Reading Spot Check

[Jamie Renton]

A highly unoriginal thread based on "Listening Spot Check" only with books instead of music (I look forward to hearing from June's lawyers)

I'm currently enjoying David Mitchell's "number9dream", a genre hopping tale set in Japan, concerning a young man's search for his father (with diversions into a WW2 kamikaze pilots diary & a children's story about a litarary goat!) I'm about 3/4 in to it & can't see where it's going to end up (always a good sign I think). As with Mitchell's "Cloud Atlas" I suspect the parts will all fit together in unexpected ways.

Anyone else reading any books worth talking about?

Cheers

Jamie

[Charlie]

Matt Rees - The Bethlehem Murders & The Saladin Murders

I was waiting until I'd finished them both before commenting. But, since you've asked, they are very absorbing novels set in Palestine, with the history teacher at a girls high school for refugees as the central character.

A Welshman who was Time Magazine's reporter based in the area for six years, Matt Rees gets us into to the teacher's head so we see everything through his eyes, and he tells it like it is without any apparent political bias.

David Hare recommended them in one of those 'what are you reading?' spreads in a newspaper

[Papa M]

Anyone else reading any books worth talking about?

Am enjoying a thoroughly entertaining coffee table book about the "best music you've never heard".

I have no idea who the author is but it is great fun.

[Ted]

Anyone else reading any books worth talking about?

The Rough Guide to Jamaica. It contains the useful advice that if you run over a child in JA you should not stop but proceed straight to the local police station in case the locals turn on you.

[CantSleepClownsWillGetMe]

Geldof in Africa

I bought this in a charity shop the other day, after flicking through it and being stunned by the beautiful photos inside. It says that it's a book of a TV series, but I didn't catch it when it was aired. I don't even know if it was crap or not, but this book definitely isn't.

The biggest surprise for me was finding out how well Bob Geldof writes. Here's an excerpt (he has just been describing how ferociously the heat strikes you when you first arrive in Africa):

"... But still trees grow. And still people move. But they do so very slowly. The grace and elegance of human movement in Africa is not accidental. It is environmental. It is learned. The overriding consideration is to conserve energy. Every action must be considered and weighed against the draining torpor of the day.

Consider an African walking. You will rarely see one do anything as provocative as run. There is an effortless, upright elegance. A huge poise against the endless whiteness of the sky. There is nothing superfluous in the action. No sudden rushes. No flurries. Rather, a slow, rhythmic steadiness of unhurried ease wholly different from the flustered, busy, jerky, spasmodic rush common to the European.

The women, like models or ballerinas, gracefully upright, balance perfectly between sky and earth, their hips propelling them forward in a lullaby sway. On their heads improbable weights of stuff. Sewing machines, car parts, electric kettles, animals, huge bundles of wood or protruding carrots that make them resemble beautiful black Statues of Liberty"

In true 'Bob-style' it also has its fair share of expletives as well as encounters with beauty, poverty, child soldiers, armed guards high on 'khat', and a very weird interview with Yasser Arafat. Excellent.

J

[taiyo no otosan]

Ted advised:

that if you run over a child in JA you should not stop but proceed straight to the local police station in case the locals turn on you.

Not just in JA.

I was in a shared taxi going from Sanaa to Sa'dah in the Yemen a while ago. Squashed into the front bench seat with 2 other people and the driver when we *almost* hit a kid on the road. The driver stopped to see if the boy was OK and was promptly stabbed by the father, who came shrieking, hurtling through the front window.

Funnily enough, I'm currently reading 'Heavenly Date' by Alexander "No. 1" McCall Smith right now, which is a nice spot of light entertainment after the harrowing 'Dangerous Parking' by Stuart Browne. A semi-auto biographical novel about a bloke dying of cancer.

[Dominic]

For my last birthday my parents gave me a couple of Penguin Modern Classics - Lark Rise To Candleford and The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. Guess which one I'm reading.

[Gordon Moore]

I'm reading Professional ASP.Net in C# by some guys - well I've got another job interview next week and I need to look like I understand it when they say "delegates, generics, polymorphism, inheritance and blah blah...

I tell you it's a different world from when I learnt:

100 Let A=1
200 Print A
300 A = A+1
400 GOTO 200

and then wonder how to stop the flipping thing... hehe

Is the the first program ever published on this forum? ahhh 1976...

[Hugh Weldon]

After ages during which I've read nothing I've currently got about half a dozen things on the go at the moment, including:

Nancy Louise Frey, Pilgrim Stories: On and Off the Road to Santiago in preparation for my attempt at the pilgrimage next month (a mere stroll of 800km)

Jean-Claude Izzo, La Trilogie Fabio Montale recommended recently here by Charlie. Keeping up my French ( tho' some of the slang leaves me guessing)

Anthony Burgess, A Dead Man in Deptford I think I will probably end up reading everything Burgess has ever written. Though I still think his autobiography is his best thing, the first volume anyway, I've been catching up on some of the later novels in recent years. Roger Lewis's biography is recommended unreservedly for the best indecorous example of the genre I've ever come across.

[will vine]

THE BOOK OF lOVE (Chapter One says to love her.....to love her with all your heart)

[Gordon Neill]

Sounds like an interesting book, Will. Who wrote it?

[Charlie]

Moneyball by Michael Lewis.

Fascinating book about the economics of baseball, which may seem like a sure fire oxymoron to many of you, but it's actually about how to measure skill and judge talent, and how many of the accepted conventions are either misleading or just plain wrong.

A lot of its insights could be applied to the world of music too, I keep thinking.

A brilliant and inspiring book.

[Gordon Moore]

about the economics of baseball

is that like rounders?



[
yes yes I know, another million posts in the last few days but I'm going on holiday next week, so I need to drain myself.

Noted that Dayna is No 2 in the postings lists now, Howard is now third and Adam fourth. I'm in positions 11, 30 and 45.

]

[kas]

I just finished reading "Joe Speedboat", a novel by dutch author Tommy Wieringa (as a Finnish translation; my dutch is just about up to a standard tourist level). Great story I urge you to read if you find it in your language.

Right now I am reading a book of "Petit Nicholas" stories by Sempé and Coscinny. They are a bundle of fun.

But the genuinely eye opening journey in to the past I have taken this summer have been two travel accounts by two Finns who lived in Congo during the early 30's.
One of them was a salesman working in Toquilhatville. The other a young woman who was married to a Finnish riverboat captain. The couple sailed the Congo river and its tributaries and cleared the bottom of tree trunks and shipwrecks.
Both writers are so naive and blatantly condescending towards the Africans they meet and live among that I have been literally gasping for breath at times. All the stereotypes are there: from the "noble savage untouched by anything resembling a culture" to stupid, lazy and childish negroes who spring to life only when they are served some stomach turning chowder only they can eat...
Both writers confess having never even seen an African before their trip, but still. Mind boggling stuff.

[Kirin]

Steven Carroll: The Gift of Speed. I found this copy for fifty cents about a week before he won the Miles Franklin for its sequel. For the first few pages I couldn't figure out why he'd win an award for anything at all. The writing seemed to rely too much on faux-naivity and repetition: "The perfect language. The perfect ball. The ball that Michael will one day bowl. The ball that will become known all across the suburb as the ball Michael bowled." After a while though, once I clicked into the rhythm of it, what had felt like attempts at beautiful writing actually became beautiful writing. The rhythm was the key.