Here it is... the book thread!

Started by scatcat, November 30, 2007, 03:55:17

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MeltingMan

The market is slowly recovering. However, the department for foreign language books no longer exists (at Amazon). A shipment is still at customs. Another was supposed to arrive on the 17th. Patience patience. 😑

En cette nation [Russie] qui n'a pas eu de théoriciens et de démagogues,
les pires ferments de destruction ont apparu. (J. Péladan)

Ulrich

I'm re-reading a book by Ulrich Ritzel plus also Lol's "Cured" book.  :cool

Quote from: MeltingMan on April 19, 2020, 10:34:26The market is slowly recovering. However, the department for foreign language books no longer exists (at Amazon)

Erm...?
https://www.amazon.de/fremdsprachige-englische-b%C3%BCcher-english-books/b/?ie=UTF8&node=52044011&ref_=sv_b_7

Btw, many local bookstores will open again (in Germany) by Monday (plus, some of 'em had a delivery service these last few weeks).
The holy city breathed like a dying man...

MeltingMan

Quote from: Ulrich on April 19, 2020, 12:48:45Btw, many local bookstores will open again (in Germany) by Monday (plus, some of 'em had a delivery service these last few weeks).

That's right, but on amazon.de there was the category 'foreign language books'. They do not exist anymore. But whoever searches, finds. 😉
En cette nation [Russie] qui n'a pas eu de théoriciens et de démagogues,
les pires ferments de destruction ont apparu. (J. Péladan)

Ulrich

Quote from: MeltingMan on April 20, 2020, 08:59:33That's right, but on amazon.de there was the category 'foreign language books'. They do not exist anymore. But whoever searches, finds. 😉

Did you click on the link? It does exist, it's just not there in the category when you do a search (I think)...
The holy city breathed like a dying man...

SueC

Read this a while back and thoroughly recommend.



The film is no substitute.
SueC is time travelling

BiscuityBoyle

Outstanding and very, very thoroughly documented. The opposite of "conspiracy theorizing". And of course even more relevant in 2020.


Quote from: undefinedThis book is a disturbing insight into the new ways world powers such as the US, Israel, Britain and China forge war today. It is a subliminal war of surveillance and whitewashed terror, conducted through new, high-tech military apparatuses, designed and first used in Israel against the Palestinian population. Including nano-technology, hidden camera systems, information databases on civilian activity, automated targeting systems and unmanned drones, it is used to control the very people the nation's leaders profess to serve.


chemicaloverload

I'm doing everything in my power to distract myself from the looming deadlines bestowed upon me a higher evil, one who did not cancel our years exams  :expressionless:. But, I've found a familar distraction in the form of Alex Gray- A Pound of Flesh. Nothing particularly gripping or special about the story line- two serial killers, one murdering sex workers, the other trying to murder the murderer of sex workers, but it is set in my beautiful city, Glasgow. I can close my eyes and see all of the locations, the streets, the alleys, the bars, the hotels and I like that. It's therapeutic in my empty world (also another great book, about a plague, killing everyone)
Life is only a dream and we are the imagination of ourselves

SueC

Nice to see you pop in, @chemicaloverload, and best wishes for your deadlines! :)  I've been reading a few crime books myself in the last couple of months, two of them by your fellow Scotswoman Val McDermid, of which one was partly set in Edinburgh.  :cool

It's so cool when something is set where you live!  As we live in a fairly remote place, not many books I've read are set here.  However, West Australian writer Tim Winton's Lockie Leonard children's books (made into a TV series) are set in Albany (half an hour from us), even though he doesn't call it Albany - yet when you read it, you know exactly all the places he is talking about!  He also wrote a book for adults called Breath, set in Denmark (although he doesn't call it that), which is half an hour from us as well, and it's the same thing - you can see the exact places he's talking about clear as day.  Although he was mostly famous for Dirt Music, I found the relationships in that really unconvincing and thought Breath was far more credible - I might actually re-read that one this year... and the funny thing is, with the types of music you like, I have a feeling you'd enjoy that novel! :)
SueC is time travelling

Ulrich

After I'll finish reading above-mentioned, I'm not certain yet which book to turn to. Maybe a recommendation from someone (cheers Brett)?
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17934530-annihilation

Quote from: chemicaloverload on May 04, 2020, 23:38:53...it is set in my beautiful city, Glasgow. I can close my eyes and see all of the locations, the streets, the alleys, the bars, the hotels and I like that.

While it is nice to read a book set in far away places, it can also be "refreshing" to read something set in the landscape you live in! My current read (almost through) is by Ulrich Ritzel and is indeed set on the "Schwaebische Alb" (some places fictional, some real).

Hope your exams will go well!
The holy city breathed like a dying man...

SueC

Well, this almost feels like it's becoming a book club now, what with people reading each other's recommendations and getting interested in other people's books!  :)  I'm currently reading Music: A Very Short Introduction by Nicholas Cook, on @Ulrich's recommendation, and am enjoying it - the author has a different way of looking at things than the "established order"... :cool

In some ways that ties in with a scene from Dead Poets Society, the clip of which I will put into the appropriate section forthwith! :)
SueC is time travelling

chemicaloverload

Thank you Sue, I will look 'Breath' out, I'm always in the market for more books :) Val McDermid is an interesting lady, her old university runs a crime writing degree combining writing and forensics:

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/15329744.new-scottish-crime-writing-course-offers-forensic-attention-to-detail/

And thank you Ulrich, but in the spirit of the Dead Poets Society, they should be ripped up. F*ck exams. Lets read guys! A new book club :D
Life is only a dream and we are the imagination of ourselves

Ulrich

Quote from: SueC on May 05, 2020, 12:31:18I'm currently reading Music: A Very Short Introduction by Nicholas Cook

Uh, now that reminds me of another one I haven't finished (yet), got stuck midways through, because it's very "theoretical"...
The holy city breathed like a dying man...

SueC

Quote from: Ulrich on May 05, 2020, 16:43:44
Quote from: SueC on May 05, 2020, 12:31:18I'm currently reading Music: A Very Short Introduction by Nicholas Cook

Uh, now that reminds me of another one I haven't finished (yet), got stuck midways through, because it's very "theoretical"...

You can always lubricate the technical reading with a beverage (or three) of your choice!  :angel


A while back I read The Girl Before by JP Delaney, and have just finished The Perfect Wife by the same author.  If any of you liked the film Ex Machina...


...this book might be for you.  Imagine waking up in what you think is a hospital, thinking you've had an accident.  Slowly, your robotics manufacturer spouse breaks it to you that you died five years ago and your consciousness has been brought back as an android.  He couldn't bear to be without you and this is the closest he could get to having you back.

It's a scenario which raises questions about sentience, consciousness, and identity, as well as the stated versus the hidden motives in intimate relationships.  Abbie the now-android comes home and slowly pieces together the puzzle of something not quite right in what she is told about her flesh-and-blood predecessor and her marriage.  She has to work through feeling like she is Abbie when she first wakes up, then accepting she is a sort of doppelgänger, and finally forging an identity of her own, while trying to solve the mystery of what happened to Abbie the human, and reconnecting with her autistic child.

The novel also points a lens at some rather cult-like Silicon valley workplaces and the psychology of their geniuses, and the acolytes of those geniuses.  This author once again made me think about all sorts of wide-ranging issues in the space of a book I devoured in less than 48 hours.
SueC is time travelling

Ulrich

A couple of years ago I re-discovered the books of Philippe Djian (best known for his "37°2 le matin", which was turned into a movie as "Betty Blue"). I used to read some of his books around 1993.
Now there's a few newer ones, so I will try and get one of them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_Djian

Also, I'm going to read "Annihilation", which has been recommended to me by Brett (& Sue).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annihilation_(VanderMeer_novel)
The holy city breathed like a dying man...

SueC

We had a very strange weather system this week which dumped a lot of rain on WA and generally felt like end times; it was forecast so we went off to the library in preparation and came home with lots of interesting stuff.  I'm reading Fatal White, the fourth in the Cormoran Strike/Robin Ellacott detective series by JK Rowling writing under a pseudonym - I've mentioned the first two before on this thread.  It's kind of addictive, like Val McDermid's Tony Hill/Carol Jordan books, with the difference that it makes you laugh on almost every page, like classic Raymond Chandler novels - it's so astutely observed, and the lead characters are totally endearing.

In this book, Robin marries the odious Matthew while we readers send expletives and black cartoon bubbles up into the ether.  He's her childhood love, but has hatched out into something of a hyena coming out of adolescence - while Robin is still loyal to the boy she loved at school and her only one ever, and can't see the metamorphosis as clearly as the readers - although there's lots of red flags that are waving in her face.  Matthew, however, is a master manipulator (and a prime example of a controlling, emotionally manipulative narcissist) - until she wises up to him, finally - sigh.  The scene where she finally walks out on him is gold - and a nice example of how to do this, for anybody finding themselves in such an unfortunate predicament.  I'm sure many readers were cheering - if you've not experienced that sort of stuff yourself, you surely know someone who has.

And yeah, the actual case is also fascinating, but I'm still reading... Interesting accounts of how various types of "society" in England operate, and not far off, I'll bet.  Also, a distinctly horrid lot of militant lefties - and I say that as a leftie, but OMG, I don't support what those characters stand for.  :1f635:   Rowling does a fabulous "show don't tell" with all of this - details like a far-left rally at a community hall, where none of the participants help the hall worker stack the chairs at the end of the meeting - the author shows throughout this novel that entitled behaviour, hypocrisy, and personal and systemic corruption can be found in every shade of politics.  How did a friend put it recently?  "Left wing, right wing, same vulture."   :lol:

Highly recommended.  Glued to the thing.
SueC is time travelling