What Book Are You Currently Reading ?

[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.
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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