Goodreads Reading Challenge/General Bookery

[Jimmy]

Absolutely loved the Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood as I expected. I also recently finished White Teeth by Zadie Smith, which took a little while to get into, but I found myself really into it the further along with it I went. I was really taken by the structure and the way it weaved passages of history and constantly revisited the dilemma of culture vs. nurture and examined internal identity crisis. 

[GhostMachine]

On the giveaways, Heidi won 5 books in one day last week. 

That's not a type. Five. Cinco. Four + One.

 

 

[apsham]

I was walking past the horror section the other day and this caught my eye.

I have absolutely been loving it so far. When I was looking for books that felt like the first season of True Detective did.. this should have been at the top of the list, had it existed at the time. Phenomenal so far and I'm supremely glad I came across it.

[hugobomb]

About halfway through No Glossing Over It: How Football Cheated Leeds United , it's well written and most of it is genuinely interesting but it's hard to get past the fact that this is an entire book devoted to "Isn't it awful how everyone picks on Leeds and wasn't Don Revie the greatest man in the history of football?"

 

Granted, some of the refereeing in their big games seems shocking and they have a good case for considering themselves the "real" winners of their European Cup final against Bayern Munich but there is a sense of bitter whining over everything that I'm finding it hard to look past.

[GhostMachine]

Is the writer a fan, making excuses for every little thing?

[hugobomb]

Yep, he's a lifelong Leeds fan. Like I said it's a well written and interesting book but the bias is too glaring for my liking 

[METALMAN]

Don't often post here, but I just read a book that I think some of the people here might quite like - White Tears by Hani Kunzru. It's about rich white hipsters, "authenticity" and blues music.

Better overview of it here - https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n15/theo-tait/three-minutes-of-darkness

"A novel is not a proposition, but it sometimes comes close to being one. White Tears is in part a thesis on the white cultural appropriation of black music – inspired, as Kunzru’s acknowledgments make clear, by Marybeth Hamilton’s interesting book In Search of the Blues. Hamilton argues that the whole idea of the ‘Delta Blues’ was largely a retrospective fiction. Robert Johnson, for instance, only ever sold a handful of records in his lifetime. A sociologist who surveyed the black bars of the Mississippi Delta late in the Depression found not a single local performer on the jukeboxes. Instead, people there were listening to the same music as the rest of black America: Count Basie, Fats Waller, Lil Green. Johnson’s significance is largely an invention of later white enthusiasts looking for a particular primitive thrill in their black music: what the field recordist John Lomax, who toured the prisons and work camps of the South in the 1930s, called ‘uncontaminated’ black singing, not spoiled by the record companies and the cities. In Hamilton’s account, the collectors were often explicitly racist – looking for music unsullied by the corrupted ways of the city Negro."

Edited August 6, 2017 by metalman

[hugobomb]

Oh, apparently Ken Bates was doing a good job of getting Leeds on a even keel before the nasty taxman got involved which led to the 15 point deduction after they went into administration about 5 minutes before their last game of the season had finished, which was completely justified and not at all a blatant end run around the rules.

 

Plus there's an insinuation that the rules about point deductions for going into administration was done to screw Leeds over. He also claims Pompey had a lot more help from the premiership when they went bust than Leeds did, which seems like bullshit but I could be wrong.

[Liam]

On 06/07/2017 at 18:59, GA! said:

630ish pages and all American Gods can muster from me is a 'meh'. 

I really enjoyed it. But I liked the concept so that carried the novel for me.

[GhostMachine]

I'm finishing up The Undead War: Tales of the Zombie Apocalypse, edited by John L. Thompson. Its a pretty good book, but there's a couple of stories I didn't care for, and one that was very good except that it had an ending that I saw coming a mile away. I have about 45 pages left to go.

[Jimmy]

I'm picking up the a pace a little now. I just finished The Pearl by John Steinbeck, which was a treat to read after reading something as dense as White Teeth. I've always loved Steinbeck's style (Grapes of Wrath is my favourite) and The Pearl is simplistic, incredibly effective and has a great ever-present feeling of foreboding running through it. It's nice to break things up occasionally with a nice 90 page novel. Anyway, moving onto My Bloody Project next! 

[Liam]

6 hours ago, Jimmy said:

I'm picking up the a pace a little now. I just finished The Pearl by John Steinbeck, which was a treat to read after reading something as dense as White Teeth. I've always loved Steinbeck's style (Grapes of Wrath is my favourite) and The Pearl is simplistic, incredibly effective and has a great ever-present feeling of foreboding running through it. It's nice to break things up occasionally with a nice 90 page novel. Anyway, moving onto My Bloody Project next! 

I loved My Bloody Project. Excellent book.

[Schlitzbrille]

We need to discuss Nelson DeMille more. Love the tone he's gotten with the John Corey books.

[GhostMachine]

There's a pretty good story in the MatchUp anthology that has John Corey teaming up with Lisa Scottoline's character Bennie Rosato.

In fact, I recommend that particular anthology, and its predecessor, FaceOff.

Here's another interesting team up in MatchUp: Temperance Brennan and Jack Reacher. 

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31939834-matchup

There's one team up in it that's really a cheat:

The Liz Sansborough and Rambo story only has Rambo appearing on a television in it. Namely characters watching a Sylvester Stallone movie.[.spoiler]

 

[Jimmy]

On 8/11/2017 at 20:05, Liam said:

I loved My Bloody Project. Excellent book.

Yeah, I thought it was great. Such a quick, absorbing read. 

[MDK]

You guys should try The Phone Book.

Not much of a plot but the cast is amazing. 

[apsham]

Currently reading Lords Of Chaos based off a recommendation from Last Podcast On The Left since they are covering the Norweigan Black Metal scene and it's an absolutely kickass read so far.

[Liam]

On 9/21/2017 at 13:47, Apsham said:

Currently reading Lords Of Chaos based off a recommendation from Last Podcast On The Left since they are covering the Norweigan Black Metal scene and it's an absolutely kickass read so far.

Ohhh. I own this and really enjoyed it until towards the end where it got a little bit too ideology heavy. That'd work for some people, but wasn't quite into it at that point.

[apsham]

30 minutes ago, Liam said:

Ohhh. I own this and really enjoyed it until towards the end where it got a little bit too ideology heavy. That'd work for some people, but wasn't quite into it at that point.

Yeah that was my read of it too. First half was amazing though.

[stokeriño]

My reading of the Harry Potter books (for the first time) continues. Finished the fifth one last night.

I'm really torn about The Order of the Phoenix. I would say that my favourite Harry Potter book is in there SOMEWHERE...but also with about another two-thirds of a distinctly average Harry Potter book crammed in alongside it (hence it also being too bloody long). The Dolores Umbridge arc is magnificent, and there are some excellent Weasley-centred sub-plots, but pretty much everything related to Voldemort seemed entirely tacked on. Not to mention that the eponymous Order of the Phoenix itself does relatively little outside of Providing A House To Stay In and then playing the part of The Cavalry at the end. That's after going to the trouble of adding new characters, such as Tonks, who get introduced and then basically ignored.

Overall ranking so far? I'm going to put it at #2, because it's not as well-formed an entity as Goblet of Fire, but it has too much good in it to put further down.

At least the next book is back to a respectable length, thank God.