Picked up any good reads at the bookstore?

[Minge är en jävla besserwisser]

Curiously I suspected that that might have that effect. (I had noticed the conrad quote)

I actually like Nostromo, but its, How can i put it, not exactly a short read, or a light read, and i never quite have the time to give its proper dues, and each time i restart it i have to goback virtually to the start. 3 steps forward, 2 back. If the lad could just shorten it down to heart of Darkness length, he might be on to a winner.

Your right though I am a cultural vacuum.

PS. Dilettante

[Amazed]

I'm reading John Irving's Last Night In Twisted River, for the second time. The translation was just published here and I have a certain professional interest in it.

[lala]

Terrible thing is Ming, you're in for such as disappointment when you finally hack your way through the dense jungle to the end ... Because the first three times you read it the ending seems to be really, really weak. On the fourth or fifth time (yes, I really have read it at least five times) it starts to make sense.

[mids]

Stop pretending to have read and enjoyed posh books, you lot.

[lala]

If it helps maintain literary karma, I recently read A Faint Cold Fear by Karin Slaughter. Incompetently plotted, and nasty as well.

[Minge är en jävla besserwisser]

Terrible thing is Ming, you're in for such as disappointment when you finally hack your way through the dense jungle to the end ... Because the first three times you read it the ending seems to be really, really weak. On the fourth or fifth time (yes, I really have read it at least five times) it starts to make sense.


Sweet Jesus. Five times, Christ on a bloody stick.
I'm about half way through and I'm not sure I've hacked my way through to the plot. I'm no quitter me though. I got through Moby Dick once.

"Whether he knew of this deficiency himself I can't say. I think the knowledge came to him at last--only at the very last. But the wilderness found him out early, and had taken vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude--and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core."

Or as I said before my biggest fear is to find out I'm the w*nker I was always afraid I might be.

"The horror! The horror!"

[justmyopinion]

Salmon Fishiong in the Yemen

Guernica

Alone in Berlin

[mango]

Latest purchase & currently reading Richard Dawkins - 'The Greatest Show On Earth'

[clarity]

I have to agree that Nostromo is the best book I've ever read. Of course it helped that I was doing a university credit course on Conrad at the time and can still remember late night discussions on the book with other students. I have read it thrice so far.

Recently re-read Wuthering Heights for a book club, what a load of twaddle that was. Strange how your tastes change over the years, when I first read it at 16, I thought it was wonderful. Perhaps I've grown cynical over the years!

Currently reading through Hans Christian Anderson and Grimm with granddaughters. Scary stuff, but they are lapping it up. I am also reading some books by Reginald Hill, which were given me by a friend, that fat bugger makes me laugh and it's light reading for the summer.

[Repat Van]

Recently read Oliver Twist for the first time and absolutely loved it. A tad anti-semetic though...

[wetkingcanute]

I'm reading 'Tomorrow' by Graham Swift.

I've read every book he's written. I honesty think he's is the greatest living novelist in the UK at the moment. (Waterland; Last Orders; Ever After -they're all great)

I've also just bought Richard Dawkins - 'The Greatest Show On Earth' - but haven't started yet.

[jonren]

The Little Fairy by Eric I Turbi is worth a mention.

[Muz]

Roger Melly's Profanisaurus. Best book EVA!!!111

[mids]

"Recently read Oliver Twist for the first time and absolutely loved it. A tad anti-semetic though... "

Best seller in Gaza, so I've heard...

[Scooby Do]

"Keeping Bees, and Making Honey"

[puffin]

I think keeping Honey and stopping her chasing bees would be more appropriate for me.

(Honey is my ever curious...and agile...pup.)

[lala]

Should we do it line by line, for Ming's benefit? One line of Nostromo a day, with wise and erudite comments.

Here we go:

In the time of Spanish rule, and for many years afterwards, the town of Sulaco -- the luxuriant beauty of the orange gardens bears witness to its antiquity -- had never been commercially anything more important than a coasting port with a fairly large local trade in ox-hides and indigo.

Ming has read this several times, going by his comment that he has had to begin the novel several times. If that is the case, he will, surely, have noticed the lines outstanding quality - it is the worst opening line ever written. Not for Conrad the arresting opening line of Orwell in 1984 ("It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.") or the racy erudition of Anthony Burgess in Earthly Powers (“It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me.”) Conrad is very serious and has no time for such frivolity. The astonishing thing is that he manages to recover from this disastrous start, and produce one of the masterpieces of English fiction.

The ox-hides and indigo, incidentally, do not important to the story, which makes his mention of them at the start even stranger. Given the books themes of love, madness, obsession, revolution, corruption and the ripping of loot out of the virgin breast of the world, you'd have thought he might have gone with one of those, but no, he went for the ox-hides and indigo. Genius.

[puffin]

I have been renewing my aquaintance with the wonderful Terry Pratchett.

[mango]

I have my suspicions re: Bloggers
but can't decide whether it's the epitome of Narcissism, would-be journalism, a form of masturbation, 'letters' for posterity letting one's descendants in on your brilliance, some sort of OCD, or all of the above

so how do I get started..?

[lala]

Start a blog, you mean? www.blogger.com/home

A blog can be pretty much whatever you want it to be. It can be deeply, achingly pretentious, arsey and crap, or it can be little more than a string of facebook status type comments. Mine tends towards the former, you will *very* surprised to hear. The degree of self importance derives more from the fuss you make about it to attract other people's attention to it.