h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm currently reading Jinx by Meg Cabot

Just read The Fade by... Chris someone?

A Sci-fi book. Good start to a series.

Finished Flashman and the Redskins. Highly recommended as ever. Now I've started Tom Brown's schooldays in which I shall see the young Flashy from another's point of view. So far Thomas Hughes has waxed lyrical about the Browns (a metaphor for the quiet, hardworking Englishmen who keep everything working without getting any credit) and a part of rural Berkshire. Eventually we might get to the bit about Rugby School.

Chris Hitchen's The Portable Atheist - which is a contradiction in terms - the book is huge!

Ooh! I thought that wasn't published until later in the year.

And inexpensive, too!

Is anyone reading things particularly for World Book Day?

Every day is Book Day!

Sho, I'm halfway through Clapton's biography (he's had acupuncture and "working" on a farm in Wales - working in inverted commas as he still has the energy to get pissed at the local pub afterwards).


Yeah, looking forward to seeing The Colour of Magic - trailers look good (but then again most trailers do.......duh!).

I'm with the Chimp. I've got dozens of books I haven't read yet. Trying to do one unread book per week and failing.

house, what do you think of the Clapton book? I was sorely disappointed

Just opened the biography of John Peel - but I'm not sure who wrote it.

I've just finished "The Wisdom Of Crocodiles" by Paul Hoffman.

It was an interesting read, reasonably well-written with a lot of good ideas, but no real point.

I'm slightly disappointed by that. Has anyone else read this, or any of his other books?

Next up is "Engleby", by Sebastian Faulks.

RF

>>what do you think of the Clapton book? I was sorely disappointed

I'm sorely disappointed by Clapton in general. I mean - I like the blues...but I just don't hear it from him.

Give me Eddie 'Son' House any day. Or Charlie Patton.

>I'm sorely disappointed by Clapton in general. I mean - I like the blues...but I just don't hear it from him.<

Well said, Ed! I agree with you, totally. (How often does *that* happen? )

I'm not going to be reading the Pynchon next; a co-worker loaned me volumes 2-4 of Piers Anthony's "Incarnations of Immortality" series, so I'm going to read and return those before starting anything else.

The Clapton book? Compared to something like Dylan's Chronicles, it's 'not very good' He, Clapton, doesn't seem to leave an awful lot out (vis a vis 'dirty washing') & some of the stuff he puts in makes him out to be a genuine 100% tw*t. Mind you, I am only half way through so things could change!
Incidently, the thing about Chronicles (& Dylan himself) that appeals to me is "less is more". What makes a person famous in the first place? - when a biography is written that subject should form the basis of the book. In Clapton there is just too much sex and drugs and not enough rock 'n' roll (never mind the Blues)!

The Peel book is a treat. Apparently, he wrote half of it before he died and his widow Sheila completed it. I'd definitely recommend it.

Yeah - 'Margrave...' is good. But it's a pity Peel didn't live to write about his Golden Era, which started with punk...and went on until his death.

I've a feeling, though, that if he *had* finished it, it would have been several thousand pages long.

I get Clapton's blues when he plays with, say, BB King, but mostly... he does sound like a bit of a twit, doesn't he. Any idea what Patti Boyd thinks of it?

No idea what the ex Mrs Harrison/Clapton thought of his book but...
Amazon have this:

Wonderful Today: The Autobiography of Pattie Boyd by Patti Boyd and Penny Junor (Hardcover - 23 Aug 2007)

which leads me to suspect that EC figures prominently!
It looks like it's been ghost written which may make for a better read. Unfortunately, I am at that stage in life (middle age) when I'd rather be doing something worthwhile (eg cycling, drinking beer, etc) than getting involved in something that has an incestous (in the literary sense) feel to it.

Just finished 'Sound Bites' by Alex Kapranos. Aslim collection of his food columns, written while on tour with Franz Ferdinand. I'm no great fan of FF, but the writing's good.

And now for a rant. I should warn you in advance that I'm about to do something that many will find distasteful. I'm going to criticise someone widely regarded as A National Treasure.

'The Ode Less Travelled' - Stephen Fry.

I've been wanting a book about how poetry works for a while, and in terms of technical detail, this more-or-less does the trick. But, jaysus....what completely shite writing! It has a patronising, tweedy prep-school master's tone. Yes, I know it's a pose, but come off it, Stephen - You weren't taught this stuff at prep school. You learnt it from people who treated you as and spoke to you as an adult. And the writing is so ****ing flabby. He doen't believe in using one over-long faux-naif simile when three will do. We get the point! Just choose the best of the three repetitions, please, and stop trying to hammer your bon mots home. As Regina Spektor put it, You can write but you can't edit.

And I've caught hinm out on a technical howler. He cites Shakespeare's 18th Sonnet as being composed entirely from regular iambic pentameters (in fairness, lots of people on the web seem to think this) - but unless the first two lines begin with trochii, it has to be read as:
"You want *me* to compare you to a summer's day?!!
I *told* you you're more lovely and more temperate."

( hmm. Have I just unearthed a hidden reading?)

Dry as a nun's wasn't it?

There was a bit of fun in there once in a while. "I only mention it for completeness, and because I care so very deeply for your soul."