What Book(s) Are You Reading?

[Innocent Bystander]

I think I'm out of step with everyone else's tastes ...

Thank goodness, I've now finished the terminally boring "A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian" and I'm back to Dickens - Bleak House. I'm only a couple of chapters in, but already it's brilliant.

I'm glad someone else found "Tractors/Ukrainian" boring. I only found it intermittently boring, because it telegraphed what was going to happen a mile off. And it didn't really stimulate my interest for tractors. It was like a girly novel with technical bits added to attract the boys.

Bleak house is great. One of Dickens' best.

You are at least partly in step with me. You may find this alarming...

[benhall.1]

You are at least partly in step with me. You may find this alarming...

Not in the least. I find it immensely reassuring.

It wasn't the telegraphing of every detail tens of pages in advance that bored me rigid with "Tractors", it was the fact that the story was simply a retelling of a sort of condensed urban myth cum illegant immigrant phobia story. I'd already heard it 'down the pub' a million times before. And even if I hadn't I wouldn't have cared. How could you care about such stupid people? They weren't even convincing. Nobody could be that stupid.

Dickens, however, exaggerates characteristics of real, living people. Well, once you've read about them, they continue to live, that's for sure. Even though his characters are often exaggerated to the point of being cartoons, they are still so intensely human that you really care about what happens to them.

[brewerpaul]

Ron, last year's Sherlock Holmes film (the Robert Downey/Jude Law feast) got me reading the stories for the first time - and loving them. Conan Doyle had a beautiful, witty writing style.

If you like the stories (I'm a huge Holmes fan), check out the British series starring the late great Jeremy Brett. Unlike many Sherlock Holmes movies which use totally made up plots, the Brett series was all straight Doyle with huge chunks of dialogue right from the stories. Sherlock Holmes could be pretty egotistical and abrasive and Jeremy doesn't sugar coat these characteristics. In addition, the sets and all of the minor character actors are simply marvelous.

[s1m0n]

I just tried hard to read crime writer Lawrence Block's memoir, Step By Step, which - to my shock - turned out to be absolutely unreadable. He's usually a rivetting writer, and his some of his mysteries are packed with what must be thinly disguised chunx of his life as delivered by a born raconteur. I had high hopes, but his memoir focused on little but his extensive late-life career as a racewalker. Almost literally step by step by step by step step by step by step by step step by step by step by step step by step by step by step step by step by step by step.

I started skipping ahead, and eventually pulled the rip cord around half way. My housemate called me a wimp and asked me not to take it back to the library until he'd had a go, but he didn't even get as far as I. Ouch.

[Thomaston]

I was a very active reader growing up, now it tends to be in spurts, and I find it hard to find stuff I want to read. I may find a book series, plow through, and then not read anything else for months. I'm trying to get back into it right now, about to start Alas, Babylon.
After that, possibly I'll delve into The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan, now that the last book comes out this year.