Currently reading?

I love reading short stories (as well as writing them... when I can be bothered to make the effort... which is virtually never these days ).

I just finished Apollo 13. I don't normally read non-fiction but the story interested me because i knew quite a bit about it already so it was really interesting! Plus i loved the film so I wanted to see how it compared and how much Hollywood twisted things!

Now I'm re-reading the Star Wars trilogy because I haven't read it for years and last time round I thought it was good! Someone like Garth Nix needs to bring out more weird fantasy stuff for me to read over the summer!

you can get em on amazon i've got it..there are some damn good books in there

Erm, lots.

Lots of Kafka, The Trial, The Castle, Metamorphosis. A book by Ian Banks called Whit, about a cult member who has to go looking for her cousin in the outside world (really, really, good), The Catcher in the Rye, and I'm glancing over Pride & Prejudice again, since I was amazed by how much I liked that book. Just finished a Douglas Copeland book called Microserfs, which is quite funny, and slightly offbeat, just how I like them. Oh, yes, and I'm halfway through So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish.

Quote: Freshly_Squeezed_Cynic_

Erm, lots.

Just finished a Douglas Copeland book called Microserfs, which is quite funny, and slightly offbeat, just how I like them.

Douglas Coupland is really excellent, I think. "Generation X" and "Girlfriend in a coma" are good, too.

At the moment, I am reading "PopCo" by Scarlett Thomas. It is about a girl called Alice who designs children's toys, but she does not want to do it anymore because she feels realy guilty about how the ways lots of companies advertise to children, and make children feel wrong if they are different. Also it is about how lots of people are put in groups by advertisers and how lots of people have all the same things. It is like a protest book a bit, too ,i think. It is really good.
Scarlett Thomas is one of my favourite authors .

Just finished "the curious event of the dog in the night time" and now I'm on two others, but i can't remember what they are called, so I will get back to this later.

I could never really get started with Ulysses. I always meant to get round to it, but I never found the time.

Quote: Freshly_Squeezed_Cynic_

I could never really get started with Ulysses. I always meant to get round to it, but I never found the time.

Well it took me about 2 weeks to read the first 3 chapters alone, so I don't blame you for not finding the time. Maybe you should try again, when you have a decade or so free.

ive just finished reading the hitchikers guide to the galazy trilogy of 4 wiht 5 books. and im thinking about starting to read revision guides as im doing some exams, but i may stop that and start a classic, thinking great expectations or emma or something like that, just to see if theyre all that theyre all cracked up to be

Like I've said earlier, Pride & Prejudice is amazingly well written.

A View from a Bridge is lovely. I played Katherine once. I did a badass brooklyn accent.

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I'll make the choice easier for you - books by Jane Austen are as good as they're cracked up to be, books by Charles d*ckens aren't.

Some Charles D*ckens books arent what they are cracked up to be,but Great Expectations is a very good book so read that.

Recommendation: Read Lolita. I adore this book, the writing style is wonderfully light and captivating despite the dark subject matter. Pllleeease read it.

Ooh and as for people censoring what others should read, 3 children in my drama teachers year 8 drama class arent allowed in lessons until she stops teaching them Harry Potter because "its the devil work." Poor kids, I mean I'm 16 and I love Harry Potter despite it being unoriginal, I feel sorry for those kids because they'll either hate their mum or become little clones of "devil haters". I asked them if they'd read His Dark Materials and they said they only read what their mum let them, so they read Narnia and a few other books. I mean they are allowed to read Narnia and thats full of christian references and they arent allowed to read His Dark Materials? Its stupid but I guess thats just how she wants to raise her children.
What really gets on my goat is that Hollywood is cutting out all references to God in the HDM movies. Tsch.

True, but still if you are going to say that children shouldnt read something because it blasphemies then surely you shouldnt read Narnia even if God is the 'winner'? The way in which God is portrayed in HDM isnt complimentary but the churchs reaction to it is life imitating art in a way.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml;$sessionid$H252S5UNZ1DMZQFIQMFSFFOAVCBQ0IV0?xml=/arts/2004/03/17/bodark17.xml

This interview between Rowan Williams and Phillip Pullman is very interesting.

i'm reading erm...three plays atm all of them for the third or fourth time.

resistable rise of arturo ui - brecht
fear and misery of the third reich- brecht (happy b*gger)
government inspector - gogol

The Virgin Suicides and Lolita are both fantastic books. Both I've seen the film first. In the film Virgin Suicides there are lines taken exactly from the book and it's amazing. Both books are better than the films but yeah they're both brilliant.
xxx

[quote=Captain_Spiky_ link=1117390987/0#4 date=1117577059]

Oooh, that sounds ace!

See I got much more attatched to the characters in Middlesex and much preffered the storyline to that of Virgin Suicides. I think this might have been a result of starting to dislike the VS characters towards the end. If it had been any longer then I probably would have done, whereas I wanted to read more about them in Middlesex. Funnily enough it wasn't the main character I liked the most, though, but the grandparents. (I'm awful at remembering character's names)

Also, I really liked the historical aspect of Middlesex which I think heightened my enjoyment of it. But yes, both good books.

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For one thing, it actually HAS a plotline!

So?

One was amazed by one's elocution. One would also think that one, being one, and only one would think one to be one of only one, wouldn't one?

And I don't think it's fair to say that all other Douglas Copeland books do not have a plotline. I can visibly see a major plotline and some interweaving minor ones throughout Microserfs, and the existential meanderings are just a wonderful bonus.

That would be because not every "one" is comparable with "you" or "I". Some just mean... erm, "one".

Nein.

Some books you can't justify with a review. It's always the greatest pleasures that are indescribable, and so that's how they stay. I sometimes feel that these secret pleasures, the ones it seems that you can't describe, are more personal and thus greater. In other words, it has to be a damn good book for you to not be able to describe it.

I don't think that made any sense whatsoever :/