone read Straight White Male yet?
Reading it at the moment, bit of a slow start, usual twisted observant humour. Only about a third of the way through though
Finished Darkness at Noon, pretty interesting. It had me looking up some Soviet history, did feel very dystopian and 1984 like in places.
I was then bored on a train last week so went back to Heart of Darkness, decent but still a slog. Now on Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, a bit more my usual thing. It's a look at some (I think) senseless murders in Kansas 60 or so years ago.
I was going to download more Steinbeck but most of his novels are £7+ on Kindle, I can't really justify that. Yeah I'd spend that on a new book but I'd prefer a copy for my shelf for that much, I can't lend it to anyone, etc. Instead I have Cannery Row in the post, or at least I think that's the one I ordered.
Well done! I will make time to skim/ re-read some older books and read some newer ones that come up on here... OK Heart of Darkness probably best read after a trip outside of the first world to get perspective on things...
The Alchemist and other books by Paulo Coelho well worth a look at but it all depends on where you are going with all this...
Last Bus to Woodstock - Colin Dexter (first Inspector Morse book)
Not sure why I've never read these books before especially when I enjoy the TV programmes so much ... really good book, and now I have a whole series to look forward to :-)
just finished 'the E Street Shuffle' biography of Springsteen during his early days up to the Born in the USA album period. Was an interesting read, concentrated a lot on the studio process of putting the various albums together with details of the huge number of tracks discarded.
Now reading Moby Dick, hard to get into but once you find the rhythm of the writing it is pretty good if a little rambling.
Just finished 'Charlotte Street' by Danny Wallace which I hated a first - bit clever clever but quite enjoyed it in the end. Just started "The unlikely pilgrimage of Harold Fry" which everyone seems to love so we'll see. Also got "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" recently which looks really good.
As I have been working nights this week , well I say working but it's supervising really which means telling the fellas what to do at the start of the night and making sure they are there all night.
This has meant I have had a chance to do some reading and that means the rather hardcore Scar tissue , the Anthony Kiedis autobiography .
what are others reading right now? books that is as I know rothko will be reading the morning star
What a rubbish thread to put on a football forum!!!
Philip Roth, Portnoy's Complaint. When I first read it, I thought it was the funniest book I'd ever read. On a second reading, 25 years on, I've not changed my mind. This time though I'm focussing on not becoming one of those Jewish parents. It shouldn't be to hard as a "goy", but I can see some parallels.
Magnus Mills - All Quiet On The Orient Express, one of them strangely sinister books that hardly anything happens in but increases your paranoia even when just going to the post office.
Arrived yesterday is 'Notes of a Dirty Old Man: The Uncollected Columns' by Charles Bukowski: pieces he wrote for an underground weekly newspaper in Los Angeles in the 1970s. It's about the important things in life: drinking, women, and going to the horse races. I'm a big fan of Bukowski, and I know Redskin, a fellow Lifer, is too. He was described by Time magazine as "the laureate of American low-life" and is often filed under the Beats with Ginsberg, Burroughs and Corso, but really he was a complete one-off. For the uninitiated, I recommend his first novel, 'Post Office', widely available: written in 1971 when he was aged fifty, about his job as a postman and then a mail sorter in LA. It is brutal, honest, subversive, exhilarating, sad - and very funny. One critic said: "It takes you by the shoulders and shakes you until your teeth rattle".
Arrived yesterday is 'Notes of a Dirty Old Man: The Uncollected Columns' by Charles Bukowski: pieces he wrote for an underground weekly newspaper in Los Angeles in the 1970s. It's about the important things in life: drinking, women, and going to the horse races. I'm a big fan of Bukowski, and I know Redskin, a fellow Lifer, is too. He was described by Time magazine as "the laureate of American low-life" and is often filed under the Beats with Ginsberg, Burroughs and Corso, but really he was a complete one-off. For the uninitiated, I recommend his first novel, 'Post Office', widely available: written in 1971 when he was aged fifty, about his job as a postman and then a mail sorter in LA. It is brutal, honest, subversive, exhilarating, sad - and very funny. One critic said: "It takes you by the shoulders and shakes you until your teeth rattle".
Have ordered a copy of "Post Office" from Amazon, thanks for recommendation.
I'm a big Bukowski fan, too, got tons of his stuff (novels, short stories, poetry), a lot of it published by Black Sparrow. If you see those editions, they're well worth picking up because they look ace. I saw a hardback of his Sometimes I Walk Through The Fire (Black Sparrow edition) in Waterstones about 10 years ago. Already, I thought it was odd for Waterstones to have that book by that publisher, but when I went to pay for it, I found it had a limited-to-50 litho print of a little cartoon by Buk inside. Worth a LOT more then the tenner I paid.
Of his novels, Ham On Rye is my favourite.
Also, as an aside, Bukowski was a huge champion of the-then forgotten writer John Fante, and was instrumental in getting him republished. Now, John Fante is ACE. His short story collection The Wine Of Youth is fabulous, especially the story story A Wife For Dino Rossi.
For the last 4 weeks I have been reading IT by Stephen King, nearly 1400 pages. Not bad, had to finish it, but felt it could have done with a strong editor. Could have been cut by 300-500 pages.
Comments
Very good book
Fahrenheit 451 I perhaps expected more, but I did enjoy some of its ideas and logic. I would have preferred it to be a bit wider reaching, though I shouldn't really be comparing it to other dystopian novels. I'll have to watch the Francois Truffaut film.
Kafka's The Metamorphosis I'm still not sure about. I guess it's 'take your own meaning,' it was cool and very unique but I've had to look up potential explanations. Also got three other short stories downloaded from him.
I way away at the weekend so didn't want to take my brand new Cannery Row copy, instead read To Kill a Mockingbird for the first time. I enjoyed it, will go down as one of my favourites in my attempt at reading 'classics'.
Started Slaughter House Five last night, too early to say much but it feels a bit Catch 22 so I have high hopes.
Reading it at the moment, bit of a slow start, usual twisted observant humour. Only about a third of the way through though
Had it recommended by several different people so just about to start it
The Alchemist and other books by Paulo Coelho well worth a look at but it all depends on where you are going with all this...
Not sure why I've never read these books before especially when I enjoy the TV programmes so much ... really good book, and now I have a whole series to look forward to :-)
Now reading Moby Dick, hard to get into but once you find the rhythm of the writing it is pretty good if a little rambling.
Of his novels, Ham On Rye is my favourite.
Also, as an aside, Bukowski was a huge champion of the-then forgotten writer John Fante, and was instrumental in getting him republished. Now, John Fante is ACE. His short story collection The Wine Of Youth is fabulous, especially the story story A Wife For Dino Rossi.