The 'what book are you reading' thread.

[One-armed dwarf]

It's ok I will write you my summary from memory from reading 15 years ago.

Part I: Little girl in magical Oxford with talking butterfly friend. Her childhood friend gets lost and she gets abducted by bitch with asshole monkey who might be a child molester. They escape and meet some witches and she can see the future or something. They go to a lab which tears away their souls but escape and then her Dad kills her childhood friend and they go to a different world or something.

A polar bear wears some armour.

Part II: A boy cuts his fingers up and gets a knife that travels between worlds. He drinks some vodka.

Part III: Weird armadillo things which have wheels for legs. Boy and girl fall in love and can't be together because of universe reasons. God gets killed or something I think.

[shinymcshine]

I read it all about 15 yrs ago too - when it came as a 3 book paperback collection in a slip case

Isn't there a bit where the polar bear **(dies)** and the reader has a little cry or perhaps you just think he might and have a cry anyway ?

Speaking of which I got The Golden Compass as a bundled game with my Wii - it was terrible.

[regemond]

Was there a thing in those books where they castrated kids or did my mind just invent that?

It was right around the end of the first book.

Kind of - the name escapes me at the minute, but it's where they were splitting kids from their daemons before they took a final form (ie puberty kicks in). It turns the kids into pliable zombies and lets adults control them.

Isn't there a bit where the polar bear **(dies)** and the reader has a little cry or perhaps you just think he might and have a cry anyway ?

Yes. And it's still a great scene to read again.

Speaking of which I got The Golden Compass as a bundled game with my Wii - it was terrible.

So was the film starring Nicole Kidman. Hopefully the BBC can make a better go of the series when that launches.

[merman]

11.22.63 by Stephen King

That is of course the date John F Kennedy was assassinated - so can a time-traveller from 2011 prevent it?

[shinymcshine]

11.22.63 by Stephen King

That is of course the date John F Kennedy was assassinated - so can a time-traveller from 2011 prevent it?

Didn't they do a TV series of this a couple of years ago ? I've got a feeling my missus watched it, or something very much sounding like it.

[merman]

11.22.63 by Stephen King

That is of course the date John F Kennedy was assassinated - so can a time-traveller from 2011 prevent it?

Didn't they do a TV series of this a couple of years ago ? I've got a feeling my missus watched it, or something very much sounding like it.

Yes, there was. But I did not watch it because I hadn't read the book...

[One-armed dwarf]

Read Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro which is a future dystopian novel about a world where people are cloned and raised for the purpose of organ harvesting. What i liked most I think was the way it's all told from a perspective of very limited knowledge as it's first person from the perspective of one of these organ donors looking back on her very short life up to that point.

It's kind of all about mortality and how brief a person's life can be and how you shouldn't waste it and stuff. Which is also what Remains of the Day was about. There are movies for both these books so I oughta check them out.

Now I'm going to go read my new book what got the armoured polar bears and the talking butterflies in it.

[regemond]

I've finally got around to starting Norwegian Wood by Murakami, and according to my Kindle I'm around a quarter of the way through. I like the book (I think) but holy shit does this guy go around the houses in his descriptions. I know it adds to the atmosphere, and it can really draw you in, but sometimes it just feels like padding.

I haven't been overwhelmed with sex scenes either, does this kick in a bit later dwarf? He's pulled a couple of times, but it's not been overly graphic. At least, not to me it hasn't.

[One-armed dwarf]

I don't know I just remember a lot of wanking in that book lol.

I tried reading Kafka on the Shore a while back but found it boring. It was some strange sci-fi mystery thing with talking cats, totally different to Norwegian Wood.

[One-armed dwarf]

I'm having a real tough time with La Belle Sauvage currently. So far it's a bunch of mystery and intrigue about acorns and letters. There's this Spanish inquisition type thing which are trying to stamp down on heresies and stuff. A bunch of philosophers sit around trying to discern mysterious symbols.

Right now it's tedious setup, but hopefully for a more interesting story which begins in this novel and not the trilogy of books already released.

It's a bit nostalgic though because I haven't read those books since a kid so is forgotten a lot of weird lore stuff like you're not allowed to touch people's 'daemons', because reasons and things (I think that this stuff might have been an allegory for a 'bad touch' in the original books...).

[One-armed dwarf]

Also they spell chocolate really stupid. It's 'chocolatl'

Edit: I'm a quarter of the way in and this is really boring. I don't remember HDM being such a snore.

[regemond]

Ahh finally seeing what you meant about Norwegian Wood dwarf. I'm liking it a lot, but holy shit it's depressing. On the closing chapters now, Naoko has left the story and he's going back to Tokyo.

As for La Belle Sauvage, it's because they started HDM straight off with Lyra spying in the wardrobe with Pan. This all feels like a set up for the story until about... half way through-ish. He seems to be building the world, giving more of an insight into how it works because we're going to be spending the whole trilogy there this time, instead of hopping between worlds.

And chocolatl never bothered me, but I always used to be bugged by his spelling of daemon. I know that's probably Ye Olde English...e or something, but it felt totally out of place to me.

[One-armed dwarf]

I won't say I don't find parts of it interesting. The whole thing reads like an allegory for repressive regimes like the Third Reich or Communist Russia. It's very 1984. Without trying to sound pretentious the allegorical subtext is kind of dense for something which is on the face of it a kid's book. I really don't remember much of the original series after the first book but it's made me curious to go back to them and see if they are as strong as I remember.

I suppose the kids that read Northern Lights are in their thirties now though.

Also I never saw the Golden Compass film but something which struck me is that in every scene the characters have to have their daemons beside them animating and transforming and talking. That seems like a really expensive thing to implement and I don't know how a BBC series can do it either.

Also I'd completely forgotten that the religion in the world is straight up just Christianity with references to Jesus Christ and stuff.

[One-armed dwarf]

La belle Sauvage is still very boring, but there's a bit just now where characters are having a covert meeting about secret things while tucking into a bowl of 'fragrant' ice which just made me lol

Maybe it's supposed to be ice cream but they just call it 'ice' so I just picture a bunch of people crunching ice in their mouthes while talking spy shit.

[regemond]

This doesn't give anything away because, well, it's on the cover, but has the flood happened yet? That's where it started getting interesting for me.