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Off-Topic => Something else => Topic started by: scatcat on November 30, 2007, 03:55:17

Title: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: scatcat on November 30, 2007, 03:55:17
Okay, due to derailing of another thread, I decided to open a new thread, where booklovers can discuss BOOKS, and whatever they are currently reading, or have read..

I am currently reading.. WUTHERING HEIGHTS, by Emily Bronte.  I started to read this one again , due to Carnage Visor's influence about Kate Bush..!!
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: Hero on November 30, 2007, 11:53:10
YEY BOOKS!

I just finished Wuthering Heights last week, its a bit confusing when the narrator changes but i really enjoyed it!

At the moment i am reading KITCHEN by Banana Yoshimoto, its a really beautiful book about death, love and kitchens!
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: scatcat on November 30, 2007, 11:55:48
Banana  Yoshimoto?   :shock:
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: Hero on November 30, 2007, 11:58:45
Quote from: scatcat on November 30, 2007, 11:55:48
Banana  Yoshimoto?   :shock:

Yeah! Its not her real name though. She's Japanese and she thought Banana sounded cute and androgynous. Her real name is Mahoko.
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: scatcat on November 30, 2007, 12:01:54
.. I was just checking it out on the net.. Her books sound very interesting..  :smth020
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: Hero on November 30, 2007, 12:07:08
She's a really good author i would recommend her books to anyone.
I've nearly finished Kitchen and i have read Goodbye Tsugumi which was fantastic also, im going to read Lizard next   :smth023
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: robiola on November 30, 2007, 15:02:05
A Book thread....Wheeeeeee!!!
Ok, where to start.... Lately I'm heavily into Tom Stoppard, anyone with me? Well, he actually writes plays, but hey, they've been published as books, so I say he qualifies. I'm currently reading Arcadia.

I read a couple of books by Banana Yoshimoto a few years ago, including Kitchen. They're very enjoyable, I remember gobbling up Kitchen in just a few hours. After a couple of books I kind of got tired of her style, though, she's a to-be-read-once-in-a-while author for me...
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: Carnage Visor on December 02, 2007, 03:39:00
I am reading a great little novel by good old Stephen King called "NIGHT SHIFT" and when not reading that, I am reading "THINNER", also by Stephen King but under the pseudonym Richard Bachman.

Thanks for the mention, I hope you enjoy the book! I believe I own the movie...

Has anyone seen the picture of Simon Gallup kissing a photo of Kate Bush? It's pretty sweet!  :smth023

Peace guys!  :)
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: robiola on December 02, 2007, 10:19:43
Quote from: Carnage Visor on December 02, 2007, 03:39:00
I am reading a great little novel by good old Stephen King called "NIGHT SHIFT" and when not reading that, I am reading "THINNER", also by Stephen King but under the pseudonym Richard Bachman.

Stephen King scares me stiff. The way he writes about fear and anguish is so amazing that I get inevitably caught up in it. I recently re-read The Shining and slept with the light on for a week. And I remember when I was 17 and I read Pet Semetary, I was so unsettled that I went to sleep with my mom for several nights, something I hadn't done since I was 6. I don't even like scary books usually, but I make an exception for King -- he has a rare talent.
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: disintegration on December 02, 2007, 11:07:44
I read "Evocatiòn" by Aleida March, wife of el CHE!
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: scatcat on December 02, 2007, 16:28:31
Quote from: Carnage Visor on December 02, 2007, 03:39:00
I am reading a great little novel by good old Stephen King called "NIGHT SHIFT" and when not reading that, I am reading "THINNER", also by Stephen King but under the pseudonym Richard Bachman.


I can tell you this, Stephen King was my first real love , in reading books. We never had many books, growing up, and there was a copy of Stephen King's 'Carrie' in our house. I tried to read it ( i was about 9 years old), but my mum caught me and confiscated the book. .... :smth011.. I found it again from the cupboard and read it, devouring the pages.. my love for the fantasy and thriller novels began...  :smth023
  I read EVERYTHING Stephen King wrote.IT.The Dead Zone. Firestarter. Pet Semetary,etc.. My favourite, The Stand.
  I read through all of his books, including those written under his alias.. ( rejecting novels we HAD to read at school)  I got up to 'Misery'..... I had to put the book down..I had, finally had enough of thrillers and fantasy. I was really sick from the horror in the book.. ( different from the movie as i recall) My journey in thrillers had ended.
  I do think that Stephen King is a great fiction writer, still. I have 'The Eyes Of The Dragon', which he wrote so his kids could read his books. I like this one for its lack of devious, psychopathic storytelling. This was the last book of his that I read.
  Stephen King brought out the 'reader' in me. He opened my mind and imagination, my emotions finally expressed in my creative writing.
I pay homage to the great Stephen King. He is a very talented writer. Although i know I will never read another book written by him. It is not in my interests now.
he did scare me.. finally in 'Misery'. I needed to close the book, so to speak.
   I suppose that is why I can only read non-fiction novels.. which in themselves can be quite horrendous!
  :smth020
 
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: Hero on December 02, 2007, 17:08:25
Wow Stephen King! What a wonderfully messed up writer he is! He really knows how to scare people with words! I haven't read much by him, i have Four Past Midnight which is a book of four novellas including Secret Window, Secret Garden (the reason why i bought it, because i love the secret window movie).
All four of the stories are brilliant but i can't read them at bedtime :shock:
Today i started The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe...so far so good!
"Resignedly beneath the sky the melancholy waters lie"
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: robiola on December 02, 2007, 18:34:25
Quote from: disintegration on December 02, 2007, 11:07:44
I read "Evocatiòn" by Aleida March, wife of el CHE!

What is it about? Is it good?
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: disintegration on December 02, 2007, 18:38:38
is good book!
I have very much book about CHE Guevara!
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: melly on December 03, 2007, 09:33:31
I also LOVE Stephen King,my imagination running wild, scaring myself!! Haven't read anything of his for a while though; I really enjoy John Grisham and Patricia Connolly; both write "forensic" type books, fictional, but enjoyable.
Thoroughly enjoy reading non-fiction too, no favourite author though, just depends on what sort of mood I am set in. Sometimes, reading about someone elses struggles and triumphs can just kick you along that bit further...
Quite often, as I settle down to read a good book, I find, after a short space of time, I am reading it through the backs of my eyelids!!
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: robiola on December 03, 2007, 10:29:22
Ok, so nobody took me up on Tom Stoppard -- I guess he isn't very well known.

But I know you all know this all-time favorite author of mine.... I'm a huge Jane Austen fan!! I have read Emma so many times it's almost embarassing. Her writing has this sort of understated but wicked irony that thrills me down to my toes.
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: Meddy on December 04, 2007, 01:36:20
Oh lovely, a book thread.  I absolutely love reading.  I think my obsession for reading is almost equal to my passion for the Cure.  I just finished reading the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind.  One of my fav authers is Caleb Carr.  He wrote the Alienst, the Angel of Darkness, and the far off Killing Time.  Has anyone else read those?  I have yet to meet, or interact with another person who has read any of Caleb's books and am just curious if any one else has discovered them... :smth023
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: Lady on December 04, 2007, 12:51:04
I love reading! :smth001
Actually I'm reading "la scoperta dell'alba" by Walter Veltroni, an italian politician.

Anyway I prefer the classics of literature, as Kafka, Defoe, etc. and italian authors of course! :roll:

And I love STEPHEN KING and ANNE RICE! :smth023
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: scatcat on December 04, 2007, 14:02:07
Quote from: Meddy on December 04, 2007, 01:36:20
I just finished reading the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind.  One of my fav authers is Caleb Carr.  He wrote the Alienst, the Angel of Darkness, and the far off Killing Time.  Has anyone else read those?  I have yet to meet, or interact with another person who has read any of Caleb's books and am just curious if any one else has discovered them... :smth023


@meddy.. what genre of books Do Terry Goodkind and Caleb Carr write? I haven't read any of them yet, but curious.
:smth023
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: Meddy on December 04, 2007, 18:46:50
They are fantasy books.  I was never into fantasy but a friend recommended Robert Jordan and I was all out of other reading material.  They are good books, than I discovered Terry Goodkind when looking at Marion Zimmer Bradley and found the first three books of his series for a very reasonable sale price.  I bought them because I finished the book I brought with me, and I had to wait through my son's surgery the next day.  That was last January/early February, and I just finished the last one that was finally release a couple weeks ago in hardcover.  AWESOME BOOKS!!! Goodkind has a quality about writing about the essence of human character, and decisions that have to be made.  I have cried with his books, yelled out in shock, and the whole works. Never has a book moved me to the point of being quite that verbal.
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: silversand on December 04, 2007, 19:04:40
Have to confess that i haven't read a book from Stephen King jet. Are these books not to scary?
Of course i love reading!! At the moment i'm reading from Albert Camus The Happy Death.

I like to read books from e.g. Paul Auster, Nick Hornby, George Orwell, Irvine Welsh and Bret Easton Ellis. And i like to read plays e.g. from Shakespeare and Brecht :)
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: Meddy on December 04, 2007, 19:11:05



@meddy.. what genre of books Do Terry Goodkind and Caleb Carr write? I haven't read any of them yet, but curious.
:smth023
[/quote]

Sorry about that, I got all excited.  Caleb Carr writes historical fiction based in the late 1890's early 1900's and they are based in New York City (except Killing Time which has to do with the future but not like sci-fi kind of future, but actually a future of man kind that is VERY believable in some respects).  I enjoy the Angel of Darkness and the Alienist because all the characters are very strong, and are historically accurate.  They have to do with serial killers, and the psychology bit, along with forensics, and it talks about the beginnings of fingerprinting, ballistics, and new breeds of legal proceedings (which is commonplace nowadays but not so much a hundred years ago).  I recommend those books, they are somewhat slow going to begin with, but if you are patient the pleasure of reading them definetly pays off...
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: robiola on December 05, 2007, 10:58:09
Quote from: Meddy on December 04, 2007, 19:11:05
I enjoy the Angel of Darkness and the Alienist because all the characters are very strong, and are historically accurate... it talks about the beginnings of fingerprinting, ballistics, and new breeds of legal proceedings (which is commonplace nowadays but not so much a hundred years ago).

I read the Alienist, although it was a long time ago and I don't remember the storyline very well. But I remember that I particularly liked seeing, in these days of CSI and all the books and shows with high-tech investigation techniques, the dawn of this type of investigation. In the "modern age" stories you sometimes get the feeling that the people investigating a crime are just there to implement the technology and they would get nowhere without it, but in the Alienist it was quite the opposite, and that's what I found so enjoyable. It's also the reason I still love to read and re-read Agatha Christie books, especially the Poirot ones -- just his little grey cells working!!
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: scatcat on December 07, 2007, 12:27:34
This writer seems very much like an IRA LEVIN (This Perfect Day..one of my favourites, about futuristic colonies , computers rule,and big brother like 'mind control', steralisation and brainwashing, monthly 'treatments' and death occurs at the age of 62 in the interests of 'efficiency'... this one is a must read!!) also wrote Rosemary's Baby, Stepford Wives, The Boys From Brazil. Excellent writer.(1970's).
I also like 'BRAVE NEW WORLD', by Aldous Huxley..these types of writers of their time, have used the available science ideas, whether they be outrageously science-fiction and totally unimaginable that the future will end up... to write books that ultimately predict the future to be just as it is...  :smth023
also a great mention to John Wyndham.. 'The Chrysalids'..  about mutations and deviations in humans that force a kind of subterrainean life for those affected, including mutations such as e.s.p.

Next on my reading list.. back to Albert Camus..Exile and the Kingdom  ! has anyone read this one?
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: Janko on December 10, 2007, 15:28:56
I LIKE:

BUKOWSKI
CELINE
SARTRE
CAMUS
HEMINGWAY
KAFKA
DOSTOEVSKY
HARMS


...

THE MOST

(JUST TO NAME A FEW!)
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: scatcat on December 10, 2007, 15:38:06
Quote from: Janko on December 10, 2007, 15:28:56
I LIKE:
BUKOWSKI
CELINE
SARTRE
CAMUS
HEMINGWAY
KAFKA
DOSTOEVSKY
HARMS
(JUST TO NAME A FEW!)

oooohhhh  :smth049  janko.. like a man reciting poetry..  :smth060

Dostoevsky, Sartre, Hemingway?

who would have known..?  a key to my heart!! 
as we say here in oz.. PLEASE EXPLAIN ?  love to hear a book review or two..  :smth020
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: Hero on December 10, 2007, 19:07:12
Well, I've been of school sick again today :? but its been a wonderfull excuse to read all day!
At the moment i'm reading The Problem of Pain by C.S.Lewis its a brilliant thought provoking book, its written from a Christian view point and asks why God allows people to suffer - im not religious and i dont believe in God but i still found this interesting but i think people who do believe would get more out of this.
I've nearly finished it so next im going to read
Broken Glass: A Family's Journey through Mental Illness by Robert V. Hine - it looks really good too! :)
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: robiola on December 10, 2007, 20:11:02
These days I'm in the mood for something nice and entertaining that doesn't require much concentration....So I'm relaxing with a book called City of Bones by Cassandra Clare. It's urban fantasy, which means it's set in New York in the present day, but it's got hot ironic demon hunters with rune tattooes, demons (well, obviously), sexy vampires, ancient myths and sacred quests....
It's meant to be a book for young adults, which I'm not  :( , but I'm enjoying it -- Cassandra Clare is really funny. One thing she does really well is sarcastic banter, and I'm a sucker for that!
:smth066 :smth074
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: melly on December 11, 2007, 10:00:46
"My Place" by Sally Morgan...true story.. when Sally and her siblings were very young, their Grandmother always said they were "Indian".... the kids knew they were different by the colour of their skin, so accepted Grannys explanation. Turns out they were, indeed, Aboriginal ( australian indigenous folk) and that the grandmother did'nt want the kids to go through what she, herself had experienced as an aboriginal, as in the racism shown towards them, plus being treated like a piece of sh!t.. so, Sally finds out eventually who she really is, and starts to trace her family, thus embarking on a highly emotional and spiritual journey. It was great reading, I loved it.... what the elder aboriginals had to put up with; slavery, being treated like 2nd class citizens... shameful..
And still, her Grandmother will never speak of her past..
a good, thought provoking book... :smth023
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: melly on December 11, 2007, 10:08:57
Quote from: silversand on December 04, 2007, 19:04:40
Have to confess that i haven't read a book from Stephen King jet. Are these books not to scary?
Of course i love reading!! At the moment i'm reading from Albert Camus The Happy Death.

I like to read books from e.g. Paul Auster, Nick Hornby, George Orwell, Irvine Welsh and Bret Easton Ellis. And i like to read plays e.g. from Shakespeare and Brecht :)


To answer your question re Stephen King... his books are as scary as your imagination will allow!!  They're not horrific, just a good read... Try one... see what you think..
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: scatcat on December 11, 2007, 13:13:04
Quote from: Hero on December 10, 2007, 19:07:12
Well, I've been of school sick again today :? but its been a wonderfull excuse to read all day!
At the moment i'm reading The Problem of Pain by C.S.Lewis its a brilliant thought provoking book, its written from a Christian view point and asks why God allows people to suffer - im not religious and i dont believe in God but i still found this interesting but i think people who do believe would get more out of this.
I've nearly finished it so next im going to read
Broken Glass: A Family's Journey through Mental Illness by Robert V. Hine - it looks really good too! :)


Great to have a whole day reading in bed hero!! hope u well.  :smth001
C.S.Lewsis often wrote about the Christian values.. I have not yet read 'The Problem of Pain'..
Broken Glass sounds very interesting.. I look forward to your views on this one!  :smth020

Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: Janko on December 11, 2007, 14:44:00
Quote from: scatcat on December 10, 2007, 15:38:06
PLEASE EXPLAIN ?  love to hear a book review or two..  :smth020

NOT MUCH TO SAY
THOSE ARE THE WRITERS ANYONE SHOULD READ

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, A FAREWELL TO ARMS, FOR WHOM THE BELLS TOLL, LES CHEMINS DE LA LIBERTE, NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND, NAUSEA, WOMEN, POST OFFICE, FACTOTUM, PROCES, STRANGER,  ...

THESE BOOKS ARE THE BASIC LITERATURE... IF YOU READ THOSE BOOKS YOU'LL UNDERSTAND THE WORLD MUCH BETTER!

JOURNEY TO THE END OF THE NIGHT IS A F***G BIBLE FOR ME...

CELINE IS AMAZING WRITER AND I BECAME A DIFFERENT MAN AFTER READING HIS BOOKS
BUT
IN THE LAST FEW MONTHS I TOTALLY INTO SARTRE'S ROADS TO (OF) FREEDOM TRILOGY MASTERPIECE...

YOU SEE, THOSE ARE TERRIBLY DIFFERENT WRITERS (RIGHT WING VS. LEFT WING)BUT YOU CANNOT GET THE WHOLE PICTURE OF THE HUMANITY WITHOUT THE BOTH SIDES...
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: silversand on December 12, 2007, 18:50:20
Quote from: melly on December 11, 2007, 10:08:57
To answer your question re Stephen King... his books are as scary as your imagination will allow!!  They're not horrific, just a good read... Try one... see what you think..



Thanks for your answer melly :) I always thought that they're scary or horrific. Now i know they're not :)
Which book of Stephen King would you recommend?
Thanks for your answer in advance :)
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: scatcat on December 12, 2007, 19:00:13
Quote from: silversand on December 12, 2007, 18:50:20
Quote from: melly on December 11, 2007, 10:08:57
To answer your question re Stephen King... his books are as scary as your imagination will allow!!  They're not horrific, just a good read... Try one... see what you think..

Thanks for your answer melly :) I always thought that they're scary or horrific. Now i know they're not :)
Which book of Stephen King would you recommend?
Thanks for your answer in advance :)


uumm... silversand.. the only one that is not scary at all is 'The Eyes Of The Dragon', which Stephen King wrote for his children to read... there are a few that aren't so graphically scarey.. The Stand, The Dead Zone, etc.. listed above. In all instances, this genre of books really relies upon your own imagination and interpretation of what suspense is written. In my case... I can't read them anymore. On that thought though, I have not read 1408 ( the latest to be made into a movie).. so maybe others can recommend some not-so-scarey ones. I do believe however that Stephen King is a genius in his genre!!
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: robiola on December 12, 2007, 19:05:29
silversand, if you're up for a long book, The Stand is not very horrific, like Scatcat said, and I think it's fabulous.
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: Janko on December 12, 2007, 21:29:21
Quote from: silversand on December 12, 2007, 18:50:20
  Which book of Stephen King would you recommend?

EVERY SINGLE ONE!
BUT DONT GET INTO DARK TOWER SERIES BECAUSE THEY WILL NEVER END!!!
SERIOUSLY!
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: Carnage Visor on December 13, 2007, 00:03:28
I suggest a book like Night Shift that contains many stories, so you can see some different styles and get some different ideas of the kind of stuff he puts out.

NIGHT SHIFT contains classic stories that were later turned into movies, such as "The Mangler", "Children Of The Corn", and "Graveyard Shift."

I suspect more, though...a few movies seemed to have carefully ripped off some of the short stories in NIGHT SHIFT and made them into films without giving credit to Mr. King...

Hmmmmm.... :)
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: melly on December 13, 2007, 04:35:33
Quote from: silversand on December 12, 2007, 18:50:20
Quote from: melly on December 11, 2007, 10:08:57
To answer your question re Stephen King... his books are as scary as your imagination will allow!!  They're not horrific, just a good read... Try one... see what you think..



Thanks for your answer melly :) I always thought that they're scary or horrific. Now i know they're not :)
Which book of Stephen King would you recommend?
Thanks for your answer in advance :)

There you go!! Lots of answers for you... That's the beauty of this place, so many people able to help out!! Just grab one, and start reading!!! Let your imagination run wild!!   Let us know what you think, won't u?? sorry if I'm slightly off topic, just didn't want silversand to think I wasn't going to reply!   :smth023
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: scatcat on December 15, 2007, 16:15:30
Quote from: Janko on December 11, 2007, 14:44:00

THESE BOOKS ARE THE BASIC LITERATURE... IF YOU READ THOSE BOOKS YOU'LL UNDERSTAND THE WORLD MUCH BETTER!

JOURNEY TO THE END OF THE NIGHT IS A F***G BIBLE FOR ME...

CELINE IS AMAZING WRITER AND I BECAME A DIFFERENT MAN AFTER READING HIS BOOKS
BUT
IN THE LAST FEW MONTHS I TOTALLY INTO SARTRE'S ROADS TO (OF) FREEDOM TRILOGY MASTERPIECE...

YOU SEE, THOSE ARE TERRIBLY DIFFERENT WRITERS (RIGHT WING VS. LEFT WING)BUT YOU CANNOT GET THE WHOLE PICTURE OF THE HUMANITY WITHOUT THE BOTH SIDES...


thanks JANKO!!   I read a review of Celine's Journey to the end of the night it sounds like an extraordinary book.. and it will be the next book on my list!!  ;)
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: Carnage Visor on December 16, 2007, 02:25:06
I actually really want to read Alice In Wonderland, but not online. I can't really get into it when I'm online, because there's always the distraction of wanting to download music and all...

I want an original copy with art by John Tenniel (or whatever his name is), that seems to be the best art I've seen for that book.

NIGHT SHIFT is great, just finished reading Children Of The Corn and don't know where to go...happy reading, guys!  :smth001
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: kissingcrimson on December 16, 2007, 04:18:03
"The war of Don Emanuel's nether parts", Louis De Bernieres

cochadebago de los gatos!
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: Hero on December 17, 2007, 15:06:16
I've just read Steve & Me by Terri Irwin (I was a Crocodile Hunter fan  :rocker)
It was quite sad near the end though... a few tears but it was a nice book full of adventures and crocodiles! Long live Steve Irwin!

CV ~ Alice in Wonderland is brilliant, Lewis Carroll is my favourite author!
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: silversand on December 17, 2007, 22:26:01
Thank you so much scatcat, robiola, Janko, Carnage Visor and melly for your help :)
You are all great  :smth023
Now i know which book of Stephen King i will buy  :)




Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: robiola on December 17, 2007, 22:45:10
Quote from: silversand on December 17, 2007, 22:26:01
Thank you so much scatcat, robiola, Janko, Carnage Visor and melly for your help :)
You are all great  :smth023
Now i know which book of Stephen King i will buy  :)

Let us know how it goes!
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: Carnage Visor on December 19, 2007, 01:53:00
Any time!

Any way I can help, I'll do it!

And yes, my adaption of ALICE is quite odd, I'm not even following the book very closely. The Mad Tea Party and the falling down the hole are in tact, but in my version the Tea Party is towards the beginning.

I've also changed some characters and scenes. Alice is now in the forest, and she meets the Cheshire Cat, who begins to pet her. It's stupid, but I laughed at the thought of a cat petting a person. It's like the "Backwards Russia" jokes that Yakov Smirnoff tells...

Oh, and Alice in my story is 16 and a bit more witty and obnoxious than her original counterpart. I may be butchering a great book, but it's just for the school Newspaper, after all.
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: japanesebaby on December 29, 2007, 19:08:41
i always end up re-reading old favorites of mine on holidays - maybe because i don't get new books as i don't get any presents anymore (poor me - haha). or maybe because i've grown lazy and don't want to take unnecessary risks on my spare time. ;)
anyway, currently:


Stanislaw Lem: Eden


it's a bit robinson crusoe kind of story at first, in a way: a spaceship crashes on an unexplored planet. but then, nothing much really happens there, other than that the crew tries to explore the planet while repairing their poor wretched ship - and they realize that they don't understand ANYTHING about this planet, it's beings, it's society.
in a way i could recommend it to anyone who's not even the slightest bit interested in sci-fi genre, because it's a strange sort of 'tour de force' of imagination: page after page after page lem is describing various things/views/creatures onfthis strange world, he describes everything in vivid details but the reader finds he's facing the exact same problem as the members of the crew: not understanding anything at all of what it's all about, what going on, what means what, what is the cause and what is the consequence in this or that. you're just left baffled all the time, with a "wtf was... that!?" kind of feeling.

i've read this book several times over the years. i must have read it for the first time some 15 years ago or so, i've read it regularly ever since. i think it's mostly because of the nature of the book: because there's always so much that you couldn't even properly picture in your mind (let alone really "get it"), i've noticed that this book always manages to preserve it's magic.
i also like the slightly laconic/sarcastically tinged dialogue that lem writes to his characters, in between describing all the lush (and to be honest, mostly undescribable) wonders.



(by the way, it's also a good excercise: try to picture something that just completely alien to you, that doesn't remind anything you've ever seen or anything you know anything about. or something that reminds something you know but in a completely wrong kind of way, so that you only get totally confused because you start interpreting things all wrong if you let the resemblance get into your brain. and then, try to write down a description of this thing to someonw else - now that's a real feat for the imagination: how to use common, regular, all-too-familair (even a bit too worn-out) words to describe something completely NEW!
just try it, it's fun! and also good for your brain, i'm sure! :D)



ps. if i should be asked to nominate a book to a list of books called "let's hope no-one never ever EVER gets an urge to try and make a movie out of THIS", then this is surely one!
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: robiola on December 29, 2007, 20:57:10
Quote from: japanesebaby on December 29, 2007, 19:08:41
(by the way, it's also a good excercise: try to picture something that just completely alien to you, that doesn't remind anything you've ever seen or anything you know anything about...
That could be the hardest part of the whole excercise! If you manage that, you may be halfway there.
Another difficult thing is the exact opposite -- describing familiar things with new words. It just gives me a little thrill when a writer describes something that's been written about a million times and manages to do it from a different perspective, using words or concepts I wouldn't have thought of, giving me a sense of discovery and recognition at the same time.

The book sounds fascinating, I always love a good book rec. :smth001
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: japanesebaby on December 30, 2007, 10:33:25
Quote from: robiola on December 29, 2007, 20:57:10
Quote from: japanesebaby on December 29, 2007, 19:08:41
(by the way, it's also a good excercise: try to picture something that just completely alien to you, that doesn't remind anything you've ever seen or anything you know anything about...
Another difficult thing is the exact opposite -- describing familiar things with new words. It just gives me a little thrill when a writer describes something that's been written about a million times and manages to do it from a different perspective, using words or concepts I wouldn't have thought of, giving me a sense of discovery and recognition at the same time.

the exact opposite - you're right!
i really love these aspects on language - too often language is perceived as "just words", a means of communication.
but there are so many different languages within one language... so much potential that remains unused in everday situations.
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: scatcat on December 30, 2007, 10:48:32
One of my favourite books, written with words like poetry, is :
A Memoir: Colours of the Mountain, by Da Chen.

A memoir of Da Chen, growing up during the Cultural Revolution in rural China, and the aftermath of Mao's death.. a journey to escape poverty, hunger and ignorance: it is a book about friendships, prejudice, familial love and academic striving. he has such great determination and extraordinary faith, against the most impossible odds.

It is a great read, not as long as say, Wlid Swans, but very enjoyable.
Da Chen is a wonderful writer. Highly recommended!
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: robiola on January 10, 2008, 14:31:05
@meddy
Guess what I'm reading... I picked up Terry Goodking's "Wizard's First Rule" on a whim because I remembered your recommendation... I'll let you know how it goes!
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: scatcat on January 11, 2008, 15:24:53
Quote from: kissingcrimson on December 16, 2007, 04:18:03
"The war of Don Emanuel's nether parts", Louis De Bernieres

cochadebago de los gatos!


I really meant to ask kissing... is this what I think the nether parts are??  :shock: ... and why are they at war??   ;)
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: Hero on January 21, 2008, 22:35:22
The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy: And Other Stories by TIM BURTON!!! :shock:

I didn't know he wrote a book, when i saw it i very nearly died! Its just a little book of short stories/poems but wonderful, just as good as his movies!
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: Poe on March 29, 2008, 14:03:31
Mmmm, a book thread, yum yum. Lots of recommendations to devour. Good of you to like Bukowski, the dirty old loveable slob, hehe. I've read Ham on Rye, but Run with the hunted is the only Bukowski book I own. I suppose you've seen Born Into This?
By the way, I've spotted The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy by Tim Burton a couple of times in book shops, must fetch...

I have slightly strange reading habits I suppose, having regular fits at the library when I borrow tons of books that I skip between and re-borrow again and again and again...until the authorities come a-knockin'. :smth039

The latest book I finally finished was Girl with a pearl earring. Nah. Pff. That's pretty much my review. I have such respect for books it's hard to just leave them when nothing interesting has happened for a couple of hundred pages or so...

The books I've almost finished are, at present: Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman, To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee, Gothic - Fred Botting (about the literary genre, interesting), Smashed - Koren Zailckas (autobiographical about a teenage alcoholic), The man who mistook his wife for a hat - Oliver Sacks (mm, brains...), and The New York Trilogy - Paul Auster. Then there may be another ten books I've just started on, like the afore mentioned Brave New World...

One of the books I've been trying to find is CHARLOTTE SOMETIMES - Penelope Farmer. You know, the book that our beloved Cure song was based on? Is it available on the net somewhere? Perhaps even...for free? Here's hopin'...

By the way, anyone who likes books on neuroscience, cognitive science, psychology, or any other brain related literature? Love it. I've been looking for "The brain that changes itself" by Norman Doidge for a couple of months now...
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: Meddy on March 29, 2008, 17:36:08
Charlotte Sometimes had been out of print there for awhile, but I did notice while browsing online at Barnes N Noble, that they are re-printing it (starting in 2007) and that its available in hardcover for around $20.  It is a very good book and my copy is in quite rough shape as to the fact that I had found it in an antique shop in the middle of North Dakota about 13 years ago.
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: Poe on March 29, 2008, 18:45:20
Quote from: Meddy on March 29, 2008, 17:36:08
Charlotte Sometimes had been out of print there for awhile, but I did notice while browsing online at Barnes N Noble, that they are re-printing it (starting in 2007) and that its available in hardcover for around $20.  It is a very good book and my copy is in quite rough shape as to the fact that I had found it in an antique shop in the middle of North Dakota about 13 years ago.

Ooo, thanks for the info. I rarely buy books I haven't read already, but perhaps I'll make an exception...I hear the Cure song captures the book quite well.

(http://www.nybooks.com/shop/product-file/32/char6732/product.jpg)
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: robiola on March 30, 2008, 01:05:13
Quote from: Poe on March 29, 2008, 14:03:31
The man who mistook his wife for a hat - Oliver Sacks (mm, brains...)
Isn't that brilliant? I picked up An Anthropologist on Mars by him last summer and I finished it in two days. Fascinating!

Those are the only two I've read. I've never heard of Norman Doidge -- similar stuff?
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: Poe on March 30, 2008, 01:28:32
Quote from: robiola on March 30, 2008, 01:05:13
Isn't that brilliant?

Yes, love case studies. Thanks for the tip on An Anthropologist on Mars, sounds delectable.

Quote from: robiola on March 30, 2008, 01:05:13I've never heard of Norman Doidge -- similar stuff?

I don't know that much about his book "The brain that changes itself", really, just that it got a good review in the magazine Scientific American Mind a while back, and that it's supposed to be an update on the research about the plasticity of the brain, which is quite fascinating...Don't know if he's written anything else.
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: robiola on March 30, 2008, 01:49:34
Good old Norman is available on Amazon Uk... Sounds very interesting.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_ss_w_h_/202-7386701-2560640?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=norman+doidge (http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_ss_w_h_/202-7386701-2560640?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=norman+doidge)
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: Poe on March 30, 2008, 03:01:34
Mmmm, good reviews for Normie, albeit few...

I came to think about this book by the way, another one by Oliver Sacks: Musicophilia. I haven't read it, and it seems to have been given mixed reviews, but I figured it would be nice for Cure fans to hear about it, so they can have confirmed what they already now about the power of music... :-D

On the US amazon page, you can also watch a couple of short monologues with Oliver about the book (they're somewhere at the top of the page):

http://www.amazon.com/Musicophilia-Tales-Music-Oliver-Sacks/dp/1400040817/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206838375&sr=8-1
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: japanesebaby on October 03, 2008, 13:24:00
(http://i43.tower.com/cover-art/mm107819971/against-happiness-eric-g-wilson-hardcover-cover.jpg)

eric g. wilson: against happiness. in praise of melancholy.

http://us.macmillan.com/againsthappiness


Americans are addicted to happiness. When we're not popping pills, we leaf through scientific studies that take for granted our quest for happiness, or read self-help books by everyone from armchair philosophers and clinical psychologists to the Dalai Lama on how to achieve a trouble-free life:Stumbling on Happiness; Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment; The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living. The titles themselves draw a stark portrait of the war on melancholy.

More than any other generation, Americans of today believe in the transformative power of positive thinking. But who says we're supposed to be happy? Where does it say that in the Bible, or in the Constitution? In Against Happiness, the scholar Eric G. Wilson argues that melancholia is necessary to any thriving culture, that it is the muse of great literature, painting, music, and innovation—and that it is the force underlying original insights. Francisco Goya, Emily Dickinson, Marcel Proust, and Abraham Lincoln were all confirmed melancholics. So enough Prozac-ing of our brains. Let's embrace our depressive sides as the wellspring of creativity. What most people take for contentment, Wilson argues, is living death, and what the majority takes for depression is a vital force. In Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy, Wilson suggests it would be better to relish the blues that make humans people.



Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: revolt on October 03, 2008, 13:36:00
Quote from: japanesebaby on October 03, 2008, 13:24:00
(http://i43.tower.com/cover-art/mm107819971/against-happiness-eric-g-wilson-hardcover-cover.jpg)

eric g. wilson: against happiness. in praise of melancholy.

http://us.macmillan.com/againsthappiness


Americans are addicted to happiness. When we're not popping pills, we leaf through scientific studies that take for granted our quest for happiness, or read self-help books by everyone from armchair philosophers and clinical psychologists to the Dalai Lama on how to achieve a trouble-free life:Stumbling on Happiness; Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment; The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living. The titles themselves draw a stark portrait of the war on melancholy.

More than any other generation, Americans of today believe in the transformative power of positive thinking. But who says we're supposed to be happy? Where does it say that in the Bible, or in the Constitution? In Against Happiness, the scholar Eric G. Wilson argues that melancholia is necessary to any thriving culture, that it is the muse of great literature, painting, music, and innovation—and that it is the force underlying original insights. Francisco Goya, Emily Dickinson, Marcel Proust, and Abraham Lincoln were all confirmed melancholics. So enough Prozac-ing of our brains. Let's embrace our depressive sides as the wellspring of creativity. What most people take for contentment, Wilson argues, is living death, and what the majority takes for depression is a vital force. In Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy, Wilson suggests it would be better to relish the blues that make humans people.






That's all very well, but as much as I love art, if being forced to chose between art and happiness, I'd take happiness any day.
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: japanesebaby on October 03, 2008, 14:00:33
Quote from: revolt on October 03, 2008, 13:36:00
but as much as I love art, if being forced to chose between art and happiness, I'd take happiness any day.

:?:
sorry i don't understand what you mean. it's not about any choice between art and happiness...
it's about fake empty happiness (by which we are surrounded today and which undoubtedly is one of the biggest problems of our modern world), faked happiness that eventually kills creativity in us. and just because we're so keen to be "happy".
there's no happiness without a healthy amount of melancholy and if the melancholy side in us is being drugged with zoloft etc., we are putting off our possibilities to true and healthy happiness too.

(sorry if i'm jumping to conclusions but i somehow do feel like you didn't read the book, didn't you?)



Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: revolt on October 03, 2008, 14:21:41
Quote from: japanesebaby on October 03, 2008, 14:00:33
Quote from: revolt on October 03, 2008, 13:36:00
but as much as I love art, if being forced to chose between art and happiness, I'd take happiness any day.

:?:
sorry i don't understand what you mean. it's not about any choice between art and happiness...
it's about fake empty happiness (by which we are surrounded today and which undoubtedly is one of the biggest problems of our modern world), faked happiness that eventually kills creativity in us. and just because we're so keen to be "happy".
there's no happiness without a healthy amount of melancholy and if the melancholy side in us is being drugged with zoloft etc., we are putting off our possibilities to true and healthy happiness too.

(sorry if i'm jumping to conclusions but i somehow do feel like you didn't read the book, didn't you?)





You're right, I didn't read it. I was just reacting to the summary you provided... And I agree with your comment, but the thing is, melancholy is just a thing that comes naturally to some people some time, it's part of them, but I don't think it is the kind of thing that you should cherish or support. I'm sure many melancholic people, if given the chance, would prefer not to be it. There are many ways we can be "deep" and "enrich" ourselves without delving deep into melancholia. Because that feeling can also be a disease, you know? (well, I'm not talking about myself here, don't worry).

And also, I'm aware that many of the most impressive works of art were produced under melancholic states or even more depressive and anguished states... But maybe many of the people who produced them would have prefered not to have been in the "adequate" psychological conditions to produce them. Do you understand what I mean?

Anyway, the search for (some kind of) happiness is probably the only thing that all humans have in common. There's nothing wrong in it. Maybe some of these forms of happiness are "superficial" but who are we to judge? A "non-superficial" person will find find his/her own way of pursuing happiness and enrichment, he/she will have no need for a book to advise him/her to do it...

I hope I've made myself more clear this time.  ;)
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: japanesebaby on October 03, 2008, 19:29:35
Quote from: revolt on October 03, 2008, 14:21:41
Anyway, the search for (some kind of) happiness is probably the only thing that all humans have in common. There's nothing wrong in it.

of course there's nothing wrong with the search for happiness. it's something that we all yearn, all living things does, humans, animals, even plant life i believe... but i don't think that's the starting point here. it's about all that forced "fake" happiness of today. it's being poured upon us from all around, all the time: e happy, smiling, perfect people, successful people with prefect families, dream houses etc. etc. - we're being told that's what everyone wants and needs. it's not natural when it goes beyond certain point, when all things melancholy are deemed somehow "ill" and unnatural. when people come to feel that happiness is about being happy-happy-happy 24/7 and when they can't take a single moment of melancholy anymore, they can't take even the smallest misfortunes without resorting to pills or something. that's not natural.
and i think that's what the book states as it's starting point: that we should not reject melancholy as some sort of unwanted sickness. it's actually very vital for us, it's vital for our creativity. there must be both light and darkness. and all this artificial happiness is not constant light.

actually, the book has been criticized for glorifying melancholy, romanticizing it. but that's a general misunderstanding of its message. the writer actually posted an open message about this once, wanting to correct this misunderstanding by some critics. he said he never ever wanted to glorify depression or anything like that. he only wanted to try and point out how empty our lives will become (or, have already become) when we live in a society that teaches us to refuse the healthy balance of happiness and melancholy. and he chose to do this by showing how certain amount of melancholy is vital for creative spirit, how nothing springs out/gets created out of sheer happiness alone.
and in that i think he's quite right.
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: revolt on October 06, 2008, 16:32:37
Quote from: japanesebaby on October 03, 2008, 19:29:35
actually, the book has been criticized for glorifying melancholy, romanticizing it. but that's a general misunderstanding of its message. the writer actually posted an open message about this once, wanting to correct this misunderstanding by some critics. he said he never ever wanted to glorify depression or anything like that. he only wanted to try and point out how empty our lives will become (or, have already become) when we live in a society that teaches us to refuse the healthy balance of happiness and melancholy. and he chose to do this by showing how certain amount of melancholy is vital for creative spirit, how nothing springs out/gets created out of sheer happiness alone.
and in that i think he's quite right.


Well, I agree he's right. But is he saying anything new, really? At least since Freud, since psychology started to really develop as a science, it's been aknowleged that psychic health is really a question of balance between opposites: positive and negative, light and dark, good and evil, the pleasure principle and the instinct of death...

Now, it may happen that the book in itself is a good read, because it's really well written and researched and so on. It's just hard for me to understand what its "target" audience can be: "superficial" people will not be reading it, will they? And as for "non-superficial" people, well, I don't think they need to read it, either. Because, as far as I can understand from what you've written, the book will only be telling them things that they already know by themselves...
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: japanesebaby on October 06, 2008, 17:32:42
Quote from: revolt on October 06, 2008, 16:32:37
t's just hard for me to understand what its "target" audience can be: "superficial" people will not be reading it, will they? And as for "non-superficial" people, well, I don't think they need to read it, either.

but when did "superficial" people read anything at all? so trying to "educate" was always useless.
i think even plato already said something like how in the end, in a democracy like ours, idiots rule anyway, and how by their greater numbers they can always suppress the ideas of those who by definition would "know better".
i don't doubt plato was right. but if we think this book is useless "because it has no audience" then i think we could just as well stopped writing all these kinds of books altogether and most of all we could have stopped it years and decades ago - even freud was doing it in vain. because íf we take that stance then we can say it was all in vain ever since plato's days... 

but people do write on, keep talking... just because they find it important.
so isn't that important as such?

Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: revolt on October 06, 2008, 18:05:48
Quote from: japanesebaby on October 06, 2008, 17:32:42

but when did "superficial" people read anything at all?

Well, I think they do. I think most "best-sellers" are generally directed at people who I would call more or less "superficial".


Quote from: japanesebaby on October 06, 2008, 17:32:42
but if we think this book is useless "because it has no audience" then i think we could just as well stopped writing all these kinds of books altogether and most of all we could have stopped it years and decades ago - even freud was doing it in vain. because íf we take that stance then we can say it was all in vain ever since plato's days... 

but people do write on, keep talking... just because they find it important.
so isn't that important as such?

Well, I'll be the first to say that it's better to talk than keep silent. With things we find important, that is.

But I also think that Plato and Freud did contribute something relevant and new, something that would always make a difference and would always find its audience, sooner or later. Whereas I was questioning whether Eric G. Wilson was in fact contributing anything that could be "classified" that way... So, maybe not the best comparison there?
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: japanesebaby on October 07, 2008, 07:34:47
uote author=revolt link=topic=4324.msg56835#msg56835 date=1223309148]
Quote from: japanesebaby on October 06, 2008, 17:32:42

but when did "superficial" people read anything at all?

Well, I think they do. I think most "best-sellers" are generally directed at people who I would call more or less "superficial".[/quote]

ok fair enough. i didn't intend to hint that people are totally dumb if they don't read. by "anything" i meant "anything a bit deeper, not readers' digest, bestsellers etc. -there's nothing wrong if people see reading as one form of entertainment, just like there's nothing universally wrong if people consider music or movies merely an entertainment. that's their choice and who am i to judge them? i just meant that you cannot judge a book (or a piece of music or a movie etc.) just by saying "the masses won't pick it up anyway". it's not the book's fault if people choose to look for mere entertainment instead. and therefore i really don't agree that we can think a book is "useless" if the masses don't pick it up.
by the way i find this especially curious coming from a person who (i think) is not at all into mainstream music - because if we use "superficial masses" as some sort of basis here, then shouldn't we then also say that all marginal music is not really worth anything because it has no mass audience? for instance all classical music today would be worthless then, all marginal bands, all underground art - basically, anything that doesn't sell.

and if the book doesn't have anything highly original to say:
sure, plato and freud had. but if we purpreme originality take that as a basic requirement, if we insist that a book is worth nothing unless it invents something completely "new" - then something like over 99% of everything written today is surely more or less useless. i mean, we can slag off almost everything published today with a "it's not as groundbreaking as plato was" - but then what?

personally i do think a book (or other such piece of art) does make difference if it manages to remind us about these things, if even one person picks it up and thinks "well this is interesting, i hadn't thought about this before", then it was worth something. the fact that "the superficial masses won't read it anyway"
so imo there IS some kind of value in taking certain topics up again, reminding people about them.
just my opinion.

anyway look, actually i only posted here in order to revive this thread, to make people to post what they are reading - not because i wanted to advertise this book and this book only. not because i think it's something that everyone "has to" read. surely there are similar books out there, but this is rather recent one and therefore someone interested in such things might come across it more easily than something published 50 years ago that has now been out of print for several decades.

see, i didn't start a new thread especially for this book or anything. it was just a post in a thread about books. if somebody thinks it's interesting, fine - if not, that's fine too. it was merely a "currently reading" kind of post. nothing more. so please, let's not keep fighting over this matter. everyone just please post what's currently on your nightdesk - regardless of whether it was a groundbreaking opus or not.
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: revolt on October 07, 2008, 12:40:50
By I don't want to fight with you. I just like to discuss things and I also like to make myself clear. So I'll just answer a few of your comments in order that you don't get me wrong...


Quote from: japanesebaby on October 07, 2008, 07:34:47
i just meant that you cannot judge a book (or a piece of music or a movie etc.) just by saying "the masses won't pick it up anyway". it's not the book's fault if people choose to look for mere entertainment instead. and therefore i really don't agree that we can think a book is "useless" if the masses don't pick it up.
by the way i find this especially curious coming from a person who (i think) is not at all into mainstream music - because if we use "superficial masses" as some sort of basis here, then shouldn't we then also say that all marginal music is not really worth anything because it has no mass audience? for instance all classical music today would be worthless then, all marginal bands, all underground art - basically, anything that doesn't sell.

I think you got me wrong here. My "the masses won't pick it" comment (which wasn't exactly stated that way, I clearly meant to say "the superficial people", not the masses) was only made in a context where I was trying to show I could not see an audience for this book: the superficial will never read it, the non-superficial won't need to read it, so most probably there will be no audience at all.



Quote from: japanesebaby on October 07, 2008, 07:34:47
then something like over 99% of everything written today is surely more or less useless.

Ah, you know, but that's more or less what I think.  :-D And that's why I prefer reading the classics or maybe a few novelties that strike me as having something new to say to me... Because time is limited, I certainly don't have time to read books that tell me what I already know (well, there is an exception to this, of course: there are books that are such a pleasure to read that I find myself re-reading them, even if I already know everything that is there).


Quote from: japanesebaby on October 07, 2008, 07:34:47
personally i do think a book (or other such piece of art) does make difference if it manages to remind us about these things, if even one person picks it up and thinks "well this is interesting, i hadn't thought about this before", then it was worth something. the fact that "the superficial masses won't read it anyway"
so imo there IS some kind of value in taking certain topics up again, reminding people about them.
just my opinion.

Well, OK, I think I understand your view. You know, people CAN understand one another, it's only that sometimes a little effort is needed to achieve that understanding.  ;)
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: japanesebaby on October 07, 2008, 19:50:04
Quote from: revolt on October 07, 2008, 12:40:50
the superficial will never read it, the non-superficial won't need to read it, so most probably there will be no audience at all.

sorry, i don't completely understand your reasoning. non-superficial people don't need to read it - sure, i had no "need" to read it but i did. even though i know there's been a lot written about this subject. i don't understand how or why some topic should become boring and useless when "it's been said before". pretty much everything has been said before by now anyway.
i think you forget that there are always NEW readers out there who might pick this subject up for the first time. why didn't they pick up all those similar books that were written before? perhaps because they are badly out of print and hard to get. i can think of a lot of other good reasons. so to keep talking about something that is intersting IS interesting as such and has some value of its own, imo.

Quote from: revolt on October 07, 2008, 12:40:50
it's only that sometimes a little effort is needed to achieve that understanding.  ;)

sorry, but now i really don't know what you're hinting to here. that it will take some effort before you can indeed prove me wrong and make me chance my mind and "admit" that this book is useless and therefore i was simply wasting my time with reading it, not to mention make a post about it?  :?
now i just regret that i even posted in this damn thread. i though i made a simple harmless post and suddenly it became such a big issue. i don't know why.

(the strangest thing here is that i'm discussing a book with someone who didn't even read it...)
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: revolt on October 08, 2008, 14:40:30
Quote from: japanesebaby on October 07, 2008, 19:50:04
sorry, but now i really don't know what you're hinting to here. that it will take some effort before you can indeed prove me wrong and make me chance my mind and "admit" that this book is useless and therefore i was simply wasting my time with reading it, not to mention make a post about it?  :?

No, it's not that at all. I don't mean to prove you wrong or win you to my side on this. Or in general. What I meant is that after we've discussed things I have finally understood your opinion better. And hopefully my opinion had been made clearer to you too, but apparently that hasn't been the case...

And that " ;)" was there because in the "How beautiful you are" thread there was this sense that "no one ever understands another". It was a light joke - "see, WE seem to be understading each other now". Apparently I was being a little optimistic. But it doesn't mean we shouldn't keep trying... And please, I'm not being ironic or sarcastic here. I wish you didn't read things in my posts that aren't there at all.
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: Poe on December 28, 2008, 15:14:13
Hmm, time to get some life back into this thread. Reading everything and nothing at once as usual (go figure), but here's one book that stands out:

(http://www.mantex.co.uk/graphics/dhl-wlov.gif)
Women in Love - D.H. Lawrence

Wouldn't say it's my kind of book, I can see why some people can't finish it, but nonetheless, I quite like it. It's the language, the strong female characters and the philosophical musing that does it I guess.
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: scatcat on December 28, 2008, 18:04:53
Currently reading ( or trying to concentrate to read.. ).  :lol:

'bird by bird'  some instructions on writing and life, by anne lamott.   :smth023

It is an extremely down-to-earth book on anyone out there for those who have always thought of writing a book.

Just to quote the blurb: ' Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he'd had three months to write. It was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm my brother's shoulder, and said, " bird by bird", buddy. Just take it bird by bird."'

With every page, I have found myself giggling at the reality and rawness of writing..learnt over years of trial and error. It is a beautifully written book, absolutely wise and helpful. It is not only a book for writers, or writers-to-be, but for any reader who maybe sometimes think.. hmmm.. maybe I could become an author.

.. even if you don't think you may ever get to put your life down in a book someday, I highly encourage THIS book, as an overture to life, in general, a very funny, and realist view to life..

I highly recommend this book to all those creative out there- this book has MANY creative ideas ( not just writing) and inspiring ideas on viewing the 'outside' world as more or-less an experiment.

4 stars for me!! Really funny and truly inspiring.   :smth020



Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: Hero on December 29, 2008, 06:29:37
I'm reading 'I Capture The Castle' by Dodie Smith (the person who wrote One Hundred and One Dalmations, genius, obviously)

Anyway it's about a girl called Cassandra (I like that name) and her family live in a real castle but its a bit run down and her father is an eccentric reclusive author who hasn't worked in years so they have no money.

It's basically just about her life and family and first love.
I've not finished it yet but it's quite good. I found it on a list of books you should read before you turn 21. I'm not too sure if i would agree.  :roll: It's good but not life changing.

Next up 'The Painted Bird' by Jerzy Kosiński (most probably because of the Banshees conection  :lol: )

Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: fiction on December 31, 2008, 01:48:36
I´m on the first book of Cormac McCarthys Border trilogy, "All the Pretty Horses" and as always Mr McCarthy has the ability to describe the dullest shades of grey with the spectrum of a brilliant rainbow and completely seduce you with what could otherwise has been a trivia story.
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: Meddy on January 08, 2009, 03:37:33
Quote from: robiola on January 10, 2008, 14:31:05
@meddy
Guess what I'm reading... I picked up Terry Goodking's "Wizard's First Rule" on a whim because I remembered your recommendation... I'll let you know how it goes!
So did you ever finish reading it??  I just realized a couple of weeks ago that they have made Terry's book series into a TV series...I give them an A for effort but it's rather dull and bland in comparison to the books..

FYI to anyone planning on reading The Sword of Truth Series, please do not decide to not read them based upon the possiblity that you may have seen a TV episode.
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: alt.end on February 04, 2009, 18:37:51
This one is HILARIOUS: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Watching-English-Hidden-Rules-Behaviour/dp/0340818867

(http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51AFVSWH53L._SS500_.jpg)

Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: japanesebaby on July 10, 2009, 13:05:09
talk about book in some other threads made me thought about resurrecting this thread.

has anybody read any works by a japanese writer haruki murakami?

i read an article about him in a magazine the other day and his work sounded really interesting. i'm currently trying to get hold of this one:

(http://www.murakamibooks.co.uk/_assets/images/skin/book-jackets/b/kafka-on-the-shore.jpg)

kafka on the shore (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/jan/08/fiction.harukimurakami)


website: http://www.murakami.ch/

Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: japanesebaby on August 17, 2009, 19:44:24
(http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41bRInPM6FL._SL500_AA240_.jpg)

Ursula LeGuin: Buffalo Gals And Other Animal Presences

a collection of short stories and poems

the title story (that gives the book its name) is a fantastic story about a girl who survives a plane crash in the middle of sage brush country somewhere in the west, and enters a sort of dream time, an animal presence, where coyote and other animals take her in and show her a different world:


...
"i don't understand why you all look like people" she [the child] said.
"we are people." [said Coyote]
"i mean, people like me, humans."
"resemblance is in the eye", Coyote said.
[...]
"you mean what i'm seeing isn't true? isn't real - like on TV or something?"
"no", Coyote said. "hey that's a tick on your collar." she reached over, flicked the tick off, picked it up on one finger, bit it, and spat out the bits.
"yecch!", the child said. "so?"
"so, to me you're basically greyish yellow and run on four legs. to that lot -" she waved disdainfully at the warren of little houses next down the hil-  "you hop around twitching your nose all the time. to hawk, you're an egg., or maybe getting pinfeathers. see? it just depends on how you look on things."
...





the other stories swirl around anything from discussions about the difficulties about understanding penguin dialects, there's a scientist's report (and an attempted translation) of acacia seed poems by an unknown ant poet found inside a deserted ant hill to a story about  a distant planet  covered by only plants and trees which share one single consciousness.

this is a really wonderful and magical book, like all leguin's work i've read so far. but even though this isn't one of her major works, this might be my favorite.  
definitely recommended.
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: PerfectBlueSkyDolls on February 21, 2010, 05:47:33
Two words..

Chuck Palahniuk

http://chuckpalahniuk.net/ (http://chuckpalahniuk.net/)

Best author I have ever read. I recommend, well, all of his work!
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: dsanchez on February 25, 2010, 17:05:50
I bought four books yesterday, and started with one I wanted to read since long, long time ago: OSCAR WILDE - The picture of Dorian Gray

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Picture_of_Dorian_Gray (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Picture_of_Dorian_Gray)

What about you guys, what are you currently reading?
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: skellington on February 25, 2010, 19:12:41
Nice choice!  :smth023 I read that book (Dorian Gray) It was very interesting and very Wilde. :-D I just finished reading "Charlotte Sometimes" and loved it. I started reading MetaMorphosis by Anothony Murkar who has had a difficult journey battling his disease (same as me)It is good so far
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: dsanchez on November 01, 2012, 16:59:57
Just bought these two:

Stephen King: 11/22/63
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/11/22/63 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/11/22/63)

José Saramago: Death with Interruptions (original: As Intermitências da Morte)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_with_Interruptions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_with_Interruptions)
Title: Re: HERE IT IS... THE BOOK THREAD !!
Post by: PicturesOfYou on November 01, 2012, 18:50:16
Quote from: PerfectBlueSkyDolls on February 21, 2010, 05:47:33
Two words..

Chuck Palahniuk

http://chuckpalahniuk.net/ (http://chuckpalahniuk.net/)

Best author I have ever read. I recommend, well, all of his work!


I like him too! I've read Choke, Invisible Monsters, Diary... I generally read all kind of stuff, but when I discovered the cure I started reading some Camus' works...he thrilled me! Now that I go to university fortunately I read more than before :P
And the last book I read was "Lolita" by Nabokov... a beautiful work, but a bit...ehm...disturbing   :smth040
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: dsanchez on November 19, 2012, 23:30:55
just opened an account in goodreads. is anyone else there?

http://www.goodreads.com/dsanchezvasquez (http://www.goodreads.com/dsanchezvasquez)

Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: dsanchez on September 13, 2014, 02:33:11
Currently reading "El Aleph" a collection of short stories by Jorge Luis Borges. Very complex writing and thus not so easy to understand. I must confess I had to read sometimes twice certain paragraphs to try to understand the idea.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Aleph_(short_story_collection) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Aleph_(short_story_collection))
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5787.The_Aleph_and_Other_Stories (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5787.The_Aleph_and_Other_Stories)
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Maya on March 24, 2015, 19:25:50
Quote from: dsanchez on September 13, 2014, 02:33:11
Currently reading "El Aleph" a collection of short stories by Jorge Luis Borges. Very complex writing and thus not so easy to understand. I must confess I had to read sometimes twice certain paragraphs to try to understand the idea.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Aleph_(short_story_collection) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Aleph_(short_story_collection))
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5787.The_Aleph_and_Other_Stories (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5787.The_Aleph_and_Other_Stories)

You tried Borges?  :) That's impressive.. He is very enigmatic and esoteric but also a bit cluttered with a lot of references.. I had the same experience as you, rereading passages.. I have read Aleph about 6 or so years ago.. I can't say I remember much about it other than the fascination with this Aleph entity/dimension which I have been searching for since I can remember (.. sometime at the age of discovering Yoda of Star Wars and his groovy self-mastery powers :P )..
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: MeltingMan on May 18, 2015, 10:19:24
I'm currently reading Historien om Västfronten by Nils Fabiansson, another book
about a "disappeared world", but an outstanding one without the usual political focus
on peace and war. Well researched with new or forgotten details and photos. A German edition
is still questionable, but I recommend the unabridged Swedish edition. :smth023
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: dsanchez on January 08, 2018, 11:14:00
Currently reading "La ciudad y los perros" (The city and the dogs) from one of my favourite authors, Mario Vargas Llosa. I have read most of his work and left for the end his first long novel.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/oct/07/mario-vargas-llosa-five-essential-novels
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on January 08, 2018, 14:12:28
After Christmas, I finished reading Bob Dylan's "Chronicles Vol.1".
Currently I'm reading "Sturmwarnung" by Stefan Kruecken (about the life of "Kapitän Schwandt", who spent most of his life working on ships), which was a Xmas gift.
Next up I want to read "Nullnummer" (original title: "Numero Zero") by Umberto Eco.
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: PearlThompsonsBloodflower on January 08, 2018, 18:29:22
Currently re reading Cured. I got it for Christmas n finished it in 3 days. I am re readin it just bc I love the book so much even if I'm not huge on Lol anymore.
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: dsanchez on April 03, 2018, 23:26:12
Watching a series in Netflix and the main character wrote some interesting stuff that is in my to-read list:

Technological Slavery: The Collected Writings of Theodore J. Kaczynski, a.k.a. "The Unabomber" (http://ia800300.us.archive.org/21/items/tk-Technological-Slavery/tk-Technological-Slavery.pdf)

Seems something worth reading, specially for those pasted to their mobile phones everyday...
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on April 04, 2018, 11:13:28
I'm currently reading Dan Brown's "Origin".
I've never been his biggest fan, but mostly his books were "entertaining", even though the adventures of Professor Langdon always follow the same pattern: he gets into some kind of mysterious adventure, meets a woman he can drag along through secret pathways, while solving a "mystery" and on the way explaining some (religious or other) "symbols"...

Quote from: dsanchez on April 03, 2018, 23:26:12
Seems something worth reading...

Are you sure? The guy was probably right to be a critique of industrialization etc., but apart from that he seems a little insane...
I myself do not think it's worth reading if the guy who wrote it thinks his own writing is so important he needs to kill to get people to read it.  :roll:

From Wikipedia:
QuoteTheodore John Kaczynski (/kəˈzɪnski/; born May 22, 1942), also known as the Unabomber, is an American domestic terrorist. A mathematics prodigy, he abandoned an academic career in 1969 to pursue a primitive lifestyle, then between 1978 and 1995 he killed three people, and injured 23 others, in a nationwide bombing campaign targeting those involved with modern technology. In conjunction, he issued a social critique opposing industrialization and advancing a nature-centered form of anarchism.

In 1995, he sent a letter to The New York Times and promised to "desist from terrorism" if the Times or The Washington Post published his manifesto, Industrial Society and Its Future, in which he argued that his bombings were extreme but necessary to attract attention to the erosion of human freedom and dignity by modern technologies that require large-scale organization.

How did you write your post btw? Using any kind of modern technology?   ;)
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: dsanchez on April 04, 2018, 12:11:32
Quote from: Ulrich on April 04, 2018, 11:13:28
Are you sure? The guy was probably right to be a critique of industrialization etc., but apart from that he seems a little insane...
I myself do not think it's worth reading if the guy who wrote it thinks his own writing is so important he needs to kill to get people to read it.  :roll:

he is insane, but most genius were/are insane. Yes, I obviously disapprove his way of making his thinking known, but the few I read, I agree with. Plus the guy was subject of an experiment when he was student in Harvard, this definitely fucked him up and probably made him do the (bad) things he did.
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on April 04, 2018, 12:55:38
Quote from: dsanchez on April 04, 2018, 12:11:32
he is insane, but most genius were/are insane.

I know. And if you won't read my genius postings here, I'm gonna kill someone!  :x  :P  ;)

Anyway, I'm 99% certain there are better authors out there warning about industrialization, finance system and so on - only they are modest enough not to kill someone to get heard...
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: dsanchez on April 04, 2018, 21:00:52
Quote from: Ulrich on April 04, 2018, 12:55:38
Anyway, I'm 99% certain there are better authors out there warning about industrialization, finance system and so on - only they are modest enough not to kill someone to get heard...

will let you know after reading ;)
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on April 05, 2018, 09:26:31
Quote from: dsanchez on April 04, 2018, 21:00:52
will let you know after reading ;)

Reading that after watching a series via "netflix" (!) is ... oh well you know...  :lol:

Before letting me know you should of course read other critics' works, for example:
Friedrich Georg Jünger: Die Perfektion der Technik, Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 8. Auflage 2010 [written in 1939!!]

Michael Adas: Machines as the Measure of Men. Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance. Cornell University Press, Ithaca NY u. a. 1990

Wolfgang Klems: Die unbewältigte Moderne. Geschichte und Kontinuität der Technikkritik. GAFB – Gesellschaft zur Förderung Arbeitsorientierter Forschung und Bildung, Frankfurt am Main 1988

Quote
Prominente Vertreter der Technikkritik sind u. a. Friedrich Georg Jünger, Günther Anders, Jacques Ellul, und Lewis Mumford. In einem weiteren Sinn kann man auch Teile des Werks von Martin Heidegger und die kritische Technikgeschichte (David F. Noble) der Technikkritik zurechnen.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technikskepsis

(Yes, I used google to find some info... :oops:)
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: MeltingMan on April 05, 2018, 17:26:53
I'm just finishing Joséphin Péladan 1858-1918 by Christophe Beaufils.
The next one will be Röda rummet by Strindberg.
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: chemicaloverload on July 15, 2018, 22:13:56
I landed in Espania with no books. Luckily I found a little market in a town outside of Barcelona where they had a donation stall with some English books. I picked two up and I just finished reading the first one called "nobody true" by James Herbert. I had not prepared myself for it's content. It's not the kind of book you read on the beach in the sun...it's a night book, for when everyone is asleep and can't see your face twisting as you read the words, asking you 'good book?' in the process, only to be met with a silent nod.

Asides from that, I recommend it. To those with a strong stomach :)
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on October 08, 2018, 10:46:00
I'm reading "Room to Dream" written by David Lynch and Kristine McKenna

QuoteAn unusual hybrid of biography and memoir, Room to Dream alternates chapters by each writer. First, co-author McKenna supplies a conventional biographical account of Lynch's life, reported through conversations with his family members, his friends from childhood to the present day, and such collaborators and supporters as Kyle MacLachlan, Laura Dern, and Naomi Watts; then Lynch responds to that material in chapters that read like transcribed and lightly edited interviews.

Room to Dream devotes almost as much of its page count to his visual-arts career as to his films. He loves to make things with his hands, from the shed he built for his landlord out of scrap wood when he was living in a Hollywood bungalow during the 1970s to the furniture he has designed more recently...
He began making short art films after feeling the desire to add movement to his paintings.

Room to Dream runs on the ebullience of Lynch's creative process: his gee-willikers enthusiasm, his quirks, his often cryptic yet effective direction of actors ("It needs a little more wind," he once told MacLachlan, the star of Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks), his openness to improvisation and luck, his do-it-yourself spirit. By all accounts, actors adore him, and a few—Nance, Dern, Watts—have worked for him repeatedly, even when it meant having to do things like don suffocating rabbit costumes to make web videos that no one understands. Don Murray, whose Hollywood career stretches back to playing opposite Marilyn Monroe, describes the set of Twin Peaks: The Return as the happiest he had ever been to. The Lynch of Room to Dream is uniformly kind, considerate and cheerful, with an almost superhuman ability to remember everybody's first name, even if it's just the kid who brings him coffee.

Of course, the great puzzle of David Lynch is how this sunny personality can create such disturbing films. Or perhaps it's no puzzle at all, and every shadow in his psyche gets so comprehensively siphoned off onto screen and canvas that there's none left to trouble his actual life.
https://slate.com/culture/2018/06/david-lynchs-memoir-room-to-dream-reviewed.html
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: chemicaloverload on November 03, 2018, 21:08:35
Finishing off Victorian Murders by Jan Bondeson. Not only does she tell you of the murders, but the locations of the houses today.
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: dsanchez on December 27, 2018, 09:23:13
Currently reading "Outliers":

QuoteOutliers: The Story of Success is the third non-fiction book written by Malcolm Gladwell and published by Little, Brown and Company on November 18, 2008. In Outliers, Gladwell examines the factors that contribute to high levels of success. To support his thesis, he examines why the majority of Canadian ice hockey players are born in the first few months of the calendar year, how Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates achieved his extreme wealth, how the Beatles became one of the most successful musical acts in human history, how Joseph Flom built Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom into one of the most successful law firms in the world, how cultural differences play a large part in perceived intelligence and rational decision making, and how two people with exceptional intelligence, Christopher Langan and J. Robert Oppenheimer, end up with such vastly different fortunes. Throughout the publication, Gladwell repeatedly mentions the "10,000-Hour Rule", claiming that the key to achieving world-class expertise in any skill, is, to a large extent, a matter of practicing the correct way, for a total of around 10,000 hours, though the authors of the original study this was based on have disputed Gladwell's usage

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliers_(book)
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: chemicaloverload on May 19, 2019, 21:52:02
Enid Blyton- Five Give Up the Booze
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: SueC on August 01, 2019, 04:34:47
Hooray!  A book thread!  :heart-eyes

I've just finished Northanger Abbey, the first part of which was hilarious, and am continuing my obscure-Austen binge with Mansfield Park.  Before the Austen binge I read The One Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out Of The Window And Disappeared.  I'm midway through a Mike Scott biography and Sy Montgomery's The Soul Of An Octopus, and revving up to read another title by Haruki Murakami, having finished Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, Norwegian Wood, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (which got me started) and a few others.  I read Cured and the coffee table book A Perfect Dream last year.

Brett is currently reading Richard Morgan's Broken Angels, which he says is a military cyperpunk archaeology science-fiction thriller; and he's also reading Brian Ward's How Linux Works cover to cover because although he uses Linux as the basic operating system, he's never been formally trained in it and this helps remedy it.
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on August 01, 2019, 11:55:40
I've been reading "Die Geschichte der Baltimores" by Joel Dicker, a real page-turner, so I might be finished with it all-too-soon.

Also, I've started re-reading "Road Series" by Hugo Race.
http://www.hugoracemusic.com/rough-velvet-records/road-series-by-hugo-race

And I want to re-read "Cured" by Lol Tolhurst!
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: SueC on September 05, 2019, 16:33:59
If anyone here is interested in a good "whodunnit" - say if you've been reading / watching Wire In The Blood and that's your thing - and / or you're interested in the psychology of what makes people tick, then I highly recommend JP Delaney's The Girl Before.  It looks at psychological dysfunction in individuals, but also on an organisational level and a cultural level - constantly getting you to consider what you think is healthy and not, and how far is too far, and what is really going on in a relationship.  The main story is about a woman called Jane who moves into a unique architect-designed home that is affordable to rent, but also requires you to stick to pages and pages of special rules about how to live in this house, and to be a guinea pig under the microscope.  Jane falls for the architect, and finds out the woman who lived in the house before also had a relationship with the architect, and looked eerily similar both to herself and the architect's deceased wife.  The previous tenant died in the house after falling off the staircase, and the coroner recorded an open verdict.  Murder? Accident? Suicide?  Jane is determined to find out.

Really good books ask more questions of the reader than they answer, and this is definitely one of them.

Reviews here:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-girl-before-j-p-delaney/1123670928#/
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: SueC on September 27, 2019, 13:20:03
Just finished Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine and I'd have to say it's my favourite out of all the novels I read so far this year - so superbly written in every respect, plus showing so well how adverse childhood experiences affect people, while making you laugh at every turn, and cry a good few times as well.  Fabulous left-field heroine who holds up a magnifying glass to the absurdity of much of what we perceive as "normal" as well!  Highly recommended.
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: MeltingMan on September 27, 2019, 18:35:57
The book about Péladan was actually the start for a new collection. I found this
interesting video about the publisher. It's in French language and from 2006, but I
think it doesn't matter. A nice weekend...😉

Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on September 30, 2019, 11:35:42
Oh my, I've been trying to re-read "Der Steppenwolf" by Hermann Hesse, which I was forced to read back in school (1987 I believe) - didn't like it much back then (one of the reasons was the teacher, who was "difficult" at best).
I'm getting on slowly, I can see what fascinates people about it, but I still can't sympathise with the main person very much, which makes it difficult. (Also, the use of alcohol, tobacco and such plus "free love" makes one wonder why they put this on school tables...?)
Still, at times you'd think he describes our "modern" world, which is no small feat for a book written in the 1920's!

In parallel, I'm re-reading Hugo Race's "Road Series", which is a good one.
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: SueC on September 30, 2019, 15:48:22
Quote from: Ulrich on September 30, 2019, 11:35:42Oh my, I've been trying to re-read "Der Steppenwolf" by Hermann Hesse, which I was forced to read back in school (1987 I believe) - didn't like it much back then (one of the reasons was the teacher, who was "difficult" at best).
I'm getting on slowly, I can see what fascinates people about it, but I still can't sympathise with the main person very much, which makes it difficult. (Also, the use of alcohol, tobacco and such plus "free love" makes one wonder why they put this on school tables...?)

I'm not sure what the policy is in German education, but here in Australia there's all sorts of stuff like that in books on the high school literature lists of both secular and Catholic schools, especially for the senior years - social realism, etc.  The most disturbing thing we had to read when I was at school was John Fowles' The Collector - about a psychopath who kidnaps a girl off the street and keeps her in a dungeon, where she eventually dies.  The idea of reading stuff like that in a senior class is so that social issues like that will get confronted and discussed head-on, but in a supported and safe environment.

Macbeth is about plotting fell deeds, murder, mayhem etc - quite horrific when you think about it, but because it's Shakespeare, it often gets away with more violence than less famous and celebrated authors do.  On the other hand, it's not gratuitous violence with this playwright, because he's always trying to examine people's reasons for doing things, and where they might have started going wrong - which is instructive - and if you don't confront the dark aspects of your own personality and realise that it's not just monsters who do horrible things, you're more likely to do horrible things yourself.

I've never tried Der Steppenwolf - I wonder should I give it a shot?  I'm not that au fait with German authors but found Goethe quite tedious in comparison to Shakespeare, with the minor start on that author I got in Germany - I was really young - do you like Goethe?  I'm sure you had your head bashed with that quite a bit in your senior school education?

Ever tried reading Ulysses?  ;)

Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on September 30, 2019, 20:06:25
Quote from: SueC on September 30, 2019, 15:48:22The idea of reading stuff like that in a senior class is so that social issues like that will get confronted and discussed head-on, but in a supported and safe environment.

Ok, that does make sense. However, I remember nothing about how/what we discussed back then... (maybe better, because that teacher was a bit of a madman, in fact we thought he was a bit of a "Steppenwolf" himself...)!

Quote from: SueC on September 30, 2019, 15:48:22I've never tried Der Steppenwolf - I wonder should I give it a shot?  I'm not that au fait with German authors but found Goethe quite tedious in comparison to Shakespeare, with the minor start on that author I got in Germany - I was really young - do you like Goethe?  I'm sure you had your head bashed with that quite a bit in your senior school education?

To be honest, I don't remember much about Goethe (or what we did in school about him)... I know a bit more about Schiller, maybe because there are towns here in the south which claim to be a "Schillerstadt".

Funnily enough, Goethe is mentioned in the "Steppenwolf", here is a quote from a summary in English (click the link if you wanna read the whole thing):
QuoteAt a professor's house, Harry gravely insults his former colleague about the way Goethe, the famous German poet, is represented in a portrait that hangs in his home...
https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/steppenwolf/summary/
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: piggymirror on January 11, 2020, 23:50:40
I have the Steppenwolf book on the shelves. Always have. Not opened yet.

Ulysses I have not read (but I seem to have some James Joyce as well? I'll have to check...).

Right now I am reading several things, on and off.

1793, by Victor Hugo

Viaje a la Alcarria, by Camilo Jose Cela

I never seem to be able to finish them!!!

Then I also have another book officially started...

The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri (tough read, original version... started but could not finish, so the next time I'll have to start again)

I've taken a liking to read original versions if possible.
As not only you have more fun when reading them, but you also learn more of those languages.
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: SueC on January 12, 2020, 01:35:43
A few years ago, I learnt a useful new word:  Tsundoku

It's the term the Japanese give to a pile of books as yet unread and intended to be read. :)

At our house we have a tsundoku on each bedside table, as well as four tsundoku on the coffee table. :lol:

In 2019 I made lamentably little progress on my bedside tsundoku, only getting through three volumes.  :1f62d:  Still sitting there part finished are The Secret Garden, The Soul Of An Octopus, Silent Spring, The Shipping News and Small Farm Success, as well as back issues of independent magazines I write for.  I did, however, also read several books on an e-reader, as well as a plethora of forum and blog posts, and do a lot of writing.

Since this is a Cure forum, I might also mention that last week, my husband finished Albert Camus' The Outsider (/The Stranger) and transferred it from his bedside tsundoku to mine.  I realised, when I saw that the title in Australia is The Outsider, that I had actually read it before, under much duress, as a 14-year-old, as part of the middle school curriculum. I remember thinking, "This protagonist is such an android, why should I care what he thinks or does?"  I had enough androids at home to want to read about more of them.  I generally prefer protagonists that are in some way inspirational, rather than shitty examples, who are just depressing.  But a good friend of ours loves shitty protagonists, and relishes dire things like Gould's Book Of Fish.  :-D

When I told Brett what I thought of The Outsider as a 14-year-old, he said, "Yes, that's a fair summary!"  I am very interested to see if I will feel any differently nearly 35 years later, but yeah, I doubt it.

Haruki Murakami is usually good value, if someone hasn't tried him yet.  The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was excellent.   :smth023  I also really recommend Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of PilgrimageNorwegian Wood wasn't bad either, but I'm stuck halfway through After Dark at the moment.
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: piggymirror on January 12, 2020, 02:38:19
Quote from: SueC on January 12, 2020, 01:35:43A few years ago, I learnt a useful new word:  Tsundoku

Sounds like a mix of tsunami and sudoku.  :lol:

Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: SueC on January 12, 2020, 05:14:37
...and that fits very well, @piggyinthemirror:  Sometimes it feels like there's a tsunami of books you want to read - with lots of sudoku-like (and lots of other) brain stimulation awaiting!  ;)

Or maybe it's a bit of a (sudoku) puzzle how one should keep the ever-growing tsundoku from turning into skyscrapers, falling over and turning into a tsunami...
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on January 12, 2020, 09:58:06
Quote from: piggymirror on January 11, 2020, 23:50:40I have the Steppenwolf book on the shelves. Always have. Not opened yet.

Keep it there. It looks good on the shelf.  :cool
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: piggymirror on February 07, 2020, 00:09:14
Quote from: Ulrich on January 12, 2020, 09:58:06
Quote from: piggymirror on January 11, 2020, 23:50:40I have the Steppenwolf book on the shelves. Always have. Not opened yet.

Keep it there. It looks good on the shelf.  :cool

Now it's too late.  :winking_tongue

So... in one tome, came:

1) Demian, which I devoured, read it all in one day.  :smth023

2) Siddharta, which took me longer.
It's the second time that I've finished it, and at first I didn't understand it at all, I suppose, as I was a kid and I read it at primary school.
I retried not long ago, but I wasn't in the mood for much, to be honest. So I put it down by 3/4 of it.
Third time, started from the beginning again, and slowly but surely to the end. Pleasant read.
Certain things take time...

3) The Steppenwolf, which has taken me a bit longer, and it's not a very enjoyable read. I suppose Hesse made the stylistic choice to split the book in just three chapters that are very uneven in length, which made it a not very easy read. But by the end it went faster.
I've actually had a flashback with it, as I've remembered that I had already had it in my hands while at school, and I actually wanted to read it, but it was mere bad luck which kept me from being able to read it as a kid, because for some reason, other classmates were faster than me and it was always taken.
I've also remembered that it was not what I wanted to read in the first place. But I remember being intrigued back then by the signs of the masquerade ball.
What I actually wanted to read (and ended up reading) was Jack London's White Fang. Woof, woof, bark, bark.
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: SueC on February 07, 2020, 00:32:59
(https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse3.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.PnKUb_6mZJac0EcP7nBHsgHaDt%26pid%3DApi&f=1)

This is the most grown-up looking certificate I could find.  You'll have to insert your own name into it!  :cool

Did you ever catch The Cat That Walked By Himself?  Kipling short story, but excellent in so many ways.  http://telelib.com/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/prose/JustSoStories/chap11_catwalk.html  Was the first proper story I ever read in the English language, for which I thank my lucky stars (or whatever) - it's one hell of an ambassador for the English language!   :heart-eyes   :cool   :)

It was in Richard Adams' Favourite Animal Stories, which I bought somewhere near Hastings when I was 11 and on a brief visit to England.  It also had a story by Jack London.

I'm currently reading mere crime fiction (one of Val McDermid's); and continuing a few other things I've started, like The Soul Of An Octopus.  I've removed 30 ancient back issues of our hippie magazine from my bedside tsundoku to encourage the finishing of half-read books.
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: piggymirror on February 07, 2020, 01:04:13
Ok, so now... a risky sport.
Through the tsundoku to the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri... again. Let's see if this time I can manage to finish it...
Nella lingua toscana di origine, btw.

Have you read it? In English, I mean?

Btw, I've just detected that Hesse did read the Comedy too (or bits of it), it shows in the Steppenwolf...

EDIT: can't find it...  :unamused: So the Divine Comedy will have to be postponed YET AGAIN.
In retaliation, I'll have a go at Alice In Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll... <off with his head!!!>
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: SueC on February 07, 2020, 03:07:29
No, I've not.  So many good books, so little time!   :1f62d:

Do you speak Italian?
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: piggymirror on February 07, 2020, 03:22:41
Quote from: SueC on February 07, 2020, 03:07:29No, I've not.  So many good books, so little time!   :1f62d:

Indeed...
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: piggymirror on February 23, 2020, 23:34:19
Quote from: piggymirror on February 07, 2020, 01:04:13In retaliation, I'll have a go at Alice In Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll... <off with his head!!!>

Finished Alice.

Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: piggymirror on February 24, 2020, 02:45:24
On another note, and going back to Hesse, which is your favourite book by him?
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: SueC on February 24, 2020, 06:48:05
I can't comment on Hesse; I did high school in Australia, but I'm sure some of the German residents here (of which there are at least three) will have been force-fed this stuff at school. ;)  So what we got over here was Shakespeare, Dickens, Thomas Hardy, the Brontës, Jane Austen, Camus (didn't stick for either of us), Steinbeck, John Wyndham, JM Synge, Samuel Beckett, Wilfred Owen, WB Yeats, ee cummings, Judith Wright, etc.

I'm just picking up the follow-up novel to Robert Galbraith's first, The Cuckoo's Calling, which I loved - this next one is called The Silkworm.  This author is actually JK Rowling in disguise, writing a series of detective novels, which she does exceptionally well.  :cool
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on February 24, 2020, 09:38:56
Quote from: piggymirror on February 24, 2020, 02:45:24On another note, and going back to Hesse, which is your favourite book by him?

Siddharta was pretty good when I read it back in 1993 or so.
Maybe I should re-read it...
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: MeltingMan on February 24, 2020, 15:15:27
I'm done with Le livre du sceptre from the seven-part series Amphitheater of the Dead Sciences. Actually, I would have to read the book five more times to understand the content. This and the remaining six. Then I would have enough material by 2030. And every time a new door opens. But it is already clear to me that my lifetime will not be enough to study all of my books. So I concentrate on certain key works, series and publishers. Next up is another novel, maybe La licorne.
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: piggymirror on February 24, 2020, 18:33:58
Quote from: SueC on February 24, 2020, 06:48:05I can't comment on Hesse; I did high school in Australia, but I'm sure some of the German residents here (of which there are at least three) will have been force-fed this stuff at school. ;)  So what we got over here was Shakespeare, Dickens, Thomas Hardy, the Brontës, Jane Austen, Camus (didn't stick for either of us), Steinbeck, John Wyndham, JM Synge, Samuel Beckett, Wilfred Owen, WB Yeats, ee cummings, Judith Wright, etc.

Is Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath part of my tsundoku? I don't even know where it is, or if it even is at home.
I've had it in my hands and read a few pages of it, though.

Quote from: SueC on February 24, 2020, 06:48:05I'm just picking up the follow-up novel to Robert Galbraith's first, The Cuckoo's Calling, which I loved - this next one is called The Silkworm.  This author is actually JK Rowling in disguise, writing a series of detective novels, which she does exceptionally well.  :cool

Interesting. I'll try and get hold of that.

Rowling's underrated because when everyone thinks of her, they instantly think of Hagrid and the flying car, but she's not bad at all, no.
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: piggymirror on February 24, 2020, 18:36:14
Quote from: Ulrich on February 24, 2020, 09:38:56
Quote from: piggymirror on February 24, 2020, 02:45:24On another note, and going back to Hesse, which is your favourite book by him?

Siddharta was pretty good when I read it back in 1993 or so.
Maybe I should re-read it...

Give it a go.
If possible, stuffed between Demian and The Steppenwolf (you choose the order).
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: piggymirror on February 25, 2020, 02:22:57
"[...] Or va, ch'un sol volere è d'ambedue:
tu duca, tu segnore, e tu maestro".
Così li dissi; e poi che mosso fue,

intrai per lo camino alto e silvestro.


...and that's the end of Chant II.

Only just started, I'm far from finished...
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on February 25, 2020, 09:37:45
Quote from: piggymirror on February 24, 2020, 18:36:14If possible, stuffed between Demian and The Steppenwolf (you choose the order).

Nah, I did re-read The Steppenwolf last year, that's it for another 30 years at least. ;)

Don't know about "Demian", because that would mean I'd have to buy (or rent or steal) it...
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: SueC on February 25, 2020, 12:52:35
Quote from: piggymirror on February 24, 2020, 18:33:58Is Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath part of my tsundoku? I don't even know where it is, or if it even is at home.
I've had it in my hands and read a few pages of it, though.

That was really excellent, and harrowing.

My all-time favourite Steinbeck is The Winter Of Our Discontent. It's about a man who has tried to be good all his life, and who then experiments with being a bit evil to see if it will help him socially and financially.  It actually is both thought-provoking and funny.

Oh, I also like Tortilla Flat and its humour.  It even has a dog called Señor Alec Thompson.

The Red Pony gave me nightmares.  I was 11 and mistook it for a children's book...


Quote from: SueC on February 24, 2020, 06:48:05I'm just picking up the follow-up novel to Robert Galbraith's first, The Cuckoo's Calling, which I loved - this next one is called The Silkworm.  This author is actually JK Rowling in disguise, writing a series of detective novels, which she does exceptionally well.  :cool

Quote from: piggymirror on February 24, 2020, 18:33:58Interesting. I'll try and get hold of that.

Rowling's underrated because when everyone thinks of her, they instantly think of Hagrid and the flying car, but she's not bad at all, no.

She's a wonderful writer! :heart-eyes  If they think of Hagrid and the flying car, or any of the gags, they've only watched the movies, not read the books.  That series is amazing.  The first couple of books are comparatively lightweight if you're an adult reader, but they're designed for children, and I can't tell you how many young children I saw reading and enjoying these books, and how they promoted the habit of reading in them early, and comparatively big books at that.  As the series goes on the reading age increases in line with the main characters' ages.

Rowling created such an amazing fantasy world, and things she invented are now part of the everyday English vocabulary.  The Harry Potter series also dealt so well with the concepts of good and evil, as well as love and friendship, family, bullying, resilience, bureaucracy and corruption, etc etc.

She writes compelling and well-developed characters, fabulous descriptions of place, astute commentary on life, and she has a keen sense of justice (you can see that in her current detective novels as well).  She can make you laugh, and cry.  I cried buckets over the Mirror of Erised, and I was in my late 20s when I first read that.  When I met Brett, I was delighted to see that he had the entire collection (and also the Wombles).  :smth023

I'm really enjoying her detective books.  Also, Roald Dahl is well-known as a children's writer - he's very naughty, and excellent - but few people seem to realise he wrote really dark, macabre short stories for adults too.  I can highly recommend those as well.  In one of them, someone commits a perfect murder by bludgeoning someone with a frozen leg of lamb, then cooking it and serving it up to the police.  :beaming-face
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: SueC on February 25, 2020, 12:54:01
Quote from: Ulrich on February 25, 2020, 09:37:45Nah, I did re-read The Steppenwolf last year, that's it for another 30 years at least. ;)

ROFL  :lol:

I know books like that too!  :)  I'm not planning on re-reading The Satanic Verses for at least a few decades either!  That was such a slog the first time around... but I finally got through it...
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: SueC on March 09, 2020, 13:00:53
Well, I finally finished The Silkworm today - a big book but well worth the time.  It's meticulously written and plotted, and had a twist neither Brett nor I saw coming when we read it - and the last time that happened in a major way was when we read Gentlemen & Players by Joanne Harris, although she still takes the plot twist prize in our eyes. :)

Reading this novel will tend to feed any misanthropy or disillusionment with the human race you may already possess, since so many of the cast are so unlikable and egocentric, and quite a number of them downright nasty (which helps to make a pool of credible suspects).  However, there's a few gems thrown in too who manage to shine despite their inevitable human flaws, including the detective and his assistant.

And now I can finally get on with other stuff.  :cool
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: piggymirror on March 28, 2020, 01:48:32
[...] Lo duca e io per quel camino ascoso
intrammo a retornar nel chiaro mondo;
e sanza cura aver d'alcun riposo

salimmo su, el primo e io secondo,
tanto ch'i' vidi delle cose belle
che porta 'l ciel, per un pertugio tondo;

e quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle.


...and this is how Dante's Inferno ends.

Now on with the Purgatory.
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: MeltingMan on April 04, 2020, 10:32:19
The book market on Amazon has plummeted. A dealer I've been with for years has temporarily removed their entire program. You need a lot of patience as a collector. But what is happening now is scary. Nobody can say whether we have a different situation by May / June. I am currently waiting for two shipments, one of which (from Switzerland) still has to be cleared. That has already become standard. Let's see...
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: MeltingMan on April 19, 2020, 10:34:26
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. 😑

Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on April 19, 2020, 12:48:45
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 (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).
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: MeltingMan on April 20, 2020, 08:59:33
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. 😉
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on April 20, 2020, 09:05:40
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)...
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: SueC on April 21, 2020, 04:51:34
Read this a while back and thoroughly recommend.

(https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.orbitbooks.net%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2014%2F01%2FGWATG-reviews.jpg&f=1&nofb=1)

The film is no substitute.
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: BiscuityBoyle on May 01, 2020, 00:43:57
Outstanding and very, very thoroughly documented. (https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745334301/war-against-the-people/) 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.

Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: chemicaloverload on May 04, 2020, 23:38:53
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)
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: SueC on May 05, 2020, 03:25:44
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! :)
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on May 05, 2020, 10:00:37
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!
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: SueC on May 05, 2020, 12:31:18
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! :)
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: chemicaloverload on May 05, 2020, 12:50:58
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
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: 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"...
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: SueC on May 14, 2020, 11:21:21
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 (http://curefans.com/index.php?topic=4324.msg770735#msg770735) 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.
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on June 04, 2020, 16:53:41
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)
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: SueC on August 06, 2020, 13:48:03
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.
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: SueC on August 11, 2020, 14:41:47
I'm nearly done with the above book, but have today managed to add three more novels to my towering tsundoku.  One is the next in the Irish detective series by the prize-winning ex-Irish Perth author, Dervla McTiernan; and another is something I wish to re-read because I really enjoyed it several years ago:  Haruki Murakami's Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki and his Years of Pilgrimage.  I wasn't going to have a third, but then laughing Brett read out to me the starting sentence of the novelisation of Dr Who: The Romans (an episode we finished yesterday)...

@Ulrich, do you remember The Withering Letter?  This is very like:

"Dear Sir

I am in reluctant receipt of your insufferable scroll - written, I must remark, on papyrus of so inferior a quality that I can only suppose it to have been selected especially to suit the style of your grammatical construction and the insolence of your tone."

You can't go wrong with an opener like that... :lol:

Anyone else reading anything interesting?

...and I too am still stuck halfway through that Very Short Introduction book on music (but will definitely finish it; it's on an e-reader and therefore a non-partner-disturbing insomnia standby)... and partway in The Soul of an Octopus, and This Changes Everything, and even the bloody Shipping News still, grrrr, I do wish to finish all these...
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on August 28, 2020, 10:03:47
A while ago I had a look around in a bookstore... I saw a book, a "classic", of which I thought "one day I might get this". Now I decided I didn't wanna live anymore without having read Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein", so I went and bought it!  :cool
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: MeltingMan on September 03, 2020, 11:01:49
I'm a hard copy as well! 😄

Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: SueC on September 25, 2020, 01:22:01
Fabulous clip, @MeltingMan, thankyou - isn't she just lovely, and her book collection too!  I love readers and how their brains are switched on.  So, another person with complex PTSD, and I can see she's had to work through very similar things, which is such an education!  Excellent that she talks about it.  :smth023

Last week I started and finished Tara Westover's Educated, on the recommendation of a recent guest, and I highly recommend it in turn.  It's the autobiography of a young woman who grew up with religious nutcase survivalist parents who kept her out of school to allegedly keep her from being brainwashed by socialists etc.  Instead, she worked in the family scrapyard, which regularly produced horrific injuries for her and her siblings, and was tormented by her sociopath brother, who was elevated to "holy man" status in her family while she was scapegoated for telling the truth about his vicious abuse of a number of women, herself included.  Out of the brood of seven siblings, three and a half escaped the brainwash - and three of those through DIY study for college entrance, which their father tried to sabotage at every turn.  Tara Westover ended up going to college a year younger than her peers (one of the parallels in our stories) and at the time of writing this book, was finishing a PhD at Cambridge, UK, a long way from her native US, and good on her.

At age 29, when she wrote this, she was still putting a lot of the puzzle together, while struggling with bad childhood "programming" bleeding through into her behaviour / ability to stand up to others, but has already come miles and miles from the limitations imposed on her in childhood.  I'd love to read a follow-up from her in 5, 10, 15 years from now - as this kind of thing is such a steep learning curve.  I'm so glad she got out - well done - and that her extra capable brain got to immerse itself in all sorts of interesting things that were previously "verboten"!  :cool

Great reading for those who've been through a rough childhood themselves, and for those who want to learn about what that's like.  Tara Westover has been critiqued by a few nasty people for allegedly excessive disclosure, but if you don't tell it how it was, in all its horrible detail, it's not nearly as useful for furthering the understanding of the community on this stuff - and people do need to understand how this goes, and for that, they need to have a complete and detailed picture.  As Cherilyn Clough, another person whose parents didn't let her go to school and who DIYd to get into college, says on her educational website littleredsurvivor (https://littleredsurvivor.com/), if people want to be remembered better, perhaps they ought to have treated others better - and everyone has the right to tell their own story.
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on October 27, 2020, 18:26:56
I've been trying the first book of the "Max Wolfe" series by Tony Parsons (ok so far, not sure yet whether I will want more of them):

https://www.lovelybooks.de/autor/Tony-Parsons/reihe/Max-Wolfe-in-Reihenfolge-1136039208/
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: SueC on November 23, 2020, 14:03:12
I've got several books on the go - and have finally reached the last two pages of Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything - that was very dense and at times very depressing, but excellent and well worth the time and the sadness - a book every Westerner should read... the Silent Spring of modern times.

Brett was laughing a lot recently while reading an e-book, so I asked him what it was.  He told me it was Becoming Superman, a biography of someone with complex PTSD and that if I read it, I'd be going, "Yep.  Tick.  Yep.  Tick." - and classifying the various behaviours exhibited by his atrocious birth family, and doing lots of exclaiming.  He was right, that's exactly what I did.  Interesting story by the way, foreword by Neil Gaiman, written by Joe Straczynski, a now 60-something writer of all sorts of things, including animation stories and lots of science fiction.  His childhood story is beyond horrific; it's extraordinary that he gets so many laughs out of us in-between our gasps of horror.  Super fabulous that he actively chose not to be like his family, and that art and kindness saved him. ♥

I'm still reading ornithologist Tim Low's Where Song Began - superb book for dipping into, and it's already amazed me dozens of times even though I'm a highly trained biologist.   :smth023   I'm also sort of still reading The Shipping News but it kind of fell off the train.  I've not ejected it from the tsundoku though!   :)

Thanks to Brett's highly bookish workmates, we keep getting a stream of great novels coming through the house; I've just started yet another JP Delaney (have mentioned his other books here before), Believe Me - I'm 20 pages in and already hooked.  This will be a fast read, for sure...  :cool
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on November 24, 2020, 11:54:58
I went looking through a bookshop in a town not far from here (I always think it's a good idea to sometimes not just look in my local bookstore - especially if I'm looking for a gift for someone who goes to that same bookstore), there I found this and bought it (for me):

http://www.unionsverlag.com/info/title.asp?title_id=3520

Garry Disher: Bitter Wash Road

QuoteIn der Nähe von Tiverton, einer Kleinstadt in Australiens Nirgendwo, wird ein Mädchen tot am Straßenrand gefunden. Constable Paul Hirschhausen, genannt Hirsch, übernimmt den Fall. Er glaubt nicht an einen Unfall mit Fahrerflucht. Einsam und isoliert durchquert der Constable die unwirtliche Landschaft, vorbei an mageren Schafen, schäbigen Höfen, stellt unbeirrt seine Fragen und lernt eine Kleinstadt kennen, unter deren Oberfläche Enttäuschung und Wut, Rassismus und Sexismus brodeln.
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: SueC on November 24, 2020, 12:49:42
Imagine a German person having to introduce an Australian to a celebrated Australian crime writer!  :1f62e:

It sounds pretty spot on - social realism etc.

Look what I found:

https://garrydisher.com/

https://www.booktopia.com.au/bitter-wash-road-garry-disher/book/9781922268402.html

Interesting that he's more acclaimed in Germany than here even.  But then, have you ever read the German crime writer Simon Beckett?  Kalte Asche etc?  He's very good, specialises in gory descriptions of corporeal disintegration, astute character studies, and plot twists.  Picked that one up at a book swap while on holiday in Tasmania once.   :beaming-face

Looks like I have to check out our library for this guy!

And the setting described sounds so much like the one for Rain Shadow, a very dark mini-series shot in South Australia...


That's The Audreys doing the soundtrack, by the way!  Perfect fit.   :smth023
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on November 24, 2020, 13:36:07
Now imagine a German person having to tell an Australian person that Simon Beckett is indeed an Englishman...  :1f633:

(Oh, the wonders of the internet world!)  :lol:

"Rain Shadow" looks good, I hope "arte" will show it (sometimes they do buy series from "down under").
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: SueC on November 24, 2020, 13:58:32
Quote from: Ulrich on November 24, 2020, 13:36:07Now imagine a German person having to tell an Australian person that Simon Beckett is indeed an Englishman...  :1f633:

Bwahaha!  :lol:  That's hilarious!  Turns out I thought he was German because the book I picked up in Tasmania was written in German. :yum:  It was such well-written German too!   :rofl   It said nothing obvious about a translator, and that was in the days before I needed glasses... (or maybe I needed them already???)

I do remember thinking, "His name is so English, I wonder if his parents migrated to Germany..."  :lol:

Also wondering if he was any distant relation to Samuel Beckett...

Thank you for ridding me of a long-standing misconception.  :cool  (How many more to go?  ;))

PS:  Brett says, "I never thought he was German, but I thought, 'Oh well, Sue should know.'"  :rofl
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: MeltingMan on November 25, 2020, 11:16:52
This year I've spent a lot of money on books - new and used. Chic volumes in leather
but also 'print on demand' brochures. I can't keep up with reading.😉 I now have around
300 copies. This one will come out next year. Maybe it's very interesting. I am currently
reading Péladan's Traité des antinomies.

(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51J-0R+HLBL._SX324_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg)
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: SueC on November 25, 2020, 14:20:59
That is a gorgeous cover, @MeltingMan!  :cool

It's a real problem.  So many books to read, and only fourscore years and ten (if we're lucky) to read them in, and considering how many excellent books are still being written, with all my best efforts I will, at the end of my life, only have got my little toe wet in that ocean.

Do you like the smell of books?  I must confess I do.  I love the smell of paper and ink.  One of the problems with electronic books is that they just don't smell good...

And you've got leather-bound books - those tend to smell extra good!  :)
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: MeltingMan on November 25, 2020, 17:45:10
Quote from: SueC on November 25, 2020, 14:20:59Do you like the smell of books?  I must confess I do.  I love the smell of paper and ink.  One of the problems with electronic books is that they just don't smell good...

Yes, especially if the pages are already tanned. That's the case with older books. Sometimes there are references to the previous owner and how he used the book e.g. remnants of biscuits or bread (!). But I have more unread copies, and it can happen that it is not cut open. I have a special knife for this. With a normal knife, you break it. Old brochures have a particularly intense smell. 😵
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: SueC on November 25, 2020, 23:30:26
Quote from: MeltingMan on November 25, 2020, 17:45:10Yes, especially if the pages are already tanned. That's the case with older books.

Yes, to me older books do usually have a better smell than new-off-the-press books, although both are very good!   :smth023

With the exception of mouldy old books, which can smell like a mausoleum... these are the only kinds of books I've burnt or composted, because I didn't want them infecting the rest of our collection.   :1f631:  (Sometimes one is given such a book, or there's one like that in a batch you might buy at an auction.)


Quote from: MeltingMan on November 25, 2020, 17:45:10Sometimes there are references to the previous owner and how he used the book e.g. remnants of biscuits or bread (!).

Hahaha.  :lol:  Brett and I both confess to frequently reading at the dinner table - you can't talk with your mouth full, so you may as well read - and we've done so from little.  I got in trouble for it as a kid, but it didn't deter me much; Brett's whole family are bookworms and they all read at the dinner table, although they did have the rule that the person(s) who did the cooking had to be consulted, out of politeness (it was really just a formality).

We don't tend to get food on our books nowadays (and I usually don't read while eating Spaghetti Bolognese because that's deadly for what it does to books...).  However, my books from childhood are a rich source of forensic data on the food I ate while reading.  Sometimes it's biscuit crumbs, which can be shaken out; more often though, it's chocolate, which is a bit more difficult to shift, or main courses, of which sauce spots are particularly permanent...

Sometimes I find a squashed housefly in the pages of one of these old books!   :1f635:


Quote from: MeltingMan on November 25, 2020, 17:45:10But I have more unread copies, and it can happen that it is not cut open. I have a special knife for this. With a normal knife, you break it. Old brochures have a particularly intense smell. 😵

A good smell, or not?  (Do you remember the smell of the old spirit duplicator copies with the purple print that was used in German schools in the 1970s?  That made all of us youngsters sniff the paper - it was a smell as pleasant as freshly baked bread...)

That's very interesting about a special knife to cut those still-stuck pages!  :cool
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: MeltingMan on November 26, 2020, 11:26:51
Quote from: SueCA good smell, or not?

I have a print from 1920, really rare, where I have to assume it came from a 'messie' household. The person was probably sick - never left the house, etc. Now it's in the bedroom next to other old books. And the strong smell will fade over the years - hopefully. The air circulates and it's not so exposed to light (enemy number one). Unfortunately, I also have one that is falling apart. It lies separately in a shoe box. The back is broken and the first two sides are loose. It's so fragile - you don't like to pick it up. When it came out (1887), nobody thought that it could be over 100 years old. Nice transition ...😉

Quote from: SueCold spirit duplicator copies

No, I don't. Never heard of that. 😕

Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: SueC on December 15, 2020, 00:46:43
I'd like to strongly recommend JP Delaney's Believe Me, having just completed it.  It's not only a whodunnit and therefore a nice mental jigsaw - JP Delaney has a great deal of psychological insight into the way people behave, and the motivations behind it (and shares that with other top-notch writers of crime fiction).  This particular book explores art, and people's response to it, and the responsibility if any of an artist for the unhinged ways people may respond to it.  It also looks at essentially the "observer effect" of having an audience, and asks how that affects people's behaviour, and what's acting and what's reality.

I've read a fair few of this genre in the last ten years or so, and therefore wasn't surprised by any of the plot twists in it - because I've become very good at avoiding being led, keeping an open mind, and asking myself at the end of every chapter, "What's an alternative scenario, to the one that obviously suggests itself?  What are the assumptions being made?  What are the other possibilities here?"  So I only had one mild surprise in this one, and that's when Claire said, "Constantinople!"  Excellent novel, and like any good literature, makes you think hard, including about what you personally believe, and why.
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on December 28, 2020, 16:58:24
I've been reading most of T.C. Boyle's "Outside looking in" and it's been quite a trip...

QuoteOutside Looking In tells a fictional story about psychology graduate students at Harvard University who attempt to explore the nature of human consciousness by taking psychedelic drugs. Boyle says he was intrigued by recent news stories about LSD coming back into medical use. "So I went back to discover where it's all coming from," he says.

Gunther Weil was a 23-year-old doctoral student in clinical psychology when he entered Harvard in 1960. Leary was his faculty adviser, and Weil says that Boyle got a lot of things right in his novel.

"I think he did an incredibly great job describing the zeitgeist of the time — the nature of the trips," Weil says. "The protagonist is a graduate student who seems to be an amalgam of a number of us."

Over four years Weil says he attended between 40 and 50 research sessions — ingesting the hallucinogens psilocybin and LSD with a handful of colleagues.

"We definitely felt that we were on the leading edge of research in consciousness," he recalls. "We definitely felt like pioneers. We definitely were enthralled and captured by the mysteries that we were beginning to approach."
https://www.npr.org/2019/05/12/721555304/did-this-novel-about-lsd-trials-get-it-right-we-ask-someone-who-was-there?t=1609170888695
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: SueC on December 29, 2020, 02:11:29
Yeah, I'm still about two thirds through Oliver Sacks' Hallucinations, which is on a similar topic but with the added contextualising of various usual and unusual brain conditions, like Bonnet syndrome (vivid visual hallucinations that happen in some blind people).  Really interesting topic.  I've also heard a podcast or two by various academics investigating psychedelic drugs in the context of depression, trauma etc; also one about these Bachelor of Divinity students who were given psychedelic drugs versus placebos (blind, i.e. nobody knew what they were getting) during some religious ritual, and the ones who'd been given psychedelics reported having deeply religious experiences, which even 20 years after the study they nominated as one of the most life-affecting experiences they'd ever had.  We have psychedelic mushrooms growing around the bushland here but my brain is already plenty trippy without enhancing agents so I'm still sticking to Portobello mushrooms for my pizzas, etc.  :angel

I finished Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything (http://curefans.com/index.php?topic=4324.msg773964;topicseen#msg773964) (as a result of which I ended up listening to Disintegration (http://curefans.com/index.php?topic=9257) a lot) and am now re-reading No Logo - and the cucumber growing section of The Permaculture Home Garden by Linda Woodrow, which is kind of my bible this past decade.  We're inland and I couldn't get cucumber seedlings to germinate properly, even in the greenhouse, until last week because it's still too cold at night... now it's time to plant them out and make up for lost time!  :)
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on December 29, 2020, 16:35:45
Quote from: SueC on December 29, 2020, 02:11:29I've also heard a podcast or two by various academics investigating psychedelic drugs in the context of depression, trauma etc; also one about these Bachelor of Divinity students who were given psychedelic drugs versus placebos (blind, i.e. nobody knew what they were getting) during some religious ritual, and the ones who'd been given psychedelics reported having deeply religious experiences...

They do the same in TC Boyle's book! (So I guess Dr. Leary & co. really did something like it.)
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: SueC on December 30, 2020, 00:31:16
Next on my list - as soon as Brett is finished with it, he got it for Christmas - is Entangled Life (https://www.merlinsheldrake.com/entangled-life) - psychedelics are just one tiny aspect of fungi (antibiotics another, but fungi collectively produce a huge array of chemicals that affect other life forms on purpose or accidentally) and the broad view always beats the narrow!  One of my favourite things about fungi is their underground symbioses with plant roots, known as mycorrhizae (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycorrhiza).  You might like this one too, @Ulrich!

And I will say that Garry Disher's Peace, which I was underwhelmed by at page 12 stage, got much better by page 24.  I still don't think his prose is up to that of A-class crime writers like Val McDermid or Stieg Larsson, but by this stage of the book he is creating a pretty realistic picture of rural South Australia, and the sense of decay in many small Australian rural places, not to mention the fishiness of some of the people there (racism, general bigotry, lack of genuine concern for others, endemic substance abuse, and the underbelly of crime).  He's now holding my interest, chiefly by making me laugh at his mockery of paperwork, the dread of paperwork, the machinations of the town gossip and small-pond politics etc.
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on December 30, 2020, 11:11:40
Quote from: SueC on December 30, 2020, 00:31:16And I will say that Garry Disher's Peace, which I was underwhelmed by at page 12 stage, got much better by page 24.  ... by this stage of the book he is creating a pretty realistic picture of rural South Australia, and the sense of decay in many small Australian rural places, ...(racism, general bigotry, lack of genuine concern for others, endemic substance abuse, and the underbelly of crime.)

Good to hear this. I got the same impression from the one I'd read a few weeks ago (see earlier in this topic); soon(ish) I will start reading his "Hope Hill Drive"* (German translation). :cool

(Edit: * it might indeed be possible that this is the German translation of "Peace" - no idea why they had to change the title.)
https://garrydisher.com/
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: dsanchez on January 07, 2021, 21:01:26
One of my goals of 2021 is to read 1 book/week. Got this to start:

- Hemingway, Ernest "The Old Man and the Sea"
- Kadavy, David "Mind Management, Not Time Management: Productivity When Creativity Matters (Getting Art Done, Band 2):
- Nicholas A. Christakis: "Apollo's Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live"
- Knapp, Jake,Zeratsky, John: "Make Time: How to focus on what matters every day"
- Snowden, Edward: "Permanent Record"
- Borges, Jorge Luis: "Fictions"
- Duhigg, Charles: "The Power of Habit"

Will start with - Duhigg, Charles: "The Power of Habit", as I want to make reading an habit (just as coming to curefans.com ;)
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: SueC on January 30, 2021, 00:14:44
Brett came home on the eve of two and a half weeks of annual leave with the new Cormoran Strike novel Troubled Blood (looked at last one here) (http://curefans.com/index.php?topic=4324.msg773332#msg773332) and popped it on my bedside table.  :heart-eyes  OMG, it's enormous - over 900 pages long - and with this, JK Rowling, writing under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, is replicating something from the Harry Potter series - namely, the tendency for sequels to get enormous...

I loved Harry Potter, fabulous plot, setting, characterisations, themes, details, language, etc etc - but the Cormoran Strike books are something else, are university level to the wizard series' high school - are not just a notch above, but several dimensions above the series that made JK Rowling famous.  I've read the first couple of chapters and am purring like a cat who's had a bowl of cream, the writing is so utterly delicious.  Over the past ten years I've come to really enjoy, and regularly read, whodunnits; starting with Minette Walters, Val McDermid, and Raymond Chandler, then Camilla Lackberg, and currently, on @Ulrich's recommendation, Australia's Garry Disher - all of whom I enjoy, for different reasons.  But none of them hold a candle to JK Rowling's foray into this genre...

With the Cormoran Strike books, you're not reading primarily to solve the puzzle, nor are you reading chiefly because of compelling regular characters and how they go about solving problems both professional and personal - although there's all that.  You're literally reading sentence-by-sentence, going oooh-aaah for all sorts of reasons.  (Brett, naughty man that he is, can be heard loudly intoning, "I'm just reading it to see if Cormoran and Robin will get together!" :lol:)

With many detective books, I'm in at least something of a rush to get to the solution - but not with JK Rowling's...there I savour each page, and take it slowly because the puzzle is no more interesting than a thousand other things.  There's superb descriptions, humour at every corner, an exceptional amount of insight into relationships and how humans individually, humans as groups and humans as society operate, lots of overt and covert commentary on all sorts of matters I'm interested in, and prose that's both gorgeous and clever...and, and, and...such a wonderful treat to read this stuff.   :heart-eyes
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: SueC on February 15, 2021, 06:19:59
I've just finished reading Troubled Blood and have to say that I find the trans backlash against this book as appalling and unreasonable as the fatwa on Salman Rushdie for writing The Satanic Verses. The new JK Rowling offering is an excellent book in which a fine lens is comprehensively pointed at all manner of social injustice, including racism, classism, misogyny – as well as family dysfunction and violence, verbal, emotional and financial abuse, rape, sexual harassment, office politics, sociopathy, narcissism, journalistic and personal spin, the after-effects and long road to recovery from trauma, and various other interconnected issues, not to mention murder and deceit – as this is a detective series.

At no point is her feminism hateful, or negative towards men or anyone else per se – she explores the struggles (and crimes) of both men and women in the profoundly dysfunctional society we've been born into, and the role of family dynamics and intimate relationships in either contributing to or buffering us against the ills of our society – and she does it with keen insight and compassion, while also creating lead characters who are compelling, flawed and lovable.

But apparently that's not good enough for some people...
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: SueC on March 16, 2021, 09:16:52
After I finished Garry Disher's Peace, the library had its predecessor, Bitter Wash Road, available to borrow, and I've got to say that was an A+ book - really superbly described places, excellent characterisations, and a pretty realistic tour through the almost casual corruption of Australian bureaucracies - in this case, police - and the ostracisation of those who call out such corruption.  It's grim stuff set in fairly remote rural South Australia, and as you read it, the dust from that landscape seems to seep into your bones.  The flawed hero, Constable Hirschhausen, makes a bright spot against the unrelentingly dark backdrop, and discovers a few other bright spots along the way, while stewarding his local community and solving crime in spite of the obstacles his bureaucracy and alleged superiors throw in his path.  Highly recommended.

If Bitter Wash Road is noir, then Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stewart is a tar pit in the middle of an Arctic winter.  I've just read the opening chapter - if you've never known bottomless poverty, read this book, and get disgusted with our failure in our societies to seriously address - end - this.  In Australia we're veering closer and closer to the US model of the few ultra-rich, increasing numbers of people under the poverty line, and a middle class too ready to swallow the line of our entitled politicos that the poor only have themselves to blame and why don't they move to the agricultural areas and pick fruit (at $3/hour, in some instances - welcome to the new feudalism).

I was never as desperately down-and-out as Shuggie Bain, but when I was 15, 16 I suffered from malnutrition, didn't have money for the bus or decent clothes (I don't mean labels, I mean waterproof jackets and good supportive water-resistant shoes and a few pretty things to wear instead of just jeans, T-shirts, shapeless jumpers and cheap sneakers), wasn't allowed the school graduation ball or dancing lessons with the rest of my graduating class or concerts or movies or to get my hair cut at a hairdresser's, was castigated for using too much hot water in the shower and interrogated when I needed hair conditioner (grudgingly I was given a bottle of the cheapest possible stuff because the knots of my uncut hair wouldn't come out without it), and paradoxically it wasn't as if my parents didn't have money, they actually had a lot more of that than most of my friends' parents who didn't go without.  I severed ties with home when I was 17 and continued, the whole time I was an undergraduate, to have to go past the majority of the fruit and vegetable section in the supermarket because that was too expensive - I ate mostly rice, pasta, lentils, cheddar, porridge, yoghurt, thinly adorned with the cheaper F&V, and my animal protein came chiefly from liver because it was cheap.  I used to walk past things like dried apricots salivating and swore to myself that once I graduated and was in fulltime work, I'd never ever scrimp on food ever again as long as I lived, and I haven't - when I was 22 I started in environmental/sustainability research, and since then I've always made a point of getting good quality, nutritious ingredients for my meals - and for the last decade I've grown a lot of our own (F&V, beef, honey).

If you've experienced hunger and cold and shame because you've got so little in the midst of a society of plenty, you'll get flashbacks to that stuff when you read Shuggie Bain too.  If you haven't, it's educational, but I fear that the people who most need to read these kinds of accounts to grow some empathy and start making noise for social change aren't going to be interested - they've been too insulated for too long from being on the bare bones of their backsides, and usually not because they work harder than average - but because they come from social privilege.  (In theory I came from social privilege, but it was seriously fvcked up - you can be a Cinderella in a privileged family while the resources get thrown at the boys, the racehorses, the yacht etc.  In a way I'm glad I was a Cinderella in that kind of family, or I might have become as odious as they are, or as many of the people governing us are - nothing like experiencing a few things for yourself to make you grow some empathy and a sense of justice. :pouting-face)

And I've not even got to Shuggie's childhood yet, in the narrative... I suspect I'll get a few more jagged flashbacks when I read about that... because that's how it always goes, it always returns you to your most equivalent experiences.  On the bright side, it's a refresher course for empathy, and it makes me even more grateful, if that is even possible, for now being in a home filled with love, justice, laughter, wonderful conversations and good food. ♥
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on March 16, 2021, 17:42:23
A couple of years ago, I received "The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair" by Joel Dicker as a gift and enjoyed it more than I thought I would. (He writes in French, so I'm bound to read the German translations.)
Here's some info on it:
Quote from: undefinedThe Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair by Joel Dicker is an admirable novel with an intoxicating plot mixing shady past and shifting present. It recounts the investigation of Marcus Goldman, a successful novelist, who attempts to clear the name of his former professor, accused of having murdered a young girl.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28950832-the-truth-about-the-harry-quebert-affair-by-jo-l-dicker-book-analysis

A bit later I read another one, now I got his new novel:
https://rantthinking.wordpress.com/2020/05/21/book-review-the-enigma-of-room-622-by-joel-dicker/

Quote from: undefinedSo far, Joël Dicker had concentrated geographically on the East Coast of the United States for all his novels which were set in Long Island and in Baltimore. "The Truth about Harry Quebert", his first great success, took the world over by surprise and was translated into 35 languages, and sold in millions of copies. In November 2018, it was made into a mini series by MGM television and TF1 and featured Patrick Dempsey and Kristine Forseth.

He is now writing about his own town, Geneva, which he knows well. The famous Swiss secret banking system is the background  for this new thriller, which is partly set in Verbier, the fashionable ski resort where Prince Andrew has bought a multimillion francs chalet.

What makes this new book particularly wonderful is that the author includes many personal and intimate details on his own family and his daily life in the story.

I particularly enjoyed the way Dicker includes his publisher Bernard de Fallois in many passages of the book, proving if he had to, that he has become a masterful writer, and more creative and literary than in the past two books, "Le Livre des Baltimore" and "La disparition de Stéphanie Mailer" which were huge success anyway.
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: SueC on March 24, 2021, 01:29:24
Shuggie Bain, like all the other Booker Prize winners I've ever read, is so unrelentingly dismal I have to take a break from it so I don't get depressed.  I'm going to read that one in small doses... I do recommend it... I've read about life in tenements and slums before, for example in Minette Walters' Acid Row and Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes (but he had the gift of providing comic relief and actual beauty in the midst of misery; it wasn't just a deep dive into a tar pit) and in a friend's autobiography I edited and gave feedback for (and she was marvellously educational, providing ideas and solutions along with her evocative dredging of the cabinet of horrors)...

Shuggie Bain is like a haemophiliac bleeding from a torn-off fingernail, it just painfully goes on and on; we have a friend who loves reading stuff like this and I will recommend it to him if he's not snaffled it already... (he's a child of justabout the most horrifically dysfunctional marriage imaginable - his father raped his teenage mother and was then cajoled by an Eastern European Catholic priest into marrying her to "make it right" :evil: and quite apart from the hideousness of forcing a young girl to have her rapist as a life partner, there was terrible emotional abuse and domestic violence ever after - it's amazing our friend is so sane and lovely and has come out so well but it's cost him...)

The reason I would still recommend Shuggie Bain for general reading is because it was written by a person with first-hand experience of what he's talking about, and it shows more clearly than everything else I've read on the subject why a lot of people never physically or psychologically escape from those kinds of circumstances, which they were born into (and firstly, nobody asks to be born, and secondly, where you're born into is a lottery).  If you're in the pitch black and that's all you've ever seen, it's hard to imagine colour.  Neglected and surrounded by violence, substance abuse and hopelessness in your birth family as well as your immediate community is a double whammy - you may never see a better example of how to live, that you can personally relate to - and the dice are loaded against you even in education - plus you are unlikely to read recreationally, so that method of flying into alternative universes to try them on for size is also often closed by circumstances.

This is not to say it's completely impossible to escape - the author did; some people do - usually people who are blessed with extra imagination and sensitivity, like the character Shuggie in this book, who may encounter an inspirational person along the road - and/or just are too different to fit in so that they have a strong drive to get out - again, like Shuggie in this book (but his getting out is to live in a boarding house of murky characters and work in the supermarket deli at 15, and it's unlikely he's ever going to jump as completely as Frank McCourt did - though of course even with him, part of his past always sat on his shoulder talking into his ear and making life unnecessarily difficult).

At this point I want to make all those smug neoliberal subscribers to the prosperity gospel who treat poverty as a sin and a punishment by God sit in front of these pages and wipe their faces in this novel... I'm agnostic but honestly, they should actually read the gospels they purport to follow for a change, because that's not what's said in those; but the people I'm talking about are the kind that suck up everything dysfunctional they can find - which in the Bible is mostly located in the Old Testament and in the Epistles, and I do know this because unlike most practicing Christians, I've actually read the thing word for word and front to back with close attention (nearly perishing in the quagmire of cubits in the narrative, if you can call it that, of the construction of the Temple) - and the Catholic version at that, which has extra books the Protestants got rid of (if you really want to indulge, read the Ethiopian version of the Bible, it's got tons more books) - anyway, the practicing evangelical Christians love to suck up the dysfunctional stuff and adopt it as their religion, thus turning themselves into the Pharisees that Jesus - whether for real or as another literary character - railed against when he sought to bring a bit more love, compassion, empathy, equality, critical thinking and justice into religion (not that this was 100% perfect either, but one heck of an improvement on what went before, and on what is preached from many supposedly Christian pulpits these days, especially in the American Bible Belt and its franchises around the world...)

Really, this massive problem of perception and attitude isn't confined to religion, it's what humans seem to do no matter what their cultural background - that what doesn't happen on blind programmed autopilot from childhood is cherry-picked from the things that have the most appeal to them (...confirmation bias (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias)), and turned into their blueprint for life - which generally becomes repeating the cycle of dysfunction they grew up with - or perhaps making their very own iteration, like a sort of patchwork quilt...

Anyway, I recommend Shuggie Bain as a general read for everyone in the West because it picks you up and drops you right into a highly dysfunctional family in a highly dysfunctional community in a highly dysfunctional society, and hopefully, from that perspective, you reflect on what life would have been like had you been born into that position, and what your chances of escape would have been - and if you're not behind a movement for social justice yet, then this might maybe convince you that the problem of the most socially disadvantaged in your community is your problem too, and your responsibility too, and your ethical obligation to do something about, by how you vote, what you buy and don't buy, what you challenge instead of walking past, what grass roots collective action you might get behind, etc.

This is not to say that it's only the responsibility of those who are better off financially and emotionally - of course everyone has responsibility for their own lives no matter where they happened to land.  We all need to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, no matter what circumstances we're born into - and we all need to also look out for one another.

I'm taking a break from Shuggie Bain and will return to it in smaller bites so its unrelenting doom doesn't put out my light... honestly, you'll shudder at the way even friends treat one another in this book, at the blinkers all over the shop, at the spiralling self-sabotage and the systematic sabotage of others, at the underlying violence in everyday life, the ubiquity of alcoholism, sexual violence, physical abuse, bullying, taunting, betrayal and neglect of one another, senses of entitlement, hunger, lies, diverse addictions, selfishness, snobbery, inverted snobbery...

We're just re-watching the late 90s BBC series The Lakes (Jimmy McGovern) which explored a number of similar themes, and Shuggie Bain makes that look like a picnic...

I think this is a good time to look at something else Scottish, and finally read Adventures of a Waterboy front to back, after hitherto only dipping into that randomly.  At least I know Mike Scott will make me laugh along the way.
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on May 26, 2021, 17:45:12
After a quick internet search, I found out that the new Garry Disher book (part 3 of the "Hirsch" series) will be out in Germany on July 12th. (Something to look forward to, until then I will re-read an old book or find something else...)
http://www.unionsverlag.com/info/title.asp?title_id=8509

Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: SueC on June 12, 2021, 14:51:35
Quote from: Ulrich on May 26, 2021, 17:45:12After a quick internet search, I found out that the new Garry Disher book (part 3 of the "Hirsch" series) will be out in Germany on July 12th. (Something to look forward to, until then I will re-read an old book or find something else...)
http://www.unionsverlag.com/info/title.asp?title_id=8509

Here it's come out as Consolation and I was trying to get an e-book copy - until they wanted $28 for it!  :1f635:  For an e-book!!!  :1f635:  Publishers, honestly - it should be cheaper than a paperback, considering you don't have to print and distribute it. Now I'm going to borrow it from the library.
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on June 12, 2021, 15:01:34
Quote from: SueC on June 12, 2021, 14:51:35until they wanted $28 for it!  :1f635:  For an e-book!!! 

Wow! It might even be cheaper if I'd send you my copy (after I read it)!  :1f62e:
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: SueC on June 27, 2021, 04:01:56
(https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fneonbubblegum.files.wordpress.com%2F2020%2F04%2F1_qxp9memqnmywhonptxeflg.jpeg%3Fw%3D900&f=1&nofb=1)

The other day I was at the local rubbish tip, where we go every 2-3 months to drop off a feed bag of recycling and the little landfill waste we produce (half a bag to a bag and that's only because I'm currently getting rid of old polybraid that can't be re-used in our fencing and no, I'm not buying any more, I'll favour plain wire from now, which does require some fence modifications to do).

Aside: If you're wondering how we produce so little recycling and rubbish - about a quarter in two to three months of the capacity local suburban dwellers are given in their waste and recycling bins every week - it's because we compost all organic material (BTW including human excrement via compost toilets), try to avoid buying excessively packaged goods, avoid packaged foods, grow much of our own F&V (and I rinse and reuse the bags we freeze surplus produce in), and we've really cut down waste from meat trays by producing our own meat and packing it in sturdy plastic bags which we wash out, hang up to dry and then put in the soft plastics recycling we drop off to a Replas collection point to be made into usable items like garden benches (and did you know you can wash and re-use cling wrap many times, and when it tears you can wash and dry it and put it in the soft plastics recycling).

If you don't produce your own meat you can save money and support high environmental and welfare standards by going to a local butcher who offers that choice and buying bulk packs of meat you ask them only to pack in bags, no trays, then you can wash and send the bags off to Replas and not have landfill waste from that stream.

Other things that have really reduced our waste output is to buy milk directly from someone with a milking cow so we can keep using the same containers while enjoying fresh milk and paying a fair price to the cow owner without the middle man taking a bigger cut (we pay them the same as we'd pay in a supermarket because we want to support local family-owned farming), and we've stopped buying bottled fruit juices and instead juice oranges ourselves and compost the waste (you won't want to buy commercial juices if you look at how they add "flavour packs" and colours etc and how many companies source their fruit, trust me - you'll want to support your local fruit growers instead), and I'm finally successful enough with my backyard tomato growing to be able to get through the whole year without buying any tinned tomatoes or bottled puree. Grow your own = fresher produce and less packaging, and what you can't grow yourself you can buy off a local grower.

Plus I just heard the average Australian now buys 27kg of clothes a year and we certainly don't do that, and never have done. As a professional I bought well-made classic outfits (some from op shop) instead of disposable fashionable items and some of those lasted me 20 years and still looked great. I've never thrown out clothes that weren't worn out, and jeans and T-shirts that looked past it I wore hiking, in the garden and around the farm until they wore out, and then used as rags, scarecrow stuffing etc (cotton and other natural materials also burn well and safely should you have a wood fire for home heating - or you can make rag rugs (https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rag+rug+make&t=ffab&atb=v113-1&iax=images&ia=images) etc). Some of my old classic outfits I've passed on to friends when we moved to our smallholding, and they are in turn getting a lot of wear and enjoyment out of those.

We're nowhere near the not-producing-waste top level though - that's people like this:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/06/zero-waste-warriors-meet-the-people-whose-household-rubbish-fits-in-a-jam-jar

Of course, if everyone just halved their waste it would have a far higher impact than if a few people go to incredible lengths to produce just a jam jar of waste a year (which is not to take anything away from those people, well done, just to say that you can make a good start by aiming to halve the rubbish you produce).

But I digress. At the tip I look through the "looking for a good home" section our lovely tip worker curates, and found some plastic netting that will come in handy for supporting the peas in my garden, as well as the book pictured above. I said, "That looks like I could learn from it!" and our tip man and I had a good laugh.

I've started reading this book and now have a theory as to how it ended up at the tip, even though it was in excellent condition and recent, and could have gone to a second-hand bookstore. My theory may betray significant streaks of cynicism and misanthropy, so beware, but here it is anyway: I can picture one of the local Neanderthals (of which we have a few - this is conspiracy theory country, and we were amongst the very few people in our neighbourhood to vote for marriage equality) picking up this book just based on this cover.

You know the type: "Ugga ugga, I like saying fvck, I think I'm so cool for saying fvck, and I don't know about punctuation so I use fvck instead. I like saying fvck around old ladies just to scandalise them, hahaha ugga ugga. It's so fun to offend other people and this guy must be way cool to put Fvck in his book title."

So our Neanderthal takes this book home and is then utterly disappointed to find genuinely good advice in it that he could actually have benefitted from. Plus maybe the print was too small and the word count too high, because Neanderthals find reading painful and prefer getting the IV drip of commercial television to tell them how to think and what values to have.

My apologies to the original Neanderthals who lived a long time ago, and were far more resourceful and intelligent than the people upon whom we now bestow this title metaphorically.

It seems to me that The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fvck was written by someone who had an epiphany about the BS of the dominant values in the West as an adult, and is now seeking to educate other adults who have not yet had this epiphany. I think the book contains good advice for people who are just going along with the shitty external values proffered by our mainstream culture, instead of determining their own. There's many people like that - it's a "wake up" to them. But those of us who have always been "outside" and thought independently have picked our own values and terms since we were teenagers regardless of peers and culture.

There's some entertaining anecdotes in this book, like did you know the guitarist of Megadeth was kicked out of his first band when they'd just scored a recording contract and spent his whole subsequent professional life trying to get revenge by being more successful than that band. And while he became successful, unfortunately (or karmically?) for him, his first band was Metallica, and because he defined success by being more successful commercially than his first band, he never really got to enjoy his own success (and there's karma for you). Megadeth actually sounds like senseless revenge music to me (and it appears there's a vast market for that) while Metallica have good moments (I'm not a metal fan, can you tell?) - so that was an interesting snippet to come across. :-D

On the whole though, long-time independent thinkers are going to find this book a bit B-grade and some of the advice in it flawed, and a lot of assertions not properly thought through, e.g. the way you feel after being kicked out of your band or other social grouping isn't necessarily self-pity - it's natural to be in shock and to grieve and to want to make sense of it. For a far superior treatment of that situation, read Haruki Murakami's wonderful novel Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage.

(https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1409202116i/10948230._SX540_.jpg)

I'd suggest  The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fvck is worth a quick read - you'll probably know most of what the author is trying to tell you already (since you're reading this on a Cure forum :P), and there's some fun stories in it - and then you can pass it on to someone who's a bit more mainstream and in greater need of basic advice on what's wrong with the mainstream way of thinking and doing things.

Here's a nice quote from this text which might easily go into one of our music discussions - why is it important for musicians to make songs which acknowledge that pain, evil and unfairness are a real aspect of life and that it's OK to grieve, and not just to write "glossies" - indeed if you ask me, the "glossies" I could most do without, I like the acknowledgement songs of both darkness and light best of all because they're looking at both the down sides of life and the truly best sides of life honestly and unblinkingly, not just offering candy and distraction...

Quote from: Mark MansonThen there are those who measure their lives by the ability to be positive about, well, pretty much everything. Lost your job? Great! That's an opportunity to explore your passions. Husband cheated on you with your sister? Well, at least you're learning what you really mean to the people around you. Child dying of throat cancer? At least you don't have to pay for college anymore!

While there is something to be said for "staying on the sunny side of life" the truth is, sometimes life sucks, and the healthiest thing you can do is admit it.

Denying negative emotions leads to experiencing deeper and more prolonged negative emotions and to emotional dysfunction. Constant positivity is a form of avoidance, not a valid solution to life's problems.
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: SueC on July 09, 2021, 20:37:07
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Just finished Gillian Flynn's Sharp Objects - excellent debut, really well observed, to the point of being physically disturbing. Basically, a young reporter is sent from Chicago to her hometown in Missouri to investigate an apparent child serial killing there. Camille hasn't been home in eight years and when you meet her dysfunctional family you'll understand why. In her mother you'll meet the pillar-of-the-community narcissist who is a nightmare to have as a parent but always manages to publicly be seen as the devoted mother of difficult children. Quite a trick, not infrequently performed - and since I grew up in a dysfunctional family, I saw the general formula firsthand.

So Camille deals with the fallout of not having been seen or loved as a child, while being viewed as spoilt and difficult through her mother's poor-me, ungrateful-child propaganda. There's a sickly younger sister who died in the back story and I immediately thought, "Could well be Munchhausen's by proxy," and so it turned out. In the present day there's a 13-year-old sociopathic half-sister. The protagonist doesn't "label" this kind of thing - most people don't - but if you've grown up anything like this, and done your background research in consequence, you'll get to that point eventually. The most useful thing when dealing with narcissists and sociopaths is knowing that's what it is - but Camille is still second-guessing herself, and still significantly susceptible to the emotional BS.

Mother and young daughter were my equal prime suspects from the go-get in consequence - based on narcissism/sociopathy. Sure, they weren't the only warped people in the little community, and were off most people's radar for the mysterious child killings in the town - but both struck me as eminently capable of it, and I could see how either of them could have dealt with the practical problem of separating and killing the victims, even as most of the small town thought the murderer had to be a man.

So which one was it? The protagonist got into hair-raising situations - to an observer with that perspective - with both of them, which again showed me how easy the child killings would have been for either of them. Meanwhile, we see a social tableau of systemic dysfunction - a small town where the wealthy care for little besides their status and being "higher-up" than the working folk - a distinction that repeats generation after generation, and begins in pre-school. These people live shallow, self-absorbed lives that do actual damage to the have-nots in the community (and the planet in general) - while those lower on the totem pole scrabble to make a living, and their labour enriches the wealthy more than it does them.

The pig factory farming backdrop is gruesome - I already don't like intensive animal production (I say that as a free-range producer) for all sorts of good reasons pertaining to environmental impact and animal welfare. Some of the practices described I'm pretty sure aren't legal in Australia, but wouldn't surprise me in the US, where the right to make an almighty dollar seems to be seen as holier than any other principle. Factory pigs have about the same living standards as battery chickens - or barn chickens, if they're lucky - meaning, they're never allowed to live anything resembling a normal life for a social animal. It's pitiful. Not living a long life is one thing, but never actually living a proper life is quite another.

In the book this serves to draw interesting parallels to the way we treat each other, as well. How much do we stand by and accept as "normal"? Or do we challenge the system, and face the personal consequences?

For me, doing the latter has been impossible not to do from the go-get. Maybe because I've seen the absurdity, injustice and cruelty in society from little, even when it's presented as normal and laudable. I could never not see it, so I never had to wake up to the fact that there are huge problems with human "standard mode" in our society and systems. Possibly it was made easier by never benefitting particularly from these, compared to some people. There was less to give up that way... but still so much that needed giving up, and it takes a lifetime apparently... Also, I had some excellent people in my life along the way, which helped hugely (some of those, I only knew by their work, but even that can make so much difference).

A book to make you think, and squirm, in equal measure.
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: SueC on July 12, 2021, 08:24:46
After an initial random flick-through when I first got it over a year ago, I've been properly reading Mike Scott's autobiography Adventures of a Waterboy in the normal front-to-back manner. I'm up to the bit that recounts the recording of This Is The Sea and its aftermath and have enjoyed the read so far. Mike Scott writes excellent prose, reflecting extensive reading as well as listening to music in which lyrics actually matter - the best prose I've read by a rock'n'roller, if occasionally patchy - though that's a natural consequence of the breadth of subject matter which is part of what makes this bio interesting.

It's not just, "I did this, I did that, he said this, she said that" but little asides about what it's like to live in certain places, deft character sketches, the politics of the music industry, love affairs gone wrong, all sorts of commentary. Dry stuff like the logistics of touring clearly isn't going to bring forth soaring verbal flights, but talking about his favourite stuff is - and there's a lot of that.

(https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse1.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.FMMzL33s1SfIHAm7PvzJnQAAAA%26pid%3DApi&f=1)

The thing I like the best about this autobiography is that Mike Scott is largely grounded, even as he recounts some cringeworthy anecdotes of 20-something learning experiences. We've all had these; I respect that he's so honest about this, instead of editing it out or glossing it over. He wrote this bio 40+ and it's interesting to read as a 40+ and compare notes.

The Waterboys were one of my favourite bands growing up and remain so, but I'd never really read any interviews, feature articles etc, so this was the first solid printed thing related to Mike Scott and his group that I've immersed myself in. As a 40+ looking at a 40+ person's recount, I had to laugh: At 15 you're listening to the lyrics going, "Oh, I want to be that articulate and deep-thinking when I'm 25!" and then at 40+ you're looking at this autobiography going, "OMG, he was naive and had shipwrecks at 25, same as I did!"  :lol:

With me it's pretty obvious why that happened given my dysfunctional upbringing and all the corresponding baggage, most of which you don't even know you have and takes a fair bit of detective work to unravel. But as far as I know, Mike Scott didn't grow up in a violent, manipulative, distorting refrigerator household that never sorted out its shiitake or made peace in any meaningful way. He seems at any rate on good terms with his mother (although people aren't always frank in public about that kind of thing for various reasons) - but the father had deserted the family in Scott's childhood.

Almost everyone has something like that to grapple with, some hollow place that makes life difficult especially in early adulthood. However, compost can be used for growing flowers, even while you're still having blind spots and shipwrecks, and people can come out of things like this with a lot of compassion for others and a clearsightedness they'd not otherwise have acquired. The mind has that in common with muscles - if you don't use them for difficult things they kind of turn into custard.

The "Kate Lovecraft" story in Mike Scott's autobiography is worth reading as a prototype dysfunctional romantic relationship not uncommon in early adulthood - and I think her name must have been changed or she would likely have sued his ass off for printing the story, given the character traits and incidents related. And, it's not the last cringeworthy romance related either - and that's how it often goes in real life anyway.

So how can someone write such amazing lyrics at 25 and still get sucked into a manipulative romantic relationship? The same way you can write excellent scientific literature at 25 or dance a beautiful ballet at 25 or discover a new mathematical theorem at 25 and still end up with personal shipwrecks. The same way marriage guidance counsellors themselves don't necessarily have glowing, trouble-free marriages. Because intellect and emotion are two different beasts and intellect is far more straightforward to work with than the subconscious. So you can sound intelligent and wise and deep and still struggle with interpersonal stuff. Also because it's always easier to deal with the things that are one step removed from your own life, than with your own stuff.

Another thing I like about this autobiography is that the person writing it mostly has his head screwed on straight about priorities in life. He doesn't give a damn about fame and wealth and status, he doesn't schmooze and play the game and constantly name-drop in self-important ways. He relates anecdotes about meeting his musical heroes that mostly don't make me cringe; he respects artists for their work rather than for their status etc.

I particularly liked this little snippet about going to Dublin, on the invite of a fiddler who's on quite a few of the albums in my personal collection:

QuoteI flew into Ireland on the fourth of January 1986 to visit Steve Wickham for a weeklong trip that turned into six years...In Steve's basement flat I was introduced to his wife Barbara and shown the guest room, a tiny chamber with a single narrow bed and a window onto a grimy backyard. Then we went out into the soul of a Dublin Saturday night...

Finding myself in Dublin was like going through the back of a Narnian wardrobe. I was in a convivial parallel universe, led by The Fellow Who Fiddles down colourful streets into dusty cafes where roguish men with scarves and glass eyes said things to each other like, 'I hear you're playing chess for money these days.' Or archaic newsagents' shops with fifties decor, which sold Irish cigarettes - Major and Carroll's Number One - and whose magazine shelves contained little songbooks with titles like A Collection Of Sea Ballads or Sing An Irish Song. I gathered this strange new world around me like a fog, quickly realising Dublin afforded me space and distance. The wilful voices of agents, managers and record companies were out of hearing. And after the shock of discovering, as I believed, that Kate Lovecraft could read my mind, Dublin was a safe haven. Even if Kate really was psychic the Irish cultural fabric was a hazy, mysterious domain of which she had no experience and couldn't penetrate. She didn't know where I was, didn't have my phone number or a mental image of my whereabouts. I felt secure.

I set about enjoying myself, regrouping my band and planning my next assault on the citadel of rock'n'roll. I wrote to Gary Kurfirst (American agent), split with him, hired a solicitor-cum-big-brother...and found myself a flat, a bright little cave in a leafy lane a mile from the centre of town. And that would be the end of one part of the story, and the beginning of all the others...

There's a few things in this book that raise the eyebrows of people not in Mike Scott's particular branch of human endeavour - like the apparently inevitable 1980s after-gig cocaine. Clearly a different work set to my own - as a science educator, my idea of fun shenanigans was to drink neon-orange fizzy Berocca straight from a laboratory beaker at a department meeting, as a layered metaphor. And my Berocca was the plain basic B-and-C vitamin type, not the American stuff with added caffeine and guarana. Trust me on two counts:  1) Berocca looks much more at home in laboratory glassware than in an ordinary drinking vessel, and 2) typical department meetings make extra B-and-C necessary for your health.  :1f635:

In Ireland, brown recreational liquids probably superseded white recreational powders, but you'd have to ask Mike Scott, and anyway, that's inconsequential overall; as are the occasional assumptions that appear to be made about certain situations being related (...you don't know for sure what's going on in someone else's head and heart unless they tell you, and are honest, including with themselves). I'm much enjoying this bio for its language, stories, settings and illumination of what it's like to be on the other side of music I've loved since I was in school, and think it's one of the more readable rock autobiographies out.

And isn't this true...

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Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: MeltingMan on August 15, 2021, 10:25:50
"Buy from us, not from Amazon," said a bookseller. A short time ago I smiled tiredly at this sentence. In the meantime I scratch my head, especially when it comes to messages like this:

Quote from: AmazonThis article is not available in your postcode area. Please choose a different delivery location.

Amazon thinks I trade books (!). Instead, I collect foreign-language specialist books. It is quite possible that I (and a few others) belong to a species that is in extinction. These books have to be ordered anyway. I can't constantly question my buying behavior then. I would like this time to read.
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on August 15, 2021, 14:51:51
I've been reading the aforementioned Garry Disher book "Barrier Highway" and enjoyed it so far.  :cool

Quote from: MeltingMan on August 15, 2021, 10:25:50Amazon thinks I trade books (!).

Strange! How can you convince them of your collector-status?  :?
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: MeltingMan on August 15, 2021, 17:35:33
Quote from: Ulrich on August 15, 2021, 14:51:51Strange! How can you convince them of your collector-status?  :?

Good question. Based on my purchases, Amazon Business thought I was a book dealer and they made me an offer. However, I deleted the mail immediately. I am currently reading L'art idéaliste et mystique from 1894, more precisely a facsimile of the book. Slightly lighter food for the (late) summer.😉 
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on August 15, 2021, 18:50:53
Quote from: MeltingMan on August 15, 2021, 17:35:33Amazon Business thought I was a book dealer and they made me an offer.

Ah well, an offer is okay, I guess. (Better than a threat...)  :-D
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: SueC on August 16, 2021, 13:16:31
Quote from: Ulrich on August 15, 2021, 14:51:51I've been reading the aforementioned Garry Disher book "Barrier Highway" and enjoyed it so far.  :cool

I know I complained about the first one in the series, but I've thoroughly enjoyed it from the second book on and I think he's getting better every book. I'm reading Consolation which may be the same book you're reading, just with the Australian title - and I think it's magnificently written. Having skim-read the one particular sub-plot I didn't want to read in dribs and drabs, I'm now back to reading the book in proper order, slowly, and savouring the wordings, descriptions and astute observations about people and society!  :cool

Also I'm very fond of the main characters.


Sorry to hear about those troubles, @MeltingMan. Amazon are pretty evil anyway.

Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on August 16, 2021, 17:10:15
Quote from: SueC on August 16, 2021, 13:16:31I'm reading Consolation which may be the same book you're reading...

Indeed that is the original title (it is mentioned in my book), no idea why they changed it (probably "marketing", because it sounds similar to "Bitter Wash Road")!
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: SueC on August 17, 2021, 11:02:48
@Ulrich, have you figured out who's stealing the underwear yet? I'm pleased to say the character I suspected from the moment I first "met" him indeed turned out to be the culprit!  :cool
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on August 17, 2021, 11:47:35
Quote from: SueC on August 17, 2021, 11:02:48have you figured out who's stealing the underwear...

Well I didn't.  :pensive:
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: SueC on August 17, 2021, 11:54:36
You mean it wasn't who you thought it was?

One of the spin-offs of growing up in a vastly dysfunctional household is that you end up collecting a lot of data that's useful for the finding of the culprits in crime novels.  :-D

Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on August 17, 2021, 11:56:22
Quote from: SueC on August 17, 2021, 11:54:36You mean it wasn't who you thought it was?

No, I didn't have any "suspects" in mind at all.  :1f636:
(I guess I should not start writing crime novels...)
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: SueC on August 17, 2021, 12:00:02
Maybe you can just be grateful for your relatively stable, positive childhood!  :winking_tongue  :smth023

I don't think it necessarily diminishes the experience of reading crime stuff if you don't pick the culprit. But what diminishes the experience for me is if an author introduces us to five different suspects, writes in detail about each of them, and then you find out it was the postman, who was only mentioned in passing!  :1f635:
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: SueC on August 27, 2021, 02:49:01
Well, I've just finished the proper read-through of Consolation, and can't recommend it highly enough to anyone else - and thanks @Ulrich for getting me onto this author.  :smth023

I know I had some issues with the first one in the series, but from the second there was no more irritation for me - just the pure enjoyment of reading intelligent, thought-provoking fiction with a huge sense of place, main characters you can thoroughly care about, astute observations about the ubiquitous dark side of human nature and the almost inevitable corruption amongst those endowed with power and prestige in the "upper echelons" of institutions and general society: Politicians, councils, boards, police, banks, schools, churches, corporations, prestigious businesses etc etc.

As a person living in rural Australia, I find his observations about Australian rural life very on the money and nowhere near caricature. Garry Disher has in my view constructed one of the most realistic parallel universes you'll ever likely encounter in fiction - it's so grounded, so believable, so aware of good and bad and in-between. This is crime fiction but doesn't do cardboard heroes and villains. There's a deep humanity to this author's writing, and a keen understanding of landscape, rural life and Australian history.

I thought Consolation was particularly remarkable for breaking the usual mould of crime fiction by not actually having a distinct "major case" with perhaps a few minor ones on the side. This was a quite organic story about various problems and crimes needing to be solved at this particular time in Constable Hirschhausen's universe, who is, after all, a village policeman from a one-person back-of-beyond station (who got kicked out of being an urban detective years ago because he spoke out against corruption).

Some of the problems are unrelated, some are connected; and it's the shining of light on all of this, the gradual solving of various puzzles, and above all, the way Hirschhausen goes about solving these various problems, that make this series very different from what my other favourite crime authors construct. You ask yourself, "Wow, what would I do in this situation?" as the protagonist goes about his job, and also as he confronts various issues in his personal life.

In the midst of the often depressing realities of human society and the human heart, so well conveyed in Garry Disher's series, there's this lighted candle in one ordinary, flawed person's determination to do the best he can by his own conscience, and the people around him. I guess you could say that it's the consolation of living in the world we live in, that people like this do exist, usually in obscurity, thanked by few, and often loathed and targeted by those who live with less personal integrity. And there's the lesson that it's this ordinary, flawed, unsung heroism that changes things for the better - there is no Superman who's going to fix it all, it's up to each of us to live with integrity and try to leave our own circle a better place than we found it.

Garry Disher "gets" the Australian landscape just as well as celebrated Australian literary author Tim Winton does - but it's my view that Winton rarely constructed particularly believable characters in his adult-audience books - while Disher excels at this. Yet Winton is on the school curriculum - because, as we all know, "mere crime" can't possibly be literary, oh no...  :P
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: SueC on August 31, 2021, 08:35:04
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It's been over ten years since our own tree-change, so it's a good time for general reflection for us, including a re-visit of Faith Addis' classic tales of her own family's move to the UK countryside in the 1970s. I originally caught the story via the BBC series of the same name, which it turns out wasn't the Addis' story at all, it was 95% conconcted. This, I shall now proceed to rant about.

It's not that the first BBC series of Down to Earth wasn't interesting in its own way. In it, Faith Addis is the person with the brains and heart to keep her family together and going forward while her well-intentioned but inept husband Brian bumbles along, and yells a lot at other people instead of accepting responsibility for his own mistakes - not to mention, whose personal pride decrees that his wife secretly working off-farm at something she excels at so her children can eat and be clothed is a betrayal not to be brooked. :confounded:

The TV children are: Sara, caught up in her own world and blinded by her first romance with a no-goodnik, the ground on which he walks, she worships - until she finds out it's only an exclusive arrangement from her end. There's Marcus, a jewel who takes more after his mother than his father, and endearing little Molly, excited about everything, but especially animals.

These were not the real Addises, who are so far removed from their fictitious doubles that I find it unethical they ever shared names. Were I Faith Addis, I'd be incensed especially at the way the screenwriters chose to portray her husband Brian - turning a resourceful, intelligent, kind, emotionally mature man into a bumbling idiot with anger management issues and an urgent need for several decades of psychotherapy. Daughter Sara never was a self-absorbed, whingeing teenager who thought moving to the country was hell - she and her brother Marcus were both for it, actually instigating the move it in the first place. Molly doesn't even exist in reality.

A few other important things never happened in reality: Brian didn't mismanage the taxes on his florist shop, forcing him to sell. He managed the business well and sold by choice. The move to the country was planned for years, not an impromptu wildcard after a train wreck. The Addises never naively thought to make a living for their family by growing flowers and vegetables single-handedly, small-scale and without prior experience - they planned to do children's rural holiday camps from the outset - and Brian already was a green thumbs.

Brett played devil's advocate when we were discussing this last night. "But Sue, we can't just have a competent, emotionally healthy, together couple moving to the country with their delighted children and succeeding. Where's the drama in that? No, no, no - make one of them a bumbling fool the other puts up with for nobody knows what reason. Make the oldest daughter a drama queen in puppy love who runs away. Make everyone into stereotypes, let them fail serially, indeed let them barely escape a naivety and failure so consistent and cumulative it almost costs them their dreams; let them only escape by a hair's breadth and by divine miracles, and by their adult son selling his motorbike and their little girl busking in the street."

Or so thought the BBC, much to my chagrin and also to my surprise - that level of sensationalising is more akin to Australian and American commercial channels. While the TV series itself, if you've never read the books they were supposedly based on, is an OK story, I think that as a story using the real Addis' actual names, it's horrible and defamatory.

I read the books after I watched the TV adaptation, and couldn't believe the BBC hadn't thought the original, unadulterated story worth telling. I personally think it's worth telling more than the confection they made out of the character names, some of the original settings and a number of real-life incidents they kept in with the rest of their confabulation. It's the story of real people, and a good how-to for anyone who's thinking of upending their lives and doing something completely different. It shows the qualities you need to cultivate in yourself to succeed, and demonstrates that even a well-considered real life already has plenty of curveballs, comedy, drama and mistakes to learn from, even without the fevered imaginations of TV writers inventing more.

The real Faith and Brian Addis were both of them industrious, energetic, clever, capable, eager to learn, and exactly the kind of people who will make a go of anything they choose to turn their attention to. They not only made a go of their 16th century farmhouse and holiday camp, but of several other ventures, although Faith Addis remarks in the foreword, "Looking back to the 1970s, which is when my books began, I realise how lucky we were to be able to do the things we did. Nowadays there are so many regulations strangling small enterprise you probably need a degree in form-filling to start a flower farm or a children's holiday home, to name just two of our ventures." And it's even more difficult in Australia or the US, which is why alternative farming practitioner Joel Salatin wrote a book not so long ago called Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal (https://www.motherearthnews.com/homesteading-and-livestock/sustainable-farming/joel-salatin-interview).

I strongly recommend both Faith Addis' classics and Joel Salatin's treatise to anyone interested in rural life and in how food gets to your table (and what you can do to encourage good environmental and animal welfare standards).
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: MeltingMan on September 02, 2021, 17:49:37
To make room for my new collection, I transported books to the basement, a total of five boxes. It was important for me to store the volumes upright so that air can get between the pages. All heavy books on subjects like art history, military history and old files. With the cardboard boxes you are already reaching the limit of what is feasible. When I went down the stairs, some volumes fell over. Oh well. Nothing happens. In the event of a move, it is recommended not to over-load the box anyway. If you only have paperbacks, it is easier. 😄
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: MeltingMan on September 04, 2021, 16:49:11
I was still missing five text-critical comments on my collection. Today I downloaded them as pdf's (August Strindbergs Samlade Verk). It is questionable whether they will ever appear in print. Certainly not this decade. A big thank you to the editors and to everyone who was involved in this 'monument'! 👌🏻
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: SueC on September 22, 2021, 00:52:09
JP Delaney writes intricate, intelligent psychological thrillers. I've reviewed The Girl Before (http://curefans.com/index.php?topic=4324.msg770735;topicseen#msg770735), The Perfect Wife (http://curefans.com/index.php?topic=4324.msg772953;topicseen#msg772953) and Believe Me (http://curefans.com/index.php?topic=4324.msg774089#msg774089) for these pages - all excellent and thought-provoking. The latest, Playing Nice, I can also highly recommend.

The title, Playing Nice, is on the one hand a reference to teaching children to play nicely with others, and on the other, about adults compromising and being reasonable with each other - or putting on a stage performance of such behaviour in public while pursuing quite different lines in private. To an extent, a lot of families give stage performances in public that differ significantly from how they act at home - most shockingly so in cases of family violence and abuse. In this novel, we meet a master of such stage play - a psychopath who is, of course, able to charm most people with his facade, plus he's ultra successful and rich, which means he can conceal a lot of things ordinary citizens can't, and engage lawyers at the drop of a hat.

Playing Nice is a novel about two babies mixed up at a hospital, and the parents discovering the mistake two years later. Now what? It is also about how people (routinely, lawyers, but they are not the only ones) will take other people's stories and twist them to present them in an unfavourable light - spin, character assassination, etc. It's about how experts in various agencies can get things completely wrong but still be the esteemed expert, and how ruthless people will play a system, and other people.

Because I've read a fair few of these and because I'm sadly au fait with narcissism and families "playing nice" in public (having grown up in such a family), I generally pick the personality traits of various disorders pretty easily even under the presented facades, when reading such books - and I usually figure out who has done what so that the "big surprises" aren't surprises to me. Therefore, I did correctly pick who had swapped the babies at the hospital and why - in part that's because I wasn't looking just at who would do something "horrible" like that, but at other reasons a person might have for doing this.

It's satisfying that Playing Nice does have a relatively happy ending, even though many real-life stories like this do not. One thing that held me in suspense was trying to figure out whether Pete was genuinely super-nice or had a personality disorder - a little puzzle the author was giving us, and it could have gone either way because sometimes it's really hard to tell the difference! Likewise, it's interesting looking closely at all the characters in this cast trying to work out what is driving them and what they might really be thinking.

Excellent treatment of "baby psychopathy" caused by an underdeveloped amygdala, and how "warm parenting" can help develop the amygdala and hopefully prevent the child becoming a psychopath - while insensitive parenting, or making a "little prince", can have the opposite effect.
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Pongo on September 24, 2021, 10:26:19
Quote from: SueC on September 22, 2021, 00:52:09Playing Nice is a novel about two babies mixed up at a hospital, and the parents discovering the mistake two years later.

Sounds like a very interesting plot. Will have to check this one out.

Psychopathy in general has been on my radar the last couple of years. Haven't read that many books dealing with it though. The Psychopath Test By Jon Ronson is a very entertaining and interesting introduction to the subject.
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: SueC on October 15, 2021, 10:55:10
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In postscript to Post #195 above: I've now finished re-reading all five books in the Down to Earth series - an interesting exercise to see how other smallholders elsewhere live their lives and solve their problems. Faith Addis is a highly entertaining writer and always good for humorous anecdotes about human foibles, including her own - books guaranteed to make readers laugh almost continuously. Also, her rural-life biography is now a slice of 1970s/80s rural history, which paints a colourful picture of Devon, Dartmoor and surrounds.

I personally preferred the earlier books in the series where they were living in historical houses built hundreds of years ago and doing a lot of self-sufficiency, as I could relate more to the activities they were doing at that point: Growing much of their own fruit and vegetables, keeping agricultural animals, producing their own milk, eggs and meat, bartering with other smallholders, and doing rural-life sidelines like running holiday camps for children and taking in general farmstay guests.

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They sold the fabled Phyllishayes at the end of Book 2 but I could stand it because the place was bought by nice people who continued to grow food and run the holiday camps. This means the children didn't miss out in consequence - I think it's so important for children to have rural experiences; many who live in cities never have the opportunity. The Addises moved to a larger smallholding where they could grow more stuff, and shared a leaky Tudor house split into two separate residences with Faith's mother while undergoing continuous education through the Smallholders Association.

The series took a dive for me when they sold the Tudor house to resurrect and on-sell a nursery that had fallen into disrepair. That was the end of most of their livestock-keeping. They then lived in a mouldy bungalow with a leaky roof and horrible interior features like psychedelic swirly carpets. Part of the aim of the exercise was to do up the house as well as the nursery, in order to sell it at a good profit two or three years later and move somewhere more pleasant. It may or may not have made them enough money to compensate for the drop in quality of life and the loss of a plethora of previous interesting activities - but I personally recoiled at the idea of running a greenhouse production unit for begonias, petunias, fuchsias, geraniums and general garden shrubs. Mass propagation of plants in artificial environments and sterile media isn't the same as getting your fingers into real soil and working organically, with permaculture systems that harmonise with nature.

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At the end of Book 4 they finally sold that place and bought an ancient Devon Longhouse on Dartmoor. I was keen to hear all about that, but at the start of Book 5 they have already sold it because the high moor is too cold to grow plants properly - and we hear basically nothing about those two years. Instead, it's back to living in another eyesore and working in greenhouses to mass-produce ornamental plants and sell them at car boot sales and fairs. Zzzzzz, I'd rather have root canal therapy than do that. Nevertheless, the last book in the series is made interesting by its discussion of green lane projects, which Brian is involved with for a while, its descriptions of the alternative-lifestyle haven Totnes and its more bohemian occupants, and the author's continuous humorous anecdotes.

By Book 5 you get to have some idea of the author's particular flaws, because she begins to make jokes at other people's expense often enough to make things uncomfortable, and because while she's different and alternative-lifestyle herself, she's often scathing of people who are different in other ways, or of kooky theories that are not her own pet kooky theories, but objectively no kookier. However, it's always easier to see other people's flaws than our own, and familiarity with anyone will increase this awareness.

I also get the impression that the Addises didn't live in particularly clean interiors. Faith often refers to her aversion to housework and even to meal preparation - and that bit is hard to relate to for foodies like Brett and me - the whole point of growing your own stuff is that you get far better taste and nutrition, because you're growing heirlooms in healthy soil and bringing them straight to the table. However, Brian seems to have not exactly pulled his weight around the house, and when you're dealing with that kind of inequality it could put anyone off housework and cooking.

Unhygienic interiors aren't uncommon with back-to-the-land smallholders - I've met a fair few, and I always winced when I read the in-house stories from the Grass Roots magazine editor about chickens running around indoors and sitting on the kitchen table and sofas. At our place, we draw the indoor critters line at one dog, who has her own sofa and isn't allowed in the kitchen, dining area or the guest rooms. She's definitely not allowed in our bed, or encouraged to spend much time in our bedroom. Our house doesn't smell of dog. Not having any carpets helps - floor rugs are washable. I launder her sofa coverings weekly. We'll vacuum once a week, and touch up in-between where needed if she's moulting or has snuck into the house without the obligatory towelling-off outside first.

Not for me the idea of chicken or any other droppings, ectoparasites and farmyard dirt inside a house. I'm happy to get dirty outdoors, but indoors is clean and comfortable and welcoming, and our personal haven. Nice crisp natural-fibre bedsheets that get a rinse in water with a shake of lavender oil at least once a week are to us the pinnacle of that kind of hygge. You can be a smallholder, but leave the dirt outside to grow potatoes in - very nice potatoes too.

Anyone who's interested in rural life and in funny anecdotes could give the Down to Earth books a go. Book 5 kind of ends mid-air and is a bit anticlimactic compared to the first three books in the series, but the whole series is still worth a read.

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Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on October 19, 2021, 19:51:10
I've been reading Garry Disher's "Under the cold bright lights".

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43599436-under-the-cold-bright-lights

Quote from: undefinedAlan Auhl was a homicide detective who took early retirement but has now returned to the police force to work on cold cases. He has an unusual household composed of his student daughter, occasionally his ex wife, several tenants and usually someone in need of a safe place while they sort out their lives.

In contrary to the other books I read by G. Disher, this one is in a more "urban" setting and the main character makes a (morally) questionable decision...

What's the same as the other books: "social realism" and cases which show how bad some human beings can become.

Quote from: undefinedBetween Auhl's several cases, and his complicated personal life, there's a lot going on in this book, but all the storylines are compelling and well-plotted.

Can't help but agree with this!  :smth023
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: SueC on October 22, 2021, 05:17:17
Definitely sounds like I should reserve it at the library, @Ulrich!  :cool

Garry Disher's books, like JP Delaney's, I tend to read quickly and without dipping into other books at the same time. I actually finish them within a few days, whereas my bedside book stack is full of books I keep dipping into and back out of, and reading in parallel with each other. This happens especially with nonfiction - and so, I've just gotten into the second half of Mike Scott's autobiography (http://curefans.com/index.php?topic=4324.msg775069#msg775069), and wanted to bring up some things from that!

As already mentioned in the above link, there's lots of good stuff in this bio, including really excellent writing. When Mike Scott does his cultural decompression in the West of Ireland, the descriptions are so evocative it feels like part of you is right there in Western Ireland too, which is lovely, for me anyway, because I've never been to Western Ireland and yet the place has fascinated me since I painted the Dingle Peninsula for my Year 10 art class Impressionism project when I was 14, and subsequently read JM Synge's Playboy of the Western World for Year 12 English Literature when I was 16. The chapters of Adventures of a Waterboy set in Western Ireland are a very good personalised vicarious immersion into the local landscape and culture.

Fisherman's Blues is one of my favourite albums of all time, and it was really interesting to read about its recording, especially the months in residence in Spiddal House. That all seemed pretty idyllic apart from when the cook threatened crew members with a shotgun, and when they had to send one of their roadies back home to his wife a couple of weeks early because he was going AWOL with alcohol and drunken antics that interfered with everyone else getting on with the recording work. I'll never be able to listen to the super-cheery Spring Comes To Spiddal again without remembering that while an oblivious Mike Scott was laying down the vocal for that track with headphones on, the cook was running around with a loaded shotgun threatening people!  :1f62e:

I loved the chapter on the young Sharon Shannon, who's one of my favourite Celtic traditional music artists, right up along with Capercaillie and Alasdair Fraser, and whom we've caught live in our small town on the South Coast of Western Australia - excellent gig, too.

Alas, good things eventually came to an end, because the recording of the next album, Room to Roam, was plagued with problems. It probably wasn't a good idea to return to Spiddal House, and the producer certainly sounded like the wrong choice, driving everyone up the wall with his bloody metronome and his lack of understanding of Celtic music. It wasn't the first time Mike Scott chose a producer that didn't work out for them, and I don't think you can choose someone like that just based on externals such as whether you like some albums they produced - I think you'd have to meet up with them, with all of your band, and have some serious discussions together on how you like to work and what your priorities are - because what matters more than anything is whether people can work together well and productively.

Mike Scott seems not to have consulted the other band members democratically and inclusively with major decisions like this - reading the bio, one gets the distinct impression that the rest of the Waterboys are kind of like his Greek chorus, and that The Waterboys ought to have been known as "Mike Scott & The Waterboys" or just "Mike Scott" like Suzanne Vega is known as Suzanne Vega even though she travels with other musicians. The Waterboys don't seem to have been a band of equals with creativity and general decision-making - Mike Scott was definitely the one with the principal say over what the band would sound like and do. And sometimes that's how it works, but I can imagine that this would have set up a fair bit of friction and resentment by the time Room to Roam was getting recorded.

Because by then the band had been together for years and probably began to feel a bit like a family that owed each other a bit of mutual consultation. I can imagine some of them getting really annoyed about being stuck with an apparently up-himself big-time big-name big-head American producer without having had any input into the decision, and I can certainly imagine that some of the band members would have been livid when Mike Scott started sacking people when the rehearsals for the new-album tour weren't working out. The album wasn't as good as it could have been, and it's my understanding that concert tours are an important aspect of making an income as a musician. You'd be understandably pissed off if you had to endure an unpleasant album recording process that ended in a relative commercial flop and then didn't get to tour that album to at least top up your bank balance, because the head honcho decided to sack you and go on tour without you - as was the case for the drummer, and all the trad musicians in The Waterboys at the time. So OK, Steve Wickham quit and then the trad stuff didn't work out, but Steve Wickham quit after Mike Scott sacked the drummer, and almost certainly at least in part because he didn't agree either with that decision, or with not being consulted.

And so, our human flaws and resulting conflicts continue to mess things up in our lives, at regular intervals along the road. This isn't an exercise in pointing the finger at Mike Scott, who in any event was aware after it all blew up that he should have approached that differently - just an exercise in imagining how the other people might have felt at the time, who were not telling this story. It's also a reminder that we're all of us plagued with these difficulties along the road, and that perhaps the most important thing is this: If you can't always avoid falling over, to get good at getting up again, and at doing your part in promoting goodwill and harmony again afterwards.

Mike Scott, in the long run, appears to have done a fair bit of this, since he did record and play live again down the track with some of the very people he sacked in that dark time for The Waterboys. And not that this is an excuse for deliberately doing something untoward, just a consolation for tripping up: It's amazing how well flowers grow in compost made from BS. Going separate ways isn't necessarily the end for anyone, creatively or personally, and much excellent music came from various separate ventures by various ex-Waterboys, as well as by the continuing Waterboys AKA Mike Scott's backing band!  :winking_tongue

I've just gotten to the early-90s New York part of the bio and am wincing again at just how easily Mike Scott got the wrong impression of people, but I think part of me is wincing for all of our human stuff-ups, misconceptions etc. Full marks for the forthrightness with which Mr Scott is letting us see some of his warts, and is a catalyst for making us think about our own warts, both warts past and warts still in treatment!
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on October 22, 2021, 15:04:44
Quote from: SueC on October 22, 2021, 05:17:17Fisherman's Blues is one of my favourite albums of all time, and it was really interesting to read about its recording, especially the months in residence in Spiddal House. That all seemed pretty idyllic

Well I guess it was and even today, when the band members speak about it (or re-visit the place) they get all sentimental about it.
However, only half of the album was recorded there, the rest was all over the place (Dublin mostly, plus some sessions in L.A., which weren't used after all).
Songs kept being rearranged and re-recorded, in the end they lost track and it could've been 3 albums in all. (Most left-over recordings were subsequently released over the next 30 years.)

Quote from: SueC on October 22, 2021, 05:17:17Mike Scott seems not to have consulted the other band members democratically and inclusively with major decisions like this

A bit like with Robert Smith, he seems to be "the boss" of the project. (It has been known that The Cure democratically decided which songs to put on some albums, but in general it is Robert who makes most decisions.)
I had the impression that Mike Scott just follows his own intuition when it came to creative decisions. This lead him to into "blind alleys" at times, but that can easily happen.

Anyway, I read that autobiography by Mike Scott a while ago and enjoyed it. He's a good writer, hopefully during lockdowns he found time to write something again (part 2 of this bio maybe)...
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: SueC on October 23, 2021, 11:30:26
Quote from: Ulrich on October 22, 2021, 15:04:44
Quote from: SueC on October 22, 2021, 05:17:17Fisherman's Blues is one of my favourite albums of all time, and it was really interesting to read about its recording, especially the months in residence in Spiddal House. That all seemed pretty idyllic

Well I guess it was and even today, when the band members speak about it (or re-visit the place) they get all sentimental about it.
However, only half of the album was recorded there, the rest was all over the place (Dublin mostly, plus some sessions in L.A., which weren't used after all).
Songs kept being rearranged and re-recorded, in the end they lost track and it could've been 3 albums in all. (Most left-over recordings were subsequently released over the next 30 years.)

Yes, they covered all that in the bio!  ;)  That producer in LA gave me the creeps. I'd have walked away (but I'm mature-age and have picked up more on alarm bells than I had as a younger person, and Mike Scott was still young and impressionable). The big American flag draped across his house was already a clue as to what you were going to get.

I've had Too Close To Heaven for many years, and I like some of the material on it even better than the material on Fisherman's Blues. And yet from what I read in the bio, that's only a fraction of what they actually recorded and then put on ice (although some of it turned up on Room To Roam, whether from the vault or re-recorded specifically for that album I'm not sure). Looks like I need to do some more digging. Also to try to get the B-sides for Dream Harder - which I had no idea existed.

Other than that I'm pretty much up to date with what I want out of that catalogue - I'm yet to acquire Still Burning (last time I looked it wasn't available) and Modern Blues, which would mean a complete catalogue up until that particular album, and after that I'm not so sure I'm interested anymore. It's starting to look samey after that and there's other back catalogues I'm still filling gaps in...


Quote from: Ulrich on October 22, 2021, 15:04:44I had the impression that Mike Scott just follows his own intuition when it came to creative decisions. This lead him to into "blind alleys" at times, but that can easily happen.

Anyway, I read that autobiography by Mike Scott a while ago and enjoyed it. He's a good writer, hopefully during lockdowns he found time to write something again (part 2 of this bio maybe)...

Yeah, I think Part 2 would be interesting. Brett, of course, after The Withering Letter (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saG2uPiP_a0), thinks Mike Scott should give up music altogether and make a career change into spoken-word projects, like audio books.

But he's also, for the last couple of days, several times a day exclaimed in shocked tones, "He sacked Sharon Shannon! How can anyone sack Sharon Shannon?" Yesterday it was the first thing he said after he woke up in the morning. :rofl

By the way, I listened to Room To Roam a couple of times since yesterday (much outdoors work to do) and it's not actually as bad an album as either the critics or Mike Scott himself suggests. About half the tracks on it I like very much, either for the lyrics or for the music - sometimes just for one, like Further Up, Further In - the last four lines are particularly sage, and I first took note of those in my 20s:

I find I've wandered far from home
but home is in me wherever I roam
I thought I was an hour or a year behind
but the hours and the years are only time


Of course, the cynical part of me thinks How Long Will I Love You? is another hormonal proclamation by a starry-eyed courting individual, which smells vaguely fishy, and will smell worse a year later (same sort of reaction with songs like this (http://curefans.com/index.php?topic=9295.msg773844;topicseen#msg773844) documented previously :winking_tongue ).

I think the main problem with this album is that it's the closest The Waterboys ever got to sounding twee - in fact, they probably crossed that line with several songs on it. This was not a problem on Fisherman's Blues, or on Too Close To Heaven - or on any other albums from that catalogue that I've heard. It's a problem with some aspects of traditional music that the better trad artists, like Capercaillie, seem to have been capable of avoiding for their entire careers, while many of the general offerings you hear on St Patrick's Day are infested with it.

But Room To Roam isn't nearly as twee in its most twee places as those general St Patrick's Day offerings - and there's another way to look at it, which is: Mike Scott seems to have been a bit like a big sponge keenly soaking up the surrounding environment and culture wherever he went - particularly the West of Ireland, New York, the Findhorn intentional community - and he always produced incredible musical postcards of those places and experiences. He wasn't a tourist, he actually became a local in those places. If you spend enough time in the West of Ireland, I'm sure some of the twee starts not to look twee to you, just as cynicism doesn't look so cynical if you live in New York! ;)

And when he was looking back at Room To Roam from the context of living in New York, he could suddenly see the twee aspects of it because of the contrast in cultures, and it seems to have embarrassed him, the way he writes about it. Plus he's a perfectionist and often looks very critically at his own work, probably more critically than anyone else, backstage.

He also wrote rather critically about the New York album Dream Harder as being faux rock'n'roll, but I actually enjoy that record for its quirkiness and think it has many redeeming features, and many super songs on it. I love Glastonbury Song, the tongue-in-cheek Corn Circles and Spiritual City and the sublime version of Love and Death, for example. He thinks his mojo was at half-mast for that record, and was happier with the subsequent B-sides, which is why I'd like to hear those B-sides...

I'd totally also be up for reading the sequel for life 40+ for Mike Scott, so yeah, I hope he's been writing during the pandemic, but maybe he hasn't because he's busy juggling parenting young children and being civil with various exes... :winking_tongue
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: SueC on October 23, 2021, 15:01:43
Quote from: Ulrich on October 23, 2021, 14:30:22Thanks for ruining another song for me with such weak assumptions. :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:  :mad:  :1f629:  :anguished:

When a song has a different effect on someone else than it has on you, it shouldn't ruin it for you. Just like it doesn't ruin bananas for me that Brett doesn't like them.  :winking_tongue

I like a lot of songs you don't like, and you like a lot of songs I don't, and personally I think that is cool and ruins nothing.

But if I've ruined How Long Will I Love You? for you because of what I've said about that and other songs like it, then I've ruined all romantic songs for you that make promises that people don't usually live up to. Sometimes they do - but mostly it's like what Nick Lowe caricatures in All Men Are Liars (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6hzkBihaew). Most singers who sing about loving someone forever and ever are with the next item a couple of years later - it's pretty predictable - and writing the next forever and ever song about them, and then about the next person after that - and the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result... :lol:

History bore out that Mike Scott didn't stay with the person forever and ever he wrote that forever and ever song for, either. Or the next one after that he thought was "the one" etc (and maybe that's because most people's romantic ideas aren't very realistic, but a bit rooted in fairytales about romance, and they mistake strong feelings caused by reproductive brain chemistry for love when those are quite different things). So no assumptions there. Personally if I can't live up to unrealistic promises, I stop making them - and I'd think it was unrealistic if I hadn't lived up to my first lot of promises, and I'd be really hesitant to think I could henceforth make such sweeping promises again.

So I'll agree to disagree with you on that one, and get back to book reviewing. One I've just begun is this, and it looks great:

(https://images2.penguinrandomhouse.com/cover/9780525510321)

Here's some information from the Penguin Random House page:

Quote"Merlin Sheldrake's marvelous tour of these diverse and extraordinary life forms is eye-opening on why humans should consider fungi among the greatest of earth's marvels. . . . Wondrous."—Time

A mind-bending journey into the hidden universe of fungi, "one of those rare books that can truly change the way you see the world around you" (Helen Macdonald, author of H Is for Hawk).

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Time • BBC Science Focus • The Daily Mail • Geographical • The Times • The Telegraph • New Statesman • London Evening Standard • Science Friday

When we think of fungi, we likely think of mushrooms. But mushrooms are only fruiting bodies, analogous to apples on a tree. Most fungi live out of sight, yet make up a massively diverse kingdom of organisms that supports and sustains nearly all living systems. Fungi provide a key to understanding the planet on which we live, and the ways we think, feel, and behave.

In Entangled Life, the brilliant young biologist Merlin Sheldrake shows us the world from a fungal point of view, providing an exhilarating change of perspective. Sheldrake's vivid exploration takes us from yeast to psychedelics, to the fungi that range for miles underground and are the largest organisms on the planet, to those that link plants together in complex networks known as the "Wood Wide Web,"  to those that infiltrate and manipulate insect bodies with devastating precision.

Fungi throw our concepts of individuality and even intelligence into question. They are metabolic masters, earth makers, and key players in most of life's processes. They can change our minds, heal our bodies, and even help us remediate environmental disaster. By examining fungi on their own terms, Sheldrake reveals how these extraordinary organisms—and our relationships with them—are changing our understanding of how life works.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BRITISH BOOK AWARD • LONGLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE

"Entangled Life is a gorgeous book of literary nature writing in the tradition of [Robert] Macfarlane and John Fowles, ripe with insight and erudition. . . . Food for the soul."—Eugenia Bone, Wall Street Journal

So far, the book is living up to the hype. If people are interested in other superb natural history books, I would also recommend:

The Future Eaters by Australian ecologist Tim Flannery - best natural history of Australia and surrounding land masses I've ever read - accessible, detailed, superbly written, total pleasure to read and so much to learn - Tim Flannery did a Literature degree before he became a biologist, and it really shows in his writing.

Where Song Began by Tim Low - amazing exploration of Australian birds, their characteristics, why they're so hyperactive and vocal (our plants make lots of excess sugar for them because there aren't enough minerals in the soil for the plants to turn all the sugars they make from photosynthesis into other useful things for their own use - such as proteins etc - so they instead use the sugar to court pollinators, and have enough to employ lots of birds to do that).
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: MeltingMan on October 23, 2021, 16:41:33
Canada, of all places, is the Guest of Honor at this year's Frankfurt Book Fair. Just don't get it wrong: I lost a book that was already out of print this year in the mail, which was ordered as a reimport from (French) Canada. No problem - the purchase price was refunded immediately and the publisher has now (with presence of mind) released a paperback version (L'Éternelle jeune fille. Une ethnocritique du Rêve de Zola by Marie Scarpa). Great.

🙂
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Pongo on October 27, 2021, 08:53:46
Quote from: SueC on October 23, 2021, 11:30:26Of course, the cynical part of me thinks How Long Will I Love You? is another hormonal proclamation

If anyone is baiting with Room to roam, I will bite. There will be more about this album in my upcoming essay on Wild Mood Swings. But concerning How long will I love you, I saw that more as an exercise in writing something lyrical. Much the same as A Man is in Love, I don't necessarily have to have Mike being the subject of this song. Both of these songs are a bit cheesy, but I appreciate the use of language in both of them. Both of these maybe should have been left as b-sides, if it weren't for that they have the music to go with them.

Moreover, most of us are multi-dimensional, sometimes we are reflecting on life in a complex way and sometimes we put a sign on the wall saying Carpe diem!. No, sorry, that was a bit too far, but I think you get the idea. But I think everyone has the right to write a Friday I'm in love, without being judged too harshly.
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Pongo on October 27, 2021, 09:19:59
In order for this not to become a Waterboys thread, I'll just say that I'm currently reading this one:
(https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSDJioV8xwouEhzl8mv5JdR4pu2IrDkRnxMUwBve9hWyZ2Fx7d6-axA8lf2M-E_FVPTpbA&usqp=CAU)

It's a history book about the Black Death. I thought it interesting in the light of the current pandemic. Don't know whether it's translated to any other languages. The focus is on what it was like in Sweden at the time but it covers what happened throughout the world.
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on October 27, 2021, 11:15:55
Thanks for trying to stay on topic.  ;)  :happy

If a book is about an album, a little "detour" is alright.
However an in-depth song analysis might be moved to a Waterboys topic at some point. I already deleted my own "off topic" posts (the sarcasm in one sentence might've been "lost in translation" to some anyway.)

Quote from: Pongo on October 27, 2021, 08:53:46...I saw that more as an exercise in writing something lyrical. Much the same as A Man is in Love, I don't necessarily have to have Mike being the subject of this song.

So do I. And unless anyone delivers a medical report about his hormonal status at the time, I will call an assumption what it is: an assumption.  :1f62e:
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on November 24, 2021, 13:00:09
I've been reading "His & Hers" by Alice Feeney. I tried to avoid spoilers, when looking for reviews. It all will depend on the ending and who will be revealed to be the killer (will it make sense? will it be "credible"), but so far it's been a good read.

http://crimebythebook.com/blog/2020/7/26/review-his-and-hers-feeney
QuoteThere are two sides to every story: yours and mine, ours and theirs, His & Hers. Which means someone is always lying.

Narrated alternately by two protagonists whose dubious connections to a murder victim make them instantly-unreliable guides through our story, HIS & HERS gives readers a passenger's seat on a twisty journey to find the truth about a local woman's death.
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: MeltingMan on November 25, 2021, 10:42:28
It looks like Amazon has lifted the restriction on certain zip codes, which I'm very happy about. I have now finished L'Éternelle jeune fille and also the seven-part series by Peladan. At the moment I'm reading ZeitGeschichte - 1700 years of Jewish life in Germany. 🕍
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on December 28, 2021, 19:14:15
Worst book of the year for me was the one by Joel Dicker (as previously mentioned in this topic). Not well-written and the persons in it didn't "come alive", they were often making "strange" decisions within the story which didn't fit their character (as it had been described before).

ALice Feeney (mentioned above) was okay, but the "solution" at the end wasn't too credible.

One I liked recently was Simon Beckett's "Stone bruises".  :cool

QuoteStone Bruises is a stand alone thriller that starts with the main character Sean, abandoning his bloodstained car and taking to the woods. Set in France mid summer, Sean soon is in trouble when his foot is caught in a trap. Rescued by the farms owners and hidden away in an attic it is soon apparent that the family that have taken him in, are anything but normal. Written in two time sequences we follow Sean as he recovers from his injury, and also in the events that have lead up to him being in his car in the first place (starting in London).
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18189475-stone-bruises
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: MeltingMan on January 29, 2022, 17:27:58
I'm reading Les dévotes d'Avignon right now - my first novel in years. It's actually two novels in one book, which was published in 1984. The first edition was in the 1920s, after Peladan had passed away. Of course I got it second-hand. The chapters are significantly longer and the font smaller compared to the print-on-demand brochures; additional challenges for me in addition to the French Language. Nevertheless, it is a very nice copy with the cover picture by Fernand Khnopff. I also bought a number of new textbooks.
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on February 07, 2022, 16:30:00
Just ordered this book, should be interesting (an autobiography by musician/songwriter/producer Alan Lee Shaw, who used to be in bands like Maniacs, Physicals, Brian James Gang and even in The Damned from 1993 to 1995):

https://www.lulu.com/en/gb/shop/alan-shaw/damned-if-you-do/paperback/product-k42p5d.html
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on February 18, 2022, 17:37:46
I just bought one by Val McDermid, apparently start of a new series of books called "1979", so I thought I'll give it a try (cheap English edition), I haven't started reading yet, but the playlist at the end of the book (she played this music to get her in the mood of the year '79) looks nice! (I know most of those songs of course.)

Next installment is gonna be called "1989" (announced for this summer), I'm gonna have a look and if she won't list "Disintegration" in that playlist, I won't buy it, ha ha!  :P
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on April 04, 2022, 10:22:39
I'm halfway through with Paula Hawkins' "Into the water".

I can't help but agree with comments like "way too many characters"! Nothing wrong with different perspective (as in the abovementioned "His & hers"), but here it changes too often... not a bad read anyway.

QuoteThis is not an easy book to get into. Lots of diverse characters and you are left trying to suss out who's who and what is happening and why so many people don't seem to like Nel and are glad she's dead. But the book does grab you. You only see glimpses, back and forth, but they are fascinating, shimmering glimpses, like trying to determine what's underneath the water.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33151805-into-the-water
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on April 23, 2022, 13:41:53
I've been reading "Good as gone" by Amy Gentry, yet another book with (at least 2) different perspectives (is that a new trend or just coincidence?)...

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29975458-good-as-gone

QuoteThirteen-year-old Julie Whitaker was kidnapped from her bedroom in the middle of the night, witnessed only by her younger sister. Her family was shattered, but managed to stick together, hoping against hope that Julie is still alive. And then one night: the doorbell rings. A young woman who appears to be Julie is finally, miraculously, home safe. The family is ecstatic—but Anna, Julie's mother, has whispers of doubts.  ...
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: MeltingMan on April 27, 2022, 10:16:52
I'm currently jumping between several titles, including Among the Ranks of the Carrion Men (K.C. Seldon). I have finished reading Les dévotes vaincues. Right in the first chapter I stumbled across what I initially thought was a fictitious book title, until I found out that it actually exists... Mandragore by Hanns Heinz Ewers! After a package was lost, I initially held back on orders overseas. I still get new or used books all the time.

Quote from: WikipédiaMandragore (original title: Alraune. Die Geschichte eines lebenden Wesens) is a novel by Hanns Heinz Ewers published in 1911. It is the most famous but also the most controversial novel by its author. It involves the character of Frank Braun, a sort of Doppelgänger of Ewers, who is present in his two other novels, The Sorcerer's Apprentice and Vampir.
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on June 03, 2022, 10:29:33
I found a cheapo edition of an Ian Rankin thriller (little book with large print, ideal for an old friend whose eyesight is not so good - I'll read it before I pass it on to him).

https://www.buecherserien.de/de/ian-rankin-ein-kaltes-herz/
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Lollo on July 10, 2022, 20:57:59
Ive been reading "Johnny got his gun" by Dalton Trumbo .

It was a bit strange but not in a bad way. The singer of Metallica wrote the song "one" after reading this book.
There is also a movie which was used in part in the musicvideo.
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: MeltingMan on July 11, 2022, 08:53:00
Although I'm still busy with Les amants de Pise, I've been quite distracted with the Lilith theme over the weekend. Because I have this placement in Scorpio. Fortunately, I found information about this in my books, which I can recommend without hesitation. They are La déesse cachée by Agnès Spiquel and the Dictionnaire littéraire de la nuit by a team of authors led by Alain Montandon.
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: MeltingMan on August 03, 2022, 10:31:14
I am currently reading Réponse à Tolstoï from 1898. Peladan refers, among other essays, to an article by Tolstoï in the Journal des débats of October 30, 1896. Here is the last paragraph. Fortunately, all sources are digitized and accessible online, but must be understood in the historical context. Van der Veer had objected to being drafted into the National Guard.


Quote from: Léon TolstoïVan der Veer's refusal to obey will necessarily be followed by similar and increasingly frequent refusals. As soon as the number of these refusals is considerable, the men who, only yesterday, claimed that life without war is impossible, these same men, and they are legion, will say that for a long time already they have been proclaiming the folly and the immorality of war, and advising everyone to behave as van der Veer behaved. And then of the war and the army in the form in which they now exist, there will remain only the memory. And those times are near.
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on October 28, 2022, 18:37:41
Bought the newly released "Faith, Hope and Carnage" by Nick Cave & Seán O'Hagan. It is not a biography, more a collection of conversations, which they were starting to have on the phone during lockdowns and quarantines.
They focus on the subjects you'd expect: songwriting (now and then), collaborations (now and then), religion, tragedy, loss, love, work, concerts etc. etc.! The making of the albums "Ghosteen" and "Carnage" is being talked about in depth of course.  :smth023

A short quote:
QuoteIt's intrinsically human to doubt though, don't you think?

Yes, I do. And the rigid and self-righteous certainty of some religious people - and some atheists, for that matter - is something I find disagreeable. The hubris of it. The sanctimoniousness. It leaves me cold. The more overtly unshakeable someone's beliefs are, the more diminished they seem to become, because they have stopped questioning, and the not-questioning can sometimes be accompanied by an attitude of moral superiority. The belligerent dogmatism of the current cultural moment is a case in point. A bit of humility wouldn't go astray.

Got to admit this rings a bell with me... people who are way too certain about their beliefs are off-putting at times.  :unamused:

QuoteFaith, Hope and Carnage is an extended conversation between Nick Cave and Observer journalist, Seán O'Hagan, who have known one another for thirty years. Created from over fourty hours of intimate recordings, the book examines questions of faith, art, music, freedom, grief and love. It draws candidly on Cave's life, from his early childhood to the present day, his loves, his work ethic and his dramatic transformation in recent years.
https://store.nickcave.com/products/faith-hope-and-carnage

Quote...essentially the transcripts of several long conversations between Cave and O'Hagan that began in summer 2020. Its 15 chapters cover a lot of ground – from Staffordshire pottery to the existence or otherwise of God.

It's occasionally deeply harrowing reading: even O'Hagan seems stunned by Cave's precise, agonising description of the day his son died. But it's ultimately enriching, a story suffused with love, teeming with ideas, a document of an artist's journey from holding the world "in some form of disdain" to a state of empathy and grace. "Despite how debased or corrupt we are told humanity is, and how degraded the world has become," Cave says at one point, "it just keeps on being beautiful. It can't help it."
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/sep/28/faith-hope-and-carnage-by-nick-cave-and-sean-ohagan-review-towards-grace
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: MeltingMan on October 29, 2022, 16:53:09
In the meantime I have read three paperbacks by Claude Langlois and Claude Louis-Combet, all from the Golgotha series. It wasn't easy for me because every author has his own style. Since I need the space they take up, I didn't want to donate them unread. Otherwise, I don't part with books that easily. Some really follow me. Because of the current inflation, another collection cannot grow as planned, but that's actually a good thing, because, as Schopenhauer rightly pointed out, you can't buy time to read. 🤓
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on December 01, 2022, 16:52:05
Garry Disher's latest book release "The way it is now" / "Stunde der Flut" (in Germany, I hastily wanna add) was an excellent read:

https://garrydisher.com/crime-novels/novels/

QuoteTwenty years ago Charlie Deravin's mother went missing near the family beach shack – believed murdered; body never found. His father has lived under a cloud of suspicion ever since. Now Charlie's back living in the shack in Menlo Beach, on disciplinary leave from his job with the police sex-crimes unit, and on permanent leave from his marriage. After two decades worrying away at the mystery of his mother's disappearance, he's run out of leads. Then the skeletal remains of two people are found in the excavation of a new building site—and the past comes crashing in on Charlie.
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on December 16, 2022, 11:08:08
After having read 2 of Tony Parsons' books (cheapo editions I found by coincidence), I dediced to get more, just reading this one (which is part 4 of the DC Max Wolfe series):

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33295198-die-last

Quote"It's a brilliant crime novel, a thrilling procedural. Max Wolfe is a wonderfully endearing character, smart and tough and vulnerable, and with Scout (and Stan too) Tony has created so much warmth and tenderness, in a world, a genre, so often devoid of it. His research is wide, deep, impeccable - from forensics to the psychology, procedure to protocol. And boy does he know how to create suspense, and convincing plot lines, which snake and weave, and surprise right until the very end. This is a complex, shocking, very contemporary story, told with utter conviction and authority. I was hooked from page one. Crime writing has a brilliant new star" (Henry Sutton)

'Story-telling as hard-hitting as a leather sap, dialogue that packs all the punch of Wolfe's favourite triple expresso ... and an affection for London that makes this crime writing to die for' - GQ

There are some series that become so special for you that the characters feel like old friends. The Max Wolfe series by Tony Parsons is one of them for me. Now, it has been a while since I read the previous book in the series, but it didn't take me long to get back into the life of Max and his daughter Scout and of course their dog Sam.
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on March 26, 2023, 12:24:30
Bought this book from a musician, will see if or how much I'll enjoy it...

QuoteSeit Jan Bratenstein 1990 im Alter von null Jahren auf die Welt kam, ist er konstant gealtert. Nichtsdestotrotz hat er sich eine kindliche Sicht auf die Welt behalten: Sein Kopf wurde geformt von Comics, Filmen, Musik und durch die treue Schiebermütze. Mittlerweile lebt er den Traum vom nicht gesicherten Einkommen als Musiker, vor allem mit seinem Solo-Antifolk-Projekt »The Black Elephant Band« und dem räudigen Songwriterkollektiv »Folk's Worst Nightmare«. Da das Leben als Musiker finanziell noch nicht unsicher genug ist, verfolgt er, immer wenn Gitarrensaiten reißen, auch eine Karriere als Autor von Comics, Drehbüchern für Webserien und Büchern. Sein Debütroman »Der Mann ohne Piano« erschien 2018 im Carpathia Verlag.
https://www.lovelybooks.de/autor/Jan-Bratenstein/
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: MeltingMan on March 27, 2023, 11:21:55
Quote from: UlrichSeit Jan Bratenstein 1990 im Alter von null Jahren (...)

:D I can't help but think of Sergej Brutalinski. ;)  I'm reading La Torche renversée, a novel from 1925 that Péladan never published in his lifetime. I wonder what else is slumbering in the archives...
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: MeltingMan on April 25, 2023, 11:53:24
Quote from: P*r* P*n*rdWe have validated your order. You have chosen the economy rate corresponding to a "Book and Brochure" shipment. We draw your attention to the fact that this method of sending does not offer any follow-up or insurance, no recourse is possible in the event of a problem (which happens very very very rarely) neither with La Poste, nor with us, bookseller.

From a certain distance/weight, registered mail should actually be a matter of course and should not have to be requested by the customer. After all, a used textbook was offered here for well below its value, which is no less careless than thoughtless. It's time to standardize book shipping within the EU. 😡
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on April 26, 2023, 09:46:23
I've been reading above mentioned book by J. Bratenstein (quite entertaining), while I was also re-reading an older book by Ulrich Ritzel.

Next up will be a collection of stories by Flannery O'Connor.
https://www.spiegel.de/kultur/literatur/flannery-o-connor-keiner-menschenseele-kann-man-noch-trauen-storys-wieder-aufgelegt-a-1192648.html

Plus I've been reading some issues of "Time" magazine (my mother knows a lady who's married to an American, so he gave those to her for me to read... which is nice)!
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on May 08, 2023, 16:28:36
Could be interesting...
https://www.brooklynvegan.com/thurston-moore-announces-memoir-sonic-life/

QuoteThurston Moore is releasing a memoir, Sonic Life, on October 24 via Doubleday Books in the US and Faber & Faber in the UK. He's also partnered with Books & Books on a limited number of signed copies, which you can pre-order now. Thurston writes:

Sonic Life tells the story of my childhood and teenage years as I fell in love with music (for the most part unbridled rock 'n' roll) and how it drove me to New York City, where I would co-found Sonic Youth. It's an adventure that would take me around the globe throughout the 1980s, 90s and onward, engaging with the magic music of visionaries, artists, and wild angels turning the world on its ear.

This book has been ages in the making, the product of intensive research and deep dives into my memories and emotions. I believe I've been able to capture the whirlwind of experiences that being in Sonic Youth entailed, as well as the creative communities that we found ourselves a part of, first in New York's punk and no wave scenes, and later in the world of underground and alternative rock and the universe of music- beyond- category. In some ways it barely scrapes the surface, but I'm proud of it and anxious to hear what everyone thinks.
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: MeltingMan on June 29, 2023, 12:41:15
I have read various old books and am now at La Rondache, published by Plon-Nourrit in 1906. The typography is so pleasing to the eye that I researched the publisher, unaware that I already owned a number of used paperbacks from that company, just under a different name. I noticed that at the old publisher's address. There's even a US copyright notice inside the book. Truly amazing.  :heart-eyes  The book itself is a kind of crime novel, actually untypical of Péladan.
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on July 07, 2023, 16:51:51
Quote from: Ulrich on December 16, 2022, 11:08:08... Tony Parsons' books ... of the DC Max Wolfe series

Well I'm deep into part 6 titled "taken" now (which is the last, so far) and it's been a good read.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41943452-taken
QuoteAfter throughly enjoying and following Tony Parsons contemporary London based crime series that features DC Max Wolfe of Homicide and Serious Crime Command, West End Central since its inception, I have become used to the topical themes and contentious issues they raised. The fifth and previous novel, Girl on Fire, disappointed me immensely largely due to the subject matter - specifically how close to home the jihadi war against the West is - and the political standpoint presented and character development. With boss DCI Pat Whitestone making rash decisions and seeming throughly contemptuous of both her colleagues and the public, and with Max bending over backwards in an effort to play the political correctness card I was all set to ditch the series. However even the death of a central figure in the last story wasn't enough to see me off and with this sixth instalment effectively working as a stand-alone, #taken brings a return to the form of the first four books with some solid crime thriller action. Together with his diminutive and highly experienced boss, forty-year-old DCI Pat Whitestone, and young TDC Joy Adams just a year out of Hendon it sees Max Wolfe in the thick of another high-profile case.

(I do agree with most of this review.)
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on July 12, 2023, 15:24:17
Next up is a book by Chris Carter (author, not to be confused with the creator of the X-Files, who has the same name). I bought a cheapo edition of "The Night Stalker" and it is okay so far.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11449491-the-night-stalker
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: MeltingMan on July 19, 2023, 13:08:46
I'm reading Les Chevaux de Diomède, a nice numbered copy from 1921. Connoisseurs of symbolism will love it. :heart-eyes  On the other hand, Histoire et Guide des cimetières genevois, La vie littéraire en Europe au XIXᵉ siècle and Une ville à la croisée des chemins have just arrived.  :smth023 
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on July 27, 2023, 16:14:41
Above mentioned book by Chris Carter was quite disappointing after all (not credible towards the ending: 2 experienced police officers enter an abandoned building without taking flashlights with them, etc.)!

I've been reading another very exciting one (so far at least)! "The Catch" by T.M. Logan:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51962594-the-catch
QuoteEd is delighted to meet his twenty-three year old daughter's fiancé for the first time. Ryan appears to be the perfect future son-in-law. There's just one problem. There's something off about Ryan. Something hidden in the shadows behind his eyes. And it seems that only Ed can see it.

Terrified that his daughter is being drawn in by a psychopath, Ed sets out to uncover her fiancé's dark past - while keeping his own concealed. But no-one believes him. And the more he digs, the more he alienates her and the rest of the family who are convinced that Ryan is 'the one'.

Ed knows different. For reasons of his own, he knows a monster when he sees one...

I have the feeling that I'll finish this way too fast ("page-turner" is the term for it, I guess)!
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on August 09, 2023, 17:44:06
Now I'm looking forward to "Day's End", the next part of Garry Disher's "Hirsch" series, of which I ordered the original language (UK) version (I didn't want to wait for the German translation, which isn't even announced yet). It arrived today.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61400894-day-s-end
QuoteHirsch's rural beat is wide. Daybreak to day's end, dirt roads and dust. Every problem that besets small towns and isolated properties, from unlicensed driving to arson. In the time of the virus, Hirsch is seeing stresses heightened and social divisions cracking wide open. His own tolerance under strain; people getting close to the edge.

QuoteEXCERPT: Out in that country, if you owned a sheep station the size of a European principality you stood tall. If you were a rent paying public servant, like Hirsch, you stood on the summit of Desolation Hill.
Nice sentences to start the book with...  :lol:
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: MeltingMan on November 02, 2023, 14:06:36
Les Chevaux de Diomède contains a dedication to Paul Adam (1862-1920) and so it was obvious to deal with this author. I read En Décor, an autobiographical novel that was published again under the title Jeunesse & Amours de Manuel Héricourt in 1913. Only so much: the title holds what it promises. The book is like a (linguistic) explosion on the first pages. In places, it reads like instructions on the adultery. :evil:  I would not recommend it freshly married people, so not immediately. Since the dark season started, I would like to read it again. 🤓
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on November 06, 2023, 18:15:22
Next up I will probably read "Set the Night on Fire" by Robby Krieger:

QuoteFew bands are as shrouded in the murky haze of rock mythology as The Doors, and parsing fact from fiction has been a virtually impossible task. But now, after fifty years, The Doors' notoriously quiet guitarist is finally breaking his silence to set the record straight. Through a series of vignettes, Robby Krieger takes readers back to where it all the pawn shop where he bought his first guitar; the jail cell he was tossed into after a teenage drug bust; his parents' living room where his first songwriting sessions with Jim Morrison took place; the empty bars and backyard parties where The Doors played their first awkward gigs; the studios where their iconic songs were recorded; and the many concert venues that erupted into historic riots. Set the Night on Fire is packed with never-before-told stories from The Doors' most vital years, and offers a fresh perspective on the most infamous moments of the band's career. Krieger also goes into heartbreaking detail about his life's most difficult struggles, ranging from drug addiction to cancer, but he balances out the sorrow with humorous anecdotes about run-ins with unstable fans, famous musicians, and one really angry monk.  Set the Night on Fire is at once an insightful time capsule of the '60s counterculture, a moving reflection on what it means to find oneself as a musician, and a touching tale of a life lived non-traditionally. It's not only a must-read for Doors fans, but an essential volume of American pop culture history.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57007682-set-the-night-on-fire
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on December 29, 2023, 11:02:51
Currently reading "The Never Game" by Jeffery Deaver, pretty good so far!

https://www.bookbrowse.com/bb_briefs/detail/index.cfm/ezine_preview_number/14109/the-never-game

QuoteFrom the bestselling and award-winning master of suspense, the first novel in a thrilling new series, introducing Colter Shaw.

A young woman has gone missing in Silicon Valley and her father has hired Colter Shaw to find her. The son of a survivalist family, Shaw is an expert tracker. Now he makes a living as a "reward seeker," traveling the country to help police solve crimes and private citizens locate missing persons. But what seems a simple investigation quickly thrusts him into the dark heart of America's tech hub and the cutthroat billion-dollar video-gaming industry.

Shaw finds himself caught in a cat-and-mouse game, risking his own life to save the victims even as he pursues the kidnapper across both Silicon Valley and the dark 'net. Encountering eccentric game designers, trigger-happy gamers and ruthless tech titans, he soon learns that he isn't the only one on the hunt: someone is on his trail and closing fast.


"The Never Game is the very definition of a page-turner." - Ian Rankin
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: MeltingMan on December 31, 2023, 10:19:21
I didn't really want to order any books in December, but then I couldn't resist. These included Masques et fantômes (U.G.E., 1974) and Histoires de Masques (Ombres, 2006) by Jean Lorrain, which have since arrived. You now have to take a closer look at product descriptions of used books. Sometimes the information refers to two different editions, whereupon the platform operators even indicate themselves. The space problem is not acute at the moment, but it will continue to be with me in the next few years. I would like to complete a collection. 🥳
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on February 13, 2024, 13:28:15
"Trust Me" by TM Logan, another "page-turner"!

https://www.goodreads.com/de/book/show/55196693
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: MeltingMan on February 28, 2024, 10:23:14
Quote from: BILDArsenic! University library blocks 60,000 books

 :?

Quote from: WikipediaThis green pigment from Paris or Schweinfurt was used in the past by painters. The brightness of this pigment was not offset by modern pigments of chemistry. Modern imitation is called "permanent green".
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: Ulrich on March 01, 2024, 17:41:52
Currently reading another page-turner, "Five Survive" by Holly Jackson.

QuoteEighteen year old Red and her friends are on a road trip in an RV, heading to the beach for Spring Break. It's a long drive but spirits are high. Until the RV breaks down in the middle of nowhere. There's no mobile phone reception and nobody around to help. And as the wheels are shot out, one by one, the friends realise that this is no accident. There's a sniper out there in the dark watching them and he knows exactly who they are. One of the group has a secret that the sniper is willing to kill for.
https://www.goodreads.com/de/book/show/61313902
Title: Re: Here it is... the book thread!
Post by: MeltingMan on March 26, 2024, 11:34:23
I'm currently reading №14 from the Unichamp-Essentiel series. The author presents a wealth of names and numbers. The printing errors are no less numerous. For a specialist or textbook there are too many.  :1f636:  For example, on p. 95 third column:

Björnson (not Bjornson), Hellberg (not Helberg), Strindberg (not Strinberg) etc.

Some of the footnotes are also not assigned correctly or even wrong (see pages 18, 42). The book itself interested me, but I'm about to put it aside.