What was the last book you read ?

[nemo]

But, uh, what about We?  I think Zamyatin was the point of the old post that tipped off this discussion?

Regardless of who got it more right (and obviously that was Huxley, though had the Cold War actually turned into a real war this probably would not have turned out to be the case), I do think Orwell was far more enjoyable to read and makes much better use of the English language, regardless of futuristic inaccuracy or thievery of ideas.

Oh, the last book I read was Nadja by Andre Breton.  I love Breton as an artist and manifesto writer, but as an author not so much.

[ktallett]

They are both rather special pieces of work although very different in style and ideas, really both brilliant to read. Orwell is possibly a correct version of events just in possibly say china/north korea (extreme i know) for example with their own media censoring and their portrayal of themselves to western world.

[polar]

last couple books i read

the science of getting rich- wattles
think and grow rich- napoleon hill

i've read them through quite a few times and i always read something similiar hoping something sinks in

[polar]

just read a book called The Shack, it was recommended to me and i didn't check what it was about in advance, it turned out to be about christianity.  i would not refer it to anyone

[PEANUTS]

he he ... 'the broon & oor wullie'  he he

[2NaFish]

been working through a lot of xmas books recently. a few including,

the fall, camus. loved it. makes me want learn french so i can read it in the original.

whatever charlie brookers new  book is called. just a collection of his newspaper articles but its a great read. primarily cos he's a vitriolic misanthrope. but also cos its fun to look back with hindsight a gauge whether or not he was spouting pish.

history of western philosophy, russell. no, i didnt get it last xmas. its taken ten months to plough through it bit by bit. its bewildering for the most part but its as impressive as anything ive ever read. i was pretty ashamed that the part i liked best was catholic philosophy.

[nemo]

been working through a lot of xmas books recently. a few including,

the fall, camus. loved it. makes me want learn french so i can read it in the original.

I'm trying to improve my French by reading those bilingual books at the moment.  I've got a very bizarre version of The Old Man and The Sea by Hemmingway, the English version of which is not actually what Hemmingway wrote, but a bad translation of the French translation back into English.  It's kinda forcing me to read it in French because the English version doesn't make any sense half the time.

Oh, and Russel is amazing, although kinda overwhelming from time to time.  I shall hear no criticism of that book.

The last thing I read was The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, which was pretty funny and kinda charming, but comes across as really very pretentious, I think her translator had delusions of grandeur.

[antonyrose]

The Game, by Neil Strauss.


The Natural Mind, by Dr. Andrew Weil.

and I am Ozzy, by Ozzy Osbourne

[2NaFish]

recently i've finished a couple books. one byarmando ianucci which was a collection of articles. i found it quite dissapointing considering the fact that everything else he has done has been brilliant.

also read jekyll and hyde, which was decent. surprisingly subversive for a victorian novel. i liked that stevenson never named hyde's vice, which kept it universal. its much shorter than and wildly different in style but it reminded me of dorian gray.

read a few jeeves books and they never fail to deliver.

[inktvip93]

The last book I finished was a game novel

[nemo]

recently i've finished a couple books. one byarmando ianucci which was a collection of articles. i found it quite dissapointing considering the fact that everything else he has done has been brilliant.

also read jekyll and hyde, which was decent. surprisingly subversive for a victorian novel. i liked that stevenson never named hyde's vice, which kept it universal. its much shorter than and wildly different in style but it reminded me of dorian gray.

read a few jeeves books and they never fail to deliver.

Ah Jeeves, I found a couple of 2nd hand Wodehouse books for 1.20Euros a pop at a book shop on Friday day.  Alongside them I also got myself a couple of Amis's (The Rachel Papers by Martin and I Like It Here by Kingsley) Fury by Salman Rushdie, The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann, David Copperfield by Dickens (I've never read anything by Dickens, that seems shameful.) Herzog by Saul Bellow and Wuthering Heights.  10 books for a total of 19 euros; I'm still rather pleased with myself for that, considering my first scan of the 2nd hand English section suggested it was made up of about 50 copies of each of Dan Brown's excretions and a few Sophie Kinsella's.

Oh, and Jekyll and Hyde is fabulous too.  I remember being shocked by how short it was compared to its reputation the first time I read it, but every word in it is worthwhile, which is a great thing to be able to say about something.

And the last thing i read was Nocturnes, Kazuo Ishiguro's short stories collection.  Essentially it was crap.  Apart from the title story, which was nice.  And given how few books I brought out here with me, I find it kinda annoying not to enjoy one now.

[2NaFish]

i'm gonna make it a long term goal of mine to read every jeeves book before i die. actually, thats too easy, i'll try and do it before stephen fry dies.

i dont feel bad in the slightest about not reading dickens, i should, but just can't muster the shame. those books are fucking huge.

as for wuthering heights? where to begin? part of me hates it because the 'cathy heathcliff' relationship is such a horrible selfish description of love it makes me feel ill. little more than onanism. part of me likes it because it is completly unlike the common understanding of it - quite a few times i've laughed in people's, mostly women's, faces because they've said heathcliff is dreamy. in the nasty bastard, byronic sense of the word i guess you could say he's romantic, beyond that  he is a giant purpled veined dick of a man.

[nemo]

I kinda love Heathcliffe, he's a cruel, unrefined, cold-hearted bastard, and a disformed ugly one to boot, yet everyone seems to think of him as up there with Mr Darcy (actually, I always thought Darcy was a twat as well) as the archetypal romantic figure.   I want to know how he gets away with it.

But one takes what one is given, and while I'm not a huge fan of Wuthering Heights, I did decide that 10 was a better number to buy than 9.  So it was a choice between that and Women in Love by DH Lawrence, which I have never read, but I've loathed every Lawrence I've ever had to deal with until now and I didn't really expect it to be any different.

[2NaFish]

99% of folk who think heathcliff is dreamy have never read the book; to do so you'd have to be deranged.

my earliest memory of anything related to wuthering heights, beyond kate bush (who is probably partially responisble for the sexification (you think up a better word if you're so clever) of heathcliff) is of sir cliff pretending to be him running about on the moors, yadda yadda.quite a disturding memory. i'm pretty sure almost every film or tv version of it has been pretty saccharine, particularly the one with laurence olivier.

i agree with you on lawrence, the more i think about chatterley the more i dislike it, appparently women in love is his best. for however much that counts.

[jamillos]

Wuthering Heights > Pride & Prejudice, although I know it's not quite the same cup of tea. Just read it recently.