What are you reading now

[Fair_play_boy]

Two nights into the da Vinci Code. Great read. Real page turner. Short snappy chapters, perfect for bed time reading.

[ken foree]

have to say the fantastic four anthology was great recently!

[Drumcondra Red]

Two nights into the da Vinci Code. Great read. Real page turner. Short snappy chapters, perfect for bed time reading.

Read all 4 of Dan Drown's books, a lot of people don't like him but I really enjoyed them, I think Angels and Demons is slightly better then The Da Vinci code though!

[Sheridan]

Hedda Gabler a play by Henrik Ibsen - ditto, but I have read it before and done the lights for it not 10 months back, so that one is a real skim job. Cracker of a play though - really cuts through you in a good translation.

Not read that, enjoyed A Doll's House (is that still running at the Abbey? Dr. Rank and I are kindred spirits) and The Lady from the Sea.

One book I'd recommend to anyone without hesitation is John Berger's and our faces, my heart, brief as photos. A slim volume of around 100 pages, but containing breathtaking insights into art, exile and nature (amongst other topics), interspersed with snatches of, frankly, less than inspiring verse.

I'm no aficionado of visual art, but it's impossible not to be moved by Berger's passionate advocacy of Caravaggio and Van Gogh (for whom, Berger claims, the act of painting was directly analogous to the labour of the peasantry he depicted.) Unfortunately, the entire work is let down somewhat by a woefully bathetic final sentence ("With you I can imagine a place where to be phosphate of calcium is enough" )

[jofyisgod]

I just finished Servants of The People by Andrew Rawnsley, a really good book about the workings of New Labour, and the relationship between Brown and Blair.

Currently reading the new Artemis Fowl book , i just find them to be really imaginative and fun. Makes a change from Machiavelli for Politics at school .

[hamish]

[QUOTE=jofyisgod]I just finished Servants of The People by Andrew Rawnsley, a really good book about the workings of New Labour, and the relationship between Brown and Blair.



Must check that book out - he writes a great article in each Sunday's Observer.

[sylvo]

Nearly finished '' Robert Emmet the making of a legend'', and have got ''The ''Emmet rising in Kildare'' waiting to read next.

[exile]

just read shantaram by by gregory david roberts true story about an ussie on the run in india in the 80's and just fininshed bird song by sebastian faulks real melencholy stuff about ww1

[Ruairi]

i read fight club a few weeks back, excellent stuff.. and for some reason i'm reading the scripts from Red Dwarf series 8....

highbrow stuff indeed

[tonycuna]

Reading "Three musketeers" by Dumas.. Really a great book, wonderful pace during the story..

Just finished "Idle thoughts of an idle fellow" an "Three men in a boat", both by Jerome Klapka Jerome. Extraordinary books in my opinion!

[TheOneWhoKnocks]

The Beast in the Red Forest by Sam Eastland.

Girlfriend got it me for me yonks ago. Only got around to reading it now and I have got to say, I am enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would. Very well written and expertly paced.

[SkStu]

I'm surprised you have a girlfriend. Heh.

[nigel-harps1954]

You guys are making logging in here everyday even more worthwhile. Quality stuff!

[Eminence Grise]

Why did it take me nearly five years to see that SkStu logging in is a perfect Canuck pun???

I wonder if TOWK ever got round to colouring in that book he mentioned... Strange fellow...

FWIW, I finished Robert Harris' The Second Sleep a couple of weeks ago - odd concept; he more or less pulls it off. Elizabeth Strout's Olive Again is just a perfect piece of writing, as was Yuko Tsushima's Territory of Light. Next up... can't decide between Limmy's Daft Wee Stories or getting back to work and reading a load of mildly interesting journal articles for a paper I have to write...

And a few I read over the last five years of this thread's inactivity

• Haruki Murakami – Men Without Women. Just brililant - witty, fantastical, acutely observed.
• JM Coetzee – Age of Iron. Meh. Underwhelming, but to be fair I've always struggled with post-colonial or post-apartheid writing and Africa. My loss, I suppose.
• Peter Hoeg – The Susan Effect. I felt his last couple were obscure just for the sake of it, but this (while it has its moments obscurity and Hoeg showing off) is a pretty fast-paced thriller. Nowhere near Miss Smila's Feeling for Snow, but miles better than The Quiet Girl.
• Markus Zusak - The Book Thief. I finally got round to it, and really enjoyed it. Good pacing, the idea of Death speaking directly to the reader builds a sense of impending threat.
• Mike McCormack - Solar Bones. If McCormack wrote the phone book I'd hang on every word of it. I met him on a writer's course a couple of years back and had a severe case of groupie fandom!
• Donal Ryan - The Spinning Heart. Worth every word of praise it got. One story developing with a different narrator in each chapter. Clever without being overwhelming or confusing, or clever for its own sake.

And several cheap Piccadilly westerns, pulp crime fiction, more than a handful of Biggles books and a lot of short stories!

[passinginterest]

A timely reminder that I need to get back to reading on the bus rather than staring at my phone. I think the last book I read was Jo Nesbo's McBeth, it was grand if nothing overly exciting. Have a good few thing lined up including one of Donal Ryan's that I must have bout nearly a year ago and still haven't started. I got a copy of Paddy Hoolihan's Hooligan for Christmas too (before the podcast controversies), should be an interesting read, despite the stupid things he said on the podcast, he's dedicated a lot of his life since the forced retirement from MMA to working for his community in Tallaght. He's MMA career in itself was fascinating particularly given he was hiding a potentially lethal medical condition for a few years.