The 'what book are you reading' thread.

[One-armed dwarf]

It's about to I think.

The Dr got the alethiometer and SPOILER has been told to bait a pedo with Malcolm

That last bit makes me think that this isn't a kids book

[regemond]

There's more. It honestly had the Daily Mail up in arms (shocker) because he has fans 'as young as 7'.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... words.html

See? I feel dirty linking to DM though. They seemed to concentrate on the swearing more than anything else with that.

Anyway, I'm currently flying through a novel called The Night Bird (Get it? Flying? No? Ah screw you all!) - weird ass serial killer making patients of a controversial psychiatrist kill themselves. It's ok for what it is, there's just not much making me think in there. I have a feeling who the serial killer is, but there's going to be some serious mental gymnastics for the author to pull it off if I'm right.

It's a nice palate cleanser after Norwegian Wood though.

I should have it finished by Friday evening and then I'll have to go back to that wonderful task of picking one from the 110 unread novels that I currently have on my Kindle...

[One-armed dwarf]

Picked up 'Infinite Jest' on Kindle. This is the kind of book that seems a rite of passage for elitist lit-snobs everywhere so I've always been curious. If you haven't heard of it it's basically Ulysses for millennials.

Only one chapter on so far and even so there's a lot of the same literary allusions that Ulysses has. It's been ages since my lit degree but according to the forward the average age of people who read this is 25, so at 28 it seems a good enough time to try it I suppose.

I've heard that with the print version people like to take a scissors to it and cut it in three parts because it has thousands of footnotes which have to be read alongside the main story. Haven't encountered that yet but hopefully the Kindle version will mitigate having to chop a book up like that.

Anyway I kind of don't have the language on me to explain what the writing style is like but in the first chapter (which is about a college admissions group meeting a prospective student) the writing was clear in a way that made me feel like I was watching a film. I really liked that feeling even though it took me an hour to read just one chapter.

[One-armed dwarf]

Also in the first chapter there's a bit where a kid eats some mould and it's really really funny.

Don't know what it has to do with getting admitted to college though

[One-armed dwarf]

Infinite Jest is really tough going.

A lot of what it's about so far is substance abuse and depression. I think that's what it's about anyway.

Some passages are easy and fun and light but every other chapter or section introduces a new set of characters and is written in a different style.

I'm pretty sure a bunch of words in it are straight made up.

I think I like it. It's slow going. It's like if Bloodborne was a book I guess. Challenging stuff can be satisfying. But exhausting also.

There's so many characters and names and abbreviations of stuff though that I'm fairly sure I'll have to read this thing straight through or I'll never finish it.

[One-armed dwarf]

Oh no I forgot to read a really long footnote now I have to go back twenty-thirty pages and read them allover again.

That doesn't sound like much but this is a really weird and hard book to read. The footnotes stuff doesn't always work well on Kindle when the footnotes are twenty pages of some guys fictional filmography which themselves also have footnotes.

Haha wtf is this shit

[shinymcshine]

Read/reading a couple of different but related books:

24 Hour Party People by Tony Wilson

The book of the film, hence whilst its semi autobiographical it does admittedly emblish some things for the purpose of entertainment. Noting I've never seen the film, but did grow up in Granada-land with Tony Wilson popping up on local TV quite a lot in his day job as a serious news reporter, at the same time as heading up Factory records, the Hacienda Club, and overseeing the careers of Joy Division, New Order and the Happy Mondays. He also makes a few snipes at those Manchester born Irish lads who took themselves off to London, which leads me on to...

Morrissey -Autobiography

In which Morrissey jibes a certain Mr Wilson for not offering them a record deal, then being narked when The Smiths become Manchester's best band of the 80s. A fair amount of detail too regarding the court case centred on (the lack of royalties received by) Mike Joyce with The Smiths being originally just Morrissey & Marr as the creative force, with Joyce and Rourke essentially paid as session musicians. Morrissey feels badly treated by, well nearly everyone, and in most cases he provides evidence to support his views, its actually a decent read too.
.

[regemond]

I mean, technically this doesn't belong here, but I really don't know where else to put it...

Last week Liverpool Uni hosted a literary festival where they had talks with authors. One of which was with Philip Pullman. I went with a friend of mine and we both agreed it was the most pretentious thing we'd ever done together, but we both really enjoyed it. Pullman seems like a genuinely nice man, and he mentioned a couple of story points about the next book in his current trilogy.

Definitely an interesting night. Oh and I now own signed copies of La Belle Sauvage, as well as a book of essays he's written called Daemon Voices.


Anyway, on to what I'm actually reading - I've just finished Titan Sinking, a history of WWF in 1995, all the issues they were facing and a lot of behind the scenes politics. Really interesting to see how badly they were doing at the time, how badly their buy rates and attendances were, and how much control The Kliq (a group of wrestlers who managed to get in the ear of Vince McMahon). I've now moved on to Titan Shattered, an account of 1996 and when certain changes were starting to be made that allowed them to compete with WCW.

[One-armed dwarf]

Nah man that sounds like a cool day out, not pretentious at all. I'm not big on the new book (put aside for the time being) but the original trilogy had a big impact on me as a youngster

It sounds like comic-con with old men, what's not to love.

[maf-me-quick]

Dwarf...is that you or has someone hacked your account?

[One-armed dwarf]

fuk u

[...]

[regemond]

Nah man that sounds like a cool day out, not pretentious at all. I'm not big on the new book (put aside for the time being) but the original trilogy had a big impact on me as a youngster

It sounds like comic-con with old men, what's not to love.

He gave an insight into La Belle Sauvage that might help with your approach - he was saying where the previous trilogy was a traditional action adventure, this was written as more of a romance. He wanted the slow build and the world-building to be part of it, to draw you back into Lyra's world. Also, I'm not sure how much you miss if you skip this one, as I can finally see why he's said all along it's not a prequel or sequel trilogy, it's an equel trilogy. The next book is set around 10 years after the end of The Amber Spyglass, so Lyra is about 20-ish or thereabouts.

Which REALLY makes me hope for even a brief reunion between Will and Lyra somewhere along the line in the last book.

He was also saying he got choked up when he recorded the audiobook for one of the deaths in His Dark Materials too, which makes me want to listen to them now.

The only thing that annoyed me was that for the hour or so he spent talking, the woman he was up on stage with was constantly saying 'mmhmm', 'ah-ha' or 'yes, yes' as he was speaking, and sometimes when he'd paused for effect/to consider a deeper delivery of his answers!

[maf-me-quick]

fuk u

[...]

Nope, that’s definitely him

[Pious the chosen]

Darksiders: The Abomination Vault

So I finished this a while back, only just got around to mentioning that. This is very good. Could easily have been a prequel game and while prior knowledge of the games and their aesthetic does enhance your reading, it's not a requirement as the book is well written and entirely self contained. Even the elusive Other Horsemen - Fury and Strife - are briefly touched on and their personalities are somewhat explored. First and foremost however, the book central protagonist is Death, with War co-opting in the latter two thirds of the book. A decent story, with memorable characters and locations throughout. Definitely an insta-buy recommendation to fans of the series. 8/10

[One-armed dwarf]

I'm a quarter of the way through Infinite Jest (Pg 240) and tbh I think I don't like it. The best way I can describe its writing is that it's extremely ugly. It's full of words I have never heard of and apparently neither has my kindle dictionary

However there's this one really long digression in it about the invention and rise and fall of 'videophony' (video calls) which really speaks to our time I feel like. It's written in 1996 but anticipates the neurosis of social media in a really prescient way.

This is a verbose extract but worth reading http://declineofscarcity.com/?page_id=2527

And here's the book in Lego form: http://www.brickjest.com/