books, books, books

Otis Westinghouse · Post by **Otis Westinghouse** » Fri May 25, 2007 2:15 am

I can relate to the sleep bit, and only alcohol or extreme tiredness will prevent me from reading something and then, after lights out, listening to something, but eating? So she comes into the house, dinner's being served, and she says 'wait, three paragrpahs and I'll be there!'?

My problem is that the pre-sleep slot is often the only one where I read. No commute other than a bike read, and somehow can't settle down to a book in the evening normally. It's beginning to depress me. I was reflecting with a fellow Beckett-lover the other day how in the space of one Easter holiday as a student I read most of his longer prose works one after the other, about 7 or 8 books. And I did the same with other writers too. And I was reading them properly and scribbling notes. I just don'thave that processing speed anymore, or at least enjoy taking it in slowly too much to want to read like that.

At the moment my reading is all Bowie-fixated. Getting to the end of the generally excellent and very engrossing David Buckley Strange Fascination biog, but this week got what is often regarded as 'The Bowie Bible', the reference work The Companion to DB by Nicholas Pegg. It starts with an A to Z of every song he's done, done with others, covered on tour, etc. Then good detailed sections on all the LPs. Then the tours. A fantastic timeline at the end. I could spend weeks with it. Though I'm ready for a good novel or two.

verbal gymnastics · Post by **verbal gymnastics** » Fri May 25, 2007 6:01 am

I'm currently reading Frank Skinner's autobigraphy. He has some great stories. He is one of my favourite comedians and I was pleased to be at the show when Michael Aspel did This Is Your Life.

I remember chatting to Frank afterwards at the front of the stage and congratulating him. I told him seeing him at the London Palladium was a far cry from seeing him at the Woolwich Tramshed. He seemed genuinely pleased that I had supported him for so many years.

mood swung · Post by **mood swung** » Fri May 25, 2007 7:39 am

(unfortunately she keeps rereading "The Devil Wears Prada").

hey, reading is reading. let's not be snobby.

I can relate to the eating and reading - I wrecked a borrowed Nancy Drew while eating an orange once. My eyes tend to wander towards the newspaper at dinner, but I try not to be rude. I generally read while everybody else is watching tv, unless House is on, but I can't read in bed at all. Or horizontally. I go right to sleep. The exception being when I'm sick, and sometimes I wish I was sick so I could spend the whole day in bed with a good book and no interruptions.

Otis Westinghouse · Post by **Otis Westinghouse** » Fri May 25, 2007 4:16 pm

The downside of being sick is that you think you can read away and actually quite enjoy it, but then it hits you that you're sick and you end up going to sleep and feeling sorry for yourself.

Mechanical Grace · Post by **Mechanical Grace** » Fri May 25, 2007 6:39 pm

...you will not need to mention it a third time

Oopsy. Hope you enjoy it, after all that, then!

Who Shot Sam? · Post by **Who Shot Sam?** » Thu May 31, 2007 10:37 pm

I'm reading this at the moment. A fictionalized account of the legendary English football manager Brian Clough's brief, tumultuous, alchohol-fueled tenure at Leeds United. Really one of the best things I've read in a long long time, and not just as a football book.

martinfoyle · Post by **martinfoyle** » Sun Jun 17, 2007 4:54 pm

Well, well, great minds think alike. Since I usually only read American crime pulp fiction I rarely check out this thread. Last friday I needed a 3rd book to make up a 3for2 deal at Waterstones and decided to give the Clough book ago since there's a film being made of it by Stephen Frears. It really is an astonishing read. Like the equally superlative Friday Night Lights tv series, you dont have to be a sports fan to enjoy it. Aparrently Frears hopes to get Michael Sheen to play Clough, that would be fascinating.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Damned-Utd-Davi ... 225&sr=1-1

miss buenos aires · Post by **miss buenos aires** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 10:20 am

My sister just got me Nathan Englander's "The Ministry of Special Cases," which I heartily recommend. It's about a Jewish couple whose son gets disappeared during Argentina's Dirty War in the 70's. Very well-crafted, if a bit "novel-y" at times with the symbolism and whatnot.

I just got my dad Michael Chabon's "The Yiddish Policeman's Union," an alternate history novel in which the Jews have gotten part of Alaska instead of Palestine after WWII. I don't know that much more about it, as I've been not reading reviews, knowing that I would buy it for my dad and then borrow it soon after.

pophead2k · Post by **pophead2k** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 11:44 am

MBA, I got the Chabon book a month or so ago but am saving it for an actual flight to Alaska I'm taking this week. I figured the timing would be perfect.

Otis Westinghouse · Post by **Otis Westinghouse** » Sat Jun 23, 2007 6:10 pm

I really wanna read Cavalier and Clay or whatever it is. Someone gave me Wonder Boys. I love the film, should I read the book, or do C & C first?

Just finished Patrck McCabe's Breakfast on Pluto.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Breakfast-Pluto ... 742&sr=8-3

I started off enjoying this and thinking it would really impress me (it has some seriously hyped-up critics' claims on the jacket), but it ended up disappointing me. despite being only 200 pages, many of which are short ones duew to 56 chapters and several unnumbered interludes. Should be a one or two sitting book, but I found its devices wearisome: the voice of Pussy Braden grated after a few pages, the exclamation marks ar einsufferable, the juxtaposition of transvestite hooker and the IRA and the 'troubles' seems like it's going to lead to something and it doesn't really, and I found the net result a frustraiting shallowness that made me think 'so what?' Did I miss something? Shoud I read Butcher's Boy or Dead School? I have the latter and it is way longer, so am wary.

Jackson Monk · Post by **Jackson Monk** » Sat Jun 23, 2007 6:15 pm

Who Shot Sam? wrote:I'm reading this at the moment. A fictionalized account of the legendary English football manager Brian Clough's brief, tumultuous, alchohol-fueled tenure at Leeds United. Really one of the best things I've read in a long long time, and not just as a football book.

I'm going to get this for my hols. I've heard lots of good things about it. Love the old story about Clough dissing the Utd players on his first day at the club.....the man was a legend.

Who Shot Sam? · Post by **Who Shot Sam?** » Sat Jun 23, 2007 7:52 pm

Great book. Hope you like it.

Otis Westinghouse · Post by **Otis Westinghouse** » Sun Jun 24, 2007 9:43 am

I needed something light and fun after struggling through Pat McCabe. This is perfect. As a Lab owner, I can relate to every moment of this, even if Marley is quite a bit madder than our Rudy.

Funny that both Amazon UK and US have very high ratings, but each has a self-righteous one starrer who berates the author and wife for being poor dog owners.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Marley-Me-Life- ... 994&sr=1-1

Tim(e) · Post by **Tim(e)** » Mon Jun 25, 2007 8:24 am

As a Lab owner,...

What, you are into animal testing and then read books like this to get your jollies??? You are a sick and twisted person Otis!

Otis Westinghouse · Post by **Otis Westinghouse** » Mon Jun 25, 2007 12:17 pm

And me a Morrissey fan...

miss buenos aires · Post by **miss buenos aires** » Tue Jun 26, 2007 12:26 pm

Finally getting around to Everything is Illuminated after buying it for 50 cents at a church. Imagine my surprise upon finding that it is actually quite well written and engaging...

Otis Westinghouse · Post by **Otis Westinghouse** » Tue Jun 26, 2007 1:11 pm

Very appropriate that you should buy it in a church.

alexv · Post by **alexv** » Fri Jun 29, 2007 11:57 am

â€œThe Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waughâ€

Mechanical Grace · Post by **Mechanical Grace** » Fri Jun 29, 2007 1:07 pm

I'm so, *so* glad to take the blame for this, and even more, I'm glad you enjoyed the letters. I laughed out loud just reading those excerpts (Lloyd George and Stalin made me choke on my iced coffee). Their combined voice is utterly addictive, no?

Glad you mentioned about 'Boots' Connolly, I always loved that.

alexv wrote:Waugh and Mitford on brother/sister love:

Mitford: [commenting on a brother/sister relationship in one of Waughâ€™s novels that seemed to imply something more] Now, Evelyn seriously, do you think being brother and sister would really have stopped them marrying? I call this rather naif.

Waugh: Your odious letter was on my breakfast table on the morning of my 60th birthday. Your family, if reports at the time were true, were peculiarly tolerant of incest. It is a taboo deeply rooted in the most heathen. I do not think morals have declined much since the age when Byron was driven from the country.

Mitford: I love you passionately and copy you slavishly as you very well know and certainly didnâ€™t mean to be odious...As for incest, what about all this ear-nibbling? Oh come!

The book that brought this on was Waugh's Put Out More Flags, which in my opinion is his best satire, hands down. (Best satire because Brideshead--to which Waugh referred as M.O., for Magnum Opus, even as he was writing it-- goes beyond that, gorgeously mixing satire and romance within a story that's really about faith and piety). As with Brideshead, there are chunks of POMF I can recite from memory, I've read it so many times.

I feel much better knowing I've helped someone else has enjoy this stuff as much as I have-- thank you!

alexv · Post by **alexv** » Fri Jun 29, 2007 7:17 pm

I never read Brideshead, just saw the Masterpiece Theater production from the early 80s, I guess. I remember that as I watched it, I was puzzled by two things: the Charles Ryder character and the mother. I found Ryder's infatuation with the family incomprehensible. He seemed accomplished and they were just layabout aristocrats. I was completely innocent at the time to importance of class and aristocracy in English life. I was also puzzled by the mother, and found her completely objectionable: I held her responsible for Sebastian's tragic end. And I could not get the whole Catholic thing. I had been raised a Catholic in name only by atheist parents in a communist society, so I just could not understand the emphasis that Waugh gave it. The death scene with Olivier was one that had me pulling for him to send the whole group away. Anyway, since then a lot of this stuff came together and made sense, but it wasn't until I read the letters that I realized how important the Catholic angle was to Waugh and how Ryder's infatuation was pretty much a fictionalized account of Waugh's very real infatuation with that aristocratic family he took up with in his early 20s. It's a story (I'm really basing this on the dramatization) that has not aged well. Seems dated to me now, almost anachronistic. I'm going to try Vile Bodies, assuming it's one of his true early satires. Makes sense?

Otis Westinghouse · Post by **Otis Westinghouse** » Sat Jun 30, 2007 4:04 am

So Put Out More Flags involves characters from the earlier Decline and Fall, Vile Bodies and Black Mischief, right?

I've never read any Waugh, but might get around to it one day... I always fancied Scoop. What's that like?

I get terribly confused with the Mitfords. There must be a brain function that makies people good at holding family databses in their brain. My wife has it in spades and is fascinated by the Mitfords, my mum too, I just don't and get confused. This helps:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitford_sisters

So is Charlotte daughter of Diana M and Britain's nearest thing to Hitler, Oswald Mosely?

Unity Valkyrie Mitford! No wonder she was a whacko nutjob.

alexv · Post by **alexv** » Sat Jun 30, 2007 9:19 am

Yes, never name a child Unity. The Mitford girls are unique to say the least. Think about it, one of them married a proto-fascist, and the other, Miss Unity, was in love with a real fascist (the man himself, Hilter), shot herself in the head, survived for a while and then died. Nancy, whom I love from reading these letters (she was a darn good looking woman, which helps), first married a homosexual (I think she had conversion fantasies), then married "Prod" who is another of the fascinating characters in these letters. You never hear him, just hear of him. Prod was an aristrocratic playboy who married Nancy and then abandoned her for fun and adventure, coming back only for money and when he needed to crash. She stayed married to him for the rest of her life, even after she fell in love with "The Colonel", her French (frog as Waugh would say) lover, and the true love of her life (he was unfaithful to Nancy throughout their long dalliance, and, after she got cancer, finally left her to marry another woman. Nice guy). Waugh constantly riffed on The Colonel's Polish ancestry (not a true frog), and on Nancy's Prod problem. He referred to her, officially, as Mrs. Prod. Waugh, mind you, had lover issues himself. As he notes in the letters, his first wife "made a cuckold of me" with one of their friends. He then married Laura (who I think was related to the man who made him a cuckold), whose real passion in life had four legs and produced milk: she loved her cow.

Otis Westinghouse · Post by **Otis Westinghouse** » Sat Jun 30, 2007 11:05 am

alexv wrote:Yes, never name a child Unity.

Nor give it Valkyrie as a middle name! I ain't done the wikiwork, but the Papist (joke: I'm Prod, wife is an Irish Catholic) says Charlotte Mosley will be granddaughter of Diana and Oswald as they only had boys. She also had a colourful tale of Diana and him having such a strong attraction (the night they met?) that they first shagged at a dinner party, presumably with Diana's first husband Bryan Guinness present. Those were the days.

Mechanical Grace · Post by **Mechanical Grace** » Sat Jun 30, 2007 12:04 pm

I can't always keep track of it all myself, despite being fascinated, because I'm horrible with names. Amazing stuff though, ain't it? Poor Nancy, quite tragic in love. Truly faithful, you could argue, to a husband and a lover, and yet neither was faithful to her or appreciated her.

Alexv, you should definitely read Brideshead. Not necessarily because your impressions were tainted by being of a teleplay-- the Grenada (I think?) version was hands-down the MOST faithful and full adaptation of a novel I've ever seen on small or large screen-- but because you'll enjoy the details so much more now, and yes, you'll see the Catholic framework in a whole new light, almost in reverse positive-negative, even.

You're meant to loathe Sebastian's mother and blame her for his downfall, just as you're meant to prefer Lord Marchmain's sane secularism. The point is that faith comes despite these things, and that for Ryder, those feelings cannot, in the end, be denied. Whether one buys the conversion outcome (they are, after all, the "Sacred And Profane Memoirs" of the narrator Charles Ryder) is to me beside the point (I'm not saying it wasn't to you; it's just a common criticism, which I understand but don't agree with). It's all there in the story very strongly; its structure and language make Brideshead one of those books which should make you turn from the last paragraph immediately back to the first, to hear the story with a different ear and be amazed. The writing is so careful and exact it would be a joy on that alone, but there's so much more. The structural detail in Waugh's novels is a wonder, often lost sight of amidst the humor and storytelling.

As to Scoop, it's the favorite of many, and it is undeniably hilarious-- I've read that one a number of times, too-- and more than worth reading. But to my mind, it's a bit more broad, humor-wise, and the satire rests on disdain for certain things more than on a real moral discomfort (how pretentious am I sounding now?), more the province of Joyce Cary, who's often compared, wrongly imo, to Waugh (and mostly, in my experience, by political conservatives who enjoy the shared denigrations, but that's just my experience). Long story short, it's great, and you should definitely read it; I just prefer Put Out More Flags. If you can manage it, Waugh's one of those authors to read chronologically, imo.

Post by **BlueChair** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 7:58 am

I'm about 3/4 of the way through The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon. What a terrific book! I had attempted to read it a few times since buying it five years ago, but always found the first 100 pages or so tedious and hard to get through. But I managed to get over that this time and have had a hard time putting it down.