What are you currently reading?

[Bogey]

I'm reading this fine novel by a Facebook friend.
[asin]184751328X[/asin]

Looks like a cool read, Dave.

[Lake Swan]

Looks like a cool read, Dave.

It's a very cool read. 

[Sergeant Rock]

Sarge

[Karl Henning]

Sarge, I suspect I should read that soon, myself.

[Bogey]

It's a very cool read. 

And available on Kindle!  Complete coolness.  I may take a peek after this read:

[Lake Swan]

This was given to me for my birthday

[asin]078515356X[/asin]

I have never read a graphic novel before, so this will be a unique experience.

I think I've read that but don't remember a thing about it.

[Sergeant Rock]

Sarge, I suspect I should read that soon, myself.

Great novel, lots of fun (and you'll read some dialogue that was used verbatim in the film). Although I don't relate to a thirtysomething guy who can't commit (I was ready to commit at age 14  ) I can relate to many of his "girl" problems, including his Desert Island All-Time Top Five Split-Ups, which, in many ways, reads like my own history: five relationships too, all ending badly or inexplicably, with the fifth resulting in a complete change of direction, leaving university and beginning an unforseen career.

Sarge

[val]

SLAVOJ ZIZEK:        " Plaidoyer en Faveur de l'Intolerance"       (2007)

A very stimulating book discussing certain political aspects of Capitalism in the present phase of globalisation.

[Fëanor]

Gwynne Dyer: Crawling from the Wreckage  Basically a compilation of Dyer's articles about the state of the world, 2000 - 2010, with some additional commentary.  Sure, Dyer is a "liberal"; you got a problem with that??

[Geo Dude]

I'm on the third book in the Gap series, A Dark and Hungry God Arises.  This series gets better and better.

[Lake Swan]

In the Heat of the Night

[Leo K.]

A very wonderful and interesting study (and yet outdated to a degree) that I wasn't aware of until recently, downloaded for iPad.



I found this next book before the above, which is great because it's updated with modern studies.

This handbook is intended as a reference for the student or scholar seeking knowledge of the history and contemporary practice of the cult of the Virgin Mary. It provides new essays that give overviews of particular areas of study - both historical and thematic - together with texts from primary sources and important scholarly articles, some of which appear in English for the first time. The book is divided into five Parts. Part One looks at the Virgin Mary in Earliest Christianity, Part Two focuses on the Middle Ages - the period in which the Virgin's cult developed to its greatest extent. Part Three deals with Mariology, or theological doctrines surrounding the Virgin, such as the Assumption and the Immaculate Conception. Part Four considers traditions of devotion to Mary, including the development of the rosary and Marian apparitions. Part Five examines the image of Mary in Art, Literature, and Film.

[asin]B005ZOFL4Q[/asin]

[Lake Swan]

.[asin]1590171993[/asin]

[Lake Swan]

STONER was so good that I ordered two more John Williams novels.

But for now...

[asin]0061236837[/asin]

[Geo Dude]

I'm on the third book in the Gap series, A Dark and Hungry God Arises.  This series gets better and better.

Now on the fifth and final book in the series.  This has been one of the most rewarding fiction series that I've ever read, though it can be rough going for the light of heart.

[Octave]

A.R. Ammons: COLLECTED POEMS
ISBN: 0393321924

I love this guy's poems.  I was on a real Ammons kick ~1 year ago, but I'm picking this volume back up after a hiatus, and it's become even better on revisitation.  I also plan on reading his SNOW POEMS again.  I guess I find some of his poems a little difficult....maybe.  Maybe quite difficult at times.  I'd like to read some intelligent writing about his work, to gain some context and insight.  The relationship with the natural world, the very shaky line between humans and non-humans, or even between organic life and everything else----this seems to be the territory he keeps plunging back into.  He was also known for his epic long poems, none of which are in this volume.  GARBAGE is a famous one that won awards; I remember being even more taken with SPHERE, if memory serves.  I need to take notes as I read this stuff.

[Mirror Image]

Two books I'm considering at the moment:

[Wakefield]

El cronista de cine (1534 pages)



Cabrera Infante is probably one of the greatest cinema critics in any language and this book collects an important part of his output as a critic. Although he wrote fluently in English (for instance, he co-wrote the script for Richard C. Sarafian's 1971 cult film Vanishing Point), many times his prose in Spanish is quite untranslatable because of his love for palindromes, among other reasons.

[jlaurson]

Ian Fleming
Goldfinger
James Bond - Book 7
Various Publishers

Cover of Penguin edition - the one I have - which is no longer available as hardcover or paper back.

In a word: Trash.

If that sounds harsh, take a whiff of this:

"The encounter put Bond in good humour. For some reason Goldfinger had decided against killing them. He wanted them alive. Soon Bond would know why he wanted them alive but, so long as he did, Bond intended to stay alive on his own terms. Those terms included putting Oddjob and any other Korean firmly in his place, which, in Bond's estimation, was rather lower than apes in the mammalian hierarchy."

Also: the wanna-be classiness of Fleming is unbearable when every champagne Bond drinks is always pink and "ice-cold". Then again, the swill that the poseur Bond thinks is the best would probably best be drunk ice-cold... it probably was Asti Spumante with food coloring.

I loved "Casino Royale" (a culture study of the 50s and the Riviera), I liked "Live and let Die" (a nice look at the Harlem of the 50s), I went along with "Moonraker" (which has little to do with the film of the same name; much of the plot's sub-structure was (badly) recycled in "The World is Not Enough"), "Diamonds Are Forever" was at least better than the film...    "From Russia, with Love" is just excellent (for the genre), and "Dr. No" is weak and preposterous. But "Goldfinger" is shocking. Partly it's because I'm becoming more painfully aware of the tosh Fleming writes: always good-old-England, patronizing, nationalist, narrow-minded, and racist... and so very, very hard trying to describe a desirable, glamorous life-style for the petty bourgeois reader (himself, essentially). And no wonder every f37(*@9ng drink Bond drinks is "ice-cold" "perfectly chilled in ice" and so forth... because Fleming is sweating his b@lls off on Goldeneye, his estate in Jamaica, as he was writing these.

I don't mind racist characters, mind you. The times were different then and we have to respect history for better and worse -- or else we're committing a much greater sin. But I do mind when a writer is projecting his own petty mind on a wanna-be classy act and thinks he is thereby infusing him with all the cool in the world.

Anyway... I'll continue reading them... but the books are beginning to be exasperating. I can TOTALLY understand the critics at the time now... who I always thought were poh-pohing oversensitive academics and pretentious literary wankers. (The kind of person that condemned Monty Python's Life of Brian, say, by calling it a "tenth rate little film" repeatedly.)

Rant over.

[Geo Dude]

I just started The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov.