What books are we reading at the moment ?

[her_welshness]

Just finished 'Mrs Dalloway' (by Virginia Woolf) in time for discussion at the Book Group tomorrow. I absolutely loved it. The way she describes people and places just jangles along on a natural pace, a lot of authors write description as filler at times and you find yourself jumping to the next paragraph. Highly recommended 

[domesticated ape]

I just finished Michael Cunningham's 'The Hours', and now I feel I have to read Mrs Dalloway too as The Hours is based on/around it. Glad to hear you liked it, I would recommend reading The Hours to you too, if you haven't already.

Just finished 'Mrs Dalloway' (by Virginia Woolf) in time for discussion at the Book Group tomorrow. I absolutely loved it. The way she describes people and places just jangles along on a natural pace, a lot of authors write description as filler at times and you find yourself jumping to the next paragraph. Highly recommended 

As for Dan Brown, I didn't mind The Da Vinci Code, but it did feel like a bog-standard Hollywood thriller, just on paper rather than on film. I can also not look at a church door in the same way again after reading what Brown has to say about them

[her_welshness]

I just finished Michael Cunningham's 'The Hours', and now I feel I have to read Mrs Dalloway too as The Hours is based on/around it. Glad to hear you liked it, I would recommend reading The Hours to you too, if you haven't already.

Just finished 'Mrs Dalloway' (by Virginia Woolf) in time for discussion at the Book Group tomorrow. I absolutely loved it. The way she describes people and places just jangles along on a natural pace, a lot of authors write description as filler at times and you find yourself jumping to the next paragraph. Highly recommended 

As for Dan Brown, I didn't mind The Da Vinci Code, but it did feel like a bog-standard Hollywood thriller, just on paper rather than on film. I can also not look at a church door in the same way again after reading what Brown has to say about them

Yes I was thrilled when I read those words 'the hours' in Mrs Dalloway and realised that they were related to the title of Michael Cunninghams book. I've seen 'The hours' fillum which was good and it was a bloody brilliant cast too. Thanks for the recommendation 

[Mrs Pingu]

I've just finished 'Matter' by Iain M Banks.
I think he's still going soft in his old age.
Iain, if you're reading this, I think you shouldn't have bothered with the epilogue. Just resist the urge next time ok?

Just started 'House of Suns' by Alastair Reynolds, it all seems a bit touchy feely too.....

[Flying_Monkey]

I've just finished 'Matter' by Iain M Banks.
I think he's still going soft in his old age.

I enjoyed Matter. It was certainly a lot better than his last non-SF work (The Steep Approach to Garbadale)

I just read Murakami Haruki's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. Frankly it was disappointing, dull and full of the most banal observations. Without the  surreal imagination of his fiction or the compelling reality of the Aum Shinrikyo attacks that made up his last non-fictional work, he is apparently not a very interesting man. He even says so himself and that's about the most perceptive sentence in the book. And just because you are the Japanese translator of Raymond Carver, it doesn't mean you can borrow and adapt a title of his for any tedious purpose. Carver's taut prose hinted at whole worlds, this book just seems to indicate that most of what is worth knowing about Murakami is in his novels and short stories.

[Mr Larrington]

Heavier Than Heaven ~ Charles R Cross.  Biography of Kurt Cobain which confirms what I'd suspected all along, viz. the guy was as mad as a whole sett of badgers.

[Kathy]

Asterix and the Banquet

 

(I needed a break from At the Mountains of Madness which I'm halfway through)

[Mrs Pingu]

I've just finished 'Matter' by Iain M Banks.
I think he's still going soft in his old age.

I enjoyed Matter. It was certainly a lot better than his last non-SF work (The Steep Approach to Garbadale)

I enjoyed it too, he just seems to have an urge to wrap everything up in a happy ending these days though.

[PaulF]

Just started 'House of Suns' by Alastair Reynolds, it all seems a bit touchy feely too.....

It gets (a bit) better, but not as good as the Revelation Space series.

[citoyen]

Was that product placement or just overuse of signifiers?  I don't know if Fleming got supplies of Aston Martins or Louis Vuitton luggage (nor Toot-sweets, for that matter )

OK, this isn't as witty as Jezza's answer but I believe it's fairly well documented that it's just Ian Fleming being a typical nouveau riche snob showing off his acute sense of taste and refinement for the reader's benefit.

It's not just the brand names, it's also things like the particular vintages of wines he mentions and of course the whole "shaken not stirred" thing (which as any counter-snob will tell you is very much the wrong way to make a Martini).

d.

[citoyen]

OK, my holiday reading was as follows:

The Sea by John Banville
Well, I had to find out what book could possibly be good enough to beat Arthur & George to the Booker. And maybe I was prejudiced against it because of my love of Julian Barnes, but I didn't really like it. I have to admit that his writing is exquisite - he has a beautiful turn of phrase and his description of people is wonderfully vivid, albeit fairly cartoony. And some of the ideas in the book about memory are interesting in a sub-Proustian kind of way. But I didn't much like the "story" (such as it was) and I saw the two big twists in the end coming a mile off (well, there's a revelation, which wasn't really a revelation to me because I worked it out, and there's an event which I broadly predicted though I didn't guess the detail of it). Still, I'm glad I read it.

Stories Of English by David Crystal
Based on Flying Monkey's recommendation, and its part in discussion in another thread, I thought I'd give this a go. I started off not liking the author's tone - he comes across as an academic trying to rework his thesis for a popular audience, so his attempts to inject humour sometimes have the "dad dancing at a wedding" effect. But I warmed to the book pretty quickly because the subject matter is so damned fascinating. Unfortunately, circumstances meant I couldn't get really stuck into it, and it's pretty dense reading at times so you do need to be able to concentrate on it, so I put it on the back burner and will pick it up again as soon as I have finished...

Homicide by David Simon
Yes, I am a Wire-aholic, so it was inevitable that I'd get around to reading this sooner or later. It's like methadone to The Wire's crack cocaine - a good way to wean yourself off the hard stuff but just as addictive if you're not careful. Utterly compelling, a real page-turner. David Simon has a real gift for picking out the narrative threads and weaving them into a gripping real-life drama. His characterisation is brilliant too, which may sound like a strange thing to say about a documentary work, but it's testament to his descriptive abilities. I have been finding this book very hard to put down, which has lead to complaints from my family that I have been neglecting them over the past few days. This is journalism of the very highest quality.

d.

[Séamas M.]

T de F just finished and I have been reading "The Crooked Path To Victory", then "Breaking The Chain" and I haven't quite finished "The Death Of Marco Pantani".

[mark]

Just finished "Homage to Catalonia", by George Orwell, his account of his experience in the Spanish Civil War. Very depressing to learn how the various anti-Franco factions threw away their chance at victory with all that infighting. Equally depressing was the number of people who came from all over the world to help the Republican cause, and got thrown in jail and shot by the very people they were trying to help when the various factions turned on each other.

[Flying_Monkey]

The Yiddish Policeman's Union is really very, very good. Chabon does a fine line in being a Jewish Raymond Chandler, and the the combination of pathos and wisecracking is always well-judged, but the whole subtext and largely implicit alternative history makes for a much more satisfyingly chewy read than your average police procedural. I'll definitely have to look out for his earlier books now.

[microphonie]

I've just finished 'Matter' by Iain M Banks.
I think he's still going soft in his old age.

I enjoyed Matter. It was certainly a lot better than his last non-SF work (The Steep Approach to Garbadale)

I enjoyed it too, he just seems to have an urge to wrap everything up in a happy ending these days though.

Just about to start Matter.

Haven't got around to buying The Steep Approach to Garbadale as I didn't think much too of Dead Air (although it's better than I thought it was going to be having read the blurb) - is it worth a read?

[David Martin]

Boy Racer - a good read due in no small part to the breaking up of the story into the framework of the 2008 Tour de France. Gives you a great insight into Cav and what he can and can't do.

The Hungry Cyclist. Tours 10,000 miles through the americas and puts on weight with a series of epic adventures in search of the perfect meal.

Caveman Chemistry. Essential reading if you are suddenly transported onto the set of Rough Science or lost on an island for 10 years and need to make basic stuff like glass, dyes, smelt metal etc..

[her_welshness]

Just finished reading 'The Thirteenth Tale' by Diane Setterfield. One of those books where you keep on pondering the characters for the days to come. Recommended 

[citoyen]

Boy Racer - a good read due in no small part to the breaking up of the story into the framework of the 2008 Tour de France. Gives you a great insight into Cav and what he can and can't do.

It's certainly a cleverly structured book (the publisher found him a very good ghost writer), but most of the content is padding - as it necessarily has to be to fill a book of 352 pages when the subject is only 24 years old and not very far into his professional career (and it doesn't even cover this year's Milan-San Remo or Tour de France).

d.

[Flying_Monkey]

Haven't got around to buying The Steep Approach to Garbadale as I didn't think much too of Dead Air (although it's better than I thought it was going to be having read the blurb) - is it worth a read?

It's just The Crow Road over again, but not as good... I think his best non-SF work is the rather underrated Espedair Street. It feels like it meant a bit more to him.

[PaulF]

Haven't got around to buying The Steep Approach to Garbadale as I didn't think much too of Dead Air (although it's better than I thought it was going to be having read the blurb) - is it worth a read?

It's just The Crow Road over again, but not as good... I think his best non-SF work is the rather underrated Espedair Street. It feels like it meant a bit more to him.

Steep Approach is probably better than Dead Air, but not as good as his earlier work. My favourite of his non-SF is The Bridge although Espedair Street is a close second. Walking on Glass is also worth a read.

[her_welshness]

Haven't got around to buying The Steep Approach to Garbadale as I didn't think much too of Dead Air (although it's better than I thought it was going to be having read the blurb) - is it worth a read?

It's just The Crow Road over again, but not as good... I think his best non-SF work is the rather underrated Espedair Street. It feels like it meant a bit more to him.

Steep Approach is probably better than Dead Air, but not as good as his earlier work. My favourite of his non-SF is The Bridge although Espedair Street is a close second. Walking on Glass is also worth a read.

The only book I have failed to ever finish was Bank's 'Song of Stone', I really thought it was a pile of poo. Good plot, but crap writing.

[microphonie]

Thanks chaps - I think Steep is going to be a library job if I bother at all. His non-SF stuff has been declining in quality for me book-by-book. My faves are The Wasp Factory, The Bridge & Canal Dreams, all of which I should get around to reading again, assuming I ever get through the pile of books I've got but haven't yet read.

[Mrs Pingu]

Complicity is my favourite, although I quite like Walking on Glass as well. I think I will have to dig some of the old stuff out and give it a read again.

[David Martin]

Boy Racer - a good read due in no small part to the breaking up of the story into the framework of the 2008 Tour de France. Gives you a great insight into Cav and what he can and can't do.

It's certainly a cleverly structured book (the publisher found him a very good ghost writer), but most of the content is padding - as it necessarily has to be to fill a book of 352 pages when the subject is only 24 years old and not very far into his professional career (and it doesn't even cover this year's Milan-San Remo or Tour de France).

d.

The structure made it not appear to be overtly padded. I thought it was well paced and a good read - in no small part due to the excellent structure. Unlike some which are far more turgid. If there is an update for next year (after a world champs win? - can a strong enough british team be put together to get MC in contention?) I'd certainly go for it.

I suppose it was a book that just really clicked with me and I enjoyed reading, especially as I have had some interaction with kids now on the Olympic Development Programme.

[clarion]

I considered buying Boy racer, but I reckoned that there were a few chapters yet unwritten...