What are you reading right now?

[Montag]

My second time reading the Shock Doctrine...

[norton ash]

Magazines, web and paper, these days. I finally got a subscription to the New Yorker. Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel is the on-deck novel, and I just finished the Trine Day Rigorous Intuition compilation by Geoff Welles or somebody. (Great book... BAD editors.)

[stefano]

About Europe roughly from 950 to 1100. Very good, I'm really enjoying it. He really gives colour to the times - to the different peoples and their struggles: Franks, Saxons, Arabs, Normans, Englishmen, Danes and Byzantines. Good stuff.

[Alaya]

Margaret. Always Magaret.

Moral Disorder

I'm drownDing in Canadians.

[Laodicean]

Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.

“Spirit! are they yours?” Scrooge could say no more.

“They are Man’s,” said the Spirit, looking down upon them. “And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!” cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. “Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And bide the end!”

“Have they no refuge or resource?” cried Scrooge.

“Are there no prisons?” said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. “Are there no workhouses?”

The bell struck twelve.

Scrooge looked about him for the Ghost, and saw it not. As the last stroke ceased to vibrate, he remembered the prediction of old Jacob Marley, and lifting up his eyes, beheld a solemn Phantom, draped and hooded, coming, like a mist along the ground, towards him.

[Nordic]

[Simulist]

I'm usually at one stage or another on a couple of books or more. Currently, I'm reading The Lucifer Principle by Howard Bloom, the His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman, and rereading The Shoes of the Fisherman by Morris West.

[TheDuke]

I'm usually at one stage or another on a couple of books or more. Currently, I'm reading The Lucifer Principle by Howard Bloom, the His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman, and rereading The Shoes of the Fisherman by Morris West.

The Lucifer Principle is a great book in spite of some overt anti Islamic bias. If you like it, go for Global Brain as well by the same author.

[PufPuf93]

My second time reading the Shock Doctrine...

My 2nd RI post.

I should be re-reading Shock Doctrine.

I just started PKDs Letter 1980-82 that have been sitting on shelf in shrink wrap. This book was like 7 years coming after the first 5 volumes from Underwood.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

.
That's a fine second post there, PufPuf93. I still haven't read any PKD, at all, and I'm frankly ashamed of myself.

I apologise to anybody who read Kevin Myers' "Watching the Door" because of my recommendation of it earlier in the thread - which effectively means I apologise to no one.

I hadn't finished the book before recommending it, and as it slowly fizzled out over many unnecessary chapters I came to realise that the author is a lying bastard and a fantasist, particularly where sex (or dialogue with women) is involved.

The first half does a pretty good job of seeming like a non-fiction book, though.

[Joe Hillshoist]

I'm reading How to make Gravy, by Paul Kelly, the Australian singer songwriter.

http://www.readings.com.au/interview/paul-kelly

Its a great read - he's a great songwriter, kind of .. its hard to imagine life without this guy. he's written or collaborated on some of the best story songs I've ever heard. He's great at laying emotions on the table.

This is one of those heartbreaking songs:



Pity the recording is so choppy cos that is one of those divine musical moments. Vikka Bull and Paul Kelly. That song ... once of his biggest influences as a songwriter is Raymond Carver.

He co wrote Treaty, by Yothu Yindi, helped get Archie Roach his start in music, co wrote "From little things big things grow" with Kev Carmody.

Here's some Paul Kelly songs.



- "From St Kilda to Kings Cross is 13 hours on a bus
I pressed my face against the glass and watched the white lines rushing past
And all around me felt like all inside me
And my soul went running."



- "They got married early, never had no money
then when he got laid off it really hit the skids
He started up his drinking then they started fighting"


- "England 1930 and the seed burst into flower
All of Jackson's grace failed him, it was Bradman was the power
He murdered them in Yorkshire,he danced for them in Kent
He laughed at them in Leicestershire, Leeds was an event
Three hundred runs he took and rewrote all the books
That really knocked those gents
The critics could not comprehend his nonchalant phenomenon
'Why this man is a machine,' they said. 'Even his friends say he isn't human'
Even friends have to cut something "



-The hilarious "Every fucking city looks the same."


The book is just a great read. A chrismas pressie from my wife. thanks.

[thurnundtaxis]

Jodowrosky and Moebius Comic book masterpiece: The Incal

The series mixes space opera, metaphysics, and satire; a counterpoint to the grandiosity of the events is always Difool's base, even cowardly nature. Every major characters in The Incal is based upon Tarot cards – for example, John Difool is obviously based upon The Fool with his name being a pun upon "John, the Fool". (A small friendly companion, like Deepo in The Incal, accompanies the Fool on his journey.) Animah's name of course is based on the Jungian concept of the anima, the feminine part of every male's psyche.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incal

[stefano]

Very good, if a bit old (1967). I read a book like this about once a year, have gone through Richard Dawkins, EO Wilson, Konrad Lorenz, Robert Ardrey, Lyall Watson, Rupert Sheldrake (the last two are a lot less orthodox) and now Desmond Morris after a friend recommended it. Ardrey's still my favourite, mainly because he's such an outstanding writer, but Morris is a very good read.

[Jeff]

Last night. (They're quite short.)

Introduction to the Bizarro Fiction genre, which I suppose is a cool name for the kids, but it's really a re-branding of grotesque satire. And this is strong, imaginative writing, with more scatology than Mr Lahey could wave a shit-stick at.

The standout is "Crazy Shitting Planet." The rich have abandoned the surface of the Earth to float above in giant gas-filled ships shaped like themselves, dumping excrement and worthless consumer goods from the Age of Stuff upon the scavenging poor, whose stomachs are hosts to a slow-killing fungus which enables them to digest plastic.

One thing about the weather: if you don't like it, stick around and it'll get worse. Sometimes it rains Sony PlayStation Twos and shit. Sometimes it rains flat plasma televisions and shit. I remember the horrible day when it rained NordicTrack Fitness Systems and shit. Many people died.

Perhaps the most horrible and metaphorically apt dystopia I've ever read.

The fat people are strong, they are smart, they have every good thing that ever was, all of it. All the earth's bounty is tightly concentrated in their gargantuan fists. They do not share. They don't have to. The great struggle is over and the fat people have won. I used to dream of a day when they would eat the last rock of the earth and find themselves, at last, hungry and unfed. But Aimless has watched them soar away into space, perhaps searching for other planets, other universes to eat and shit upon and throw away. The fat people want to eat the sun, and when they've run out of sun I'm sure their hunger will lead them on to other stars. They'll never have enough.

[Searcher08]

Wonderful storyteller, riveting tale with many lessons for this moment in history...