[News] What are you currently reading?

I'm currently working my way through Mikhail Sholokhov's "And Quiet Flows the Don," which I got from a secondhand bookstore quite a while ago. It's got that great old-book smell to it, which is just <3

It's an enjoyable book, about the Don Cossacks from the period right before World War I up to, I think, the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. I hear it's kind of like Tolstoy's "War and Peace," except not on such a grand scale.

I took a slight risk on buying it, but I don't regret it. Nice book.

How ya doing, buddy?

I picked up Murakami's "Norwegian Wood" again and started to read it, picking up from where I left off (which wasn't far, about chapter 3) last time.

It's a great book. Well-written, great characters, great story and perhaps, yes, a bit... sexy as well. I love it, I really do.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I've been reading a bit of Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys, but for some reason it hasn't really grabbed me as much as some of his other books have. Which is why, I guess, I decided to pick up Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and read through it again.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I was at a book fair the other day and bought a fair few secondhand books: Jack Kerouac's Desolation Angels, George Orwell's 1984 (yes, I know), Nicholas Blincoe's The Dope Priest and Robert Sabbag's Snowblind and decided tonight to start working through the four.

Picked Snowblind first, and I'm enjoying it quite a bit. I love the way Sabbag wrote the book, very entertaining.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by Zephyrin

But I have a job now that allows me a lot of time to sit and read, so I'm halfway through Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance which lurker gave me for Christmas. Very hard to get through, but my reading ability has dwindled since high school. Slowly getting my ability to read smoothly back, though.

I've read that book (I randomly picked it from amongst the myriad books my dad has on philosophy and stuff like that), but I never did finish it, if I recall correctly. Might be time to try and do so.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Right now I'm juggling between three books: Ken Bruen's Priest, Nicholas Blincoe's The Dope Priest and an anthology of works by Kahlil Gibran entitled A Treasury of Kahlil Gibran.

I've been reading the Bruen book most, and it's, as typical with Bruen, quite bloody good.

I plan to acquire William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch soon.

Most amazing jew boots

Right now I'm reading Bunker 13 by Aniruddha Bahal. Got it for cheap at a warehouse clearance sale (like, USD$1.50 or something?) and I have to say that I'd have paid quite a bit more for it, judging by what I've read so far.

It's set in India, deals primarily with a reporter getting involved with a certain regiment (is that the proper word?) of the Indian army involved in the Kashmir (Kashmiri?) conflict who are, for lack of a better term, morally loose.

It's a bit demented, perhaps, as a review would have it, but I'm liking it so far.

The quote from the Guardian on the cover goes like: "Imagine Catch 22 rewritten by Hunter S. Thompson [and] set in an unapologetically modern India.", which may just describe it quite well. I'm not familiar enough with Catch 22 and/or Hunter S. Thompson to say for sure, though.

FELIPE NO

Will do.

I've been meaning to do so, actually but got side-tracked by my sudden desire to read Burroughs' Naked Lunch (which I have now finished, by the way. I liked it.).

Would Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas be a good starting point in regards to Hunter S. Thompson?

I'd probably dive in regardless, though.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

It's an awesome book, isn't it? Quite... crazy, if I do say so myself. Haven't seen the movie adaptation, though. Will try and track it down.

Ah, ok then, Fear and Loathing it is.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

So I bought Fear and Loathing the other day, yeah, and I started reading it tonight.

Up to the fifth chapter now and I can tell that I'm going to enjoy it greatly.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

For some reason I've been re-reading William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch recently. Started re-reading it, what, two weeks after I first finished reading it? Not sure myself.

I like the book very, very much. <3

Still haven't got around to finishing Aniruddha Bahal's Bunker 13, though. In the closing stages of the novel now, but I haven't really felt like picking it up and finishing it.

How ya doing, buddy?

I'm currently working my way through Headcrusher by Alexander Garros and Aleksei Evdokimov, and so far it's quite an entertaining read. I bought it pretty much as an impulse buy along with two other books (Smalltime by Jerry Raine and Espedair Street by Iain M. Banks) at a bookstore which sells defective (for lack of a better term . . . still very readable, though, mostly just minor defects) books, extra print runs and the like. Which means the books are often quite cheap.

I might start reading one of the other two soon. If I can tear myself away from all the gaming that I've been doing, that is.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I picked up Oscar Zeta Acosta's The Revolt of the Cockroach People (among a couple of others) for cheap the other day (3 books for the equivalent of US$5 meant that I was willing to take a bit of a gamble) and I decided that I'd start reading through it before I tackled any of the other books in my backlog. Not for the Hunter S. Thompson association (I'll admit, though, I bought it because of that), but because it seemed like a genuinely interesting book.

And, yes, I'm finding it quite interesting so far. No, he's not the greatest writer, but I'm enjoying it. I like the fact that the book's not just about the Chicano movement, but also about himself and his "personal saga," to quote the blurb at the back of the book. Adds something, I find. I'm not sure what exactly, but . . . yeah.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I bought John Birmingham's Off One's Tits on Sunday and just started reading it today. It's a collection of previously published essays and articles and, honestly, it's pretty good. Some articles are perhaps slightly Hunter S. Thompson-esque, while some are more serious and thoughtfully written. I'm liking it so far. Nothing overly special, but not bad. Paid all of US$3 for it, too.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?