What are you reading at the moment?

thebreeze

Grief is a thing with feathers by Max Porter.  A brilliant reflection on grief and bereavement - if you need this kind of thing.  

Sits alongside Levels of life by Julian Barnes as books that capture that wholly individual and almost inexpressible process that is grieving the one you love.

fields5069

God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens. A brilliant read so far and I haven't read much yet.

What strikes me is that, among other achievements, he exposed so many challenges from religious experts as childish trick questions. Mess with me, mess with the majority of the population, and you will most likely confuse and trap us. But thank goodness we had a man like Hitchens to make the argument plain and forceful.

EricTheWeary

Actually started another book. If I can manage three in a year that might be a record.

The Revenant. A book about men with beards to be read by men with beards. I've not seen the film but it's a fairly straight narrative so it's an obvious one to put on celluloid.

jpttaylor

Just finished No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthey which, like all his books, is superbly written but infinitely depressing. The film really is faithful to the book and nearly as good.

Moving onto The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby is my favourite book but this is the first of his other books I've bothered with.

fields5069

Just trying to get back into The Half Brother by Lars Saabye Christensen. Wonderful storytelling and really quite evocative but also somewhat dry. That's in between my dips into Christopher Hitchens and Consumed by David Cronenberg. I've come to the conclusion that Cronenberg is more of a film-maker than an author, but it's not a bad book in a trashy sort of way.

IvanMC

EricTheWeary said:

Back on track..

Started The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro. Such a clever author although not completely grabbed me as yet.

Got The Girl With All the Gifts incoming, see how I get on with a supposedly sophisticated zombie book. 

@EricTheWeary , I read When We Were Orphans and it blew me away. The story was dark and sophisticated but I was totally riveted. Have you finished The Buried Giant yet? How would you rate it? I finished a collection by Lovecraft. Beyond amazing indeed. Now I'm reading Everything's Eventual, by S. King. I'm not devouring it, but I do read some pages a day. I don't consider King a first rate writer, but his works come in handy when you need to get some oppressive thoughts off your chest or lay off the job problems for a while.

EricTheWeary

IvanMC said:

EricTheWeary said:

Back on track..

Started The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro. Such a clever author although not completely grabbed me as yet.

Got The Girl With All the Gifts incoming, see how I get on with a supposedly sophisticated zombie book. 

@EricTheWeary , I read When We Were Orphans and it blew me away. The story was dark and sophisticated but I was totally riveted. Have you finished The Buried Giant yet? How would you rate it? I finished a collection by Lovecraft. Beyond amazing indeed. Now I'm reading Everything's Eventual, by S. King. I'm not devouring it, but I do read some pages a day. I don't consider King a first rate writer, but his works come in handy when you need to get some oppressive thoughts off your chest or lay off the job problems for a while.

The Buried Giant confused me greatly. I read some of the reviews on Amazon after I'd read it and they seem to split between Genius and Meandering Twaddle. I'm in the Meandering Twaddle camp. Shame as I've read three of his other novels that I thought were excellent. Some of the other reviews talk about how The Buried Giant is about post Thatcher Britain which completely passed me by when I was reading it. Not that there isn't some lovely writing but the narrative goes around in circles for much of the book.

breakstuff

Thanks to @axisus recent thread (cheers mate,for the reminder),this....


http://static4.comicvine.com/uploads/scale_large/6/67663/2029287-01.jpg

Enjoying catching up with an old friend.

axisus

Wiz'd. But of course!

mudslide73

Tim Book Two - Tim Burgess. Tim gets people (Iggy, Stephen Morris, Boy George and err Gary Neville) to recommend records they love and visits record shops all over the world to find them. Part biography, record review, history lesson and love letter to record shops. Ironically there's a Spotify play list of all the albums so you don't have to leave the sofa to hear what he's on about. 

RocknRollDave

Song for the Dying by Stuart MacBride. Great, but gruesome. 

breakstuff

RocknRollDave said:

Song for the Dying by Stuart MacBride. Great, but gruesome. 

Stuart McBride is brilliant.Read all his books.

Skipped

Finally reading the Andy Summers bio. It is every bit as good as has been mentioned on this forum.

The guy is intelligent, funny and very open. ( I am guessing he actually produced this work without a ghost writer. I hope so anyway).

boogieman

breakstuff said:

RocknRollDave said:

Song for the Dying by Stuart MacBride. Great, but gruesome. 

Stuart McBride is brilliant.Read all his books.

Me too. Much prefer the Logan McCrae ones to the Ash Henderson ones though. 

boogieman

IvanMC said:

EricTheWeary said:

Back on track..

Started The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro. Such a clever author although not completely grabbed me as yet.

Got The Girl With All the Gifts incoming, see how I get on with a supposedly sophisticated zombie book. 

@EricTheWeary , I read When We Were Orphans and it blew me away. The story was dark and sophisticated but I was totally riveted. Have you finished The Buried Giant yet? How would you rate it? I finished a collection by Lovecraft. Beyond amazing indeed. Now I'm reading Everything's Eventual, by S. King. I'm not devouring it, but I do read some pages a day. I don't consider King a first rate writer, but his works come in handy when you need to get some oppressive thoughts off your chest or lay off the job problems for a while.

Stephen King is actually better when he doesn't do horror imo. His characterisation of little town America is first class. Stories like The Body, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon and Shawshank Redemption are where this works best. 

RocknRollDave

boogieman said:

breakstuff said:

RocknRollDave said:

Song for the Dying by Stuart MacBride. Great, but gruesome. 

Stuart McBride is brilliant.Read all his books.

Me too. Much prefer the Logan McCrae ones to the Ash Henderson ones though. 

Agreed, but they had the next Ash Henderson one in the library and not the next McCrae one .
Annoyingly, my charity shop hauls keep throwing up every other Logan McCrae book, so I have gaps I have to pay full whack Kindle price for.....but definitely working my way through them all, great books.  

boogieman

RocknRollDave said:

boogieman said:

breakstuff said:

RocknRollDave said:

Song for the Dying by Stuart MacBride. Great, but gruesome. 

Stuart McBride is brilliant.Read all his books.

Me too. Much prefer the Logan McCrae ones to the Ash Henderson ones though. 

Agreed, but they had the next Ash Henderson one in the library and not the next McCrae one .
Annoyingly, my charity shop hauls keep throwing up every other Logan McCrae book, so I have gaps I have to pay full whack Kindle price for.....but definitely working my way through them all, great books.  

I liked Halfhead too. It seems to get universally slagged off but I've never really figured out why, it's a good read. 

Vaiai

I listen to Audiobooks as I don't have time to read but just finished the most recent Peter F. Hamilton book and decided to go back to the first book of his I got (Pandora's Star) - I tend to mix up my books each time I get a new one so Sci Fi/Fantasy then something like a Thriller or Crime one then back to the Space Opera

Placidcasual79

I am sure this wont dig up any trees but in my view the following are esstential reading -

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S Thompson
On the Road - Jack Keurac
Money - Martin Amis
100 years of solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Factotum - Charles Bukowski
Ask the Dust - John Fante
Celine - Journey to the end of the night
The big sleep - Raymond Chandler

RocknRollDave

boogieman said:

RocknRollDave said:

boogieman said:

breakstuff said:

RocknRollDave said:

Song for the Dying by Stuart MacBride. Great, but gruesome. 

Stuart McBride is brilliant.Read all his books.

Me too. Much prefer the Logan McCrae ones to the Ash Henderson ones though. 

Agreed, but they had the next Ash Henderson one in the library and not the next McCrae one .
Annoyingly, my charity shop hauls keep throwing up every other Logan McCrae book, so I have gaps I have to pay full whack Kindle price for.....but definitely working my way through them all, great books.  

I liked Halfhead too. It seems to get universally slagged off but I've never really figured out why, it's a good read. 

I'll deffo give Halfhead a  go too. MacBride is filling the gap left now I'm up to date with Mark Billingham and Christopher Brookmyre.