Books

[Melmoth]

Read through War of the Worlds for the first time over the weekend.

Really interesting to see how much the science fiction genre has drawn influence from a book that old. Would have always considered heat rays an invention of a 1950s era imagination for example, rather than someone writing in the 1890s.

[Carnage]

Read through War of the Worlds for the first time over the weekend.

Really interesting to see how much the science fiction genre has drawn influence from a book that old. Would have always considered heat rays an invention of a 1950s era imagination for example, rather than someone writing in the 1890s.

I started that years ago but packed it away when moving and haven't finished it. Enjoyed what I had read though, roughly half of it.

[Pedrito]

Shakleton's boat journey written by his skipper Frank Worsley. An excellent read. Tom Crean features quite a bit and another Irishman by the name of Timmy McCarthy from Kinsale who having survived the whole thing, went to WW1 and was killed within 2 weeks. The world was a crazy place 100 years ago. Extraordinary people and events. Shakleton, as it turns out, was also born in Ireland and lived in Kildare until he was 10 albeit Anglo-Irish. What a complicated thing being 'Irish' was at the time.

Also reading and really enjoying the Witcher. Finished the Last Wish and now on Sword of Destiny. Felt like something written by a 5 year old for the first 100 pages but it picks up nicely.

[Scáthach]

Started and finished the story of the eye by Georges Bataille this afternoon. Very enjoyable and recommended if you like a bit of literary filth. It's very short at about 75 pages, but also includes some short related pieces by Bataille and essays by Susan Sontag and Roland Barthes. I don't know for sure, but would guess at it being influential for W. S. Burroughs stuff, with similar imagery and levels of debauchery. The final chapter would make some BM lyricists blush for its levels of blasphemy. 

[StoutAndAle]

Finished Woody Allen's "Apropos Of Nothing". The first two-thirds of the book is a highly enjoyable read - funny, interesting and unflinchingly honest about his personal life from his first marriage, through subsequent relationships and in dealing with the entire Mia Farrow/Soon-Yi Previn affair.

The latter is dealt with in a very factual way, much like Ronan Farrow's- his estranged son - book "Catch & Kill" about Harvey Weinstein et al. And much like "Catch & Kill", this book has clearly been read by several lawyers before publication to make sure Allen isn't libeling anyone and yet he opens the floodgates. It's quite telling that nobody has mentioned suing Allen on publication of this memoir.

The book falls apart in the final third. It becomes a "what I did on my summer holidays" report. Became a slog.Glad I read it though.

Just started "Barrel Aged Stout & Selling Out" by Josh Noel about Budweiser (and other big breweries) feeling the heat from craft brewers and buying them out to shut them down.

[Pedrito]

Let us know about that beer book. Mate of mine would be very interested if it's worth a read.

[StoutAndAle]

Let us know about that beer book. Mate of mine would be very interested if it's worth a read.

Will do. It's enjoyable and interesting so far anyway,  Josh Noel is a very good journalist.

I'd recommend Pete Brown's books to your mate if he hasn't read them. Definitely "Three Sheets To The Wind", "Hops And Glory" and "Man Walks Into A Pub". I have bought the rest but I haven't read them yet.

https://www.petebrown.net/books/

[Eoin McLove]

Two weeks off work. I just opened Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges. Let's see what sort of madness it might contain.

[astfgyl]

I'm currently reading a book of Jeremy Clarkson's thoughts from 2010ish that I got in the charity shop for 50 cent. I find it amazing how I once thought that he encapsulated basically everything that I saw as being wrong with the world, and now find myself agreeing with almost everything he says. Some of it borders on the prophetic. Getting older is not fun.

[Carnage]

Henning Mankell: The White Lioness - the third of the Wallander series. Needed a couple of relatively light books before getting back to the Dune series.

[Caomhaoin]

Can't beat a bit of Wallander lad

Still on the auld l'étranger. I'm failing to see what it was that got the boy a Nobel prize. And it's in frog speak, wrecking my head how many times I have to whip out the dictionary and then my lad to ease the frustration.

[StoutAndAle]

Still on the auld l'étranger. I'm failing to see what it was that got the boy a Nobel prize. And it's in frog speak, wrecking my head how many times I have to whip out the dictionary and then my lad to ease the frustration.

A game of Scrabble in your gaff might get a bit "adventurous".

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Triple splurge score!

[Scáthach]

Currently reading The Witch by Ronald Hutton and its very interesting. It's essentially a historic and global survey of the witch and witchcraft, but crucially, its written by a history professor and not a new age Wicca practitioner. The latter tend to make up a lot of their version of history from their own wishful thinking. I'm just getting to the juicy parts now on the witch trials and persecutions of late medieval and early modern Europe. What is it about Germans that they seem to love rounding up people in their thousands and eradicating them?

[Eoin McLove]

They hate clutter and value elbow room.