What books are you reading these days?

[Hurlshort]

I grade papers from 12 and 13 year olds for a living, so my definition of horrifying writing may be different than yours. I definitely can't think of a better 15-year old writer out there.

[Pidesco]

We're talking about published fiction that's been read by millions of people, not something written by some random kid in school.

 

 

Also, I'd like to think I was already a better writer than that when I was 15. But that's just biased opinion, of course.

[Baley]

I arrived - at Duxemburg's Mellaho Station at 5 PM on a hot, if not effusively so, day - to the railway management's chirping noises: some child or luggage or whatever (forgive me my lack of attention) had been misplaced and, since M.S. is basically three huts and a rail-line, a tussle had been made and a search brigade formed. A woman of certain charms, her real name exempt, had been hired to accompany me... to act as a guide, if you will (and if you have to call her something, it might as well be Diane). She was holding a banner with my named spelled in Q-tips. I chose not to ask why.

 

(I'll spare you our drab hotel memoirs - suffice to say, I didn't get a room.)

 

Duxemburg is (consummately) a College town. Trustafarian, hipsters, and other artsy types speckle the environment. It's inner groove is artistic... artistic with a heavy dose of pretension, of course, and youthful pomp. As you walk through its streets you notice its inhabitants almost forcibly... they stand out, individually, yet as a whole enact some bizarre romp, as if each had a part reserved, but suddenly and on-the-spot decided to swap clothes and assert their individuality.

 

Diane said I should cover this local band - I bobbed my head hastily in a-yes-mam-fashion - called Seize The Nintendo Controller. "Indie Rock?" I enquired (with a tinge of hah-hah, sarcasm, hah-hah). She was not amused.

 

(They were - well - I'll detail: limp-wristed alt-country with emphasis on the "alt" and a singer aping Tex Williams, replace God with Woman.)

 

I left after three suicide-themed howlers and a ballad to a baby girl. Diane followed. I said "I think it's time we hit the festival". To that she would respond, of course, nagging me... "superiority complex"... "smug"... "continually disappointed"... "an act, a sham". I entertained that possibility for a second or so - it felt like the right thing to do - and then proceeded to nod my head to the beat of her monologue... still, I followed her traipse; her walk.. it's pretty and feminine with an ounce of arrogance and all that, but I didn't give it much notice apart from the fleeing thought here-and-there.

 

The festival... as corny and artsy as the town itself, if not more so. The usual indie dolls, silent titans, and sacred monsters. I had a word with this chap who directed something-or-other, and I smiled at this girl who talked crap about this-and-that. There were book-sales, indie-hoppers, and alt-theatrics; there were professors, students, and loiters; there were girls and boys and girl and boys and rinse repeat.

 

I bought a second hand Vonnegut; Diane frowned. I was calm and casual and buddy-buddy; she wasn't impressed. As we were leaving, I asked if she wanted some java, a drink perhaps. She said she didn't and that I am supposed to be going now (away away away). "There's no rush." "Yes, there is."

 

So she bought me a ticket and tucked me fondly in this second-rate compartment and that was that. Goodbye. Goodbye.

 

(She waved. I waved.)

 

 

Refugee Blues by W. H. Auden

 

Say this city has ten million souls,

Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes:

Yet there's no place for us, my dear, yet there's no place for us.

 

Once we had a country and we thought it fair,

Look in the atlas and you'll find it there:

We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there now.

 

In the village churchyard there grows an old yew,

Every spring it blossoms anew:

Old passports can't do that, my dear, old passports can't do that.

 

The consul banged the table and said,

"If you've got no passport you're officially dead":

But we are still alive, my dear, but we are still alive.

 

Went to a committee; they offered me a chair;

Asked me politely to return next year:

But where shall we go to-day, my dear, but where shall we go to-day?

 

Came to a public meeting; the speaker got up and said;

"If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread":

He was talking of you and me, my dear, he was talking of you and me.

 

Thought I heard the thunder rumbling in the sky;

It was Hitler over Europe, saying, "They must die":

O we were in his mind, my dear, O we were in his mind.

 

Saw a poodle in a jacket fastened with a pin,

Saw a door opened and a cat let in:

But they weren't German Jews, my dear, but they weren't German Jews.

 

Went down the harbour and stood upon the quay,

Saw the fish swimming as if they were free:

Only ten feet away, my dear, only ten feet away.

 

Walked through a wood, saw the birds in the trees;

They had no politicians and sang at their ease:

They weren't the human race, my dear, they weren't the human race.

 

Dreamed I saw a building with a thousand floors,

A thousand windows and a thousand doors:

Not one of them was ours, my dear, not one of them was ours.

 

Stood on a great plain in the falling snow;

Ten thousand soldiers marched to and fro:

Looking for you and me, my dear, looking for you and me.

 

And as for what I wish I were reading, Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje.

[metadigital]

in the last couple of months:

Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoevsky)

Communist Manifesto (Marx and Engels)

Common Sense (Thomas Paine)

Thomas Paine's The Rights of Man (Christopher Hitchens)

On the Suffering of the World (Arthur Schopenhauer)

Teach Yourself Jung (as tangential background information for another book I am currently reading: The Seven Basic Plots (Christopher Booker))

An Attack on an Enemy of Freedom (Cicero).

I have a subscription to New Scientist and Scientific American

[Kaftan Barlast]

Last book I read was Guilou's "Madame Terror" on a plane, I wish I would have picked something a little more... worth reading but I cant really focus on something like "Brothers Karamasov" with a baby vomiting next to me and engine noise at 80db ringing in my ears

 

 

(regarding that book- dont read it. its the litterary equivalent of a McDonalds meal. It goes right through you and leaves you wondering wether those 3hours would have been better spent starng on a cloud and drooling )

[The Illuminator]

I've finished Diablo's ''Legacy of Blood'' today. It's an exciting novel forming further curiosities with its every new page, but also includes some logic mistakes too.

[Colrom]

I stalled on Foucault's Pendulum and am reading language books these days.  The last full book I read was Angurgapi: The Witch Hunts in Iceland.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

So did I. Thanks for the reminder though. I need to try again.

[Draken]

Stories from The Vinyl Cafe.

 

^_^

[ScottishMartialArts]

Stuff I've read been reading in the past two weeks:

 

Metamorphoses - Ovid (Gregory trans.)

Theogony and Works and Days - Hesiod (West trans.)

Homeric Hymns (Cashford trans)

Iliad - Homer (Lattimore trans)

A Short Introduction to Classical Myth - Powell

The Republic - Plato (Bloom trans.)

Complete Plays of Sophocles (Jebb trans)

[Nartwak]

My power was out for a few days so I read through The Hobbit yesterday, and through Myths to Live By by Joseph Campbell a few times over the previous days. Sort of thin pickings. There's going to be another wind storm tonight though, so I'm probably going to be without power again! Woo, more reading by lantern light!

[Big Bottom]

I'm currently reading Northern Lights (or Golden Compass for the yanks) and I'm enjoying it so far. I have a mountain of books I'd like to read, including about half a dozen Discworld books and a couple of autobiographies, but I'm a hopeless internet addict so I don't have a lot of book-time alloted.

[Oerwinde]

I'm currently reading Northern Lights (or Golden Compass for the yanks) and I'm enjoying it so far.  I have a mountain of books I'd like to read, including about half a dozen Discworld books and a couple of autobiographies, but I'm a hopeless internet addict so I don't have a lot of book-time alloted.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I'm a big fan of the His Dark Materials trilogy. They were pretty dark considering they're apparently sposed to be kids books. I liked the whole religion is the villain angle too.

 

I'm currently re-reading the wheel of time books now that Knife of Dreams is out in paperback. Its been 2 years since I read Crossroads of Twilight so now the only thing I really remember is how I felt about each book.

 

1:Good, 2: Really good, 3: Good, 4:Pretty good, 5: Pretty good, 6: OK, 7: OK, 8: OK, 9:Half Decent, 10: 800 pages of nothing.

 

Apparently the new one makes up for book 10 though.