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Currently reading Lost Baggage, the sequel to His Favourite Hole which featured contributions from this very forum
just finished Joe Abercrombie Sharp ends, the bloody nine makes an appearance and is a bloody as ever.. Also did the latest Skippy book (Craig Alanson: Fallout bk13) , 22.5hr of Audio book in a blink, cause I love them, Ch6 had me crying.. reparative or not, I enjoy them.
Onto Leviathan Falls, the expanse novel like fat-boy-fat, Mr May's narration just make the experience lovely (Amos's 'change', was a great ending to the last book).
Three crackers by authors I really enjoy, the next series of random books are going to suck, in comparison
So, I finished Disgrace by JM Coetzee…..absolutely fantastic, right up there with the best books that I’ve ever read.
It is tremendous and utterly brutal. What other one have you ordered? Age of Iron and Waiting for the Barbarians are good too.
Currently reading Sharpe' Fortress, really good read TBH, almost don't want it to end.
It is tremendous and utterly brutal. What other one have you ordered? Age of Iron and Waiting for the Barbarians are good too.
Life and Times of Michael K. Someone else has recommended Waiting for the Barbarians so I might order that too 👍
I need to read her first book now The Salt Path.
Really enjoyed that.
On recommendation by a colleague, I'm reading We by Yevgeny Zamyatin. It's a love story of sorts, set in a dystopian future.
According to the blurb in the book, it is credited as the inspiration for 1984. It was written in 1921, and banned in Russia. I couldn't finish 1984, I found it quite boring, but I'm really enjoying this.
I found a copy of We Need to Talk About Kevin the other day, wouldn't describe it as a good read so far but it has a lot of interesting bits that really make you think. I find myself turning pages without much engagement and then suddenly there is a bit where I stop reading and spend a while thinking about what I've just read.
I suppose it's similar in a way to how I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance decades ago.
Spontaneous purchase today - The light division in the peninsular war 1811-1814 - real sharpe......
Still working through Lotharingia by Simon Winder. Very enjoyable writing style and so rich in little anecdotes about historical Europe that I can pick up and put down without worrying about following the thread, it's enough just to dip in and out whenever I have the time.
chuckling my way through the Disc World collection by Mr Pratchett
Might dig out Hogfather, 'tis the season after all
Currently churning my way through JG Ballard - Cocaine Nights however I can't decide if I'm enjoying it or if its a bit of a chore.
I am in the middle of the latest version The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties by Robert Conquest.
Truly frightening
Just read Trainspotting....seen the film a fair few times and remember studying bits of the book for A Level English. It was on the top of one of my boxes of books that are currently in storage, I think that my sister got it for me as a Christmas present about 10 years ago. I guess that I don't need to do a review....flippin awesome though!
Is stuff like Porno and Skagboys worth a read?
The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber, and David Wengrow.
It's about why we still cast our ancestors as either primitive and childlike or war-like and brutal, It's using actual archeological evidence (as oppose to made up stories) and having a new look at things like the move to agriculture, the changes that new technologies actually had, and why European societies in the 18thC needed to create theories about them as a reaction to indigenous critique of "civilisation"
A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. A nice, cheerful tale for the festive season!
That's a lighthearted sunny romp compared to Cancer Ward!
In preparation for reading Crossroads after Christmas, I'm filling in my Jonathan Franzen gap by reading Purity. Can't decide how I feel about JF. The Corrections was one of my favourite contemporary novels ever but I was so underwhelmed by Freedom. Purity is... okay so far.
Almost finished Brothers in Arms by James Holland. A very detailed description of the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry campaign from D Day to the end of the war - France, Belgium, Germany. Very good indeed. It has been described as a British version of Band of Brothers, and I think that is a pretty good comment, and has both positive and negative aspects…
Is stuff like Porno and Skagboys worth a read?
I thought Porno was a bit crap, it's nothing like as good as Trainspotting.
House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune.
Quite surreal and a bit whimsical would be my description.
Almost finished Brothers in Arms by James Holland. ............ It has been described as a British version of Band of Brothers, and I think that is a pretty good comment, and has both positive and negative aspects…
Yeah, Holland does his thing very well, and comparing him to Stephen Ambrose feels about right. Detailed, but not so much that it affects how readable it is, and keeps the book moving along at a decent pace. There will obviously be stuff omitted.
I'm currently reading Adrian Goldsworhy's Phillip and Alexander. Sometimes it feels like it needs a bit of the above. 😀
* Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson - near future climate change thriller, typical Stephenson - a bit long and loose but some good ideas. light years better than SevenEves
* As I walked out one midsummers morning - by Laurie Lee. Account of his walk through spain the in 1930's on the cusp of the civil war. Brilliant, brillaint writer and recommended.
* Spain by Jan Morris. Another amazing travelogue by one the best travel writers out there.
[url= https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1444787179/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tu00_p1_i8 ]Paradise Sky by Joe R Lansdale[/url]
Is stuff like Porno and Skagboys worth a read?
Read em all. Irvine Welsh is briliant.
The moon's a balloon - David Niven.
I read this many years ago and had completely forgotten what an interesting life this actor had lived.
The book is extremely well written and takes one back to a simpler time but not always better.
Just finished the Shatner Ashes of Eden
4/5 Not painful to read a rather good yarn.
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"The moon’s a balloon – David Niven"
Such a great book as is Bring On The Empty Horses
I read them both as a teenager, I need to revisit too
Spanish fly - indeed, his other book very good and funny.
Spent ages trying to find some new science fiction that wasn't the same regurgitated recommendation lists for 2021 and came across Angry Robot publisher. They have a digital sampler on their website (some good, some dire) but I'm currently enjoying Glow by Tim Jordan
Pretty decent debut.
“Reminiscent of the best space opera mixed with the gritty, violent dystopia of cyberpunk. Recommended for fans of Alastair Reynolds and William Gibson.” – Booklist
Death in Her Hands - Ottessa Moshfegh.
The last few years I've been reading a lot of contemporary fiction, trying to find something beneath the hype of certain newish authors. Lots of difficult second/third novels. Moshfegh can write, best examples probably being the character studies in her Homesick for Another World, but I still don't get that she has anything much to say, just that if she ever had something to say she'd say it very well. It's a dickish thing to come out with, "your hyped novel seems more style than substance", but a book is an investment of time, more so than a film or record, and I really miss that feeling of being introduced to new ideas through fiction. People say all the good writers are doing tv now, and Dan Harmon has skills in both sticking to a formula and subverting it, but there must be people writing ambitious unpretentious fiction somewhere.
Gone to sea in a bucket.
Well, re-reading really.
Decided I should probably attempt to fill in a big black hole in my knowledge of the USSR, from say 1918 to 1988. 😆 Just randomly picked a book. Went for this.
30 pages in seems decent, fascinating stuff. 🙂
Parked The Anarchy (and reading in general) over Christmas. Now reading Victoria Coren's poker book For Richer, For Poorer and The Dillinger Days by John somebody - Steven King recommended it for people interested in depression-era gangsters, and what a bunch of dicks they all were.
I'm almost certainly going to regret it, but watching the Wheel of Time tv series inspired me to pick up the first book, which I read so long ago that I couldn't really join in the online hate train against the series, or criticize it for changes, could only remember the broad strokes.
What I do remember is how absolutely shit the middle of the series is, so, no plans to go any further than this one.
I read another JM Coetzee book over Christmas, The Life and Times of Michael K. He's fast become one of my favourite authors, so will order some more of his. Currently reading Redhead By The Side of The Road by Anne Tyler...very readable, will have finished it in under 5 hours, both books are very interesting takes on a person's character.
I have also made good on the first new years resolution that I've ever made, by starting a book club.
Currently reading Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum: Glasgow's Portal to the World, by Muriel Gray. The building was constructed according to the winning entry in the 1891/92 competition to design a new combined art gallery and museum for Glasgow. Initially, the design was to include an art school too, but at a later stage this was dropped from the plans. I had never considered, as pointed out in this book, that if an art school had indeed been integrated into the overall design, there would have been no need for Mackintosh to design the Art School – a magnificent building (in my opinion) and regarded, by some at least, as a masterpiece.
Anyway, this ties in nicely with one of my next reads – The Flower and the Green Leaf: Glasgow School of Art in the Time of Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Have had a browse through and it looks really interesting.
For Richer, For Poorer was good, bit indulgently overlong in places and she uses poker terminology that meant nothing to me when it would have been interesting to know more clearly what was going on, but good stuff. Kind of ploughed through The Dillinger Days out of spite but I was glad when they were all either dead or banged up. Made a start on Carrie Fisher's Surrender The Pink because Summer was reading it in a Mint Sauce scene but it's not for me, got about two thirds through and decided to draw a line, now on the excellent You Don't Want To Know by James Felton - one to pick up for short stints rather than dive into for a lengthy sitting, short chapters, much grossness and genuinely laugh-out-loud funny if we share the same sense of humour. Also tackling Stanislavsky's An Actor Prepares - tried it (and failed) before but now just reading rather than studying it, which is making it much easier going!
Just finished the Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd (no idea why it took me so long to get around to it).
Started Play it as it lays by Joan Didion. Think the last time I picked a Didion book was due to Rattlesnakes... 🤣🤪🤣🤪🤣
I've just finished The Trial by Kafka....not sure it was worth the effort as I found it fairly tough going.
I think that I'm going to start The Handmaid's Tale tonight.
Bloody Scotland short stories by various artists. Very good. But that last one "Paradise Sky" was wonderful. Should be a Netflix series
Ernest Cline's Ready Player One, enjoying it.
Have the final Expanse book (Leviathan Fall) by James Core to start when i've finished the above.
Booked marked this as need to cast my net passed all the sci-fi nonsense i usually read.
Having recently watched the film for the first time, I'm reading The Man Who Fell To Earth.
Finished You Don't Need To Know - grotesque, sweary, ace.
Finished Pound For Pound, a biography of Sugar Ray Robinson - so-so, rolls along pretty quick but lacks depth and rather skips over less savoury aspects of the man - if anyone knows of a decent biography of him, let me know!
This way for the gas, Ladies and Gentlemen
Read this when I was younger, and thought I'd just remind myself given the resurgence of the American and UK right wing.
Last year I challenged myself a book a month and hopefully going to get through that again this year.
Over xmas (or as it was known in this house the omicron period) I managed to finish off Simon Armitage's book Walking Home. A trip down the Pennine Way. Very entertaining.
My first of the year was Robert Twigger Walking the Great North Line.
My daughter picked up a couple of books for me at xmas and I've started Catch-22. Possibly not something I would look at but none of the books I read last year were overly similar (with the exception of my last two, but they were in different years!) anyway must admit I've struggled through the first 50 chaotic pages but that may just be my brain struggling with stuff after covid brain fog.
Still got Tehanu on the go with Cibola Burn (Expanse book 4) waiting in the wings. That was months ago I wrote that.
Got slightly distracted from them as the wife got me Bob Mortimer's autobiography for Christmas so I've been chucking my way through that. Also, got the two Thursday Murder Club books so I think I'm taking a break from sci-fi/fantasy for a while.
Sad Little Men - Private Schools and the Ruin of England, Richard Beard.