Now Reading

jeff somers - electric church

michael marshall smith - one of us

neil gaiman - american gods

brooklyn follies

both at the same time: g.i. gurdjieff - meetings with remarkable men & beelzhebub's tales to his grandson

the guy is a genius!!

currently reading two of em actually...depends on my mood.

aldous huxley - doors of perception/heaven and hell

hunter s thompson - kingdom of fear

  thanks robert moses said:

H.P Lovecraft Collection, just finished At The Mountains of Madness. Also, on the side, On Ugliness by Umberto Eco.

HP Lovecraft is brilliant! Many audiobooks freely available online...

a thousand splendid suns

by the dude that wrtote the kite runner.

grim but really good.

  MajaIloveyou said:

"I will shoot at him" said the cyberdemon and he fired the rocket missiles. John plasmaed at him and tried to blew him up. But then the ceiling fell and they were trapped and not able to kill.

"No! I must kill the demons" he shouted

The radio said "No, John. You are the demons"

And then John was a zombie.

rofl

Tove Jansson "the summer book"

Right now I am reading these.

  Etch said:

one of my all time favourite books

  LUDD said:

  Etch said:

 

 

one of my all time favourite books

I havn't finished it yet but it is already quite remarkable.

Just finished:

Salman Rushdie - Fury

Umberto Eco - The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loanna

now reading:

Mark Twain - Tom Sawyer. When I finish that I've got Huckleberry Finn to move onto.

  Etch said:

  LUDD said:

  Etch said:

 

 

one of my all time favourite books

 

I havn't finished it yet but it is already quite remarkable.

It is absolutely fantastic, and you'll want to read it again and again.

Meanwhile I'm reading Crystal Frontiers by Carlos Fuentes, and I'm rekindling my love affair with the poetry of Dylan Thomas after picking up an excellent biography of him in a junk shop.

a fascinating and entertaining read.

  Quote

Amazon.com Review

Scientist, poet, and self-proclaimed Antichrist, Jack Parsons was a bizarre genius whose life reads like an implausible yet irresistible science fiction novel. Sex and Rockets looks at his short life and dual career as cofounder of Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and leader of the Agape Lodge of Aleister Crowley's Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO). Author John Carter scours primary documents and interviews surviving friends and contemporaries to deliver an intriguing portrait of a dreamy, driven man equally interested in rocketry and magick. From his early childhood and deep attachment to his mother (who killed herself hours after he died) through his nonacademic research and brilliant innovations in solid fuels to his mysterious 1952 demise in a garage-laboratory explosion at the age of 37, the reader gets the impression of a man whose obsession with explosives and propellants was nearly single-minded. Yet this same man found spiritual fulfillment through Crowley's Law of Thelema, conducted magickal operations with L. Ron Hubbard, and signed an oath asserting himself to be the Antichrist--clearly Parsons wasn't a boring guy in a white coat. Carter pulls off the difficult task of integrating Parsons's disparate drives into one compelling story; though there are some rough spots and awkward transitions, one gets the sense that this illuminates the man's life better than a smooth, flawless work would. Robert Anton Wilson's introduction is smart and funny as always, initiating the uninformed into the basics of Crowleyanity while placing Parsons in the context of his times. While it might not be possible to read universal themes into Parsons's life, Sex and Rockets is an excellent study of a passionate life fully lived. --Rob Lightner

I bought my own fucking weight in second-hand books this weekend. Amongst others:

The complete verse of Edward Lear

The complete John Clare

Old Angel Midnight by Jack Kerouac

The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell

Ways of Seeing and And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos by John Berger

The Iron Man by Ted Hughes

Some Beatrix Potter stuff and a book of ghost stories set on the Norfolk Broads

And it just goes on and on!

I've just finished reading The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

what a great book, wondering wether to read Islands in the Stream now aswell as both are bundled in one book (borrowed it from the library) but I know that it is widely considered to be one of his weaker efforts

what does WATMM think?

Screwjack by Hunter S Thompson

  dese manz hatin said:

I've just finished reading The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

 

what a great book, wondering wether to read Islands in the Stream now aswell as both are bundled in one book (borrowed it from the library) but I know that it is widely considered to be one of his weaker efforts

 

what does WATMM think?

Definitely stick with Hemingway, try Fiesta/The Sun Also Rises for a great, short, beautiful novel.

I'm reading Ulysses as ever, loads of Dylan Thomas, In The Heart of the Country by JM Coetzee, and If On A Winter's Night A Traveller by Italo Calvino. I'm meant to start on Padre Paramo by Juan Rulfo soon.

some jeanette winterson (the passion), some recent galeano, carole pateman's participation and democratic theory

Biomedical Bestiary: An Epidemiological Guide to Flaws and Fallacies in the Medical Literature

A friend recommended it to me after a discussion about the overzealous use of prescription drugs by lazy or uninformed doctors. Its a pretty interesting read thus far.

  awkward said:

reading all the pretty horses (then the other two border triology books by cormac mccarthy)

all the pretty horses was good but i knew the crossign was goign to be better from the first few pages. it drew me straight in. it made me so sad at the end of part one when

part 2 kinda feels tacked on so far. should have been a short story of the freidnship between a wolf and a boy. but he probably couldnt end it on such a bad note.

I've not read those, I probably should. I like McCarthy from what I've read. The Road (as everyone says) was a starkly beautiful work, and I read Blood Meridian a few weeks ago and really enjoyed it.

  Iain C said:

I've not read those, I probably should. I like McCarthy from what I've read. The Road (as everyone says) was a starkly beautiful work, and I read Blood Meridian a few weeks ago and really enjoyed it.

i've heard 'cities of god' is one of his best and look forward to that next. sounds like you have enough on already though.

the road is great. its so stripped down. he avoids the distractions he sometimes takes pages and pages on which make me sleepy.

they'll have to make it more action based for the movie though i imagine

just finished 'one big damn puzzler' by john harding. funny, salient, timely.

pretty well written, though not the best book i've ever read.

a bit of a page turner though.

regardless of recent perusals, i'd like to say, in this thread in particular... fuck j k rowling and her talentless ramblings for children. fuck her and her books right up the sphincter. fuck them hard and ruthlessly.

i have now read four harry potter books in an attempt to understand the furore, and i finally understand.

the furore relates to an attempt by illiterate aduts to appear literate.

these are childrens' books. poor quality and derivative childrens' books.

(i've nothing against adults reading good childrens' books. i do it myself... narnia.. phantom tolbooth, nicholas and the gang... etc. . harry potter...? give me a fucking break.)

Ah the Phantom Tollbooth. my dear Auntie Pauline gave me a copy when I was very young. Loved it.

Roald Dahl was my favourite when I aws a boy, though.

fuck Harry Potter.