What are you reading right now?

[innerspaceboy]

Went antiquing this morning to cheer myself up and found a crate of old Classics Illustrated. I already had several adaptations of my favorite classic sci-fi novels but I hadn't realized there was still another H.G. Wells title in the series so I grabbed it.

[Marie Monday]

Gullivers Travels, and it's annoying me. The humour is dated and pretty cheap, and the satire is superficial without making intelligent points. The only real amusement (apart from some of the more imaginative bits) is the unintentional irony of a small-minded, self-satisfied writer complaining about small-minded self-sarisfaction in others

[jadis]

Gullivers Travels, and it's annoying me. The humour is dated and pretty cheap, and the satire is superficial without making intelligent points. The only real amusement (apart from some of the more imaginative bits) is the unintentional irony of a small-minded, self-satisfied writer complaining about small-minded self-sarisfaction in others

Just skip to Book 4, the one with the horses, that's the true masterpiece. You don't have to read the first three ones to get it, it's not a 19th century novel where you can't skip a single word.

[Marie Monday]

I just finished the 3rd book so that tip came too late but thanks anyway! At this point I can't imagine this guy being capable of any masterpiece by modern standards, but I'll suspend my judgement a while longer

[Marie Monday]

I've finished the fourth book now and while it's certainly more interesting than the previous ones, it's still narrow-minded and superficial. Swift just complains about bad symptoms in society without questioning the causes in any depth. His sketch of an utopia also has an odious fascist flavour reminiscent of Plato's republic. And then I'm not even considering the racism and sexism (and homophobia)

[Dianne W]

Just gone recently from reading many lightweight books to going back to research the Ancestry Tree I started so now reading History related stories relating to my family. I found a perfect French Translator on Rootschat who I think is Dutch but he loves to get his mits into translations of the really bad writing of the BMD documents and has given me information that nearly knocked me for six's. Hand written documents of many many Thousand including our relative, Pierre Aumonier born 1630 in Fressines, Deux Sevres Poitou-Charente, France. He was Murdered by the French Dragoons...the murderous disciples of the King Louis XVI...one Son Jonas escaped to London injured but alive...........
I have stopped now.....

Well almost because the picture is about another relative that moved as a youngster to New Zealand for the Coromandel Gold Rush where he hit it big time. The community loved him and honoured him with a house they built him next to the first known church as such and an Avenue named after him. He held Charity Fairs each year in his vast garden of 23 acreas and raised huge amounts for the needs of others.

http://www.kelticfair.co.nz/index.php?s=1&page=history LESS

[Guybrush]

Will be starting this soon:



I think it's a horror novel about boys in an orphanage or something? We'll see 🙂

Finished this. It's got some great reviews (including an endorsement from Stephen King, I believe), but I didn't really care too much for it. It left a lot of questions unanswered and I didn't care too much for the supernatural elements.

Now I'm reading a collection of Lovecraft-inspired short stories, but I don't care that much for them either 🤔

[FETCHER.]

I just picked up Caitlyn Jenners book from the library yesterday. I am excited to see what shit she has divulged in here 😂. I'm hoping there is a lot about the olympics and less about the kardashians but I'll probably be happy either way since I love to hate the kardashians 😂

[Lisnaholic]

^ I hope you're enjoying that book, FETCHER; that it's full of insider details, plus a bit of celeb dirt as well, which is what I often hope for in a book.

Gullivers Travels, and it's annoying me. The humour is dated and pretty cheap, and the satire is superficial without making intelligent points. The only real amusement (apart from some of the more imaginative bits) is the unintentional irony of a small-minded, self-satisfied writer complaining about small-minded self-sarisfaction in others

^  Wow! That's a pretty comprehensive put-down, Marie M ! I haven't really read Gulliver's Travels, despite "doing" it at school at age 11. But, yeah, some books considered classics just don't cut it by today's standards.
___________________________________

Here's a book that I imagine Dianne would love:-



The drummer of The Cure describes his life, in suitably unassuming prose, as an ordinary boy who grew up in the very ordinary town of Crawley. He does a good job of explaining the drab existence that millions of British teenagers yearn to escape from, then name checks some places that Dianne probably knows: The Cure's first gigs in Croyden and elsewhere. If Lol and Robert Smith are exceptional, it seems to be in their determination to actually push their way out of their home environment, unlike so many others who just drift into an unsatisfying life and end up, by force of circumstance, pretty much reliving what their parents did.

Something that's refreshing and disappointing at the same time: there are no lengthly sections about the band's musical endeavours or artistic vision, in fact there's almost no description of their sound or style at all, apart from the occasional reference to punk. Lol comes across as an amiable guy, a drinking companion to roadies and fans alike as the band zigzags around Europe, but I wish he had co-written his book with Trollheart, who could've added some insightful descriptions of what The Cure were actually doing on stage and in the recording studio.

Bottom line: an easy book to read and enjoy, even though Lol's annecdotes about life on tour turn out to be rather hum-drum in the main.

[Guybrush]

I guess it's a common trait of autobiographies that they don't always go deep into what fans really want to know. I guess it's hard to know what people on the outside want when your perspective has always been from the inside.

Zappa's autobiography comes to mind where he writes very little about the people he played music with, but does take the time to do things like complain about musicians' workers unions. 😄

[Lisnaholic]

I guess it's a common trait of autobiographies that they don't always go deep into what fans really want to know. I guess it's hard to know what people on the outside want when your perspective has always been from the inside.

Zappa's autobiography comes to mind where he writes very little about the people he played music with, but does take the time to do things like complain about musicians' workers unions. 😄

I've not read Zappa's autobiography, but thinking about it, if you spend your working life making music and arguing about it in the recording studio, perhaps it's the last thing you want to write about when you're back home, alone with your journal.
Also, there is this, which I thought was a Zappa quote, but probably isn't:-

"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture" is a maxim used to express the futility of translating music through words.
The origins of the quote have never been verified. It has been attributed to musicians, entertainers, and writers such as William S. Burroughs, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Frank Zappa, George Carlin, Martin Mull, Lester Bangs, David Byrne, Steve Martin, Elvis Costello, and Laurie Anderson.

[Janszoon]

I just finished two books.



The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea (2018)

This is the story of one weekend in the life of the patriarch of a large Mexican-American family. On Saturday is his mother's funeral. On Sunday is his last birthday party, as he has terminal cancer and he knows he doesn't have much time left. It's full of a whole huge family of vivid characters and all too real family dynamics. Some of it is tragic and a lot of it is funny, but overall it just feels like life, and Urrea's prose is both witty and poetic.




Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote (1958)

I've never seen the movie, so I didn't have much in the way of expectations. I thought it was pretty good. It was sadder than I was expecting.

[Guybrush]

I've never seen the movie, so I didn't have much in the way of expectations. I thought it was pretty good. It was sadder than I was expecting.

I've only seen the movie (a couple of times). There's a layer of sadness there about whatever life and people Holly left behind, but the movie doesn't really delve too deep into that. It's actually one of my issues I have with it because it makes Holly seem like less of a sympathetic character (imo).

How's the book regarding this? Not asking for spoilers, but I would guess it digs a little deeper into where she comes from and why.

I'm reading this currently:



It's just a random book that was on sale for a dollar in the Google play bookstore, but it's enjoyable enough 🙂

It reminds me a little of Stephen King's Langoliers. A small group of peeps find themselves inexplicably alone on a cruise ship (instead of a plane / airport) and the mystery hasn't started to unravel yet.

I'm gonna assume reality eating balls aren't going to show up, but still curious about where the story will go.

I don't really know the author or anything from before.

[Janszoon]

I've only seen the movie (a couple of times). There's a layer of sadness there about whatever life and people Holly left behind, but the movie doesn't really delve too deep into that. It's actually one of my issues I have with it because it makes Holly seem like less of a sympathetic character (imo).

How's the book regarding this? Not asking for spoilers, but I would guess it digs a little deeper into where she comes from and why.

It digs a decent amount into her background and that's definitely the saddest stuff. She's also not particularly likeable in the book, I'm not sure how much of that was intentional and how much of that is the book showing its age. One thing that was interesting was the character of Yunioshi. Though I've never seen the movie, I've seen clips of the racist caricature that he was on screen. It's such a weird decision because in the book he's an American guy of Japanese descent, so the accent and clothing wouldn't have made sense even if they were done in a less racist way.

[interloper]

I've been chipping away at Age of Surveillance Capitalism forever. I think it's great, if the language is unnecessary flowery, convoluted sometimes.

Also listening to Sapolsky's "Determined." It doesn't offer much new but it is a great overview and makes lack of free will seem kinda obvious, at least currently, once you're exposed to it.