What Book Are You Currently Reading ?

[Batman]

right well I've got 4 books after I have finished this one to hit my goal for the year

I was going to read 1984 next but I have been told to read another Nabokov book, which should be delivered any day now, I can't remember exactly what its called, something like 'sinister bend' or something, but I'm going to read that, then Dorian Grey (to give the Nabakov book time to settle) then I'm going to read 1984 (because apparently its a direct rip off of sinistier bend or what not) and then tthe 4th book is up for grabs at the minute.

once I have hit my goal though I want to leave myself enough time in the year to read S by JJ abrams and I wanna re-read house of leaves...Pissed I am...but that is my plan

Damnit @Batman read '1984' so you can compare and contrast your take on it with Hillary Clinton's take on it

That was the plan but apparently 1984 completely ripped off Nabakov so I'm gunna have to read that one first so I can give a balanced view on the book and the author .

Fuck I'm pissed

[Gandalf]

I like to read my Kindle in the bath and dropped it in the water yesterday. It was totally submerged, but the power came back on and it seemed to be okay. Today though I tried turning it on and the screen went blank. It wouldn't turn on! I tried to reset it and still nothing. I was panicking. I read online that you can put it in a sealed bag with some rice and I did that while I went out. I came back and it was trying to update, but stalled. Then right before it came back! I am so relieved! Amazon is one evil bullshit corporation, but I need to read and thank god it came back. I would happily pay 15% extra for all my books if it would go directly to the staff in Amazon sweatshops. Form more unions you buggers, take them down!

[Batman]

I like to read my Kindle in the bath and dropped it in the water yesterday. It was totally submerged, but the power came back on and it seemed to be okay. Today though I tried turning it on and the screen went blank. It wouldn't turn on! I tried to reset it and still nothing. I was panicking. I read online that you can put it in a sealed bag with some rice and I did that while I went out. I came back and it was trying to update, but stalled. Then right before it came back! I am so relieved! Amazon is one evil bullshit corporation, but I need to read and thank god it came back. I would happily pay 15% extra for all my books if it would go directly to the staff in Amazon sweatshops. Form more unions you buggers, take them down!

Best thing when something like that happens is to put it in a box with rice before switching it back on, let it dry out completely first

Or leave it in a box of rice overnight and an Asian will sneak into your house and repair it for you

[Beanz]

I like to read my Kindle in the bath and dropped it in the water yesterday. It was totally submerged, but the power came back on and it seemed to be okay. Today though I tried turning it on and the screen went blank. It wouldn't turn on! I tried to reset it and still nothing. I was panicking. I read online that you can put it in a sealed bag with some rice and I did that while I went out. I came back and it was trying to update, but stalled. Then right before it came back! I am so relieved! Amazon is one evil bullshit corporation, but I need to read and thank god it came back. I would happily pay 15% extra for all my books if it would go directly to the staff in Amazon sweatshops. Form more unions you buggers, take them down!

Best thing when something like that happens is to put it in a box with rice before switching it back on, let it dry out completely first

Or leave it in a box of rice overnight and an Asian will sneak into your house and repair it for you

Where is Miles going to find an Asian?

I can't imagine reading stuff on a kindle but with hundreds of books lining the walls could do with the space. No smell, no touch, no pate turning sound....ewww

[Batman]

I've got a Kindle but it doesn't get used all that often at all, its more for if there is a book that I am only semi interested in then I'll download it.

It's also good for my Lovecraft and Poe stuff I mean they the books are not exactly practical for reading on the bus



I'm hoping to get The Crossing finished today or tomorrow, I've got about 200 pages left in it, its actually been a lot better than I was expecting, I thought it would just be in the same vein as James Patterson or Jeffrey Deaver but its actually a lot better than that, it isn't all car chases and shootouts (so far) and its very much about the investigation side of things which sits well with me.

I'm enjoying it so far anyways.

After that I think I'm going to get started on 1984, I was going to read Sinister Bend by Nabakov but it hasn't been delivered yet...I don't think, it may have and I've just forgotten about it, I've had a fuck load of books delivered over the past few weeks.

[Batman]

finished The Crossing, really good book it was.

I'm not sure what I'm going to read next, its out of

1984 - George Orwell (1949)
Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (1939)
Zofloya or the Moor - Charlotte Dacre (1806)
The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde (1890)

and I'm currently waiting of delivery of

Bend Sinister - Vladomir Nabokov (1947)
The Raw Shark Texts - Steven Hall (2007)

I also had this delivered the other day, I can't wait to get started on this but I'm going to wait until I've completed my 2017 challenge on Goodreads before starting it

One book. Two readers. A world of mystery, menace, and desire.

A young woman picks up a book left behind by a stranger. Inside it are his margin notes, which reveal a reader entranced by the story and by its mysterious author. She responds with notes of her own, leaving the book for the stranger, and so begins an unlikely conversation that plunges them both into the unknown.

THE BOOK: Ship of Theseus, the final novel by a prolific but enigmatic writer named V. M. Straka, in which a man with no past is shanghaied onto a strange ship with a monstrous crew and launched onto a disorienting and perilous journey.

THE WRITER: Straka, the incendiary and secretive subject of one of the world’s greatest mysteries, a revolutionary about whom the world knows nothing apart from the words he wrote and the rumours that swirl around him.

THE READERS: Jennifer and Eric, a college senior and a disgraced grad student, both facing crucial decisions about who they are, who they might become, and how much they’re willing to trust another person with their passions, hurts, and fears.

S. , conceived by filmmaker J. J. Abrams and written by award-winning novelist Doug Dorst, is the chronicle of two readers finding each other in the margins of a book and enmeshing themselves in a deadly struggle between forces they don’t understand. It is also Abrams and Dorst’s love letter to the written word.

Its absolutely crammed full of little odds and sods that help tell the story, newspaper cuttings, postcards, diaries, even a fucking napkin (yes an actual napkin) with a map drew on it, I'm going to have to get some post it notes and stick them to all the detachable pieces because they will no doubt fall out at some point, its definitely a book to be read at home and not on the bus.

[Batman]

`Few venture as thou hast in the alarming paths of sin.' This is the final judgement of Satan on Victoria di Loredani, the heroine of Zofloya, or The Moor (1806), a tale of lust, betrayal, and multiple murder set in Venice in the last days of the fifteenth century. The novel follows Victoria's progress from spoilt daughter of indulgent aristocrats, through a period of abuse and captivity, to a career of deepening criminality conducted under Satan's watchful eye. Charlotte Dacre's narrative deftly displays her heroine's movement from the vitalized position of Ann Radcliffe's heroines to a fully conscious commitment to vice that goes beyond that of `Monk' Lewis's deluded Ambrosio. The novel's most daring aspect is its anatomy of Victoria's intense sexual attraction to her Moorish servant Zofloya that transgresses taboos both of class and race. A minor scandal on its first publication, and a significant influence on Byron and Shelley, Zofloya has been unduly neglected. Contradicting idealized stereotypes of women's writing, the novel's portrait of indulged desire, gratuitous cruelty, and monumental self-absorption retains considerable power to disturb. The introduction to this edition, the first for nearly 200 years, examines why Zofloya deserves to be read alongside established Gothic classics as the highly original work of an intriguing and unconventional writer.

Well that was tough going, decent book but far too similar to The Monk by Matthew Lewis, the author actually uses the pseudonym of Rosa Matilda so she didn't even try to hide the influence.

The ending was a complete rip off of The Monk but nowhere near as good.

The characters were pretty standard and the story didn't excite me, I'm glad that I read it and I would recommend it to fans of this genre but I can think of many books that I would put above it.

I'm just about to start this now (at last, Amazon lost the first copy that I ordered so they had to resend it)

The state has been recently taken over and is being run by the tyrannical and philistine ‘Average Man’ party. Under the slogans of equality and happiness for all, it has done away with individualism and freedom of thought. Only John Krug, a brilliant philosopher, stands up to the regime. His antagonist, the leader of the new party, is his old school enemy, Paduk – known as the ‘Toad’. Grieving over his wife’s recent death, Krug is at first dismissive of Paduk’s activities and sees no threat in them. But the sinister machine which Paduk has set in motion may prove stronger than the individual, stronger even than the grotesque ‘Toad’ himself.

The first novel Nabokov wrote while living in America and the most overtly political novel he ever wrote, Bend Sinister is a modern classic. While it is filled with veiled puns and characteristically delightful wordplay, it is, first and foremost, a haunting and compelling narrative about a civilized man caught in the tyranny of a police state. Professor Adam Krug, the country's foremost philosopher, offers the only hope of resistance to Paduk, dictator and leader of the Party of the Average Man. In a folly of bureaucratic bungling and ineptitude, the government attempts to co-opt Krug's support in order to validate the new regime.

Don't worry El Kabong, I'll be getting started right on 1984 once I have finished this one.

[Batman]

Finished this, cracking book, not as good as Lolita but still well worth a read.

Nabokov has a strange way of making really dark subject matters quite light hearted, his characters kind of remind me of Kafka's in their blase approach to serious situations.

Krug is a celebrity philosopher and when a new government comes into power called the Ekwilists who enforce equality upon everyone and believes that if no one is individual then everyone must be happy, Krug opposes this and the head of this new political party try to force him to publicly support them, they arrest his friends and everyone close to him and he still refuses to back down, eventually they take things up a level and its only right at the end of the book when you realize how far they are willing to go to get the support that they want. Oh and the head of this party is nicknamed The Toad, an name bestowed upon him when he was at school with Krug, yeah it turns out that Krug used to bully The Toad rather severely whilst they were at school.

one thing I would say is if you are going to read this then take a look at Hamlet first and familiarize yourself with the general story because there is a 20 page chapter devoted to it.

anyways, I'm finally going to be getting started on

Winston Smith is a low-rung member of the Party, the ruling government of Oceania. He works in the Ministry of Truth, the Party's propoganda arm, where he is in charge of revising history. He is but a small brick in the pyramid that is the Party, at the head of which stands Big Brother. Big Brother the infallible. Big Brother the all-powerful. In a totalitarian society, where individuality is suppressed and freedom of thought has its antithesis in the Thought Police, Winston finds respite in the company of Julia. Originality of thought awakens, love bloosoms and hope is rekindled. But what they don't know is that Big Brother is always watching...

lets see how this stacks up to Bend Sinister then

[Master]

My son 15 year old is reading 1984 for his GCSE.

[Batman]

My son 15 year old is reading 1984 for his GCSE.

Yeah, its one of those books that everyone should have read but I have just never got around to it, I'm trying to work my way through all of the 'books to read before you die' sort of lists.
I've never read Animal Farm either (I've seen the naughty video though tee hee)

[Batman]

@El Kabong finished it last night, I have to say that on balance I think I would opt for re-reading Bend Sinister by Nabakov over 1984.

Both brilliant books released at roughly the same time about the same subject, 1984 was more of a standard story whilst Bend Sinister made me stop and think a little bit more.
As I was reading 1984 I kept thinking to myself 'wow this still seems pretty damn fresh considering it was released in 1984' then I would catch myself and think 'hang about, it is set in 1984 but it was released in 1948.
It still reads as though it could have been published for the first time just yesterday.

Orwell really did have the future nailed on, I mean we are 33 years down the line from when the book was set and the things that he was imagining are not far from reality now, he did a fantastic job in that regard.

What was it that old Hill Dog said about it then? you mentioned it was something about how we need to 'trust the government' just those 3 words seem to go against the entire premise of the book.

Eric Sanderson wakes up in a place he doesn't recognise, unable to remember who he is. All he has left are journal entries recalling Clio, a perfect love now gone. So begins a thrilling adventure that will send Eric and his cynical cat Ian on a search for the Ludovician, the force that is threatening his life, and Dr Trey Fidorus, the only man who knows its secrets.

I started this today, only on about page 30 or 40 but it seems like good fun so far

[El Kabong]

She said the following....

“Attempting to define reality is a core feature of authoritarianism,” Mrs. Clinton writes. “This is what the Soviets did when they erased political dissidents from historical photos. This is what happens in George Orwell’s classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, when a torturer holds up four fingers and delivers electric shocks until his prisoner sees five fingers as ordered.
“The goal is to make you question logic and reason and to sow mistrust towards exactly the people we need to rely on: our leaders, the press, experts who seek to guide public policy based on evidence, ourselves,” she continues.

[Batman]

She said the following....

“Attempting to define reality is a core feature of authoritarianism,” Mrs. Clinton writes. “This is what the Soviets did when they erased political dissidents from historical photos. This is what happens in George Orwell’s classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, when a torturer holds up four fingers and delivers electric shocks until his prisoner sees five fingers as ordered.
“The goal is to make you question logic and reason and to sow mistrust towards exactly the people we need to rely on: our leaders, the press, experts who seek to guide public policy based on evidence, ourselves,” she continues.

In that case she is a fool, he wasn't being tortured in order to breed mistrust, he was being conditioned to blindly follow.

The first two thirds of the book is where the mistrust is formed, the final third of the book shows how far The Party are willing to go in order to ensure that blind worship, they forced Winston to abandon every belief he held against The Party and Big Brother, even when he meant it, it still wasn't enough for them, they needed 100% compliance and the only way to do that was to go after the one person he loved, by the end of it there wasn't any room for anyone else other than Big Brother.

[El Kabong]

She said the following....

“Attempting to define reality is a core feature of authoritarianism,” Mrs. Clinton writes. “This is what the Soviets did when they erased political dissidents from historical photos. This is what happens in George Orwell’s classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, when a torturer holds up four fingers and delivers electric shocks until his prisoner sees five fingers as ordered.
“The goal is to make you question logic and reason and to sow mistrust towards exactly the people we need to rely on: our leaders, the press, experts who seek to guide public policy based on evidence, ourselves,” she continues.

In that case she is a fool, he wasn't being tortured in order to breed mistrust, he was being conditioned to blindly follow.

The first two thirds of the book is where the mistrust is formed, the final third of the book shows how far The Party are willing to go in order to ensure that blind worship, they forced Winston to abandon every belief he held against The Party and Big Brother, even when he meant it, it still wasn't enough for them, they needed 100% compliance and the only way to do that was to go after the one person he loved, by the end of it there wasn't any room for anyone else other than Big Brother.

Thank you for the confirmation

[Batman]

Well this took me a week longer than anticipated but that is only cuz I was pretty fucking ill last week and the meds I was on knocked me the fuck out so I was in no fit state to do any reading.

I'm a bit conflicted by this book, some parts of it were extremely well done and pretty fucking clever, other parts (a large chunk at the end) was just outright plagiarism and that bothered me.

Its basically about a bloke who wakes up with no memory at all of who he was, he goes on a voyage of self discovery, falls in love, and has to do battle with a big fuck of conceptual shark that eats memories...yeah

There are some pretty cool sections with 'text imagery' including a few pages of a shark made up of nothing but text, it works pretty well, its like a watered down, easier to read version of Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves.

Once you get to the end you have to go over in your head the whole book that you have just read and try to figure out where it actually begins and if there is a cross over, I'm pretty sure I have got it figured out and after having a quick look online it looks like there is quite a few people that agree with me so I'm pretty satisfied with the conclusion.

I've also just hit my reading challenge for the year, 30 books I've read so far, everything else is just a bonus now.

I'm not overly sure what to delve into next, its out of

First published in serial form as Der Golem in the periodical Die weissen Blätter in 1913–14, The Golem is a haunting Gothic tale of stolen identity and persecution, set in a strange underworld peopled by fantastical characters. The red-headed prostitute Rosina; the junk-dealer Aaron Wassertrum; puppeteers; street musicians; and a deaf-mute silhouette artist.

Lurking in its inhabitants’ subconscious is the Golem, a creature of rabbinical myth. Supposedly a manifestation of all the suffering of the ghetto, it comes to life every 33 years in a room without a door. When the jeweller Athanasius Pernath, suffering from broken dreams and amnesia, sees the Golem, he realises to his terror that the ghostly man of clay shares his own face. . . .

The Golem, though rarely seen, is central to the novel as a representative of the ghetto's own spirit and consciousness, brought to life by the suffering and misery that its inhabitants have endured over the centuries. Perhaps the most memorable figure in the story is the city of Prague itself, recognisable through its landmarks such as the Street of the Alchemists and the Castle.

During the 1950s, Gold Medal Books introduced authors like Jim Thompson, Chester Himes, and David Goodis to a mass readership eager for stories of lowlife and sordid crime. Today many of these writers are admired members of the literary canon, but one of the finest of them of all, Elliott Chaze, remains unjustly obscure. Now, for the first time in half a century, Chaze’s story of doomed love on the run returns to print in a trade paperback edition.

When Tim Sunblade escapes from prison, his sole possession is an infallible plan for the ultimate heist. Trouble is it’s a two-person job. So when he meets Virginia, a curiously well-spoken “ten-dollar tramp,” and discovers that the only thing she cares for is “drifts of money, lumps of it,” he knows he’s met his partner. What he doesn’t suspect is that this lavender-eyed angel might just prove to be his match.

Black Wings Has My Angel careens through a landscape of desperate passion and wild reversals. It is a journey you will never forget.

I'm also tempted to re-read Dantes Divine Comedy (or maybe just Inferno) I'm not decided yet