Re: Book Thread number ?
Started Lucky Jim, which I became curious about because a lot of lists rate it as one of the best comic novels of all time (up there with Catch-22, The Good Soldier Svejk, and Breakfast of Champions). It's definitely a genre book -- British campus stories -- but it has a Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams edge that many great British comedies do (albeit in a 50s setting and sensibility).
On the audio commute I finished War and Peace (my advice: do not bother with the second epilogue as it's just his endless repetition of his theory of history which you get quite enough of in the novel proper). Overall I am amazed by the book -- it's far more intimate and sensible than I'd have believed by its reputation. It's also far, far more accessible, once you get past its two daunting gatekeepers (sheer length, and keeping track of dozens of characters each of whom is referred to by three or even four different names).
On audio I am now starting Ulysses, after many fruitless attempts to actually physically read it. Both it and Finnegan's Wake are appropriate for audio, since they are exercises in language more like poetry than prose. Anyway, that's the excuse I am giving myself. I also owe Joyce for Dubliners, which is still the most beautiful collection of short stories I've ever read, so I really, really want to cut him some slack and put the time in on his two epics.
One last book I really recommend, if you can find it, is the autobiography of R. G. Collingwood, which I am reading very, very slowly to savor everything in it. If you're interested in either philosophy or interbellum British culture and history it's essential, and I also recommend it as just an outstanding autobiography. Very down to earth, and generally the record of someone it would have been nice to know, so this is the next best thing.
At bedtime I'm reading through all the Raymond Chandler novels. I just finished The Little Sister, which I'd never even heard of before. It has all the elements you'd typical associate with Chandler and a plot that if you can believe it is even more tortuous than most. I enjoyed it, but RC can pretty much do no wrong with me.
And on my recent cruise I knocked down Asimov's The End of Eternity, which I still think is one of the best time travel stories ever written. A fun read that works both as a story (admittedly clunky, since it's a love story and Asimov like all the golden age greats wrote strictly 2-dimensional women), as futurism, and also as a pretty good internal psychological story in the way sci-fi rarely approached prior to Lem or Pohl.
