Reading through On Cecil Beach because my flatmate asserted that he "does not write books for girls" and close to finishing it...
I do have 12 (or so seemingly) in the to-read pile (brownie point for anyone who guesses how many advertised as Richard & Judy when I was in Waterstone's data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)... but picked up The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Sunsand The Audacity of Hope two days ago
Impostor - Never hunted it out. Sounded too much like a hastily padded out version of what was meant to be a short film of a short story. A punchy 12 page short story extended to an hour and a half seemed like a bad idea to me. Holywood execs thinking that all PKD stories could be a big pay day ?
Paycheck - Not too bad but still too Hollywood.
Confessions D'un Barjo - Was aware of it but have never seen it. Is it any good ? Confessions of a crap artist is a great book though and if it is any good I may hunt it out.
My main gripe with big film productions of PKD is that they miss the overall feeling of paranoia ( Dick's own ? ) and the slow ( or sometime not too slow ) descent into madness of many of the central characters in favour of all out action. All the tension is sucked out and probably out of neccesity for the major markets they are dumbed down.
Some memories of Uni there.... Meditations goes down hill after III.
Mill is an interesting as his thoughts are so confused. Being raised by James Mill and Jeremy Bentham is one sure fire way to give a child a bizarre outlook on life.
I'm reading something by David Baldacci - The title isn't really important as the books are all very samey. I keep buying these in airports as they are "safe". His style really bugs me at times but they're all quite light hearted.
Before that I read the new Bond book, suprised by how good it was. data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7
Thanks. I am buying this book on your recommendation.
If you haven't seen it already, I suggest that you getthe excellent German DVD "Stalingrad", directed by Joseph Vilsmaier.
Definitely agree with this for Total Recall. They missed that feeling of not knowing which among several scenarios was reality (if any of them). I hope they do better with Ubik if they ever get round to making it.
Check out Eye in the Sky (also PKD) and The Futurological Congress by Stanislaw Lem.
Absolutely love Eye In The Sky - it is one of books I always go back to again and again. Who's reality is 'reality' or are any of them ? True PKD mind bending excellence.
Never picked up on Stanislaw Lem. Will hunt him out. data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7
Always looking for new stuff in the same vein. The only contemporary writers of this ilk that I like are Jeff Noon , William Gibson and Jon Cortenay Grimwood. Any other reccomedations ?
Yes seen the film. Someone had 'War Without Garlands' when I was in Kazakhstan and I started reading some of his book while I was there. When I got back I got it from Waterstones so I could carry on reading. There's other books by the same author.'It Never Snows in September' is about Arnhem and the title is based on a German artillery officer seeing parachutes coming down and thinking they were snowflakes. That will probably be my next book.
If you want to read more on the russian front read 'Through Hell For Hitler'by Henry Metelmann. He was a German tankie so you get more of a ground level view of the whole campaign. It finished with him as a PW and he was in a camp where the guards were cold in the sub zero temperatures but to him it was like a heatwave.
Just bought the Obama book - The Audacity of Hope - so far so good and makes me feel optomistic for the future.
The last book I read was called Marching Towards Hell by Michael Scheuer on the US debarcle in the Middle East which I enjoyed. I keep promising myself I'm going to get back into a bit of fiction - I used to love Stephen King but I only seem to read on holiday these days.
Yes they do go rather downhill - it seems he's very good at destroying stuff in the first two, but from there he struggles to rebuild anything with anything like the same kind of strength.
Mill is very interesting - at times I'm fairly sure that even Mill himself didn't know quite what he was proposing. This applies particularly to Utilitarianism.
And I'm not reading them for my own pleasure. My uni makes me.