Recently Read/Currently Reading

figured we'd start one of these too. we're not all illiterates, are we?

i used to read all the time. a lot. as in, several books per week in a slow week. however, since having kids, i have read exactly zero books. the time just isn't there. however, as my older son that lives with me is now 10 and more self-sufficient, i decreed that this year i would set aside at least one night a week for reading. i couldn't be happier to be reading again. so far this year i've read three books:

Kurt Vonnegut - A Man Without A Country
this is as close to an autobiography we're going to get from Kurt. it's sort of random and contains his thoughts on the current state of affairs, anecdotes on his past works, some of his artwork, general life stories, etc. it's just plain hilarious and disturbing all at once, like all other KV works. this book made me remember how much i love his writing style. this weekend i'll probably re-buy some of my favorites of his, as all mine are gone. he has passed, right? i guess this is his last book. well worth the price.

Chuck Palahniuk - Fight Club: A Novel
yes, i'm one of the few that had never read one of his books. one of my friends had this one laying out and i had always wanted to read it so i asked to borrow it. i couldn't put it down. even though i've seen the film many, many times, every page was still fresh to me. i really love this guy's writing style. i guess i had a later edition, as there is a neat little prologue from him telling the story of everything that has happened to this story since he first wrote it, and how it has completely blown up. great story, great writer. looking for recommendations for my next CP book - i'll be hitting the bookstore this weekend

David Lynch - Catching The Bog Fish
as i said on Lynchnet, this is a hodgepodge of random thoughts from DL himself. this is as close to a doorway into his thought process as we will ever get. a collection of thoughts on life, his past films and actors, his relationship with angelo, how he works, what he eats, etc. every once in awhile he ties it all back into transcendental meditation, but it's by no means a preachy book. it's not full of ground-breaking content like any Lynch-phile might hope. but as you're reading, every once in awhile he's spit out a sentence that floors you and makes you think for days. typical Lynchy goodness!

• 15/03/07, 16:00:54

I think I tried this idea for a thread a few years back, hope yours goes better

I'm in the same boat--used to read multiple books per week (on my way to an English Lit degree and beyond), but since I've had kids I tend to read magazines, such as The New Yorker, SPIN/Rolling Stone, Art In America, Interview, and yes, The Sporting News. Recent books I've read or am in the process of reading include a collection of Mark Twain, a guy I'd actually never read before, and A History Of God, which is interesting as hell but labyrinth and exhausting at the same time.

Chuck's hit and miss, but I find Invisible Monsters to be a great compliment to Fight Club, and think his best offering outside of those is Lullaby. Choke is entertaining, Survivor less so. I got about a third of the way through his most recent one and gave it away to a new Chuck fan; I'd seen it all before and at times he seemed to be going for mere shock value over actually saying anything.

• 15/03/07, 17:03:33

I don't read nearly as much as I used to. I once got through the whole of Edding's Elenium in a week. Now, I've had Rainbow Six open for months. I've got other unfinished books lying around too. Bit of a state.

• 15/03/07, 17:45:01

Alexhead wrote:Choke is entertaining, Survivor less so.

Survivor is the only one of his I've read aside from FC. There are worse ways to blow off a few hours.

I barely read books these days. I spend 45 hours a week at work reading AP, NY Times, Wash Post, LA Times, McClatchy and Bloomberg copy. So at home the last thing I want to do is ... read.

Last books I had open were The Da Vinci Code (gift from mom) and the fifth Harry Potter book (ditto), and that was months ago. Might try to finish the Potter before the movie is out this summer.

Going by Wikipedia (which is never wrong ), James Ellroy will finally put out a new one later this year. Maybe that'll be just the spark I need.

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• 19/03/07, 10:31:32

• 27/04/07, 16:26:30

I've been riding the light rail to work now so I actually have time to do some reading. I went to the library by my new house in search of something good, but I came up nearly empty. Their catalog has a huge selection, but this branch had almost nothing I was looking for.

Vonnegut - nothing
Assimov - I, Robot and that's it
Heinlein - obscure lesser books I'd never heard of
Palahnuik - nothing

Eventually I gave up and just wandered through the Fiction stacks looking for something remotely interesting. In the end I found a biography I'd been wanting to read instead - Samurai William - an account of the first Englishman to settle in Japan. It's been really interesting so far. At the end of my train ride this morning I reached a point that described a brilliant tactical move by the shogun Ieyasu to quell an uprising by his rival Hideyori. If you're not familiar with the siege of Osaka Castle, here is a brief summary, and for those who already know about it forgive me if I screw up the details...

Hideyori is holed up in the impenetrable Osaka Castle and Ieyasu can't break through with his guns.
Ieyasu signs a peace agreement and leaves, abandoning the siege.
However, he leaves behind a garrison of men who then proceed to tear down a big section of the castle wall and fill the moat with the rubble.
Hideyori's men realize what they are doing and start rebuilding the wall.
Ieyasu says 'Aha!' that is an act of war, and retaliates by attacking the castle again.

• 12/06/07, 15:31:34

• 12/06/07, 19:12:22

All my parents' old sci-fi books.

Favourites of those I've read recently would be something along the lines of:
Ursula Leguin: The Lathe of Heaven
Asimov: The Gods Themselves
Brian Aldiss: Non-Stop

I might consider broadening my range and visiting the library or even amazon since I've read each of these books half a dozen times. And if it's not sci-fi, pratchett (on poor form in recent years) or a Le Carre spy novel it doesn't exist

• 13/06/07, 03:53:14

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• 18/07/07, 23:58:59

Re: Recently Read/Currently Reading

TC wrote:Kurt Vonnegut - A Man Without A Country
this is as close to an autobiography we're going to get from Kurt.

Nah, that would be Palm Sunday. Collection of stories, speeches, excerpts and such wound into his life story. It's an invigorating read, I polished it off inside two weeks.

Yeah, so

Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (loved it... brilliant)

Vonnegut, Palm Sunday (fun read, good insights into a modest man's life... wasn't too impressed that he misspelled Pirsig's name though, copy errors abound in this thing)

Just starting Nietzche's "Beyond Good and Evil," the first in a five-book collection I picked up. Incomprehensible German translated into equally incomprehensible English... it's very dense and tough reading, but once you get into the swing of it you can start to handle the language. Don't read this one with distractions, read it with a dictionary at hand

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