This Week I are mostly reading (contd)

Frank McGivney · 10-10-2013 02:29PM

I was talking to someone about the book thief yesterday, It sounds really good. I think Tobin really hits the mark with the way what was essentially the start of the early Christian church was manipulating things from the beginning
Ah you man Roddy Doyle is so good. Laughing at 1 in the morning reading a book is always a good sign and its not just the funny bits the whole was he gets the stry out to you is so good

Callan57 · 11-10-2013 03:58PM

Just finished off A Tale For The Time Being by Ruth Ozeki.
When I picked this one up I wasn't aware it was on the Booker Shortlist 2013 but I am not at all surprised, it's an amazing and original read. I enjoyed it immensly.

I have a book of short stories, The Pre-War House & Other Stories, which I want to get finished over the weekend hopefully.

Saorenza · 11-10-2013 04:11PM

I enjoyed A Tale For The Time Being very much too. It was so affecting I had to put it aside for a week or so (I was reading it not long after my mother died). I started Bryant and May and The Memory of Blood by Christopher Fowler yesterday. I wanted some silly fiction I curl up with and get in. Also I am going to London next weekend so I wanted a London based story.

Belle E. Flops · 11-10-2013 11:30PM

I've postponed Fanny Hill. It's grand, but I can't say it's a book I'm dying to continue reading.

Going to start 'Rosemary's Baby' now. Thought it would be appropriate for the season coming up.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO · 11-10-2013 11:36PM

I'm dying a death with Nicholas Nickleby still. If his life and times were as boring to live through as they are to read I think the book will end in mass suicide.

Tom Joad · 12-10-2013 08:45PM

TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote: »

I'm dying a death with Nicholas Nickleby still. If his life and times were as boring to live through as they are to read I think the book will end in mass suicide.

Feel the exact same about Bleak House at the minute - am persevering but just about - down to about 5 pages a day now.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO · 12-10-2013 08:54PM

Tom Joad wrote: »

Feel the exact same about Bleak House at the minute - am persevering but just about - down to about 5 pages a day now.

Mine's from the library and it has to be brought back on Tuesday. I can't bring myself to renew it but I don't want it to beat me either so I have 400 pages to get through in 2 days :eek:

Tom Joad · 12-10-2013 08:59PM

TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote: »

Mine's from the library and it has to be brought back on Tuesday. I can't bring myself to renew it but I don't want it to beat me either so I have 400 pages to get through in 2 days :eek:

Rather you than me

. I've finished 2 other books since picking up Bleak House - might finish another 4 before I do but will definitely finish Bleak House - I'm stubborn like that

Swiper the fox · 12-10-2013 09:01PM

Tom Joad wrote: »

Feel the exact same about Bleak House at the minute - am persevering but just about - down to about 5 pages a day now.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote: »

Mine's from the library and it has to be brought back on Tuesday. I can't bring myself to renew it but I don't want it to beat me either so I have 400 pages to get through in 2 days :eek:

Can I recommend this to ye, my 7 year old daughter got it from the library the other day and really enjoyed Bleak House:p

http://www.usborne.com/catalogue/book/1~FC~FC7~3848/illustrated-stories-from-dickens.aspx

Tom Joad · 12-10-2013 09:04PM

Swiper the fox wrote: »

Can I recommend this to ye, my 7 year old daughter got it from the library the other day and really enjoyed Bleak House:p

http://www.usborne.com/catalogue/book/1~FC~FC7~3848/illustrated-stories-from-dickens.aspx

In my house we just use the naughty step for punishment :P

TICKLE_ME_ELMO · 12-10-2013 09:04PM

Swiper the fox wrote: »

Can I recommend this to ye, my 7 year old daughter got it from the library the other day and really enjoyed Bleak House:p

http://www.usborne.com/catalogue/book/1~FC~FC7~3848/illustrated-stories-from-dickens.aspx

Ha! I had this idea the other night to draw a sort of simple comic version of Great Expectations, just as a way to get me back into drawing every day. Sad to see someone has beaten me to it.

Callan57 · 12-10-2013 10:56PM

Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann

Hidalgo · 13-10-2013 03:26PM

About a quarter through 'Chickenhawk' by Robert Mason.

Author was a US helicopter pilot who flew over 1000 missions in Vietnam in 1965-66. Pretty good read so far esp highlighting the lack of knowledge of soldiers like the author of what they were doing and why they were there as well as the kinks in the system of using the new cavalry of helicopters

Call Me Jimmy · 13-10-2013 03:37PM

Hidalgo wrote: »

About a quarter through 'Chickenhawk' by Robert Mason.

Author was a US helicopter pilot who flew over 1000 missions in Vietnam in 1965-66. Pretty good read so far esp highlighting the lack of knowledge of soldiers like the author of what they were doing and why they were there as well as the kinks in the system of using the new cavalry of helicopters

Absolutely great book, got it here and have read it twice. One of the best accounts of war I've read and that includes Band Of Brothers.

Hidalgo · 13-10-2013 04:11PM

Call Me Jimmy wrote: »

Absolutely great book, got it here and have read it twice. One of the best accounts of war I've read and that includes Band Of Brothers.

Found it by complete chance in a 2nd hand book shop. Really well written in fairness.
The book that 'The Pacific' mini-series was based on is supposedly top notch also. Title is something like 'My helmet as my pillow' or something along those lines.

'The Cage' by Tom Abraham is another excellent first-hand account of Vietnam also, author spent time as a POW. Must dig it out for a re-read, havn't read it in a dozen years or so

Wyldwood · 13-10-2013 07:03PM

TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote: »

Mine's from the library and it has to be brought back on Tuesday. I can't bring myself to renew it but I don't want it to beat me either so I have 400 pages to get through in 2 days :eek:

Take it back to the library and read the rest of it on www.gutenberg.org at your leisure

useurename · 13-10-2013 09:20PM

Breath by Tim Winton. Fantastic coming of age tale set in a rural setting near Perth in Australia.Loved it.Half way through Dirt Music by the same author.Not as good and three times longer.

TICKLE_ME_ELMO · 13-10-2013 09:47PM

useurename wrote: »

Breath by Tim Winton. Fantastic coming of age tale set in a rural setting near Perth in Australia.Loved it.Half way through Dirt Music by the same author.Not as good and three times longer.

Love Tim Winton. Breath was fantastic. I liked Dirt Music but it got a bit weird at the end. Cloudstreet is brilliant too, bit long but I flew through it.

Aenaes · 13-10-2013 10:48PM

Call Me Jimmy wrote: »

Absolutely great book, got it here and have read it twice. One of the best accounts of war I've read and that includes Band Of Brothers.

Agreed. I remember a feeling a great chilling sensation when reading the part of

a soldier running from chopper to chopper during an evacuation. All the pilots were refusing him as the weight would be too much but Robert Mason was able to take the soldier due to his mechanic/crew giving his helicopter more power than the standard helicopter. Makes you wonder what would have happened to that soldier had Mason not been able to take him along.

Anyway, I finished The Diary Of Anne Frank.

Now I'm starting Dark Green, Bright Red by Gore Vidal. It's the first time I've tried any of his work.

emeraldstar · 14-10-2013 02:51AM

Leave it to Psmith, by PG Wodehouse. It's the first time I've read one of his non-Jeeves & Wooster books. I have to say I don't find it quite so wonderful as J&W (that's next to impossible) but it's still great, of course.

Aenaes · 14-10-2013 11:44AM

I read two books last night. I finished Dark Green, Bright Red by Gore Vidal last night. It was good, short and engaging. Found it similiar to Mamista by Len Deighton or Mamista is similiar to Dark Green, Bright Red.

The other was The Oxford Murders by Guillermo Martinez. Nice crime novel with mathematics thrown in. Made into a film with Elijah Wood and John Hurt.

Gamayun · 15-10-2013 09:40PM

The Proof and The Third Lie by Ágota Kristóf
Two follow up novellas to the brilliant The Notebook. The Proof is a solid piece of storytelling, it didn't grab me in the same way as its predecessor and the narrative seemed a bit rushed, enjoyable enough though. I found The Third Lie a bit of a disappointment to be honest, it seemed entirely comprised of mini-revelations and didn't flow very well. A pity as the first novella is one of the most memorable I've read.

The Necrophiliac by Gabrielle Wittkop
A novella in the form of a necrophiliac's diary, what's not to like? :pac: A short, interesting read, well written in a calm, unspectacular style which makes you feel a lot less voyeuristic than it might have!

Also I read this New Yorker piece from 2005, about the English translations of the classic Russian novels. After reading this I checked my old copy of Crime and Punishment (Penguin Classics) to find it bore no mention of a translator! A quick google told me that it was translated by Constance Garnett who is completely vilified by the article. Comparisons with other translations show how she bent the meaning of the works to suit her, and even omitted parts (!), bilingual authors such as Brodsky and Nabokov hated her translations and made it known. This is probably why she's not credited on my copy. Interesting stuff.

Slattsy · 15-10-2013 11:36PM

Very slightly off topic, but is A Clockwork Orange worth a read yeah?

Callan57 · 15-10-2013 11:37PM

Slattsy wrote: »

Very slightly off topic, but is A Clockwork Orange worth a read yeah?

Definitely not IMO, I thought it a load of rubbish. But that's just my opinion

fruvai · 16-10-2013 12:51PM

I think A Clockwork Orange is definitely worth a gander - it deals with very interesting themes and issues using a really creative fictional slang called nadsat (kind of a cockney rhyming slang/Russian amalgam) that is enormous fun to read after you've gotten the hang of it. It's not without flaws though (it can be a bit didactic and the ending is a damp squib) but I'd hardly call it rubbish. Maybe you should steer clear if you don't like books with highly intelligent but odious narrators (like Lolita's Humbert Humbert) and/or you are a bit squeamish at a bit of the old ultra-violence :eek:

Aenaes · 18-10-2013 11:41AM

I'm reading The Gold Train: The Destruction of the Jews and the Looting of Hungary by Ronald Zweig.

It's basically a train filled with millions worth of possessions of Hungarian Jews which headed out of Hungary in 1944 accompanied by cunning, desperate, or gullible passengers trying to reach an illusory Nazi stronghold in the Alps.

It sounds like some Nazi gold thriller but it's completely true.

SarahBM · 18-10-2013 02:41PM

Finished Misery by Stephen King last night. Great book. I think I would like to read more of his books.

Do I go back to the Count of Monte Cristo or will I read the Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out Of The Window and Disappeared? Ive seen lots of people recommend it.

Though I should probably be reading my Molecular Biology notes, really.

IvyTheTerrible · 18-10-2013 02:44PM

SarahBM wrote: »

Finished Misery by Stephen King last night. Great book. I think I would like to read more of his books.

Do I go back to the Count of Monte Cristo or will I read the Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out Of The Window and Disappeared? Ive seen lots of people recommend it.

Though I should probably be reading my Molecular Biology notes, really.

Count of Monte Christo, by a country mile!

Aenaes · 18-10-2013 07:47PM

SarahBM wrote: »

the Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out Of The Window and Disappeared? Ive seen lots of people recommend it.

Friend of mine is reading this and recommended it to me, she reads quite alot so I'm expecting it to be good when I eventually get around to it.

Belle E. Flops · 19-10-2013 09:17PM

Finished Rosemary's Baby. It was good but I guess I was expecting more.

Starting Daphne Du Maurier's 'My Cousin Rachel' now. Looking forward to it because I really enjoyed Rebecca and Jamaica Inn.

This Week I are mostly reading (contd)

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