What are you reading tonight?

[bwfcdan94]

sorry wrong thread

[Always hopeful]

Dan you are a really strange person, who should take some advice from a variety of people from this site and decide that your time would be better spent elsewhere.

[Harry Genshaw]

Jon Krakauer - Into Thin Air. First hand account of the Everest Disaster of 1996 when 9 people died. Harrowing stuff but a brilliant read. Really gets into the mindset of the 'Because its there' fraternity.

Tis a good book but worth reading Anatoli Boukreev's (sp?) book that tells the alternative version of events. Krakauer does some good stuff mind, just finished another 1 of his recently about the American Footballer Pat Tillman who walked away from the NFL to serve his country in Afghanistan, only to be killed by friendly fire.

[John Doe]

Jon Krakauer - Into Thin Air. First hand account of the Everest Disaster of 1996 when 9 people died. Harrowing stuff but a brilliant read. Really gets into the mindset of the 'Because its there' fraternity.

Tis a good book but worth reading Anatoli Boukreev's (sp?) book that tells the alternative version of events. Krakauer does some good stuff mind, just finished another 1 of his recently about the American Footballer Pat Tillman who walked away from the NFL to serve his country in Afghanistan, only to be killed by friendly fire.

Ok thanks H. I remember hearing about the American Footballer at the time.

Interesting re the Russian's book. I remember Krakauer mentioned that Boukreev had given his side of it in a book and there was animosity between the 2 of them thereafter. It did sound very confused in the dead zone in that period. Will try and get round to reading it mate.

[William the White]

Today I finally manged to finish The World That Never Was... Subtitled... A true Story of Dreamers, Schemers, Anarchists and Secret Agents.

It's pop history with a complex tale to tell - and it doesn't manage to tell it with clarity all the time...

The central focus is the Anarchist movements of the late 19th/early 20th century, and especially those that were involved with 'terrorist' activities... And the establishment of secret police forces that themselves came to be provocateurs, helping to organise the very acts they were supposed to be preventing... And thus, apart from anything else, keeping themselves in well-paid employment...

I already knew quite a bit about the territory, and it still became a bit of a plod to get through...

Now onto the current year's Booker shortlist... starting with Mantel's winning Bring Up the Bodies...

[Sponge]

Now onto the current year's Booker shortlist... starting with Mantel's winning Bring Up the Bodies...

Don't envy you. Though the Levy sounds like it might be worth reading.

[malcd1]

I don't think I have contributed to this thread much before but I do love to read. I have read hundreds and hundreds of books over the years and until yesterday have finished every single book I have started. Even if it is really bad. My OCD prevents me putting it to one side.

I got a Kindle at Christmas and decided to read some of the 'classics' as I probably wouldn't buy them in book format. Some have been really good like Robinson Crusoe, To Kill a Mockingbird and Three Men in a Boat.

However, the first book I have had to stop reading because it is really, really tediously boring is Moby Dick. Herman Melville's classic is as dull as dishwater. I don't know if it gets better in the last half of the book but I don't care as the first half is just awful. I know it was written in a different era and it is difficult to read in places but I am consigning this one to Room 101.

[William the White]

Now onto the current year's Booker shortlist... starting with Mantel's winning Bring Up the Bodies...

Don't envy you. Though the Levy sounds like it might be worth reading.

Well, I really enjoyed Mantel's last, Wolf Hall and so far am really enjoying this.

[Raven]

I don't think I have contributed to this thread much before but I do love to read. I have read hundreds and hundreds of books over the years and until yesterday have finished every single book I have started. Even if it is really bad. My OCD prevents me putting it to one side.

I got a Kindle at Christmas and decided to read some of the 'classics' as I probably wouldn't buy them in book format. Some have been really good like Robinson Crusoe, To Kill a Mockingbird and Three Men in a Boat. However, the first book I have had to stop reading because it is really, really tediously boring is Moby Dick. Herman Melville's classic is as dull as dishwater. I don't know if it gets better in the last half of the book but I don't care as the first half is just awful. I know it was written in a different era and it is difficult to read in places but I am consigning this one to Room 101.

One of my favs

[bobo the clown]

I got a Kindle at Christmas and decided to read some of the 'classics' as I probably wouldn't buy them in book format. Some have been really good like Robinson Crusoe, To Kill a Mockingbird and Three Men in a Boat. .

One of my favs

Mine too.

When I finished my finals & was walking home after a drink I saw a copy in a second-hand book shop & bought it on instinct. It was probably the first book I read for no reason other than I wanted to for probably a year.

It was read in about 3 hours, it's very small & I've loved it ever since.

[clapton is god]

Two new books this week from Amazon:

Dominion from CJ Sansom. Made a start on this one and its got a very good feel to it. An alternative reality tale where we surrendered to Germany on the 9th May 1940. Churchill was never Prime Minister and Oswald Mosely is the Home Secretary.

Everest 1953: The Epic Story of the First Ascent. Read a review last week and its apparently the first complete account of the climb written since 1956! very much looking forward to reading this.

Mrs C got David Mitchell's autobiography and gives it a very good report.

[Gary the Enfield]

Not read very much recently. Going through a bit of a lull in terms of finding things to excite.

On holiday last week (well, in the airport before the flight) I spied this:



Cover to cover in a little over 4 hours (with breaks for baggage handling and car driving etc.) it was a fascinating read. I'm sure he made half of it up, though.

I think WtW and thebish may like this.

[Lost Leopard Spot]

could you make that slightly bigger?

[bobo the clown]

could you make that slightly bigger?

Does that help ?


My pleasure !

[Lost Leopard Spot]

could you make that slightly bigger?

Does that help ?


My pleasure !

I was being ironic, and you've gorn and taken it literally, you clown you!

[bobo the clown]

could you make that slightly bigger?

Does that help ?

My pleasure !

I was being ironic, and you've gorn and taken it literally, you clown you!

Just trying to help .... no need to shout.

[Lost Leopard Spot]

could you make that slightly bigger?

Does that help ?

My pleasure !

I was being ironic, and you've gorn and taken it literally, you clown you!

Just trying to help .... no need to shout.

But you made me shout

[William the White]

To talk about reading - if it isn't terminally unfashionable on this thread - Bring Up the Bodies is as good as Wolf Hall three years ago... Which makes Hilary Mantel the writer of the last two books that were worth getting the booker Prize, after the extremely dubious victors of the last two years...

Her command of language, character and narrative is so assured, and she's worked the main trick of historical fiction - use it to investigate the modern world or enduring features of human societies. This novel is even more powerful than the first in its dissection of the corruption of power, and its attraction, and its self deluding... In a fictional world where Henry VIII functions in a political cesspit akin to that of 20th century totalitarianism.

Her Thomas Cromwell is to the Tudor king as Goebbels to Hitler or Beria to Stalin... The loyal (and both fearful and terrifying) functionary who schemes, and invents, and murders as a service to a power corrupted by absolutism.

Great writing. None of the rest of the shortlist will come anywhere near this quality, but I'll be giving them a go...

[lovethesmellofnapalm]

Bring up the bodies is superior to Wolf Hall in every way
i'd go so far as to put it in my top 5 ever.
but i didn't see Goebbles in her depiction of Cromwell- she writes him very sympathetically in my view.

[William the White]

Bring up the bodies is superior to Wolf Hall in every way
i'd go so far as to put it in my top 5 ever.
but i didn't see Goebbles in her depiction of Cromwell- she writes him very sympathetically in my view.

That's the fantastic trick - in the last hundred pages she shows him weaving a web of lies, half truths, digging into the gold himself, sending the innocent or half or quarter guilty to execution - working cynically and ruthlessly, organising his own fortune, working out how to profit by the fall of the Boleyns, manipulatively transgressing every code of political 'honesty'... And yet, brilliantly, shows him as a human being, with his own sense of 'mercy' (like not hanged drawn and quartered but a good French swordsman)... That is her 'sympathy'...

I feel she wants you to see both sides... her strength as a writer lies exactly in the ambivalence of her protagonist... The truth is Beria or Goebbels... The mirage is the decent man, who, while behaving decently, and missing, truthfully, the dead wife and children, can, somehow, accustom himself to serving power with absolute clear, intelligent, cynical ruthlessness, with its inevitable bloodshed and lots of opportunities for making gold. And, almost, convince himself it's for 'higher' goals...

I wouldn't like to choose between the two novels myself. But you can bet I'm looking forward to the third.

My hope is I'm wrong, but there could be two more disappointing Booker winners in between...