Books

[ochoill]

Still plodding through The Plague.  It is actually very good but it is taking me years to get through for some reason.

Flat out stopped reading this.  Didn't have the head for it any more.  It is sitting in my bag here waiting to be picked up again.  Dunno what isn't grabbing me with it, I enjoy it when I have it in my hands but nothing is bringing me to go back to it.

[Carnage]

Finished up Land by Maggie O'Farrell this evening. I had never heard of her before and I bought the book based purely on the beautiful cover. It was very good indeed. As and tragic, but also full of colour and wild pagan magic. A unique read.

Is that her latest (about the census takers)? Sounds intriguing, I wouldn't mind giving Hamnet a go either.

[Eoin McLove]

They were cartographers, not census takers, but yeah. I'll give Hamnet a go if I see it.

[Carnage]

Ah right, I got that wrong. I read a couple of interviews with her around the time it was released and it sounded interesting anyway.

[Eoin McLove]

Well worth a read. I can't put my finger on why, but it maybe doesn't quite reach classic status for me, but it's beautifully written all the same.

[Don Gately]

Re reading Revolutionary road by Richard Yates. One of the best books I ever read. Revisiting this after 20 yrs or so

[Eoin McLove]

Next up: The School of Night by Karl Ove Knausgaard. I've read his Morning Star trilogy and mostly enjoyed them so I'm hoping this one will grip me too.

Burning through this. One of the best things I've read in a while. I was detecting a similar poisoned atmosphere to Crime & Punishment and Camus's The Outsider, and it turns out my intuitions were spot on. Knausgaard tells his own story, and it has its own meaning and drive, but those influences are strong. I can't put the thing down!

Edit. The School of Night is, simply put, a masterpiece. Knausgaard is a master of writing an engaging and thoroughly unlikeable protagonist. There's a Faustian theme running throughout the book, and his deployment of the pact, the calling in of the debt, is fucking brutal. A painful and stunning read.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Any takers for Ray Bradbury's There Will Come Soft Rains, set today, August 4th 2026, read by Leonard Nimoy?

https://archive.org/details/bradbury-nimoy?webamp=default

[Eoin McLove]

Next up:

Engagement by Gun-Britt Sundström.

Edit.  Fuck it, plunging in to The Odyssey too...

[Pat Twisted Wrath]

Read a short story over the last few days - The Divine Farce by Michael Graziano.

Basically three strangers find themselves confined in a time concrete cell in complete darkness - It expands from there. Only like 100 pages so easy to breeze through.