What book is everyone reading at the moment?

Status
Not open for further replies.
"Blunder" Zachary Shore

"why smart people make bad decisions"

GREAT BOOK and not too long.
 
Today: A History Of The World In Six Glasses by Tom Standage. I am halfway through Beer at the moment. Should be up to Wine later this evening...

Then spirits, tea, coffee and finally - cola.

:D
 
Idiot America, by Charles Pierce.

Great so far, all about how America seems to have forgotten that woosters (or "cranks" in the book) are amusing sometimes, useful in their way, but should never be taken seriously. We've lost sight of this, and now suddenly everyone's opinion is of equal value, and actual experts are not to be trusted, especially when there's someone with no training or knowledge offering an alternative.
 
Shōgun. I've read the cover and the first page of the prologue off this copy, and the pages are yellow with age and the oil of my fingers. And it's still one of the best stories I've ever known.
 
"Household Guide To Dying", pre-release version. This book is Teh Suck. Should be "Household Cure For Insomnia"
 
sackett said:
The Mayor of Casterbridge. Somebody should write a history of dialect in English literature. I'm guessing it starts with Shakespeare.

Oh aye, us maks mooch o' Maister Hardy, so us does. 'A skrivens on't, thet Wussex matter 'n sich, tel all we kin see't 'n smell't 'n hear on't too.

Well, dammit, it is clear and vivid, and for all the wordy words the plot moves fast. I just wish he'd known enough to hint at the dialect, like Faulkner, instead of shoveling it onto the page. Yuss, us most times kin finger oot wha' volk be a sayin', but oh Lard 'tis hard workin' -- MAKE ME STOP!
Click to expand...
I think there's a real art to getting dialect without overdoing it, and it requires, among other things, a certain self-assurance, the feeling that you don't have to prove you know the real dialect. Mark Twain and Dickens both manage to get the point across with very sparing use of actual imitative dialect.

One thing that has always bothered me is when authors attempt to denote illiteracy or poor speech by misspelling words in a way that doesn't actually affect how you would pronounce them when read, as in "Whut?"
 
If I'd been reading the print version of Charlatan: America's Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam I'd still be reading it. I managed, somehow, to reach the third CD of the audiobook before I gave up: the reader is absolutely intolerable. He rasps, he gasps, he mispronounces, he fakes accents, he starts every recording session in a different tone, and somehow he's one of AudioFile magazine's "Top Fifty Voices".
 
The oddly pleasant sensation

of getting a fair quantity of ******** thrashed out of you.

The World's Worst Warships, Antony Preston, Conway Maritime Press, 2002, ISBN 0 85177 754 6. Fascinating, and corrective of a number of misconceptions I've carried all me borned days, hence my title.

Except that I have the sense of being bellowed at from the quarter-deck. "Belay yer jawin' tackle, ye sorry, lubber! Lave seafarin' ta them as has salt water in thur veins! Go back to a follerin' yer plow, damn yer bones!"

Bet you thought the Bismarck was one helluva battleship, didn't you? Well read the man's book and learn.
 
Last edited:
Just started The Common Law, by Holmes. Very interesting so far, but I'm not that far into it.

Also reading Roma, by Steven Saylor. Also very interesting, novel of the founding and early days of Rome.

And because I got to that part in Roma, I'm rereading Coriolanus, by Shakespeare.

Also, Rule of Four, by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason, which reminds me of what Dan Brown tries to do, except that it's much better. A little show-offy, but enjoyable.

Also, Agatha Christie's The Seven Dials Mystery, which I'm not far enough into to comment on.

Also, I'm two books into the Southern Vampire Mysteries, by Charlaine Harris.

And I've got more waiting in the wings, although I think I'm going to try to force myself to finish one or two of these before I start a new one.


Also: Piscivore, if you're still following this thread, I ended up not needing to read that book (Saving Our Children from the First Amendment) for my paper, so I put it down. I may pick it up again someday, but I'd say it's unlikely to be soon. Sorry.
 
I periodically try to read books that for whatever reason I always meant to get around to but never did (in some cases since childhood). Lately I've been catching up on H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds and The Island of Doctor Moreau.

What impresses me about both books is that while both are told from a first person perspective, they are very cinematic and (perhaps not surprisingly) much better than any film adaptations I've seen of either book. Wells had an economy of prose that I wish more writers would emulate. I'm of the Borges school that less is often more...then again I could just be a little bitter after recently finishing Moby Dick after literally years of slowly working my way through it. Both books are surprisingly intense and in some passages, relatively gruesome. Moreau in particular reads like a long nightmare.

I'm moving on to The Invisible Man next...
 
JohnG said:
I periodically try to read books that for whatever reason I always meant to get around to but never did (in some cases since childhood). Lately I've been catching up on H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds and The Island of Doctor Moreau.

What impresses me about both books is that while both are told from a first person perspective, they are very cinematic and (perhaps not surprisingly) much better than any film adaptations I've seen of either book. Wells had an economy of prose that I wish more writers would emulate. I'm of the Borges school that less is often more...then again I could just be a little bitter after recently finishing Moby Dick after literally years of slowly working my way through it. Both books are surprisingly intense and in some passages, relatively gruesome. Moreau in particular reads like a long nightmare.

I'm moving on to The Invisible Man next...
Click to expand...

I *love* Moby Dick - I have read it about 3 times in the last 5 years. The thing to remember is... it isn't really about whaling.

It is about life.

Oh - and whaling.

But mainly, life.
 
I've also been trying to catch up on some of those books I never read but probably should have, and just finished Dickens's Great Expectations. Not as much fun as Little Dorrit, perhaps owing to the first-person narrative, that doesn't allow for the same level of social ranting and irony, but all right at least. I just started rereading Conrad's The End of the Tether. Conrad takes some getting used to, but once you're in the mood, he can put you so much in the story that you not only see it but smell it.

I'm away from home, visiting my mom, who before Alzheimer's set in was a great Conrad fan, and having forgotten my copy, figured just to get one off her shelf. She's got about 3 feet of Conrad here, and wouldn't you know it, that's the one she doesn't seem to have!

So to pass the time I'm dipping into Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica, a classic work of 17th century skepticism. Often falls far short of proper critical thinking, owing to religious bias and appeal to authority, but often hits the mark pretty well, and with a good bit of irony. Discussing whether or not worms have blood, we get

That worms are exsangueous animals, and such as have no blood at all, is the determination of philosophy, the general opinion of scholars, and I know not well to dissent from thence my self. If so, surely we want a proper term whereby to express that humour in them, which so strictly resembleth blood....etc.
Click to expand...

I'm reading the fifth edition from 1669, whose print is a bit dodgy and pages a bit yellowed, but it's still fun to be able to read a book that old.
 
BTMO said:
I *love* Moby Dick - I have read it about 3 times in the last 5 years. The thing to remember is... it isn't really about whaling.

It is about life.

Oh - and whaling.

But mainly, life.
Click to expand...


Don't get me wrong; there were times when I was convinced I was reading the greatest novel of all time and a few pages later I was bored out of my skull, but I grudgingly acknowledge that the "boring" bits served a purpose. I have a theory that Melville deliberately made the novel difficult to read (in terms of sheer length, the style he employed, the endless digressions, etc.) because he wanted the reader to become as monomaniacal as Ahab was in finally meeting up with Moby Dick. By sharing Ahab's obsession, the reader identifies with him, which is a much more interesting and audacious feat for the writer than identification with the likeable, but dull narrator, Ishmael.

Now if I could only get through Tristram Shandy...
 
'Tis the tale of a cock and a bull!

JohnG said:
...Now if I could only get through Tristram Shandy...
Click to expand...

Oh sir! One does not read through Tristram Shandy! One ventures through it, or should I say, sojourns in it?

There is a pleasure only to be had by those who have travelled the whole length of Shandy: That of watching others read it. Why, on a sultry day one may keep tolerably cool in the breeze of an exasperated reader flipping pages back and forth as our author tears apart the whole structure of prose narrative, yes, and dances on the fragments.

You should persevere; Mr. Smollett means you no serious harm, I think.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Share this page

ISF - Join now!

Every member here is approved by hand. No bots, no spam, just people who care about evidence and honest debate.

Membership is free!

Create your free account

Back
Top Bottom