notice how I go book-crazy when I am meant to be studying

[fahye]

Two new book reviews:

- Mary Renault's The Friendly Young Ladies
- Ray Bradbury's The Halloween Tree

Right now I'm reading DWJ's Conrad's Fate, Kinglsey Amis's Booker Prize winner The Old Devils (my review of THAT is going to be mostly my long-in-coming rant about the Booker's love affair with the theme of middle-aged white people ~contemplating their mortality~) and also some of Bradbury's short stories. And also a book of essays for radio by Dylan Thomas, and also Wilfred Owen's poems again, and also Peter Ackroyd's London: the Biography which has been on the go for-fucking-ever because I'm not always in the mood for it. I think I might also be two pages into A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book but I got...distracted. As you can see.

WHAT ARE YOU READING, FLIST? Is it any good? Are middle-aged white people contemplating their mortality, and if so, can we make them stop?

Comments

[innerbrat]

Romance of the Three Kingdoms!

Unpleasantly ambitious and bloodthirsty Chinese people being horrible to each other!

[fahye.livejournal.com]

How refreshing?

[innerbrat]

Well, it does have epic bromance. And I do mean epic.

[skygiants]

I make it a point of principle to do my best to turn and run the other direction whenever middle-aged white people are contemplating the mortality! (Though I did by accident pick up a book in which a middle-aged college professor contemplated his mortality and his terribleness to the women in his life the other day, and then grimly read through to the end out of sheer stubbornness, hating it all the while.)

[fahye.livejournal.com]

My Man Booker project COMPELS ME. I actually really enjoyed Graham Swift's Last Orders for all that it's a sterling example of the genre, but Ian McEwan's Amsterdam was all-around blah, and John Banville's The Sea made me want to stab myself in the face, as Banville does. (I hate his prose style, and for fuck's sake, the only likeable person in the book was the DEAD WIFE. WHO WAS DEAD.) Anne Enright's The Gathering was rescued by its female protagonist and the fact that it's a very good book, but it was still I Am White And Someone Is Dead, I Must Now Think Back Over My Life.

[skygiants]

This is why - though I laud and admire your dedication to your Man Booker project! - it is not one that I could ever complete. I think after Amsterdam and The Sea I would be ready not only to stab myself, but also the entire prize-awarding committee.

[fahye.livejournal.com]

All things considered I'm still really glad I'm doing it, because otherwise I wouldn't have read Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger, or Keri Hulme's The Bone People, or Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things. Wolf Hall would be on that list, but let's face it, I would have read that regardless.

But most of all I would not have discovered Penelope Lively's Moon Tiger, which after two readings is already one of my top five books ever.

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

I am reading 1000 Years of Annoying the French and it is funny & lightly informative as pop-history books should be. No one is contemplating their mortality & everyone has been characterised as "a bit of a dick", which I like. I just finished reading Witch Week by DWJ and it was tres awesome and I will now be lynched for suggesting that the quality of writing is better than That Other Book About Teen Wizards.

[fahye.livejournal.com]

Not at all, I'd choose DWJ's style of writing over Rowling's any day.

[metonymy.livejournal.com]

I am very, very slowly poking my way through I Choose This: How to Nearly Make It in the Music Industry by David Ford, which is... um. Bitter? I love his music but I am having a hard time reading his memoir, which is saddening. Youngish white dude contemplating how terrible and soul-sucking the recording industry is, basically, but not his mortality. Just finished Soulless by Gail Carriger, everybody and their mom has recced that but I didn't really love it (awesome setup, disappointing style and the main character irritated me to no end). Young white people and werewolves contemplating their mortality and also zeppelins. And I am about forty pages into Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution by Sara Marcus and enjoying it so far. No contemplations of mortality yet!

[ashen_key]

When A Billion Chinese Jump: Voices From the Frontline of Climate Change, by Jonathan Watts, which is so far excellent. Picked it up yesterday.

Lonely Planets: The Natural Philosophy of Alien Life, by David Grinspoon - reading this slowly, but I like it, even though I had to skip chapters of how the Earth was formed (but that's because I've read enough that I know)

The Humans Who Went Extinct: Why Neanderthals Died Out and We Survived, by Clive Finlayson, which I'm also reading slowly, but HEARTS IN MY EYES. Finally, someone who doesn't think the Neanderthals were stupid. Basically, his theory is that Neanderthals were fine, as long as there were forests. But as the climate changed, and the forests disappeared, they were in serious trouble (we, on the other hand, are fine with savannah/steppe-country - difference in hunting styles.) Which. Yes. HEARTS IN MY EYES. *might, possibly, be slightly defensive over the Neanderthals*

[schiarire.livejournal.com]

I, uh... you know what I'm reading. But I will recommend what agonistes sent me (http://fuckyeahthemountaingoats.tumblr.com/post/745146862/slightly-john-darnielle-master-of-reality)!