What are you reading now?

[cella]

I am currentley reading "your pregnancy week by week" according to the book this week the baby should weigh a little over 3 pounds and total length is about 17 inches...it goes on to tell me about good posture and nutrition and also what I should do if I go into labor early.

[Wools]

Im reading Not nesscarilly stoned but beautiful - An insight into making of the abulm Are you experinced by Jimmi Hendrix.

Picked it up cheap in HMV

[Jay]

Several on the go at the mo:

Me Talk Pretty One Day - Davide Sedaris. ****ing hilarious. Not quite up there with the other book of his I've read - Dress Your Family In Corduroy And Denim, but still very, very funny and understated - no ridiculous comedy situations here, just pure wit. All biographical and impossible to explain *why* it's so funny.

Running With Scissors - Augusten Burroughs. Again, biographical. This guy had one crazy childhood. Worth reading just to get an idea of how far from 'normal' some people are raised.

Strange Fruit - David Margolick. A chronicle of the effect of Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit as the first blatant anti-lynching, pro-civil rights song to make it onto wax. Most people don't realise the song was written by a middle-class, white jewish guy. Interesting stuff.


Jay

[tokyochojin]

Just reading the Trainspotting novel, although it's alot more detailed in the book i can't help but imagine the movies scenario's when reading it.

[bowser123]

Just finished Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.
It was recommended to me by Paul after I asked for something similar in style and theme to 1984 or Brave New World. Whilst it wasn't as expansive as those two (probably more down to the brevity of the book than a deficiency), it was certainly enjoyable and comparable to the others.

It's about a time where literature and free thinking is banned, all order and eradication is by firemen whose jobs are not to put out fires but to start them by torching the banned books. To help them in their quest is a mechanical hound that's the ultimate killing machine.

There's one thing I don't quite get about the book though, and that's the Fire Chief, Captain Beatty.

->Open Spoiler<-

From two sections in the book (when Montag is in bed ill and during the card game) Beatty shows an absolutely huge knowledge of literature, he is probably as well read as Faber and Granger.

This is a little strange as whilst the firemen are allowed a small lapse of reading as long as they destroy the book within 24 hours, I thought this was more a one off thing. Beatty talks of understanding this questioning of their profession on a purely one off basis. So it's unlikely that Beatty reads all what he burns.

Which has led me to believe before the alternate fireman profession started he must have been heavily linked to books. If so, what turned him so against them that he'd become Fire Chief whose job is to eradicate the books? He strongly believes in what he does IMO (the bit where he talks of books dividing people as they allow free thought and alternate ideas; the perceived better way is to turn everyone to watching the state ran TV that makes everyone "robots", thus equal) shows this.

But at the same time whilst he's happy to provide analytical arguments against books by using book quotes, he is seemingly unhappy in what he does. He goads and allows Montag into killing him, so did he hate his job and want to die?
I think so, but I don't understand what made him fire chief in the 1st place.

Why did he become so set against them that he became the fire chief when there was an alternative in running into the hills with the others. Even if he didn't do this he could still have done a Faber and pretended to conform whilst storing the literature secretly.
What made him become the fire chief?

Eek. Sorry about the long essay style post. Just interested and enthusiastic, I suppose.


Am just about to start the book everyone has recommended, Catch 22.

[Pacman555]

Currently reading Papillon, an apparently true story about a Frenchman wrongly found guilty of murder in the thirties and deported to a prison camp in French Guiana on the north coast of South America. Quite a simple style, but still detailed. It's amazing some of the stuff they did, slashing their knees open and putting these oily seeds in their eyes to make them swell up full of pus in order to get into the hospital to avoid the internment islands .

I think I'll try and pick up a copy of that Fahrenheit 451 Bowser, it sounds dead good.

[Jay]

Am just about to start the book everyone has recommended, Catch 22.

Good luck. I found it the most dreary book I've ever had the misfortune to pick up. In fact, I think it's probably the only book I've ever started and given up on.


Jay

[bowser123]

Well I changed my mind and started the so far wonderful Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman. It was one of the ones I'd never heard of prior to it being in the BBC's Big Read Top 100.
Tis a kids book, but like Dark Material and Narnia, it has more than enough scope and depth to appeal to an older reader. Really enjoying it.


Also, can anybody help with my Fahrenheit 451 post a few up?
Was hoping Paul would give his interpretation seeing as he recommended the book, but he's been banned and can't.

[Supergoal]

I recently read a book needed for my a-level course English, called The Color Purple, and what a boring load of tripe.
Why punish students even more by forcing us to read bollocks.

Rant Rant Rant

[Ady]

Currently reading Papillon, an apparently true story about a Frenchman wrongly found guilty of murder in the thirties and deported to a prison camp in French Guiana on the north coast of South America. Quite a simple style, but still detailed. It's amazing some of the stuff they did, slashing their knees open and putting these oily seeds in their eyes to make them swell up full of pus in order to get into the hospital to avoid the internment islands .

That's the one where the guy eats a cockroach, isn't it?

There's a film adaptation of that book. It's quite old.

[anephric]

If The Color Purple bores you, you have no soul. Officially.

I'm probably the biggest Ray Bradbury fan on the planet (literally, I could sit on Australia) and Fahrenheit 451 certainly is iconic - and influential - but Bradbury novels are far less compelling and well composed than Bradbury short fiction, so when you read F451 or Something Wicked This Way Comes you're left with the feeling that nothing really gelled, characters behaved irrationally... there's some gorgeous, callow Bradbury prose (poetry?) but as novels they don't essentially work. They're scatty, inconsistent, staccato. They don't flow...

Still absolutely worth reading, though. I won't spoil the ending but that's another thing that's contentious... in one way it's a celebration but in another it's intrinsically depressing...

[anephric]

That's the one where the guy eats a cockroach, isn't it?

There's a film adaptation of that book. It's quite old.

But no less good. It features an amazing performance by Steve McQueen (it skimps on a lot of the more grim stuff, though).

[anephric]

There's one thing I don't quite get about the book though, and that's the Fire Chief, Captain Beatty.

->Open Spoiler<-

He's comparable to O'Brien in 1984: he understands completely the nature of society and what they destroy in order to perpetuate said society, he's conversant in the things "denied" the common man for the good of the status quo and, perhaps, even enjoys those illicit things proscribed by law, because, in a bourgeois way, he is "above" the blank prole that they strive to nurture; he's an intellectual, a middle-class bulwark... the patronising, avuncular sort of guardian that looks on the lower classes as mindless, violent children that can't decide for themselves what's best for themselves.

Except, of course, Beatty doesn't pull out any of Montag's teeth

[Tom Salter]

Currently reading Papillon, an apparently true story about a Frenchman wrongly found guilty of murder in the thirties and deported to a prison camp in French Guiana on the north coast of South America. Quite a simple style, but still detailed. It's amazing some of the stuff they did, slashing their knees open and putting these oily seeds in their eyes to make them swell up full of pus in order to get into the hospital to avoid the internment islands .

It's my old man's favourite book, that. His copy is so dog-eared, he's been reading it every night for about 15 years...

[bowser123]

He he anephric, I always enjoy reading your posts.
They always make me go straight to dictionary.com to understand them in their entirety. Always an education

Fire Chief:

->Open Spoiler<-

What's your take on his death? Was he complacent and arrogant in his actions to leave Montag open to do his stuff? I took Montag's view initially that he wanted to die on the basis that I thought he was a former scholar, that took the job and loves it, but also loves his books. His love of literature then made him see the error in his actions and forced Montag into acting as he did.

But with your post I'm starting to think maybe Montag got it wrong and The Chief underestimated him through his arrogance

The end:

->Open Spoiler<-

The Nazi's didn't have the final solution, me and Bradbury do. Wipe out the population, start afresh. It's the only way