Author Topic: What are you reading?  (Read 551859 times)

Mr.Mojo

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1025 on: August 24, 2014, 06:59:31 AM »
Becoming a supple leopard

Var City

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1026 on: August 25, 2014, 04:47:09 AM »
I'm reading getbig

By Trotsky

WillGrant

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1027 on: August 25, 2014, 05:07:46 AM »
An oldie but a classic , 1984

dr.chimps

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1028 on: August 28, 2014, 09:30:51 AM »
Oh, I am reading The Friends Of Eddie Coyle by George Higgins.

Pretty cool movie too, check it out.
Agree, on both counts. Was one of Elmore Leonard's favourite books.   

xxxLinda

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1029 on: August 30, 2014, 12:18:14 PM »
Anna Karenina, Tolstoy

I'm re-reading it, this time slowly, because every single word is so beautifully written, even in translation.  I read it once before when I was about 16.  Loved it.  Incredible descriptions of human emotion.  

We all know the ending, she madly throws herself under a train.


...Although I ought be not doing anything remotely promoting things Russian (given the current political mess), I find that I am in the mood for vodka and re-reading crazy-unrequited-love suicides...



I may have to re-read War and Peace next...

madly
xL

The Ugly

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1030 on: August 30, 2014, 01:31:57 PM »
Agree, on both counts. Was one of Elmore Leonard's favourite books.  

Have to check this out. Thanks, fellas.

xxxLinda

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1031 on: August 30, 2014, 02:30:48 PM »
Books as decoration. Nothing new. Shelf Porn runs stuff like this all the time. Books without their DJs? No thanks; can't do it.

ADD: Sorry. That sounded shitty. Just can't do it, is all. Pathology.  


I tend to agree with you on this, I cannot bear books on or for show.  


I cannot handle number 1 bestsellers from some doctor in LA.  I'll buy paperbacks at the Charity Shop or Car Boot or Market in piles of 10 and read most of them.  I donate the ones I thought readable back at the charity shop and do the world a favour and bin the rubbish in the recycling.

What I collect are hardcover reference books and I have collected a library of many hundreds.  I keep the dustjackets nowadays, although I stupidly used to take them off, not knowing they were valuable.   I live in central London and the books I find nowadays and always have been wonderful.  I've sold some first eds at Sotheby's.  I keep looking.  When once in a while I find a really special beautiful book in a secondhand shop, which sometimes takes ages, I then go right through absolutely everything they have hoping that they have the entire lot from that lovely well-read dead person...


Back at quote:  When it's shelving on most walls 12 foot high and six foot across full up, I'm thinking that's not decoration, that's a collection.  I truly love them.  

Plus it's soundproofing, I can no longer hear the neighbours on that side....

And good books in any used condition will continue to accrue value.

Books as decoration:  the funniest and most telling is the one laid prominently right next to the bed...

with mad love
xLinda

The Ugly

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1032 on: August 31, 2014, 08:12:42 PM »
Just finished this yesterday



Finally got around to it, interesting read. Gotta admit, though, Hitchens is a bit difficult for me to follow at times. Some of his phrasing, etc. gets a little too tricky for my feeble mind.

The Ugly

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1033 on: September 01, 2014, 07:35:32 PM »
Couple chapters into Tyson's autobiography. Shit is fascinating.

FitnessFrenzy

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1034 on: September 02, 2014, 08:08:10 AM »
Marcus Aurelius - Meditations

xxxLinda

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1035 on: September 02, 2014, 07:06:49 PM »
Marcus Aurelius - Meditations
I've got a book dealer coming around to buy stuff from me tomorrow.  I have a first edition Marcus Aurelius I hope to get about £50 for.  Oh fuck maybe I ought hang onto it.  I have something signed by Vita Sackville West I thought I'd let go for maybe £100?  I have no idea how to deal with a book dealer, will he log onto the wwwinternet to find out how much stuff is worth?  

I was going to sell him books by the yard, I've got them piled up on their sides shoulder high in the hallway...

I've a few books I know are worth at least £100 each, and I only ever pay £1 per in the Charity Shop.  I've filed all my fiction.  I've put all the children's fiction to one side and all of that can go.  

Also the travel books are worth money, I've hundreds of those and I'm not going anywhere. But if or when I do do in future, I'll google...

Not sure whether I'll sell the cook books, I've so many funny ones: Guess I'll keep the best ones, I've got the hardcover Cooking with Alcohol.  The Art of British Cooking?  I tend to buy books with funny titles...

Health Books:  I've got the concise illustrated massive doctor book.  Also every and any yoga and etc books...  Hundreds of them.


Some of my favourites are the Dancing How-to books from the 30s 40s and 50s and 60s, many of them have pix of the footsteps.

Also I adore some of my elocution manuals:  They have pix of how to hold your lips and mouth to say ohhhhhhh ouuuuuu


I have about 20 or 30 books about manners and mannerisms, all much older than you


xxx

wish me luck with this ephemera man,
think I'll just sell him all the many boxes I have of old magazines and postcards.  Then I'll just let him look at the books....




xxxLinda

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1036 on: September 02, 2014, 07:21:40 PM »
Finally got around to it, interesting read. Gotta admit, though, Hitchens is a bit difficult for me to follow at times. Some of his phrasing, etc. gets a little too tricky for my feeble mind.


this book is on my to-do-immediately list


xxxL

Var City

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1037 on: September 03, 2014, 12:14:37 AM »
i'm working through this one now:


and this book is on my to-do-immediately list


xxxL


syntaxmachine

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1038 on: September 03, 2014, 12:43:16 AM »
Chris Hitchens was a very entertaining pseudointellectual (or perhaps an intellectual who acted very much like a pseudointellectual despite his intelligence). His use of flowery prose and an endless series of rhetorical devices instead of proper argumentation on matters ranging from religion to the Iraq War was seemingly fine-tuned to impress the casual observer and disappoint the thoughtful person giving it critical thought.

Var City

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1039 on: September 06, 2014, 09:08:07 AM »
i've been getting really into this book lately.

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Archer77

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1040 on: September 09, 2014, 07:12:12 AM »
I decided to take a break from non-fiction and read Dune again.   
A

Grape Ape

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1041 on: September 09, 2014, 10:18:56 AM »
I am pilgrim.
Y

FitnessFrenzy

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1042 on: September 13, 2014, 01:13:51 AM »

jillymayr

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1043 on: September 24, 2014, 04:31:09 PM »
the new judge toler marriage book

BB

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1044 on: September 29, 2014, 06:24:50 PM »
Charles Willeford's Hoke Moseley series. Having run short on new Elmore Leonard, I figured I'd go to Miami's closest author to him. Snappy dialog, decent, yet quirky plots, and a warmer feel than many authors. He's my fall reading pick.

While not from the Moseley books, here's a sample from a personal memoir of his -

"In hospital language a patient does not urinate, micturate, pee, piss, or take a leak. He voids. Or, as in my case, he is unable to void.

Hospital jargon is mid-Victorian. My hemorrhoids were not chopped out, hacked away, or operated upon. Instead, my asshole was dilated and debrided. There is no sex talk in a hospital either. Sex organs, male and female, when they are mentioned at all, are discussed formally, as elimination tools; nor is there, apparently, any distinction made between toilets for men and women....

Several years ago, before I ever thought of entering a hospital, a friend told me that a nurse’s aide would give a man a slow handjob for five bucks. Unsurprised at the time, I filed the information away, thinking I might be able to use it in a novel some day. I have been sorry since that I failed to press my friend for details. On the disinterested outside, I had no reason to disbelieve him. But on the inside, watching these harried, grimly smiling nurses’ aides—probably the lowest IQ occupational group of employees in the nation—rushing about inefficiently, but earning every cent of their $2.40 an hour, I wondered vaguely how my friend had gone about getting his slow handjob. He would have had to draw them a picture. However, discounting the denseness of the nurses’ aides understanding, the lack of privacy, the hospital stench, and the permeating reek of indignant death, these factors in combination, drove all thoughts of and about sex from my mind during the two weeks of my stay. ".

If a man can write that gloriously about hospital stays, and his asshole, he can certainly write good pulp.

dr.chimps

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1045 on: October 05, 2014, 04:20:44 PM »
Finished 'Wild at Heart' by Barry Gifford. Yes, it is the basis of the self-same movie, and by an author I was not previously familiar with. Pretty good. Kinda like an affected Elmore Leonard, who does provide a blurb. If I'm being honest, I liked the movie better. The book is spare and well-told, but the movie's over-the-top-ness made it into a more enjoyable experience, albeit a different animal. 7/10

The True Adonis

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1046 on: October 05, 2014, 06:38:09 PM »
Chris Hitchens was a very entertaining pseudointellectual (or perhaps an intellectual who acted very much like a pseudointellectual despite his intelligence). His use of flowery prose and an endless series of rhetorical devices instead of proper argumentation on matters ranging from religion to the Iraq War was seemingly fine-tuned to impress the casual observer and disappoint the thoughtful person giving it critical thought.
::)

Aashish

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1047 on: October 08, 2014, 10:44:54 PM »
Looking forward to the movie coming out in Diwali.

CalvinH

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1048 on: October 17, 2014, 11:26:58 AM »
The Thomas Wood series on Victor the assassin.

James28

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1049 on: October 23, 2014, 08:54:48 AM »
John Grisham - Gray Mountain

First 50-60 pages a bit wonky before hitting his stride and being classical Grisham. Should finish today. No idea what to read after that.
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