What are you reading now? vers. "So I don't end up being a fucking waffle waitress"

[BREAKaBEAT]

^ Doesn't make it a bad read.

breaka: I think you might like it. I finished it tonight and was slightly disappointed until I realised that noone's autobiography is ever going to be entertaining or provide closure.

Thats a pretty fucking clever realisation.

 

[lil angel15]

If that's your interest as of now hunt out a movie called Waking Life.

A great look at little snippets from lots of different fields of philosophy. It's fun too. May be a little rough on the head if you watch whilst coming down and drinking like I did.

Sweet as fuck animation as well (same style/director of A Scanner Darkly).

Thanks for the suggestion LP

I may just take on your suggestion and make sure I'm coming up at the time rather than coming down.

 

[hoptis]

If you can find "In Praise of Idleness"... it's a series of essays Bertrand Russell wrote about work and society I loved when I was younger.

 

[lostpunk5545]

Thanks for the suggestion LP

I may just take on your suggestion and make sure I'm coming up at the time rather than coming down.

That's definitely a good idea

 

[ayjay]

I read books I hate until the end. I don't think I've ever discarded a book I've started. Ok, there was that one time when I tried to read Rainbow 6 by Tom Clancy. I'm still having nightmares. Or boremares anyways...

Sad to say I've got a few I couldn't finish - and embarrassing to admit but they are all classics:

Don Quixote, by Cervantes. Said to be the first modern novel. Un-fucken-readable (by me anyway)

Nostromo, by Joseph Conrad. Actually I only picked it up because the title is the same as the ship in Alien. But it is too dense and long - lost interest.

Mill on the Floss - George Elliot. I just get bored with period dramas with no buckling of swash. Give me Dumas any day.

I actually DID finish Godel Escher and Bach (Hofstadter) - but it took 3 goes over 15 years. I reckon I am one of about 17 people on the planet who have finished this one

 

[vurtomatic]

I thought Waking Life's animation and style was great for coming down! The same director, Linklater, did Before Sunrise/Sunset, and Dazed and Confused as well. Waking Life and Scanner Darkly was animated using a technology called rotoscoping. Wired had a good article on Linklater and the fiming/editing process of Scanner Darkly about 2-3 years back. IIRC he swore never to do an animated film again.

Finished Bester's The Stars My Destination and Clarke's Childhood's End, back into Abercrombie's The Blade Itself, after which I have Before They Are Hanged lined up.

It's true, they used to write less (generally speaking) and better in the old days.

 

[BREAKaBEAT]

We need to talk about Kevin.

It is the first book I have ever read that keeps me reading word to word. Fantasically crafted. If only every book read like this, I would read forever.

 

[vurtomatic]

Craig Russell's adaptation of Sandman - The Dream Hunters, issue 1 of 6.

I really, really, really, miss reading Sandman. Even 12 years after issue 75, reading this adaptation today is like coming back to the metaphorical home. It sucks when a story fills up so much of your life for so long.

 

[Raz]

I just finished reading The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas....I love Christos; I don't think this is the best thing he's ever written, but taken as a series of character pieces it's great! He is really talented at honestly depicting Australian culture, warts and all..


plus did I mention I love him?

 

[CHiLD-0F-THE-BEAT]

I've just stared Porno by Irvine Welsh - the author who wrote Trainspotting. I have seen the aforementioned film once or twice, both in a drunken and or fucked up haze so I really don't remember it too well. Memories are hazy to say the least. This means I'm coming into this supposed sequel fresh-faced and relatively new to all of the characters which makes for interesting times.
Each chapter is written from the perspective of one of the main characters, and anyone who's read this will tell you it's a fucking chore to read through some of the Welsh or Scottish prose as it's all written phonetically.

That said, the writing is beautifully descriptive with just enough finess. I like the writing so much that even the horrid squalor they all live in holds some other-worldly delicate fascination to me.

I'm really enjoying it, even though it makes me throw the book down and humph at my lack of understanding of some of the broad slang used, and occasionally curl my lip with disgust over some of the scenes depicted. It's a very reactionary book and for that I love it.

 

[ayjay]

I just finished reading The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas....I love Christos; I don't think this is the best thing he's ever written, but taken as a series of character pieces it's great! He is really talented at honestly depicting Australian culture, warts and all..


plus did I mention I love him?

I'm keen to read this one - I really love his work too (although maybe Raz you were referring to the actual person????). I must say I was pissed off with the review in the weekend paper - A SYNOPSIS IS NOT A REVIEW!! and inevitable contains spoilers - luckily I managed to avert my eyes before I read too much.

Dead Europe was ace - although my partner found it to be too dark - looking forward to being slapped

Oh and to actually add content to the thread - currently reading The Affluent Society by J K Galbraith. It's a hoot that something written in 1958 could be so relevant.

Prior to that read "Music of the spheres" by someone I can't remember - an examination of the way music and physics started being pretty much the same thing, and then diverged over the centuries - pretty interesting; also sheds light on modern Western conceptions of magic too.

 

[up all night]

A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

Genius. The story follows the farcical existence of Ignatius Reilly, an obese 30 year old who still lives at home with his mother and occasionally masturbates thinking about his dead dog. He spends his days either watching movies, "What is this? These people should be gassed! This movie is a total abortion!" or sitting in his room writing what he believes to be the most important piece of literature ever released. He is disgusting, obnoxious and absolutely fucking hilarious.

This book made me laugh out loud repeatedly. The uncontrolled snorting type of laughter that you don't really want to do on public transport but you can't help yourself. And it's not just base, slapstick comedy (although it does at times have a Fawlty Towers vibe which is awesome) but Ignatius is a truly witty character and he is surrounded by equally funny people. The police officer who is so bad at his job his boss makes him wear costumes and hang out in public toilets to try and nab 'characters', the well-dressed gay man who Ignatius tries to start a political party with, the exotic dancer who wants to train her parrot to undress her etc.

Ignatius is an abortion of a man. He is impossible to like, and yet hating him is so much fun it becomes something akin to love. I think comedy is the hardest genre to write well, and this is one of the funniest books I have ever read.

The only sad part of the story is the truth behind it. The author wrote it in 1967 and committed suicide in 1969. The book wasn't published until 1980, when his mother found a carbon copy in the attic and set about getting it published. It won a Pulitzer in 1981. All I could think when I finished reading it was how sad it was we would never get to read more of Ignatius J. Reilly.

 

[up all night]

I finished The Virgin Suicides the other day. I have wanted to read it for ages because the movie is kickass but it was reading the author's other book, Middlesex, that made me buy this one. The story revolves around the suicides of five girls in the same family. If you've seen the movie, which I'm guessing most people have by now, Sofia Coppola did a really excellent job of creating the atmosphere and tone of the book. She's also kept some of the most powerful passages in the book, such as, 'We knew the girls were really women in disguise, that they understood love, and even death, and that our job was merely to create the noise that seemed to fascinate them. If you liked the movie, the book is worth reading.

 

[vanth]

How was Middlesex?

 

[Jabberwocky]

i bought L. Ron Hubbards - The Invaders Plan for some lulz and an insight into some of his scientology

 

[Raz]

I'm keen to read this one - I really love his work too (although maybe Raz you were referring to the actual person????)

A little from column a, a little from column b...

I first came across his work when I read Loaded, and was blown away by it because it was like nothing I'd ever read before. Then I met Christos a couple of times when I was doing community radio a bazillion years ago, and fully developed a mad crush on him because he is that rare thing in the gay world, which is an attractive intelligent independently-minded man who has his own ideas about the world and is genuinely a really lovely guy.

I've bumped into him once or twice over the years and he always remembers me from the crappy interviews I did with him years and years ago. I have heaps of respect for that man and I find him quite inspiring both on a personal and professional level.

But anyway, this isn't the Christos Tsiolkas love-in thread, so...I just finished reading The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini. It's the story of a priveleged Afghani man named Amir, and how he becomes a man.

What I liked about it was that for me, it's the first real view I've had of Afghani culture outside of the bullshit we get fed through the commercial media, and that was quite interesting. It's well written, and very involving, but ultimately I was dis-satisfied with it. His whole life, Amir is surrounded by beautiful noble people who sacrifice everything for him, and he is a completely self-absorbed cowardly shit through all of it. There were times when this book made me really angry, because he has people in his life who take on all of his burdens for him, and all he can ever do is feel sorry for himself. He's really antisympatico. I would recommend reading it for the view of a different culture, and because the other characters in the book will make you love them, but Amir himself I just wanted to fucking die horribly for most of the book.

 

[up all night]

Vanth,

Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides

Written by the same guy who wrote The Virgin Suicides, Middlesex has long been on my list of books to read. I wasn't disppointed.

It's about a hermaphrodite (although calling him that seems to miss the point entirely) who believed (as did his family) he was a normal girl, until puberty struck and things started going awry. It's an amazingly tender portrayal of someone struggling with the same issues everyone goes through in those horrible early teen years, and even though his exact issues aren't something most of us could relate to, the feelings and situations feel so familiar. The thing I liked the most about the book is that it's not really focused on how the narrator, Cal, comes to terms with his condition, as the book ends very soon after he finds out the truth about himself, but it delves into the lives of each generation in the family. As Cal points out, all the things that happened way before he existed, way before his parents existed, all contributed to the present. It's almost like a really long Life's a Rich Tapestry lesson, but by including not only the details of Cal's life, but that of his parents and grandparents, this wonderfully epic story is created.

The character of Cal is a masterful creation - funny, insightful, flawed, curious - everything you want in a narrator. The gender issue is just a platform for questioning all the social borders that were once so stringent and now waver, sometimes disappearing entirely. Books like this are why I love books.

Raz: Yeah, but then it was written by someone who is essentially an American. I liked the book, but I can't see it as an accurate reflection of... anything. It's fiction, and sometimes disliking the main character keeps you reading.

I'm reading Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung: The Work of a Legendary Critic by Lester Bangs. This man was a bit of a genius. If Hunter S. had some sort of gonzo grasp on journalism, Bangs can teach some truly pure music criticism. Every article of his I've read in this book so far makes me think, "What the fuck Rolling Stone 2008. What the fuck?'

 

[Raz]

Raz: Yeah, but then it was written by someone who is essentially an American. I liked the book, but I can't see it as an accurate reflection of... anything.

Really? I assumed he had actually at some point actually been in Afghanistan, or at least had family there......I didn't know otherwise. That kind of ruins it a bit actually, to think that it's just some guy's conjecture of what it would be like to come from that environment...

 

[IXinX]

Currently I'm reading Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh and I must say it is reinvigorating my passion for all things literary.

My interest in this book which i've heard of in passing in my younger years came about from watching an episode of the Brideshead Revisited BBC TV series that airs on ABC2 on Sunday evenings. I found it so quaint (and queer) that I could not but help to obtain a copy of the original text that the series was based upon. I am currently devouring it with a voracious appetite, digging into its ethereal worlds of English countrysides and Oxford quadrangles with aplomb on my weekdaily commute to work.

It fascinates me, this most regular yet surprising of texts. I twitter when reading it alone in my bedroom at night as the passages of high falutin' humour and sardonic/dry English wit tickles my funnybone rightly so.

There's many things about this book that are infinitely endearing; how it canonises our younger years of epicene fantasy, how we fall into reminiscing on past misadventures with a delicious irony and how we skirt around the possibility of obtaining the unattainable only to let it slip from our fingers in our older years.

It's themed along a story very similar to mine, albeit different English, different setting and different characters. Oh how glorious it is to find a mirror of one's heartstories in a book written in a grandiloquent language redolent of Austen's flowery prose style.



ps

it's basically about two wannabee intellectual male students who toy with the idea of being fags during their time in College.

 

[fortehlulz]

I often read several books at once.

At the moment I'm re-reading 'Grendel', and reading 'The Consolodations of Philosophy' and Fidel Castro's memoirs.