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What are you reading?

Just started The Picture of Dorian Gray by possibly the best writer ever, Oscar Wilde.

I've only got through about fifty pages or so, but already the level of homo-eroticism is staggering, and I'm a-loving it. It's also hilarious and every page has a quote which is like, World famous. The man was such a genius.

And I'm re-reading Animal Farm cause we're doing Stalinism, and as such, I get it more now. Not that I didn't get it before, obviously. Great book, I prefer 1984, but they are both fantastic pieces of work.
 
Dorian Grey is awesome. As you said, so funny and quotable. It's too bad Oscar Wilde never wrote any more novels.
 
Sorry to lower the tone :p I'm reading Jurassic Park (almost finished it, it's a three poo novel) again. I probably read it every three or four years and it's a pretty decent book.

It's sufficiently different from the film to make it worth reading over and again. It's trash, but good trash! :)
 
^I never knew it was a book. :?
Anyway I havn't read much for a while as I havn't been able to kick myself up the ass and go and buy one. :)
Plus I wouldn't know what to get, as whenever I get books I only get ones that I know about. I very rarely pick up a book I don't know and read it as i'm scared that I may not like it. :lol:
 
Not as literary as other things, but I just finished a historical documentation of Herbert Schmeck's coasters. It was quite interesting and certainly fueled my interest in the early years of the wooden coaster.

Now I'm starting through an architecturally minded survey of the world's ancient historical sites. It should prove relatively interesting, I think.
 
Picked Cujo up second hand from Stafford market. It's good reading 'classic' King for the first time. I remember why I liked him so much :D

It's not the best book in the world, but it's nice and rambling and set comfortably in Castle Rock.
 
I am re-reading Northen Lights by Phillip Pullman. It is a fantastic book. I read it when I was 11 and bought a copy. I just never got round to reading it again. With the movie coming out recently (I refuse to see it as it will ruin Pullman's book) I decided to read again and remember why I love it so much. If you haven't read it you really need too.
 
Jurassic park was a great little book.. very gory in places - sequel wasn't a bad book either.


As for "on the bog" reading material.. I've just finished re-reading james herbets "the rats" again.

It's great little short story which is perfect for on the bog reading (While wondering if a rat is gonna come out of the u-bend and bite yer arse off)
 
James Herbert I loved as a 14 year old - you don't notice just how badly written his early stuff is. The Rats is great fun, but The Fog was always my favourite. Domain is good though (I do like my post apocalypse stories) :D

Anyway, finished Cujo, and it was great. Nothing happened really, but it was just a good yarn.

Then to stay in Castle Rock, I read The Dead Zone. Well, it's only a little in Castle Rock, but again, an excellent quick read. Nothing much happens, but it's just easy stuff to get along with.

Now moved on to Derry for my annual reading of IT! I just can't read the book too often - I find it hard, because the book is cruel and I know it's going to be cruel to the characters I love, but I just adore the way that you're brought into the lives of the people and town, you really do live it with them.

I'm also reading the latest Official Nintendo Magazine :D
 
Shopaholic Ties the Knot

Still haven't completely finished it as I've been a bit preoccupied, but I read a good bit in the last week and I can say, it's an interesting book. It's the third book out of like, six or so, and it's keeping my intrigued. Basically, her mom is planning a backyard wedding in Oxshott, whereas her boyfriend's mom is planning a fabulous wedding at the Plaza in New York, and she can't choose which to attend. It's very exciting :p .

9/10 so far. I'm a bit annoyed that I left it at school accidentally, so now I have no reading material for the weekend.
 
Started to read through Japanese For Busy People yestarday as an attempt to brush up my Japanese skills, and if someone wants to learn some basic Japanese then this is a book to consider.
 
I've just started Mad Dogs. It is good so far, but I'm only a few pages in. Hopefully the rest of the book will be of the same sort of standard.
 
Just read Holes by Louis Sachar.
Brilliant book, but we had to work lots with it in the English class, so I'm a bit tired of it now.
still, 10/10
 
Nobody on CF would be intersted in this book, but should you find yourself bored, I'd recommend reading Piers Morgan's "Do You Know Who I Am?"

For those that don't know who is is/was, he's the editor that was fired from the Daily Mirror for those hoax abused Iraqi prisioner images.

The book is in diary format and tells of his struggle of what to do next. He's basically between jobs.

The general gist of it is him debating what his life is now worth.

The best parts of the book so far have been his unbiased and relentless opinions on famous people he has met throughout his career. And yes, he does slag loads of famous peopel off.

It's all about him trying to understand the world of celebrity culture. Something which I don't understand. I'm on a similar wavelength to Morgan.

So, if you want a bit of a gossipy type read, it's a great book!
 
Started reading "The Dice Man" by Luke Reinhart last night.

It was all the rage about 14 years ago while I was at uni. Everyone raved about it. That immediately means that I can't get into it - I have a natural predisposition to avoid things everyone raves about. I like to find things for myself, or wait until all the fervor has gone away, and then let myself find out if it's really good or not, because there's no 'hype' bigging it up (sometimes you get caught in hype and it makes things seem better, other times the thing wont live up to the hype, so it's more disappointing, and you're therefore harsher).

Anyway, I was always really intrigued by the idea of the book. It's about a psychologist (Luke Reinhart), who is bored with life. So he decides to use the outcome of a die toss to determine his next action.

The first example is that if the die reveals a 1 - he'll go downstairs and rape his best friends wife - any other outcome and he'll simply go to bed.

As he comes to rely on the die more and more, his life becomes ever more unpredictable, and of course, collapses around him.

It's pretty compelling stuff, and is very witty - I can also see why the idea may have been so attractive to 20 year old students, lost in a world of drink of drugs :lol:

It's no literary masterpiece, but that's fine, I like trash - 100 pages in, and it's well worth the £4 from Asda I paid :D
 
I currently rading a short book written by Terry Jones, and Douglas Adams called Starship Titanic

Pokemaniac said:
Just read Holes by Louis Sachar.
Brilliant book, but we had to work lots with it in the English class, so I'm a bit tired of it now.
still, 10/10

I love Holes :) great book and the movie wasn't half bad either.
 
12:19am
A Mercedes leaves the Ritz hotel.
12:25am
A car loses control in a Paris underpass.
3.57am
Three people are pronounced dead.
3.58am
Samuel Carver realizes he's been a set up...


Tom Cain's The Accident Man starts by taking a world wide conspiracy theory and adds his fictional spin on the yarn that everybody has ready in the press. A royal scandal and so on...

Initially, the thought of another consiparcy theory was the last thing I wanted to read, yet since it was recommended by a friend (and also carries endorsements from Wilbur Smith and Lee Child) I thought I would give it a go.

From the outset Cain makes it plain that this is by no means a conspiracy theory that he is laying out for all to read but merely his mind as a novelist asking the hypothetical question "What If...?" The ways in which Cain weaves this tale are oustanding throughout and it is actually a very gripping and exciting pillow clutching thriller.

You follow the journey of ex-marine Samuel Carver, who now works for an agency that deals in making "bad things happen to worse people" as the rear cover blurb put it. Initally the reader is placed right in the middle of one these missions, to rid the world of some threat or other, to which Carver does in a rather viscious manner maybe. Still, by any means necessary this man is trained to get the job done.

What I found quite profound in this book is the fact that throughout there is no mention of any of the subject matters names. Clearly, from the blurb on the back and the subsequent events in the back, it is based around the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. Whether this is due to legal reasons or because the dead do not need naming is questionable, yet I would imagine it is solely due to the latter but it also adds to the integrity of the book. Because there are no names named, it is stating again, it is not a conspiracy theory about the death of Diana but the death of a royal.

What I found most unusual, so to speak, was the fact that although I know full well the book is not based on actual fact and more one singular event, I discovered myself actually contemplating the reality of it, or more the plausability of that said reality. Which I can conclude, is very believable. You would imagine a piece like this as being somewhat predictable, because we all know so very much about it, yet Cain completly extinguishes those conspiracies and effectively creates his own, in a fictional manner that does led you to wonder; if you are susceptible to that sort of thing. Having said that, after a while though the initial outlay of the book is the least of your thoughts as it follows many different paths and ideas that aren't directly related to the death. The death of the princess is merely a catalyst to get Carver into the particular cloak and dagger thriller.

Naturally the book covers a damsel in distress and a whole gander of bombs, blasts, terrorists, etc etc but it does it all with so much panache and to be honest, an air of authority, almost expecting you to believe this to be the truth, even though Cain has stated that this is not the case.

The scenes of what could be mis-construed as gratuitous violence are so well put and crafted in a manner that gives this book a page turner quality in the most perverse sense of the word. There aren't many books where I want to continue reading the ways in which the characters are defeated but this was a book I just couldn't put down.

The biggest surprises of all came in the "truth" being uncovered in the whodunit and the actual end of the book, or should I say where the book leaves the lead character. By no mean feat, it is totally unexpected yet makes total sense and you aren't left feeling cheated, yet you are still curious as to what happens next. Thank fully this is to be covered in a second book by Cain in the summer of 08 called "The House Of War"

I thoroughly enjoyed this book from start to finish and I recommend it to anyone who fancies a bit of action film quality thrills.
 
Finished Mad Dogs.

I can safely say that I was very impressed. I really liked the way it was wirtten, and it kept me on edge as each chapter would end with a cliffhanger. I would remmoned it, although I can imagine that it wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea.

If just started The Life Of Pi but I've only read a page so...
 
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