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Read Any Good Books Lately?

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The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. It took me a bloody long time to finish, eleven years to be precise, but I got there in the end :deadx: .

Those long, words can be so tedious to look up.... :rolleyes:

That's why I much prefer The Magic Pudding. That's more my style.

 

Aah, 'The Magic Pudding', Great book, I still have my copy, yet I haven't read it in maybe 35+years, I remember my dad reading it to me as a child, good story, so nice to see someone else has heard of it too :) .

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A book about......................MARYPORT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

This reminds me of the book about Lavatories in Yorkshire by Edna Paper.

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A book about......................MARYPORT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

This reminds me of the book about Lavatories in Yorkshire by Edna Paper.

 

Then theres 'Daydreaming' by Edna Clouds.

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A book about......................MARYPORT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

This reminds me of the book about Lavatories in Yorkshire by Edna Paper.

 

Then theres 'Daydreaming' by Edna Clouds.

 

 

Babysitting by Justin Casey Howells?

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With a few million others this summer I expect, I've been reading and enjoying Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy. Have nearly finished his second book, The Girl Who Played with Fire. Imagine working so hard on three books, delivering the lot together, then falling down dead before you could collect the earnings and all the tributes etc. What a bummer.

 

Sorry Harry, took time to get around to it, but thanks for the recommendation.

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I haven't read it, and suspect its more pictures than words, but this gave me a chuckle when spotted it in a local bookshop...

 

gaudi-the-complete-buildings.jpg

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Currently reading The Broken Window by Jeffery Deaver. I have quite a lot of reading to catch up on, but considering that I no longer have a job, I should get through the lot in double quick time!

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Currently reading The Broken Window by Jeffery Deaver. I have quite a lot of reading to catch up on, but considering that I no longer have a job, I should get through the lot in double quick time!

 

I haven't read it, just looked through it... :unsure:

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Currently reading The Broken Window by Jeffery Deaver. I have quite a lot of reading to catch up on, but considering that I no longer have a job, I should get through the lot in double quick time!

 

I haven't read it, just looked through it... :unsure:

Sincerely hope you didn't stick your head in too far - jagged shards of glass can be lethal! :lol:

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If you're looking for a Christmas present for cantankerous old Uncle Bill and can't face the chunky sweater/Party Seven, you could do worse than Rob Young's overview of British folk/folk-rock, Electric Eden. The only trouble with these whopping tomes is that you end up buying half the albums referenced. Unless you're one of those freeloading types interweb freedom fighters who begrudges Anne Briggs or Nic Jones a few pennies for their sterling efforts, of course.

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Just polished off half of David Gaffney's The Half Life of Songs on the train today. Laugh out loud funny, really clever and full of surprises. There's some serious rubbish around when it comes to 'microfiction' i.e. very short short stories, but David Gaffney is an honourable exception.

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Babs the Impossible by Sarah Grand. While it lacks a mature vernacular for effective expression of abstract ideas. The writer tries hard, and it's evident in a very whimsical tale about a small English Hamlet that has optioned not to add a rail road through it's lands, and consequently missed the industrialization and has fallen by the wayside. A Feminist, Grand writes and describes 5 different country noble women, who cope with boredom in very different ways, economic stagnation and perhaps genetic stagnation, as all able men have the ability to escape the depressing but beautiful village. The story is told through the eyes, of Babs (Lorrane) Kingconstance, a tempermental child who hasn't coped with personal stagnation and stunted intellectal growth. She however applies herself to be a hellion girl and indicates a very strong intelligence, as she devises ways to make life hell for everyone to relieve her boredom... including her glutton dimwitted mother heiress of the Kingconstance fortune, her suicidal aunt who is also called , a loony bachelorette Miss Spice, who entertains herself with unhealthy delusions of fancy in everyday things and exists in a wonderful but unrealistic fantasy world, etc etc etc.

 

The book was charming in a quaint way. It could be a parody of Victorian-Edwardian era romance novels, by describing in limited vocabulary, but very descrptive minute ways what goes through the minds of women who are bored housewives suck in the boonies, before the age of mass media, television, internet, Sex toys, and recreational drugs, or Tai-bo palates.

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Babs the Impossible by Sarah Grand. While it lacks a mature vernacular for effective expression of abstract ideas. The writer tries hard, and it's evident in a very whimsical tale about a small English Hamlet that has optioned not to add a rail road through it's lands, and consequently missed the industrialization and has fallen by the wayside. A Feminist, Grand writes and describes 5 different country noble women, who cope with boredom in very different ways, economic stagnation and perhaps genetic stagnation, as all able men have the ability to escape the depressing but beautiful village. The story is told through the eyes, of Babs (Lorrane) Kingconstance, a tempermental child who hasn't coped with personal stagnation and stunted intellectal growth. She however applies herself to be a hellion girl and indicates a very strong intelligence, as she devises ways to make life hell for everyone to relieve her boredom... including her glutton dimwitted mother heiress of the Kingconstance fortune, her suicidal aunt who is also called , a loony bachelorette Miss Spice, who entertains herself with unhealthy delusions of fancy in everyday things and exists in a wonderful but unrealistic fantasy world, etc etc etc.

 

The book was charming in a quaint way. It could be a parody of Victorian-Edwardian era romance novels, by describing in limited vocabulary, but very descrptive minute ways what goes through the minds of women who are bored housewives suck in the boonies, before the age of mass media, television, internet, Sex toys, and recreational drugs, or Tai-bo palates.

Mmm, on reflection, if it doesn't have a mature vernacular for effective expression of abstract ideas I think I may give it a miss. That's the first thing I look for in a book.

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Mature vernacular of another kind abounds in Me Cheeta, the tome purporting to be the autobiography of the famous chimpanzee. I've skirted round reading this but eventually wilted under the pressure of others telling me I'd love it. Started that today and around the point that Cheeta called the late Rex Harrison an "irredeemable c*nt" I decided I loved this book!

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Shit My Dad Says - I got this yesterday and have finished it today - I quite often wish I was someone else, and this week, I wish I was this guy's dad. He's a legend.

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Currently working my way through The Forgetting, a 'biography' of our knowledge and understanding of Alzheimer's Disease. Highly readable, highly recommended for those intent on studying 'form' of dead pool candidates. Though I was a bit miffed to find that at the halfway point the whole books simply starts again!

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Seeing as out-of-copyright books cost nowt on Kindle, in the last couple of months I've waded my way through Frankenstein, Jane Eyre, Nostromo, Pride and Prejudice, Madame Bovary and Great Expectations. Before I start speaking like some archaic lord I'd quite like to read something from the modern world, but at £10 a pop it just doesn't seem worth it. Amazon needs to look at its pricing structure, not that I resent living authors making a decent crust.

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Given the tonnage of writing talent herabouts there's probably the potential of cash earnings for some, should they wish to try. This might be helpful. I've been dipping into it of late.

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Riders Of The Chariot by Patrick White. I couldn't describe it any better than what it says on the back cover:

 

Through the crumbling ruins of the once splendid Xanadu Miss Hare wanders, half-mad, yet seeming less alien among the encroaching wildlife than among the inhabitants of Saraparilla. In the wilderness she stumbles firstly upon a half-caste aborigine and then a Jewish refugee. They each place themselves in the care of a local washerwoman. Existing in a world of pervasive evil, all four have been independently damaged and discarded. Now in one shared vision they find themselves bound together, understanding the possibility of redemption.

 

What an excellent read! I think I can see things more clearly now. :lol:

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Just finished American Psycho. Damn fine book, about 1/3 viscous murder, 1/3 venturing into the mind of a psychopath, and 1/3 1980's businessmen talking about business cards and making dirty jokes.

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Matterhorn - Karl Marlantes. Brilliant book - powerful blood and guts Vietnam war story, starts with marine discovering a leech has found its way in to his todger, stopping him peeing with no immediate medical help available.

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Grunch Road. Free to read online.

 

Not read it myself yet like, but it's by one of that growing tribe of Authors Who are Also Deathlisters, so it deserves our support.

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Just finished Anathem by Neal Stephenson. Some stamina is needed to enjoy its 900 pages, but it's by far the best fantasy I've read in years.

 

regards,

Hein

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Beautiful Losers by Leonard Cohen. A trippy account of an unconventional ménage à trois. Nothing is quite as it seems. One of the lead characters - "F" - transpires possibly not to actually exist at all, other than in the imagination of the other two (one of whom turns out to have been dead all along). A Mohawk god/spirit/thing features prominently, for no reason at all as far as I could fathom. Cohen also finds the time to regale his readers with rambling accounts of bisexual shenanigans.

 

I'd always wondered if the great man's novel writing matched up to his music. Now I know. 3/10 and that's giving him the benefit of the doubt.

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