What was the last book you read ?

[ktallett]

Dickens is brilliant definately would recommend to anybody. Its worth having a go even though large will go rather quickly.
Im not sure if they count as books but i have just finished the manga series bleach and kingdom hearts.

[wyldechild]

legionary Peters

it's a book about finnish man called Kyösti Pietiläinen who served more than 20 years in foreign legion. I'm not usually into books that much but this one got my attention. It might be written poorly and it's a bit messy but the story just wont let go of you and he tells very cool stories about the legion.

if you find it somewhere (I dont know have they translated it to english) go and read it. It's nothin' revolutionary but it's a damn good book and you will not regret reading it

[2NaFish]

i've been feeling sorry for myself as i'm sick, so i've been catching up with books that i should've read at uni but never did. to that end i read "Candide: of Optimism" by Voltaire today. even understand the circumstances in which it was written - as im sure you know Liebniz gets a roasting - it wasnt very enjoyable. i've read books from similar periods that didnt feel as hokey and primitive whilst still displaying the ethos of the times - gulliver's travels or monetsqiue's lettres persanes for example. outside a fair few swipes at various bloated european super powers of the time it lacked any story to keep me reading and the allegorical payoff was sporadic and weak.

voltaire, you can do better, son.

[nemo]

i've been feeling sorry for myself as i'm sick, so i've been catching up with books that i should've read at uni but never did. to that end i read "Candide: of Optimism" by Voltaire today. even understand the circumstances in which it was written - as im sure you know Liebniz gets a roasting - it wasnt very enjoyable. i've read books from similar periods that didnt feel as hokey and primitive whilst still displaying the ethos of the times - gulliver's travels or monetsqiue's lettres persanes for example. outside a fair few swipes at various bloated european super powers of the time it lacked any story to keep me reading and the allegorical payoff was sporadic and weak.

voltaire, you can do better, son.

I loved Candide, mostly just because I found it very funny.  And partially because I don't like Leibnitz.

Admittedly Micromegas and Zadig (and possibly even the Inguine) are better pieces of writing, but there are some amazingly quotable bits in Candide, the English Officer who gets shot to 'encourage the others' as an example.

I'm making a start on Herzog by Saul Bellow at the moment.  It seems good thus far, but it's too early to pass comment yet, I think.

[2NaFish]

off the top of my head leibniz invented a branch of calculus (newton did it too, but they were independent of one another) and he invented the binary system which makes him the father of the computer. add to that he was a polymath who excelled even the da vinci's in breadth, if not in quality.

it seem anachronistic to hate the man for trying to square the problem of evil in the 17th century. unless the boy did the dirty on your great-great, etc-granny then i think you're being unfair.

[nemo]

off the top of my head leibniz invented a branch of calculus (newton did it too, but they were independent of one another) and he invented the binary system which makes him the father of the computer. add to that he was a polymath who excelled even the da vinci's in breadth, if not in quality.

it seem anachronistic to hate the man for trying to square the problem of evil in the 17th century. unless the boy did the dirty on your great-great, etc-granny then i think you're being unfair.

I don't think I ever used the word 'hate', and yeah, fantastic scientist and mathematician (and to this day i find it odd that we tend to use Leibnizian notation for calculus in the UK and the Germans tended to use Newtonian notation) 

But Optimism is too rank to be let off the hook.  Giving him a get out of jail free pass for it is kinda like Woopi Goldberg describing what Roman Polanski did as "not 'rape' rape".  I kinda get the impression no-one would have paid it any attention whatsoever, were it not for Leibniz's name on the cover of Theodicee.

[2NaFish]

anachronism dear boy. to modern ears it is obviously ridiculous (very few people had any difficulty with it in his own time) but its wrong to judge his theology by our standards. by your standard all greek and any catholic and most christian philosophers would be worthy of your contempt.

in order to validate the all knowing, all powerful, all good god the theory of the best of all possible words isnt that bad - there are far worse anyway. its poor to assume the conclusion and try and prove it subsequently - heresy by our standards - but nothing worse than most thinkers have done in years gone by and many modern scholars.

[Archangel Michael]

Just finished reading "Angels & Demons" by Dan Brown. It was great... another genius writing by Dan Brown. I feel kind of regret for didn't watch the movie when it was in cinema few months ago.

[PEANUTS]

Love Dan Brown - read most - but reading Nicci French at the moment - pretty good if you can do a novela day - can't put it down

[Rocket Queen]

Min Kamp 2- Karl Ove Knausgård

[2NaFish]

just finished the compete sherlock holmes. cracking read. i look forward to revisiting it in a decade or so.

[Rocket Queen]

is that so. I'll add that to my never ending list.

[nemo]

I've been on one of my increasingly rare reading splurges this week:

The Rachel Papers - Martin Amis
I Like It Here - Kingsley Amis
The Body Artist - Don de Lillo
Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood

The Rachel Papers is brilliant, filthy, funny and has the most hateable yet endearing lead character I've come across in a long time
The Body Artist is pretty slim, but beautiful, not a word is wasted.
Oryx and Crake is another of those amazing dystopias Atwood can come up with, I might even have enjoyed the premise more than The Handmaid's Tale, though it does get a bit lost at times.

I Like It Here was sort of mildly amusing now and again, a good observation on the attitude of the stereotypical 'Brit abroad', but nothing worth writing home about

[nemo]

Katherine Burdekin - Swastika Night

Amazing premise for a book, a lot of really important themes tackled very intelligently, unfortunately she can't actually write semi-decent prose (her sentence construction may well be worse than Dan Brown's!), it was a pretty horrible experience to get through it.