What books are we reading at the moment ?

[MSeries]

Still reading

IBM & The Holocaust

and

Enigma

Since I am not travelling by bus anymore I don't read on my commute and I'm usually too tired to read at bedtime

[geraldc]

The Ultimate French Review and Practice: Mastering French Grammar for Confident Communication 

Somehow after getting through GCSE French, and AO Level, I've now reached the point where I've forgotten so much, it's back to pidgin level. Need to get back up to speed again.

After I've gone through this book, I was thinking about reading a chemistry revision book. I used to understand things like covalent bonds and atomic weights. Now it's all Greek to me.

It is slightly worrying that amount of stuff I've forgotten since the age of 16.

[fiendish]

In Defence of Food by Michael Pollans.  Looking at relationships with food over time, and the confusion introduced with science and nutrition,  mass production and over processing. 

I love his opening line: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

[Mr Larrington]

The End Of Mr Y - Scarlett Thomas

Note to the author: even if your parents were hippies, don't give the leading character a name like "Ariel Manto" unless you want to get jiggy wif Mr Shovel.

[tiermat]

Just finished "PS I Love You" and about to start "The Welsh Girl", at some point I'll finish reading this year's Galaxy book awards books and start reading something different, probably after reading "Making Money"

And yes I did cry whilst reading "PS I Love You"

[Mr Larrington]

Half Asleep In Frog Pyjamas ~ Tom Robbins

Surprisingly un-odd given the title and previous experience of Mr Robbins, but then I've only got as far as chapter two, in which the leading character and her psychic friend are looking for an escaped monkey.

[scott]

Just finished _Land of Tempest_ by Eric Shipton, about expeditions in Patagonia in the 50s. Pretty straightforward "men on adventures" stuff, but fairly entertaining.

[Mrs Pingu]

I am currently having another attempt to read Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. See if I can get to half way this time!

[Mrs Pingu]

Just started Will Self's 'The Book of Dave'

I quite enjoyed that, tho I've never read any other Will Self books, and I was really desperate at the time. I've read worse.

[Tim Hall]

Finally finished "The Music of the Primes" whilst on holiday. Now got to re read the bit about zeta functions.

After that I read "The Fourth Bear" by Jasper fforde.  Ded gud itwas too.

[Flying_Monkey]

I am currently having another attempt to read Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. See if I can get to half way this time!

I thought it was disappointing and overrated - and one of those books that isn't half as impressive if you've ever read any decent science fiction (which of course most mainstream critics and people who give out awards haven't). He's generally got away with quite a bit has David Mitchell - his earlier books, written whilst he was still in Japan, are so 'influenced' by Haruki Murakami that Murakami should sue him. He got away with it, I think because Murakami wasn't so well known then outside Japan as he is now. Since he's stopped trying to be Murakami he's been very windy and pretentious but lacking in genuine spark IMHO.

I've just finished reading a collection of wonderful short stories by Tobias Wolfe (the best US short writer since Raymond Carver) and some rather nastier and less subtle tales by TC Boyle (who isn't) and Divine Invasions - a life of Philip K. Dick. I am now reading Q by 'Luther Blissett'*, which I found in the market today for a quid.

*Not the ex-footballer, but his name is used, for historical reasons, as a nomme de plume by various Italian anarchists and situationalists...

[mark]

Still reading

IBM & The Holocaust

and

Enigma

Since I am not travelling by bus anymore I don't read on my commute and I'm usually too tired to read at bedtime

Is "IBM and the Holocaust" still in print?

[ChrisO]

I am currently having another attempt to read Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. See if I can get to half way this time!

I thought it was disappointing and overrated

God yes. My wife quite liked him and made me read Ghostwritten, which I hated. Unfortunately I'd forgotten who he was when she suggested Cloud Atlas as a response to me being about to fly off somewhere and needing a book to read.

My personal hell will be a library stocked only with books by David Mitchell, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Yann Martell and certain David Carey. But I won't be allowed to read them - they will be performed to me as modern dance or performance art on alternate days for all eternity.

Anyway...

I have recently "discovered" G.K. Chesterton . He's one of those people I've always been aware of but never got around to reading. I really enjoyed "The Man Who Was Thursday". Very clever premise and very funny, even if the ending is a little weak.

On the strength of that I started reading the Father Brown Stories. They're good in parts but his Roman Catholicism is very heavy at times. Fortunately it's leavened considerably by his wit. This made me sniggger:

"It was one of those journeys on which a man perpetually feels that now at last he must have come to the end of the universe, and then finds he has only come to the beginning of Tufnell Park."

The introduction to the book made me laugh as well. Apparently he was notably absent-minded and once sent his wife a telegram saying "Am at Market Harborough. Where ought I to be ?"

[Flying_Monkey]

Yann Martell

Oh, totally! The Life of Pi is so crap. I can't believe how many people apparently think it is sooo clever or how it won any awards. Then I read some other stuff by him and it was far worse...

Then again, I seem to be in a minority on things literary - most people seem to think that The Bone People is the worst book ever to win the Booker Prize, whereas to me it's one of the most beautiful, painful books ever written and one of the few books I have read that I thought that unequivocally deserved to win everything it could.

[Ariadne]

Ah - yes, I agree, Flying Monkey, I adored the Bone People. I did, sort of, like the Life of Pi, though - but only in the sense of it's being an entertaining, lightweight wee tale.

I'm currently entirely hooked on Victorian literature and so I'm on the last of Trollope's Barsetshire series. I ought to have been born a lady, you know, with an income. Something went wrong.

[Captain Zep]

Collected the latest Christopher Brookmyre from the library yesterday, "A Snowball in Hell".  I'm 150 pages in - he has brought together Simon Darcourt (Black Spirit assassin from "A Big Boy Did it and Ran Away") and Zal Innez (illusionist / bank robber from "The Sacred Art of Stealing).

Wonderful, laugh-out-loud stuff. 

[scott]

Just started Tim Robinson's _Connemara_, which has been a long time coming since the 2nd _Stones of Aran_ book, which I finally read recently and was completely caught up in, despite its length.

[Mr Larrington]

Half Asleep In Frog Pyjamas ~ Tom Robbins

Surprisingly un-odd given the title and previous experience of Mr Robbins, but then I've only got as far as chapter two, in which the leading character and her psychic friend are looking for an escaped monkey.

Right, Robbins, pay attention.  Narrating your novel in the third person is fine.  Narrating it in the first person is fine too, as long as you get it right.  Narrating it in the second person is the act of a pretentious ponce who's been on one too many¹ "creative writing" courses.

Swapping the narrative between second and third person, however, means that should our paths ever cross I expect to be eating ice cream very shortly afterwards.

Is now a good time to mention that I rather liked both "Ghostwritten" and "Cloud Atlas", as indeed did most of the SW2 massive?

1 - i.e. one

[citoyen]

Ah - yes, I agree, Flying Monkey, I adored the Bone People. I did, sort of, like the Life of Pi, though - but only in the sense of it's being an entertaining, lightweight wee tale.

Booker winners are such a mixed bag, though, aren't they - you can't judge them as a class. I did consider undertaking a project to read through every Booker winner ever, but then some of them really are such dross that I don't think I could stomach it - The English Patient, The Famished Road, Hotel du Lac... Blech! I've not read The Bone People - it doesn't look like my kind of thing - but I enjoyed Life Of Pi as a bit of whimsy, and I was well and truly sucked into Vernon God Little, which seems to divide critics even more than The Bone People. I really liked The Ghost Road a lot, and Last Orders, but Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha was just one Roddy Doyle book too many for me. Arthur & George should have won but it doesn't really matter that it didn't - it's still a great book by a great writer - but then The Sea, which I've not read, also sounds pretty good so maybe it deserved to win.

The only Booker winner I've read that I would recommend unequivocally is The Remains Of The Day - I don't dig sentimentality but that book damn near broke my heart.

I'm currently entirely hooked on Victorian literature and so I'm on the last of Trollope's Barsetshire series.

Enjoying it? Trollope is on my must-read list but I've never quite got around to him. I've been recently, belatedly getting into Dickens, though - Our Mutual Friend is a new favourite of mine. Viciously caustic and bitter but also very, very funny.

d.

[Wascally Weasel]

Re-reading “The Bus Conductor Hines” by James Kelman

[Flying_Monkey]

Re-reading “The Bus Conductor Hines” by James Kelman

Now that is an awesome book. Indeed Kelman should get the Nobel some day IMHO. He's a Scottish national treasure.

Back to the Bookers - yeah, I agree most of them are overrated - that's what you get when committees chose prizes by consensus. The Remains of the Day is wonderfully atmospheric however. The Ghost Road - yep. And I enjoyed Vernon God Little for much the same reason - it has a remarkable voice and tone - I am not sure it is anything more than a good book though.

[Deano]

Re-reading “The Bus Conductor Hines” by James Kelman

Now that is an awesome book. Indeed Kelman should get the Nobel some day IMHO. He's a Scottish national treasure.

Back to the Bookers - yeah, I agree most of them are overrated - that's what you get when committees chose prizes by consensus. The Remains of the Day is wonderfully atmospheric however. The Ghost Road - yep. And I enjoyed Vernon God Little for much the same reason - it has a remarkable voice and tone - I am not sure it is anything more than a good book though.

How Late It was, How Late by James Kelman won the Booker.  And it is fabulous.

Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things was another - great book, won the Booker.  They sometimes get it right

Oh, and I've just read Those Feet - A sensual history of English Football by David Winner.  Best sport book I've ever read, since it's only lightly concerned with the typical highlights of English football.  It covers the culture of football, rather than the tedious statistics of the game itself.  It's almost enough to make me go and watch football again.  Well, Darlo winning 6-0 away from home on Saturday probably helped

[bikenerd]

Having another go at Moby Dick by Herman Melville.  Finding it easier this time around, probably as I'm not reading so much for work at the moment.

[ghostrider]

Michael Crightons  "The Andromeda Strain"

[redshift]

Hols coming soon, so although current reading is 'Exercise Physiology: Human Bioenergetics and its applications,' I nipped into Waterstone's today and picked up some holiday reading:  Stephen Ambrose's 'D-Day,' Knut Haukelid's 'Skis against the Atom,' and George Macdonald Fraser's 'Quartered safe out here.' 

For some reason, I appear to be entering WWII territory again.