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What book are you currently reading?

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I'm reading this....It's beautiful but is taking me ages....

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The Three-Cornered World
Natsume Soseki

In the award-winning translation by Alan Turney

‘Walking up a mountain track, I fell to thinking.
Approach everything rationally, and you become harsh. Pole along in the stream of emotions, and you will be swept away by the current. Give free rein to your desires, and you become uncomfortably confined. It is not a very agreeable place to live, this world of ours.’ - Natsume Soseki, The Three-Cornered World.

Opening with the most famous introductory lines in Japanese literature, The Three Cornered World has been cherished by generations of readers as a glittering jewel in the crown of Soseki’s artistic achievement.

A painter escapes to a mountain spa to work in a world free of emotional entanglement, but finds himself fascinated by the alluring mistress at his inn and, inspired by thoughts of Millais’ Ophelia, he imagines painting her. The woman is rumoured to have abandoned her husband and fallen in love with a priest at a nearby temple, but somehow the right expression for the face on her painting eludes the artist . . .

Beautifully written, humorous and filled with bitter-sweet reflections on the human condition, The Three Cornered World was intended as a unique ‘haiku-novel’ with a mood utterly different to anything ever produced in the West. Demonstrating along the way a mastery of everything from Western painting to Chinese literature, Soseki succeeded in an artistic tour-de-force that produced what legendary recording artist Glenn Gould would simply refer to as his ‘favourite book’.

‘Vastly refreshing . . . Soseki doesn’t shrink from seeking and finding exquisite pearls of beauty.’ — Guardian

‘A writer to be judged by the highest standards. His works create, after the fashion of all great writers, a new and completely individual reality.’ – Spectator

‘The greatest Japanese novelist of the modern period.’ – Sunday Telegraph

‘An extraordinarily varied and accomplished writer.’ – Observer

Natsume Soseki (1867-1916) is Japan’s most revered writer, whose works continue to attract vast quantities of critical scrutiny and debate. His influence, both on contemporary Japanese authors and throughout East Asia and beyond, has been immense.
 
I love Philip Pullman and His Dark Materials. He's an amazing writer. I'm glad that his work has been rescued from the ignominy of the children's lit section.

I'm currently reading Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman. Modeled on War and Peace, it's an epic novel with the Siege of Stalingrad at its core. Grossman worked as a reporter on the Eastern Front from 1941-5 so his experiences in that context make the novel particularly realistic. He was one of the first few reporters to visit Treblinka in 1945 and his description of the camps is horrifying in its accuracy and insight. Ultimately uplifting despite its subject matter.
 
Yemen - Travels in Dictionary Land- Tim MacKintosh-Smith

I doubt anyone here will read it but for anyone with an interest in Yemen, Arabic and/or how some words come into being...its a fine read.
 
Courtroom 302: A Year Behind the Scenes in an American Criminal Courthouse

by Steve Bogira

Great read....

Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Chicago-based journalist Bogira's first book is an outstanding journey inside the American criminal justice system that nicely complements last year's Blue Blood, Edward Conlon's inside look at the life of a big-city cop. Like that instant classic, this book—centered on the Cook County Criminal Courthouse, "the biggest and busiest felony courthouse in the nation"—punctures the popular myths engendered by TV shows like Law and Order to provide a balanced view of the realities of the day-to-day, assembly-line grind that marks so much of the process from arrest to final disposition.

The author's ability to gain the trust of so many different participants in the grim drama—judges, public defenders, prosecutors, court officers, prison guards and many defendants—is remarkable, and he often comes close to presenting a more complete picture of the truth of a particular crime than emerge in court in the or in the few cases that actually go to trial. Despite this access, Bogira does not gild the people he describes; even Judge Daniel Locallo, the book's central figure—whose courtroom witnesses racial violence, pathetic thievery, the abused and the mentally incompetent, and who, on balance emerges positively—is portrayed warts and all.

The brilliance of Bogira's insights will lead many to hope that he will follow this debut with proposals to cure the many ills he has diagnosed.

This book is a riveting wake-up call for students who mistake the slick justice of television courtroom dramas for reality
 
I'm reading the Book of General Ignorance.

It's got some basis in a quiz show called QI, but I have never seen it. Stephen Fry and guests. It bangs big holes in quite a lot of what we all learned in school and know as common knowledge.

Bit smug, but riveting. Bought in in the airport, good transport book.
 
Currently reading

"Beat the dealer " by Edward Thorp.

Saw it in the movie " 21" and it looked interesting, so I am giving it a whirl.
 
jude101 said:
I'm reading the Book of General Ignorance.

It's got some basis in a quiz show called QI, but I have never seen it. Stephen Fry and guests. It bangs big holes in quite a lot of what we all learned in school and know as common knowledge.

Bit smug, but riveting. Bought in in the airport, good transport book.
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oh i bought that a while back, it's one of my bathtime reading books along with charlie brooker's screen burn and the daily mash book.

story-book wise i've just bought the satanic verses, but i've already got a john king book, something happened and closing time to go through and i ordered zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance and doors of perception: heaven and hell.

i'm in a proper book collecting mood at the moment. trying to make a bit of a mini-library.
 
Have just read the first 50 pages of "Alentejo Blue" by Monica Ali.

Under no circumstances read this book. It has to be the biggest pile of self consciously "aesthetic" yet clumsily obvious pile of wank I've ever had the misfortune to clap eyes on.

Spent all of Sunday reading "50 Dead Men Walking" by Marty McGartland, which is no literary classic but is an absolutely incredible story, highly reccomended.
 
Na Boa said:
Spent all of Sunday reading "50 Dead Men Walking" by Marty McGartland, which is no literary classic but is an absolutely incredible story, highly reccomended.
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I thought that was also a good read. As is the Michael Stone book.
 
^^^^^^^^^^^
re, mcgartland's book.
I dont want to spoil things for you mate but he was well known in the area i'm from & the book is 75% fantasy.mcgartland was a petty crook,was never in the IRA & he became basically a £10 tout(low level police informer) to avoid going to jail for joyriding & burgularly offences.
It is an enjoyable enough yarn, i read it myself but the reality is a lot less exciting.


Currently reading 'Nor meekly serve my time;the h-block struggle' (L.mcKeown et al)
 
Recommend a good book thread

As an aside to the idiot box movie thread i thought i'd add a book one to.

I'll start with a fiction and a non-fiction

Non-Fiction:
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"Generation Kill" is not just a combat chronicle but an inside look at how people fighting in war actually experience it. It is both an action narrative like "Black Hawk Down" and a detailed portrait of a generation at war along the lines of "Band of Brothers". It is not a book you are going to forget in a hurry.

An awesome book, the blackest of comedy and a bit philosophy mixed together.

Fiction:
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"Tells the story of Case, a burnt-out software cowboy forced to do one last job in the infinite bytes of cyberspace."

Sounds basic, but is really well written, very immersive and full of what is just straight up cyber punk.
 
Beaten to it I'm afraid, Marty. The best ideas have usually been done before 8)

Good choice on the Gibson, incidentally. Have his first few books but not come across the more recent ones so far. Do likes me a bit of cyberpunk :)

Last book I read was The Brief History of The Dead. Was loaned it by the occasional Mrs Shambles ages ago after watching Wristcutters: A Love Story. Very similar concept, but the film is great and the book less so. Worth a read but found the end a bit shit.

Will finally get around to reading Valley of The Dolls next - been on my list for ages :)
 
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