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Your current read?


Guest Jake Wifebeater

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I'm reading Wild Harbour by Ian McPherson which I picked up on a whim in the oxfam book shop having gone specifically to find some Nan Shepherd. It was written before WW2 and follows a couple who try to escape the war (which in the book breaks out in 1944) by hiding in a cave in the Speyside hills. I've been keen to read some more by local(ish) writers, although I've still never read Sunset Song.

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I'm reading Wild Harbour by Ian McPherson which I picked up on a whim in the oxfam book shop having gone specifically to find some Nan Shepherd. It was written before WW2 and follows a couple who try to escape the war (which in the book breaks out in 1944) by hiding in a cave in the Speyside hills. I've been keen to read some more by local(ish) writers, although I've still never read Sunset Song.

Dinna, it's a dirge

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The Radetzky March - Joseph Roth

This is one of the best books I've ever read. It follows a couple of generations of an Austro-Hungarian family and beautifully charts the demise of the empire. Some absolutely brilliant characters and astonishingly vivid imagery. I just loved this so much, what a book. I can't recommend it highly enough.

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I'm reading 'Among Muslims: Meetings at the Frontier of Pakistan' by Kathleen Jamie, and it's both very interesting and very good. I'm a big fan of her poetry and I'm reading this as part of an argument in my PhD. I read her other travel book 'Findings' which is a great wee as well.

On the fiction front I'm a wee bitty through Murakami's 'The Wind Up Bird Chronicles' but if I don't finish it before 'The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets Nest' comes out it will be on hold for a short while.

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Pack it in and go for The Mill on the Floss for all your effeminate classic needs. It's ace.

I've actually re-started Wuthering Heights. I'm getting more into it this time. Before I was just giving it 20 minutes a day on my lunch break, but it's really a book you need to concentrate on without people coming in and out and talking to you. Now I've got Stephen King in my desk drawer for lunch breaks and Wuthering Heights next to my bed :up:

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Now finished 'The Death of Bunny Munro' by Nick Cave. Enjoyed it OK but it sees a fair shift in style from 'And the Ass saw the Angel'. In fact it read more like an Irvine Welsh novel. It actually seems to be a continuation of Cave's apparent ongoing mid-life crisis so far seen in Grinderman.

Now reading 'Reheated Cabbage' by Irvine Welsh, so far so good. I think it shows that despite still being an enjoyable read, his later period writing has not been near his earliest work in terms of quality.

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I'm on a bit of a non-fiction thing at the moment. Just finished Bad Science by Ben Goldacre (excellent book about how badly the press report science stories, fraudulent claims made by alternative medicine practicitioners etc) and in the middle of reading Quantum: Einstein, Bohr and the Great Debate About the Nature of Reality by Manjit Kumar (a bit of a biography of the two scientists and an account of their contributions to Quantum theory and the repercussions of it).

Might need to read something lighter after that one...

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Am currently reading "Entering The Castle" by Caroline Myss. It's a modern reworking of El Castillo Interior written in 1577 by Saint Teresa of vila. Am only at page 44 but already it's shaping up to be one of the most beautiful things I've ever read. The foreward by Ken Wilber and the authors own preface are worth the admission price alone.

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  • 2 weeks later...

******************MILD STIEG LARRSON SPOILERS********

I started/finished The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest yesterday evening/wee hours of the morning. I thought it should have ended a wee bitty sooner than it did as anything after the warehouse confrontation sort of weakened the sense of finality. All in all though a cracking end to the trilogy, although I still think the second book is the strongest of the three.

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At a loss for things to read at the moment so re-reading 'Success' my Martin Amis, which is really good book about a group of people going slowly insane due to over-prevalence of rampant narcissism, materialism, sexual humiliation and incest within their family. It's written from the point of view of the two male children, who occupy entirely different positions within society yet are forced to live with one another.

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At a loss for things to read at the moment so re-reading 'Success' my Martin Amis, which is really good book about a group of people going slowly insane due to over-prevalence of rampant narcissism, materialism, sexual humiliation and incest within their family. It's written from the point of view of the two male children, who occupy entirely different positions within society yet are forced to live with one another.

There's heaps of other books been written. Go to a library, bookshop, jumble sale or even check on line :)

Sounds like a nifty story like but I've never understood re-reading whole books. I'll keep books I like and flip through them, read a section here and there that I enjoyed but I've never re-read a book start to finish. I consider that when I die there will be thousands of enjoyable books that I never got round to reading so why waste my time on one when I ken fit happens?!

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Started A Snowball in Hell by Christopher Brookmyre. Great opening chapter - I love that character.

Surely the only novel which quotes former Aberdeen FC Manager Ebbe Skovdahl!

I'm about 3/4 of the way through this and like with all Brookmyre books I've read this is the point where I start skimming over the overly descriptive, far fetched action scenes.

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