What you Reading at the mo?

[Ady]

i'm sure theres a few bookworms on here-so what you reading then(well apart from this text) as in book form?

i'm currently reading the flashman books....all about a soldier in the 18th century......and is he a hero? nahhhh of course not! he's a womaniser,drinker,bully and ultimatly a coward,its good fun as he gets mixed up in real events of the time and manages to get away with murder.

[mutlien]

I'm reading 'His Dark Materials'.... in fairness, I've been trying to get through this monstrosity for 4 months - I really don't know why I'm bothering! I quite like the story, however the writing is poor as poor can be.

I find myself starting to seeth every time the word 'presently' appears, which is about every 2/3 pages, which is why I still haven't finished it.

During this mammoth reading experience, I've read others... Shadow of the Wind, Heart Shaped Box, Angels, Tales of the Witch-House and other stories, plus the usual Pratchett / Barker / Gaiman books.. All good!

Anyone got any recommendations for a good read? I've quite a wide variety of interests so something different...

[Gubbins]

I'm reading The Gun Seller by Hugh Laurie at the moment. (No I didn't know he did either) It's alright. Very readable but not really that much substance. It's also possibly the smuggest book I've EVER read, I can see him sitting at his desk, typing furiously with one hand and masturbating furiously into a mirror with the other.

I've also been slowly going over The Doors of Perception for the last couple of months. I know it's really short but I can never be bothered to read more than three or four pages at a time for some reason.

The Dark Materials books were great I thought. Bit worried about the film, I don't think I'll see it.

[ChrisLuxford]

i'm currently reading the flashman books.

Never read any of those. I know of the character of course, from Tom Brown's Schooldays, but have never read any of the Flashman series (different author to his first appearance, but you knew that already). Captain Sensible's a big fan apparently, The Damned used to call their information service The Flashman Society.

[ChrisLuxford]

I'm currently reading Novel With Cocaine by M Ageyev.

It's a first peson account of a teenager in Moscow in the years either side of te Russian Revolution. The protagonist is being brought up as a bourgeouise, but for reasons that aren't explained, his family are actually quite poor. The book is unique in covering the years 1916-1919 without actually mentineing the fact of the Bolshevik Revolution. mostly because the central chaacters are all teenagers so sex and drugs are far more important to them than all that political stuff.

Nobody knows who M Ageyev was. The book was originally published in serial form in a Russian Emigre magazine in Paris in the 1930s.

[Meenie]

I am reading SAS the soldiers story by Jack Ramsay,not usually my kind of thing,a mate lent it to me and i'm enjoying it thoroughly.

[schlep]

I'm reading a comic book!
Bizarro comics from the 1930's by Fletcher Hanks, collected as "I Will Destroy All the Civilized Planets!"

Hanks is sort of the Ed Wood Jr of comics; his main protagonists are Stardust, a sort of intergalactic Tom of Finland type,


who detects the evil plans of earthbound gangsters and arrives in a flash of light to undo their damage and punish them in certain ways; VILE ways.



And Fantomah, "Mystery Woman of the Jungle", who likewise, with supernatural powers, protects her local innocent jungle inhabitants from bad guys in pith hats by morphing a skull face,

flying around undoing the damage, and punishing them likewise, in vile ways.

It's really primal and crude but the language and images are so weird and eerily beautiful, it's worthy of laudation!
Funny how Hanks was seemingly obsessed in 1939 with the idea of gangs of evil terrorists plotting to destroy New York with bombs, and take over the USA. Like a subconscious recurring national nightmare...

[psparky27]

Yep comics for me too... I just managed to resirect my old Tintin and Asterix books out of my dads loft. There in a bad state but better than buying new ones.

There making a TIntin film next year wonder who will play Captain Haddock?

[Ally Craig]

I've been reading "The Timewaster Diaries" by Robin Cooper (pen name of Robert Popper from Look Around You), so far it's hilarious. His previous book ("The Timewaster Letters", in which he would... well, write time-wasting letters to various organisations) got a bit monotonous after a while, but the Diaries really flesh out the character and give the jokes more space. I particularly like the surrealism of him using certain phrases or references that are completely imaginary, as if the audience are meant to know what he's on about - such as naming his pet pigeon Smithy after "the famous cartoon character Smithy the Woodpecker", which he later realises is actually called Woodsy (sic) Woodpecker... it tickles me just right, anyhow.

[schlep]

Yep comics for me too... I just managed to resirect my old Tintin and Asterix books out of my dads loft. There in a bad state but better than buying new ones.

There making a TIntin film next year wonder who will play Captain Haddock?

You could draw the beard and captain's hat with magic marker on squinty Geoffrey Rush here:

Maybe Snowy could be played in capture-motion by that guy who was Gollum

[psparky27]

good one schlep Do you think he would get the " thousands of thundering blistering blue barnicles" right though?

[steve adams]

im flicking through
ian glaspers book the day the country died
about the anarchist punk scene
from 1980 to 1984,
plus shakespears winters tale
for what im doing with in situ,
plus this months uncut magazine
which is good to read on the bog
along with private eye magazine

[Damian]

I'm reading "Rude Kids: The Unfeasible Story of Viz". Great book.

[Pet Lamb]

I'm currently re-reading 'Saint Camber' by Katherine Kurtz...and will be going on to Bill Bryson's book on Shakespeare after that...

[Greyhound]

I'm reading 'His Dark Materials'.... in fairness, I've been trying to get through this monstrosity for 4 months - I really don't know why I'm bothering! I quite like the story, however the writing is poor as poor can be.

Anyone got any recommendations for a good read? I've quite a wide variety of interests so something different...

I just finished reading HDM for the second time (Had to get another read in so I can be hyper-critical of the forthcoming film(s)). I personally love this not-really-for-kidz-it's-for-us-grown-ups-innit trilogy. My only gripe was that I thought the ending was a bit rushed.

If you like fantasy fiction I recommend The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe. It's set a million years in the future and is about a disgraced torturer who's exiled from his guild 'cause he went and fell in love with one of his victims. Many adventures ensue.

I'm reading One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night by Christopher Brookmyre, 'cause all his books are consistantly hilarious.