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

Just read a book by John Bird

Tom Brown's Schooldays

It takes it's time to get started, doesn't it?

Evidently so. It was written around 150 years ago.

I'm reading a collection of Italian short stories from about the 13th Century til the 20th. Some very good stuff in there. This after ditching Shardik by Richard Adams.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I've only got so long to live, after all.

having devoured Watership Down and The Plague Dogs I never got to grips with Shardik. It sits there on my shelf looking all folorn and left out.

I read some time ago an Italian , I think from the 16 or 17th century, Piero Aretino, the title more or less is The Dialogues of Married Women. Dialogos de casadas, in Spanish. It is between erotic and pornographic, but funny anyway.

Never read the Decameron, but that idea of stories inside a story is great.
:::
I'm reading now Wuthering Heights, it is so bitter and rough! I didn't expect that at all. I was used to Jane Austen, so subtle: Kind Nature,comfortable homes, lovely china cups, subtle eroticism, (no many agreed on that, but for me it is) Jaysus!! A real contrast.

I think of Effers while reading the novel

A "Best of" list of books by editors.

http://bookshop.blackwell.co.uk/jsp/bobuk_editorial/promotions/top_50_favourites.jsp?source=1210673998

I never heard of "Good Omens", but I just ordered it from Amazon.

OK, finished Tom Brown's Schooldays which was a lot more boring than I expected, and a lot less Flashman than I expected. Still, now I'm clear to start the Flashman novels.

In the meantime I've started Slam by Nick Hornby.

Good choice Steve K.! "Good omens" is an excellent book - cool and witty!

One of my all time favourites!

I've read a about Nancy Wake and am currently reading some short stories by Roald Dahl

Was the sticking out of an actual

btw...I still think we need a smiley.

Have now finished reading "The Pirates! In an advenure with Napoleon!"

Will be moving on to "Evolution" by Steven Baxter, in my ongoing attempts to put off doing research for an entry on Poland.

you cheeky monkey

I'm *still* reading this Piers Anthony series so I can return the books to my co-worker. Since they're basically the same books, there's no point in my talking about them any further.

Quite a pile has accumulated in the meantime; a graphic novel about medieval mice, Philip K Dick's "Eye In the Sky", a book about coffee called "Uncommon Grounds", a recent Michael Moorcock release, some manga, and the sequel to "The Sex Lives of Cannibals", which is "Getting Stoned with Savages". Where to begin?

Right, I've been away from this thread for a while, and during the meantime I've read some books. I know you all hang on my every word, so:

A colleague lent me "The Longest Crawl" by Ian Marchant. No, the other Ian Marchant. No, the other, other Ian Marchant. The one you've not heard of before. Him.

It's a non-fiction tale of his month-long pub crawl between the most Southwesterly pub in the British Isles (the Turk's Head, on the Isles of Scilly) and the most northeasterly (somewhere in the Shetlands).

In the meanwhile he drops biographical notes, and morsels of wisdom. It's quite amusing, not a serious read, and yet you learn something from it (not least, the human condition). Well worth a read. Especially if you like (proper) beer.

Then, down in Cornwall, I was confronted with the typical library of a holiday cottage: apart from recent "bumpycovers", there was also a selection of vintage material. I spurned "Wuthering Heights" (in an original orange-and-white Penguin edition, with a price in shillings on it...maybe worth something?) for a book that originally retailed at the princely sum of 85p. It was Kingsley Amis' "The Alteration", and, although I'd read it many decades ago, I picked it up and re-read it. It really is very good, and, if you can stand Amis, I recommend it. I think he is one of the most underrated 20th-century writers, largely (I suspect) because people associate his name with his no-mark son.

RF

"OK, finished Tom Brown's Schooldays which was a lot more boring than I expected, and a lot less Flashman than I expected. Still, now I'm clear to start the Flashman novels."

I wonder what difference it makes having read Tom Brown first. I read most of the Flashes before it and I don't think it spoiled my enjoyment of them. When I finally read Tom Brown there was the odd surprise, not enough Flashman being one. Tom and East were also less pious and goody-goody than Flashman described them, especially early on when Flashman would actually have known them.

Anyhow, I'm stil on the Doherty, but also started Big Bang by Simon Singh. It seems more of a history of science than a book about the big bang, albeit one with an emphasis on cosmology. I'm guessing that when we've left the ancient Greeks behind we might get more towards the Big Bang Theory as we know and love it.

Flashman is to Tom Brown as Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern are to Hamlet?

He's in it a bit more, but not much.

Slam is vaguely disappointing, I can't wait to finish it.

Emperor Joker

DC Comics

I mean hey I have been reading "The American War" about Vietnam but I'm taking a break

Plenty blood n guts on the Tv

I've just finished Twilight by Stephenie Meyer (teen vampire romance) and I'm now in the mood for some romance - preferably totally unrequited love.

Any suggestions?