What Book Are You Currently Reading?

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Hari Kunzru - My Revolutions

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Currently reading:



Just finished:



Begun, set aside for other stuff, but will definitely finish: Alexander Mitscherlich, Die Unwirtlichkeit unserer Städte

Also in the queue: Yevgeni Zamyatin, We

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GB84, by David Peace.
Yes, it inspired my current sig/username/map location. Why do you ask?

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Yes. Or a lot of it. Not an easy read though (besides, I found out that I don't actually know the subject well enough.)

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I read 1974 quite recently; after reading a glowing review of the tv adaptation of the Red Riding series (which was shown at some ungodly hour on German tv. And which I didn't watch). It's the only part of it that the Frankfurt library system stocks... but they got three German copies (at different branches) and one English copy of that one. Go figure that one out. (If it weren't the first part, I wouldn't have bothered.) When I left for the Mosel a week ago, I looked through the English fiction section at a bookstore at the station. And found this other title by him, thought the subject matter interesting, and invested a tenner.

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De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae

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My favorite Vonnegut was always Cat's Cradle.

Currently this. Before that I reread Cristo si è fermato a Eboli (after a long long time) and simultaneously The People of the Abyss. Both in German.

[minionofmidas]

My favorite Vonnegut was always Cat's Cradle.

Currently this. Before that I reread Cristo si è fermato a Eboli (after a long long time) and simultaneously The People of the Abyss. Both in German.

Have you read the cat-book I'm reading?

No.

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Yes, but they don't write books.

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Is it legal to read Mein Kampf in Germany?

Yes... but it's illegal to publish without the consent of the copyright holder. Who happens to be the state of Bavaria, and not in the habit of consenting to anything of the sort. So you'd have to purchase used - which is perfectly legal - or have inherited some pre-45 copy. Or just import from somewhere, such as Britain or America or, well, most of the world, that doesn't recognize Bavaria's rather dubious claim to ownership of the copyright. (Turkey recognizes it, for instance... as a means to ban the book without officially banning it.) Will expire in 2016 (70 years after Hitler was officially declared dead), anyhow. What they'll do after that, I dunno.
Attempts to have the book put on the Index (which would ban any but over-the-counter sales, ostensibly to protect the youth) or declare its content seditious (and thus distribution illegal) have been made in the past and failed - the latter paragraphs are so tightly drawn that virtually nothing can be banned under them. Which I think is due to court interpretations aimed at not having to declare the law unconstitutional.

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I thought Mein Kampf sold pretty well in Turkey a few years back?

It was de-facto-banned three years after the Turkish translation first appeared. It sold fairly well in the interim.

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And everyone who bought it would immediately regret having done so.

I have a copy. It would be charmingly strange if it weren't so horribly real.

Yes, that reminds of Andreas Maier's verdict.

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Haven't read more than a couple of pages yet, but I got Carlo Feltrinelli's biography of his father for christmas.

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'A Confederacy of Dunces' by John Kennedy Toole

Approve

Greatly Approve. Obvious influence on Opebo there.

Who of us hasn't been influenced by it?

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Andreas Maier & Christine Büchner, Bullau. Versuch über Natur and Jörg Heinisch, Mehr als nur der 12. Mann: Ein Streifzug durch die Fanszene von Eintracht Frankfurt

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Is that an academic paper on the fan culture of Eintracht Frankfurt? That sounds pretty cool. Didn't know anyone wrote about things like that.

No, it's a fullscale nonfiction book. And not particularly academic. (And not as well put together as the same publishers' books on, say, Eintracht Frankfurt's 59-60 European run. Or the quite academic one on the club's pre-45 history. Both of which I own, while I checked this one out of the city library.)

But such academic papers exist as well, of course.

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No, it were a little (unfunny) joke. You mentioned two books dealing with the rise of Socialism in Flanders. Thus the joke.

The rise of socialism in Flanders from the late 19th century onwards has been and will continue to be slow but inexorable. The book deals with the entire period from humble beginnings in the 19th century to unanimous socialist victories - in free and fair elections - in the 74th century, and deals with every episode in painstaking detail. It has 374,597,816 pages.

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Geert Mak, Jorwerd: the Death of the Village in the Late 20th Century (in German translation, of course, not in either English or the Dutch original) and Michael Thumann, der Islam-Irrtum.

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I didn't know OFOTCN was a book. It disgusts me no one comes with great films themselves.

And as ever, the book is even better than the film. Though the film is very good, too.

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A biography of Muddy Waters.

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Just began Shame by Salman Rushdie. Very entertaining read so far.

Oh yes.

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It's his earliest IIRC, and certainly one of his angrier books. I've read quite a few of his, but not everything, and I didn't like everything I've read. (Also, Rushdie's German translations are horrid and unreadable. Though I don't think I checked the later books' German versions as I could get those in English at the library. I think some of the early ones were translated in a rush during the Fatwa controversy, and rushed translations always suck royal circumsized balls. That I never got far with Midnight's Children is at least partly due to the translation. They don't stock it in English.) But I liked this one a lot when I read it. Been a few years though.

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It's his earliest IIRC, and certainly one of his angrier books. I've read quite a few of his, but not everything, and I didn't like everything I've read. (Also, Rushdie's German translations are horrid and unreadable. Though I don't think I checked the later books' German versions as I could get those in English at the library. I think some of the early ones were translated in a rush during the Fatwa controversy, and rushed translations always suck royal circumsized balls. That I never got far with Midnight's Children is at least partly due to the translation. They don't stock it in English.) But I liked this one a lot when I read it. Been a few years though.

Don't you mean Rushdied?

Ok, sorry about that. Anyway, it isn't the earliest but it's certainly early. I think it is the second after Midnight's Children, because the cover of my copy references that.

I agree on translations. Ever since my English became good enough I make a point out of reading all English novels in English.

(wikies) apparently Children is second and Shame is third.

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Just finished "Pornography" by Witold Gombrowicz.

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Complete bull. Naipaul is the Trinidad wing of Vishwa Hindu Parishad.