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What book are you currently reading?

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quodec
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What book are you currently reading?

#1

Post by quodec »

I recently purchased a collection of Ernest Hemingway's books and am currently reading 'The Sun Also Rises'. Not sure what to make of it, to be honest! Very ordinary, even simple repetitive prose and dialogue. Perhaps it was unusual in 1926 when published, but just seems like an incomplete draft of a book to me! Will finish it but not overly impressed, coming as it does from one of the 20th century's greatest writers!
Tom Mann Centuria
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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#2

Post by Tom Mann Centuria »

Not particularly high brow but I'm reading Nemesis by Jo Nesbo. Getting through the Harry Hole series and enjoying them.
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Dave Hedgehog
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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#3

Post by Dave Hedgehog »

Picked up the 7 Sin City graphic novels recently so working my way through those.
Gonzovision
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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#4

Post by Gonzovision »

The Path to Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 1) - Robert Caro. I really hope he can finish out the series!

I finished the absolute masterpiece - The Power Broker, about Robert Moses by the same author a while back and it was so good, I had to read everything Caro has written. Hands down in the top 3 books I've ever read.
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isha
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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#5

Post by isha »

I absolutely loved Hemingway when I went through my phase of reading him - I do that and never read the writer's work again, good thing ye never knew me in my Thomas Hardy phase, God, I was a melancholic sap. A Farewell to Arms sticks with me as the book whose rhythm I would love to emulate if I was a writer. I can understand his work being perceived as unpolished, plain, etc but I loved it. It is robust.

At the moment I am in my Iain M Banks phase and have the whole Culture series stacked up beside my bed. I am on book 4 - The State of the Art. I hated book 1, Consider Phlebas, and wondered if all the people who had raved about him were just a shower of eegits, but right near the end I got hooked.
Thinking out loud, and trying to be occasionally less wrong...
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Hodors Appletart
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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#6

Post by Hodors Appletart »

Currently reading Ready Player 2

before that I read Artemis and Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (The Martian) - PHM in particular I enjoyed immensely.
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Uncle Frank
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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#7

Post by Uncle Frank »

God's Own Country by Ross Raisin. Excellent book if a bit grim at times. If you liked The Butcher Boy or The Wasp Factory it will be right up your street.
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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#8

Post by 765489 »

Underground by Suelette Dreyfus. This is an ebook and the author released it free. A young Julian Assange helped out with the research on it. It details the underground computer hacking scene in the late nineties / 2000. I stumbled on it on my hard drive and started reading it again so may aswell finish it. Well worth a read to see how technology has changed to where we are at now.

https://suelette.home.xs4all.nl/undergr ... ground.txt
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Walter Ego
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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#9

Post by Walter Ego »

Come With Me by Ronald Malfi. Absolutely fantastic read. Before that I read Salvation by Christopher Artinian.
WARNING: THE ABOVE POST MAY CONTAIN IRONY, LIES OR OUTRIGHT SARCASM
tangy
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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#10

Post by tangy »

Pat Nevin's memoir, The Accidental Footballer. Not your stereotypical footballer.
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8760976543
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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#11

Post by 8760976543 »

Recently finished Gary Numan's book (R)evolution. Have to say really enjoyed that. Also would recommend "This is going to hurt" by Adam Kay, get the audio version as he's a good narrator and is quite funny.
Humblepie
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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#12

Post by Humblepie »

The Disappearing Act by Florence de Changy. Its a deep dive into the MH370 disappearance, pretty detailed stuff and a lot I hadn't read before. Not sure I believe her theory of what happened but plenty of food for thought nonetheless.
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isha
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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#13

Post by isha »

I have started in on Eichmann in Jerusalem, ya know, as light relief from the pandemic 😛

In the early chapters Hannah Arendt covers the continuation in service even in the 1960s of so many people who had served under Hitler. I found it shocking actually. Had not known it but most simply rolled on in the new society. Ringleaders often lived openly and prospered in new careers like one who ran a chocolate factory, and even if arrested people got really short sentences for mass murder. Like 10 years to Otto Bradfisch for the murder of 15000 Jews, or 3.5 years for Joseph Lechthaler who had liquidated the Jews of Slutsk and Smolevichi in Russia.

In 1961 5000 of the 11500 judges who had served the Hitler regime were still in place. And Arendt says there were "innumerable men in the federal and state administrations and generally in public office whose careers had bloomed under the Hitler regime."

"The logic of the Eichmann trial......would have demanded exposure of the complicity of all German offices and authorities in the Final Solution - of all the civil servants...of the regular armed forces, of the judiciary, and of the business world."

I think these observations remain instructive even in these times.

PS Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning is a really good book on this subject matter.
Thinking out loud, and trying to be occasionally less wrong...
Séimhe

Re: What book are you currently reading?

#14

Post by Séimhe »

10 Days in a Madhouse

From Wikipedia "The book was based on articles written while Bly was on an undercover assignment for the New York World, feigning insanity at a women's boarding house, so as to be involuntarily committed to an insane asylum. She then investigated the reports of brutality and neglect at the Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island (now called Roosevelt Island).[2]

The book received acclaim from critics at the time. Accumulation of her reportage and the release of her content brought her fame and led to a grand jury investigation and financial increase in the Department of Public Charities and Corrections"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Days_in_a_Mad-House

Download https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/59899

It's not long and really interesting first person account.
Hairy-Joe
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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#15

Post by Hairy-Joe »

I'm going through "Fermat's Last Theorem" by Simon Singh and "The Vietnam War" by Geoffrey Ward and Ken Burns.

I recently finished up "Inside the Third Reich" by Albert Speer (interesting for what it doesn't say) and "The Works Escorts" by Graham Robson (very interesting book indeed!)
quodec
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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#16

Post by quodec »

Reading Irish author Catherine Ryan Howard's 2020 thriller 'The Nothing Man'. Half-way through it and enjoying it so far with the story nicely set up for a tense finale - I hope!
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Mr Daniel F. O'Leary
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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#17

Post by Mr Daniel F. O'Leary »

I got myself a library card recently, so I've been reading a lot more than I have in long time.

I'm reading "Life in Medieval Ireland" by Finbar Dwyer at the moment and really enjoying it.
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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#18

Post by 6456739 »

John Guy's Elizabeth: The Forgotten Years. It's focused mainly on her life from 1590 onwards. It doesn't cover her religious settlement at all which is irksome and it glosses over the Armada but it's otherwise fantastic. Guy said he went through something like 15,000 documents to research it!
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isha
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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#19

Post by isha »

Recently finished Oliver Burkeman's Four Thousand Weeks, which is the length of an average lifespan. Yep! It explores our omnipresent anxiety over the finitude of time. We will never get to do most of what we would like to do and its best to accept that and be happy with what we do do.. Most of our productivity is only worthwhile in a few hours a day, so dream away, friends, it's natural.

Then I read Eric Utne's memoir, Far Out Man. He was a bit of a Forrest Gump in the alternative movement - uplifting interesting book.

Now I have started to reread Ursula Le Guin's Always Coming Home as I remember 30 years ago finding it to be lovely and I have forgotten it and need it's influence. It is a kind of anthropological science fiction.

I am also dipping in and out of Gustav Le Bon's The Crowd because it seems very apropos in this time. 😉 In fact I may return to some of the old gulag/ camp literature which I have found very moving in the past eg If This Is A Man by Primo Levi, for a How To Guide in case things go sideways. 😊
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Mr Daniel F. O'Leary
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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#20

Post by Mr Daniel F. O'Leary »

I've just started reading A History of the Middle East by Peter Mansfield and Nicholas Pelham.

It's about the Middle East from Napoleon's invasion of Egypt to the Present Day. Peter Mansfield originally written the book in 1991 and Nicholas Pelham has added chapters since than about what's happened since then in the region, to keep the book relevant.
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Del.Monte
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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#21

Post by Del.Monte »

Newstalk had a piece about the closure of Chapters bookshop in Dublin this evening and several people in the Vox Pop said that they couldn't see the point of books...I could feel the brain cells dying.
'no more blah blah blah'
quodec
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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#22

Post by quodec »

Del.Monte wrote: Fri Oct 29, 2021 5:35 pm Newstalk had a piece about the closure of Chapters bookshop in Dublin this evening and several people in the Vox Pop said that they couldn't see the point of books...I could feel the brain cells dying.
Many's an interesting hour I spent in there. A real shame and a sign of the times. It and Hodges Figgis were my go to shops whenever I was in the big smoke.
Hairy-Joe
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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#23

Post by Hairy-Joe »

Ya, shocked at those on RTE' saying that there no point in books. Books are great. They never break, never run out of charge and have zero electronics. There's nothing better on a wet day to sit down with a good book that stretches the mind rather than zoning out in front of the TV.

As you can probably guess, I'm not a fan of TV and I've a lot of non fiction books at home.
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Mr Daniel F. O'Leary
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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#24

Post by Mr Daniel F. O'Leary »

I have begun reading Dune.

It's a book that has been on my shelf for a few years and I've heard many great things about it, but couldn't really get into it.

I saw the film in the cinema about 2 weeks ago, which has sparked my interest in the book again, so hopefully I'll finish it this time!
quodec
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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#25

Post by quodec »

Always enjoyed a bit of space opera now and again, so took the plunge and began 'Leviathan Wakes' by James S A Corey. Its the first in a series of 9 or 10 books in the Expanse series, set in this Solar System where we inhabit Mars and the Asteroid Belt. All the books seem to be around 500 pages long so there'll be some reading to do. But this first one is interesting and I'm well hooked!
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