What Book Are You Currently Reading ?

[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

[Batman]

Just finished this

An elderly, incontinent Elvis Aaron Presley teams up with an deeply incognito John Fitzgerald Kennedy to defend their East Texas nursing home from an ancient Egyptian soul-sucking mummy. This is the short story that became the cult classic major motion picture, inspiring a generation of care-givers, archaeologists, and public servants. TCB.

Someone told me to watch the film on YouTube and I discovered it was a book (well short story, I think it clocks in at about 150 pages) so I thought I'd read it before I watched it.

Elvis is an old miserable bastard who may not actually be Elvis but an Elvis impersonator who fell off stage and broke his hip and convinced himself that he was the real deal.
JFK is alive and well, his brain is in a jar and wired up to batteries in the white house, his own head is now filled with sand...oh yeah...this JFK is black as well

Thing is there is a mummy dressed like a cowboy sucking people souls out through their ass holes, on that basis why couldn't it be the real Elvis and black JFK

Not really my sort of book but it passed an hour or so on a boring Sunday afternoon

[Master]

The book sounds interesting @Batman. Stay awake.

[Batman]

Interesting is probably the best way to describe ribe it, Elvis also has a pus filled boil on the end of his knob which pops and erupts during a rather intense masturbating session, the boil actually gets mentioned far more than is required.

[El Kabong]

Anyone read any Salinger? I've yet to dive into his books, but after watching the documentary on him (titled 'Salinger') my interest in his works has grown. I always heard that 'Catcher In The Rye' was a masterpiece and often misunderstood (mostly by famous murderers, which caused Salinger to seclude himself and stop having his works published while he was alive).

His newly released books which deal with his time serving in the OSS (the precursor to the CIA) in World War 2 and shortly thereafter and also some other works about the Glass family which were very in depth works of fiction are intriguing. Salinger supposedly married a woman in Germany who was a former Nazi and then annulled the marriage. Salinger was set to marry a young Oona O'Neil after having courted her in the time prior to World War 2 and an ancient Charlie Chaplain stole her away while Salinger was fighting in Europe.....as if I needed anymore reason to think poorly of Chaplain, W.C Fields was 10 times the comedian that Chaplain claimed to be!



Also I wonder about Mark Twain's Autobiography....I am not sure I could get through that one in an entire lifetime. That is some very heavy lifting mentally to get through such a long 2 volume set.


Anyone check into those books?

[Batman]

Anyone read any Salinger? I've yet to dive into his books, but after watching the documentary on him (titled 'Salinger') my interest in his works has grown. I always heard that 'Catcher In The Rye' was a masterpiece and often misunderstood (mostly by famous murderers, which caused Salinger to seclude himself and stop having his works published while he was alive).

His newly released books which deal with his time serving in the OSS (the precursor to the CIA) in World War 2 and shortly thereafter and also some other works about the Glass family which were very in depth works of fiction are intriguing. Salinger supposedly married a woman in Germany who was a former Nazi and then annulled the marriage. Salinger was set to marry a young Oona O'Neil after having courted her in the time prior to World War 2 and an ancient Charlie Chaplain stole her away while Salinger was fighting in Europe.....as if I needed anymore reason to think poorly of Chaplain, W.C Fields was 10 times the comedian that Chaplain claimed to be!



Also I wonder about Mark Twain's Autobiography....I am not sure I could get through that one in an entire lifetime. That is some very heavy lifting mentally to get through such a long 2 volume set.


Anyone check into those books?

Catcher in the Rye was a good book, it is obviously pretty dated now but it was pretty controversial at the time of its release, I've gotta be honest it's been a good few years since I've read it, I might have to dust my old copy off if I ever manage to get through the beast of a book that I am reading now.

I just remember the kid in it (his name escapes me now) doing my head in, I get what Sallinger was trying to get across but he needed to extend the kids vocab a little bit, he called every fucker in the book a phoney.

[Gandalf]

Anyone read any Salinger? I've yet to dive into his books, but after watching the documentary on him (titled 'Salinger') my interest in his works has grown. I always heard that 'Catcher In The Rye' was a masterpiece and often misunderstood (mostly by famous murderers, which caused Salinger to seclude himself and stop having his works published while he was alive).

His newly released books which deal with his time serving in the OSS (the precursor to the CIA) in World War 2 and shortly thereafter and also some other works about the Glass family which were very in depth works of fiction are intriguing. Salinger supposedly married a woman in Germany who was a former Nazi and then annulled the marriage. Salinger was set to marry a young Oona O'Neil after having courted her in the time prior to World War 2 and an ancient Charlie Chaplain stole her away while Salinger was fighting in Europe.....as if I needed anymore reason to think poorly of Chaplain, W.C Fields was 10 times the comedian that Chaplain claimed to be!



Also I wonder about Mark Twain's Autobiography....I am not sure I could get through that one in an entire lifetime. That is some very heavy lifting mentally to get through such a long 2 volume set.


Anyone check into those books?

I've never read Catcher in the Rye. It was recommended to me years ago as someone said I would relate to the main character. I just never got around to reading it though. I probably should. I bet he's a bit weird and aloof.

I am currently reading a biography of Syd Barrett from Pink Floyd. Only just started, but I am currently quite envious of the upbringing he had. Smart, interesting parents, decent well adjusted siblings and a fondness for drawing. Lucky bastard. Still as life shows it all turns a little bit queer sometimes.

[Batman]

I finished this on Thursday



Blimey what a struggle that was, it took me nearly 4 weeks to read it.

It is extremely wordy (even for the time that it was written) and the story never really goes any where, well I say the story, it is actually a story in a story in a story...possibly in another story, the main character is barely in the book and the problem with the multiple stories that all tie in together is that if you get one or two that you can't get into or don't enjoy then you start drifting off and ultimatly end up getting kind of lost.

I was hoping to find something like The Monk but unfortunately I was left pretty dissapointed

Anyway, now it's time for some controversial reading

The year was 1865. With the close of the Civil War, there began for the South, an era of even greater turmoil. In The Clansman, his controversial 1905 novel, later the basis of the motion picture The Birth of a Nation, Thomas Dixon, describes the social, political, and economic disintegration that plagued the South during Reconstruction, depicting the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and the reactions of two families to racial conflict. This study in social history was alternatively praised and damned by contemporary critics. As historian Thomas D. Clark notes in his introduction, the novel "opened wider a vein of racial hatred which was to poison further an age already in social and political upheaval. Dixon had in fact given voice in his novel to one of the most powerful latent forces in the social and political mind of the South." For modern readers, The Clansman probes the roots of the racial violence that still haunts our society.

I'm about half way through now, it's not easy going, and the author is clearly not going to win any awards for his writing style but it's interesting.
I have to admit that I was expecting it to be 'negroe this' and 'negroe that' but it's actually not like that at all so far, the majority of the book has been about the politics behind the scenes after Abe Lincoln was shot.
There is the obligatory love interest between a bloke from the sound and a girl from the North but there really hasn't been any abuse directly towards the blacks at all so far.

Having said that you can feel it is building and you know that it is going to be a case of 'South good' North bad' Blacks very very bad'

It's interesting to read it just to see the opinions of those at the other side of the fence even if you don't agree with them.

[El Kabong]

Ah yes very controversial indeed, that book became immortalized as D.W. Griffith's 'Birth of a Nation'....which if the book is at all like the film that is going to be like running a marathon through the mud. SOOOOO tedious and that was just the film mind you.

[Batman]

The year was 1865. With the close of the Civil War, there began for the South, an era of even greater turmoil. In The Clansman, his controversial 1905 novel, later the basis of the motion picture The Birth of a Nation, Thomas Dixon, describes the social, political, and economic disintegration that plagued the South during Reconstruction, depicting the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and the reactions of two families to racial conflict. This study in social history was alternatively praised and damned by contemporary critics. As historian Thomas D. Clark notes in his introduction, the novel "opened wider a vein of racial hatred which was to poison further an age already in social and political upheaval. Dixon had in fact given voice in his novel to one of the most powerful latent forces in the social and political mind of the South." For modern readers, The Clansman probes the roots of the racial violence that still haunts our society.

Finished this today

I was actually surprised, I enjoyed the first 1/2 or 2/3 of the book, it was very much the polictical views of a disgruntled southerner, it was nice to hear their viewpoint and try to see things from their point of view, the only times you really hear it from them it is coming from some fat redneck in a hood or someone opposed to their viewpoint telling us why the Southerners are wrong.

The problem started in the second half of the book when the black characters came into it and were given the freedom of the vote, I understand that there would have been some regional dialect but it was fucking laughable and at times impossible to understand, the descriptions of them completely blasted any possible constructive argument that the writer might have been trying to get across.

Every single black character in the book was either outright gutless and kissed the boots of every white man that they saw or they were out and out monsters, the cowardly blacks and the evil blacks had all been dummed down to the point of retardation as well.

I'll see if I can be arsed to type up some of the dialogue between them just so you can see how amazingly racist and just well...bad it was

I understand that it was a different time and people had a completely different outlook but even back then people must have rolled their eyes when they read it, I note that the book isn't credited with the 'rebirth' of the klan and that it was the film that was based on the book (birth of a nation)

[Batman]

next up is this

THE CHICAGO KILLER: The Hunt For Serial Killer John Wayne Gacy is the story of the capture of John Wayne Gacy, as told from the perspective of the former Chief of Detectives of the Des Plaines, Illinois Police Department, Joseph Kozenczak. The conviction of Gacy on 33 counts of murder is a record in the archives of the criminal justice system in the United States. Two additional bonus chapters give the reader a comprehensive insight into the use of psychics and the lie-detector in a serial murder investigation.

He was a cracker old Gacey was, not on the same level as Dahmer but he wasn't a bad serial killer, I'm quite looking forward to this, I'm hoping it'll be in the same vein of 'Helter Skelter' about Charley Manson, fucking brilliant that book was

[Batman]

here we go then, here is a bit of convo from the book

'you hear 'bout de great sassieties de Gubment's fomentin' in dis country?'
'Yas I hear erbout em'
'I yer er member er de Union League?'
Na-sah. I'd rudder steal by myself. I doan' lak too many in de party!'
En yer aint er No'f Ca'liny gemmen, is yer- yer ain't er member er de 'Red Strings?'
Na-sah I come when I'se called- dey doan' hatter put er string on me- ner er block. ner er collar, ner er chain, ner er muzzle'

that is honest word for word how it is wrote, page 102

[El Kabong]

here we go then, here is a bit of convo from the book

'you hear 'bout de great sassieties de Gubment's fomentin' in dis country?'
'Yas I hear erbout em'
'I yer er member er de Union League?'
Na-sah. I'd rudder steal by myself. I doan' lak too many in de party!'
En yer aint er No'f Ca'liny gemmen, is yer- yer ain't er member er de 'Red Strings?'
Na-sah I come when I'se called- dey doan' hatter put er string on me- ner er block. ner er collar, ner er chain, ner er muzzle'

that is honest word for word how it is wrote, page 102

Did you hear about the great societies the government is fomenting in this country?
Yes, I have heard all about them.
Are you a member of the Union League?
No Sir, I would rather stay by myself. I do not like too many in the party.
are you or aren't you a North Carolina gentleman, are you or aren't you a member of the 'Red Strings'?
No Sir, I come when I am called. They don't have to put a string on me, nor a block, nor a collar, nor chain, nor a muzzle.


Translated as best I can



From 'Their Eyes Were Watching God'
What she doin coming back here in dem overhalls? Can’t she find no dress to put on? – Where’s dat blue satin dress she left here in? – Where all dat money her husband took and died and left her? – What dat ole forty year ole ‘oman doin’ wid her hair swingin’ down her back lak some young gal? – Where she left dat young lad of a boy she went off here wid? – Thought she was going to marry? – Where he left her? – What he done wid all her money? – Betcha he off wid some gal so young she ain’t even got no hairs – Why she don’t stay in her class? – "

Just hurts my brain to read like that....can't understand how people write like that. I'm from the South so naturally everything I read comes into my brain with a twang, no need to funk the words all up unless someone is talking and even then as an author you can put in things like "They said, in their thick Southern accent"

[Batman]

finished this yesterday, good book, the author clearly has a huge ego but I guess that is required in his profession and especially when dealing with a case of this magnitude.

Gacy sounds as though he was a real bastard, most times serial killers are quite charming and people wouldn't ever suspect them of their crimes however Gacey sounds like he was just an out and out arse hole.

next up is

"So the Wind Won't Blow it all Away" is a beautifully-written, brooding gem of a novel - set in the Pacific Northwest region of Oregon where Brautigan spent most of his childhood. Through the eyes, ears and voice of Brautigan's youthful protagonist the reader is gently led into a small-town tale where the narrator accidentally shoots dead his best friend with a gun. The novel deals with the repercussions of this tragedy and its recurring theme of 'What if...' fuels anguish, regret and self-blame as well as some darkly comic passages of bitter-sweet romance and despair. Taken with the recently discovered, "An Unfortunate Woman", these two late Brautigan novels are a fitting epitaph to a complex, contradictory and often misunderstood genius.

It's only around 100 pages so it should only take a few hours to power through it when I get around to picking it up