what are you reading right now?

[Valkyrie]

well you should or you'll never get a proper shag

[plastic_paddy]

http://www.nytimes.com/1996/10/22/movies/sleepers-debate-renewed-how-true-is-a-true-story.html

Fair do's Mr Peter Perv Pedantic...

Still - tis a good book and film!

Really enjoying The Catcher in the Rye right now

[rosso]

@ baz .. .. .. Why the fuck do you have a picture of a cotton weaving machine as your avatar ..?

[bazman]

@ Rosso - there's a certain lost and antique nobility to those old machines that appeals to me.

I'm always trying to find a new use for packaging and glass jars and bits of things - old Bonne Maman jam jars make for elegant and effective candle holders, wine bottle corks on a plastic/polystyrene dish from packet meat or vegetables (once you've given it a good clean) a functioning base to catch the wax etc..

Until I acquired a suitable ceramic vase for my mini-palm tree (one euro in a farmers market), I used a silver tray from a ready meal to hold water...that kind of thing.

Oh and I have a huge old wooly cardigan lies accross the back of an old couch in the living room making a pair of old battered things that little bit more cosy and comfortable.

I realise the link is tenuous but it equated in my addled brain so I rolled with it.

So...too much detail???



EDIT: sorry I think that needs more explaining - see, once upon a time, somebody worked on those things to make them what they are and in that duty they instilled life into them so I find it hard to discard things. I think it a form of recycling. It's certainly not skinflintedness as I am profligate with food and drink but where more life can be given to a thing, I generally try to do so.

That's got me started now - on the recycling tip... I go all out.

People wasting water drives me bonkers... say for example you're boiling up a few spuds for roasting.. does it not make sense to use the same water to boil vegetables or wash greasy dishes or even wash the floor?

Same with dishwater which hasnt gone all yukky and is still a bit soapy can be used to wash the floor etc or cleanse drains.

Leftover kettle water from the pot of tea or coffee can be used to soak greasy dishes, wash floors, sterilise stinky drains etc especially if you add a wee drop of bleach.

enough....

[plastic_paddy]

The Catcher in the Rye is a classic. sped through the thing twice. Boy, that killed me! It really did.

Also just finished High Fidelity - brilliant, absolutely brilliant book, and thinking back the movie done it justice. but will have to watch it again soon!

Now started "The Best a Man can Get" by John O'Farrell...

[plastic_paddy]

Could I just say that "The Best a Man Can Get" is a great read. Literally had me guffawing on every page.

Man meets woman, man falls in love with woman, man has babies, man is finds children boring, man decides to set up a "studio" in a flat the other side of london to do his jingle commercial work in, man has double life to get away from wife and kids.

[stainesgirl]

Just finished reading this. (Well you weren't expecting me to be reading war and peace now were you?!) I was actually really impressed. I LOVE supernatural romance books and am a total twilight addict and this really filled the void. I couldn't put it down, and now have to wait til September 2010 for the sequel, which I assure you I shall be 1st in line for.

[summer of george]

I was given the new Charlie Brooker book, amusing as ever in places though he still continues to steal my jokes.

I got into a bit of a read on over Crimble and read "low side of the road", a biography of Tom Waits, which was quite dull as Mr Waits is obsessive about his privacy and forbid anyone speak to the author, he had a go but with no information, it tapered off.

Read Zimmer men, which despite the pun is not about Dylan, but village Cricket, which was a sequel and a bit of a let down, finished the new James Ellroy, which was also a bit of a dying fall, though may require a re-read.

Wading through In Cold Blood by Capote, which i am surprised i haven't read before, Down and Dirty Pictures by Peter Biskind, about the Indie film scene of the 90's which is better than I hoped, not as good as Easy Riders, but it's entertaining to see what an egotistical twat Tarantino turned into.

On the up side.

Public Enemies by Bryan Burrough.

It's a definitive account of the FBI's war on crime in the early 30's, including the likes of Karpis, Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde and so forth...
It's superb, comes on like a top notch thriller and illuminates the sheer unreliability of cars and guns of the time, they were always fucking up.

Later I plan to begin a Book on Alexander the Great that I was gifted and had been banging on about.

Now I am having a nauseating existential moment regarding why i am posting this at all...who cares what books i am reading.

Idiot.

[bazman]

I care.

You've saved me the bother of reading that Tom Waits book and it's nice to know that up until recently, I had read something you hadn't - In Cold Blood is a super read.

[rosso]

...Down and Dirty Pictures by Peter Biskind, about the Indie film scene of the 90's which is better than I hoped, not as good as Easy Riders, but it's entertaining to see what an egotistical twat Tarantino turned into..

Heh, Yes. I got that last year, after endlessly borrowing it from the library and getting stuck on page 335

It is currently on my shelf

With a book marker on page 335

I have had a real blast reading The Kid Stays in the Picture, by Robert Evans, (producer Godfather, Chinatown)

Also; Set Up, Joke. Set Up, Joke, and Conversations with my Agent - both by Robert Long, (writer Cheers)

And have two Charlie Brooker books to plough into if I don't wander off to the book shop

[plastic_paddy]

Just reading Super Freakanomics , the follow up from Freakanomics of 4 years back.

Also re-read Wilt in Nowhere, the Pocket Guide to Mischief, and Urgum the Barbarian...!

[Cardie]

In Harm's Way, by Doug Stanton.

It's the story about the USS Indianapolis during WWII.

The Indy was the ship that shuttled the first atom bomb to the Marianas Islands, then got torpedoed on a subsequent run to the Philippines. The men aboard who survived the torpedoing bobbed around in the sea for five days before being rescued, due to absolutely incredible US Navy fuckups. Out of over 1100 men, just a little over 300 were finally rescued, after five days of watching their shipmates die of injuries, go crazy from exposure, dehydration and ingesting salt-water, or getting mauled by huge schools of sharks. It remains the biggest known shark attack in history.

The Captain of the Indy survived, only to be court-marshalled. The Navy brass unjustly blamed him for the tragedy. He killed himself in 1968, after decades of receiving horrible letters from the families of dead Indy sailors, blaming him for the deaths, even though he followed his orders to the letter.

In the late 1990's, an 11 year old boy in Florida decided to do a school project about the Indy. He did lots of research, and long story short, he wound up testifying in front of Congress in a quest to clear the Indy's captain's record. He, along with some survivors who joined him, was successful, in part because of naval documents that had been recently de-classified.


The little boy didn't win the big school project prize because he submitted some material in a spiral-bound notebook.


It's an amazing story, and this account is nicely written.

[plastic_paddy]

Reading closing time by Joseph Heller - the so-called sequel to Catch 22 as it re-visits a lot of the characters as they are in their old age.

My manager leant it to me and said he didn't really like it much, especially compared to Catch 22, but I like it. A little bit of the grit of '90's NYC, and love his play on the english language.

Really should re-read Catch 22 though - was about 15 last time I read it!

[Ms Scarlett]

I'm reading "Dirty Havana Trilogy" by Pedro Juan Gutierrez. Brilliant, gripping, compelling, bleak yet funny with lots of shagging, drugs and swearing. I came across it through a review from a quarterly magazine my friend got me a subscription to for my birthday, think it's called "Slightly Foxed" or something. It's just reviews of books basically but it's a great way of finding out about new books and authors that you might not come across otherwise. Now if I could only stay awake on the train for long enough to read more than two pages at once...

If I haven't already said, this is my favourite site for selling and buying books

www.greenmetropolis.com

Much simpler than ebay or amazon and often cheaper too.

[Cardie]

"True Confessions" by John Gregory Dunne.

LA fifties murder mystery .... sorta. More about two brothers who get drawn into the whirlpool of circumstances surrounding the murder. It's a wonderfully written book, great language. It was made into a movie years ago starring Robert deNiro ("Bobby") and Robert Duvall, which was also very good, but this book is a real treat.