New now reading

[KeithPratt]

[hippopotamus]

I got this as an audiobook yesterday because so many people had recommended it to me



It's not, by any means, great literature... but I can hardly complain too much as i'm 10 chapters in already.
It's also as if someone was narrating my life. It's a bit eerie. It also fascinates me that this is something people would like to read about... it's Exactly my life, and several of the anecdotes have actually happened to me almost verbatim. I do think it's a worthwhile thing to have published with the intention of giving people a very honest look into the inner workings of the NHS. I guess people don't really know how it works. I'm considering making all my friends and family read it so that they finally understand what I'm talking about all the time



I'm reading another book that looks exactly like this, and thereofre is a little bit less portable, but more real.

IT's a memoir of J M Barrie, originally published just for friends and family. I absolutely love it. I absolutely love him.
It's such a lovely thing.

Each chapter begins with one of his earlier articles he published as a free-lance journalist, and then finishes with how he came to write it, where he was in life when he wrote it, and what it was like to be so full of ambition, young and eager to please.

The books aren't Entirely dissimilar, I notice on reflection... though written about an age more than 100 years apart.

[copehead]

Just finished: How Not To Be a Boy by Robert Webb
Very funny and quite heartbreaking in places, the story of how he grew up in rural Lincolnshire and his thoughts on masculinity and patriarchy.

He imagines the construct of British masculinity as Frankenstein's monster that has Herr Doktor bent over and is fucking him while the good Doktor says " I'm OK, honestly I'm fine"

[Snarfyguy]

^^^ Might have to skip that one.



Barrel of laughs, as you might imagine.

[clive gash]

Fisher was a fine writer, his other books are very worthwhile.

[clive gash]

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/ ... -the-bardo

Yay!

[Penk!]

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/oct/17/man-booker-prize-2017-second-american-author-george-saunders-lincoln-in-the-bardo

Yay!

I read it over the weekend, a splendid book.

A tad short though, for a Booker winner? Its 300-odd pages are really only about 100 given that there is so much blank space (it's laid out as a series of quotations and citations).

[clive gash]

It took me a while to get into it. The audiobook is really good too, a cast of thousands

https://www.wired.com/2017/02/george-sa ... audiobook/

Pastoralia blew my mind.

[Darkness_Fish]

Pah, forget the booker, some of us only read Nobel prize winners. *Picks up Dylan album liner notes, looks puzzled*

[Minnie the Minx]

I'm reading 'Behind the Beautiful Forevers' by Katherine Boo. I hadn't intended to buy it but they didn't have the book I wanted. It's drop dead wonderful.

[Deebank]

I got this because it looked interesting rather than because I'm a fan of his music as such...



The first half is about his music career (which is OK although given the subtitle I expected more nerdy info about analogue synthesisers) while the second reveals that TD invented music over the internet (as well as auto-tune!) and facilitated the Nokia waltz with the various technologies he developed.

It's not as interesting as it sounds.

This was better...



Allan Jones revists his 'greatest hits' plenty of top notch anecdotery.

I like Johnny Marr - he is a brilliant guitarist and always seemed like a good guy (ripping off band mates notwithstanding) but I am really starting to tire of his 'voice' in this...



Perhaps it's because I don't have much sympathy with the idea that Modest Mouse are the best band he's ever been in (perhaps he said the most fun he ever had in a band which is different to be fair). I'm finding the last part of this biog to be a slog.

[harvey k-tel]

I don't know how many of you are familiar with Baker's writing, but he specializes in the minutiae of daily life. This is, as I'm about a third of the way through, one of his best that I've read.

[Darkness_Fish]

A rear page turner.

You only read the end? Or the last page was upside down?

[Darkness_Fish]

I guess it was rebranded as a 'suspense' thriller...

[Darkness_Fish]

[Minnie the Minx]

I'm reading 'Behind the Beautiful Forevers' by Katherine Boo. I hadn't intended to buy it but they didn't have the book I wanted. It's drop dead wonderful.

I finished this gorgeous book last night. I sincerely recommend it. It's quite something.

[Jimbo]

Just started this audio tonight at the gym. It's part two in a 1920s, family feud, gangsters, cops and politics drama that so far is eminently listenable and compelling.



I started this but then returned it because while I like red neck-y, hillbilly, backwoods stories, these characters were just too fucked up to be believable.

[harvey k-tel]

I don't know how many of you are familiar with Baker's writing, but he specializes in the minutiae of daily life. This is, as I'm about a third of the way through, one of his best that I've read.

Just finished this last night, and I'm tempted to re-read it again immediately. It's really about nothing, but his small observations on daily life drew me right in.

I thought his theory that bad dreams are the body's way of letting us know we need to wake up to urinate was especially intriguing.

[Snarfyguy]

I don't know how many of you are familiar with Baker's writing, but he specializes in the minutiae of daily life. This is, as I'm about a third of the way through, one of his best that I've read.

Just finished this last night, and I'm tempted to re-read it again immediately. It's really about nothing, but his small observations on daily life drew me right in.

I thought his theory that bad dreams are the body's way of letting us know we need to wake up to urinate was especially intriguing.

Thanks for the recommendation. I've read and enjoyed one or two of his, so I'll grab this one when I see it.

[Neige]

One of the books I devoured in my holidays:



I had never bothered with Cloud Atlas, because I'd seen the film (which didn't really work for me) and hate reading books when images (and the actors playing the characters) are already stuck in my mind, but then I figured I'd give this a try.

I thought it was indeed fantastic, a stylistic tour de force, a riveting read and a real page turner. Any fans - and any suggestion on what I should pick up next?