Currently reading?

i'm reading erm...three plays atm all of them for the third or fourth time.

resistable rise of arturo ui - brecht
fear and misery of the third reich- brecht (happy b*gger)
government inspector - gogol

The Virgin Suicides and Lolita are both fantastic books. Both I've seen the film first. In the film Virgin Suicides there are lines taken exactly from the book and it's amazing. Both books are better than the films but yeah they're both brilliant.
xxx

Quote: Captain_Spiky_

Oooh, that sounds ace!  Where can we get these from then?  Can you post a link to a website or summink?

Zadie Smith is rather excellent.  

Sorry for taking so long to reply. I'd've thought you can get them from most bookshops; we definitely do them in WHSmiths anyway Website wise I think someone suggested Amazon? And I'd've thought Penguin's website will have them somewhere. I'm not very helpful am I ?

On the subject of The Virgin Suicides- it's good, but Middlesex (also by Jefferey Eugenicides, hence my mentioning) is infintely better. It's just so beautifully written and is one of the most interesting and well-structured books I have ever read. Very perceptive too and despite it's 600-odd pages there is not one where it is dull. You might think that a book about a haemaphrodite would be slightly dodgy/peverse/wrong, but Eugenicides handles the topic very well. There are some peverse leanings (incest, freak shows and the like) but they're written in a way that you learn to accept them and they don't seem as abnormal as they would do if written in another way. Go and read this book.

Re: Douglas Coupland; his best book is undoubtably All Families Are Physchotic. For one thing, it actually HAS a plotline! And it's the funniest of the lot too. This was the first one of his I read (it went through my family and I don't think anyone that read it was dissappointed by it) and none of the others I've read subsequently have quite matched its standards in my opinion, although to be fair, I've not read them all.

And on subject; at the moment I'm reading 'The French Revolution: A Very Short Introduction' by William Doyle. I would pass judgement but it would be extremely one sided, considering my current hatred for the French Revolution. History lessons do that to you

I didnt like Middlesex. I felt I couldnt care about the character or get into the characters fate or story. I felt detatched from the book but when I read The Virgin Suicides, I felt attached to the fates, and lives of every character.

Lolita is another book I'm perenially half-way through.

Good point. Still makes it marginally better though.

I also cannot believe I used the phrase 'heightened my enjoyment' on an Internet forum. Well... at least it wasn't 'heightens ones enjoyment' or something...

...

That's not one of the one's I've read and I'm slightly overexaggerating by saying they don't have a plotline. But it is true that a lot of them are worse than Ben Elton for going off on complete tangents (don't get me wrong, I like both Coupland and Elton, but it's undeniable that half their books are taken up with tangents. And, in the case of Ben Elton, graphic descriptions of sordid sex. All fun). This doesn't make them bad books at all, I just said that I preferred All Families Are Pyschotic was because of the more visible plotline which I found made it more interesting to read.

And I didn't understand a word of your first paragraph even when replacing every 'one' with 'you' or 'I'. Hmph.

Care to translate?

(/me thinks answer is probably going to be no)