What are you reading now? (Chapter 2)

[Clinton Huxley]

India In The Slow Lane by Mark Tully, a biography of Walsingham, Elizabeth I's spymaster, some book about pirates for the MHs and another one I can't remember.

[PsychoSerenity]

Dodger by Terry Pratchett and a 1000 page economics textbook by Paul Krugman which was a bit of an impulse buy and I'm quite enjoying.

[SteveB]

Finished Death by Black Hole by Neil deGrasse Tyson. I liked it. The bits that I could understand that is.

I gots a Goodreads account so y'all can see what I'm reading: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/24360257-steven-ure

The boring Feast for Crows and the Poe book I just started reading last night.

[orpheus]

As usual, I have several going at once. Right now, five of them. Five fucking books, all of them very fucking good, none of them fucking easy. FUCK!

Closing in on the end of W.G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn. I'll be sorry to see the last page of this one - it's excellent. It'll be well worth a re-read, I'm sure. (In a way though, I am looking forward to the end, so I can start on his last novel - Austerlitz - which looks even better.)

Re-reading Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Mr. JJ. The Master. It gets more enjoyable each time, this one.

Samuel Beckett's early novel, Watt. Good old Sam. Beckett is something of an obsession for me. I feel closer to him than to any other writer - by far. I've read all his middle and late works (from Godot on), but I've stayed away from his early stuff. I always found it too difficult. He was showing off - trying to outdo Joyce on Joyce's own turf (i.e., knowing everything and putting it all in his books). It's highly allusive, and the problem was that Beckett was extremely well-read, in several languages, so a lot of the allusions are really obscure. (I mean, everyone knows the works of 17th-century Flemish philosopher Arnold Geulincx, right? ) As Beckett found his own voice as a writer, he stripped all that away. So unlike a lot of writers, his later works are actually easier. (At least I think so.) But I figured I'm a big boy now, so it's time to tackle the tough stuff. I know I'm not getting a lot of the references. But the book is manically funny - I mean laugh-out-loud funny - and that's keeping me going.

The Last Gold of Expired Stars - the complete poems of Georg Trakl, translated from the German by Jim Doss and Werner Schmitt. Trakl is not an easy poet, and certainly not a happy one. But he's very worthwhile. Extraordinary autumnal mood, so it's a good time of year to be reading this.

Alberto Giacometti's Paris Sans Fin. Technically, I suppose this doesn't count as reading, since it's a book of lithographs. But I'm spending a lot of time with it. Birthday gift to myself last year. It's a very fine facsimile of what some consider to be the most beautiful book ever printed. I'm leaning toward that opinion myself. He did these toward the very end of his life, and I think he knew he didn't have long to go. There's something valedictory about these.

And then for desert, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Tasty.

[laklak]

Boy's Life by Robert McCammon. McCammon, for those that aren't familiar with him, is usually classified as a horror writer and indeed much of his work is horrific, but most is more Southern Gothic with tinges of spirits and spooks rather than outright horror. He's a fine writer, with an almost Faulkneresque grasp of the slow cadences of Southern speech and life. Boy's Life is a coming of age story about a group of 12 year old boys set in the strange little town of Zephyr, Alabama. There are supernatural overtones and a rich cast of characters, including an ex Nazi war criminal passing as the town doctor, the habitually naked son of the town's richest citizen and the Reverend who thinks the Beach Boys are actually demons trying to turn the town's children into sex-crazed delinquents. Dogs are truly a boy's best friend, bicycles are mystic steeds, school can be a dangerous minefield and adults are incomprehensible. It's reminiscent of King's The Body, but I think McCammon is the better writer, he speaks to my own childhood in such a recognizable and true voice. I definitely recommend it.

[SteveB]

I gave up on that Poe book. Most of his stuff is so boring! I never would have thought it.

I'm reading The Secret Garden now. I'm thinking the Secret Garden is a metaphor for her vagina. We English Majors know these things.

[Sean Hayden]

...added The Elements of Moral Philosophy...it's been a good introductory book so far.

[hadespussercats]

I gave up on that Poe book. Most of his stuff is so boring! I never would have thought it.

I'm reading The Secret Garden now. I'm thinking the Secret Garden is a metaphor for her vagina. We English Majors know these things.

Huh.

She's eight. Plus, the garden belongs to her uncle. All in all, pretty creepy way to interpret it.

[Animavore]

Practical Ethics, by Peter Singer.


When do I get to the infanticide part?

[tattuchu]

I gave up on that Poe book. Most of his stuff is so boring! I never would have thought it.

I'm reading The Secret Garden now. I'm thinking the Secret Garden is a metaphor for her vagina. We English Majors know these things.

Huh.

She's eight. Plus, the garden belongs to her uncle.

[Hermit]

I gave up on that Poe book. Most of his stuff is so boring! I never would have thought it.

I'm reading The Secret Garden now. I'm thinking the Secret Garden is a metaphor for her vagina. We English Majors know these things.

Huh.

She's eight. Plus, the garden belongs to her uncle. All in all, pretty creepy way to interpret it.

Maybe SteveB is referring to My Secret Garden by Nancy Friday.

[JimC]

Re-reading "Wintersmith" by Terry Pratchett

[Pappa]

Design Patterns - GoF

[Azathoth]

If we are doing tech books:

An Introduction to formal languages and automata,
Concepts of programming languages,
Fundamentals of database systems,
Database system concepts,
Algorithms,
Computer organisation and embedded systems,
Programming the 68000,

are next to me right now.

A picture of dorian grey to switch my brain off later

[Tero]

The 900 page Beatles biography Vol 1.