May's (Mostly) Marvelous Literary Musings

[nj1]

currently trying to get through KNIGHTS OF THE BACK AND WHITE by JACK WHYTE, A historical fiction on the founding of the Templar Knights and the first crusade. Bit grim at the moment so am finding it tough to wade through it.

Congrats on the new job Conn, hope it works out for you .

[Stenevor]

Originally Posted by Nesacat

Strange Pilgrims by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I read this a couple of months ago, bit of a mixed bag I thought though I liked The Saint, Maria Dos Prazares and one or two others. Ive also recently read In Evil Hour, Leaf Storm, No One Writes to the Colonel and Chronicle of a Death Foretold all of which I prefered. Ive also got Autumn of the Patriach but I have to say it looks extremely intimidating and I cant bring myself to start it. Has anyone read it? Is it a struggle and if so is the struggle worth it?

Currently half way through The Rum Diaries by Hunter S Thompson, its great.

[woodsman]

Originally Posted by nj1

currently trying to get through KNIGHTS OF THE BACK AND WHITE by JACK WHYTE, A historical fiction on the founding of the Templar Knights and the first crusade. Bit grim at the moment so am finding it tough to wade through it.

Congrats on the new job Conn, hope it works out for you .

I quite enjoyed this actually(possibly because it was £1.50 from t'market), but yeah the style's not the greatest and it takes a while to get to the point.
Would be interested to hear what your final opinion is!!? I think there's a couple of follow-ons, but haven't laid eyes on them as yet.

[Talysia]

Next in the anthology, The Elves, by Johann Ludwig Tieck, translated by Thomas Carlyle.

[AvoidingReality]

Finished Exile's Return by Kate Jacoby a couple of days ago. 'Twas good, for a book I picked up rather randomly, though as it's part of a series it didn't exactly have a decisive ending. Might look at the sequels once I get past a rather long to-read list.

Now reading The Family Trade by Charles Stross, which is looking very good so far. I think I'll get through this one quickly.

[Connavar]

Originally Posted by pyan

Do you get a staff discount, Conn?

Im not a regular worker yet. Even i was i wouldnt spend the money on the dark side ie the big chain bookstore, i have my favorit bookshop who i love. Small enough and perfect for me

[Nesacat]

Finished Milan Kundera's Farewell Waltz
... set in an old-fashioned Central European spa town, eight characters are swept up in an accelerating dance: a pretty nurse and her repairman boyfriend; an oddball gynecologist; a rich American (at once saint and Don Juan); a popular trumpeter and his beautiful, obsessively jealous wife; an unillusioned former political prisoner about to leave his country and his young woman ward.

Stevenor ... I've read all the ones that you have along with One Hundred Years of Solitude; Love in the Time of Cholera and Memory of my Melancholy Whores. Have not got The Autumn of the Patriach and have never read it either. However, am curious about how you go with it.

[Nikitta]

I'm now done reading Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said and want to thank those who recommended it to me in another thread - I liked that.

Now I'm starting in on The Lies of Locke Lamora - the dice told me to do it!

[Stenevor]

Originally Posted by Nesacat

Stevenor ... I've read all the ones that you have along with One Hundred Years of Solitude; Love in the Time of Cholera and Memory of my Melancholy Whores. Have not got The Autumn of the Patriach and have never read it either. However, am curious about how you go with it.

Ive also read One Hundred Years of Solitude and as well as The Autumn of the Patriach ive also got Of Love and Other Demons and The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor to read when I get around to them.

I dont know if youve ever seen a copy of The Autumn of the Patriach but Ive never come across another book like it. There are no paragraphs, and no inverted commas. My copy has 230 very dense looking pages split down into 7 chapters(paragraphs) and page long sentences look common. It looks as though it will need a serious amount of concentration to get through it!

[Talysia]

After an impromptu library visit yesterday, I'm taking a break from my anthology to read Terry Pratchett's Men at Arms.

[Ragnar]

Ken MacLeod's Cosmonaut Keep. Its a second attempt as it didn't really grab me the first time.

[iansales]

Finished Lawrence Durrell's Reflections on a Marine Venus ("a companion to the island of Rhodes"). Definitely a good one. About to start Capacity by Tony Ballantyne.

[HoopyFrood]

For me this week, 'tis Cymbeline by William Shakespeare.

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by HoopyFrood

For me this week, 'tis Cymbeline by William Shakespeare.

Not my favorite Shakespeare, but it has some very good stuff to it. Incidentally, if you look around, you may find an old Caedmon recording of the play, with Karloff in the cast. Now, that was a very good bit of casting, I thought....

[Zubi-Ondo]

*Big sigh* ...
I finally finished "Hammerfall" C J Cherryh. I like her style, although it is really not my kind of book. It was in the SF section at the library, but it's mostly a romp in the desert with warring factions, family troubles, opposing goddesses and the like. IMO it rambled on quite a bit with all of the trekking through desert storms and such. There is an interesting twist which has now more or less twisted my arm in to reading "Forge of Heaven" which is the sequel. It's told entirely from the point of view of the desert dwelling clans, in fact it's more or less 3rd person omniscient from a single character named "Marak". But there is a meddling going on from an alien race which is all I'm going to say so I don't over-spoil it. I may not get to "Forge of Heaven" right away, because I've now started "Child of the River" by Paul J. McAuley, which is also the first of a series, and I finally got "A Fire Upon The Deep" - Vernor Vinge, which is a sequel to "Deepness in the Sky", and I had been waiting almost a month for it.

- Z.