[Misc] What Book are you Currently Reading?

[Blackadder]

Just read "Prisoners of Geography" by Tim Marshall. Brilliant read.

Tell You Everything You Need To Know About Global Politics. Why countries hate each other, forge allliances etc.

 

[CHAPPERS]

View attachment 86707

Excellent book. Racing through it.

Finished. Worth a read but first half better than second.

Now on to this

 

[Two Professors]

Just started this.

 

[Hiney]

Had this in the bookcase for MONTHS.

Started it today on the beach. A nostalgic look back at football in the 1970s.

The Golden Age

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

Picked up a copy of THIS intriguing-looking hardback at the BHF charity shop in London Road yesterday. Signed by the author. £1.50.

A local book for local people, looks like

 

[Cheeky Monkey]

 

[Marshy]

Just Finished " The Goldfinch " by Donna Tartt - At least 250 pages too long but glad I stuck with it.

Now onto " End of the World Running Club " Adrian Walker - Expecting good things.

 

[CHAPPERS]

Now onto " End of the World Running Club " Adrian Walker - Expecting good things.

Great read that.

I gave up another book, that one a few posts up in fact. Terrible.

Now on Ernest Cline's other book 'Armada'. Enjoyable but no Ready Player One.

 

[Marshy]

Great read that.

I gave up another book, that one a few posts up in fact. Terrible.

Now on Ernest Cline's other book 'Armada'. Enjoyable but no Ready Player One.

The First trailer for " Ready Player One " has been released if you have not seen it, really hope they make a good job of it

 

[CHAPPERS]

The First trailer for " Ready Player One " has been released if you have not seen it, really hope they make a good job of it

Cheers for this. Looks great!

 

[Surf's Up]

Re-visiting the delightful "Cider With Rosie" by Laurie Lee and also reading "Born to Run", Bruce's autobiography.

 

[Scampi]

Re-visiting the delightful "Cider With Rosie" by Laurie Lee and also reading "Born to Run", Bruce's autobiography.

Had to read Cider with Rosie for o level english. not good memories

 

[Scampi]

Just read "Prisoners of Geography" by Tim Marshall. Brilliant read.

Tell You Everything You Need To Know About Global Politics. Why countries hate each other, forge allliances etc.

That is a good book. Passed it onto my son who seems to be attempting to memorise it

 

[Blackadder]

That is a good book. Passed it onto my son who seems to be attempting to memorise it

I couldn't put if down.

 

[sydney]

i'm currently flicking through the viz annuals from 15 &16 for a bit of light relief after ploughing through the follow up to shantaram.....mountain shadow......zzzzzzzzzzz theres 5 weeks of my life i'll never get back ....next will be predator by wilbur smith

 

[Buzzer]

The Man Booker long list was announced yesterday and that means my annual attempt at reading all 13 long-listed books. I didn't get too far with last year's challenge but I've more time this year to devote to it so I'm hopeful of completing the task. What usually scuppers me are the novels by authors from the Indian subcontinent who write 800 pages of metafiction or as with 2015's winner - dozens of characters engaging in paragraph after paragraph of dialogues written in dialect and phonetically. There's 2 or 3 authors from India and Pakistan included this year including the eagerly awaited return of Arundhati Roy but these 3 particular novels are mercifully short reads. As well as Roy there's other familiar names amongst the 13 including Mohsin Ahmid, Zadie Smith, Ali Smith and Paul Auster. I'm surprised that neither Michael Chabon's 'Moonglow' and Derek B Miller's 'Norwegian By Night' didn't make the cut, both books (especially Moonglow) have been universally praised.

I'm still not convinced that the inclusion of American authors has been a positive step for the Man Booker Prize but this feeling is fuelled in part by the grudge I still carry from the appalling American authored books selected in 2015, the first year that American authors were included.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2...nglist-led-by-arundhati-roy-return-to-fiction

I made a good start last night with Zadie Smith's 'Swing Time' and thoroughly enjoying it.

 

[BNthree]

The Man Booker long list was announced yesterday and that means my annual attempt at reading all 13 long-listed books. I didn't get too far with last year's challenge but I've more time this year to devote to it so I'm hopeful of completing the task.

Sounds like a good challenge, might try it myself!

 

[Cheeky Monkey]

Kudos Buzzer.

I'm currently re-reading Memoirs of a Dipper by Nell Leyshon having binned Stuart, A Life Backwards a quarter of the way through.

 

[Buzzer]

Zadie Smith - 'Swing Time'

A book about friendship, race and belonging, and dance. Possibly Zadie Smith's best book since White Teeth. it tells the story of an unnamed narrator and her childhood friend, their mutual love of the golden age of film musicals and their lives and relationship as they both grow older.

I've read lots of reviews compare this book to Elena Ferrante's recent quartet of novels and there are legitimate comparisons. Both books are about women's lives, men are periphery characters in both but unlike Ferrante's novels the women are not depicted like some sort of heroine from a Soviet propaganda poster, they are 3-dimensional in character and although as with Ferrante both main characters enjoy success, Smith has her protagonists in secondary/supporting roles and the success is by proxy through someone else's much greater success. And unlike Ferrante's unbelievably far-fetched plots (Ferrante is just chick-lit trying hard not to be chick-lit, as far as I can see) Smith has the men in the story covering all bases as heroes, villains and in some cases just plain old men without axes to grind nor subterfuges to plot against womenkind. Ferrante's men are tolerated, they act like children, they exist but never spiritually or intellectually. In Smith's novel it is often the men who are doing the right thing and suffering for it.

Apart from the 3 main themes of the book, there is also a 4th: that the world is rarely made of absolutes. Smith's Britishness shines through here. No-one does equivocation better than us. Her writing style reminds me of Anita Brookner and E.M. Forster - there's a crispness to it that never loses its edge. Highly recommended.

 

[Barry Izbak]

Winston's War

I am loving it. Final 100 pages tonight