Forum: 

What are you reading right now?

Dream King's picture
Submitted by Dream King on

I just finished reading the horror/seriel killer novel Perfume, Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Kolonis and Titus Andronicus.

Right now I am reading An End To Evil as well as Double Indemnity.

Another thread that I'd like

Another thread that I'd like to see brought back from the dead.

A while back I bought a "phablet" and it has facilitated doing something my aging eyes had made difficult: reading on the bus. This first book I read on my device as H. G. Wells' The War In the Air, written in 1907. Very prescient of WWI, and obviously where many of the ideas fleshing out in The Shape of Things To Come started gestating. Also very steampunk in a "future that never was" kind of way. In fact the post-war dystopia of the book would be a great setting for some steampunk fiction. The shockingly casual racisim in the book is pretty amazing from a historical perspective, too. 

"Classic Star Wars: Splinter of the Mind's Eye" by Allan Dean Foster. An interesting little read I picked up a while back and finally got around to reading. Takes place between A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back.

Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley. Have read it about 3 times now over the past 10 yrs. Probably one of the best Arthurian legend novels I've ever read.

About halfway through Dorothy Parker's  "Laments for the Living" and just finished TS Eliot's "Old Possums Book of Practical Cats"  both are excellent

I always seem to have a couple books open. These are what I carried with me in my backpack from Halifax:

The Jerry Cornelius novels by Michael Moorcock. I'm on the second one, but I've already read the first and third since they don't have to be read in order. Super stylish  assassin/spy/scientist/philospher/rock star Jerry never saves the world. He always seems to end it. While having lots of sex., going to parties and spouting witty dialogue.

Kafka's stories. Yeah. typical.

Art of Photoshop. I'm a nerd.

The Complete Spy vs Spy.

Demo by Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan. Just finished this collection of comics. Great stuff. About growing up, making choices, and having weird powers.

Pamphlets and newsletters from all the haunted locations I visited on my trip. I just got back from a haunted tour of the Cariboo. I loved it and highly reccomend it.

A legal statement from my ex's lawyer.  It's compelling....me to respond or face legal action.

Some things stir such powerful feelings in me - call me sentimental.

marquis de sade "crimes of love" translated by urmm... smth coward.

anyways it's a collection of stories. not really gorey or shocking. they're all commercial (he was badly in need of funds at that time) and you feel he is sort of mocking the reader...

the bad boys n girls always got theirs in the end.

i don't really recommend it.

I've run out of stuff to read! I'm reading "The Lost World" by Michael Crichton again. This is the first time in years that I have read a novel more than once. It is a great book though.

"Royal Blood" by Bertram Fields. It's non-fiction looking at who killed the princes in the tower and what sort of person King Richard III really was, his reputation having been blackened by the Tudor monarchs that followed him. It's quite good so far, it's interesting as it's written by a lawyer, bringing a lawyer's perspective to who committed the crime (if the crime was even comitted). Of course, most people don't really care about this crap, but I'm personally obsessed with 15th century England.

I just finished reading "Notes from a Small Island" by Bill Bryson. It's a travel diary of him travelling the length and breadth of Great Britain by means of public transit. It's absolutely hilarious and a real reminder (because his point of view is American) how much of the Canadian character is rooted in England, Wales and Scotland.

I've just jumped into the middle of Iain M Bank's Excession.

Started reading it before I moved here, but didn't bring it with me. But I really want to know the ending! I've read it before, but forgotten how it ends. So I went to White Dwarf and got it.

Brilliant book! As are all his works, both with and without the 'M'.

Read them if you haven't!

No, I've been 'reading' it for nearly a year now. I always seem to get distracted by other, slightly less confusing books.

In addition to my last post, I'm now reading "JUCIED: Wild Times, Rampand 'Roids, Smash Hits and How Baseball Got Big". It's a very eye-opening read.

I re-read Jurassic Park last month.......I had forgotten how much different the movie was. After that, I decided to pick up The Lost World. The movie for that book is even more different. At the moment, I'm reading random ghost stories and will soon be picking up Juiced, which is Jose Canseco blowing the whistle on all the steroid use in Major League Baseball. Should be an interesting read.

I've been meaning to tackle 'The Iliad', and I got about seventy pages in before suddenly realising that I didn't have enough time to read anymore. Hopefully I'll be able to get back to it, because reading The Mission News doesn't really cut it.

Hi Fael,

Sorry cannot remember the name of the Borges book, gave it to a friend who took it to Australia, I will ask when I get a chance.

I have not read any poetry by Borges, funnily it was an excellent book about poetry and poetry's place in society. 

I have read many of his short stories. I especially enjoyed "The lottery in Babylon" and "The house of Asterion"

Just finished

Lawrence Ferlinghetti "Her" - a brilliant semiautobiographical account of his surreal absinthe soaked pursuit of the ideal of woman through the streets of 1950s Paris.         

Ciaran, I'm not familiar with Borges poetry, but just roaming around the net, everyone seems to laud "Dreamtigers" as his best work. Borges himself considered it one of his most personal.

If you remember the name of the book let me know, I'm always interested in his stuff.

Currently reading: Milan Kundera - Immortality

right now: Terry Pratchett's "Fith Elephant" (great book!)

Günter Grass' "ein weites Feld" is still waiting for my attention... maybe i should read it next...

Currently:

Simone De Beauvoir "The Second Sex" - an existential look at the lot of woman in society through recent history.

Robert Denoon Cumming "Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre" - rambles many similar examples

Recently:

Rainer Maria Rilke "Duino Elegies" - some beautiful and melancholy poetry

Keith Ansell-Pearson "Nietzsche on the Genealogy of Morality" - a nut longing for a nonexistent heroic past

Lawrence Ferlinghetti  "Love in The Days of Rage"  - very readable love story set during French student revolt.

Elizabeth U Harding "Kali" - interesting if somewhat fanatical look at the Hindu goddess of life and death, as one trained in applied physics I find some religions seem to be interestingly poetic descriptions of the laws of physics, especially older religions. I still know a lot of how but very little why and probable never will.

John Canaday "Metropolitan Seminars in Art 4: Abstraction" - development of Abstract visual language.

Smash your television its good for you.     

My favorite book of poetry is still Lawrence Ferlinghetti "Pictures of a gone world" - favorite poem "Dada would have liked a day like this" also contains "Not too long" of great big Hungry Eye fame.

PS

Fael,  Borges also wrote a very good book about poetry but cannot remember the title. 

     

"Creation" - Gore Vidal

Dune series - Frank Herbert (for like, the 4th time) - ok this series is cool - every three or four years I read it again BECAUSE I am not the same person and the books always ring through differently.

Reading Huxly's Chrome Yellow atm, it's not as complex as his later works, quite simmilar in it's ease of reading as Brave New World, only rather more entertaining.

the book am reading at the moment is called `sometimes they come back` by stephen king it really good.

its about some kids that come bak from the dead etc REALLY FREAKY.

"World War Two through German Eyes" by James Lucas. Fascinating stuff, if a little depressing. It's hard to watch so many of the same things happening in the U.S. right now and see so many of the same attitudes.

Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen.  Austen is a guilty little pleasure of mine.  At least the books are.  What I've seen of any of the movies doesn't seem to capture her little biting attacks at the various characters.  I refer to them as my guilty pleasure because all the ones I've come across seem to be about some poor uneducated girl who is given over to extended family in hopes of finding a suitable husband.  Anyhoo, they give me a good chuckle.

Swoop

While I'm not usually a fan of Stephen King, I'm currently reading through his Dark Tower series. It's quite good actually. I'm into the fourth book and rather impressed with the series thus far. It's even brought me some inspiration for a portfolio project, and I find inspiration has been rather fleeting lately. So for a series to have such an effect on me is certainly a good thing.

blood meridian by cormac mccarthy.

holy jeebus, this is the most violent book i've ever read. scalpings, dead babies hanging from trees, point blank shootings, all in America's not-so-glorious frontier times.  it's his way of undercutting the romanticism of the western/cowboy tale and it's incredible. 

I just finished "American Gods"

I'm currently working on "The Dark Reign of Gothic Rock : In The Reptile House with The Sisters of Mercy, Bauhaus and The Cure"  (whew! that was a long title ... but it's an interesting read)

I'm reading Sartre's The Nausea. I also have 11 more books to finish, and I've estimated at least 117 hours to finish them all. :(

"Woman on the Edge of Time" by Marge Piercy.  Classic feminist book about the medical/science community's repression of women/the poor/the nonwhite through definitions of mental illness, and the issue of genetic control as a crucial turning point.  Also points out alternative utopian and dystopian futures depending on what's done with this.

ALSO...something I've put aside for the moment is "Defacement" by Michael Taussig, about "sacred" public symbols and the social impacts of their desecration (WTC comes to mind).  Basically it's about what he calls "public secrets", or "knowing what not to know", and how much work society goes to to actively not acknowledge how illusory these symbols really are.

I'm reading "Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre" by H.P. Lovecraft. It's a collection of short stories like "Call of Cthulhu", "Shadow over Innsmouth", The Colour out of Space", and "The Dunwhich Horror". Lovecraft wrote these stories in the 1920s and 30s and is considered to be the originator of Modern Horror story and authors such as Steven King, Ann Rice,and  Wes Craven all give their props to him as one of their main influences.

Zen and the art of motorcycle maintainance.  It wasn't what I thought it was going to be (sappy pseudoeastern new age mumbojumbo), and that's a good thing.

Pages