An Sionnach Posted May 27, 2011 Share Posted May 27, 2011 What's so funny about becoming handfasted? I see the juvenile level of some posters hasn't changed in the wee while I've been away! I've also just read: A fascinating guide to the many God and Goddess revered by our ancestors, tracing the influences of the Roman, Greek, Saxon and Germanic beliefs that form part of our spiritual heritage today. More good stuff from David and Sorita. -1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kejan Posted May 27, 2011 Share Posted May 27, 2011 JM Coetzee - Youth 7/10 A young South African moves to London to live the dream or so he thinks, to find an exotic job, a beautiful mistress and write lots of poetry. He ends up doing none of that and working as a computer programer. A lot of self-pity from the writer and quite depressing at stages, but thorougly enjoyed it. Looking to read Graham Greene - The Honourary Consul, John Steinbeck - Cannery Row next. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ICTChris Posted May 27, 2011 Share Posted May 27, 2011 What's so funny about becoming handfasted? I see the juvenile level of some posters hasn't changed in the wee while I've been away! I've also just read: A fascinating guide to the many God and Goddess revered by our ancestors, tracing the influences of the Roman, Greek, Saxon and Germanic beliefs that form part of our spiritual heritage today. More good stuff from David and Sorita. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mak Posted May 27, 2011 Share Posted May 27, 2011 That last one actually looks quite interesting, to be fair. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
saint dave Posted May 27, 2011 Share Posted May 27, 2011 Hell's Angel: The Life and Times of Sonny Barger and the Hell's Angels Motorcycle Club 6/10 Decent book on the origins of the Hells Angels, however he glosses over the drug dealing, killings and biker wars. The fight against the RICO court case is interesting but overall you get the feeling that's it's a half told story, which is a shame. I'd be interested if anyone has read a good biography on the Hells angels, that isn't sensationalised or more than cheerleading for the club,perhaps they could recommend it to me. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
uberman Posted May 28, 2011 Share Posted May 28, 2011 Hell's Angel: The Life and Times of Sonny Barger and the Hell's Angels Motorcycle Club 6/10 Decent book on the origins of the Hells Angels, however he glosses over the drug dealing, killings and biker wars. The fight against the RICO court case is interesting but overall you get the feeling that's it's a half told story, which is a shame. I'd be interested if anyone has read a good biography on the Hells angels, that isn't sensationalised or more than cheerleading for the club,perhaps they could recommend it to me. I read that a couple of years ago, Ridin' High, Livin' Free is also quite good, it's a collection of true stories from bikers presented by Sonny Barger. I've just finished reading Angels Of Death - Inside The Biker's Global Crime Empire which tells of all the murders, rapes and drug dealing The Angels got up to, paints a different picture from Sonny's book which portays them as fun loving mischievious bikers! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sam2304 Posted May 31, 2011 Share Posted May 31, 2011 Jeffrey Archer's collection of short stories, To Cut a Long Story Short. Not his best collection of short stories but the last story, The Grass is always Greener was a standout 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
T_S_A_R Posted May 31, 2011 Share Posted May 31, 2011 (edited) If so, surely the fact that the first page you read began in mid-sentence as a continuation from the previous page was a bit of a give-away? i'm sure i've read a few books that begin mid sentence. american pyscho definitely ends mid sentence. i just thought it was some weird form experiment. even reading it the wrong way round it still wasn't as weird as borroughs, brautigan, stewart home or kathy acker. it just seemed like a different way of doing martin amis's backwards narrative trick. Have recently read a few. First being The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. Has amazing reviews, my brother gave it to me saying it was in his top five of all time but it left me a bit cold - 5/10. i really enjoyed that. she lays it on a bit heavy with rushdie-esque language but it's a good story that unfolds in an interesting way. i'm quite interested in india and caste though. recently i've read 'the road' by cormac mccarthy, orwell's '1984' and i'm just about to finish 'the private memoirs and confessions of a justified sinner' by james hogg. all have been excellent, but the road would have probably been better if i hadn't watched the rather mediocre film first. i refuse to watch the film of the road as it won't come near the book. i totally agree that seeing the film first would ruin the book, i was shitting myself with every turn of the page reading the novel. confessions is a century ahead of it's time, maybe more. in my opinion it's up there with lanark as the greatest ever scottish novel and should be more widely read. Hell's Angel: The Life and Times of Sonny Barger and the Hell's Angels Motorcycle Club 6/10 hunter s. thompson's book hell's angels is the only thing i have read on them. barger is one of the few people who come across as being almost ok, the rest of them seem like total arseholes. Edited May 31, 2011 by T_S_A_R 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
An Sionnach Posted June 1, 2011 Share Posted June 1, 2011 i'm quite interested in india and caste though. John Irving's A Son of the Circus. Not one of his best as it jumbles too many themes and ideas into the melting pot and has sections where he seems to play the "I'm John Irving - look at my unique writing style" card, but it does shed light on the underside of Indian street life and is still a very entertaining read. However, as you name-checked the '60's "hippy" author Richard Brautigan, I have a feeling I'm teaching Grandma to suck eggs! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
T_S_A_R Posted June 1, 2011 Share Posted June 1, 2011 (edited) i haven't heard of that book before. has irving lived in india? he's not the first (or the 100th) person i'd think of when it comes to the subcontinent. white tiger by avinda adiga very deservedly won the booker a few years ago and is very insightful about how the lower castes fit into modern india. i've also got a fine balance by rohoin mistry waiting to be read which is supposed to be very good. i'm not actually a fan of brautigan. the opposite in fact, watermelon sugar was a major test to finish. i was considering throwing it out a train window at one point it was annoying me so much. i've been on a bit of a war splurge recently... general of the army of the dead by ismail kadare: an italian general and a priest travel around albania trying to recover the bodies of italian soldiers killed during the italian occupation. the general has a bit of an ahab complex which only gets worse as his gruesome tasks wear him down but the more interesting thing about the novel was learning a bit about alabians and their history which i know next to nothing about. kadare paints a picture of a people out of time, hidden away from the rest of europe by their mountains, who are tied to their ancient cultures, violence and vendettas. i'm definitely going to read more of him. soldiers of salamis by javier ceraces: it's a book about the spanish civil war in 3 parts. the first part is a journalist in barcelona in the 90s deciding to write a novel about a falangist writer escaping a republican firing squad at the end of the war and how he stumbles on the information. the second part is the novel itself which is a fairly straight telling of the history of the falangists and the civil war the incident of the firing squad and escape. the third part is the most interesting, it takes place after the book has been published but the author feels it is unresolved. out of nowhere the chilean author roberto bolano appears and steers him towards a man who has a remarkable story which may truly complete the novel. i'm a big fan of bolano so it was a nice suprise to 'see' him in the novel, before he appears the author is trying to tell a 'factual story' but the inclusion of bolano and the events that follow it seem to indicate that an author must put something of himself into a novel and be free to add a few things to the story. the people's act of love by james meek: another novel about a few topics i didn't know anything about, the czech legion fighting their way home from WW1 by travelling east through siberia and a weird siberian religious sect. the czechs at the beginning of the russian revolution were the only organised fighting group in the country and ended up controlling the full trans siberian railway until trotsky got organised and raise the red army to fight them. the book is basically about a mysterious stranger coming out of the woods into a town controlled by a crazy czech officer and full of mental russian cultists with a warning about a cannibal who is chasing him. as ever all is not as it seems and things rapidly deteriorate. it reminded me of andrei makine but not quite as good and more relying on plot twists which aren't really my thing. it has lots of terrific moments but the full thing doesn't quite come together. the white guard by mikhail bulgakov: the story of the turbin family loosely based on bulgakov's own family during the battle for kiev during the russian civil war. it's a much more traditional novel than the master and margarita and not on the same level of greatness but it does a good job of tieing you to the family and their home while creating the sense of an entire city in chaos. it will probably always be in the shadow of M&M but it definitely stands on it's own as a classic of russian literature. it was turned into a play which stalin apparently loved and saw numerous times which is probably the reason bulgakov managed to almost finish his great work and die of natural causes rather than ending up purged and in the gulag. Edited June 1, 2011 by T_S_A_R 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Donnyarb Posted June 2, 2011 Share Posted June 2, 2011 The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring Brilliant book, best I've ever read. Can't wait to get into the second one now! 10/10 -1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sam2304 Posted June 5, 2011 Share Posted June 5, 2011 The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring Brilliant book, best I've ever read. Can't wait to get into the second one now! 10/10 Want me to tell you what happens? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Donnyarb Posted June 5, 2011 Share Posted June 5, 2011 Want me to tell you what happens? No. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jojo Posted June 5, 2011 Share Posted June 5, 2011 (edited) Read the first LORG but when I read the second one there were long stretches in which absolutely nothing happened abd u just couldn't Finnish as it was so dull sometimes.that was when I was like 12 though. Will read it again soon from scratch. Last one I read thOugh was wind in the willows and I thouroughly enjoyed it. 7.5/10. Now reading the hills were peaceful together or something like that. Jamaican book. Good Edited June 5, 2011 by jojo 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IrishBhoy Posted June 5, 2011 Share Posted June 5, 2011 Currently reading Trainspotting. After thats done Im going to read the other 2 books that contain the same characters (I think), Porno and Glue. This is a new thing for me I havent read a book right threw since 5th year. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Savage Henry Posted June 6, 2011 Share Posted June 6, 2011 Hell's Angel: The Life and Times of Sonny Barger and the Hell's Angels Motorcycle Club 6/10 Decent book on the origins of the Hells Angels, however he glosses over the drug dealing, killings and biker wars. The fight against the RICO court case is interesting but overall you get the feeling that's it's a half told story, which is a shame. I'd be interested if anyone has read a good biography on the Hells angels, that isn't sensationalised or more than cheerleading for the club,perhaps they could recommend it to me. Echo the call that Hunter S Thompson's Hell's Angels will tell you all you want to know really. It was written before Thompson found his Gonzo voice, as it were, so it's a pretty straight up depiction. I just finished The Girl With Dragon Tattoo and thought it was remarkably bad, in need of an editor and, frankly, dull. The prose is clunky to say the least, the ending dreary and the characters either romanticised or rampant misogynists. Aside from about 100 pages in the middle where it takes off, I flew through this book and never learned a thing. Currently reading Murakami's The Wind Up Bird Chronicle, and honest, the quality of writing is almost the polar opposite. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
T_S_A_R Posted June 6, 2011 Share Posted June 6, 2011 I just finished The Girl With Dragon Tattoo and thought it was remarkably bad, in need of an editor and, frankly, dull. The prose is clunky to say the least, the ending dreary and the characters either romanticised or rampant misogynists. Aside from about 100 pages in the middle where it takes off, I flew through this book and never learned a thing. Currently reading Murakami's The Wind Up Bird Chronicle, and honest, the quality of writing is almost the polar opposite. that's like getting move from clyde to man utd, an incredible jump in class. i've had a look through that dragon tattoo book a few times but i only have to read a couple of paragraphs to know it's not for me. the wind up bird chronicle is amazing, it's probably my favourite murakami novel. i won't spoil it by going into details though. the translation of his most recent work 1Q84 is out in october which is quite exciting 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mighty meadow Posted June 6, 2011 Share Posted June 6, 2011 (edited) Finished 'The Westies' by T.J. English in work today. Waterstone's Onto something completely different now ... Arran ... A History by Thorbjørn Campbell Edited June 6, 2011 by mighty meadow 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StewartyMac Posted June 6, 2011 Share Posted June 6, 2011 I just finished The Girl With Dragon Tattoo and thought it was remarkably bad, in need of an editor and, frankly, dull. The prose is clunky to say the least, the ending dreary and the characters either romanticised or rampant misogynists. The second book is better, in that the main story zips along at a faster pace. The first 80 odd pages of TGWTDT are really quite boring, although it does get better. The ending is, as you say, quite poor. They could have finished it about 50 pages before they did. Many of the characters may well be 'rampant' misogynists', but hey, that's Sweden for you. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
banterman86 Posted June 7, 2011 Share Posted June 7, 2011 The second book is better, in that the main story zips along at a faster pace. The first 80 odd pages of TGWTDT are really quite boring, although it does get better. The ending is, as you say, quite poor. They could have finished it about 50 pages before they did. I enjoyed the first "Girl" book, but couldn;t get into the second one at all, sadlky. The ending was definately a muddke, it could have either been stretched out or saved for the second book. Many of the characters may well be 'rampant' misogynists', but hey, that's Sweden for you. I thought that would have been the point of a book initially named "Why men hate women" or such likes. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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