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  • EADD Moderators: Pissed_and_messed | Shinji Ikari

What are you currently reading? v2

Got to get me that one.

Slaughterhouse Five for me today after forgetting to read it on the advice of a couple of BLers earlier this week and also my disability tutor. Also Canterbury Tales. I'm getting right into my Medieval lit and the set up of the story appeals to me greatly on a kind of socio-economic spectrum, if that makes sense. But that's mostly cos I have a seminar on it tomorrow. I do enjoy Medieval lit though and got called 'a big geek' for wanting to study further in it by my English PHD ex-girlfriend.

Was proud when I had Schroedinger's girlfriend over the other night and she was perusing my bookshelves for summat to read outside of what she usually would. I have a lot of books, I dunno how I choose them but certain things just kinda appeal. I wanted her to read If On a Winter's Night a Traveller but she went for On the Road cos I figured it'd appeal to her. She's mostly into the Jane Austen-y stuff that I Ok drugs will continue post later
 
Made it 2 hours into The Picture Of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.

This is a record for the furthest i have made into a book or audio book since i finished David Attenboroughs' autobiography over a year ago. This book really is most excellent, and the guy who reads it is fucking perfect. The style of highly opinionated language could easily rub off on me. The narrator reads the difficult to comprehend passages quickly, and the straightforward ones slowly. I guess it is the perfect way to read the book, seeing as it is deliberately full of paradox after paradox, or epigram after epigram, which i believe is the correct literary term.

This section in particular, i cannot get my head around:

"How dreadful!" cried Lord Henry. "I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect."

"I do not understand you," said Sir Thomas, growing rather red.

"I do, Lord Henry," murmured Mr. Erskine, with a smile.

"Paradoxes are all very well in their way... ." rejoined the baronet.

"Was that a paradox?" asked Mr. Erskine. "I did not think so. Perhaps it was. Well, the way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test reality we must see it on the tight rope. When the verities become acrobats, we can judge them."

"Dear me!" said Lady Agatha, "how you men argue! I am sure I never can make out what you are talking about."

If anyone wants the mp3 i can email it to them, i presume emails can take a 350 MB attachment ?
 
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snolly said:
I wanted her to read If On a Winter's Night a Traveller
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Is that actually any good? I've only ever read the first page or two and just found it all painfully smug and pretentious. I understand that the book is held in high esteem for lit. theory reasons (which is how I've encountered it) but is it actually any fun to read?

snolly said:
[...] stuff that I Ok drugs will continue post later
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LOL :D


The 2 books I've read most recently have been George Gissing - New Grub Street and W. Somerset Maugham - Of Human Bondage.

I loved the Gissing so much that I went on a bit of a splurge on Amazon and bought another 3 or 4 of his novels.

Of Human Bondage is beautiful and everyone should read it <3

I think both books will be revisited at least once in the future.
 
*dharmabum* said:
Is that actually any good? I've only ever read the first page or two and just found it all painfully smug and pretentious. I understand that the book is held in high esteem for lit. theory reasons (which is how I've encountered it) but is it actually any fun to read?
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It is good, in my opinion. It's very 'meta' (hate that word) and the appreciation for the book, if it's your kinda thing, grows as you piece it together. Closest I could compare it to is Nabokov's Pale Fire. There are little threads and strings that tie together and it's definitely one for repeated reading. But yeah in my opinion it's a very good book and it covers a whole load of topics as well as having a more traditional narrative running underneath and engages with the reader directly, which I found interesting. It needs more than one read though, I think.
 
Yes I've found that direct engagement with the reader intensely irritating! I guess I'll give it another try at some point
 
Haha I guess it takes all sorts. I found it fairly novel (ha) but I can understand it'd irritate others and it does get confusing.
 
So, Schroedinger's Girlfriend, she exists in a state of uncertainty until you open her box upon which she collapses into a definite state? Have I got that right?


Sorry :)
 
sub21lime said:
I'm currently reading "The Girl Who Played With Fire"
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Random fact: when author Stig Larsson died, it turned out he had bequeathed most of his resources [millions of millions of $$$ from the royalties of this unexpected smash hit] to a small trotskyist (ex-council communist) party, Socialistiska Partiet, in northern Sweden.
http://www.arbetarmakt.se/english.html (historical archive)
 
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JedTheHumanoid said:
Much to my surprise Skagboys was an unexpected delight... Highly recommended.
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JedTheHumanoid, I'm with you on this one. A surprisingly good read, and much like Trainspotting (+ some of his other major works) this proved more than just sensational writing. It's strong point lies in provoking some pretty intense soul-searching, but also a lot of strolling down childhood and early adolescence memory lane (in a good way). Some parts of the story possibly felt more like conveyor belt devices, chugging things along in order to move on to the next part of the book (obligatory parts about going eurorail typical of the era felt a bit like it was written more out of duty than functioning as some structurally necessary part needed for character development).

I highly recommend listening to the London Real interview with him on Skagboys, provides some interesting background tidbits on how the book came to be: http://www.londonreal.tv/episodes/irvine-welsh-trainspotting-skagboys
 
Shambles said:
I think you'll find he got roasted just as much as any other reporter does here, MDB. Only reason I gave him the time of day was after speaking to him via PM a bit. He put in a lot more time and effort engaging with members than any other reporter has. He actually behaved like a normal member in many ways (albeit one that only posted in his own thread). I made it clear to him that I had my suspicions that it was all gonna end up in the traditional hatchet job but he went out of his way to answer his critics and give his own views on issues and it just so happened that some of what he said - publicly and via PM - convinced me that he was being genuine. Or at least as genuine as any reporter looking for contacts to provide info and opinion to fit their piece can be. But mainly I think it was just the amount of time he spent replying to people - made it apparent he's a person as well as a journalist. Never known another journo who bothered to do any of that stuff. Perhaps they could learn a thing or two...

(and the book really is a decent read)
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Yeah, drugs 2.0 turned out to be a pretty comprehensive (and accessible) depiction of the development of the psychedelic/hacker/rc/mafia/globalization/cut-throat chinese companies development of the last 90 years. I actually read the whole thing during my first LSZ trip, quite fitting, I felt. Also a tribute to the state of acceptably high cognitive functioning coupled with a childlike enthusiastic curiosity which I think is typical for LSZ. Brainy and silly. I hope his publisher manages to get this translated into other languages, I think it could be a Europe-wide pocket book hit in that case actually.
 
knock said:
ex-council communist, now trotskyist? What happened to progress?
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Yeah, good question. They actually kept up an impressive level of activity (with infoshops in many middle-sized Swedish towns) well into the 80's, but never managed to make any major inroads. There was never a tradition of council communism in Sweden, really; a somewhat strong independent anarcho-syndicalist union absorbed most anti-authoritarian marxists, and when that organization started to turn to reformism in the 50's and 60's, the authoritarian alphabet soup-left were much better equipped at absorbing non-conformist youth and wildcat strikers in the forests and mines in deep Norrland than some newly hatched outfit translating the works of Maurice brinton, Rosa Luxemburg, and Anton Pannekoek. They did leave a legacy behind though, with the organization Folkmakt (People's Power) formed in the early 90's, a nation-wide organization taking their inspiration from Stig Larssons old KAF organization and groups like Red Action and Class War Federation alike.
 
Jeez you don't mean UK Red Action surely? From the 80's? SWP breakaway? That was me and about six others.

So I'm guessing you don't mean them.
 
were you an swp breakaway? I find swp very cultish. They're surely backed by the state because they keep on keeping on and they 're the ones with the placards. I'll have a listen to Mr. Welsh, nice one for that. I must go read instead of blthering online
 
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