what are you reading now?

IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
"I didn't know he'd killed himself. He was from my mother's hometown, which makes me want to like him."
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I think he lived alone and shot himself in the head. Body was found a month or so later.
 
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BareBones

wheezy
I'm reading celine's 'journey to the end of the night' after a few people recommended it in that top ten books thread and it is absolutely brilliant. so bitter and pessimistic and angry. sample quote:

"The old men from the charity hospital next door would come jerking past our rooms, making useless, disjointed leaps. They'd go from room to room, spitting out gossip between their decayed teeth, purveying scraps of malignant, worn-out slander. Cloistered in their official misery as in an oozing dungeon, those aged workers ruminated the layer of shit that long years of servitude desposit on men's souls. Impotent hatreds grown rancid in the pissy idleness of dormitories. They employed their last quavering energies in hurting each other a little more, in destroying what little pleasure and life they had left."
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Céline said:
"The old men from the charity hospital next door would come jerking past our rooms, making useless, disjointed leaps. They'd go from room to room, spitting out gossip between their decayed teeth, purveying scraps of malignant, worn-out slander. Cloistered in their official misery as in an oozing dungeon, those aged workers ruminated the layer of shit that long years of servitude desposit on men's souls. Impotent hatreds grown rancid in the pissy idleness of dormitories. They employed their last quavering energies in hurting each other a little more, in destroying what little pleasure and life they had left."
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So yeah, when I said 'silly and light-hearted', this is pretty much what I had in mind...

Edit: one thing I've found in fiction is that if you want to write something harrowing, haunting and bleak, the topic of mental illness is (unsurprisingly) pretty much the most effective thing going. Moreso than war, even, though of course the one often leads to the other.
 
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michael

Bring out the vacuum
Brother Randy Hickey said:
i had the same problem with Independence Day. All rather meh
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I wondered with The Sportswriter whether the possible interest / impact had diminished over time, but OTOH a self-deluded narrator who's a bit of an asshole and spends a huge amount of the book mulling over his problems with little insight is never going to be that much fun.
 
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Brother Randy Hickey

formerly Dubversion
michael said:
I wondered with The Sportswriter whether the possible interest / impact had diminished over time, but OTOH a self-deluded narrator who's a bit of an asshole and spends a huge amount of the book mulling over his problems with little insight is never going to be that much fun.
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quite. If the navel gazing is going to be that protracted, I want some conclusions, not American Dream angst and whining
 
john eden

john eden

male pale and stale
Gordon Carr - The Angry Brigade
Mary Whitehouse - Whatever Happened To Sex?
Jah Wobble - Memoirs of a Geezer
 
STN

STN

sou'wester
That is the most typically John Eden list of books I have ever seen.

Once I've finished The Peregrine I am going to start Children of the Sun. Woo!

So far The Peregrine is very good, people.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
my opinion=maybe if you can read french celine is good. in english its boring. ive read the one you're reading, death on installement and guignols band.
 
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Brother Randy Hickey

formerly Dubversion
Actually, I picked it up yesterday. And packed it into a box to be moved to yet another house where it will sit on the shelf and I won't get round to reading it. See also Underworld by Don DeLillo (nobody gets past chapter one).
 
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