similar to the ‘favourite poems’ thread, but for books and all other manner of things that you can read! read anything interesting lately? in the middle of reading something interesting? want to read something… you get the idea. let us know.
at the moment i’m really enjoying zadie smith’s new book of essays, changing my mind. i love white teeth (even if it is like, so unhip to like it now) and everything i’d read of her non-fiction was brilliant, so when i didn’t get this book of essays for christmas i just bought it for myself. despite the fact that i find it difficult to find the energy and will to read non-course books during term i’ve already read the first two essays in it today, and am working on the third (which is about middlemarch. zadie smith is making me feel suitably wrong for having not given middlemarch the attention it deserved when i did an essay on it a year and a half ago). the essay on e.m. forster is so great - the idea about people’s theories and beliefs about fiction being fueled by self-interest is very true, and not just for fiction, i think. so often people talk in absolutes about what they look for in a good poem, painting, sock, whatever, when really there are so many different ways that a thing can be good or worthwhile.
anyway, yes. zadie smith. possibly even a better essayist than she is novelist (although i still need to read on beauty). thoughts? both related or entirely non-related, hit me with them. pow.
Buahahah I’ve just finished reading The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest when I SHOULD have been reading stuff for my course. Not sure who the winner is here :s
i am also reading paradise lost for my course, not just zadie smith funtimes :(.
thankfully no freud for me. i read a freud essay for a tutorial last year then just didn’t write on it and had an incredibly embarrassing moment when my tutor realised that neither I or my tutorial partner had properly understood it. my boyfriend loves freud, i feel bad for not caring, but nergh.
I’m in the middle of reading The Hippopotamus by Stephen Fry. It’s a tremendous book, but I have to say, there’s one scene which absolutely turned my stomach. Ick. So if you’ve got a strong stomach and a love of quirky humour, it’s super. But otherwise, beware. :D
Oh, wow! I really want to read that, but thanks for the warning. For Christmas I was given a book called The Sun and The Moon, which I can’t wait to read. The tagline is:
‘The remarkable true account of hoazers, showmen, dueling journalists, and lunar man-bats in nineteenth century New York.’
I’m not sure I’ve ever been more enticed by a blurb…
Finished it. The stomach-turning scene turns out to be very relevant. Mr Fry is, indeed, a genius - he deserved his Special Recognition prize, that’s for certain. And it’s a super read, I recommend it!
I’ve just got an Amazon Kindle (superb timing - just as they’re on their way out!) and I’ve downloaded Lorrie Moor’s ‘A Gate at the Stairs’ to read.
I’m also rereading again and again Transformers: Last Stand of the Wreckers #1, because it’s my favourite comic for, like, a year.
Oh, and of course, I’m rereading everything I’ve written for our new website and trying to work out the extent to which I come across as an ignorant jackanape. Is there a measurement for that? Yards, maybe?
Currently reading Italo Calvino’s Our Ancestors - it’s a bit of a disappointment after Invisible Cities & If on a winter’s night a traveller, but they set an incredibly high bar and were written later anyway. Last book before that was Joshua Ferris’ Then We Came to the End ,which I picked up (in Cancer Research) after the Economist plugged it, which is definitely well worth a read -it’s not at all dissimilar to A Heart-breaking Work of Staggering Genius, but probably significantly better. (Although, admittedly, the title’s not as entertaining.)
(And Jon - if the website in question is Doc Fulminare’s, personally I rather liked it. May I nominate Rimbaud for immortalisation on a Top Trump card?)
i still need to finish a heartbreaking work of staggering genius. really like what i’ve read of it so far, though.
i ordered bad science from amazon last night after hearing ben goldacre talk at the oxford union. i’m really excited to read it, but i bet it doesn’t come until i’m really busy and don’t have time. gutted.
I have to admit the only Zadie Smith I’ve read is ‘On Beauty’ and I thought it was entirely horrendous (sorry!). Maybe I’d prefer ‘White Teeth’, who knows, but I haven’t dared in case I hate it as much!
I’m currently battling my way through ‘Moby Dick’ for the second time for uni. Luckily I do like it, but it’s still a bit of a slog!
Oh, and some obscure Indian novels for another module, which are awesome.
The last book I read for pleasure, a few weeks ago, was JM Coetzee’s “Summertime” which is just stunning. Not perhaps as good narratively as some of his other works that I’ve read, but the writing itself is breathtaking.
I love Moby Dick - it’s one of those books I think most of my friends are a bit sick of me recommending whenever I get the opportunity. Does anyone else think it reads a bit like a nineteenth-century ehaling industry blog, or is that just me?
Just been told I have to read either Persuasion or To The Lighthouse in the next week. Which to choose?! I think I’m going to go with Persuasion, as I fell asleep during an audiobook of TTL once, which can’t be a good sign.
