What book (s) are you reading now ?

‘Neptune’s Brood’ by Chris Stross, the follow-up to ‘Saturn’s Chilren’. After that I’m going to read the complete ‘Laundry’ series; I’ve got the first three as dead trees, but I’m getting the whole set as ebooks, it’s far easier to read a book on my phone during breaks at work, having a coffee in town, or whatever.
After that, there’s a whole bunch of other books that Stross has written that I’ve only read a couple of, so lots to keep me occupied.

Just finished battling through ’Feersum Enjin’ again which I just don’t get.

Helps to read it aloud to yourself. See also Mason & Dixon.

Just Finished: The Watchmaker of Filigree Street – Natasha Pulley
From the inside cover: 'In 1883, Thaniel Steepleton returns to his tiny flat to find a gold pocke****ch on his pillow. When the watch saves Thaniel's life from a blast that destroys Scotland Yard, he goes in search of its maker ...'
Unusual story, interesting characters, well-written – although I did feel it lost its way a little part way through, but rallied for the ending.

Just started: The Red Notebook – Antoine Laurain
From the back cover: 'Bookseller Laurent Letellier comes across an abandoned handbag on a Parisian Street, and feels impelled to return it to its owner.'
Not sure what to expect really, but I enjoyed the first chapter.

Next up: The Hidden Life of Trees – Peter Wohlleben
From the back cover: '... makes the case that the forest is a social network. He draws on groundbreaking scientific discoveries to describe how trees are like human families ...'

It’s the actual thread of the story I don’t get. I’ve read reviews and explanations but there are bits I just can’t work out and link together in my own head.
I’m the same with Tinker Tailor…there’s a bit about 2/3s of the way through where Smiley suddenly seems to work it all out and I’m never sure how or why…🤷‍♀️

@jimw Recently reread Winged Victory by VM Yeates, a semi-autobiographical account of the same period,

I've just finished that this week. I found it among the books of of a family friend after he died and it's a great book. If you haven't read it I also found a copy of Warriors for the Working Day by Peter Elstob. A fictional but again semi autobiographical account of a tank crews journey from Normandy to Germany. Like Winged Victory a lot of it is about the intolerable strain on the men and it's an equally good book.

Currently reading Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens and really enjoying it.

I'm reading Philip - A final portrait by Gyles Brandreth.

There are contributions by the Prince himself.
A war hero.
Humorous.
An environmentalist with many ideas which have been put in place now, (tree planting, rewilding).
Not necessarily a good father to Prince Charles.

If you have small children - could I recommend 'Interview with a tiger' and Interview with a shark' both by Andy Seed.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08MWTGSVJ/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08ZJMZC6Q/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Also available from your friendly local bookshop

Longitude is a great book. If you liked that, let me recommend 'The Prisoners of Geography'. Different but just as interesting.

I'm always reading multiple books. Short attention span 😉

Enjoying all of them. I think - when I last checked - I have around 50 unread books. Mostly paperbacks. I buy whenever I see an indy book shop. I fully intend to read them all when I retire 🙂

APT The Untold Story a technical and commercial insight into the development and ultimately the failure of British Rail's advanced passenger train project. Ten years and £42 million pfft.

About 3/4 done with Under the Volcano (Malcolm Lowry) - was on holiday last week so wanted to read something large. About as glorious as you'd expect, and very sad.

Not a book to read if you have a drink problem - you'll think you're a picture of health because no one has a drink problem compared to the consul.

Thinking of going full Wirral and reading something from Olaf Stapledon next - formative SF writer (1930s). Star Maker gets a lot of praise.

@lister - apologies, I shouldn't have assumed it was the phonetic spelling you were referring to.

I struggle to remember which culture novel is which.

Also read The Last Unicorn with my daughter at bedtime recently - high quality for sure but found it a little underwhelming, I know some folk have it on their all time lists. Daughter liked it but was a bit too young for the very metaphoric / dreamy style.

Was reading that the author Peter Beagle has had an absolute torrid time with a criminal agent exploiting him (he's quite old - the book sold millions, was made into an animated film, but a long time back). He recently won a lengthy court battle to own his own work.

https://www.tor.com/2021/03/25/peter-s-beagle-last-unicorn-lawsuit-resolved-ip/

It's fun to see what other people are reading, but it would be good if people could give a quick summary of what these books are about. I read loads but have never heard of most of these books or authors and can't really tell if I want to read them or not.

I've just finished That Old Ace in the Hole by Annie Proulx. She has a great ability to produce little thumbnail sketches of the (usually hard) lives of people living in rural communities. She creates a great sense of place and the plot itself often feels like it's just a device to allow her to weave these stories together. This time we're in the modern day Texas panhandle following somebody scouting sites for industrial hog farms. But the stories go from the early pioneers, through the dustbowl era and the oil boom along with reflections on industrial scale farming and water shortages. She leaves a few loose ends, which can be frustrating for the reader, but is part of her style and while it's not quite up there with the Shipping News (or even Postcards) in my opinion, it is still an enjoyable read.

Next up is a short story: Men in the Sun by Ghassan Kanafani, which is part of an attempt to read more by authors from cultures outside my normal diet of British, American and Australian authors. Kanafani was an author and also a leading figure in the PLO, before being killed by Israeli agents in 1972. From Wikipedia "originally published in 1962. Men in the Sun follows three Palestinian refugees seeking to travel from the refugee camps in Iraq, where they cannot find work, to Kuwait where they hope to find work as laborers in the oil boom."

PS. Thanks @stevenmenmuir I think I'll give The Young Team a go.
@matt10214 I've read most of Tim O'Brien's stuff. It was a long while ago but I seem to remember that The Things They Carried was one of his best.

Alternating between various (mostly political) non-fiction books, and the books by Dodge, Fante and Bukowski from this list.
https://twitter.com/williamsonkev/status/714174268486066176?s=20

A few there Ive read Alex, esp Hastings and Holland, both good but very different historians.

Currently reading Black Earth by Timothy Snyder. It’s a history of the Holocaust, predominantly in Eastern Europe. It’s grim but really fascinating. It details the miscalculations and apathy of established states that led to catastrophe and murder. Frankly it feels more relevant today than ever.

@roverpig As someone who enjoys reading about the Vietnam War i'm a bit late to the party regarding Tim O'Brien!

I have just finished reading Lost Baggage written by me! The last proof-read before hitting the publish button. It is the sequel to His Favourite Hole that our fine Scottish forum members help me with earlier this year.

Happy to pass on once done

@matt10214 After reading Tim O'Brien I remember I got into the short stories of Thom Jones. I think the Vietnam war featured in a few of those. Especially his first collection (The Pugilist at Rest) if I remember correctly. Might be worth checking out, although again it was a long while ago and I can't remember much more than that I enjoyed them at the time.

About to start 'A People's History of London' (L.German)
Rover, check out Accordion Crimes, if you haven't already, it's superb.

Reading bill Brysons: the body which I'm enjoying as usual. Quite like his books, humourous and informative but without too much technical depth...just right for a simpleton like me.

Just finished the most recent Ben Aaranovich novel following Peter Grant "false values" which was ok...not as good as the others in the series but I read it on a kindle for the first time and for some reason found it less engaging that a hard copy??

Thanks @BillMC Not read that one yet, so I've just asked the good folk at Word of Books to send me a copy. Along with The Young Team as recommended by @stevenmenmuir, The Rotter's Club recommended by Geoff Norcott (I think it was) on R4's A Good Read and Tatiana, the 8th Arkady Renko novel from Martin Cruz Smith. I enjoyed Gorky Park and have been working my way through the rest of the series. Should keep me occupied for a little while.

@roverpig thanks for the info! Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes is a brilliant read if you haven't already had the pleasure.

Last book was Dune. Very good.

Currently reading The Cairngorms by Patrick Baker. Which has also been very good.

Next is Legends, Stories in honour of David Gemmell. Which is a book of short stories. I also have Cairngorm John to read after that too.

Thanks @matt10214 I've added that to my World of Books wishlist so I can include it with the next order.

It’s Charles Stross who wrote the books I mentioned, for some reason I put Chris!
Anyway, here’s a Wiki synopsis;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satur n's_Children_(novel)

There’s a short story he wrote called ‘Bit Rot’ that links the two, the second book takes place quite some time after the first; like several centuries.

Just finished: Malibu Rising, Taylor Jenkins Reid. Really enjoyed this tale of one night of 80's excess.
Reading: Billy Summers, Stephen King. Had a bit of a thing for King's novels the last few years, loved The Institute, but this is a fairly standard, and low key, redemption story. 3.5/5

Recently finished The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy which is a former Booker Prize winner. Beautifully written, and occasionally humourous, tragic story of an Indian family and its interactions with the caste system.

Currently a third of the way through Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart which is the 2020 Booker Prize winner. Set in Glasgow it's about family disintegration due to poverty, alcohol and domestic abuse (among other things)

Also reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins which makes some very interesting arguments against the existence of God. The major issue is that Dawkins seems to have the ability to over-complicate most of his arguments and also make them far too long - he could have condensed the whole thing into less than 100 pages rather than the 400+. As a result it's an extremely turgid read and has taken me months to wade through. He also, annoyingly, keeps including his own little humourous anecdotes, particularly where he has got one over another academic or religious commentator.

Reading this one through the day:

This one in the evenings:

Currently having this read to me (Audible) at work:

And this read to me (Audible) while running:

Currently making my way through Command and Control

Which is a history of the efforts to both develop and control and make safe the most destructive weapons ever created, while at the same time looking closely at a fire in an ICMB silo in rural Arkansas in the 80's, and givinbg an alternate historical view of the cold war.

Also have Max hasting's history of the Korean War on the go, although it's now a bit dated, and (like most of his work) is overlaid by his small C leanings and a somewhat "colonialist style" : He can't resist (for example) referring to the Chinese or North Koreans as a "Hoarde", or "Swarm..."

And finally going to re-read

Last read it as a teenager, and it stayed with me. I wanted to see if my views had changed about it at all.

Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky.

Thoroughly recommend this fascinating book, I never realised how important salt had been to the developing world - I guess I'd never thought about it tbh.

Re-reading this - such a vivid account of life in the trenches in WW1 from a German perspective.

Fast Trains- Europe at 186mph by Tom Chesshyre. See also: **** Brexit you brexitty ****ers, you ****ed the job for everyone, didn't you? Arseholes.

I have The Little Book Of Humanism by Alice Roberts and Andrew Copson to try next. I will admit to a girl crush on Alice Roberts (and Hannah Fry)... 😊

I’m always reading multiple books. Short attention span

Some good ideas there, might order a few....

Another sci-fi reader (or audible listener) here, listening to the Alex Benedict series by Jack McDevitt's, has more a of an 'old skool' 50's Sci-fi feel, which is surprising, as the majority were authored since 2000.

I'm now reading The Boys In The Boat by Daniel James Brown. It's the story of the eight man rowing team from the USA that went to the 1936 Olympics. It's a fascinating and gripping tale. Would make a great film.

Another one for re-reading Dune, having watched the movie last week.

Alongside Simon Winder's Lotharingia. I love his histories of Europe, so dense in detail and fascinating imagery, in fact so dense that I can happily re-read them as I've remembered so little 😁

Eleanor of Aquitaine by Marion Meade

We've just come back from France and made an overnight stop at the Grand Hotel de l'Abbaye in Beaugency which is where Eleanor's marriage to Louis VII was annulled prior to her going on to marry the future Henry II a few weeks later. Eleanor was quite a woman.

Staying at the beautiful Abbaye gave me the incentive to find out more about her.  And there's a lot.

Eleanor was quite a woman.

Staying at the beautiful Abbaye gave me the incentive to find out more about her! And there’s a lot.

I just listened to an episode of the "You're Dead To Me" pod last week about her. Worth a play if anyone's after a brief and fairly light-hearted primer.

Finished And Away this week, quite enjoyed that. Rereading Dune, and thoroughly enjoying Richard Morris's excellent biography of Leonard Cheshire.

Currently working through Charles Stross’ ‘Laundry’ series, which I started once and never carried on with. Downloading the ones I didn’t already have as I go, currently reading The Apocalypse Codex’. Written in 2012, it has some quite remarkable parallels with America in 2019/20. Only possibly without sleeping elder Gods from outside our continuum. But lots of self-serving evangelicals and Pentecostals trying to Save The World…
…but for whom.

Just read Michel Barnier's "My Secret Brexit Diary" which was thoroughly depressing, appreciate there is a bias there but we came across as unable to cogently articulate what we wanted as a result of leaving the EU.

Also re-read the first two books from William Gibson's "Bridge Trilogy" - Virtual Light and Idoru. One of my favourite authors and love his ability to set a sense of place.

After finishing Stuart Maconies the nanny state made me, I have almost finished rereading his the pie at night. I’ve got Bob Mortimer autobiography in a pile of books I got for my birthday last week.

Just re-read Grapes of Wrath. Such a beautiful book and clearly obvious why Steinbeck is an important author for anyone really interested in literature.

Now back to my main love of history and the two world wars and really enjoying a book recommended on here about WW2 through the eyes of German civilians called The German War.

Currently reading Hearthstone by CJ Samson, a Tudor crime novel based in 1545, the French are about to attack England, Henry VIII pops down to Portsmouth and stuff goes wrong.

Merlin Sheldrake's Entangled Life.