Books you're reading now

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Lord Chrusher
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby Lord Chrusher » 29 Aug 2015, 08:15

I finished Lawrence James' The Middle Class: A History on the trip over to Liverpool.

I started rereading Terry Pratchett's Raising Steam on the train in from the airport.

I am also working away on Anthony Trollop's Framley Parsonage.
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby Volafortis » 29 Aug 2015, 10:01

Bebop Man wrote:Finishing The Body Artist by Dom DeLillo. I like it, hadn't read anything quite like it in a while.

I've got White Noise by Don DeLillo on my shelf, might have to read that one next.
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby Bebop Man » 29 Aug 2015, 11:44

Volafortis wrote:
Bebop Man wrote:Finishing The Body Artist by Dom DeLillo. I like it, hadn't read anything quite like it in a while.

I've got White Noise by Don DeLillo on my shelf, might have to read that one next.


I read End Zone and didn't like it very much. The Body Artist is my second book and I'm enjoying it more. Haven't read anything else by him, I hear his three best/known books are Underworld, Libra and White Noise.
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby Kapol » 08 Sep 2015, 21:53

I'm getting close to finishing the Bioshock audiobook. It's a surprisingly good listen. It's interesting to learn more about the world behind the game. The making of Rapture, and it's slow descent into madness. I had always assumed that something just happened on new years to cause everyone to go insane and splicer-y. But that's not that case.

Though, as is the case with any prequel like this, it does take away from the entire story that I know what happens.
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby RoboNixon » 17 Sep 2015, 13:21

Wow, just finished The Martian by Andy Weir in 2 days. Really enjoyed it. That's probably a personal best. Don't tell my boss ;)
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby Bebop Man » 17 Sep 2015, 19:46

I'm taking turns between The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers and A New Path to the Waterfall by Raymond Carver.
First is a collection of horror/weird stories that seem to have been edited from better to worse; I've been stuck on the final three for the past year or so. I've taken to it again and migh as well finish it off.
Second is a posthumous poetry collection. I feel like I've missed out on poetry so that I never properly cultivated an appreciation for it. But I like Carver's (and Sylvia Plath's, and Updike's). They write the kind of poetry that for whatever reason I can actually tolerate and even enjoy. I'd recommend them to anybody who's still trying to figure their way around the medium.
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby Thysane » 28 Oct 2015, 15:12

Finished up Memories of Ice, so I'm taking a break from utterly massive brick-like fantasy monstrosities for a while. Instead, I'm relaxing with a mere 600 page hard-sf in the form of Redemption Ark, the second book in Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space trilogy. So far, so hard-edged, chilling, and thrilling. Creepy nanotech and strange space cultures abound!
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby Bebop Man » 28 Oct 2015, 16:53

Finished A New Path to the Waterfall, then read Reflections in a Golden Eye by Carson McCullers. After reading the latter I learn that it's supposedly "one of only four familiar gay novels in the English language in the first half of the twentieth century".
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby gcninja » 01 Nov 2015, 11:53

Trying to read more personally. Like 3 books a week but it's hard with my work schedule. Right now on the list is the last Splinter Cell book (funny because I think it's actually the first in the series), The Harry Potter Collection. Read the first two in a day each (actually one sitting each) and then stopped halfway through the third. Also on the list are The Martian and an assassins creed book. We'll see what I get done.
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Bebop Man
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby Bebop Man » 26 Nov 2015, 18:57

Reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, first time around. Fun read! Guy was a visionary.
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alexzorg
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby alexzorg » 26 Nov 2015, 23:12

i wish i had a reading habit :(
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby RoboNixon » 29 Nov 2015, 06:50

alexzorg wrote:i wish i had a reading habit :(


Reading is a lot like food. You just have to find something you like. Don't worry about other people's tastes :)
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby Ptangmatik » 12 Dec 2015, 15:28

If it'll help, I could lend you a reading wimple?
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby Psyclone » 12 Dec 2015, 16:46

Ptangmatik wrote:If it'll help, I could lend you a reading wimple?

eyyyyyyyyyy

In other news, I'm reading the Hamilton biography since I listened to the soundtrack, and it's fascinating. I'd forgotten how much I love biographies. Maybe I'll get back into it over the break.
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby RoboNixon » 15 Dec 2015, 12:13

After listening to Cam on the Prometheus Corrector's Commentary podcast, I will attempt to read The Golden Bough by James Frazer.

If you like bios Psyclone, American Lion by Jon Meacham is a fascinating read about President Andrew Jackson.
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby Psyclone » 15 Dec 2015, 15:06

I've read some of Meacham's stuff and I wasn't a huge fan of American Gospel, but I'll definitely check it out!
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby RoboNixon » 15 Dec 2015, 19:00

Some of Meacham's books aren't great, but I enjoyed it. Jackson is a character :)
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby Bebop Man » 26 Dec 2015, 13:47

Finished reading Cormac McCarthy's The Sunset Limited. It's a "novel in dramatic form" (i.e. pure dialogue and some sparse stage directions), where one character is trying to talk the other out of killing himself. The gist is that the suicidal thoughts are argued on intellectual rather than emotional principles, and that the might-be savior is deeply religious.

Now I'm starting On Chesil Beach, by Ian McEwan. It's a couple of virgin newlyweds on the first day of their honeymoon. He's super nervous about sex, she's disgusted by the thought. It's my first McEwan book, I'm liking it. It's a pleasure to read out loud.
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby fantôme » 28 Dec 2015, 04:59

An Unkindness of Ravens, a book of collective nouns - Chloe Rhodes. Because for some reason I'm a lover of etymology, goodness knows where that came from.
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby Ptangmatik » 28 Dec 2015, 09:30

Received "A brief history of time" for xmas, so I guess I'm rereading that
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby Bebop Man » 30 Dec 2015, 16:57

Here's my review of On Chesil Beach (2007), my 35th and final book this year.
Read on if you're bored or otherwise have a hankering for depression.

This book packs quite a bit of emotional mileage for 5 chapters - 30 to 50 pages each - covering an hour or two into the wedding night of Edward and Florence, a couple of twenty-somethings honeymooning on Chesil Beach in 1962. Not that they know it, but both of them are virgins: Edward eagerly awaits to correct this, Florence - asexual, perhaps; definitely repulsed by the idea of hanky panky - dreads the moment.

How the novella goes about is, McEwan presents these newlyweds in scenes of intense dilation as they waltz around primae noctis (chapters 1 and 3), then intercuts the awkward mating ritual to recap their childhoods, coming-of-age epiphanies and the chance meet cute that started them in a muted relationship (chapters 2 and 4), then finishes off with a heartwrenching pay-off in chapter 5.

McEwan narrates with documentarian zeal, delving into the slightest bit of thought that goes into every action and spoken word. Edward and Florence are shamelessly dissected and laid bare to all but each other - why would he say this? Why would she do that? Every bit of action (and inaction) on their behalf is rigurously chronicled, McEwan playing the savvy voice from the future that mourns - sometimes irritatingly - all the "shoulda, coulda, woulda".

I suppose the whole thing could be summed up as being a mere cautionary tale of "shoulda, coulda, woulda". McEwan does so himself at the very end ("This is how the entire course of a life can be changed - by doing nothing"). That the book winds up being so much more is a credit to the rich, complex characterization of its characters, of the love that they feel for each other, and the insidious way in which McEwan - master wordsmith that he is - brews the fatal finale, a product of carefully construed failures.

"And what stood in their way? Their personalities and pasts, their ignorance and fear, timidity, squeamishness, lack of entitlement or experience or easy manners, then the tail end of a religious prohibition, their Englishness and class, and history itself".
Last edited by Bebop Man on 02 Jan 2016, 16:41, edited 1 time in total.
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Lord Chrusher
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby Lord Chrusher » 30 Dec 2015, 19:15

I read Bernard Cromwell's Warriors of the Storm on my trip back to Canada. It is the ninth novel in his Last Kingdom series about the Danish invasions of Britain and the creation of England at the end of the ninth century and the start of the tenth. Nothing special but it was somewhat interesting to read a book set in Cheshire and Merseyside after living in Liverpool.

I am starting in on Bernard Cromwell's Waterloo, a non-fiction account of the famous battle that ended the Napoleonic wars.
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby Bebop Man » 02 Jan 2016, 16:40

I've started John Cheever's Falconer (1977). It's about a meth addict that goes to prison for killing his brother, peppered with flashbacks to his shitty life. Meanwhile the things that happen in the prison are high-octane nightmare fuel.

There's a weird sense of comedy to the whole thing that keeps you on your toes while reading...
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Lord Chrusher
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby Lord Chrusher » 02 Jan 2016, 23:50

I finished Bernard Cromwell's Waterloo.
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Re: Books you're reading now

Postby Lord Chrusher » 13 Jan 2016, 12:07

I am now reading Marlon James' A Brief History of Seven Killings. So far it features gangsters, politicians, Bob Marley and the CIA in Kingstown, Jamaica in December of 1976.
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