What are you currently reading? v2

[Waterfall]

currently reading "on the road" and wondering why it's taken me 5+ years to actually pick up one of kerouac's books, as i'm really enjoying it. planning to sink my teeth into 'the brothers karamazov' over christmas. dostoevsky

What would you say you're enjoying about "On the Road"? Is it the fuck-you spirit of adventure, the desperate search for "meaning", the somewhat romanticised Guthrie-esque portrayal of the American underclass, or just Neil Cassady (aka whatever his alias is in the novel) being fucking mental and awesome?

Good luck with the Dostoevsky. I remember reading a novella of his last year about a man trying to make sense of his wife's apparently unexplained suicide. It was not exactly a lighthearted read.

 

[moshforjesus]

There's just a charming naivety in the way its written, plus I have wanderlust, I really want to go travelling but it won't be happening for several years for a couple of reasons; so I guess I could just be romanticising whilst I'm reading it.

I love Dostoevsky, although he's not for the faint of heart, for sure. You should give Crime & Punishment a go at some point, not much happens for the first 100 pages or so but it's a real page turner after that. I was amazed at how dynamic and readable something written in the 1860s was, but yeah, it's pretty dark and I guess that would put a lot of people off... got me hooked though!

 

[alasdairm]

a friend left this at my house and i picked it up:

looked like mediocre airport fantasy but it's pretty good. it's first of a trilogy so now i have to get the other two

alasdair

finished that and moved onto this:



it was just as good. next up, the final book of the trilogy:



alasdair

 

[felix]

Then:

Right? :D

 

[Waterfall]

I love Dostoevsky, although he's not for the faint of heart, for sure. You should give Crime & Punishment a go at some point, not much happens for the first 100 pages or so but it's a real page turner after that. I was amazed at how dynamic and readable something written in the 1860s was, but yeah, it's pretty dark and I guess that would put a lot of people off... got me hooked though!

Yeah I read Crime and Punishment a few years ago. Can't really say I "enjoyed it", like you say dark as fuck, but I thought it was fascinating in its straightforward portrayal of psychopathy/social alienation, which hadn't really been done before. If you're into your Russian lit, do you like Chekov? Similarly nihilistic but much more of a sense of humour. The Government Inspector is laugh-out-loud in places in its satirisation of contemporary social mores, and Gogol does a similar thing in Dead Solus.

 

[alasdairm]

Then:

Right? :D

you know, i have tried a couple of times. perhaps, in honor of his passing, i'll revisit the sci fi. would you suggest starting with 'consider phlebas'?

alasdair

 

[Allein]

Just read this :-

Disappointing, I guess some people were keen to hear about his forays into the evils of drugs, I found it rather boring TBH

 

[Vurtual]

Just rereading Blindsight by Peter Watts. An excellent first contact scifi story full of cool ideas and speculative science - lots about psychology, consciousness, bit of transhumanism - quite dark in places (might have mentioned it upthread). Reading it again cos he's just released a sequel called echopraxia and i couldn't remember the details (i take comfort from my memory going that i can reread all my books (if i remember where they are)).

[alaisdair: i'd say consider phlebas is a good intro - was the first iain m banks i read and i loved it (very well written) (or maybe it was 'use of weapons' i read first - both are cool). EDIT: no it was use of weapons i was thinking of - i read it first though consider phlebas is earlier (they're not really sequential); but i prefer it - a more moving plot somehow (though i'm not trusting my memory now (felix is use of weapons the one with the dual plot structure?)].

 

[Waterfall]

Any Will Self fans amongst EADDers? His chief themes are psychiatry/mental illness, drug abuse and the hypocrisy of bourgeois English middle-class values, which I feel might resonate with this community.

Would reccommend Dorian as a starting-off point. Basically it's a reimagining of Wilde's Dorian Grey set in the 1980s gay scence. Dorian seems to be immune to the HIV crisis and rampant cocaine abuse, whilst the video installation of him decays and starts to show the severe symptoms of AIDS. It's dark, funny and socially incisive.

Just wanted to bring the tone down after all this uplifting Stephen Fry shit.

 

[felix]

you know, i have tried a couple of times. perhaps, in honor of his passing, i'll revisit the sci fi. would you suggest starting with 'consider phlebas'?

Oh my god yes. Do it chronologically. You might not be blown away by it or the next one (The Player of Games), but I can give you my personal guarantee that you will want to become a citizen of The Culture by time you've finished the third one (Use of Weapons). After that you have Excession and Inversions and The State of the Art and so on, and you have no idea how fucking jealous I am of you going into this anew. :D

Come back to me after a couple of them and we can talk about drug glands and Minds and all the rest of it. Trust me on this one, ali.


edit:

oh yeah, ali. The Bridge is, as I'm sure you know, the Banksy connoisseur's favourite, As it is mine. Use of Weapons is the equivalent on the sci-fi side of things. Work that apprenticeship and when you get there you will know what all the Banks fans have been talking about all these years.

 

[stylish_nihilist]

"Acid Test: LSD, Ecstacy, and the Power to Heal"...only half of the way through it but it's intriguing. Normally a Bukowski and Vonnegut guy myself. Check out "Player Piano" by Vonnegut...the first 30 pages are kind of a boring backdrop but it picks up hard. Slaugtherhouse-Five will take you on a hard trip without drugs.

 

[Septonn]

The Crackup by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

I was in high need of some hipsterpoints so bought myself this book. I had only read The Great Gatsby before this one and I wasn't aware of the man's rocky career and early passing but an interesting read nonetheless.

 

[lurching]

 

[ColtDan]

Haha

 

[Wenlock]

Just bought myself The Maze Runner series of books. Just started on the first, OK thus far. Thought I'd get the books and give them a go as I watched the film, of the same name (which was pretty good) and mainly because the second film isn't even in production yet.

 

[BigG]

"Curveball" by Bob Drogin.

About the Iraqi defector who went to Germany and told them he was a Chemical Engineer who helped build the mobile bio warfare labs that were the basis of the US (and UK) claim that Saddam had WMDs.

Anyway turns out he was a total Walter Mitty who was lying his arse off and the CIA knew it....but invaded Iraq anyway.

MOTO - why let the truth get in the way of a good war?

 

[maxalfie]

Rock Bottom - Pamela Des Barres.
Tales of excess, of wild and sexy nights on the road, of famous names behaving badly.

 

[Sadie]

I actually choked laughing when I read that! Class!!!

 

[felix]

The Anvil of the Psyche - Thomas Sheridan

That made me do a double take. I thought you were talking about this guy:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Downfall-Al...24431&sr=8-1&keywords=downfall+tommy+sheridan

Just read this recently. Written by a former friend with an axe to grind, but still, after doing some other research, I tend to believe most of it. Tommy Sheridan is a bit of a fucking sociopath who single-handedly ruined a political party, along with a few lives along the way. Total arsehole.

 

[Allein]

I read Moab Is My Washpot years ago. I can't remember too much about it- not sure if that's a reflection of the book or not; most likely due to my poor memory tbf

I've read a few of his books and always enjoyed them, I think with this one he wanted to be open about his cocaine abuse but it just wasnt that interesting. He has an understandably narrow view of drug use and is under the impression he was living on the edge, he quite clearly was not