What Book Are You Currently Reading ?

[Master]

Book sales went up last year, I can see why with you reading that much.

[Freedom]

See I'd love to be able to read stuff like this but I struggle with it massively, if you've got any exceptional recommendations let me know cuz I'd love to get stuck into a book like those.

I'm in the middle of "the war of the end of the world" by Mario Vargos Llosa at the moment, it's fucking brilliant but I keep having to take breaks from it cuz it's a fucking monster of a book

I'm also reading "Ghost Story" by Peter Straus which has started off great

I've also got to get through

Brand new world - Aldous Huxley
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
The demolished man - Alfred Bester
The woman in white - Willkie Collins
Pale Fire - Nabakov
Sweetheart sweetheart - someone I can't remember
And another one or two that I'm waiting to be delivered

Should be enough to keep me busy

I was never able to read Catch 22 all the way through, I found it very dull. The movie was boring too, with poor attempts at humor, so I turned it off after about 30 minutes.

Brave New World wasn't bad, but there are better science fiction novels. I read it a long time ago.

The others you mentioned I've never even heard of.

Some I'd recommend: Pillars of the Earth and Armageddon mentioned above, as well as Napoleon's Russian Campaign which I read last year.

[Batman]

Robert Bloch's Psycho captivated a nation when it appeared in 1959. The story was all too real-indeed this classic was inspired by the real-life story of Ed Gein, a psychotic murderer who led a dual life. Alfred Hitchcock too was captivated, and turned the book into one of the most-loved classic films of all time the year after it was released.

Norman Bates loves his Mother. She has been dead for the past twenty years, or so people think. Norman knows better though. He has lived with Mother ever since leaving the hospital in the old house up on the hill above the Bates motel. One night Norman spies on a beautiful woman that checks into the hotel as she undresses. Norman can't help but spy on her. Mother is there though. She is there to protect Norman from his filthy thoughts. She is there to protect him with her butcher knife.

Well its Psycho, old Norman Bates, The Bates Motel, the infamous shower scene, we all know the story.

This was a good fun paced read, Norman is completely different to the film version of him and it gets a little bit deeper into why he is the way that he is, his appearance is also completely different in the book, here he is a short fat sweaty guy who tends to be nervous around people, that is in stark contrast to the Anthony Perkins version that we all know so well.

The film stuck to the book pretty faithfully (although it has been a while since I watched Psycho) the shower scene is actually underplayed in the film, the book version is a lot more graphic which I wasn't expecting.

There isn't a lot that I can add to this as it is such a well known story.

The War of the End of the World is one of the great modern historical novels. Inspired by a real episode in Brazilian history, Mario Vargas Llosa tells the story of an apocalyptic movement, led by a mysterious prophet, in which prostitutes, beggars and bandits establish Canudos, a new republic, a libertarian paradise.

Well that was a pretty epic tale of monstrous proportions.

How one man who goes around preaching to the weak, the criminals, the cripples and the poor can ultimately cause so much devastation whilst still retaining his followers is unreal.

That is pretty much what happens here, a strange man known as the counselor goes from town to town preaching and gaining followers, he does odd jobs around these towns in exchange for paltry amounts of money and shelter, he preaches he fixes churches, builds walls around cemeteries etc.

Eventually as his following grows larger and larger he sets up base in Canudos, people continue to flock to this new land, due to the overwhelming amount of new arrivals the authorities start to get a little nervy and send out a small army to try and restore order, it doesn't go well for them, they keep trying and keep sending out larger and larger armies and ultimately continue to fail to take control back from the poverty stricken malnourished faithful.

The book paints a real bleak picture of what life in Canudos would have been like yet people appeared to be happy living in the squalor.

The characters were absolutely fantastic, Galileo Gal, The Shortsighted Journalist, The Little Blessed One, The Dwarf and my favourite The Lion of Natuba, each character had a huge chunk of the book dedicated to their stories, some ultimately ended earlier than others yet they all managed to be integral to the plot.

This was an unusual book for me to read as I had to put it down for a while and take a bit of a break from it and read something else inbetween, its certainly a hefty book about nearly 800 pages but it is well worth the time and effort

[Batman]

In a seedy motel in Florida, a young man holds captive a little girl in a soiled pink dress. He is anxious, tormented, introspective. She is calm, passive, strangely detached. She says her name is Angie Maule.

In the small upstate town of Milburn, New York, four old friends meet to honor the traditions of the Chowder Society. They drink good whiskey and trade ghost stories. As chilling as these tales are, and as strangely prophetic, they pale before the horrific nightmares that began a year ago when one of their members attended a party for a visiting actress--and there died of a heart attack. Or was it fright? Ask the actress. She says her name is Ann-Veronica Moore.

In California, a talented young novelist teaching creative writing at Berkeley finds himself hopelessly obsessed with one of his students. She is exquisitely lovely, infernally elusive. She says her name is Alma Mobley.

What is the connection between these places, these people, these agonizing events?

So five old men who name themselves the 'chowder society' meet up on a monthly basis and tell each other ghost stories, the meetings are rather strange though, in the respect that each of the members of the Chowder Society are having frequent nightmares, it is pretty obvious that something happened early on in the book and this is their coping mechanism.

It ends up that there is a huge supernatural presence at work in this small town, things continue to escalate during a blizzard of epic proportions, with the help of one of the societies nephews and a plucky 17 year old they commence battle.

The book has everything required to make a good horror, although the book is called Ghost Story it is anything but.

It makes you question what is real and what isn't, at times it was almost like an early alternate take on the simulation theory that you often hear being discussed by .

Stephen King has heaped praise on this book and you can see exactly why, it reads so much like a King book that at times it felt as though he could have been the author of it, small town setting, strong quirky characters, a slow foreboding supernatural twist which grows as the plot develops, there were loads of similarities to Salems Lot especially.

[Batman]

next up

Professor Timofey Pnin, late of Tsarist Russia, is now precariously perched at the heart of an American campus. Battling with American life and language, Pnin must face great hazards in this new world: the ruination of his beautiful lumber-room-as-office; the removal of his teeth and the fitting of new ones; the search for a suitable boarding house; and the trials of taking the wrong train to deliver a lecture in a language he has yet to master.

Wry, intelligent and moving, Pnin reveals the absurd and affecting story of one man in exile.

I actually ordered Pale Fire by Nabokov but Amazon sent the wrong book out and I ended up with this, no bother though as Nabakov is a great author so I've got no problems with it, an acceptable mistake I suppose.

or I may read this

A gangster is murdered during a blistering Manhattan heat wave. City cop Andy Rusch is under pressure solve the crime and captivated by the victim's beautiful girlfriend. But it is difficult to catch a killer, let alone get the girl, in crazy streets crammed full of people. The planet's population has exploded. The 35 million inhabitants of New York City run their TVs off pedal power, riot for water, loot and trample for lentil 'steaks' and are controlled by sinister barbed wire dropped from the sky.

Written in 1966 and set in 1999, Make Room! Make Room! is a witty and unnerving story about stretching the earth's resources, and the human spirit, to breaking point.

[Fenster]

@Batman or anyone who knows

Have you ever bought books from Amazon for 20p? (£2.70 delivery). I don't care if the books are battered as long as they're not full of shit and piss

[Beanz]

@Batman or anyone who knows

Have you ever bought books from Amazon for 20p? (£2.70 delivery). I don't care if the books are battered as long as they're not full of shit and piss

I have mate. Bought used books from all over, often because they were out of print. It should usually give you a grade for what type of condition they are in. I would have thought the piss and shit would have dried a long time before they come through your letterbox.


and that is not a euphemism

[Batman]

@Batman or anyone who knows

Have you ever bought books from Amazon for 20p? (£2.70 delivery). I don't care if the books are battered as long as they're not full of shit and piss

I get the majority of my books off Amazon, usually I choose the ones that are in good or very good condition, I've had a fair few that have been in pretty poor condition, it doesn't bother me though, I quite like it when other people have wrote in them, I had one and some dude had wrote a load of gibberish about his new pen on the inside cover, it gives the book a bit of personality when you get stuff like that in it.

its not often that you buy them and pages are hanging out of them, as Beanz said it usually gives you a brief description of the general condition that they are in.

What you looking at buying Fenners?

[Fenster]

I am actually looking at buying several books, I used to read lots back in the day before internets and whatnot, lived next door to a big library which would order any book for free, had favourite authors like Douglas Copeland, Chuck Palahniuk and Kurt Vonnegut (Beanz will be disgusted by my Americanism).

I now have time and space to sitdown again so want to reread some of my favourites from back then and get lots of newer stuff to restock a big old fashioned book case unit.

Boringly the 16p book was about speed figures/gambling. It said the front cover was folded but spine and pages in good condition. Just wondering if I can trust those little descriptions. Thanks

[Gandalf]

Go for it Fenster. You can give it a sample and if it works well then you can order some more. No big loss if you don't like it on a first try.

[Beanz]

I am actually looking at buying several books, I used to read lots back in the day before internets and whatnot, lived next door to a big library which would order any book for free, had favourite authors like Douglas Copeland, Chuck Palahniuk and Kurt Vonnegut (Beanz will be disgusted by my Americanism).

I now have time and space to sitdown again so want to reread some of my favourites from back then and get lots of newer stuff to restock a big old fashioned book case unit.

Boringly the 16p book was about speed figures/gambling. It said the front cover was folded but spine and pages in good condition. Just wondering if I can trust those little descriptions. Thanks

Not really if you look further back in the thread you will see that John Updike is among my favourite authors. Not only the sublime Rabbit Novels but his art criticism too which is lucid, insightful and inspirational. I don't like the eschewing of British culture in a blind rush to adopt imported culutre per se. (Fucking Italians) but have a great love and affinity for many American artists, writers etc and am hanging out to go and visit as much of the country as I can one day.

[Batman]

A little update on what I have been reading



charmingly sad is probably the best way that I could describe this book.

This is my 3rd Nabakov book (the others were Bend Sinister and Lolita) and all three are spectacularly different.

Pnin is quite a simple book at first glance, nothing major happens in it, there is no huge drama, it is really just one clumsy man stumbling from one minor haphazard incident to another, and therein lies the beauty of Nabakovs writing, how he can make someone getting on the wrong train so interesting is fantastic.

Pnin himself was such a really sad character, he didn't really seem to fit in anywhere and whilst he had friends he never seemed to have 'close friends' and his social awkwardness is all to apparent throughout the book.

DARK FOREBODINGS.

All should have been well for Colin and his English bride -- but his twin brother, David, sensed trouble. Growing obsessed, David made his way to England to calm his fears -- instead he found an...

UNBOUNDED HELL.

Colin and his wife were dead -- victims of ghastly violence. Their seemingly serene cottage seethed with an aura of murder, madness, and betrayal. Overpowered by the evil, David soon embarked on a...

JOURNEY INTO THE MACABRE.

Suffocatingly, the presence grew...grew to a malevolent force trying to kill David's fiancee...grew until David himself was a helpless prisoner of unholy passion!

The story sounds like a paint by numbers horror/ghost story and for the most part it is.

David and his twin brother Colin were separated at a young age, they met up and bonded again later in life only for David to strike out and move to America, unless I have forgotten it doesn't really delve into the reasons why, it is hardly important though, David moves over their and starts a new life.

That is until his brother stops writing him and David feels an urge to travel back to England as soon as possible, he takes the plunge and no sooner than he arrives he is met with the news that both his twin brother and fiance have died within a matter of weeks of each other and their cottage and all of their money has been left to him.

David takes up residence in the cottage and this is where things start getting eerily similar to the magic cottage by James Herbert, everything is idyllic and the place immediately feels like home, David has some questions to ask regarding the circumstances of his brother untimely demise though, around the same time Davids other half arrives and a few sinister occurrences take place.

As you can imagine things escalate from there.

The first 200 pages were really slow burning but things really took off in the final 100, the twist at the end is a real curve ball that is somehow right in front of you the whole way through but almost impossible to see.

first 200 pages - 3 stars, final 100 pages - 5 stars

With introductions by Margaret Atwood and David Bradshaw.

Far in the future, the World Controllers have created the ideal society. Through clever use of genetic engineering, brainwashing and recreational sex and drugs all its members are happy consumers. Bernard Marx seems alone harbouring an ill-defined longing to break free. A visit to one of the few remaining Savage Reservations where the old, imperfect life still continues, may be the cure for his distress...

Huxley's ingenious fantasy of the future sheds a blazing light on the present and is considered to be his most enduring masterpiece.

I was really looking forward to this but it left me feeling a little flat.

It felt as though the whole book was leading up to one conversation in the final pages in which Huxley really attempts to drive his point home.

2 stars may be a little harsh but when I compare it to Bend Sinister, 1984 and Farenheit 451 it falls short by quite a distance.

[Batman]

In a near-future France, François, a middle-aged academic, is watching his life slowly dwindle to nothing. His sex drive is diminished, his parents are dead, and his lifelong obsession – the ideas and works of the nineteenth-century novelist and pessimist Joris-Karl Huysmans – has led him nowhere. In a late-capitalist society where consumerism has become the new religion, François is spiritually barren, but seeking to fill the vacuum of his existence with something.


And he is not alone. As the 2022 Presidential election approaches, two candidates emerge as favourites: Marine Le Pen of the Front National, and Muhammed Ben Abbes of the nascent Muslim Fraternity. Forming a controversial alliance with the mainstream parties, Ben Abbes sweeps to power, and overnight the country is transformed. Islamic law comes into force: women are veiled, polygamy is encouraged and, for François, life is set on a new course.


Submission is both a devastating satire and a profound and painfully sharp meditation on isolation, faith and love. It is a startling new work by one of the most provocative and prescient novelists of today.

I was pretty disappointed with this, I was expecting a controversial subject here, it ends up that it is more of a commentary on how Western men are fed up with their lot, they are just going through the motions, they accept the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and their newly introduced laws without question.

The title of the book is really about how the public submits to these changes without challenging it, the Muslim way of life actually suits the main character of the book, he retires early with a huge pension only to be offered his job back along with a promotion and the opportunity to have 3 or 4 wives, things look pretty good, what the book doesn't go into is how these changes affected the females, you can see that life isn't quite as comfortable for them however you are left to come to your own conclusions as to how they feel but that is really a side part of the book.

'It is the history of a revolution that went wrong – and of the excellent excuses that were forthcoming at every step for the perversion of the original doctrine,' wrote Orwell for the first edition of Animal Farm in 1945. Orwell wrote the novel at the end of 1943, but it almost remained unpublished. Its savage attack on Stalin, at that time Britain's ally, led to the book being refused by publisher after publisher. Orwell's simple, tragic fable, telling what happens when the animals drive out Mr Jones and attempt to run the farm themselves, has since become a world famous classic.

Everyone knows the story, they all know the parallels between Animal Farm and the Russian revolution, Stalin, Marx etc so there isn't any need to go into that.

I will say though I wish that I was made to read this at school, I can see why it is such a popular choice, it is short and to the point, there aren't many layers to the story, it hits you in the face from an early point and leaves you with no doubt as to which direction things are going.

I can imagine that kids would enjoy it a whole lot more than having to trawl through Shakespeare.

Special shout out to Benjamin the donkey, he was my favourite from the get go.

The Buddha. Rene Descartes. Emily Dickinson. Greta Garbo. Bobby Fischer. J. D. Salinger: Loners, all—along with as many as 25 percent of the world's population. Loners keep to themselves, and like it that way. Yet in the press, in films, in folklore, and nearly everywhere one looks, loners are tagged as losers and psychopaths, perverts and pity cases, ogres and mad bombers, elitists and wicked witches. Too often, loners buy into those messages and strive to change, making themselves miserable in the process by hiding their true nature—and hiding from it. Loners as a group deserve to be reassessed—to claim their rightful place, rather than be perceived as damaged goods that need to be "fixed." In Party of One Anneli Rufus -- a prize-winning, critically acclaimed writer with talent to burn -- has crafted a morally urgent, historically compelling tour de force—a long-overdue argument in defense of the loner, then and now. Marshalling a polymath's easy erudition to make her case, assembling evidence from every conceivable arena of culture as well as interviews with experts and loners worldwide and her own acutely calibrated analysis, Rufus rebuts the prevailing notion that aloneness is indistinguishable from loneliness, the fallacy that all of those who are alone don't want to be, and wouldn't be, if only they knew how.

Well this is as close to a self help book I reckon I'll ever get.

When I read the foreword I immediately thought 'finally, someone else gets it' that was a big help because it really piqued my interest, everything the author was saying for the first few chapters resonated with me.

The average loners attitude to crowds and social events, work, relationships and love, friends, family, so much of it rang true with what I go through on a daily basis.

One example that I can think of from the top of my head was where it talks about people asking what you did on a weekend, its a straight forward question but my answer is the same 99% of the time, my usual reply is 'I didn't do anything, I just stayed in all weekend' people are usually left aghast by this, they can't comprehend that it is what I choose to do, I stay home read books, watch films, play instruments, I have plenty of hobbies to keep me occupied, I don't need or want company most of the time.

The other is when I am home alone and someone phones me, they seem to think that because I am alone that I am always available to speak, the thought that someone could be busy whilst being alone seems alien to them.

There were plenty of points like the above throughout the book and it was pretty nice to read them, I found that the second half got a little bit too preachy though, it felt almost like an attack on the non loners at times.

overall a good solid book and it was nice to read something that I could actually identify with so closely.
-------------------------
I'm currently reading this

On a damp October night, 24-year-old Ashley Cordova is found dead in an abandoned warehouse in lower Manhattan. Though her death is ruled a suicide, veteran investigative journalist Scott McGrath suspects otherwise. As he probes the strange circumstances surrounding Ashley's life and death, McGrath comes face-to-face with the legacy of her father: the legendary, reclusive cult-horror film director Stanislaus Cordova--a man who hasn't been seen in public for more than thirty years.

For McGrath, another death connected to this seemingly cursed family dynasty seems more than just a coincidence. Though much has been written about Cordova's dark and unsettling films, very little is known about the man himself.

Driven by revenge, curiosity, and a need for the truth, McGrath, with the aid of two strangers, is drawn deeper and deeper into Cordova's eerie, hypnotic world. The last time he got close to exposing the director, McGrath lost his marriage and his career. This time he might lose even more.

This has been brilliant so far, nice fast pace, interesting and engaging plot, characters are pretty good but there are a few things that are bothering me, the whole thing seems pretty easy and there is bound to be a major plot twist which at the moment seems pretty obvious to me and if the fast pace gets any faster towards the final third of the book then it will be going at a breakneck speed and will most likely end up growing to be absurd.

Enjoying it so far though

[Freedom]

Reading Margaret Pole: Countess in the Tower right now. I'm about half-way through. Very nicely written.



Perhaps the most evil act of Henry VIII was ordering the execution of the age 67 countess, daughter of the brother of Edward IV and a direct descendant of Henry II.

[X]