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  • EADD Moderators: Pissed_and_messed | Shinji Ikari

What book are you currently reading?

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just finished The Dark Fields by Alan Glynn.

Fictional story about a new wonder drug MDT-48 set in New York. Good read, would recommend.

now moved onto Harlan Coben's 'Gone For Good'
 
UnfortunateSquid said:
All his shit is getting a bit derivative now. Shock value is easier than a properly constructed plot.
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This is why I think chuck palahniuk is a twat, and also why I deeply regret burning all my school books in a tragically adolescent "finally I've fucking escaped" post-secondary funeral pyre. The short stories I wrote in standardgrade english were rooted in the genuine horror of my day to day experience of hating school and life, and informed by 2000AD, william gibson, and roald dahls tales of the unexpected etc, and completely shat on anything chuck palahniuk has ever written. I wish I'd kept them.

I've never actually read any irvine welsh books, I keep confusing him with the guy that writes rebus who I just think is a tosser.

This thread has reminded me I haven't read the latest will self book, I did notice the dictionary next to my bed was looking a bit neglected.
 
Get some Welsh read :D

Good idea, keeping a dictionary by the bed. Might have to do that myself, got a good vocab generally but there are a lot of words that still elude me.
 
I had a hard time with will self at first because every other page I'd be reaching for the dictionary, he clearly takes pleasure in making full use of the language.

I've had a dictionary next to my bed for years, if I'm a bit fucked and can't be bothered reading a few pages of my current book, random pages of the dictionary entertain long enough to send me to sleep. It's actually quite addictive.
 
Sweet, sounds like something I'd find useful. Just been on Amazon now looking for one as I don't think I own any English dictionaries and have now decided I want the Penguin guide to punctuation and grammar too. I might as well set up a direct debit and just have them send me everything that turns up in 'People who bought this also bought...' bit.
 
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I bought this book ages ago, started to read it, really really got into it, then left it on the bus/train. :X

Anyway, I caved in and bought another copy (I always knew I would) as it's so rare for me to become absorbed in a book. I've a short attention span, and my mind easily wanders. And often when I find a book I actually like, I read it over and over until the words stay with me forever. But like Tracey herself, I start books and hardly ever finish them. And as soon as I started reading this, it was almost as if we had an understanding; she was speaking a language I was interested in. I instantly understood her, and some of her brutally honest recollections of yesteryear had moved me to tears on many occassions (particularly when on the bus :o).

It reads almost like a diary. A bunch of scattered memories squished together to form a short novel. It's not a conventional autobiography, but you wouldn't really expect that from her anyway. It's an intimate, and genuine retelling of past events by someone who knows her own mind very well. Poised with wit, a desperate sadness, and intelligence. She's fucking awesome. <3
 
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The most amazing book ever, Period.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Shadow-Crows-Journeys-Remarkable-Friendship/dp/1906702063

http://davidcharlesmanners.com/Home.html

Here is a clip... the book is pure poetry.....

IN THE SHADOW OF CROWS


I awoke to discover that I had slept through a great storm.

Rain squalled across perse peaks, filtering dawn light into fickle, iridian hues. Ghoulish clouds hung low over a sodden landscape, trailing in vast wreaths about fantastic hills.

My new cousin Samuel had insisted upon keeping me company at the Himalayan View the previous night. I had felt him tremble as his arm slipped round to hold me as I prepared to sleep. He had said it was their custom, that his parents would be proud, and with some glee asserted that his cousin-brothers would now be jealous that he had been “the chosen one”.

After breakfast porridge, we shared a soapy bucket-bath, then strolled out into clarty streets. Samuel first led me up to the old Scottish church, its stained-glass lately broken when a schism in an already diminished congregation had resulted in the hurling of bricks to vent a doctrinal sulk. We tried the doors, but found them locked, so squelched through soggy cottage garden, muddy chicken yard and on to forest in which a hillside graveyard lay. Above us, punk-fuzzed monkeys grumbled in the wet, whilst far below, beneath a pall of mist, the Teesta scored between Bengal and Sikkim its circuitous incision.

Samuel clutched fast my arm as we braved a dangerous declivity to press on amongst dense scrub and scattered stones. Monsoon-mellowed epitaphs bore witness to the lives of lowland missionaries who had arrived with foreign burr and Bible, only to soon sicken in exotic climes and swiftly merge with mountain humus.

Beneath dark, dripping trees, Samuel slowed us to a halt.

“This is where they lie,” he whispered, I thought to mark respect. “So now let’s go,” he hissed and tugged to draw me back.

I stood astonished to have reached this isolated patch of unmarked ground, precariously perched on a Himalayan foothill’s fragile slope. And yet to now know the tranquil saturation of this place, that to another would bear no significance or worldly worth, was the culmination of an abundant life of familial inheritance and grandmotherly affection.

“Dajoo, please!” Samuel intruded with a beseeching scowl. “I’ve got the proper creeps!”

“Just one last thing,” I insisted, bending to place a hand upon the earth. I touched my heart and spoke aloud the names of Uncle Oscar and Aunt Isi, then chose a stone to fit my pocket.

Samuel crouched to peer in puzzlement at my quirk.

“A final gift my Grandmother asked of me,” I explained. “From Uncle Oscar’s resting place to hers ...”

I looked hard into the trunk-cut mist. I had now eaten a mango from its tree, as she had asked, and held a Dalit. I had sat with sadhus and collected a memento of a grave. I had fulfilled her every wish, and yet found no solace in their attainment. Only sorrow at one more conclusion. Sadness at another end.

“Well, good! You’ve done your duty,” Samuel hurried his approval, glancing anxiously around as though bhut ghosts might be prepared to leave their foggy peace and hunt us home. “So now,” he spluttered in my ear, pulling on my shoulders to heave me upright, “let’s please be getting out of here!”

We dredged our way back into town where, despite the weather, the haat market bustled, barter babbling over vegetables and fruits, bloody meat and stinking fish. Drifts of embroidered shawls and woolly jumpers, kitchen utensils and handmade tools. Neat bluffs of churpi yak’s cheese and murcha yeast-pats to ferment chhang millet-brew. Tumbles of milk lollipops, flip-flops, Durga-covered calendars and all the paraphernalia of puja.

Then, the spices!

Multi-hued hillocks of clove, cassia, coriander seed and peppercorn, heaped high onto squares of saffron cloth. Turmeric for colouring, preserving and treating tender inflammation. Pink garlic, bay and curry leaves for flavour. Sweet cardamom to fragrance puddings, and knotty clumps of ginger root to make digestive teas. Tamarind, fenugreek and mustard. Cumin, aniseed, and mace. Mountainous rainbow ranges of tongue-scalding chillies of every size and shape, piled into sparkling pans of beaten brass.

I closed my eyes to draw the piquant air deep into my chest.

I was instantly back in Priya’s house. Her mother cooking dhansak and chopping kachumber. Her sisters grating jaggery and nutmeg. Her father sitting in his armchair watching Betamax Bollywood and crunching crisp, peppery papads that glistened with warm peanut oil. The sudden clarity of memory offered unexpected comfort and I found myself smiling, even as it stole my spice-laced breath.
 
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I really want to read that now.

Started reading Andre Gide - The Immoralist last night. Only got about twenty pages in before I decided to go to sleep but it felt very 'smooth' to read. I'm not sure if that makes sense exactly, but it was.

And stuff.
 
snolly said:
Aye, has been put on my Amazon wishlist for purchase this Thurs :D
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Its so good.

I found out about it by mistake, I usually sleep with the radio on, I woke up like 3am, and the author was talking about it on radio 5 live, it captivated me, and I ordered it the next day. :)

The fact that it has 14 customer reviews on Amazon, and not a single one is less than the maximum "5 stars" speaks volumes.

It really is that good. I would not be surprised at all, if in 10 years time this book is seen as a classic.

Best book I have read since " A Fine Balance" by Rohinton Mistry ..

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fine-Balanc...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1248016557&sr=1-1
 
The Liberal Media said:
Its so good.

I found out about it by mistake, I usually sleep with the radio on, I woke up like 3am, and the author was talking about it on radio 5 live, it captivated me, and I ordered it the next day. :)

The fact that it has 14 customer reviews on Amazon, and not a single one is less than the maximum "5 stars" speaks volumes.

It really is that good. I would not be surprised at all, if in 10 years time this book is seen as a classic.

Best book I have read since " A Fine Balance" by Rohinton Mistry ..

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fine-Balanc...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1248016557&sr=1-1
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Hehe that's a kinda cool story, might try sleeping with the radio on myself. No doubt it'd end up going static-y and scaring me though.
 
Martin Martin's On the Other Side, by Mark Wenham.

It's got elements of Brave New World, 1984, maybe Clockwork Orange, but not really as good. More like 'the government buys the proles off with cheap entertainment' than anything else. I bought it by mistake, I was reading a criticism of recent science fiction awards, and I thought it said this was an amazing book: it actually said it was mediocre, but at least took risks (which I don't think it does, either; other than having the narrator being totally thick and un-selfaware - imagine if Winston really did love Big Brother from the start).

Before that read Netherland, about a Dutch guy playing cricket in New York, which is highly acclaimed but didn't really grab me. Not terrible but not brilliant.
 
tribal girl said:
^Have you ever read Generation X by Douglas Coupland before?:



It might be the book to get you into reading again. It definitely kick started everything for me. :)
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No, I stopped reading books when I was 15 and got into drugs. :|

(The last one I read was 'of mice and men').

I'll be sure to try that one out though.
Thanks for the recommendation! :D
 
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