What Book Are You Currently Reading ?

[Batman]

I'm going to be finishing Hell at the Breech in the few days so I took a stroll to waterstones and purchased these today

The classic novel about a daring experiment in human intelligence

Charlie Gordon, IQ 68, is a floor sweeper and the gentle butt of everyone's jokes - until an experiment in the enhancement of human intelligence turns him into a genius.

But then Algernon, the mouse whose triumphal experimental tranformation preceded his, fades and dies, and Charlie has to face the possibility that his salvation was only temporary.

Oakley Hall's legendary Warlock revisits and reworks the traditional conventions of the Western to present a raw, funny, hypnotic, ultimately devastating picture of American unreality. First published in the 1950s, at the height of the McCarthy era, Warlock is not only one of the most original and entertaining of modern American novels but a lasting contribution to American fiction.

"Tombstone, Arizona, during the 1880's is, in ways, our national Camelot: a never-never land where American virtues are embodied in the Earps, and the opposite evils in the Clanton gang; where the confrontation at the OK Corral takes on some of the dry purity of the Arthurian joust. Oakley Hall, in his very fine novel Warlock has restored to the myth of Tombstone its full, mortal, blooded humanity. Wyatt Earp is transmogrified into a gunfighter named Blaisdell who . . . is summoned to the embattled town of Warlock by a committee of nervous citizens expressly to be a hero, but finds that he cannot, at last, live up to his image; that there is a flaw not only in him, but also, we feel, in the entire set of assumptions that have allowed the image to exist. . . . Before the agonized epic of Warlock is over with—the rebellion of the proto-Wobblies working in the mines, the struggling for political control of the area, the gunfighting, mob violence, the personal crises of those in power—the collective awareness that is Warlock must face its own inescapable Horror: that what is called society, with its law and order, is as frail, as precarious, as flesh and can be snuffed out and assimilated back into the desert as easily as a corpse can. It is the deep sensitivity to abysses that makes Warlock one of our best American novels. For we are a nation that can, many of us, toss with all aplomb our candy wrapper into the Grand Canyon itself, snap a color shot and drive away; and we need voices like Oakley Hall's to remind us how far that piece of paper, still fluttering brightly behind us, has to fall." —Thomas Pynchon

[SlimTrae]

I'm going to be finishing Hell at the Breech in the few days so I took a stroll to waterstones and purchased these today

The classic novel about a daring experiment in human intelligence

Charlie Gordon, IQ 68, is a floor sweeper and the gentle butt of everyone's jokes - until an experiment in the enhancement of human intelligence turns him into a genius.

But then Algernon, the mouse whose triumphal experimental tranformation preceded his, fades and dies, and Charlie has to face the possibility that his salvation was only temporary.

Oakley Hall's legendary Warlock revisits and reworks the traditional conventions of the Western to present a raw, funny, hypnotic, ultimately devastating picture of American unreality. First published in the 1950s, at the height of the McCarthy era, Warlock is not only one of the most original and entertaining of modern American novels but a lasting contribution to American fiction.

"Tombstone, Arizona, during the 1880's is, in ways, our national Camelot: a never-never land where American virtues are embodied in the Earps, and the opposite evils in the Clanton gang; where the confrontation at the OK Corral takes on some of the dry purity of the Arthurian joust. Oakley Hall, in his very fine novel Warlock has restored to the myth of Tombstone its full, mortal, blooded humanity. Wyatt Earp is transmogrified into a gunfighter named Blaisdell who . . . is summoned to the embattled town of Warlock by a committee of nervous citizens expressly to be a hero, but finds that he cannot, at last, live up to his image; that there is a flaw not only in him, but also, we feel, in the entire set of assumptions that have allowed the image to exist. . . . Before the agonized epic of Warlock is over with—the rebellion of the proto-Wobblies working in the mines, the struggling for political control of the area, the gunfighting, mob violence, the personal crises of those in power—the collective awareness that is Warlock must face its own inescapable Horror: that what is called society, with its law and order, is as frail, as precarious, as flesh and can be snuffed out and assimilated back into the desert as easily as a corpse can. It is the deep sensitivity to abysses that makes Warlock one of our best American novels. For we are a nation that can, many of us, toss with all aplomb our candy wrapper into the Grand Canyon itself, snap a color shot and drive away; and we need voices like Oakley Hall's to remind us how far that piece of paper, still fluttering brightly behind us, has to fall." —Thomas Pynchon

Batman is an undercover bookworm....haahaaaa

[Batman]

ha, I'm a massive bookworm

Anyways I finished Flowers for Algernon, brilliant book that is, only took me two days to read, its actually quite sad, its unlike me to think that of a book, I can find them depressing but sad isn't a word I usually use to describe a book.

4/5 from me

I started this yesterday

La Bete humaine (1890), the seventeenth novel in the Rougon-Macquart series, is one of Zola's most violent and explicit works. On one level a tale of murder, passion, and possession, it is also a compassionate study of individuals derailed by atavistic forces beyond their control. Zola considered this his 'most finely worked' novel, and in it he powerfully evokes life at the end of the Second Empire in France, where society seemed to be hurtling into the future like the new locomotives and railways it was building. While expressing the hope that human nature evolves through education and gradually frees itself of the burden of inherited evil, he is constantly reminding us that under the veneer of technological progress there remains, always, the beast within. This new translation captures Zola's fast-paced yet deliberately dispassionate style, while the introduction and detailed notes place the novel in its social, historical, and literary context.

I'm only 30 or 40 pages in and you can see why it was a wee bit on the contraversial side, he don't half give his missus a kicking at the start of the book.

I think this is going to take me a while to read its not exactly easy going, my next book was going to be another one from the 1890's but I think I'm going to need a break from that era after this one so I'll probably go with the 4th Salander book, can't remember what its called now, something like the girl who tickled the donkeys bollocks or something like that

[Batman]

Thats the badger

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO IS BACK WITH A UK NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER

Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist have not been in touch for some time.

Then Blomkvist is contacted by renowned Swedish scientist Professor Balder. Warned that his life is in danger, but more concerned for his son's well-being, Balder wants Millennium to publish his story - and it is a terrifying one.

More interesting to Blomkvist than Balder's world-leading advances in Artificial Intelligence, is his connection with a certain female superhacker.

It seems that Salander, like Balder, is a target of ruthless cyber gangsters - and a violent criminal conspiracy that will very soon bring terror to the snowbound streets of Stockholm, to the Millennium team, and to Blomkvist and Salander themselves.

I really enjoyed two out of the first three books (I am one of the few people that enjoyed the third and thought the second was terrible) and I know it isn't Steig Larrson writing but I'm going to give it a go and see if the dead horse has been flogged.

Having said that I may take a wonder down to waterstones or jump on Amazon today its pay day and I'm off work next week so I may purchase a book or two to get me through.

I'm also off down the charity shop next week, I really need to sort through my books desperately, I've got 2 bookcases which are overflowing and just looking around the living room there are 5 books on the coffee table 5 books on the floor 3 books on the settee and a pile in front of the book case.

I'm gunna have a look through at the ones I don't want any more and get rid of them.

[Batman]

took 68 books to the charity shop today

These are the ones that were in my living room



bookl case is looking much nicer now

[Batman]

Finished this today, it was ok but 2 things really really annoyed me about it.

1-The forced and utterly pointless connection of Marvel comic books, Salander's online alias is WASP, yeah apparently it's from the Marvel superhero, it even shoehorns in mentions of Thor and Thanos etc, I know that Marvel is popular at the moment but come on for fucks sake, there was just no need for it, it really wound me up

2-It is basically the 1998 Bruce Willis film Mercury Rising, I mean the whole concept...

The NSA are massively corrupt and a young autistic kid who also happens to be a savant has info that they don't want getting out, their only option is to kill him, then the hero has to 'unwillingly' take the kid into their care and protect them with their very life.

Is that a little summary of Mercury Rising or is that a little summary of The Girl In The Spiders web? the answer is it is honestly a little summary of both of them.

And I was always going to end it by saying that he didn't get Salander's character right, she was like a watered down version of the original.

4 out of 10

[Batman]

I'm going to be starting this tomorrow

From our most celebrated writer of the psychological thriller comes this nerve-wracking yet eerily beautiful work of erotic obsession and madness.

In the summer of 1959 Stella Raphael joins her psychiatrist husband, Max, at his new posting--a maximum-security hospital for the criminally insane. Beautiful and headstrong, Stella soon falls under the spell of Edgar Stark, a brilliant and magnetic sculptor who has been confined to the hospital for murdering his wife in a psychotic rage.

But Stella's knowledge of Edgar's crime is no hindrance to the volcanic attraction that ensues--a passion that will consume Stella's sanity and destroy her and the lives of those around her.

I've just had a quick flick through and its only 250 pages but the font is fucking microscopic

[Batman]

Finished this last night, good book actually, woman falls in love with a psychopath, goes crazy herself, it's I was expecting the book itself to verge on the side of batshit crazy but it was actually pretty grounded.

The story is told from the perspective of the womans shrink after all of the events have occured, I struggled with the first 1/3 of it but then really motored through the rest.

it was hard to feel sorry for the majority of the characters and the main woman came across to me as a real villain even though it was the illness and not her if that makes sense.

Any way it's on to this motherfucker next



first released in 1820

Created by an Irish clergyman, Melmoth is one of the most fiendish characters in literature. In a satanic bargain, Melmoth exchanges his soul for immortality. The story of his tortured wanderings through the centuries is pieced together through those who have been implored by Melmoth to take over his pact with the devil. Influenced by the Gothic romances of the late 18th century, Maturin's diabolic tale raised the genre to a new and macabre pitch. Its many admirers include Poe, Balzac, Oscar Wilde and Baudelaire.

It's gunna be a beast of a read but I'm looking forward to this one