Case Histories, by Kate Atkinson The Widows of Eastwick, by John Updike, MP3 audio Live Wire, by Harlan Coben, CD
I'm reading Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace atm. I'm about a hundred pages in and its pretentiousness is pissing me off so far I have to say
Just finished The Lonely Londoners by Sam Selvon. As soon as I started this book I knew I would either love it or hate it. I can say. It's a chore to read, being in a Tinidadian accent if you don't catch the rhythm of the book you'll easily be bored by it, but once you get used to it the book is funny and sad, poignant and comedic but not lighthearted. It's kind of like Portrait of the Artist by James Joyce, in a weird way. Well worth checking out but I understand if you don't finish it. I've also been reading some P.G. Wodehouse too. He's quickly becoming comfort reading. Dante's The Divine Comedy, the Longfellow translation. This is my third time reading The Comedy. I love it.
The Cut, by George Pelecanos Minds Eye, by Hakan Nesser, on CD The Twelfth Imam, by Joel C. Rosenberg on MP3 audio The Sentinel, by Mathew Dunn E-book
I discovered P. G. Wodehouse after hearing that he was Douglas Adams' favorite writer back in the 80's. I love his sentence structures, and understated wit. "It was a confusion of ideas between him and one of the lions he was hunting in Kenya that had caused A. B. Spottsworth, to make the obituary column. He thought the lion was dead, and the lion thought it wasn't." And everybody loves Jeeves the butler, even if they don't know where he came from.
Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu. "Tao is empty- Its use never exhausted. Bottomless- The origin of all things. It blunts sharp edges, Unties knots, Softens glare, Becomes one with the dusty world. Deeply subsistent- I don't know whose child it is. It is older than the Ancestor."
The Damned United, the novelisation of the 44 days Brian Howard Clough was manager at Leeds United in 1974. David Peace has taken the real events and created a very interesting book, all told from Clough's perspective, taking in his Derby County and Hartlepools United days and his long-running hatred of Leeds United and their way of doing things (Don Revie's infamous brown paper envelope has been mentioned). It also has the managerial speech to end all managerial speeches: "Gentlemen, I might as well tell you now. You lot may have won all the domestic honours there are and some of the European ones but, as far as I'm concerned, the first thing you can do for me is to chuck all your medals and all your caps and all your pots and all your pans into the biggest fucking dustbin you can find, because you've never won any of them fairly. You've done it all by bloody cheating."
I just started reading The Writer's Art by James J. Kilpatrick, because mammamaia thinks so highly of it. Until she mentioned it, I'd never heard of it, and I often like writing books. Who is this Kilpatrick guy, anyway?
I just finished Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s Mother Night, and I'm currently reading Carl Sagan's Cosmos and Dave Egger's A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.
The Crossing Places, by Elly Griffiths Death on the Air, by Ngaio Marsh, on MP3 audio The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, by Jack Finney E-book (just finishing up) The Cut, by George Pelecanos
I used to read a lot of P.G. Wodehouse when I was slightly younger, but just stopped reading him at some point. This has been a revisit and, oh boy! Was the guy witty or what! Some of his best comedy came in the form in off-hand remarks Bertie makes - and how lovable is Bertie Wooster too!
The Ministry of Special Cases by Nathan Englander Losing the Head of Philip K. Dick by David Dufty - this is a true story. It wasn't his real head, obviously, but the head of the Philip K. Dick android (which was capable of discussing Dick's philosophical ideas and stories with people). A great mind twice lost. But it makes for a fascinating story so I doubt Dick would feel hard done. We Can Remember It For You Wholesale collected short stories of Philip K. Dick China: A History by John Keay Skin: A Natural History by Nina G. Jablonski
Bertie reminds me of my younger brother...though, bertie is a tad smarter. ;-P Right Ho, Jeeves: http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/10554/pg10554.txt
