Just started The Plague - by Albert Camus.
Printable View
Just started The Plague - by Albert Camus.
Reading ‘The Cocaine Diaries’ by Paul Keany & Jeff Farrell at the moment. It’s about an Irish guy (Paul Keany) who gets caught smuggling drugs in Venezuela & gets locked up in Los Teques prison, it’s basically a diary of his experience.
Halfway through it just now and it’s pretty good, sounds absolutely mental.
Just finished God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens and about to start Rage Against God by Peter Hitchens. The latter is written, in part, as a response to the former. I enjoyed the first without necessarily agreeing with all of it so I'm intrigued to see what the response is like.
I'm not really a fan of either Hitchens brother, they are/were a bit dogmatic at opposite ends of the scale for my tastes, but they can both write.
If you like crime novels and beautiful scene settings try James Lee Burke. He can take a scene and make it poetic while still maintaining the violence of criminal acts. A great American author.
Got it on my amazon wishlist. Good to see a recommendation for it.
I had been going back through my Kurt vonnegut Jr books recently and thoroughly enjoyed: God bless you Mr rosewater and cats cradle.
Currently reading this love is not for cowards: salvation and soccer in ciduad juarez.
Then onto the tender bar - which was recommended to me in Andre aggasi's biography! (which I'd highly, highly recommend).
After that two more sports books:
Behind the curtain: football in Easter europe
And
Angels with dirty faces: the footballing history of Argentina.
Reading From Russia with Blood just now. If even half is true is a damning insight into Putin and the complicity of the West in turning a blind eye to russian corruption ....
Just returning to this thread, with a story that might interest the geekier of bibliophiles out there.
When I was 9, I was given a copy of Tales From Shakespeare, by Charles and Mary Lamb, by my mum's Uncle. The book was designed to introduce Shakespeare to younger readers. The problem was, it was written in 1807, so the language was impenetrable to a 9 year old. Apart from a couple of attempts to read bits of it as a teenager, in the vain hope that it might help with school work (it didn't), it has followed me round the city for decades, unread and unloved.
Until this past week.
In the spirit of the new normal, I decided to give it a go and try to fill in a massive gap in my literary knowledge. I had completely forgotten that my great uncle had inscribed it to me inside the front cover. However, there was another inscription...... to him,on his own 9th birthday, in 1912.😳
I have never been so careful with a book....
The language is still a bugger though. And that Bill Shakes loved a bit of cross-dressing, no?
I've just finished Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning. A book exploring why some German civilians not only turned a blind eye to mass murder during WWII but were often active and enthusiastic participants. The author refutes the idea people were simply following orders or acting through fear. Instead he contends that humans can be far more easily persuaded to do evil things than we might imagine. Further he argues we find it easier to absolve ourselves of responsibility if there is a collective element to the actions.
Certainly food for thought and arguably quite relevant as right wing populism takes hold in many countries.
James O'Brien---"How to be right" just finished it. A good read about how he brings angry, offended, gammon types back down to something approaching level headed normality. Chapters include Islam, LGBT, Brexit, old age, occasionally funny and a look at how media stokes the fires of anger in angry types :greengrin
Just finished 'The Deposition of Father McGreevy' by Brian O'Doherty (shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2000).
It starts off with an Irish editor of a literary magazine sitting in a London pub in the 1950s, who hears a story about the destruction of a small village in Kerry 15 years previous. Its demise is shrouded in mystery as no-one will talk about it due to the shameful circumstances, so he decides to go to Kerry (where he originally comes from) to investigate.
The tale is a sad one (and it involves an epidemic at one point, so I put the book down for a while!) but the Irish humour stops it descending into melancholy; I laughed aloud several times. I'm glad I read the book, and don't think I'll be forgetting it in a hurry. Strange but ultimately fulfilling.
Taken - Tony Parsons
The Max Wolfe series is superb.
I see there is a new book out about Jim McLean. “Jim McLean Dundee Utd Legend”.
I think that would be a good read.
Just finished the last of Stuart Cosgroves Soul trilogy tonight. Three books are Detroit 67, Memphis 68 and Harlem 69 (which CWG appears to have been reading earlier in this thread). Each book was a cracking read in its own right. Good mix of the music and the historical events happening at the same time.
He’s given me a load of singers and bands to trawl YouTube and amazon music to listen to. Been trying to add tunes to playlists as I read the books but will go back over them now to add songs I’ve missed out.
Highly recommend the books if you have an interest in 60’s soul music.
Back in 2012 I decided to better myself or something and started on a quest to read all of Dickens' novels in order of publication. 8 years on I've got as far as Barnaby Rudge, his fifth, at which rate I should reach the untimely sputtering out of Edwin Drood sometime in 2044. Needless to say, I've found it a bit of a slog with many years and other books in between attempts. However, undaunted I've picked up old Barnaby again and shall give it another go.
Inbetween times in recent weeks for entertainment I've read Harry Pearson's "The Far Corner", his account of travelling around football grounds in the north east of England in the 1993/94 season. He's an updated sequel coming out later in the year, hence my re-reading. Its a bit of fun.
I'm also reading "Revolution in the Head" by Ian Macdonald, on and off. Its essentially a chronological critical assessment of all songs recorded by the Beatles over the course of their career. Oddly, I'm not much of a Beatles fan at all, but I've become more and more fascinated with the phenomenon and mythology that surrounds them.
Just finished reading the sombrero incident by brautigan. It's pretty short and concise.
Worth a read, but I wouldn't rush to read it again.
Now starting a supposedly fun thing I'll never do again by David Foster Wallace.
I read Revenge of the Lawn when Rebel Inc re-published it 20 years ago or thereabouts. I'm pretty sure I enjoyed it at the time, but I'm not so sure I would do now. Had a go at Trout Fishing in America a few years back too, felt more like one to dip in and out of.
I really enjoyed Harry Pearson’s book, it was very good.
Got all of Dickens on the bookshelves but only read half or two-thirds I think.
My favourite is still ‘The Pickwick Papers’, it reminds me of ‘Three Men in a Boat’. ‘Bleak House’ is probably the best I have read so far, but I found it hard going.
Pickwick is a bit whimsical, silly and nonsence. For further reference to whimsy, silliness and nonsense I guide listeners to the Coriander Thread in the Vault where there is a whole lot of rubbish and the odd witty moment. More importantly there is a deep and meaningful discussion about the off-field responsibilities that come with being a professional footballer. And then lots of whimsy, double entendres, single entendres, entendres that barely meet the test of being single and some downright crudeness.
Being a whimsical and, occasionally, silly fellow I enjoyed the Pickwick Papers too. I liked that there wasn't really much of a story at all, just a series of incidents, so I could dip in and out and it wouldn't matter that much if I forgot who someone was, or what was going on. Having said that, the characters, or caricatures, were pretty memorable, especially Sam Weller and his faither.
The thing about Dickens is he was paid by the word as his novels were serialised in periodicals. Hence the long passages of prose which could well have been done away with. I eventually found even Oliver Twist a bore and that particular novel has more sparkle than most.
However, I salute his humanity - although I'm not sure his wife would agree - and his characters who will live for ever.
For wit and economy of style, however, it's Jane Austen for me every time.
I've read all of Dickens' novels except A Tale of Two Cities, Edwin Drood, half of Barnaby Rudge and half of The Old Curiosity Shop. The last two I just couldn't finish as life is too short and they were just too boring. I think you've done really well. If I had my time again I wouldn't bother with Martin Chuzzlewit and Hard Times. However, Great Expectations and Little Dorrit are well worth the effort in me 'umble 'pinion.
You know, I've never even tried any of her's. Suppose I've always been put off by Sunday night TV costume dramas. What would you recommend starting with?
I found The Old Curiosity Shop a real slog. I struggled to the end out of bloodymindedness alone, but it was no fun. I'm sort of enjoying Barnaby Rudge so far, I'm about a third of the way through, but I'm finding the periods between going back to it getting longer. Not a lot seems to be happening, but I like the characters for the most part.