What Book Are You Currently Reading ?

[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

[Batman]

[QUOTE=Batman;1402636]

Not bad, not brilliant, kind of a 'what if sort of book' it's about a kid (12 yers old) who bought some bullets for his .22 instead of going next door and buying a burger, he ended up accidentally shooting and killing his only real friend with one of them bullets.

next up, I've read it before and I might not read it all this time but it'll keep me ticking over until my next set of books are delivered

"The Exorcist", a 1973 movie about a twelve-year-old girl possessed by the Devil, frightened people more than any horror film ever did. Many moviegoers sought therapy to rid themselves of fears they could not explain. Psychiatrists coined the term "cinematic neurosis" for patients who left the movie feeling a terrifying presence of demons. At the Washington premiere, a young woman stood outside the theater, trembling. "I come out here in the sunlight," she said, "and I see people's eyes, and they frighten me."Among the few moviegoers unmoved by the horror were two priests, Father William S. Bowdern and Father Walter Halloran, members of the Jesuit community at St. Louis University. "Billy came out shaking his head about the little girl bouncing on the bed and urinating on the crucifix," Halloran remembers. "He was kind of angry. 'There is a good message that can be given by this thing,' he said. The message was the fact that evil spirits operate in our world."Bowdern and Halloran knew that the movie was fictional veneer masking a terrible reality. Night after night in March and April 1949, Bowdern had been an exorcist, with Halloran assisting. Bowdern fervently believed that he had driven a demon from a tormented soul. The victim had been a thirteen-year-old boy strangely lured to St. Louis from a Maryland suburb of Washington. Bowdern's exorcism had been the inspiration for the movie.The true story of this possession, told in Possessed, is based on a diary kept by a Jesuit priest assisting Father Bowdern. The diary, the most complete account of an exorcism since the Middle Ages, is published for the first time in this revised edition of Possessed.

[Batman]

Finished 'possessed' this morning, first time round I gave it 2 out of 5, this time I've increased it to 4 out of 5, really enjoyed it.

gunna be starting this today

Leyton examines true-life cases of ordinary children who turned into deadly assassins. He investigates case studies to reveal the all-too-common pressures on middle-class life that have led to the arlarming increase in this terrifying phenomenon.

I dunno if it will be any good or not but I'm gunna give it a shot, it only cost 1p off Amazon so I'm not all that bothered if I don't finish it