What kinds of books do you read?

[Martinus]

Well, I do not hide the fact that among the "themes of relevance to me", any instance of an upper class Briton describing in a flowery, rich language the process of sucking cock ranks rather high. 

Tell me, do you feel at a disadvantage for not being one of those british upper class type ? 




G.

Well of course. I'm upper class by Polish standards, but if there is one thing about my birth I truly regret and would like to change, it is not being born British. I have had this Anglophile thing going long before I even realised I'm gay.

All my favourite authors are British (whether gay or not). This is one of the reasons I never really got into, say, popular Latino or Spanish writers such as Marquez - they just have a different sensibility from the dry, British wit I singularly adore.

[Martinus]

Yeah, it's funny as balls - Dick thought Lem was a commie plot.

Oddly (or maybe not) sounds like it could be the plot to a Dick novel. 

I love the stated reason:

Lem is probably a composite committee rather than an individual, since he writes in several styles and sometimes reads foreign, to him, languages and sometimes does not -

Please, don't give this man If On A Winter's Night A Traveller by Italo Calvino. His head might explode.  ???

It's actually funny because Lem was as far from being a communist Party aparatchik as one could be. He was a free thinking wonderful person. A Jewish Holocaust survivor, an atheist, he was a deeply involved humanist (he was a medical doctor by education). Along with Mrozek and Gombrowicz, he is my favourite 20th century Polish author and thinker. He (along with Leszek Kolakowski - who is quoted in Joan's signature; and some other thinkers) recorded this great TV series "Interviews at the end of the century" in the late 1990s, which is a real treat. I am not sure if it is available in non-Polish language version, but it was a real treat.

Wasn't Dick a mormon, though? He does sound like a lunatic.

[Ed Anger]

Wasn't Dick a mormon, though? He does sound like a lunatic.

[Queequeg]

If you remove stuff I read for University then mostly fiction.  A lot of Russian, Turkish, and American literature.

[Queequeg]

Wasn't Dick a mormon, though? He does sound like a lunatic.

Anyone with any understanding of literature would understand that creative genius and batshit insanity are not mutually exclusive, if anything they come together.

I think Dick mentally declined over his last few years though, IIRC. 

[Martinus]

I never said his books suck (although I haven't read them so can't pass any judgement), just that he was batshit crazy. While you are right that this is not uncommon in great writers, many of them (like Lem, for example) escaped that insanity.

[fhdz]

Wasn't Dick a mormon, though? He does sound like a lunatic.

I don't believe he was a Mormon, no.  He was, quite unfortunately, rather a textbook case of paranoia and delusional states in his later years.

[Habbaku]

I read a pretty fair mixture of fiction and non-fiction.  Admittedly, the fiction I do read often tends to have historical background, as of late.  I have read a plethora of the Flashman series and am just starting on the Captain Aubrey series.

[Barrister]

I read a pretty fair mixture of fiction and non-fiction.  Admittedly, the fiction I do read often tends to have historical background, as of late.  I have read a plethora of the Flashman series and am just starting on the Captain Aubrey series.

Watch it - I think Aubrey / Maturin sucked up an entire year of reading for me...

(and of course I've just finished book two of Flashman)

[Savonarola]

Anyone with any understanding of literature would understand that creative genius and batshit insanity are not mutually exclusive, if anything they come together.

Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiae fuit.

(There has not been any great genius without an element of madness.)

-Seneca

[charliebear]

I read mostly non-fiction, although I did enjoy a Nora Roberts book recently.

[Malthus]

I read a pretty fair mixture of fiction and non-fiction.  Admittedly, the fiction I do read often tends to have historical background, as of late.  I have read a plethora of the Flashman series and am just starting on the Captain Aubrey series.

Watch it - I think Aubrey / Maturin sucked up an entire year of reading for me...

(and of course I've just finished book two of Flashman)

Ah, Flashman. What a treat. 

[Malthus]

It's actually funny because Lem was as far from being a communist Party aparatchik as one could be. He was a free thinking wonderful person. A Jewish Holocaust survivor, an atheist, he was a deeply involved humanist (he was a medical doctor by education). Along with Mrozek and Gombrowicz, he is my favourite 20th century Polish author and thinker. He (along with Leszek Kolakowski - who is quoted in Joan's signature; and some other thinkers) recorded this great TV series "Interviews at the end of the century" in the late 1990s, which is a real treat. I am not sure if it is available in non-Polish language version, but it was a real treat.

Wasn't Dick a mormon, though? He does sound like a lunatic.

Heh, I know Lem makes an unlikely Communist provocateur; more to the point, he's a person, not a committee. 

Sadly, I think Dick's delusional paranoia went beyond the amusing and into the relm of the clinical.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_k_dick#Mental_health

[Martinus]

It's actually funny because Lem was as far from being a communist Party aparatchik as one could be. He was a free thinking wonderful person. A Jewish Holocaust survivor, an atheist, he was a deeply involved humanist (he was a medical doctor by education). Along with Mrozek and Gombrowicz, he is my favourite 20th century Polish author and thinker. He (along with Leszek Kolakowski - who is quoted in Joan's signature; and some other thinkers) recorded this great TV series "Interviews at the end of the century" in the late 1990s, which is a real treat. I am not sure if it is available in non-Polish language version, but it was a real treat.

Wasn't Dick a mormon, though? He does sound like a lunatic.

Heh, I know Lem makes an unlikely Communist provocateur; more to the point, he's a person, not a committee. 

Sadly, I think Dick's delusional paranoia went beyond the amusing and into the relm of the clinical.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_k_dick#Mental_health

That's very interesting. I am always anxious about people like that - I mean, there is a difference between a debilitating, raving mad lunacy and people who experience such strange visions and are convinced of knowing some hidden truths - who says they aren't right in some way.

Personally, I treat them in a same way I treat religious people (of the non-tedious type, at least) - with fascination, amusement and a tinge of envy for having experienced stuff I have never had.

[AnchorClanker]

Mostly non-fiction (history, philosophy/theology and political matters), and maybe 20% fiction, the bulk of which are play scripts and "the Classics(tm)".

On rare occasions, I read some fiction written after WWII, but that's few and far between.
I just can't seem to get excited about modern fiction and devoting time to it, when there's so many books
that I *should* have read, but didn't.