What are you reading?

[snowcap21]

Shirley by Charlotte Bronte. I'm not sure what to think about it, the two main topics, problems of the working people at the beginning of the industrialization and problems of women to find their place in society not only through marriage aren't uninteresting, but I cant feel a personal interest in the fate of the characters. Still there's something that makes me return to it, only I can't say what.

Sudelbuecher by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. A collection of aphorisms, ideas and concepts, of which some are really fun to read due to a biting wit and a fine way of using language. At first I tried to read it like a normal book and failed miserably, but now I hop from one part of the book to another and only read what catches my interest.

Maybe I'm also reading Joseph by Thomas Mann, but I seem to take a quite long break between the first volume and the next. Good book and I like the style of Thomas Mann very much, but you have to take your time to read it and concentrate.

[SubJeff]

Just read The Great Gatsby

Must dig out my copy and read it again. I've totally forgotten it.

if you like sci-fi and haven't read any Ian M Banks, you are missing out on probably the best modern sci-fi author.

I read Consider Phlebas and hated it. In his Ian Banks incarnation he also quite meh imho. Complicity was dull, Crow Road - no had to put it down booooring and I don't get what the raving is about him. Perhaps I have to read more. The Wasp Factory was great though, but I figured 1/4 makes it the fluke.

[rachel]

Balzac surely has talent for detailed description of environment and characters, but the amount of detail he puts into description of environment is pretty boring for me at times. 175 pages so far and most of them were filled with incredibly dull description of manners, facades, high-school like romantic plots and corruption of French aristocracy.

Quoted for absolute fucking truth. Balzac is a pain in the ass to read, I could never stand his style. The guy would describe every single piece of furniture in a room and then proceed to the character's clothing, before beginning a dialogue...
Well, that, and I also found the story pathetic to begin with, though to be fair, the fact I was forced to read it as a school assignment probably had a lot to do with that.

I always preferred Hugo. Romantic > Realist in my book

[Vivian]

I read Consider Phlebas and hated it.

Really? I loved that book. What didn't you like about it? I mean, it's unapologetically space opera rather than cerebral 'science' science fiction, but I thought it was a great read - had enough intelligence and wit behind it to allow me to suspend my disbelief.
Unless you're totally put off him now, I reckon you should read 'The Player of Games' before you make your mind up finally. That's probably his best SF book. I hear what you're saying about his no-M stuff though, it can get a bit tedious. 'Walking on Glass' was pretty good, but it was also pretty short. I think he tends to repeat the sorts of personal stories that happen in his sci-fi books, but as they're not set on giant revolving shell-worlds or billion kilometre air-spheres it tends to sound less impressive.

[Scots Taffer]

A script with some promise.

[Ulukai]

Phoenix Squadron, which is nothing to do with Biggles, I might add.

[Queue]

Didn't Biggles invent pedophilia?

[Ulukai]

You tell us, Quiz Master.

[Danius]

I'm currently reading "This gaming life" by Jim Rossignol, a reporter at PC Gamer.

It is an interesting book about PC gaming. He writes about many different aspects of gaming. From why we play and how it affects us to Korean gaming culture and large in-game corporations in EVE.

[Matthew]

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on that when you've finished, as I have been planning to hunt down a copy myself.

[st.patrick]

Just re-read How To Be a Little Sod (plus Look Who's Walking! and Not Another Little Sod) for, like, seventeenth time; I read it to my gf as bedtime stories, it has great contraceptive effect

I'm trying to hunt down the TV series of the books but no luck so far.

[Queue]

That would be incorrect.

[N'Al]

I'm currently re-reading Joseph Heller's Catch-22. Whilst I definitely enjoyed it when I read it first time round, I'm also realising how I'd just skim-read it; I'm discovering quite a few details I hadn't noticed before, which is pretty cool.

[Toxicfluff]

I'm currently reading "This gaming life" by Jim Rossignol, a reporter at PC Gamer.

It is an interesting book about PC gaming. He writes about many different aspects of gaming. From why we play and how it affects us to Korean gaming culture and large in-game corporations in EVE.

He's still in the biz, huh. I always hated his articles when I read them in PC Gamer as a kid. Which means they're probably not bad. Then again, I liked Gillen.

Balzac waffles on

Hmm, sounds similar to a guy I read, who was originally part of the naturalist lot but then broke all ties and herded his instinct for all things prolix into a obsessive, perverse and utterly indulgent opposite direction, J K Huysmans. You'd sometimes get 3-4 pages of description for a single painting or perfume. I did start to skip them after a while. That said, the style was magnificent and there was a few passages I could run off by heart long after, which is rare for me.

I'm currently reading Montaigne's essays. Impressions so far, not good, really. The one on death was alright as a sort of Renaissance self help guide on thanatophobics, the one on the education of children is just too discursive for me. He's constantly wandering out of sight. One second he's talking about something pertaining to instruction in the young, then he's chuntering on for a few paragraphics in some tangential direction. It might just be the edition I'm reading, it is from the early 20s... Anyway, I might drop it and go for Tropic of Cancer.

Nice thread, btw. Already added some of those mentioned to the list.

[thefonz]

Hustler.

[TBE]

A biography about Abraham Lincoln. I plan on making my stepson read it this summer when he's out of school and making him do some quizzes and reports. Then I've got the Great American Hot Dog Book for some recipe ideas. The Dog House in Albuquerque, New Mexico made me long for their chile recipe, and it's in this book!

[Kolya]

I tried to read John Irving's "A prayer for Owen Meany", as it was recommended to me, but it was terrible.

Irving's style is cramped with extraneous details and a cowardly humour that always goes on expense of the characters you're supposed to care about. Insertions are his favourite way to add even more wish-wash into every single sentence.

After 50 pages he had introduced about 25 characters. None of them approached any more depth than a cartoon character. Including the titular Owen Meany who is a super-small 10 year old kid SPOUTING WISE REMARKS IN CAPS ALL THE FUCKING TIME. And the talking-black-hole-narrator who manages to detail his beloved mother's early and violent death in a completely emotionless way, but in fact with a smirk.

And of course the baseball-coach is fat and down-to-earth and the cop is a bit stupid... But it doesn't matter at all, because they appear and vanish from the scene like tomfools in a cheap and charmeless varieté. And you soon end up feeling incredibly bored by all the dribble of an author who has replaced quality for quantity in every imaginable way.

[nicked]

Unless you're totally put off him now, I reckon you should read 'The Player of Games' before you make your mind up finally. That's probably his best SF book.

Is that the second one in the Culture series? I loved Consider Phlebas and want to read the rest at some point.

I also loved Against a Dark Background, because it's just full of utterly unsympathetic characters having really bad things happen to them, but is still extremely compelling and interesting.

[SubJeff]

Am I supposed to read them in a specific order? I was given Consider Phlebas by someone who is a fan of the series. It came recommended. I think I might just go for the Foundation series instead. I'm not reading any sci-fi at the moment but I've thinking about Flowers for Algernon for a while. Or The Drowned World. I tend to like that oldskool sci-fi. The Fifth Head of Cerberus was all win.

[Vivian]

It makes some sense to read the culture series in order (Player of games is the second), but you don't have to: each book is a self contained story, but the bits of the culture they're concerned with makes a fairly logical progression.
Foundation series is pretty hokey, but I'm not a massive fan of Asimov's writing (or lack thereof! great themes, but I can't remember a single story not reading like it was written by a biochemist). Drowned World's on my list, I was pretty impressed by ballards autobiography. Have you read any of Margaret Atwoods 'speculative fiction' (i.e. sci-fi putting on airs and graces)? Oryx and Crake was brilliant.

[Queue]

I tried to read John Irving's "A prayer for Owen Meany", as it was recommended to me, but it was terrible ... end up feeling incredibly bored by all the dribble of an author who has replaced quality for quantity in every imaginable way.

You are so right with this one. That book sucked.

I've seen a lot of this writing--completely unfocused, convoluted, and heavily stylistic to hide the fact they can't write well. It's like that awful Citizen Vince novel by Jess Walter, the thing won and Edgar Award (Best Novel) for fucks-sake and was filled with fragmented sentences, improper usage of ellipsis, screaming text, and littered with passages that read as if you are being machine-gunned, like this: "The mailman? No way. Clueless. That leaves Doug and Lenny. He can't imagine Len has the brains, or Doug the balls. The both seem harmless." Come on, a High Schooler can write better than this.

But, this does seem to be what all the "hipster" younger publishers are looking for now-a-days.

[Starrfall]

The Reach of a Chef by Michael Rulhman. It's a re-read, and it's going stupidly slow cause I'm busy as shit!

Rulhman is hands down the best writer about the american restaurant industry. He's also worked on a few cookbooks with a few guys no one's ever heard about like Thomas Keller and Eric Ripert. (And he's got a few of his own.)

[mrle01]

Just starting Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's The Time Wanderers (aka The Waves Extinguish the Wind). I've been reading all the books by them I could find lately (Hard to be a God, Definitely Maybe, The Ugly Swans, The Inhabited Island and Beetle in the Anthill). I only wish more of their books were translated into my language as they are very good.

I'm also reading through Kurt Vonnegut's collection of essays A Man Without a Country.

[Muzman]

I just finished "Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman :The Adventures of a Curious Character". Feynman's about the most down-to-earth physicist you can imagine. It's funny; the pull quote on the back from someone or other says that there's genius, that's merely clever, and magic, as in baffling and extraordinary. Feynman, he says, was a magician. Personally I find the complete opposite. He's so straightforward and light of touch that you can think anyone could do all the things he's done. Indeed I think that's the effect he's going for.

Now I'm reading Voltaire's 'Candide' and commentaries thereon. I thought I'd read it but I think I've only read stuff about it before now. It's quite the brutally black comedy.
Still snailing through the opening bits of 'The Decameron' too. Comparing the various translations and language updates is fun. A dynamite line in one will be stumblingly meh in another, and vice versa.

[Stitch]

I've seen a lot of this writing--completely unfocused, convoluted, and heavily stylistic to hide the fact they can't write well.

Surely you can't be talking about John Irving. A Prayer for Owen Meany wasn't a masterpiece by any stretch but Irving is pretty solid writer.