What are you reading tonight?

[Prufrock]

My Holiday bookies:

Douglas Adams- Hitchhikers and Restaurant: Not read these two since I was a kid, but blasted through them both in about 6 hours altogether, absolutely wonderful. These should be in all schools. Fun reading at it's best.

Am I the only person who does not get these books, tried Hitchhikers and one of the rare books I just gave up on, found it boring and uninteresting, tried the TV series and the film and hated them too.

Currently reading Dunkirk book (bit heavy going and quite hard to follow) and Thirteen by Jasper Kent the follow up to Twelve which was good but Thirteen I think is better.

I think you might be

Possibly my favourite line in any book ever is "The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't".

[Raven]

Sure I am, yet to meet someone who does not like them and all seem to really like them...passionately too

Not idea what the Spinal tap reference in the previous post means

[Gary the Enfield]

Sure I am, yet to meet someone who does not like them and all seem to really like them...passionately too

Not idea what the Spinal tap reference in the previous post means

They had speakers went up to 11. The 'documentary maker' asked why they didn't buy normal speakers (which went up to 10) and make them louder and the band member (can't remember which one) said........

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ll7rWiY5obI

[thebish]

I blitz read through Girl with a Dragon Tattoo/Played With Fire/Kicked a Hornets Nest whilst on holiday. I was absolutely blown away by the three of them. I thought them fresh and original. The story line was audacious and like nothing I've ever read before. I actually gasped out loud several times during the read. The characters were all complete and well rounded including probably the best female character I've ever read.

I recommended the trilogy to Mrs Clapton and after a slow start she is now totally hooked and ploughing through them as I did

The films (Swedish version, Hollywood following) are released on DVD starting next month.

If you've not read them yet do yourself a favour.

seconded - as long as you can get your head around 12 yards of unpronouncable street names every page - and a cast of several hundred very similar sounding swedish police and secret service!

further to this... in the film of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo....

Michael Nyqvist plays Mikael Blomqvist

[Prufrock]

Pru, is 'Deception Point' the one with him running around Seville? Or is that Digital Fortress?

Nope, it's the one with someone running around the Arctic. My dad got Digital Fortress for his birthday, is it any good? I enjoyed Da Vinci and Angels and Demons but wouldn't bother with Deception point, so I'm not sure whether to start it?

Ah yeah, I know the one now.. Can't really remember the plot, but don't remember it being 'all that and a bag of chips, mmhmmm'

As for Digital Fortress, I don't like recommending things, whether they be books, films, bars, restaurants.. But anyhow, It's worth a read to make up your own mind, it's oka. I remember it being better than Deception Point and Angels and Demons.

You should have more conviction in your opinions Boris! You were right, Digital Fortress much better than Deception Point, and I can't really remember Angels and Demons. That's the sort of books they are, an interesting way to spend a couple of hours, but have no lasting effect whatsoever.

[Prufrock]

My Holiday bookies:

Frankie Boyle- My Shit Life So Far: Read for the journey there as something to lightly read through. Pretty enjoyable, not amazing as those sort of books go, but as ever with him capable of a savage one liner to bring your drink down your nose. Quite interesting as well since I knew absolutely nothing of his life, or his career before Mock the Week.

Martin Amis- Money: Picked this up on impulse in the airport WHSmith. I enjoyed it, unsure on the ending, but I thought it well written, with a few cracking aphorisms, and an account of America and the Dream both savage and human.

The QI book of Animals: Really good, I really like the QI books, and this is one of the better ones. New favourite animal, the Zonkey!

The QI book of the dead: A lot more thorough, and a few entries I didn't care about or find interesting, but that will always be the case with that sort of thing, some really interesting bits however, and it's organised well.

Douglas Adams- Hitchhikers and Restaurant: Not read these two since I was a kid, but blasted through them both in about 6 hours altogether, absolutely wonderful. These should be in all schools. Fun reading at it's best.

One of the newer Jeremy Clarkson books: Typical fare, a chuckle here and there, and he is a brilliant motoring writer, judging the line between technical information and everyman speak very well.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez- One Hundred Years of Solitude: It's taken me a long time to read it, I'd started it twice previously, but I sat down to read it this time and I loved it. I needed the family tree at the beginning, but I couldn't put it down. I must admit to knowing next to nothing about the history of the region, but even without that it's a brilliantly told story, and the manipulation of emotions, and the contrast between happiness and sadness, and tragedy and comedy is brilliant.

Dan Brown- Deception Point: He gets a lot of stick, which I think unfair. I wouldn't call it literature, nor is it historically accurate, but he writes decent thrillers. That said, I thought this was poor. The ending was guessable about halfway through, and his insistence since the Da Vinci Code business that it's all built on some sort of fact is tiresome. Poor.

Have just started Alan Bennet- The Uncommon Reader. Hope it's good.

Really enjoyed it. Still only being a wee 22, have heard a lot about Alan Bennett as a cultural icon, but having never seen or read any of his work this book caught my eye in the airport. I wouldn't buy it new again, £7 for three hours reading seems steep, but it's a really good way to send a few hours. Funny, sharp and intelligent. Good book to give kids to get them interested in reading.

Now I'm off to join the library.

[TANGODANCER]

Just finished Even byAndrew Grant. Well enough written, but a total steal of Lee Child's Reacher novels for me.

[William the White]

My Holiday bookies:

Frankie Boyle- My Shit Life So Far: Read for the journey there as something to lightly read through. Pretty enjoyable, not amazing as those sort of books go, but as ever with him capable of a savage one liner to bring your drink down your nose. Quite interesting as well since I knew absolutely nothing of his life, or his career before Mock the Week.

Martin Amis- Money: Picked this up on impulse in the airport WHSmith. I enjoyed it, unsure on the ending, but I thought it well written, with a few cracking aphorisms, and an account of America and the Dream both savage and human.

The QI book of Animals: Really good, I really like the QI books, and this is one of the better ones. New favourite animal, the Zonkey!

The QI book of the dead: A lot more thorough, and a few entries I didn't care about or find interesting, but that will always be the case with that sort of thing, some really interesting bits however, and it's organised well.

Douglas Adams- Hitchhikers and Restaurant: Not read these two since I was a kid, but blasted through them both in about 6 hours altogether, absolutely wonderful. These should be in all schools. Fun reading at it's best.

One of the newer Jeremy Clarkson books: Typical fare, a chuckle here and there, and he is a brilliant motoring writer, judging the line between technical information and everyman speak very well.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez- One Hundred Years of Solitude: It's taken me a long time to read it, I'd started it twice previously, but I sat down to read it this time and I loved it. I needed the family tree at the beginning, but I couldn't put it down. I must admit to knowing next to nothing about the history of the region, but even without that it's a brilliantly told story, and the manipulation of emotions, and the contrast between happiness and sadness, and tragedy and comedy is brilliant.Dan Brown- Deception Point: He gets a lot of stick, which I think unfair. I wouldn't call it literature, nor is it historically accurate, but he writes decent thrillers. That said, I thought this was poor. The ending was guessable about halfway through, and his insistence since the Da Vinci Code business that it's all built on some sort of fact is tiresome. Poor.

Have just started Alan Bennet- The Uncommon Reader. Hope it's good.

About bloody time!!!

Great book...

[William the White]

My holiday reading...

I started with 'samarkand' by amin maalouf - a Lebanese writer... Set in 12th century Persia its three protagonists are the poet, philosopher, mathematician Omar Khayam; Hassan Sabah, the islamic fundamentalist founder of the 'assassins' - the original 'suicide attackers' killing for their founder's rigid and austere view of the moslem faith and the vizier Nizam al Mulk, ruling Persia as a consummate politician... At the centre is Khayam, and a lost manuscript of his rubaiyat... And his poetry celebrating humanity and his religious scepticism is placed in opposition to fundamentalist ruthlessness and machiavellian manouevres by the political state... It is, in other words, a story of our times set a thousand years ago... won the french Prix Goncourt in 1990-something, their equivalent of the Booker, though pre-dating it by decades. Recommended especially to Tango, for his love of Khayam, whose work is the true centre of this novel. My own reservation is a nagging feeling that the translation may be over-ornate at times, as often happens when 'oriental' writers are rendered in english...

I followed that up with The Book of Chameleons, written in portuguese by a mozambican writer, Jose Eduardo Agualusa, which is full of wisdom, in short chapters, set in a quiet corner of a formerly murderous african state, where the human condition is investigated by a gekko observing life from the wall of a room in a house of an outcast man whose job is to create a better past for people than they have endured already. Partner and I loved it. it has hardly any narrative in the normal sense, but much perception. Recommended to the bish especially, who, as a literalist, needs more whimsy in his life...

Then came two doorstops... first, the winner of this year's Orange Prize, The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver (an excellent story teller, i recommend also her 'The Poisonwood Bible' and 'Animal Dreams'). Over 650 pages of a chronicle novel telling the story of a Mexican-American who becomes committed to workers struggles in the USA, a friend of artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in mexico, and Trotsky's secretary in his final months before his murder, and then a writer who has to face the McCarthy HUAC repression in the 1950s. Prufrock would love this...

And finally - Wolf Hall by hilary mantel, the latest Booker Prize winner, another 650 page doorstop, another chronicle novel, set in Henry VIII's England, a place of ruthless politics, vigorous repression and great fear. In other words - planet hobo - and recommended to the tramp, if only to keep him out of fantasy island for a night - or week - or two...

All of these would be really enjoyed by anyone who likes the 'literary' novel... i did... they all went well, in their different ways, with sunshine, and fish and wine...

[mummywhycantieatcrayons]

All of these would be really enjoyed by anyone who likes the 'literary' novel... i did... they all went well, in their different ways, with sunshine, and fish and wine...

Yes, but let's be honest - so would the phone book!

[Worthy4England]

Pru, is 'Deception Point' the one with him running around Seville? Or is that Digital Fortress?

Nope, it's the one with someone running around the Arctic. My dad got Digital Fortress for his birthday, is it any good? I enjoyed Da Vinci and Angels and Demons but wouldn't bother with Deception point, so I'm not sure whether to start it?

Ah yeah, I know the one now.. Can't really remember the plot, but don't remember it being 'all that and a bag of chips, mmhmmm'

As for Digital Fortress, I don't like recommending things, whether they be books, films, bars, restaurants.. But anyhow, It's worth a read to make up your own mind, it's oka. I remember it being better than Deception Point and Angels and Demons.

You should have more conviction in your opinions Boris! You were right, Digital Fortress much better than Deception Point, and I can't really remember Angels and Demons. That's the sort of books they are, an interesting way to spend a couple of hours, but have no lasting effect whatsoever.

An interesting comment Pru.

I enjoyed Angels and Demons and Deception Point, but had to return to the back of the book Deception Point to remind myself what it was about.

But as to the lasting effect bit, there must be load of books people read, where they're an excellent suspension of reality for the time you're reading them but don't have a lasting effect - especially when they're fictional rather than non-fictional. There aren't too many I'd put in the fiction "lasting effect" category...

[William the White]

All of these would be really enjoyed by anyone who likes the 'literary' novel... i did... they all went well, in their different ways, with sunshine, and fish and wine...

Yes, but let's be honest - so would the phone book!

You see, despite my best efforts I couldn't find one to recommend to you - but I didn't need to - you have your own tome of infinite variety... Perhaps I'll give it a page or two next year and report back...

[William the White]

But as to the lasting effect bit, there must be load of books people read, where they're an excellent suspension of reality for the time you're reading them but don't have a lasting effect - especially when they're fictional rather than non-fictional. There aren't too many I'd put in the fiction "lasting effect" category...

Bit there are some? Care to share?

I'm the other way - works of fiction are much more likely to endure. Though, of course, some post-mod critics come close to arguing all writing is fiction...

[Worthy4England]

But as to the lasting effect bit, there must be load of books people read, where they're an excellent suspension of reality for the time you're reading them but don't have a lasting effect - especially when they're fictional rather than non-fictional. There aren't too many I'd put in the fiction "lasting effect" category...

Bit there are some? Care to share?

I'm the other way - works of fiction are much more likely to endure. Though, of course, some post-mod critics come close to arguing all writing is fiction...

Well one collection I know you don't rate Lord of the Rings stuck with me.

Many of Robert Ludlum's books I've read more than once.

Then back to the realm of pure fantasy/sci-fi - Stephen Donaldson has written some fairly memorable stuff - Chronicles of Thomas Covenant made an impression, David Eddings a little less so.

Terry Pratchett's early books, I thought were good they provide a temporary suspension of reality that works for me.

A book by Denis Wheatley has stayed with me since I first read it as a young kid - The Devil Rides Out.

Spike Milligan's war books are really bitter/sweet, you can really feel the bouts of manic depression during some chapters.

[TANGODANCER]

[post-mod critics come close to arguing all writing is fiction...

:

Many of Robert Ludlum's books I've read more than once.
Then back to the realm of pure fantasy/sci-fi - Stephen Donaldson has written some fairly memorable stuff - Chronicles of Thomas Covenant made an impression, David Eddings a little less so.
Terry Pratchett's early books, I thought were good they provide a temporary suspension of reality that works for me.
A book by Denis Wheatley has stayed with me since I first read it as a young kid - The Devil Rides Out.
Spike Milligan's war books are really bitter/sweet, you can really feel the bouts of manic depression during some chapters.

[/quote]
My earliest novel reading memories (after the Famous Five and Secret Seven periods and Tom and Huck ) are of Percy F. Westerman, Jack London and Arthur Conan Doyle, Dumas, Baroness Orczy and Dickens. Read the Thomas Covenant trilogy many years ago. Enjoyed. I personallly like re-reading classic novels, Westward Ho, Lorna Doone, Last of The Mohicans, Ivanhoe etc and the stories (sometimes through the medium of film) have lasted. H Ryder Haggard and Rice Burroughs were also always enjoyable. Enjoyed Wheatley when he wasn't on his political ramblings, particularly The Haunting of Toby Jugg. Also did Devil Rides out and To the Devil a Daughter many years back. Bram Stoker's Dracula ws far better than any of the film versions made from it and Frederich Forsythe did a couple of good novels made into films. Read a million books since but I've forgotten most before I closed the covers. With many authors it's a case of too much of a good thing (the likes of Dick Francis ans his sqeaky clean heroes etc and too many Wilbur Smith novels). Few are original these days, with a positive overkill of fantasy novels and Dan Brown wannabe's. I find history and mystery usually better reads than most novels these days.

[Worthy4England]

Aye - agree about Wheatley's political ramblings. Don't forget the Ka of Gifford Hillary on your "supernatural" list.

Couple of Forsythe's, I've enjoyed, but Wilbur Smith hasn't managed to capture my attention yet.

[TANGODANCER]

Aye - agree about Wheatley's political ramblings. Don't forget the Ka of Gifford Hillary on your "supernatural" list.
Couple of Forsythe's, I've enjoyed, but Wilbur Smith hasn't managed to capture my attention yet.

Did that. Felt the fear, had the nightmares.

The Sunbird and Eagle in the Sky are Wilbur Smith's two best for me. Worth a read.

[Prufrock]

My holiday reading...

I started with 'samarkand' by amin maalouf - a Lebanese writer... Set in 12th century Persia its three protagonists are the poet, philosopher, mathematician Omar Khayam; Hassan Sabah, the islamic fundamentalist founder of the 'assassins' - the original 'suicide attackers' killing for their founder's rigid and austere view of the moslem faith and the vizier Nizam al Mulk, ruling Persia as a consummate politician... At the centre is Khayam, and a lost manuscript of his rubaiyat... And his poetry celebrating humanity and his religious scepticism is placed in opposition to fundamentalist ruthlessness and machiavellian manouevres by the political state... It is, in other words, a story of our times set a thousand years ago... won the french Prix Goncourt in 1990-something, their equivalent of the Booker, though pre-dating it by decades. Recommended especially to Tango, for his love of Khayam, whose work is the true centre of this novel. My own reservation is a nagging feeling that the translation may be over-ornate at times, as often happens when 'oriental' writers are rendered in english...

I followed that up with The Book of Chameleons, written in portuguese by a mozambican writer, Jose Eduardo Agualusa, which is full of wisdom, in short chapters, set in a quiet corner of a formerly murderous african state, where the human condition is investigated by a gekko observing life from the wall of a room in a house of an outcast man whose job is to create a better past for people than they have endured already. Partner and I loved it. it has hardly any narrative in the normal sense, but much perception. Recommended to the bish especially, who, as a literalist, needs more whimsy in his life...

Then came two doorstops... first, the winner of this year's Orange Prize, The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver (an excellent story teller, i recommend also her 'The Poisonwood Bible' and 'Animal Dreams'). Over 650 pages of a chronicle novel telling the story of a Mexican-American who becomes committed to workers struggles in the USA, a friend of artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in mexico, and Trotsky's secretary in his final months before his murder, and then a writer who has to face the McCarthy HUAC repression in the 1950s. Prufrock would love this...

And finally - Wolf Hall by hilary mantel, the latest Booker Prize winner, another 650 page doorstop, another chronicle novel, set in Henry VIII's England, a place of ruthless politics, vigorous repression and great fear. In other words - planet hobo - and recommended to the tramp, if only to keep him out of fantasy island for a night - or week - or two...

All of these would be really enjoyed by anyone who likes the 'literary' novel... i did... they all went well, in their different ways, with sunshine, and fish and wine...

Shall have to check it out, though I made a list of things to read this afternoon (I made the list this afternoon, not that I have to read them this afternoon), and it's pretty long, so it might take me a while! Hopefully, like One Hundred years of Solitude, it will be worth it.

Well, I went to the library. It's not quite the temple to reading I remembered from when I was younger, I swear there were literally about 14 books, three of which were by Katie Price. No Philip Pullman or Terry Prattchet. No Sergei Whatsisface the Russian guy who wrote Night Watch and Day Watch, no Virginia Woolfe, no fecking Shakespeare. Adlington library has no Shakespeare! Two pathetic rows of 'classics' which was basically Jane Ayre and two copies of Pride and Prejudice. I'm not joking when I say Katie price has written three FICTION books, all of which Adlington library has, along with two seperate biographies on Jade Goody, but no fecking Shakespeare. It's no wonder kids hate reading. I went online after and they claim to have a load of books they definitely don't, all of which they are proud to claim are 'not on loan'.

I did however manage to come away with Jeff Stelling's 'Jellyman's thrown a wobbly' and Mark Twain's 'Diaries of Adam and Eve.'

[thebish]

I followed that up with The Book of Chameleons, written in portuguese by a mozambican writer, Jose Eduardo Agualusa, which is full of wisdom, in short chapters, set in a quiet corner of a formerly murderous african state, where the human condition is investigated by a gekko observing life from the wall of a room in a house of an outcast man whose job is to create a better past for people than they have endured already. Partner and I loved it. it has hardly any narrative in the normal sense, but much perception. Recommended to the bish especially, who, as a literalist, needs more whimsy in his life...

that's very kind of you william, I'll look it up.

recently I have been revisiting books that I read when I was a student...

the ragged trousered philanthropists
keep the aspidistra flying
down and out in paris & london
road to wiggin pier
love on the dole
saturday night & sunday morning


I don't usually re-read books - I read quite slowly - I can't scan read a whole page like my missus does - so i figure I usually ought to read stuff i haven't read before because of limited time - i am well into my 40s now...

but all of these came back to me as fresh as they did when I first read them 30 years ago...


as for holiday reading - i usually take a big assortment and end up not reading much because I also drink red wine and that - with the fresh air sends me to sleep...

last year, though I read Flaubert's Parrot (Barnes) for a second time (it also helps that I am quite forgetful) - and I really enjoyed that... and I also re-read Life of Pi - which was a joy even second time tound when I knew the ending...

I also usually take a bunch of light bloke-reading - Colin bateman-type books and also read the missus's huge pile of grisly murder/detective books
i usually take some books of poems - often one of the Anvil series of new poets
and i buy daily newspapers and read them properly - because it is not something i normally do


the novel that has most affected me personally - and was a surprise to me - was Charlotte Gray by Faulks. I don't think it was the writing or the plot - except one scene that grabbed me by the throat and still haunts me to this day....

it describes the Jews hunted down across france - and in particular two boys - one twelve and one younger - 8 or 9 I think. they are herded onto the cattle truck with their little suitcases - and then into the concentration camp - it dawns on the 12 yr old what this - but not his younger brother - and the 12 yr old seeks to protect his brother from the horror of it all by pretending it is something other than it is...

I could hardly read it - and it haunted me (properly haunted) for months. - probably because I had children of that age at the time and the characters became them in a scarily real way... not sure why..

my missus read it and was totally unaffected... powerful stuff is fiction....

[Prufrock]

Pru, is 'Deception Point' the one with him running around Seville? Or is that Digital Fortress?

Nope, it's the one with someone running around the Arctic. My dad got Digital Fortress for his birthday, is it any good? I enjoyed Da Vinci and Angels and Demons but wouldn't bother with Deception point, so I'm not sure whether to start it?

Ah yeah, I know the one now.. Can't really remember the plot, but don't remember it being 'all that and a bag of chips, mmhmmm'

As for Digital Fortress, I don't like recommending things, whether they be books, films, bars, restaurants.. But anyhow, It's worth a read to make up your own mind, it's oka. I remember it being better than Deception Point and Angels and Demons.

You should have more conviction in your opinions Boris! You were right, Digital Fortress much better than Deception Point, and I can't really remember Angels and Demons. That's the sort of books they are, an interesting way to spend a couple of hours, but have no lasting effect whatsoever.

An interesting comment Pru.

I enjoyed Angels and Demons and Deception Point, but had to return to the back of the book Deception Point to remind myself what it was about.

But as to the lasting effect bit, there must be load of books people read, where they're an excellent suspension of reality for the time you're reading them but don't have a lasting effect - especially when they're fictional rather than non-fictional. There aren't too many I'd put in the fiction "lasting effect" category...

It's partly why above I said I didn't think Dan Brown's books were 'literature'. Without wanting to open the 'what is art' debate again, there is nothing in the Dan Brown books that will change an opinion, that will lift your mood, or bring about any sort of real emotion. I too, like William, find fiction has a longer lasting effect, though I think they each have different effects, and there have been a number of works of fiction that have effected me for a long time afterwards. Often the effects from a piece of literature affect you in a bizarre way, perhaps making you see something unrelated differently, and changing the way you see the world. 'The Portrait of Dorian Gray' certainly did that for me, as did Le Dernier jour d'un Condamné by Victor Hugo, and L'Étranger by Camus along with many others. Often I forget the plot as a whole, but my attitude is changed, or I remember one line or one scene here and there. There have been books that left me cold, that others claim life changing, but even with those I could at least understand how it might speak to someone.

I don't get that sense with Dan Brown. That's not meant to be a criticism though. I really can't stand the snobbish attitude you sometimes hear from people towards people wo are reading a Dan Brown book. Not every read has to be edifying. I can quite happily watch an episode of The Wire, which I would call art, and then straight afterwards watch and enjoy some crash bang 24, which I would not. Brown's books are like action films.