Books The BOOK thread

Spoony Youngblood said:
That's on my reading list, funnily enough.



Noted. I'm reading The Castle at moment, reckon I'll have it completed by next day or so. As side from the Penal Colony I don't think I've got anything else by Kafka on my reading list. Here's what I'm planning to read after my current book.... Notes from the Underground, Iliad, Heart of Darkness and Plato's Republic, off the top of my head.




Anything really. I've been reading a lot of classics lately but I'm not too fussed.
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I think I enjoyed Kafka's short stories more than his novels. If you enjoyed Kafka you might as well try Camus and Sartre (if you havent already). Imo, the Stranger, Nausea and The Plague are all better than the Trial but people usually disagree with me on that.

I found the Republic extremely tedious after the first couple of hundred pages. A lot of stuff is irrelevant in modern society and that style of writing of answering questions only worked in shorter dialogues for me as in Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo.
 
mehro said:
I think I enjoyed Kafka's short stories more than his novels. If you enjoyed Kafka you might as well try Camus and Sartre (if you havent already). Imo, the Stranger, Nausea and The Plague are all better than the Trial but people usually disagree with me on that.

I found the Republic extremely tedious after the first couple of hundred pages. A lot of stuff is irrelevant in modern society and that style of writing of answering questions only worked in shorter dialogues for me as in Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo.
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Yeah, a mate of mine loved The Outsider/Stranger or whatever it's called, but he also dislikes Kafka's work. I loved the The Trial though...but then again, I'm probably a bit warped. As for Notes from the Underground I just can't get into it...I'll make sure I finish it though. And then complain. Probably.
 
Spoony Youngblood said:
Yeah, a mate of mine loved The Outsider/Stranger or whatever it's called, but he also dislikes Kafka's work. I loved the The Trial though...but then again, I'm probably a bit warped. As for Notes from the Underground I just can't get into it...I'll make sure I finish it though. And then complain. Probably.
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The Plague by Camus is also a piece of work
 
The Taurean said:
I'll pick it the next time.
What about some suggestions for Dean Koontz?
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Strangers. Possibly my favourite DK.

Lightning is the first I ever read of his, and is an old-fashioned kind of thriller more than the horror of some of his books. Made me want to read more.
 
I'm reading "The White Spider" the account by Heinrich Harrer (author of Seven Years in Tibet and a former SS Officer :nervous: ) of the first ascent of the Nordwand of the Eiger, or the North Face. It's an amazing read, speedy, detailed and passionate. Harrer writes with emotion of the failed attempts to climb what became known as the Mordwand or Murder-face and possibly the most severe climb in the world. He does this before recounting his attempt, with three other acclaimed climbers.

Aside from the obvious problems climbing the North Face offers Harrer also carefully situates the human psyche into the climb and how important mental strength is to surviving on the face. It becomes more than a challenge to the body but also the mind and he explains how friendships are formed under the most extreme circumstances and that how as a climber the real strength comes not from yourself but from the man above and below you.

It is said that anyone who reads "The White Spider" will know inside their own mind whether they could tackle the North Face of the Eiger.

Fantastic read for those interested in travel literature, human experience and achievement and of course those interested also in climbing.
 
My mam sent me a pack of stuff over for the kids and us for Xmas, and my auntie had stuck a book in called The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein.
It's about a married couple and their young daughter told through the eyes of the family dog, Enzo...which sounds ridiculously juvenile but it wasn't a bad book to be fair if a little bit by-the-numbers.
I can see them making a film out of it but they might wait until the stench from You, me and Marley has gone away as there is a similar theme although quite different at the same time.
 
Spoony Youngblood said:
That's on my reading list, funnily enough.



Noted. I'm reading The Castle at moment, reckon I'll have it completed by next day or so. As side from the Penal Colony I don't think I've got anything else by Kafka on my reading list. Here's what I'm planning to read after my current book.... Notes from the Underground, Iliad, Heart of Darkness and Plato's Republic, off the top of my head.




Anything really. I've been reading a lot of classics lately but I'm not too fussed.
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A mixed bag, mostly modern- a fella needs some relief from all those classics.


Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. A short\novella. At Stalin’s pleasure, a fella has a bad day in a Siberian Gulag and the forecast doesn’t look too hot.
Saul Bellow’s Seize the Day. A short\ novella. Best of Bellow. Simple\bittersweet stuff. A grunt has bad days in chase of the American Dream and the outlook is mixed.
James Ellroy’s American Tabloid. Savage noir with as much cynicism as satire. Shitloads of guys have bad days; the baddies get worse and the goodies either surrender their designation or hide in committees. Ellroy doesn’t do redemption and as such will not be making any tuxedoed acceptance speeches not that he’d give a flying proverbial.
Elmore Leonard’s Swag. Vintage Leonard at work. A noir stylist peerless when it comes to dialogue and understatement. The bad guys aren’t so bad after all, even if redemption is accidental.
Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. McCarthy does small man in big open indifference. Another worthy of a shout is The Road.
John Updike’s Rabbit Is Rich (one part of a quartet in the Rabbit series). At the very least, the best, recently deceased American writer. Haven’t read Rabbit At Rest yet but it’s on my ‘to read’ list.
 
If you're going to read Ellroy you should read Hammett, Chandler and Macdonald (Keith Millar) first. Then the LA Quartet.
 
AdZzUtd said:
I'm reading "The White Spider" the account by Heinrich Harrer (author of Seven Years in Tibet and a former SS Officer :nervous: ) of the first ascent of the Nordwand of the Eiger, or the North Face. It's an amazing read, speedy, detailed and passionate. Harrer writes with emotion of the failed attempts to climb what became known as the Mordwand or Murder-face and possibly the most severe climb in the world. He does this before recounting his attempt, with three other acclaimed climbers.

Aside from the obvious problems climbing the North Face offers Harrer also carefully situates the human psyche into the climb and how important mental strength is to surviving on the face. It becomes more than a challenge to the body but also the mind and he explains how friendships are formed under the most extreme circumstances and that how as a climber the real strength comes not from yourself but from the man above and below you.

It is said that anyone who reads "The White Spider" will know inside their own mind whether they could tackle the North Face of the Eiger.

Fantastic read for those interested in travel literature, human experience and achievement and of course those interested also in climbing.
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You might like Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster (1997) by Jon Krakauer. Krakauer abstains from the morbid to focus on the mistakes made. He is especially scathing of the commercial agencies, their willingness to escort (at up to 65,000 dollars a pop) rich Jack and Jills-wth gourmet picnicking and their own personal sherpa slaves- up the hill irrespective of experience and condition. Appropriately he doesn't treat the high-altitude climber with the reverential awe and veneration that quite frequently marks works of this kind.
To summit Everest requires physical endurance and mental fortitude and while Krakauer lauds these qualities, he rightly points out that the motivations behind what are essentially personal crusades are inspired not to much by nobility of purpose as the selfish need to quell some personal fixation. The mountain isn't there as an affront to mankind; it will not be vanquished because some fella plants his feet atop of it.
I was at Everest Base Camp a few years ago. It doubles as both a perma-village and a dump for discarded equipment\gear from all previous climbs. I can confirm, first-hand, the deleterious impact that thin air has on body and mind. I recall staggering around trying to educate my feet to work in a manner that resembled walking but finding the effort a difficult one. At 5000m, I felt like a drunk with a severe hangover suffering through a bad flu. I also recall not being able to sleep; in fact for the 3 or 4 days I was above 4000m, I can't recall sleeping at all. Low oxygen levels makes it difficult to pitch your breathing to slumber mode.
Like Krakauer, I can appreciate the endurance needed to push for the summit. But with high altitude climbs there are uncontrollable elements, quite apart from the technical aspects of climbing, such as the uncertain impact of oxygen deprivation and freakish weather systems that renders the word 'tragic' a misnomer when applied to climbing accidents
 
Hitchcocker said:
Just bought The Finkler Question - will start reading it in the morning. Way too tired now.
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Halfway through it. I quite like Jacobson's books - Kalooki Nights was really good - but I think this one's pretty mediocre. The main character's not very interesting and the dialogue's not generally believable at all, they all sound like Jacobson pontificating. I'm finding the Jew-obsession fairly tedious, so I can't imagine what it's like for a non-Jewish reader. Above all it's not particularly funny... I think I've laughed properly once. He's at his best when he's funny.

Seems like this Booker was a sorry-you-haven't-had-one-yet prize, a bit like Giggsy's Player of the Season, or my Redcafe Lifetime Achievement Award.
 
Redjazz said:
A mixed bag, mostly modern- a fella needs some relief from all those classics.


Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. A short\novella. At Stalin’s pleasure, a fella has a bad day in a Siberian Gulag and the forecast doesn’t look too hot.
Saul Bellow’s Seize the Day. A short\ novella. Best of Bellow. Simple\bittersweet stuff. A grunt has bad days in chase of the American Dream and the outlook is mixed.
James Ellroy’s American Tabloid. Savage noir with as much cynicism as satire. Shitloads of guys have bad days; the baddies get worse and the goodies either surrender their designation or hide in committees. Ellroy doesn’t do redemption and as such will not be making any tuxedoed acceptance speeches not that he’d give a flying proverbial.
Elemore Leonard’s Swag. Vintage Leonard at work. A noir stylist peerless when it comes to dialogue and understatement. The bad guys aren’t so bad after all, even if redemption is accidental.
Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. McCarthy does small man in big open indifference. Another worthy of a shout is The Road.
John Updike’s Rabbit Is Rich (one part of a quartet in the Rabbit series). At the very least, the best, recently deceased American writer. Haven’t read Rabbit At Rest yet but it’s on my ‘to read’ list.
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I've read everything here except for Swag.... good taste man!
 
Alexei Sayle's Mister Roberts is really bad. It's the kind of thing I might have written when I was 13 just with more words in it. It's sci-fi, I suppose, because a boy finds an alien disguise suit that gives him special powers when he wears it.

On the plus side it's pretty short. Otherwise I wouldn't have bothered finishing it.

It isn't funny either.
 
some excellent non-fiction books

My Experiments with Truth - M.K. Gandhi
Leaving Microsoft to Change the World - John Wood
Unbowed - Wangari Maathai
The Call of Service - Robert Coles

good fiction
A Lesson Before Dying - Ernest Gaines
 
Plechazunga said:
Halfway through it. I quite like Jacobson's books - Kalooki Nights was really good - but I think this one's pretty mediocre. The main character's not very interesting and the dialogue's not generally believable at all, they all sound like Jacobson pontificating. I'm finding the Jew-obsession fairly tedious, so I can't imagine what it's like for a non-Jewish reader. Above all it's not particularly funny... I think I've laughed properly once. He's at his best when he's funny.

Seems like this Booker was a sorry-you-haven't-had-one-yet prize, a bit like Giggsy's Player of the Season, or my Redcafe Lifetime Achievement Award.
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Finished it now. It's really not very good... the protagonist is about the least interesting or vividly evoked I've ever come across, it's not funny, and virtually nothing happens. Aside from that, it's great...
 
I was reading a piece about what books to look out for this year, and I have to say I can't wait to read this:

the-pale-king-cover.jpg


Out in April. I think Pillory is the only other DFW fan on here that I know of.
 
Redjazz said:
You might like Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster (1997) by Jon Krakauer. Krakauer abstains from the morbid to focus on the mistakes made. He is especially scathing of the commercial agencies, their willingness to escort (at up to 65,000 dollars a pop) rich Jack and Jills-wth gourmet picnicking and their own personal sherpa slaves- up the hill irrespective of experience and condition. Appropriately he doesn't treat the high-altitude climber with the reverential awe and veneration that quite frequently marks works of this kind.
To summit Everest requires physical endurance and mental fortitude and while Krakauer lauds these qualities, he rightly points out that the motivations behind what are essentially personal crusades are inspired not to much by nobility of purpose as the selfish need to quell some personal fixation. The mountain isn't there as an affront to mankind; it will not be vanquished because some fella plants his feet atop of it.
I was at Everest Base Camp a few years ago. It doubles as both a perma-village and a dump for discarded equipment\gear from all previous climbs. I can confirm, first-hand, the deleterious impact that thin air has on body and mind. I recall staggering around trying to educate my feet to work in a manner that resembled walking but finding the effort a difficult one. At 5000m, I felt like a drunk with a severe hangover suffering through a bad flu. I also recall not being able to sleep; in fact for the 3 or 4 days I was above 4000m, I can't recall sleeping at all. Low oxygen levels makes it difficult to pitch your breathing to slumber mode.
Like Krakauer, I can appreciate the endurance needed to push for the summit. But with high altitude climbs there are uncontrollable elements, quite apart from the technical aspects of climbing, such as the uncertain impact of oxygen deprivation and freakish weather systems that renders the word 'tragic' a misnomer when applied to climbing accidents
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Thanks mate - I've just got this so will begin reading when I get my exams out of the way. Also very interesting regarding your own visit to Everest - It's something I'm truly fascinated by and can't wait to read this. I'm starting climbing as a hobby in the summer.
 
"Gypsy Boy" a personal account of being born into and growing up as an "English" Roma gypsy written by Mikey Walsh is a fascinating true story that will make you both laugh and cry, a brilliant insight into a secret world. I still find myself thinking about poor Mikey's ordeals since finishing this remarkable book almost three months ago.
 
Nialler said:
"Gypsy Boy" a personal account of being born into and growing up as an "English" Roma gypsy written by Mikey Walsh is a fascinating true story that will make you both laugh and cry, a brilliant insight into a secret world. I still find myself thinking about poor Mikey's ordeals since finishing this remarkable book almost three months ago.
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Thanks for that...I bought it a few months ago but haven't got round to reading it yet. I'll make sure I do now.
 
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