Safe As Book

[guest]

45 is brilliant, Bill Drummond is awesome, and if you like that Id really reccomend Head On by Julien Cope its the best pop autobiography Ive ever read (its probably the only one though) hes so enthusiastic about music and all the bands he loves and totally honest about what a dickhead he was. It was so good it got me into his music which is brilliant too, as much as i try to avoid hippies the guy is a total hero. Although towards the end of the book pretty much all the incidents begin with 'we'd just taken loads of acid when...'

[sparky]

love that book, "45".

i'm currently reading this which is making me worry about my brain a bit:



prior to that i read this which made me worry about humans a bit:



prior to that i read this which didn't make me worry at all:



but reminded me of this which is one of the best fictions i ever read:



but not the best of course which would obviously be this:



anyone know how to get the pictures smaller?

[AdamW]

Yep, *resize* them sparky!

I haven't read the Wasp Factory for ten years, or so, a terrifying and moving read. Brilliant. I haven't rated anything else Banks has written to the same degree.

I think I'll pull it out of the bookcase and give it another read.

The thing is: I hate re-reading books because I feel I should be reading something else, even though I know that I enjoy a book more on the second read.

A literary dilemma.

Still, I was in Istanbul. That's all that matters until they send my brain and voice back from Taksin and the Ataturk.
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[sparky]

I totally forget books and films after about three months, dunno why. I can be half an hour into watching a film, and then think "seen this" but cannot remember the ending so carry on watching anyway.

In one way quite frustrating, but saves me a fortune as I only have three books and three DVDs and use them on a rota basis, one per month - a bit like crop rotation if you are a farmer.

[Tommy Tynans Lovechild]

45 is fantastic

i'm reading brian keenans thing on alaska now.

its great and i wanna fucking go there!

[Guest]

I've just finished 'Altered State' which is about dance culture and drugs from the mid 80's onwards, it was well researched and didn't just rehash all the usual stories. And I also read "Mr S" which was a biography of Frank Sinatra by the bloke who was his assistant for 20 years. Frank was massively rich, had women throwing themselves at him and was the most famous person in the world but he still wasn't entirely happy cos Ava Gardner didn't love him.

[Guest]

A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby... Nick Hornby isn't my favourite writer: he's kind of a stop gap between the real pulpy shitey trash that I read when no-one's looking [Stephen King and Dean R Koontz] and the convoluted skyscrapers of words I pretend to read for mind-broadening purposes [step forward Don DeLillo, Umberto Eco, Salman Rushdie etc.]

Nick Hornby's new one is built on the kind of premise the writers of Eastenders would swap all of their cocaine for; but is stretched too far over the course of an entire novel. Still, there is one brilliantly realised character, Jess, who's half Tank Grrl and half that kid from the Tourette's documentary from a decade-or-so-ago, and she had me chewing the insides of my cheek off so as not to laugh and wake my ninja wife up.

Nick Hornby - however - is one of those irritating authors who - seemingly - has to include an autobiographical[-ish] character in all of his novels. Stephen King's heroes always tend to be writers, and Hornby's motif is becoming failed musicians... well, if you've only read High Fidelity and this one it is.

I can't bring myself to read Fever Pitch for obvious reasons.

I've just started Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer which is a psychotropic Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time based in New York.

[AdamW]

That's me too...
_________________
The Musical Mystery Tour,
every Sunday night 10pm - 1am, BBC Radio Wales
http://adamwalton.co.uk

http://myspace.com/adamthomaswalton

[guest]

Did anyone else cheer at the end of Curious incident with the dog in the nighttime, I love that book so much.

[John Mc]

[iuliano#10]

Has anyone mentioned "The Good Fairies Of New York" by Martin Millar? (sorry, I got distracted looking through the pages to answer that question myself...)

It's ace. All about alcoholic fairies that get thrown out of their clan for getting bingoed and playing Johnny Thunders tunes on their violins. They end up stowing away on a boat (ship?) travelling to New York, where they chance upon loads of other fairy clans. It's grrreat.

In fact, now I think on, so are all of the Martin Millar books I've read (Lux the Poet, something about Melody someone-or-other and Milk, Sulphate and something else......apologies for the lack of details in the rest of these titles - I'm very forgetful about things like that. Surprised I remembered so many details about the Fairies....)

[gillworm]

[Crustybit]

I have just finished "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini, fucking great. It's about a guys life in Afganistan and later in the US, it gives you an insight into life in Afganistan in the 60's & 70's before moving on to the Russian occupation and later the Taliban rule. The story was so intense, I read it in two days which is pretty good going for me.

http://www.khaledhosseini.com/
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[jeff in chicago]

reading 1776 by David McCullough...good read.

Speaking of Hornby, my wife knows I've read all of his work so for father's day she run's out and buys "A Long Way Down". Having no idea what the books about she proceeds to write in the Father's Day message..."We love you and know you'll enjoy the book. Happy Father's Day" then signs all the kids names, etc.

It was great to be able to tell her that the book is about suicide and I appreciate the sentiment...

[John Mc]

Art Garfunkel's website has a list of every book he's read over the past 30 years:

http://www.artgarfunkel.com/library/library.htm