Do you read?

[mjmooney]

9 hours ago, Midfielder said:

My one "contribution" to this thread is a confession. Despite being required in my career to read textbooks A through Z I have hand on heart read maximum five books my entire life. One of those was Jim Morrison's 'biography', Cantona's autobiography, likewise Zlatan and Merson. 

The other I think was Andy McNab's Bravo Two Zero, at the time when the hype surrounded it.

I am38. There is no hope for me. 

Not knocking anyone on here. I'm just "repping" , as the kids say, for any other similarly afflicted types on here. Just me? I'll get me coat. Sorry. 

Interesting. But no need to apologise.

I'm like that when I look at the TV thread. Can't imagine binge watching so many US box sets when I could be reading books. 

Horses for courses, don't they? 

[leemond2008]

3 hours ago, Rodders said:

they're crime based aren't they?

The Ian Rankin  'Rebus' series books are really good if the detective genre appeals. Similarly, Mark Billingham is another author I;'ve read a couple of, not recently but they were decent crime thrillers.

 

 

I was recently given the entire Rebus collection  (a bird I work with ordered then and they delivered then twice so she gave the second lot to me for free) 

I've read the first 3 of them, they are ok, just really bog standard, they felt pretty dated and I didn't think much of Rankins writing.

[Rodders]

fair enough, I'd give Billingham a miss then as he's not as good!

[Xela]

I liked the Billingham books!

Michael Connelly is a good. The 'Harry Bosch' series is well worth getting into

John Connolly from memory - also very good. Bit of a supernatural angle... 

[mjmooney]

Have a browse round some of our bookshelves:

 

Edited August 19, 2017 by mjmooney

[theboyangel]

56 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

Have a browse round some of our bookshelves:

 

Not even arranged in alphabetical order or genre, you anarchist!  

[mjmooney]

FFS don't quote the post!

Just had a look and realised I didn't post all the pics I took. Oh well, you get the gist. 

And it's true, they are somewhat randomly sorted. Never recovered from the last house move (twenty years ago!) 

[Ginko]

So Mike went to the library on Saturday.

[Chindie]

4 hours ago, mjmooney said:

FFS don't quote the post!

Just had a look and realised I didn't post all the pics I took. Oh well, you get the gist. 

And it's true, they are somewhat randomly sorted. Never recovered from the last house move (twenty years ago!) 

You've got 2 copies of Iain Banks' A Song of Stone. Which is notably odd as it's not exactly his most beloved of works.

[mjmooney]

7 hours ago, Chindie said:

You've got 2 copies of Iain Banks' A Song of Stone. Which is notably odd as it's not exactly his most beloved of works.

That'll be the wife. She buys in charity shops and forgets what she's read. 

[villaglint]

14 hours ago, mjmooney said:

Have a browse round some of our bookshelves:

 

Interesting

[Chindie]

1 hour ago, mjmooney said:

That'll be the wife. She buys in charity shops and forgets what she's read. 

You should read more Banks if you've not. He has some fantastic stuff in his bibliography, like the Crow Road.

And in fairness I can't talk on owning multiple copies of stuff. I have 3 copies of Good Omens 

[coda]

Aussie POWs dying on the Burma Railway. The author's father experienced a lot of it and it's a tough read but worth it.

[mjmooney]

1 hour ago, Chindie said:

You should read more Banks if you've not. He has some fantastic stuff in his bibliography, like the Crow Road.

And in fairness I can't talk on owning multiple copies of stuff. I have 3 copies of Good Omens 

I've read a fair bit of Banks (with and without the 'M'). Yeah, good writer. My personal favourite is 'The Bridge'. 

Edited August 20, 2017 by mjmooney

[leemond2008]

I've just ordered a few books

Quote

`Few venture as thou hast in the alarming paths of sin.'

This is the final judgement of Satan on Victoria di Loredani, the heroine of Zofloya, or The Moor (1806), a tale of lust, betrayal, and multiple murder set in Venice in the last days of the fifteenth century. The novel follows Victoria's progress from spoilt daughter of indulgent aristocrats, through a period of abuse and captivity, to a career of deepening criminality conducted under Satan's watchful eye. Charlotte Dacre's narrative deftly displays her heroine's movement from the vitalized position of Ann Radcliffe's heroines to a fully conscious commitment to vice that goes beyond that of `Monk' Lewis's deluded Ambrosio. The novel's most daring aspect is its anatomy of Victoria's intense sexual attraction to her Moorish servant Zofloya that transgresses taboos both of class and race.

A minor scandal on its first publication, and a significant influence on Byron and Shelley, Zofloya has been unduly neglected. Contradicting idealized stereotypes of women's writing, the novel's portrait of indulged desire, gratuitous cruelty, and monumental self-absorption retains considerable power to disturb.

Quote

One of the most controversial novels of the twentieth century, Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita is a strange, troubling love story told by the one of the most unreliable narrators in literature. This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an afterword by Craig Raine.

Poet and pervert, Humbert Humbert becomes obsessed by twelve-year-old Lolita and seeks to possess her, first carnally and then artistically, out of love, 'to fix once for all the perilous magic of nymphets'. Is he in love or insane? A silver-tongued poet or a pervert? A tortured soul or a monster? Or is he all of these? Humbert Humbert's seduction is one of many dimensions in Nabokov's dizzying masterpiece, which is suffused with a savage humour and rich, elaborate verbal textures. Filmed by Stanley Kubrick in 1962 starring James Mason and Peter Sellers, and again in 1997 by Adrian Lyne starring Jeremy Irons and Melanie Griffith, Lolita has lost none of its power to shock and awe.

Quote

'Dedalus have unearthed a series of aptly decadent titles where elements erotic and grotesque combine. The Dark Domain is a collection of psycho-fantasies, doom-saturated tales of lonely men lost in hostile terrain, but the East European melancholy lifts to provide wonderful odd scenes, like the watchmaker whose death stops all the town clocks and the phantom train that always turns up unannounced, surprising the station staff.' Chris Fowler in Time Out Something fresh and original in fantastic fiction.

 

Edited August 21, 2017 by leemond2008

[leemond2008]

But before them

I'm looking to finish 'It' tonight

Quote

The story follows the exploits of seven children as they are terrorized by an eponymous being, which exploits the fears and phobias of its victims in order to disguise itself while hunting its prey. "It" primarily appears in the form of a clown in order to attract its preferred prey of young children. The novel is told through narratives alternating between two time periods, and is largely told in the third-person omniscient mode. It deals with themes which would eventually become King staples: the power of memory, childhood trauma, and the ugliness lurking behind a façade of traditional small-town values.

I worked it out and I was 17 when I first read it so 15 years ago, the fact that it is a 1200 page monster was one of the things that put me off, the second thing that put me off was the final 1/3 of the book where a bloody turtle vomits up the universe and balances it on its shell after suffering from indigestion.

Anyways with the new film coming out I thought that now was a good time to bite the bullet and pick it up again, I've loved it so far, yeah it could easily have been trimmed down by a couple of hundred pages but thats easily forgiven, and as for the final 1/3 I've only got about 100 pages to go and it hasn't got into the ludicrous territory yet, I'm guessing that maybe I have more patience these days.

And as for the film, I had forgotten just how wrong the previous films adaptation of Pennywise was, whilst Tim Curry was brilliant Pennywise is constantly menacing, I think its a common misconception that Pennywise was a semi normal looking sort of clown in order to lure kids in, that isn't the case at all, majority of the time when they see him he just has empty sockets instead of eyes, that doesn't lend well to the 'look at the cute cuddly clown over there, I'm gunna ask him for a balloon'

It has only taken me 12 days to finish it so that should be an indication of how much I've enjoyed it.

and then tomorrow I'll be starting this

Quote

Blood Meridian is an epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, brilliantly subverting the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the Wild West. Based on historical events that took place on the Texas--Mexico border in the 1850s, it traces the fortunes of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennesseean who stumbles into a nightmarish world where Indians are being murdered and the market for their scalps is thriving. 'Cormac McCarthy's violent lyric masterpiece, Blood Meridian acquires an amoral, apocalyptic dimension through the Miltonic grandeur of the language ...It is a barbarously poetic odyssey through a hell without purpose' Irish Times 'McCarthy's achievement is to establish a new mythology which is as potent and vivid as that of the movies, yet one which has absolutely the opposite effect ...He is a great writer' Independent 'A bloody and starkly beautiful tale'

 

[Rodders]

I started reading IT when I was 12. I was a sensitive soul and it scared the **** shit out of me. I subsequently threw the book on the fire.  Not good, and sadly not the only book I burned either. ( Though I emphatically stopped at 2 ). 

Just started these:

a story set in slavery in the mid 19th century America. 

and for non fiction:

 

which is starting well. 

[mjmooney]

Blood Meridian is brilliant. 

[leemond2008]

On 8/21/2017 at 20:29, mjmooney said:

Blood Meridian is brilliant. 

Controversial I know but I really am not a fan of Cormac McCarthy.

The Road took me two or three attempts to complete and although I did end up enjoying it, Blood Meridian just completely drained me, I found myself looking at the words rather than reading it.

Now I can quite easily sit down and blast through 60 pages or more in one sitting but I struggled to get through 10 pages at a time with this one.

The Judge was a good character and I like his imbecile but other than that I didn't find anything enjoyable about the book at all.

Its just his writing style I just can't get on with it, I haven't struggled with a book this much for years, I wouldn't have bothered finishing it if it wasn't for the fact that a mate lent it me and everyone classes it so highly.

[maqroll]

Ok, no more fooling around, I'm going to make a to read list, and read one book a month.