What are you reading tonight?

Batman · Post by **Batman** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 7:09 pm

bryson bores me these days

communistworkethic · Post by **communistworkethic** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 7:33 pm

too fat?

Bruce Rioja · Post by **Bruce Rioja** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 7:51 pm

Batman wrote:bryson bores me these days

Really? I'm sure that he'd find your posts on here simply riveting!

I trust that the recent work that left you feeling bored was A Short History of Nearly Everything, and it's quite easy to work out why that particular book wouldn't appeal to you.

Batman · Post by **Batman** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 7:55 pm

nah, notes from a small island failed to capture me

a short history was nearly a return to form, nearly

Bruce Rioja · Post by **Bruce Rioja** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 8:00 pm

Batman wrote:nah, notes from a small island failed to capture me

a short history was nearly a return to form, nearly

Aye, areet!

William the White · Post by **William the White** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 9:23 pm

Batman wrote:read that cloughie one too, that and the damned united

both superb

The Damned United arguably best football-themed book ever. Especuially if you remember that cynical, despicable Leeds side of the 1980s.

Christ, i'm agreeing with Batman !*!

TANGODANCER · Post by **TANGODANCER** » Tue Sep 09, 2008 10:56 pm

Having a re-run of an old schoolday swash-buckler favourite: Anthony Hope's The Prisoner of Zenda Brings back a few memories.

Lord Kangana · Post by **Lord Kangana** » Tue Sep 09, 2008 10:58 pm

"The Radical Right and the murder of JFK"

Johnson and Nixon make Bush look like the Easter Bunny

Dujon · Post by **Dujon** » Wed Sep 10, 2008 12:56 am

I have just finished reading Rudyard Kipling's Kim. Having recently read a biography of Kipling's early life - to age 35 - and also a collection of some of his short stories (Plain Tales from the Hills) about India and its people I thought that, not having read much of Kipling at all, I'd best read his most celebrated publication. Whilst the collection was written by a quite young Kipling Kim seems to me to be a product of a much more mature and broad thinking mind.

The plot is simple (if you can call it a plot) but the description of life in India under the rule of the Sahibs is fascinating as are the minutiae of day-to-day doings of existence at that time. No doubt things have changed since Kipling wrote Kim just as they have in most other parts of the world; I also have to accept Kipling's descriptions as being true as I have nothing else with which to compare them.

Did Kipling gild the lilly? I don't know, but if he did I suspect that it would be in the small detail rather than the large. The caste versus caste, the religion versus religion, life versus death, the Indian versus European - never mind the man versus man - combine to form an intricate web describing the internal structure of India at that time.

This is a work of fiction. This is a work written by a man who spent his formative years in India and then was shuffled off to England by his parents, for educational purposes, but who then returned to India in his later, but still young, life. As I understand it Kim was conceived whilst Kipling was living in the U.S. of A. - a short stay of just three or four years - after his marriage to an American lass. Therefore I must look at the work as a (possibly) nostalgic look back at what was, might have been or even distorted memories of a happy childhood: the latter I suspect afflicts us all.

If you have not read the book then I recommend that you do so.

General Mannerheim · Post by **General Mannerheim** » Wed Sep 10, 2008 9:20 am

The Viz

CAPSLOCK · Post by **CAPSLOCK** » Thu Sep 11, 2008 10:20 pm

Finished The Summons last neet and now well into The Broker

Nice, easy reading

TANGODANCER · Post by **TANGODANCER** » Thu Sep 11, 2008 11:46 pm

Reading Paul Doherty's The Templar and finding it hard going. The man seems to have a personal dislike of paragraphs.

TANGODANCER · Post by **TANGODANCER** » Tue Sep 16, 2008 4:47 pm

Just finished "Ghost" by Robert Harris. Worth reading.

Prufrock · Post by **Prufrock** » Tue Sep 16, 2008 4:59 pm

'Is it just me or is everything shit'

Brilliant, recomend it to everyone.

superjohnmcginlay · Post by **superjohnmcginlay** » Tue Sep 16, 2008 5:04 pm

Prufrock wrote:'Is it just me or is everything shit'

Brilliant, recomend it to everyone.

Ive read that, made me chuckle.

Edit - There's a site with some of it in:

http://www.iseverythingshit.co.uk

boltonboris · Post by **boltonboris** » Tue Sep 16, 2008 6:02 pm

CAPSLOCK wrote:Finished The Summons last neet and now well into The Broker

Nice, easy reading

Is that the one based in Bologna? where the world and his dog are after him? If so, pretty entertaining

Bruce Rioja · Post by **Bruce Rioja** » Tue Sep 16, 2008 8:05 pm

Prufrock wrote:'Is it just me or is everything shit'

Brilliant, recomend it to everyone.

Volume Two 'Because, if anything, it all just keeps getting worse', is now available.

CAPSLOCK · Post by **CAPSLOCK** » Tue Sep 16, 2008 8:24 pm

boltonboris wrote:
CAPSLOCK wrote:Finished The Summons last neet and now well into The Broker

Nice, easy reading
Is that the one based in Bologna? where the world and his dog are after him? If so, pretty entertaining

Tis

Prufrock · Post by **Prufrock** » Tue Sep 16, 2008 8:31 pm

Bruce Rioja wrote:
Prufrock wrote:'Is it just me or is everything shit'

Brilliant, recomend it to everyone.
Volume Two 'Because, if anything, it all just keeps getting worse', is now available.

the one i think i read was 'the best of is it just me or is everything shit'. Not sure if thats both together or the best of each.Any ideas?

Dujon · Post by **Dujon** » Wed Sep 17, 2008 3:15 am

I've just finished reading a wonderful, weird and wacky, totally fun, book titled The Ultimate Aphrodisiac A Brief History of World War III by Robert G Barrett. It's a wild romp through the Pacific Islands and other parts of the world and includes U.F.O.s, gratuitous sex, a right wing American president and lots and lots of hemp and surfing. It also includes a fair bit of the Australian vernacular, but if you can figure out all that you'll be right - no worries, mate, fair dinks.

It seems that Barrett has also written a number of books based around a character known as Les Norton (this one is not). I shall be seeking them out.

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