[Closed] WHAT YOU READING ?

James Patterson-Along Came a Spider. Good fast paced thriller. Nowt too thinky!

Just finished 'Sunnyside' by Glen David Gold - excellent, in my (admittedly plebbish, according to the 'must read' thread on here) opinion.

T.E.Lawrence - Seven pillars of wisdom

Yes, it is quite heavy going! 😆

His Last Bow by Arthur Conan Doyle.

Elementary...

the kite runner

The gas meter.

am not reading it right now...

but its a book I have read and read again..

Ken Follet's Pillars of the Earth - a stunning story and not the usual style of story I would go for..

am Currently reading - Ken Follet (only my second of his books) The Third Twin - a contempary Thriller

Keith Floyds autobiography

I was gutted when he popped his clogs.

20,000 leagues under the sea, playing with free books on the iPod touch.

Ranulph Fiennes- Mad dogs and Englishmen.
If history was as fun as this at skool I mite be better edukated 😀

"A Prayer for Owen Meany" by John Irving.

Started it just before New Year and was loving it, but put it aside until last night so only just getting back into it.

@Barnslymitch - have you read "Carter Beats the Devil" by the same author?

"Stringbag" by Charles Lamb - the definitive FAA aviation memor of WWII.

He's just punched out a Vichy French internment camp commander....

Good stuff.

stuartie_c - I bought "Carter Beats the Devil" for Mrs HTC for Christmas but she hasn't got to it yet - is it a good read?

Carra - Jamie Carragher's biography - it's quite good 🙂

The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes It's a brilliant history of science and scientists from the 1750s onwards.

Yeah, read it and loved it - just annoying that it took him so long to write another. Try googling Carter - he was quite an interesting (real life) character.

Confessions of an Irish Rebel by Brendan Behan.

American Gods by Neil Gaiman. Really enjoying it.

Oh, and 'Under the dome' by Stephen King.

Bradley Wigins the new leader of the Sky road teams book.

I'm working my way through the internets
it's pretty hard going and difficult to read it in order
might try and get it finished over the weekend

coyote: I'm just getting over a binge on gaiman - I've read all his books since christmas. Genius.

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, '...A nightmare odyssey'
just ordered another three by same author as is, superb!

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, '...A nightmare odyssey'

Read it again! Best book I've ever read, and it gets better with subsequent readings.

@Hamishthecat - "Carter..." is excellent.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, Booker winner

Henry VIII's marital problems as seen through the eyes of Thomas Cromwell

Short sample - Thames boatman discussing Anne Boleyn's alleged incestuous affair with her brother: "that very night her brother's inside her, licking her up to the lungs, and then he's, excuse me sister, what shall I do with this big package - and she says, oh, don't distress yourself, my lord brother, shove it up the back entry, it'll come to no harm there."

Work of genius - my bet is it it will be on the A-level English Literature exam list before too long

Strip Tease by Carl Hiaasen it's very funny.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

...an eye opener...hard labour, building a Power Station when it's -26C !

lord of the rings

Blood's a Rover - James Ellroy, his third in the trilogy of US crime

POP LARKIN is this a new or old book please James Patterson-Along Came a Spider?

David Peace's GB1984 -Although a work of fiction Pearce provides an excellent commentary on the miners strike and describes the ‘war’ between Scargill and Thatcher and the plight of the miners and the mining communities.
This book has a special resonance for me as the shop on the right (Raynor’s) was my Parents at the time – they were in when this picture was taken – and had a grand stand view of the miners petrol bombing the police

EDIT - can't get this to display the image but follow the [url= http://www.flickr.com/photos/34240534@N06/3818447747/in/photostream/ ]link[/url]

also whats Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, '...A nightmare odyssey'like please?

It is a beautifully written, very dark and violent kind of road movie-esq novel. Its set/based on the Wild West in the 1850's.

A book on the Falklands war (in Chronological order). Foreword by Simon Weston 😀

Prev was forgotten voices- story of the Falklands War.

also whats Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, '...A nightmare odyssey'like please?

Set in the Indian Wars in Texas and Mexico in the 1840s/1850s and tells the story of scalphunters under the leadership of John Joel Glanton (based on actual events and actual characters).

The character of the Judge is one of the most spooky in western literature.

Amazing, cinematic descriptions of landscape and some stomach-churning passages of carnage.

Truly brilliant.

[EDIT - humanbean beat me to it!]

Brain Moore Beware of the dog, its a great book, even though I hated him as a player is a great read.

Marc Beaumont " The man that cycled the world" is an ok read

Bewdley to Bejing - why dont you fly- a book about a local guy (Bewdley) who cycled to bejing from the road I live on.

So I have three on the go, all good

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Just finished "let the right one in" awesome book!
Now reading "An Education" by Lynn Barber interesting autobiography.

Atom and Archetype - The Pauli/ Jung Letters 1932 - 1958.

Just finished Anathem - Neal Stephenson which I really enjoyed.

Currently ploughing my way though the final chapter of book 1 of Schama's A history of Britain.

Also started Beyond Numeracy (An uncommon dictionary of mathematics)...

The Hungry Cyclist by Tom Kevill Davies - really good read, though I usually have no interest in bikes or food.....

John ofarell. An utterly exasperating history of the last 60 years. Quite an interesting read on politics written in an easy to read style which makes it pretty accessible.

Got a James lee Burke next and then The Road by Cormac Mccarthy n

Just finished The Road by Cormac McCarthy on the recommendation of a mate...very good. Before that it was Billie Morgan by Joolz Denby. Again, super duper.

ian banks the algebrist very slowley, started it on holiday that was 7 months ago, dont read when I'm working

Training and Racing with a Power Meter: Allen and Coggan. Great stuff.

Waiting on monkeenutz to come along and tell us we're all cretins because we're not reading ancient Sanskrit scripts. 🙂

Galactic patrol by E E "Doc" Smith for the umpteenth time. 😳 Its a simple but riproaring yarn

American Tabloid by James Elroy...superb.
Just finished Defense of the Realm about the history of MI5, quite interesting but heavy going in places

On a Wing and a Prayer: Biography of Steve Coppell by Stuart Roach.

A truly top man by the sounds of it. And I haven't even got to the Reading years yet.

The Damned United by David Peace - so far much better than the film of the same name.

just about to start 'The man who cycled the world' (Mark Beaumont)

just finished 'The Escape Artist' quite a good book bit short though

[i]just finished 'The Escape Artist' quite a good book bit short though [/i]
did you want more details about his wife's chemo or something?

gervaise phinn - head over heals in teh dales, very very very funny

AndyP - Member

Why would you reply with something like that ????? 😕

sorry just found it brief !

[i]AndyP - Member

Why would you reply with something like that ?????
[/i]

because I found it a bizarre statement.

sorry didnt think the book was all about his wifes illness ?

[i]Old Mendip[/i] by Robin Atthill. My preferred folk-cure for the pain of exile.

im after a good horror please?

try Under the dome, the new one by Stephen King.

currently:
The Uplift War - David Brin
The Weirdstone of Brisingamen - Alan Garner
Broken Rails - Christian Wolmar

Tiziano Terzani- A fortune teller told me.

An account of a year avoiding air travel by a journalist who covered many epochal events of the 20th C. His translator in Cambodia was a focal character in the film "The killing fields". The book is beautifully written, very readable and strangely mind altering if you are open to that sort of thing.

Choke - Chuck Palahniuk

Bike

Interesting spelling and grammar to start a thread about books with there 😉

Regardless, I'm in the middle of Stand on Zanzibar at the moment. I found the first part of the book quite dull, but now I'm getting deeper in the interest is starting to show. I haven't really seen the brilliance that got it destined for the SF Masterworks series, and earned it so many high praises, yet though.

I think I need to give Blood Meridian another try soon. I started on it a while ago but ran out of steam around half way through, For some reason it didn't grab me at that time, although most of McCarthy's other stuff I've read has been brilliant.

Chris Hoys' Autobiography.
Just got to the bit where he had 15 pastries for breakfast.

[i]Bike[/i]

I re-read old copies... endlessly.

Blood Meridian's problem is the long sentences that start and keep going and going and when you expect a comma or something to punctuate the unremmitting biblical prophecy spake truely by the Judge you find nothing but ands and ands and then you think it is all over and a new paragraph shall arise surely and lo no paragraph is born and again the ands and ands go on and on and then a scalp is hoist aloft and it is truely a scalp that which a man has bequeathed off from his skull that which did think of nothing but hot sun and thirst and explosive destruction created by man from matches on a barren lump of rock on this earth and man's demonic ingenuity before of which it was taken from that dome.

Amongst other things I'm part way through Paris - Roubaix : A Journey Through Hell.

Probably one of the best cycling books I've ever read.

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sodafarls - Member

Blood Meridian's problem is the long sentences that start and keep going and going and when you expect a comma or something ...

Takes a while to tune in but what's not to like?

[i]"It was a lone tree burning on the desert. A heraldic tree that the passing storm had left afire. The solitary pilgrim drawn up before it had traveled far to be here and he knelt in the hot sand and held his numbed hands out while all about in that circle attended companies of lesser auxiliaries routed forth into the inordinate day, small owls that crouched silently and stood from foot to foot and tarantulas and solpugas and vinegarroons and the vicious mygale spiders and beaded lizards with mouths black as a chowdog's, deadly to man, and the little desert basilisks that jet blood from their eyes and the small sandvipers like seemly gods, silent and the same, in Jeda, in Babylon. A constellation of ignited eyes that edged the ring of light all bound in a precarious truce before this torch whose brightness had set back the stars in their sockets."[/i]

Cycling weekly :O)

Swallows and Amazons.

Never read it before.
It's good. 😀

Rusty - Swallows and Amazons are ace as is the rest of Ransome's books!

Certainly put me in the mood to read it again - that said I believe Titty has become politically incorrect as has Roger the dog.........

Books I'm reading in various states of completion....

The first dragon tattoo book thing, it's not as good as people are making out but I'll keep reading it to make sure

Catch 22 - (forth time)

Cryptonomicon - Second time, it's a great book.

On my ipod I'm reading moby dick and the twelveth night, (the latter nly because she's the man was on tv the other night and it arose my interest despite reading it a long time ago.

I have nothing lined up once I've finished these and need to sort out some new books.

tankslapper - Great isn't it? You mean Roger the ship's boy?
Definitely not allowed these days!

Love old fashioned kid's books: Used to read Jennings, Bunter, Biggles, Famous Five, Ian Serraillier (The Silver Sword, There's no Escape) and Anne Holm (I am David) all the time as a small kid.

Also re read Erskine Childers' 'Riddle of the Sands' recently for the first time in 30 years, along with H Rider Haggard's 'King Solomons' Mines.'

Second childhood? Bring it on.

Collins Mandarin Phrasebook and Dictionary

and

The Acid House

Also reading 20 000 leagues under the sea on iphone. Its good, and i reccomend reading the invisible man or war of the worlds which are also on there...

Agreewith Rusty Spanner, Sillver sword. Famous five books are just good books for kids (uncles might quite enjoy them too!

I have just finished Judas Unchained by Peter F Hamilton, rather long but difficult to put down. On the Origin of Species, by some old dude (a 1930's re-print I found in a second hand book shop), also the greatest show on earth by Richard Dawkins and just to keep me confused at bedtime I am re-reading the Farthest North by Fridtjof Nansen. Which is a bit difficult to get into but once going is a bloomin good read and makes one realise how ballsy late 19th century explorers were.

Your Heart is Mine - Dean Koontz