Wellington Reads discussion

I am still finishing my Chinua Achebe book No Longer at Ease - it's taking me quite a while as I'm not enjoying it thaaaaaat much, and it keeps slipping to the bottom of my reading pile!

I'm also reading The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and am loving it! I really (really!) enjoyed the original Sherlock stories, and really like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's writing.

My pile of books to read is ever-growing, too - I have Hermann Koch's The Dinner out at the moment and can't wait to get into it!

What is everyone else reading this month?

I've just started The Pearl Diver. So far I'm finding the writing a little disjointed and I keep catching myself rereading paragraphs to find out where I am and who's saying what. Not ideal.

I am reading another biography "Leonard Woolf : a life " by Victoria Glendinning (B WOO). Actually I am skip-reading it because certain parts of his life interest me more than others. Poor old Leonard has had rather a bad press but I think he is a very interesting man - colonial administrator (Ceylon), writer, founder of the Hogarth Press, gifted gardener and famously the husband of Virginia Woolf.The latter role is the one which has attracted the most controversy, but I think LW had a difficult road to hoe with Virginia (who after all had had mental illness prior to meeting him) and that he tried to do his best for her. Certainly it is difficult to imagine what her life would have been without his support.An interesting life but quite a challenging read.

I'm still slogging through War and Peace. I'm on page 750 - 550 to go! I am enjoying it but it is fairly slow going. I like the sound of your "skip-reading", Sue, but it seems so wrong adn I'm afraid I'll miss something pivotal!
I have The Rehearsal, The Sea Inside, Tenth of December and The Day of the Triffids sitting tantalisingly on my bedside table but I'm soldiering on with Leo for now. I also have a couple of little local books I'd like to get to: "On Reading" by Lydia Wevers and The Inequality Debate, both of which Goodreads does not appear to have heard of.

oooh I have The Rehearsal sitting in my bookshelf too.

I'm reading Dream of the Red Chamber. From the book jacket inside flap: ...a vast, abundantly peopled chronicle of a great family of the 18th c." (Qing Dynasty China).
There are about 30 characters introduced in the first 50 pages but I made a cheat sheet of the family tree which was v. helpful. Enjoying being transported to this time and place. The book reads like a soap opera.
My interest in reading it stemmed from the exhibition from the National Museum of China that is currently at Te Papa.

Reply to Ali re skip-reading :
Well I don't normally do it either Ali but life is short and there are so many books !! Sometimes I think it is
quite valuable to get 'the essence" of a book particularly if you are a librarian and have an area of special interest, as I do with biographies). I wish you luck with "War and peace' ( I think I skip-read that too!!

Sue wrote: "Reply to Ali re skip-reading :
Well I don't normally do it either Ali but life is short and there are so many books !! Sometimes I think it is
quite valuable to get 'the essence" of a book particul..."

Skip-on, Sue! Great way to fit in more books :)

I'm halfway through Mockingjay, another good book in the Hunger Games trilogy. Going to spend the rest of this month trying to read some books that have been sitting on my bookshelf for years!

Erica wrote: "I'm halfway through Mockingjay, another good book in the Hunger Games trilogy. Going to spend the rest of this month trying to read some books that have been sitting on my bookshelf for years!"

Good plan Erica! It's one that I only manage to do occasionally.

I've just finished Mackenzie Wark's 'The Spectacle of Disintegration'. It is a hilarious book. It charts the evolution of modern society from the late 19th century to the present day. Wark revisits several key moments in politics, art, literature, and popular culture over this timeframe and rewrites these events into a spectacular narrative. The hilarity of Wark stems from his radical approach to the past. This book is not easily defined as history, theory or fiction. Rather, Wark uses a whole range of practices from each discipline. The book is full of jokes, metaphors, anecdotes, repurposed news stories, Marxist theory, art history, and swearing. Wark paints late capitalism as equivalent to a slowly disintegrating island of plastic junk (the North Pacific Sub-Tropical Gyre). Through such a range of discourse and media, he manages to channel the famous Situationist practice of being at war with the world lightheartedly. The overall project is one of revolution. In refiguring the established narrative of history, Wark refigures potential movements for the present. So, if you're dissatisfied with the whole capitalist shebang and want some help finding potential departure points from it, try this book!

I recently finished 'Disgrace' by J.M Coetzee. I'd seen the movie will John Malkovich and was blown away. The film and the book are fantastic companions and neither is compromised by the other. Coetzee contrasts an urban South Africa with a rural one. The protagonist commits a crime and is grapples with the expanding range of consequences throughout the text. The text is at once layered and straightforward. The terms shame, disgrace, good, bad, revenge, are all in play. Such abstract words seem quite simple and prevalent throughout most narratives. Yet Coetzee manages to illustrate the full complexity and depth of feeling wrought by a disgraceful action. Awesome and harrowing.

Andrew wrote: "I recently finished 'Disgrace' by J.M Coetzee. I'd seen the movie will John Malkovich and was blown away. The film and the book are fantastic companions and neither is compromised by the other. Coe..."

I read Disgrace in uni and I really enjoyed it too. Harrowing is definitely a good word to describe.

I read Disgrace a few years back but haven't seen the movie...might have to check it out.
I've started reading Shadows of the Wind, I'm enjoying it. Very nice writing style.