i had need to be discussing the modern amtiquarian just yesterday. a firm, if somewhat frustrating, favourite in our house.

i’m reading oliver statler’s japanese inn which i’d never heard of but a mate gave me a loan of. i can now give simple explanation of the meiji restoration. hurrah!

Mountains Of My Life – Walter Bonatti

Black Swan Green by David Mitchell (not the one off the telly), it is epic.

I loved The Wasp Factory but as the pages of review excerpts at the front testify it’s not for everyone.

Just read Rejecting Middle Age, Becoming One of the Worlds Fittest Men, and Discovering myself, by Rich Roll. Sounds like a Singletracker! Unreal what people can do.

Now onto Stephen King ‘Joyland’ which is great.

Wasp Factory is the absolute definition of “not for everyone” 😆 Still, could be worse, could be Dead Air- not for anyone.

Working through David Brin’s first Uplift trilogy, was a Kindle offer a little while back, I thought “Wonder why I’ve never read any of this”. Turns out I’d already read the first one, Sundiver, I just forgot absolutely everything about it. But it’s pretty good, bit slow and draggy but otherwise really enjoying it.

Long Earth next I think.

Just Read:

Reading Now:

Next Read:

On holiday, so just chewed my way through a nice, lightweight read – emergency amazon purchase. “The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry” or something. A surprisingly emotional twist at the end though! 😳

Loving the Long Earth books.. I can’t put ’em down.. Probably a bit over CFH’s head I imagine..

Not long finished Dan Brown – The Lost Symbol. Utter tosh. Only read it because it was a present from The Wife.

Waiting for the latest Mo Hayder book to arrive from Amazon. Also looking forward to Raising Steam by Pratchett.

Eight(seven+1) loch of the green corrie is one of greigs best. I am reading Amandas Bed by John Aberdein on the strength of a good review from greig.

Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton. Darkly humorous, the final headline feeling like a punchline to a very long joke.

legend – Member
World War Z – finding it pretty awesum (worth noting that it is nothing like the movie)

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Defo agree. Not a zombie fan really, but that was a great book. Great style and premise for story telling

‘Wasted’ by Mark Johnson. True story of his wasted (in more ways than one) life with drug abuse.

Just read: Coetzee’s The Childhood of Jesus.
Just started: Lowry’s Under the Volcano.
Next up: Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge.

Praesagium 😉

Just made a start on the first Wheel of Time book,The Eye of the World.
If it doesn’t get better soon it’s going in the bin

Very glad rogerthecat mentioned PLF. He was an amazing man!

An Adventure is very good. I’m just about to start The Broken Road in the next few minutes. It will make more sense if you have read A Time Of Gifts and Between The Woods And The Wayer first, though.

Just finish and enjoyed ‘The world versus Alex Woods’ by Gavin Extence. Reminded me of Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night.

PG Woodhouse and Blandings at the moment.

Iain M Banks Surface Detail, master of the grand

I’ve not long finished reading (over a period of time) the Peter May Lewis Trilogy [i]The Black House / The Lewis Man / The Chessmen[/i]. Easy reading but he really immerses you into the landscape of the Outer Hebrides with his writing.

Mrs Pondo persuaded me to start The Storyteller by Jodi Piccoult, and d’you know what? It weren’t bad at all! 🙂

Jaw droppingly good, one of those books that leaves you feeling drained at the end.

Hell, yes! I pretty much had to lie down.

sausagefingers – Member

Just made a start on the first Wheel of Time book,The Eye of the World.
If it doesn’t get better soon it’s going in the bin

Run while you still can. It gets better, then it starts repeating itself, then it gets worse, then it’s intermittantly good and terrible depending on which character it’s following, then it’s all terrible again, but perfectly timed so at the exact point it becomes incredibly awful, you’ve invested so much time and frankly bloody hard work in the series that you can’t walk away. It’s like a bad marriage, you read the next 4 or 5 (enormous, pointless) books basically for the sake of the kids. And the worst thing is, when it’s good, it’s actually pretty damn good, which drives home just how piss-awful it is all the rest of the time.

On the plus side, eventually he dies, and then Brandon Sanderson takes over and makes it all better. Not to mention shorter. I think the lesson here is clear, we must kill George RR Martin.

Just started Cronin’s The Passage, well behind everyone else on the thread, not my usual choice of read but g/f & brother rave about it. Having just finished 5 of Fforde’s Thursday series, which is light hearted daftness, it’s a bit darker 😯

I’m about half way through The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson which is very funny, once you get into it.