Does anyone read books?

[Hibbyradge]

Seriously but,...

Mibbes we could discuss stuff.

:dunno:

[IWasThere2016]

I don't read enough D - even on ma hols I'll be lucky to read a whole book.

I've got Ben Elton's Dead Famous with me - the missus bought me it three years ago!

[BroxburnHibee]

:agree: Usually fiction.

Cookbooks/Biographys as well

Read a book written by Jeff Stelling recently..........funny as :greengrin

[Godsahibby]

Dont readas much as I used to, ony really do it when i'm away with work, passes the time sitting in airports and plan journeys.

Normally will find an author I like and go through all their books then move on, pretty much completed the life and works of Andy McNab, perfect time killer reading.

[Hibbyradge]

I read loads on holiday. Really enjoyed myself.

I'd particularly have liked an opinion on a novel called "A room swept white" by Sophie Hannah.

It was my wife's book and I only read it after I had finished all my other ones, but I was very impressed with it.

If anyone ever needs to remember how dangerous it is to accept a version of events without knowing the facts, they should read this.

[The_Todd]

Yes. I read books.

[heretoday]

I read all the time.

Currently I am reading Post Captain - the second of Patrick O'Brian's sea stories about Jack Aubrey. They capture perfectly the atmosphere on board a ship in the Napoleonic era, being full of salty lingo and nautical jargon.

Unlike say Hornblower, however, there are moments of farce and wit.

[Mixu62]

I also read a bit when I get a moments peace! I hear Ken Follett has a new one coming out soon. Hate trying to read during lunch at work though. There's always at least 1 muppet will interrupt you with "whatcha reading?".

[Jonnyboy]

I read a lot.

I like true crime as well as fictional crime thrillers by the likes of James Patterson, Lee Child and Michael Connelly. I also read a lot of books about WW2

[Mixu62]

I read a lot.

I like true crime as well as fictional crime thrillers by the likes of James Patterson, Lee Child and Michael Connelly. I also read a lot of books about WW2

Have you tried any of Jake Arnott's books? "He Kills Coppers" is very good. He take genuine well known crime cases and builds a story around them. Sort of like "In Cold Blood" but British.

[ballengeich]

I'm reading The Trial (Kafka) alongside my usual newspapers and magazines. There are so many great books - more than I (or anyone else) will ever get through.

[Lucius Apuleius]

Lots and lots and lots. Keeps me out the bar!!!

Currently struggling with The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo. maybe it is losing something in the translation, but not overly impressed so far. Usually read at least one a week, but this has dragged for a couple so far.

Ken Follet's new book is out Mixu. (Not on eBook though:grr:)

[Beefster]

I read a fair number of books but very rarely read fiction. I think the last fiction book I read was 'The Road' by Cormac McCarthy about 2 years ago.

Usually read WW2, history, true crime (particularly Mafia, Terrorism and Serial Killers), political memoir or science/cosmology.

Currently working my way through "The Only Living Witness', which is about Ted Bundy and his shenanigans.

[Hibbyradge]

Lots and lots and lots. Keeps me out the bar!!!

Currently struggling with The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo. maybe it is losing something in the translation, but not overly impressed so far. Usually read at least one a week, but this has dragged for a couple so far.



I read TGWTDT last week and my advise would be to stick with it.

It started quite slowly, with a lot of detail, but I ended up thoroughly enjoying it and am looking forward to the second book in the trilogy.

[hibsbollah]

I read a fair number of books but very rarely read fiction. I think the last fiction book I read was 'The Road' by Cormac McCarthy about 2 years ago.



Excellent book. 'Blood Meridian' by him is also excellent. I'm currently reading Sebastian Faulks' 'a Week in December', which is (to use that awful phrase):greengrin 'unputdownable'.

[heretoday]

Lots and lots and lots. Keeps me out the bar!!!

Currently struggling with The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo. maybe it is losing something in the translation, but not overly impressed so far. Usually read at least one a week, but this has dragged for a couple so far.

Ken Follet's new book is out Mixu. (Not on eBook though:grr:)

I was very disappointed with The Girl etc etc. Most overhyped book ever. The ending was absurd. Not a patch on Henning Mankell if Scandacrime is your bag.

[Hibs Class]

I read a fair bit - a combination of biographies, novels and war books, both WW1 and WW2. I like Brookmyre, Andy McNab (& if you like McNab then Chris Ryan's also worth a try), Nelson DeMille

[Twa Cairpets]

I read all the time.

Currently I am reading Post Captain - the second of Patrick O'Brian's sea stories about Jack Aubrey. They capture perfectly the atmosphere on board a ship in the Napoleonic era, being full of salty lingo and nautical jargon.

Unlike say Hornblower, however, there are moments of farce and wit.

I'm about 3/4 way through a book called "Cochrane the Dauntless" by David Cordingly. Its the story of Thomas Cochrane, who was the inspiration for both Aubrey and Hornblower - some of the ficitional stories of both are acknowledged as being straight lifts from actions that Cochrane took part in. Worth a read if you like your authentic, real-life derring-do.

[--------]

I read TGWTDT last week and my advise would be to stick with it.

It started quite slowly, with a lot of detail, but I ended up thoroughly enjoying it and am looking forward to the second book in the trilogy.


Just finished the trilogy (Dragon Tattoo, Played With Fire, and Hornet's Nest) for the second time. As good a read as I've encountered, and well worth the time.

Those, and James Ellroy, and Raymond Chandler.

Non-fiction I can recommend - Stephen Sears' "Gettysburg", and Parshall & Tully's "Shattered Sword" - THE account of the Battle of Midway.

Also Andy Dougan's "Dynamo".

[heretoday]

I'm about 3/4 way through a book called "Cochrane the Dauntless" by David Cordingly. Its the story of Thomas Cochrane, who was the inspiration for both Aubrey and Hornblower - some of the ficitional stories of both are acknowledged as being straight lifts from actions that Cochrane took part in. Worth a read if you like your authentic, real-life derring-do.

I'll look for Cordingly.

The first O'Brian, Master and Commander, had more battle action and I found the jargon difficult without the aid of a nautical glossary. The second one has a more romantic dry land-based storyline which doesn't grip but I find I am enjoying the technical stuff more without the glossary. There are twenty of these novels but I couldn't read more than one a year, I think.

[Twa Cairpets]

I'll look for Cordingly.

The first O'Brian, Master and Commander, had more battle action and I found the jargon difficult without the aid of a nautical glossary. The second one has a more romantic dry land-based storyline which doesn't grip but I find I am enjoying the technical stuff more without the glossary. There are twenty of these novels but I couldn't read more than one a year, I think.

You might also enjoy a couple of books by a guy called Roger Crowley. "Constantinople, the Last Great siege 1453" and "Empires of the Sea: The final battle for Mediterranean". They are both written superbly well, and read almost like historical novels rather than history. Really, really good.

[Pretty Boy]

I read a lot. Usually finish aout 2 books a week, depending on the length obviously.

As a huge boxing fan currently enjoying 'The life and Crimes of Don King'. An excellent look at the life of this despicable human being.

I despair when i hear people around my age mocking readers as though enjoying a book is something to be ashamed of. Call me out of touch or uncool or whatever but i'd far rather read a good book than watch X Factor, Big Brother or some other reality TV garbage.

[EskbankHibby]

Enjoyed TGWTDT but the 2nd book was so bad i have yet to read the 3rd.

Used to love Robert Jordan "wheel of time" series but that is just getting ridiculous now, first 8 or so were absolutely superb but the rest seem to be an exercise in padding out an already epic series of books. The series was heading for the final instalmaent when Robert Jordan died, his wife/estate decided to make the final book a trilogy! The most blatant bit of profiteering i have seen for a while.

Same Genre and Raymond Feist wrote a trilogy started by a book called Magician which are all a superb read.

Papillon is a great book and i've read all of Agatha Christie's stuff, Frankie Boyle's book was keek. Read all of Rankin, Banks and Brookmyre over the years.

The Looming Towers is a pretty good read regarding the progress of Islamic extremism and the built up to 9/11 and associated security failures.

[Leicester Fan]

I read a lot.

I like true crime as well as fictional crime thrillers by the likes of James Patterson, Lee Child and Michael Connelly. I also read a lot of books about WW2

If you like Michael Connelly you'll probably like Harlan Coben as well. Tough detective type fiction, snappy dialogue with a sports background.

Funniest book I've ever read is 'My **** life so far' by Frankie Boyle. As soon as I'd finished it I started to read it again, it was that good.

[Jonnyboy]

Have you tried any of Jake Arnott's books? "He Kills Coppers" is very good. He take genuine well known crime cases and builds a story around them. Sort of like "In Cold Blood" but British.

Haven't tried any of Arnott's books but will do so now :thumbsup:


Lots and lots and lots. Keeps me out the bar!!!

Currently struggling with The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo. maybe it is losing something in the translation, but not overly impressed so far. Usually read at least one a week, but this has dragged for a couple so far.

Ken Follet's new book is out Mixu. (Not on eBook though:grr:)

See Doddie's post quoted below and stick with Larsson GT :agree:


Just finished the trilogy (Dragon Tattoo, Played With Fire, and Hornet's Nest) for the second time. As good a read as I've encountered, and well worth the time.

Those, and James Ellroy, and Raymond Chandler.

Non-fiction I can recommend - Stephen Sears' "Gettysburg", and Parshall & Tully's "Shattered Sword" - THE account of the Battle of Midway.

Also Andy Dougan's "Dynamo".

Doddie, have you read Stephen E. Ambrose's D-Day? Also look out for The Snowman by Jo Nesbo - very Larsson like and an excellent read


If you like Michael Connelly you'll probably like Harlan Coben as well. Tough detective type fiction, snappy dialogue with a sports background.

Funniest book I've ever read is 'My **** life so far' by Frankie Boyle. As soon as I'd finished it I started to read it again, it was that good.

I've just picked up a Harlan Coben book (Play Dead) and am looking forward to reading it. I must also pick up Frankie Boyle's book as it sounds a hoot :thumbsup:

[Ed De Gramo]

Playboy, Daily Star, Nuts :greengrin

Been reading Frankie Boyle's book and also former WWE Wrestler Shawn Michael's autobiography

[Lucius Apuleius]

Jonny, Radge etc.:

I won't stop reading it. I have never given up on a book in my life. Once it is bought it gets read!!!!! Funnily enough I thought last night it was starting to get better when I was reading it. Perseverance!!!!!!!

[Greentinted]

Reading books is braw!
But I have to say that as its a prerequisite for a lit student! :greengrin

Currently reading Of Human Bondage (for me) and 2/3 others a week (for uni)

The so called 'classics' are much maligned but theres always something for everyone - they urnae labelled classic for nothin ye ken.

19th Cent (http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/16.Best_Books_of_the_19th_Century) - Hoggs Confessions is a must for everyone in my humble opinion.

20th Cent (http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/6.Best_Books_of_the_20th_Century)

[PeeJay]

Reading books is braw!
But I have to say that as its a prerequisite for a lit student! :greengrin

Currently reading Of Human Bondage (for me) and 2/3 others a week (for uni)

The so called 'classics' are much maligned but theres always something for everyone - they urnae labelled classic for nothin ye ken.

19th Cent (http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/16.Best_Books_of_the_19th_Century) - Hoggs Confessions is a must for everyone in my humble opinion.

20th Cent (http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/6.Best_Books_of_the_20th_Century)


Excellent listings, thanks for posting - some truly fantastic reading in there, particularly among the classics, many of which I'm still trying to catch up on ... they're long lists!:greengrin

[Lucius Apuleius]

Reading books is braw!
But I have to say that as its a prerequisite for a lit student! :greengrin

Currently reading Of Human Bondage (for me) and 2/3 others a week (for uni)

The so called 'classics' are much maligned but theres always something for everyone - they urnae labelled classic for nothin ye ken.

19th Cent (http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/16.Best_Books_of_the_19th_Century) - Hoggs Confessions is a must for everyone in my humble opinion.

20th Cent (http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/6.Best_Books_of_the_20th_Century)


Damned if I know what it says about me but I have read a hell of a lot more of the 19th century than the 20th:greengrin

[--------]

Doddie, have you read Stephen E. Ambrose's D-Day? Also look out for The Snowman by Jo Nesbo - very Larsson like and an excellent read.



Yup - Ambrose is excellent. Beevor's book on D-Day is very good, too.

Not come across Nesbo, but I'll look out for him.

Not everyone's cup of tea, but possibly the best book I've come across on the Final Solution is Daniel Mendelsohn's "The Lost", about his quest to discover the truth about what happened to his family in the Holocaust. Hard read, heartbreaking, but very rewarding.

And Owen Beattie and John Geiger - "Frozen in Time", about the fate of the Franklin Expedition of the 1840's in the Canadian Arctic.

[Twa Cairpets]

Yup - Ambrose is excellent. Beevor's book on D-Day is very good, too.

Not come across Nesbo, but I'll look out for him.

Not everyone's cup of tea, but possibly the best book I've come across on the Final Solution is Daniel Mendelsohn's "The Lost", about his quest to discover the truth about what happened to his family in the Holocaust. Hard read, heartbreaking, but very rewarding.

And Owen Beattie and John Geiger - "Frozen in Time", about the fate of the Franklin Expedition of the 1840's in the Canadian Arctic.

I've got the Beevor D-Day book to read - its on the shelf beside Stalingrad which was good.

Is the Mendelsohn book fiction or non-fiction? I read Martin Gilberts "The Holocaust" a few years back and that gave me nightmares.

[LiverpoolHibs]

Just finished the trilogy (Dragon Tattoo, Played With Fire, and Hornet's Nest) for the second time. As good a read as I've encountered, and well worth the time.

Those, and James Ellroy, and Raymond Chandler.

Non-fiction I can recommend - Stephen Sears' "Gettysburg", and Parshall & Tully's "Shattered Sword" - THE account of the Battle of Midway.

Also Andy Dougan's "Dynamo".

Just re-reading the Cold Six-Thousand at the moment. Seems to be even better the second time around.


Damned if I know what it says about me but I have read a hell of a lot more of the 19th century than the 20th:greengrin

Probably because the 20th Century list is awful whereas the 19th C. one is pretty canonical. Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter in the top ten novels of the last century? I think not...

[--------]

Just re-reading the Cold Six-Thousand at the moment. Seems to be even better the second time around.

:agree: Just finished The Black Dahlia and now started the Dudley Smith trilogy for the second time. My favourite crime-writer.

Probably because the 20th Century list is awful whereas the 19th C. one is pretty canonical. Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter in the top ten novels of the last century? I think not...

Lots of great 20th-century novels, but those two ain't on my list either.

How's about Mailer's "The Naked and the Dead" or Joseph Conrad?

Just been listening to the new Tory Education minister - wants to get teenagers reading Dryden and Pope (Alexander Pope, that is, not PapaNazi). That'll be right.

[LiverpoolHibs]

:agree: Just finished The Black Dahlia and now started the Dudley Smith trilogy for the second time. My favourite crime-writer.

Need to get hold of his new one in the Underworld trilogy, Blood's a Rover.

Read any Derek Raymond? He's probably my favourite crime author along with Ellroy and Chandler. Quite similar to Ellroy stylistically but a lot less American (read: cool) and even more unpleasant.


Lots of great 20th-century novels, but those two ain't on my list either.

How's about Mailer's "The Naked and the Dead" or Joseph Conrad?

Apparently Conrad doesn't warrant a mention in the top fifty and Ulysses (the greatest novel ever written and I won't hear any argument against that) only places at fourty-seven, behind Ayn ****ing Rand.

I know it's just a populist, largely arbitrary list and a bit of fun - but really...


Just been listening to the new Tory Education minister - wants to get teenagers reading Dryden and Pope (Alexander Pope, that is, not PapaNazi). That'll be right.

Gove's always going on about Dryden and Pope. It's fairly easy to understand why he's more comfortable with them than the Romantics that followed them. Terribly ideologically consistent, Michael.

[Bishop Hibee]

My political and religious reading list would probably cause Hibs.net to meltdown given the rabid reaction to some of my posts :greengrin

Tend to enjoy the lighter side of fiction these days e.g. Ian Rankin, Christopher Brookmyre, Ian Banks (and his Sci-Fi) although I find I don't have as much time as I would like.

Looking forward to reading Lawrie Reilly's autobiography and seeing some old friends at the book launch at ER.

[matty_f]

I love Brookmyre's books, and I've been reading the Rebus ones recently too.

Out of interest, does anyone use an electronic book reader, or are we all good old fashioned proper book people?

Just curious, because I think I'll look for it as a feature of my next mobile phone but although on the face of it there shouldn't be much of a difference to having an actual book, you know it's not going to be the same...

[Jonnyboy]

I love Brookmyre's books, and I've been reading the Rebus ones recently too.

Out of interest, does anyone use an electronic book reader, or are we all good old fashioned proper book people?

Just curious, because I think I'll look for it as a feature of my next mobile phone but although on the face of it there shouldn't be much of a difference to having an actual book, you know it's not going to be the same...

A bassa to get autographed by the author though :greengrin

[Bookkeeper]

My political and religious reading list would probably cause Hibs.net to meltdown given the rabid reaction to some of my posts :greengrin

Tend to enjoy the lighter side of fiction these days e.g. Ian Rankin, Christopher Brookmyre, Ian Banks (and his Sci-Fi) although I find I don't have as much time as I would like.

Looking forward to reading Lawrie Reilly's autobiography and seeing some old friends at the book launch at ER.

Working my way through Untamed by Alan Hirsch and just finished Soul Cravings by Erwin McManus.

Also like Peter Robinson for crime and some Robin Jenkins - The Cone Gatherers, Matthew and Sheila.

When does Lawrie Reillys book come out BH?

[Jonnyboy]

Working my way through Untamed by Alan Hirsch and just finished Crave by Erwin McManus.

Also like Peter Robinson for crime and some Robin Jenkins - The Cone Gatherers, Matthew and Sheila.

When does Lawrie Reillys book come out BH?

Am attending the official launch on 14 October but I reckon it might be available (perhaps on Amazon) before that :thumbsup:

[GhostofBolivar]

Yup - Ambrose is excellent. Beevor's book on D-Day is very good, too.

Not come across Nesbo, but I'll look out for him.

Not everyone's cup of tea, but possibly the best book I've come across on the Final Solution is Daniel Mendelsohn's "The Lost", about his quest to discover the truth about what happened to his family in the Holocaust. Hard read, heartbreaking, but very rewarding.

And Owen Beattie and John Geiger - "Frozen in Time", about the fate of the Franklin Expedition of the 1840's in the Canadian Arctic.

Disagree about Ambrose. He has a lot of value as an oral historian of individuals experiences, but he made a career out of playing to the myth of the greatest generation and lionising the American fighting man. Beevor and Max Hastings have written far superior books about the Normandy campaign than Ambrose.

[GhostofBolivar]

Lots of great 20th-century novels, but those two ain't on my list either.

How's about Mailer's "The Naked and the Dead" or Joseph Conrad?

Just been listening to the new Tory Education minister - wants to get teenagers reading Dryden and Pope (Alexander Pope, that is, not PapaNazi). That'll be right.

Mailer's best book is The Executioner's Song - though that isn't a novel.

I'd say Catch-22 is the greatest novel of the 20th century myself.

As for the education secretary, perhaps it'd be better to encourage kids to read things they might actually enjoy. Making children sit down and read stagnant crap like Sunset Song because a group of 50 year-olds consider it to be 'great' just discourages pupils from enjoying books and thinking about them.

I read Catch-22, Trainspotting and LA Confidential for the first time when I was 16 and I liked them far more than the rubbish the curriculum makes you study. I never got the encouragement to do that from my school.

Harry Potter isn't my thing, but it does more to get kids into books than any teacher I had.

[barcahibs]

I've got FAR too many books to be honest. Just about every wall in my house has a bookcase on it and I've got boxes and boxes of them under the bed, in the cupboards and in the folks garage. I just can't throw a book out. I went through my entire collection a couple of weeks ago and managed to find four that I was willing to give to the local charity shop - and two of them were only because they were doublers :greengrin

A friend of mine has recently been doing that thing where you release an old, loved book into the wild by leaving it in a public place with a message on the inner cover asking whoever finds it to read it and then leave it somewhere else. I'm very tempted to start following her around nicking them. They'll only get blown up in a controlled explosion these days anyway :greengrin

I tend to read non-fiction history and popular science and fiction sci-fi, Terry Pratchett, Jasper Fforde and the odd technothriller.

I'm a bit scattered with my reading I tend to have several books on the go at once, at the mo I've got 'Churchill's Wizards' by Nicholas Rankin and 'Sharpe's Fortress' in the livingroom, 'The Sea Kingdoms' by Alistair Moffat in my bedroom and 'Without Warning' by John Birmingham at my girlfriends flat.

Enjoying them all to be honest though I think 'Churchill's Wizards' is a bit disappointing, concentrates far too much on the general history of the wars and is a bit thin when dealing with its supposed subject matter of the British deception operations.

'The Sea Kingdoms' a history of the Celtic peoples of Britain is probably my favourite of the ones I'm reading just now and Alistair Moffat right up there with my current favourite authors. Check out his 'Arthur and the Lost Kingdoms' and 'Before Scotland' if you like your history really old and with a Scottish flavour (and possibly a tad speculative :greengrin)

In a particularly sad fashion I'm also reading 'Mansfield Park' with my girlfriend, we're spending a lot of time apart just now so one of the things we're doing is trying to keep in touch by reading the same book :jamboak: I must admit I cannae really stick the 'classics', we've already done 'the woman in white', 'the moonstone' and 'heart of darkness' and I can't say say I enjoyed any of them. 'Kidnapped' or 'Gulliver's Travels' next so we'll see how they get on.

I've got a huge pile of books to read next but 'Millenium' by Tom Holland, 'Rebels and Redcoats' by Hugh Bicheno, 'Peacemakers' by Margaret Macmillan, 'Lustrum' by Robert Harris, 'Bad Science' by Ben Goldacre and 'Shades of Grey' by Jasper Fforde are the ones I'm really looking forward to. I'll probably pick one at random out of that. Oh, or 'Flashman' by George MacDonald Fraser, or 'the collected stories of Vernor Vinge' or 'Omega' by Jack McDevitt, or 'Excession' by Iain M Banks... arrghh too much choice!
I also want to re-read the 'Nights Dawn' trilogy By Peter F Hamilton, I've just got the paperbacks to replace the huge hardbacks and that justifies going through them again! Great books if you're into that kind of thing but at well over 3000 pages in total a bit time consuming.


I love Brookmyre's books, and I've been reading the Rebus ones recently too.

Out of interest, does anyone use an electronic book reader, or are we all good old fashioned proper book people?

Just curious, because I think I'll look for it as a feature of my next mobile phone but although on the face of it there shouldn't be much of a difference to having an actual book, you know it's not going to be the same...

Started reading the Rebus books earlier this year and just finished 'Exit Music'. I was surprised to find I really enjoyed them, I'm not really into crime novels usually. Very upset that they changed the format of the book for exit music so it doesn't go with the others on the shelf! :greengrin

I'm reading 'around the world in 80 days' on my phone just now. Only really reading it on the bus, in waiting rooms etc so its taking forever. At the moment I'm still undecided about book readers. Its very clever and handy to always have a pile of books with me but it just doesn't feel right. I like the look, feel and even smell :greengrin of a real book too much to give them up I think. Plus the screen is just too small. I'm tempted by a Kindle but they'd really have to make it waterproof first :greengrin


Disagree about Ambrose. He has a lot of value as an oral historian of individuals experiences, but he made a career out of playing to the myth of the greatest generation and lionising the American fighting man. Beevor and Max Hastings have written far superior books about the Normandy campaign than Ambrose.

Agree with this. 'Pegasus Bridge' was OK but I found the rest of his stuff I've tried to read hard going, maybe because I'm not American of course. IMO it just can't compare to the likes of Nemesis, Berlin, Barbarossa etc for ww2 histories. On the other hand there is a definite place for oral historians, its just not really my thing.

Oh I almost forgot! I've also got the 'Only an Excuse, diary of the season 1999/2000' in the car for when I'm stuck in car parks, early for appointments etc etc :greengrin picked it up in a second hand bookstore and loving it :greengrin

[Lucius Apuleius]

I love Brookmyre's books, and I've been reading the Rebus ones recently too.

Out of interest, does anyone use an electronic book reader, or are we all good old fashioned proper book people?

Just curious, because I think I'll look for it as a feature of my next mobile phone but although on the face of it there shouldn't be much of a difference to having an actual book, you know it's not going to be the same...

eBook for me all the way. However real books when it comes to Hibs obviously.:greengrin


Am attending the official launch on 14 October but I reckon it might be available (perhaps on Amazon) before that :thumbsup:

Is he doing a signing Jonny? If so I guess the missus is going to be standing in a queue.:greengrin

[Pretty Boy]

For anyone who is at all interested in military or American history i can't recommend James McPhersons 'Battle Cry of Freedom' highly enough.

A one volume summary of the causes, course and aftermath of the American Civil War. Absolutely fascinating reading and the narrative rolls along at such a pace that it never gets tedious or boring.

Probably not everyones cup of tea but a brilliant book.

[Twa Cairpets]

I've got FAR too many books to be honest. Just about every wall in my house has a bookcase on it and I've got boxes and boxes of them under the bed, in the cupboards and in the folks garage. I just can't throw a book out. I went through my entire collection a couple of weeks ago and managed to find four that I was willing to give to the local charity shop - and two of them were only because they were doublers :greengrin

A friend of mine has recently been doing that thing where you release an old, loved book into the wild by leaving it in a public place with a message on the inner cover asking whoever finds it to read it and then leave it somewhere else. I'm very tempted to start following her around nicking them. They'll only get blown up in a controlled explosion these days anyway :greengrin

I tend to read non-fiction history and popular science and fiction sci-fi, Terry Pratchett, Jasper Fforde and the odd technothriller.

I'm a bit scattered with my reading I tend to have several books on the go at once, at the mo I've got 'Churchill's Wizards' by Nicholas Rankin and 'Sharpe's Fortress' in the livingroom, 'The Sea Kingdoms' by Alistair Moffat in my bedroom and 'Without Warning' by John Birmingham at my girlfriends flat.

Enjoying them all to be honest though I think 'Churchill's Wizards' is a bit disappointing, concentrates far too much on the general history of the wars and is a bit thin when dealing with its supposed subject matter of the British deception operations.

'The Sea Kingdoms' a history of the Celtic peoples of Britain is probably my favourite of the ones I'm reading just now and Alistair Moffat right up there with my current favourite authors. Check out his 'Arthur and the Lost Kingdoms' and 'Before Scotland' if you like your history really old and with a Scottish flavour (and possibly a tad speculative :greengrin)

In a particularly sad fashion I'm also reading 'Mansfield Park' with my girlfriend, we're spending a lot of time apart just now so one of the things we're doing is trying to keep in touch by reading the same book :jamboak: I must admit I cannae really stick the 'classics', we've already done 'the woman in white', 'the moonstone' and 'heart of darkness' and I can't say say I enjoyed any of them. 'Kidnapped' or 'Gulliver's Travels' next so we'll see how they get on.

I've got a huge pile of books to read next but 'Millenium' by Tom Holland, 'Rebels and Redcoats' by Hugh Bicheno, 'Peacemakers' by Margaret Macmillan, 'Lustrum' by Robert Harris, 'Bad Science' by Ben Goldacre and 'Shades of Grey' by Jasper Fforde are the ones I'm really looking forward to. I'll probably pick one at random out of that. Oh, or 'Flashman' by George MacDonald Fraser, or 'the collected stories of Vernor Vinge' or 'Omega' by Jack McDevitt, or 'Excession' by Iain M Banks... arrghh too much choice!
I also want to re-read the 'Nights Dawn' trilogy By Peter F Hamilton, I've just got the paperbacks to replace the huge hardbacks and that justifies going through them again! Great books if you're into that kind of thing but at well over 3000 pages in total a bit time consuming.



Started reading the Rebus books earlier this year and just finished 'Exit Music'. I was surprised to find I really enjoyed them, I'm not really into crime novels usually. Very upset that they changed the format of the book for exit music so it doesn't go with the others on the shelf! :greengrin

I'm reading 'around the world in 80 days' on my phone just now. Only really reading it on the bus, in waiting rooms etc so its taking forever. At the moment I'm still undecided about book readers. Its very clever and handy to always have a pile of books with me but it just doesn't feel right. I like the look, feel and even smell :greengrin of a real book too much to give them up I think. Plus the screen is just too small. I'm tempted by a Kindle but they'd really have to make it waterproof first :greengrin



Agree with this. 'Pegasus Bridge' was OK but I found the rest of his stuff I've tried to read hard going, maybe because I'm not American of course. IMO it just can't compare to the likes of Nemesis, Berlin, Barbarossa etc for ww2 histories. On the other hand there is a definite place for oral historians, its just not really my thing.

Oh I almost forgot! I've also got the 'Only an Excuse, diary of the season 1999/2000' in the car for when I'm stuck in car parks, early for appointments etc etc :greengrin picked it up in a second hand bookstore and loving it :greengrin

Great post Barca. I did a similar "clear out" and think I got four as well. Just cant do it.

I like your standby list - of the ones you have, Bad Science is fantastic, and the Flashman series is my all time favourite, most re-read fiction. totally brilliant.

I've recently read two books similar to Flashman in back-story, but without the same levels of being a cad. Coward on the Beach and Coward at the Bridge, set in Normandy and Arnhem respectively, written by James Delingpole. Well worth a look.

[Hibs Class]

'Lustrum' by Robert Harris,

Possibly stating the obvious but have you already read Imperium? I bought Lustrum then realised it was the second in a trilogy so managed to get Imperium and read them in the right order.

[IndieHibby]

Excellent book. 'Blood Meridian' by him is also excellent. I'm currently reading Sebastian Faulks' 'a Week in December', which is (to use that awful phrase):greengrin 'unputdownable'.

:agree: Just started it myself, haven't read any SF before, but really like it so far. I rarely have the mental energy at the end of a work day to start reading, but this one seems to make it easy....

[Bookkeeper]

Am attending the official launch on 14 October but I reckon it might be available (perhaps on Amazon) before that :thumbsup:

Thanks Jonnyboy, should be a good read. He was my dad's favourite along with Gordon Smith.

[Betty Boop]

I have just started 'The Invention of the Jewish People' by Shlomo Sand.

[Jonnyboy]

Disagree about Ambrose. He has a lot of value as an oral historian of individuals experiences, but he made a career out of playing to the myth of the greatest generation and lionising the American fighting man. Beevor and Max Hastings have written far superior books about the Normandy campaign than Ambrose.

It's interesting you say that because my overall view of Ambrose's book was that every GI was a hero whilst every Tommy stopped for regular tea breaks!

[The_Todd]

I've read a fair amount of Brookmyre, love his work especially the Parlabane series. Another author I've recently discovered is Colin Bateman (he writes as simply "Bateman") - his books about a bookshop owner with no name are darkly hysterical.

Recently I've discovered Stephen King as well. Ok, I'd seen his movies but never read his books. Totally absorbed by Duma Key and Under The Dome - the latter being a huge cast of characters and you just get sucked in. Didn't care for the ending so much, but that may just be because I didn't want it to end.

As well as modern day writers, I tend to read things like 1984 every so often. I love that book, a real warning by a writer who was definitely ahead of his time.

[Houchy]

Picked up "Angels and Demons" last night by Dan Brown and couldn't put it down.

It's got short chapters so it makes you want to just read to the next one which turns into the next one and so on. I've read 200 pages so far which is unheard of for me to do. FHM's normally the most i'll read.

[barcahibs]

Great post Barca. I did a similar "clear out" and think I got four as well. Just cant do it.

I like your standby list - of the ones you have, Bad Science is fantastic, and the Flashman series is my all time favourite, most re-read fiction. totally brilliant.

I've recently read two books similar to Flashman in back-story, but without the same levels of being a cad. Coward on the Beach and Coward at the Bridge, set in Normandy and Arnhem respectively, written by James Delingpole. Well worth a look.

I've already had a quick flick through 'Bad Science' on the day that I got it and it looks really good, think I'll take your recommendation and bump it to the top of the list. Coincidentally I'm having a friendly argument with a buddy who's interested in homeopathy, I suspect it'll give me some more ammunition :wink:
Will look out for the Dellingpole books once I read 'Flashman' - though if I like that I'll have to go through the whole series of them first :greengrin


Possibly stating the obvious but have you already read Imperium? I bought Lustrum then realised it was the second in a trilogy so managed to get Imperium and read them in the right order.

Not stating the obvious at all, I didn't think of that myself til you said it! Which is a bit daft of me since I've read 'Imperium'. I'll probably give it a re-read before going on to 'Lustrum' now you've said that. I don't have to read 'Pompeii' again as well do I?
Re-read 'Fatherland' and 'Archangel' not long ago, 'Fatherland' is still a great read but thought 'Archangel' suffered a bit second time around, I kept having to force myself to finish it rather than start something new.

Talking about re-reading, how common is that amongst the people on here? Most of my books have been read and re-read several times, some of my paperbacks, especially the Terry Pratchett ones, have had to be replaced as they've been read so often they're falling apart! Most people I know don't re-read books at all however, my mum in particular thinks its a crazy thing to do. :dunno: She just wants rid of the books in her garage IMO :greengrin

[Twa Cairpets]

I've already had a quick flick through 'Bad Science' on the day that I got it and it looks really good, think I'll take your recommendation and bump it to the top of the list. Coincidentally I'm having a friendly argument with a buddy who's interested in homeopathy, I suspect it'll give me some more ammunition :wink:
Will look out for the Dellingpole books once I read 'Flashman' - though if I like that I'll have to go through the whole series of them first :greengrin

Not stating the obvious at all, I didn't think of that myself til you said it! Which is a bit daft of me since I've read 'Imperium'. I'll probably give it a re-read before going on to 'Lustrum' now you've said that. I don't have to
read 'Pompeii' again as well do I?
Re-read 'Fatherland' and 'Archangel' not long ago, 'Fatherland' is still a great read but thought 'Archangel' suffered a bit second time around, I kept having to force myself to finish it rather than start something new.
Yeh, know exactly what you mean. Archanagel felt like it was being written with a view to it being made into a film, whereas Fatherland was a "proper" novel somehow.


Talking about re-reading, how common is that amongst the people on here? Most of my books have been read and re-read several times, some of my paperbacks, especially the Terry Pratchett ones, have had to be replaced as they've been read so often they're falling apart! Most people I know don't re-read books at all however, my mum in particular thinks its a crazy thing to do. :dunno: She just wants rid of the books in her garage IMO :greengrin
The Flashman series, the first three Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy books, Brookmyre, Bill Bryson and Tony Hawks (esp. Round Ireland with a Fridge) get an airing every year or two. Just well written entertaining books that stay fresh.

[barcahibs]

Yeh, know exactly what you mean. Archanagel felt like it was being written with a view to it being made into a film, whereas Fatherland was a "proper" novel somehow.


The Flashman series, the first three Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy books, Brookmyre, Bill Bryson and Tony Hawks (esp. Round Ireland with a Fridge) get an airing every year or two. Just well written entertaining books that stay fresh.

That could very well be whats wrong with Archangel, I found the same problem with Michael Chrichton, for me everything he wrote after 'Jurassic Park' read like a movie script. Chrichton's 'Next' is one that I've started a long time ago and to be honest I doubt I'll ever finish. I was given 'Pirate Latitudes' at Christmas and I keep putting it off, I feel I have to read it as it was a gift but I can't work up the enthusiasm.

Could never get in to the Hitchikers books myself - which is strange as they should be right up my street. Will give them another go sometime too.

[hibsbollah]

:agree: Just started it myself, haven't read any SF before, but really like it so far. I rarely have the mental energy at the end of a work day to start reading, but this one seems to make it easy....

Its brilliant isnt it? So many recognisable characters in it.
Faulks' classic is 'Birdsong', the second of his 'France' trilogy, about the Somme. Possibly my desert island book.

[Hibs Class]

I've already had a quick flick through 'Bad Science' on the day that I got it and it looks really good, think I'll take your recommendation and bump it to the top of the list. Coincidentally I'm having a friendly argument with a buddy who's interested in homeopathy, I suspect it'll give me some more ammunition :wink:
Will look out for the Dellingpole books once I read 'Flashman' - though if I like that I'll have to go through the whole series of them first :greengrin



Not stating the obvious at all, I didn't think of that myself til you said it! Which is a bit daft of me since I've read 'Imperium'. I'll probably give it a re-read before going on to 'Lustrum' now you've said that. I don't have to read 'Pompeii' again as well do I?
Re-read 'Fatherland' and 'Archangel' not long ago, 'Fatherland' is still a great read but thought 'Archangel' suffered a bit second time around, I kept having to force myself to finish it rather than start something new.

Talking about re-reading, how common is that amongst the people on here? Most of my books have been read and re-read several times, some of my paperbacks, especially the Terry Pratchett ones, have had to be replaced as they've been read so often they're falling apart! Most people I know don't re-read books at all however, my mum in particular thinks its a crazy thing to do. :dunno: She just wants rid of the books in her garage IMO :greengrin


Pompeii wasn't part of the trilogy - the third book after Imperium and Lustrum isn't due out until some time next year.

[PeeJay]

Enjoyed Charlie Connelly's "Attention All Shipping" - one for Radio 4 shipping forecast enthusiasts, I guess.
Can also heartily recommend "Three Cups of Tea" by Greg Mortensen & David Oliver Relin -humanitarian work in Pakistan & Afghanistan by "Westerners" - better than bombing them back into the Stone Age by far - great tale!
Mark Twain's "The Innocents Abroad" - OK it's an oldie but a goldie!
Graham Greene's "Brighton Rock" - great read, but I found it to be a very unsettling novel.

"The Quiet Man" - Pat Stanton - one of my favourites :greengrin!

[heretoday]

Its brilliant isnt it? So many recognisable characters in it.
Faulks' classic is 'Birdsong', the second of his 'France' trilogy, about the Somme. Possibly my desert island book.

Birdsong is a great book - his best by far. It's got the whole gamut of emotions in there.

Can I also recommend Regeneration by Pat Barker - also set during WW1 in a rehab hospital (Craiglockhart in Edinburgh). We see the damage of the trench war far away from the actual action. It's based on a true story.

[Expecting Rain]

Istanbul-Orhan Pamuk, anything by Cormac McCarthy and last but not least Germinal by Zola is brilliant and probably my favourite.

[hibsbollah]

Istanbul-Orhan Pamuk, anything by Cormac McCarthy and last but not least Germinal by Zola is brilliant and probably my favourite.

Orhan Pamuk did one called 'Snow' which I read last year and enjoyed. I love Germinal as well:agree:

[LiverpoolHibs]

Talking about re-reading, how common is that amongst the people on here? Most of my books have been read and re-read several times, some of my paperbacks, especially the Terry Pratchett ones, have had to be replaced as they've been read so often they're falling apart! Most people I know don't re-read books at all however, my mum in particular thinks its a crazy thing to do. :dunno: She just wants rid of the books in her garage IMO :greengrin

Depends what it is; it's fairly easy to work out whether something will require re-reading to fully get a grip on it or otherwise and there are a considerable amount of novels that require more than one reading rather than it being optional, I think.

You could read Ulysses or Finnegans Wake every year for the rest of your life and I don't think you'd exhaust them. I've read Pale Fire by Nabokov four times and As I Lay Dying by Faulkner three (as a result of university) and I still don't think I fully understand them.

[--------]

Disagree about Ambrose. He has a lot of value as an oral historian of individuals experiences, but he made a career out of playing to the myth of the greatest generation and lionising the American fighting man. Beevor and Max Hastings have written far superior books about the Normandy campaign than Ambrose.


I enjoyed Ambrose, but I agree that Beevor and Hastings are much superior.

And I'd put forward Marcel Proust - "A La Recherche du Temps Perdu" - as a viable candidate for "Greatest Novel of the 20th Century".


(NOT that I've read it all the way through. :devil: )

[Hibrandenburg]

Spend my working life reading stuff like this Heavy Jobbies (http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bundesrecht/betrvg/gesamt.pdf) so only really read for light entertainment in my free time. Just about through reading all Brookmeyer's books.

[barcahibs]

Depends what it is; it's fairly easy to work out whether something will require re-reading to fully get a grip on it or otherwise and there are a considerable amount of novels that require more than one reading rather than it being optional, I think.

You could read Ulysses or Finnegans Wake every year for the rest of your life and I don't think you'd exhaust them. I've read Pale Fire by Nabokov four times and As I Lay Dying by Faulkner three (as a result of university) and I still don't think I fully understand them.

I think we might have different objectives when we're reading - I read novels so that I can stop thinking! :greengrin I forced my way through 'Ulysses' once and I swore I'll never pick it up again :greengrin

Novels are about escapism for me, but having said that I think you can read something like Jasper Ffordes 'Thursday Next' books, or anything by Terry Pratchett, several times and discover new jokes and references every time. In fact I know that I don't get a lot of the references in the Jasper Fforde books because I don't know my classics well enough, I've got that enjoyment still to discover!

I know people who completely disagree with that - once you know how the plot works out whats the point of reading a book again? I would argue that there's always fun to be found on the journey through a good book, the destination is just a bonus, but I wondered if that was unusual. Guess its not!

If we're talking non-fiction then I totally agree, I need to read through something by Hawking(s) or Dawkins for example more than once in order to make sure I understand it, though I'm sure others will be able to get them first time! I'll read history books several times as well to make sure I'm picking everything up and to try to understand any arguments - and just because I enjoy them of course!

[Hibbyradge]

Humour.

I've read and enjoyed pretty much all of Tom Sharpe's work.

Some of the passages in The Throwback nearly killed me.

Bill Bryson's "The Thunderbolt Kid" had much the same effect.

Laugh and laugh and laugh out loud books.

[Expecting Rain]

Orhan Pamuk did one called 'Snow' which I read last year and enjoyed. I love Germinal as well:agree:

Pamuk`s "My Name Is Red" is arguably his best though "Snow" pushes it close.

[One Day Soon]

Thanks to all posters so far for some great recommendations. If anyone can also recommend a good definitive narrative/history of the American Civil War I would be grateful.

As usual I am at odds with, for example, Liverpool Hibs in his views on The Lord of the Rings. However a look at the top fifty (or whatever it was) books demonstrates the downside of democracy. If you give people the vote they will express their views and those are, generally speaking, disappointing. So there's why, ludicrously, you don't have Ulysses included.

For me The Catcher in the Rye is right up there - if you want to encourage a young person to ask why and to question authority give them this book to read in their teens.

I would also add pretty much all of Orwell, 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' by Marquez (a book so good that I started reading it and kept going without stopping to do anything else, literally, until it was finished), all of Beevor's stuff, Koestler and 'One Hundred Years of Socialism' by Donald Sassoon is very good if you like that sort of thing. If you like pithy, well observed crime stuff then Georges Simenon and the Maigret detective stories are a lark.

[LiverpoolHibs]

I think we might have different objectives when we're reading - I read novels so that I can stop thinking! :greengrin I forced my way through 'Ulysses' once and I swore I'll never pick it up again :greengrin

Novels are about escapism for me, but having said that I think you can read something like Jasper Ffordes 'Thursday Next' books, or anything by Terry Pratchett, several times and discover new jokes and references every time. In fact I know that I don't get a lot of the references in the Jasper Fforde books because I don't know my classics well enough, I've got that enjoyment still to discover!

I know people who completely disagree with that - once you know how the plot works out whats the point of reading a book again? I would argue that there's always fun to be found on the journey through a good book, the destination is just a bonus, but I wondered if that was unusual. Guess its not!

If we're talking non-fiction then I totally agree, I need to read through something by Hawking(s) or Dawkins for example more than once in order to make sure I understand it, though I'm sure others will be able to get them first time! I'll read history books several times as well to make sure I'm picking everything up and to try to understand any arguments - and just because I enjoy them of course!

It's really, really sad that so many people are put-off reading Joyce as they find him to be intimidating, or whatever. Especially as it's the complete opposite of what he intended - he'd be thoroughly disgusted that his work has become pretty much purely an academic pursuit.


Thanks to all posters so far for some great recommendations. If anyone can also recommend a good definitive narrative/history of the American Civil War I would be grateful.

As usual I am at odds with, for example, Liverpool Hibs in his views on The Lord of the Rings. However a look at the top fifty (or whatever it was) books demonstrates the downside of democracy. If you give people the vote they will express their views and those are, generally speaking, disappointing. So there's why, ludicrously, you don't have Ulysses included.

For me The Catcher in the Rye is right up there - if you want to encourage a young person to ask why and to question authority give them this book to read in their teens.

I would also add pretty much all of Orwell, 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' by Marquez (a book so good that I started reading it and kept going without stopping to do anything else, literally, until it was finished), all of Beevor's stuff, Koestler and 'One Hundred Years of Socialism' by Donald Sassoon is very good if you like that sort of thing. If you like pithy, well observed crime stuff then Georges Simenon and the Maigret detective stories are a lark.

We may be at odds on Tolkein but I'm afraid to tell you I'm also a massive Simenon/Maigret fan. I've got pretty much all the Maigret novels in the beautiful old green and white Penguin Crime series.

Stunning so they are.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/13482952@N00/389080428

[Twa Cairpets]

Thanks to all posters so far for some great recommendations. If anyone can also recommend a good definitive narrative/history of the American Civil War I would be grateful.


Try Battle Cry of Freedom, James M McPherson. I read it a few years ago, and recall it being pretty comprehensive but equally pretty readable.

[One Day Soon]

Try Battle Cry of Freedom, James M McPherson. I read it a few years ago, and recall it being pretty comprehensive but equally pretty readable.


Ta very much. You will be happy with NHS Highland or Grampian's new position on homeopathy I take it?

[barcahibs]

Humour.

I've read and enjoyed pretty much all of Tom Sharpe's work.

Some of the passages in The Throwback nearly killed me.

Bill Bryson's "The Thunderbolt Kid" had much the same effect.

Laugh and laugh and laugh out loud books.

I used to really like Bill Bryson but I gave up on him after 'A Walk in the Woods'

SPOILER ALERT!! don't read any further if you don't want to know what happens!

I did enjoy the start of the book, laugh out loud funny in many places and some fantastic observations as usual, but I felt oddly cheated somehow that he gave up on the walk. I ended up really disappointed in it.

/SPOILER

I got a bit fed up of 'Notes on a Small Island' by the end as well, I thought it got pretty repetitive. I'd read it straight after 'Notes from a Big Country' and it maybe would have been better to have put some time between them. Plus he wasn't very complimentary about Edinburgh! :greengrin



It's really, really sad that so many people are put-off reading Joyce as they find him to be intimidating, or whatever. Especially as it's the complete opposite of what he intended - he'd be thoroughly disgusted that his work has become pretty much purely an academic pursuit.


I wouldn't say I was intimidated by 'Ulysses' - in fact I'd barely heard of it when I read it. I didn't do any sort of literary degree and it wasn't a book that had turned up at school. I went into it with an open mind, it was just one of many books that my girlfriend owned that I picked up off her shelf because I'd never read it before.

To be honest I just found it really boring. I couldn't get into at all and I gave up trying after a while. I didn't find the settings or any of the various stories/themes at all interesting - though by the end I suppose I wasn't really giving it a fair chance I just wanted it finished :greengrin

Just not my idea of fun - I accept that its me thats in the wrong, I've no doubt its a great literary work.

I did enjoy 'The Odyssey' mind you - just to prove I'm not a total moron :greengrin - but I probably like it more for the glimpse into the ancient mind than anything else.

She's got 'Finnegans Wake' as well - she did do an English degree, she's got all sorts of weird stuff - so I'll no doubt read it at some point but its not at the top of my list! Maybe I should bump it up a bit, I really should be broadening my horizons!

[Twa Cairpets]

I used to really like Bill Bryson but I gave up on him after 'A Walk in the Woods'
I did enjoy the start of the book, laugh out loud funny in many places and some fantastic observations as usual, but I felt oddly cheated somehow that he gave up on the walk. I ended up really disappointed in it.
I got a bit fed up of 'Notes on a Small Island' by the end as well, I thought it got pretty repetitive. I'd read it straight after 'Notes from a Big Country' and it maybe would have been better to have put some time between them. Plus he wasn't very complimentary about Edinburgh! :greengrin
Ive thought theyve all been really good reads, although Shakespeare wasnt as good as the rest.

By the way, if you didnt like THHTTG, try Douglas Adams' two other novels: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul (possibly the best book title ever, although The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse by Robert Rankin runs it close and is almost as weirdly funny)


Ta very much. You will be happy with NHS Highland or Grampian's new position on homeopathy I take it?

Very much so on the latter, but this is a nice thread so im not going to allow myself to hijack it...

On the American Civil War side, the Starbuck Chronicles by Bernard Cornwell are good romps - essentially "Sharpe" in America, and The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara (which was turned into the epic film "Gettysburg") is worth a read too.

[Steve-O]

At the risk of sounding like an uneducated fool (I'm not, honest!), I much prefer to read fact-based books. Very rare that I read fiction, last fictional novel I read was The Road, which was pretty good to be fair.

Personal favourites in fact based books

Helter Skelter - great book if you like true crime stuff, about Charles Manson.

I Am Ozzy - Ozzy Osbourne - seriously, this book is great, utterly hilarious in parts.

If you are into wrestling at all (or were) there are some genuinely good autobiographies out there of which I'd recommend Mick Foley's (Have a Nice Day), Ric Flair's, Chris Jericho's, Eric Bischoff's, and Bret Hart's. Some really good and funny stories amongst all of them, but if you've never ever watched wrestling then it's hard to relate.

I am looking to read something decent soon though so will keep an eye out for recommendations on here.

[Jonnyboy]

At the risk of sounding like an uneducated fool (I'm not, honest!), I much prefer to read fact-based books. Very rare that I read fiction, last fictional novel I read was The Road, which was pretty good to be fair.

Personal favourites in fact based books

Helter Skelter - great book if you like true crime stuff, about Charles Manson.

I Am Ozzy - Ozzy Osbourne - seriously, this book is great, utterly hilarious in parts.

If you are into wrestling at all (or were) there are some genuinely good autobiographies out there of which I'd recommend Mick Foley's (Have a Nice Day), Ric Flair's, Chris Jericho's, Eric Bischoff's, and Bret Hart's. Some really good and funny stories amongst all of them, but if you've never ever watched wrestling then it's hard to relate.

I am looking to read something decent soon though so will keep an eye out for recommendations on here.

Have read that Steve and as you say it's first class :agree:

[Lucius Apuleius]

OK put in an effort over the weekend and finished TGWTDT. Got better to be honest. Are the rest of the books the same characters?

Started on one called The Shack by William P Young now. Seems easy reading and that is kinda what I need at the minute. Then it is back on to Waterstones to download something. Probably Ken Follet's new one as I see it there now.

Wife has been informed of the dates for Lawrie's signings so will have to get her butt through and get a signed copy for me :greengrin

[haagsehibby]

OK, can't do all that multi quoting thing, so a few things I've read and found to be good.

If this is a man - Primo Levi
In cold blood - Truman Capote
The Dark Tower series - Stephen King
Pretty much all the Iain Banks sci fi stuff (except Feersum Endjinn which was a bit weird)
Wild sheep chase - Haruki Murakami
Harlot's Ghost - Moran Mailer

[barcahibs]

At the risk of sounding like an uneducated fool (I'm not, honest!), I much prefer to read fact-based books. Very rare that I read fiction, last fictional novel I read was The Road, which was pretty good to be fair.

Personal favourites in fact based books

Helter Skelter - great book if you like true crime stuff, about Charles Manson.

I Am Ozzy - Ozzy Osbourne - seriously, this book is great, utterly hilarious in parts.

If you are into wrestling at all (or were) there are some genuinely good autobiographies out there of which I'd recommend Mick Foley's (Have a Nice Day), Ric Flair's, Chris Jericho's, Eric Bischoff's, and Bret Hart's. Some really good and funny stories amongst all of them, but if you've never ever watched wrestling then it's hard to relate.

I am looking to read something decent soon though so will keep an eye out for recommendations on here.

Nowt wrong with fact based books, I know a few people that consider reading fiction to be a bit of a waste of time.

I must admit I tend not to read biographies or true life stories though, I prefer the escapism of fiction.

I do have all of John Simpsons books about his life as journalist though and really enjoyed them. I'd particularly recommend "The Wars Against Sadaam" for a (IMO) pretty unbiased view on the the various Iraq wars back to the Iran-Iraq conflict. Its basically a series of short anecdotes and memories of his time covering the conflicts and the personalities involved. Can be very funny at times as well as tragic in places.

Sir David Attenboroughs "Life Stories" is also a brilliant read. Its based around his BBC Radio 4 series which were short 10 minute programmes about various natural themes and why they're important to him. I read it cover to cover in one sitting (its not a long book!), brilliant stuff IMO from a fabulous broadcaster.

One of my most read books is "A Rumour of War" by Phillip Caputo which is centred round his experiences in the Vietnam war where he was involved in an incident where some prisoners were shot illegally. Its a fascinating insight into that war and how ordinary people can be so easily pulled into extraordinary events.

I'm sure I've mentioned this next one on here before, but Simon Kuper's "Football Against the Enemy" is another great read, about the various football rivalries in world football at both club and international level.
It was written not long after the Berlin Wall came down I think (I don't have my copy to hand) and has some great sections on Eastern European football, including a piece on Lithuania where a he meets a rich club owner who likes to pick the team... (its not Vlad unfortunately but may show where he gets his ideas!)

I've not long finished A.J Jacob's "The Year of Living Biblically" which details the authors attempts to live a year following EVERY rule in the bible to the letter. Turns out its not easy, theres some very weird stuff in there! Its good, very funny in places, but I felt the author was trying too hard not to offend anyone. He clearly goes into the whole thing with preconceptions, he's Jewish (and very sympathetic to his religion) and has family who are ultra-orthodox and he's awfully worried about what they think of him and what they'll say about his book IMO. I'd rather it was written from a truly neutral viewpoint but thats probably my own prejudices coming out.

I have a few biographies to read, Tom Bowers 'Gordon Brown' and Johnson Beharry VC's 'Barefoot Soldier' are probably due to be next to be read. I'd be interested to hear if they're worth looking at - might give me an excuse to skip them! :greengrin

Read the first 'Flashman' book over the weekend and really enjoyed it, I think my library has a fair collection of the others so I'll check out some more. Unfortunately I think its a book I've read before - I've got memory problems regarding anything that happened a few years ago and this happens to me a lot :greengrin. Its very frustrating, I kept 'guessing' what was going to happen next!

Picked up (read stole from a friend :greengrin) "The Scientist, the madman, the thief and their lightbulb" by Keith Tutt which details various groups and individuals search for sources of "free energy" (ie perpetual motion machines). I presume they're all fraudulent but you never know... :greengrin

Also bought "The Hebridean Traveller" by Dennis Rixson and "In the shadow of Cairngorm" by the Rev Dr W. Forsyth to add to my pile!


Ive thought theyve all been really good reads, although Shakespeare wasnt as good as the rest.

By the way, if you didnt like THHTTG, try Douglas Adams' two other novels: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul (possibly the best book title ever, although The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse by Robert Rankin runs it close and is almost as weirdly funny)

I've been meaning to try Robert Rankin for some time, I'll check and see if the library has that one available too. I'm trying to stop buying books!

[--------]

Try Battle Cry of Freedom, James M McPherson. I read it a few years ago, and recall it being pretty comprehensive but equally pretty readable.


Thanks for the heads-up, TC.

I've been looking for a general history of the American Civil War for ages. Got it from Amazon four days ago. Excellent. Finally beginning to get my head around just how complex the circumstances were that led up to the Secession.

As you say, it's not hard going and McPherson manages to plot a fairly clear course through the maze. I'm really enjoying it. Ta, mate. :thumbsup:

[--------]

Try Battle Cry of Freedom, James M McPherson. I read it a few years ago, and recall it being pretty comprehensive but equally pretty readable.


Thanks for the heads-up, TC.

I've been looking for a general history of the American Civil War for ages. Got this from Amazon four days ago. Excellent. Finally beginning to get my head around just how complex the circumstances were that led up to the Secession.

As you say, it's not hard going and McPherson manages to plot a fairly clear course through the maze. I'm really enjoying it. Ta, mate. :thumbsup:

Could I recommend tto you "Bloody Dawn" by Thomas P Slaughter? An account of the Christiana Riot of 1851 and the aftermath in the North?

Stephen W Sears is really good on the military side of the war - I have his "Chancellorsville", "To the Gates of Richmond", and "Gettysburg" - all very good; he gets very close to the ordinary soldier on both sides.

[hibsbollah]

Thanks for the heads-up, TC.

I've been looking for a general history of the American Civil War for ages. Got this from Amazon four days ago. Excellent. Finally beginning to get my head around just how complex the circumstances were that led up to the Secession.

As you say, it's not hard going and McPherson manages to plot a fairly clear course through the maze. I'm really enjoying it. Ta, mate. :thumbsup:

Could I recommend tto you "Bloody Dawn" by Thomas P Slaughter? An account of the Christiana Riot of 1851 and the aftermath in the North?

Have you read Cold Mountain by Charles Frasier? definitely a novel, not an bona fide historical account, but its impeccably researched and very revealing about what the Civil War was like from a soldier's perspective. Was made into a not-nearly-as-good film by Anthony Mingella.

[haagsehibby]

Thanks for the heads-up, TC.

I've been looking for a general history of the American Civil War for ages. Got it from Amazon four days ago. Excellent. Finally beginning to get my head around just how complex the circumstances were that led up to the Secession.

As you say, it's not hard going and McPherson manages to plot a fairly clear course through the maze. I'm really enjoying it. Ta, mate. :thumbsup:

Or as my friend from the South calls it "The war of Northern Aggression" !!

[Pretty Boy]

Thanks for the heads-up, TC.

I've been looking for a general history of the American Civil War for ages. Got it from Amazon four days ago. Excellent. Finally beginning to get my head around just how complex the circumstances were that led up to the Secession.

As you say, it's not hard going and McPherson manages to plot a fairly clear course through the maze. I'm really enjoying it. Ta, mate. :thumbsup:

If you are interested in the American Civil War there is pretty much an endless supply of books, both fiction and non fiction covering it. I wrote my Uni dissertation on it so read about it for months on end. 'Battle Cry of Freedom' is by far and away the best single volume account available. An absolutely fantastic read.

A few other recommendations if you wish to further your reading would be:

Uncle Tom's cabin- Harriet Beecher Stowe
With Malice Towards None: the Life of Abraham Lincoln- Stephen Oates
Abraham Lincoln- James M McPherson (again)
Robert E. Lee: Icon for a Nation- Brian Holden Reid
The American Civil War- John Keegan (military based and not so good if you want root causes or a social perspective)
The Rise of American civilisation- Charles Beard (the chapters on the Civil War are fantastic, Beard was one of the first revisionary or progressive historians who moved away from slavery as the key cause of the war, i don't agree with him but his writings on the economic and industrial conflicts are brilliant).

[Twa Cairpets]

Thanks for the heads-up, TC.

I've been looking for a general history of the American Civil War for ages. Got this from Amazon four days ago. Excellent. Finally beginning to get my head around just how complex the circumstances were that led up to the Secession.

As you say, it's not hard going and McPherson manages to plot a fairly clear course through the maze. I'm really enjoying it. Ta, mate. :thumbsup:

Could I recommend tto you "Bloody Dawn" by Thomas P Slaughter? An account of the Christiana Riot of 1851 and the aftermath in the North?

Stephen W Sears is really good on the military side of the war - I have his "Chancellorsville", "To the Gates of Richmond", and "Gettysburg" - all very good; he gets very close to the ordinary soldier on both sides.

Cheers Doddie - I think I'll get Bloody Dawn, looks interesting and its got good reviews (as well as your recommendation of course :greengrin). I like books that use a relatively small, forgotten or obscure event that paint a picture of a bigger background.

Favourites I've read of this type of book are:

Sir Gregor McGregor and The Land that Never Was: David Sinclair
Batavias Graveyard: Mike Dash
Signal Catastrophe - The retreat from Kabul 1842: Patrick Macrory
The Perfect Heresy - Life and death of the Cathars: Stepehen O'Shea
Nathaniels Nutmeg - Giles Milton (in fact all Giles Miltons histroy books)

Anyone had any good reads about the Zulu Wars/Isandlwhana/Rorkes Drift? There seem to be lots but I hate buying a duff book...



Uncle Tom's cabin- Harriet Beecher Stowe
With Malice Towards None: the Life of Abraham Lincoln- Stephen Oates
Abraham Lincoln- James M McPherson (again)
Robert E. Lee: Icon for a Nation- Brian Holden Reid
The American Civil War- John Keegan (military based and not so good if you want root causes or a social perspective)The Rise of American civilisation- Charles Beard (the chapters on the Civil War are fantastic, Beard was one of the first revisionary or progressive historians who moved away from slavery as the key cause of the war, i don't agree with him but his writings on the economic and industrial conflicts are brilliant).

Is this the best one that looks at the military side do you think?

[Pretty Boy]

Cheers Doddie - I think I'll get Bloody Dawn, looks interesting and its got good reviews (as well as your recommendation of course :greengrin). I like books that use a relatively small, forgotten or obscure event that paint a picture of a bigger background.

Favourites I've read of this type of book are:

Sir Gregor McGregor and The Land that Never Was: David Sinclair
Batavias Graveyard: Mike Dash
Signal Catastrophe - The retreat from Kabul 1842: Patrick Macrory
The Perfect Heresy - Life and death of the Cathars: Stepehen O'Shea
Nathaniels Nutmeg - Giles Milton (in fact all Giles Miltons histroy books)

Anyone had any good reads about the Zulu Wars/Isandlwhana/Rorkes Drift? There seem to be lots but I hate buying a duff book...




Is this the best one that looks at the military side do you think?

It's not bad, the best of a bad bunch really. There are a few factual errors that were a bit annoying and it's nowhere near as well written in a narrative sense as something like 'The battle Cry of Freedom'.

I actually think the military history of the American Civil War is severely neglected in book form. There are countless journal articles that discuss it but when it comes to books historians tend to focus on the personalities or the causes and aftermath of the war. Considering it it generally considered one of, if not, the first 'modern war' the lack of a top notch narrative on the military history is quite worrying.

[--------]

If you are interested in the American Civil War there is pretty much an endless supply of books, both fiction and non fiction covering it. I wrote my Uni dissertation on it so read about it for months on end. 'Battle Cry of Freedom' is by far and away the best single volume account available. An absolutely fantastic read.

A few other recommendations if you wish to further your reading would be:

Uncle Tom's cabin- Harriet Beecher Stowe
With Malice Towards None: the Life of Abraham Lincoln- Stephen Oates
Abraham Lincoln- James M McPherson (again)
Robert E. Lee: Icon for a Nation- Brian Holden Reid
The American Civil War- John Keegan (military based and not so good if you want root causes or a social perspective)
The Rise of American civilisation- Charles Beard (the chapters on the Civil War are fantastic, Beard was one of the first revisionary or progressive historians who moved away from slavery as the key cause of the war, i don't agree with him but his writings on the economic and industrial conflicts are brilliant).

Thanks, PB. Oates, McPherson, Reid and Beard look particularly enticing. SWMBO will not be amused, I fear, as I foresee another costly expedition to the upper reaches of the Amazon looming...



Cheers Doddie - I think I'll get Bloody Dawn, looks interesting and its got good reviews (as well as your recommendation of course :greengrin). I like books that use a relatively small, forgotten or obscure event that paint a picture of a bigger background.

Favourites I've read of this type of book are:

Sir Gregor McGregor and The Land that Never Was: David Sinclair
Batavias Graveyard: Mike Dash
Signal Catastrophe - The retreat from Kabul 1842: Patrick Macrory
The Perfect Heresy - Life and death of the Cathars: Stepehen O'Shea
Nathaniels Nutmeg - Giles Milton (in fact all Giles Miltons histroy books)

Anyone had any good reads about the Zulu Wars/Isandlwhana/Rorkes Drift? There seem to be lots but I hate buying a duff book...

Is this the best one that looks at the military side do you think?

I have O'Shea and Dash - really enjoyed both. I think I'll go for McCrory - I've never quite believed everything I read about the First Afghan War in the Flashman books. :wink:

Have you come across Charles Allen's "Soldier Sahibs" - about John Lawrence's agents on the NW Frontier in the 19th century, John Nicholson in particular?

I also enjoyed Burke Davis's "Sherman's March" and Hicks and Kropf's "Raising the Hunley". Doctorow's "The March" is fiction, but serious historical fiction, and a very good read. And I really can't recommend Sears highly enough.

No idea about the Zulu Wars, I'm afraid.

[Twa Cairpets]

I have O'Shea and Dash - really enjoyed both. I think I'll go for McCrory - I've never quite believed everything I read about the First Afghan War in the Flashman books. :wink:

Have you come across Charles Allen's "Soldier Sahibs" - about John Lawrence's agents on the NW Frontier in the 19th century, John Nicholson in particular?

I also enjoyed Burke Davis's "Sherman's March" and Hicks and Kropf's "Raising the Hunley". Doctorow's "The March" is fiction, but serious historical fiction, and a very good read. And I really can't recommend Sears highly enough.


I've had Soldier Sahibs on my shelf for years, and realised after your post I've never read it - thaks for the reminder. Flashman wasnt too far off the mark - I got right into the history of that period after reading it. Peter Hopkirks "The Great Game - On Secret Service in High Asia" is a rollocking good book covering the background and machinations of it all, and reads like a real life boys own adventure.

[Jonnyboy]

OK put in an effort over the weekend and finished TGWTDT. Got better to be honest. Are the rest of the books the same characters?

Started on one called The Shack by William P Young now. Seems easy reading and that is kinda what I need at the minute. Then it is back on to Waterstones to download something. Probably Ken Follet's new one as I see it there now.

Wife has been informed of the dates for Lawrie's signings so will have to get her butt through and get a signed copy for me :greengrin

They are Gordon, aye. The storyline gets better and better and it's a great sadness that Larsson is now deceased as the characters could easily have been used again and again.

[Jonnyboy]

Bright Shiny Morning by James Frey. Anyone read this? I loved it and I'd be keen to know what others thought of it

[sKipper]

Pompeii wasn't part of the trilogy - the third book after Imperium and Lustrum isn't due out until some time next year.

Was going to say.

I've read Imperium and Pompeii and didn't notice a link :greengrin

Just read an awesome trilogy of novels on Troy by David Gemmell. Possibly my favourite historical novels ever and I 've read hundreds.

[heretoday]

I have just finished Post Captain by Patrick O'Brian - Napoleonic era sea stuff and very involving. I will try to limit my reading of this author as I don't want to get sick of him. Two novels a year will do.

Now reading "A Short History Of Tractors In Ukrainian" by Marina Lewycka - unlikely title but immediately gripping material for anyone in their fifties or sixties who has recently had to cope with dying oldies/lawyers/wills/greedy siblings etc.

[Lucius Apuleius]

OK put in an effort over the weekend and finished TGWTDT. Got better to be honest. Are the rest of the books the same characters?

Started on one called The Shack by William P Young now. Seems easy reading and that is kinda what I need at the minute. Then it is back on to Waterstones to download something. Probably Ken Follet's new one as I see it there now.

Wife has been informed of the dates for Lawrie's signings so will have to get her butt through and get a signed copy for me :greengrin

This book has taken a pretty strange turn. Doddie might actually be interested in it. Basically a guy gets a note in his mail box telling him to go to the Shack to meet God. He goes and he meets the Holy Trinity. Lot heavier than I imagined and actually comes over now as the author's take on religion. Now, obviously GT is not a theologian by any manner of means, but would be extremely interested in the take of a minister on it. As some of you know I have been battling for a while with something and it is trying to bring religion back into my life and this book intrigues me with the take it has on things.

By the way, wife duly drove all the way to Embra yesterday to get me a signed copy of LR's book. Said all three were gentlemen as always. Whose wife was first in the queue though?

[--------]

I've had Soldier Sahibs on my shelf for years, and realised after your post I've never read it - thaks for the reminder. Flashman wasnt too far off the mark - I got right into the history of that period after reading it. Peter Hopkirks "The Great Game - On Secret Service in High Asia" is a rollocking good book covering the background and machinations of it all, and reads like a real life boys own adventure.

Mrs Doddie's gonnae ban me from this forum if this goes on, TC. That's another one on my wanted list now... :greengrin


OK put in an effort over the weekend and finished TGWTDT. Got better to be honest. Are the rest of the books the same characters?

Started on one called The Shack by William P Young now. Seems easy reading and that is kinda what I need at the minute. Then it is back on to Waterstones to download something. Probably Ken Follet's new one as I see it there now.

Wife has been informed of the dates for Lawrie's signings so will have to get her butt through and get a signed copy for me :greengrin

The Millennium Trilogy gets better as you go on, GT. It's not just about crime - it's about a whole lot of other deeper issues regarding Swedish society and the way society in general treats people. I normally buy paperback, but I have these in hardback and I've already read them twice. For me they're up there with Le Carre and David Simon and James Ellroy.

I haven't read "The Shack", but I will. (Dear God, my wife's gonnae have a fit when the Amex account comes in next month!) A couple of things I've read recently and enjoyed are Donald Miller's "Blue Like Jazz" and "Searching For God Knows What".

Glad you got LR's book. :thumbsup:

[--------]

Bernd Greiner: "War Without Fronts: the USA In Vietnam".

A REAL eye-opener.

[Leicester Fan]

The Millennium Trilogy gets better as you go on,

I disagree, the 1st book was great,2nd not as great and the 3rd a worse again.

Still better than a lot of books today though.

The 3 Swedish films follow a similar path.

[GhostofBolivar]

Mrs Doddie's gonnae ban me from this forum if this goes on, TC. That's another one on my wanted list now... :greengrin

Mrs Doddie gave up on controlling our book-buying urges some time ago.


Bernd Greiner: "War Without Fronts: the USA In Vietnam".

A REAL eye-opener.

You're welcome :greengrin

[DaveF]

I hardly ever read, which is a great shame.

I have a book up in the attic on Stalin (http://www.simonsebagmontefiore.com/stalincourtredtsar.aspx) which I could do with digging out and starting on again.

[stantonhibby]

Yup - Ambrose is excellent. Beevor's book on D-Day is very good, too.

Not come across Nesbo, but I'll look out for him.

Not everyone's cup of tea, but possibly the best book I've come across on the Final Solution is Daniel Mendelsohn's "The Lost", about his quest to discover the truth about what happened to his family in the Holocaust. Hard read, heartbreaking, but very rewarding.

And Owen Beattie and John Geiger - "Frozen in Time", about the fate of the Franklin Expedition of the 1840's in the Canadian Arctic.


Dan Simmons novel ' The Terror ' is based on that - well worth a read

On a similar vein Robert Ryan's novel Death On the Ice about Scott of the Antarctic is good

I enjoy WW2 fiction - John Lawton , Jeff Shaara , David Downing , etc

Phillip Kerr's Bernie ****her series is excellent

CJ Sansom's Shardlake series

Have read all the Rebus books, Robert Harris , Wallander

moved house recently and gave 7 bags of books away to charity !

[Bookkeeper]

This book has taken a pretty strange turn. Doddie might actually be interested in it. Basically a guy gets a note in his mail box telling him to go to the Shack to meet God. He goes and he meets the Holy Trinity. Lot heavier than I imagined and actually comes over now as the author's take on religion. Now, obviously GT is not a theologian by any manner of means, but would be extremely interested in the take of a minister on it. As some of you know I have been battling for a while with something and it is trying to bring religion back into my life and this book intrigues me with the take it has on things.

By the way, wife duly drove all the way to Embra yesterday to get me a signed copy of LR's book. Said all three were gentlemen as always. Whose wife was first in the queue though?


Read the Shack a couple of times, thought Young does a good job of stripping away 'religion' from God and painting a picture of an extremely accessible Holy Trinity. Thought the grieving father was a good metaphor for God too.

Hopefully going to get Lawrie Reilly's book this week :greengrin

[--------]

Talking about re-reading, how common is that amongst the people on here? Most of my books have been read and re-read several times, some of my paperbacks, especially the Terry Pratchett ones, have had to be replaced as they've been read so often they're falling apart! Most people I know don't re-read books at all however, my mum in particular thinks its a crazy thing to do. :dunno: She just wants rid of the books in her garage IMO :greengrin


Depends what it is; it's fairly easy to work out whether something will require re-reading to fully get a grip on it or otherwise and there are a considerable amount of novels that require more than one reading rather than it being optional, I think.

You could read Ulysses or Finnegans Wake every year for the rest of your life and I don't think you'd exhaust them. I've read Pale Fire by Nabokov four times and As I Lay Dying by Faulkner three (as a result of university) and I still don't think I fully understand them.


:agree:

I've been through "Anna Karenina" three times and hope to read it at least twice agian before I die, and "Moby Dick" four times - again, I hope to go back to it soon.

Some books will only bear one reading but others are worth going back to again and again.

"As I Lay Dying" is a fascinating book, but I would never claim to 'understand' it.

[discman]

Bernd Greiner: "War Without Fronts: the USA In Vietnam".

A REAL eye-opener.


For vietnam: Michael Herr: Dispatches

For IRAQ: Generation Kill and the book that Green Zone was based on:Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Rajiv Chandrasekaran.

And to wax lyrically on the future of 6-4-0 get Inverting the Pyramid:Jonathan Wilson.

Just a thought,dont you use the library?

enjoy:cool2:

[Twa Cairpets]

For vietnam: Michael Herr: Dispatches

For IRAQ: Generation Kill and the book that Green Zone was based on:Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Rajiv Chandrasekaran.

And to wax lyrically on the future of 6-4-0 get Inverting the Pyramid:Jonathan Wilson.

Just a thought,dont you use the library?
enjoy:cool2:

Cant speak for Doddie obviously, but for me it somehow isnt the same reading a library book. I dont like books with the spine broken (if you looked on my bookshelves you would think that almost nothing has been read such is my OCD in this area).

Library books just feel, well, used

[--------]

Cant speak for Doddie obviously, but for me it somehow isnt the same reading a library book. I dont like books with the spine broken (if you looked on my bookshelves you would think that almost nothing has been read such is my OCD in this area).

Library books just feel, well, used

LIBRARY???????????

Golly gosh, no.

I want the book, MY BOOK, IN ME HOT SWEATY PAW, MY BOOK, MINE, ALL MINE, ON MY BOOKSHELVES TO KEEP AND TREASURE AND READ OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN....

It's not the same borrowing from the library.... :devil:

[discman]

LIBRARY???????????

Golly gosh, no.

I want the book, MY BOOK, IN ME HOT SWEATY PAW, MY BOOK, MINE, ALL MINE, ON MY BOOKSHELVES TO KEEP AND TREASURE AND READ OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN....

It's not the same borrowing from the library.... :devil:


okay........... Just thought i'd ask! : )


check out the list interesting, and agree gwtdt best trilogy in a long time,liked it for similar reasons for loving james ellory lots of layers.

were you asking about books related to the zulu campaigns? I f not apologies but

zulu hart: saul david gives you a taster happy pawing! /; )

[Twa Cairpets]

okay........... Just thought i'd ask! : )


check out the list interesting, and agree gwtdt best trilogy in a long time,liked it for similar reasons for loving james ellory lots of layers.

were you asking about books related to the zulu campaigns? I f not apologies but

zulu hart: saul david gives you a taster happy pawing! /; )

Cheers - it was me. I read Saul Davids history of the Indian Mutiny which was pretty good, but this is a historical novel isnt it? I'll give it a go - thanks for the tip!

[--------]

okay........... Just thought i'd ask! : )


check out the list interesting, and agree gwtdt best trilogy in a long time,liked it for similar reasons for loving james ellory lots of layers.

were you asking about books related to the zulu campaigns? I f not apologies but

zulu hart: saul david gives you a taster happy pawing! /; )


Sorry mate - dunno what came over me there. :greengrin

Like TC said, library books somehow feel used, and like him I try to keep my books as close to mint condition as possible.

Besides, in Lanarkshire, unless you're interested in the likes of "101 Ways of Entertaining Yourself With A Flute" by Mason O'Boyne or "The Loves of MY Life: Getting Intimate With Airport Runways" by JP2 there's not much point in going to the library.... :devil:

[Kevvy1875]

Seriously but,...

Mibbes we could discuss stuff.

:dunno:


Yeah I do. We all should.

Although tbh these days I find myself reading less and spending more time on the internet.

[Lucius Apuleius]

A wee story. When I was at school I was near enough a straight A student as they say. However it was only in subjects that I could get interested in. History and geography bored the t1ts off me so I never did well in them. My history and geography teacher were actually fighting over which one I should drop in 4th year. Anyway, long story cut short, the geography teacher was actually the main reason I went to sea. He was 60+ years old and had done nothing except go to school since he was 5 and he tried to tell me I knew nothing about the world. I reckon nearly 39 years later of having travelled the world I know a bit more than him. However, where I am coming from is sitting in your cabin at nights and you have done what boys have to do, I would always change magazine and read something semi intelligent. I think it was probably the Roots books or the series of books that came out about the Slave trade that really opened my eyes. Likewise Nigel Tranter for Scots history (I appreciate not always 100% factual)If they had given us these books to read at school instead of dross filled statistics, I for one would have been a hell of a lot more interested. Geography the same, tell me about the cultures, not how much blooming rainfall they get and I would have been interested and my whole life would probably have taken a different road. Not complaining as life has treated me well for the most part but I still think there is something wrong with the education system.

[--------]

A wee story. When I was at school I was near enough a straight A student as they say. However it was only in subjects that I could get interested in. History and geography bored the t1ts off me so I never did well in them. My history and geography teacher were actually fighting over which one I should drop in 4th year. Anyway, long story cut short, the geography teacher was actually the main reason I went to sea. He was 60+ years old and had done nothing except go to school since he was 5 and he tried to tell me I knew nothing about the world. I reckon nearly 39 years later of having travelled the world I know a bit more than him. However, where I am coming from is sitting in your cabin at nights and you have done what boys have to do, I would always change magazine and read something semi intelligent. I think it was probably the Roots books or the series of books that came out about the Slave trade that really opened my eyes. Likewise Nigel Tranter for Scots history (I appreciate not always 100% factual)If they had given us these books to read at school instead of dross filled statistics, I for one would have been a hell of a lot more interested. Geography the same, tell me about the cultures, not how much blooming rainfall they get and I would have been interested and my whole life would probably have taken a different road. Not complaining as life has treated me well for the most part but I still think there is something wrong with the education system.


Gordon, I used to be an English teacher. I lasted 4 years. I had been 7 years in primary school, 6 years in secondary, 4 years at University, and a year at Moron House training as a teacher, and one day I sat down, counted it all up, and decided to get the hell out of it. Twenty-two years in school was longer than I'd have served if I'd murdered someone.

I nearly became your geography teacher. Maybe I was him.

Reading good books informs my experience, and experience informs my reading, but I still regret not having jumped on a plane or a boat and headed out into the wide world when I had the chance.

You ain't wrong about the education system, mate.

[barcahibs]

Peter Hopkirks "The Great Game - On Secret Service in High Asia" is a rollocking good book covering the background and machinations of it all, and reads like a real life boys own adventure.

Add me to the list of people picking that one up - I wonder how far we could push it up Amazon's sales ranking!


Dan Simmons novel ' The Terror ' is based on that - well worth a read


Haven't read that one but Dan Simmon's 'Olympus' is a good read - though the second part is a bit weak. Educational too as it got me to read the Illiad and the Odyssey after it. I have his 'Hyperion' too but I haven't got round to starting it. I'll keep an eye out for 'The Terror'.



:agree:

I've been through "Anna Karenina" three times and hope to read it at least twice agian before I die, and "Moby Dick" four times - again, I hope to go back to it soon.

Some books will only bear one reading but others are worth going back to again and again.

"As I Lay Dying" is a fascinating book, but I would never claim to 'understand' it.

Moby Dick is on our list of classics to be read, I've started it twice but never been able to get past the first hundred or so pages. I KNOW its a good book I just guess I've never been in the right frame of mind. Will have to give it another go.


Cant speak for Doddie obviously, but for me it somehow isnt the same reading a library book. I dont like books with the spine broken (if you looked on my bookshelves you would think that almost nothing has been read such is my OCD in this area).

Library books just feel, well, used


Sorry mate - dunno what came over me there. :greengrin

Like TC said, library books somehow feel used, and like him I try to keep my books as close to mint condition as possible.

Besides, in Lanarkshire, unless you're interested in the likes of "101 Ways of Entertaining Yourself With A Flute" by Mason O'Boyne or "The Loves of MY Life: Getting Intimate With Airport Runways" by JP2 there's not much point in going to the library.... :devil:

I agree with both of you, theres something just fundamentally wrong with reading a library book. Having said that though sometimes needs must, I can read a couple of books a week and apart from the cost of keeping up with it I just don't have anything like the physical space!
There's just nowhere left to keep books here, as I type this my feet are resting on top of two boxes under my desk filled with books, theres another three boxes next to them. There's books under the coffee table, boxes of them lining the floor of every cupboard and there's no longer room for the cat under the bed. There's literally no place else to put them.

I stopped buying hardbacks three years ago as I just couldn't justify the space they take up. There is nothing worse than having to wait a year for a book you really want to come out in paperback. :bitchy:
I've been fondling the hardback copy of 'The Lore of Scotland: A guide to Scottish legends' in my local Waterstones since 2009, they're starting to give me odd looks and it doesn't come out in paperback til May next year.

I disagree about keeping books pristine too, theres nothing better than cracking the spine on a new book :greengrin

My local library isn't too bad. In fact if you're into large print romance novels or family sagas then I'm sure its fantastic. The staff are excellent though, I started going to it last year and I'd only been in twice before they were recognising me and recommending books to me. They're very short on history and science books but they have a decent range of sci-fi stuff, especially the really trashy ones that I secretly love. I do wish they'd stop mixing it in with the fantasy books though. Elves and dragons just aren't my thing.

What are folks views on lending books to others? I have to say I'm really selfish with my books, I hate lending them out. I leant a copy of 'Arc Light' by Eric L Harry to a mate a wee while ago and we were chatting one night when he mentioned he'd started it in the bath the night before and was really enjoying it.
"he'd started it in the bath." I hope he didn't see the glint of madness and hatred in my eyes at those words.
I can read books in the bath because I'm careful, other people...


Cheers - it was me. I read Saul Davids history of the Indian Mutiny which was pretty good, but this is a historical novel isnt it? I'll give it a go - thanks for the tip!

I have his 'Victoria's Wars: the rise of empire' and its an excellent read. It doesn't go as far as the Zulu wars though, it only covers 1837-61. This gets you the Opium wars, the first Afghan war, the Sikh wars, the Crimea, the invasion of Burma and the Indian Mutiny. We do seem to have been a warlike people :greengrin. I bought it along with a pile of others last year as I, ahem, had to for supplementary reading around an OU course. :greengrin

[discman]

Add me to the list of people picking that one up - I wonder how far we could push it up Amazon's sales ranking!



Haven't read that one but Dan Simmon's 'Olympus' is a good read - though the second part is a bit weak. Educational too as it got me to read the Illiad and the Odyssey after it. I have his 'Hyperion' too but I haven't got round to starting it. I'll keep an eye out for 'The Terror'.




Moby Dick is on our list of classics to be read, I've started it twice but never been able to get past the first hundred or so pages. I KNOW its a good book I just guess I've never been in the right frame of mind. Will have to give it another go.





I agree with both of you, theres something just fundamentally wrong with reading a library book. Having said that though sometimes needs must, I can read a couple of books a week and apart from the cost of keeping up with it I just don't have anything like the physical space!
There's just nowhere left to keep books here, as I type this my feet are resting on top of two boxes under my desk filled with books, theres another three boxes next to them. There's books under the coffee table, boxes of them lining the floor of every cupboard and there's no longer room for the cat under the bed. There's literally no place else to put them.

I stopped buying hardbacks three years ago as I just couldn't justify the space they take up. There is nothing worse than having to wait a year for a book you really want to come out in paperback. :bitchy:
I've been fondling the hardback copy of 'The Lore of Scotland: A guide to Scottish legends' in my local Waterstones since 2009, they're starting to give me odd looks and it doesn't come out in paperback til May next year.

I disagree about keeping books pristine too, theres nothing better than cracking the spine on a new book :greengrin

My local library isn't too bad. In fact if you're into large print romance novels or family sagas then I'm sure its fantastic. The staff are excellent though, I started going to it last year and I'd only been in twice before they were recognising me and recommending books to me. They're very short on history and science books but they have a decent range of sci-fi stuff, especially the really trashy ones that I secretly love. I do wish they'd stop mixing it in with the fantasy books though. Elves and dragons just aren't my thing.

What are folks views on lending books to others? I have to say I'm really selfish with my books, I hate lending them out. I leant a copy of 'Arc Light' by Eric L Harry to a mate a wee while ago and we were chatting one night when he mentioned he'd started it in the bath the night before and was really enjoying it.
"he'd started it in the bath." I hope he didn't see the glint of madness and hatred in my eyes at those words.
I can read books in the bath because I'm careful, other people...



I have his 'Victoria's Wars: the rise of empire' and its an excellent read. It doesn't go as far as the Zulu wars though, it only covers 1837-61. This gets you the Opium wars, the first Afghan war, the Sikh wars, the Crimea, the invasion of Burma and the Indian Mutiny. We do seem to have been a warlike people :greengrin. I bought it along with a pile of others last year as I, ahem, had to for supplementary reading around an OU course. :greengrin



Jeezo touched on a nerve here,first Dodie now you, I love libraries and am not ashamed to admit it :greengrin They can order anything for you,you can get cd's its fab,
anyone know who came up with idea.....genius


With regard to keeping them for ever I,m sure its indicative of a need or desire to be admired/valued by the SIZE of our book collection, decided one day to give all mine away and havent suffered too much since,true there have been some lapses,especially when Borders was open,but generally my library substitute has kept me relatively stable :cool2:

[barcahibs]

Jeezo touched on a nerve here,first Dodie now you, I love libraries and am not ashamed to admit it :greengrin They can order anything for you,you can get cd's its fab,
anyone know who came up with idea.....genius


With regard to keeping them for ever I,m sure its indicative of a need or desire to be admired/valued by the SIZE of our book collection, decided one day to give all mine away and havent suffered too much since,true there have been some lapses,especially when Borders was open,but generally my library substitute has kept me relatively stable :cool2:

There could be something in that I suppose, I certainly am proud of my books, but I have to say that in general I think you're more likely to get the opposite reaction. Far from being admired/valued I tend to find there's a bit of a stigma attached to having a large book collection. Its not something I'd boast about to anyone I know, if anything I'm embarassed when people first come to my house and see them.

I just find something intrinsically worthwhile about books. To me they're beautiful objects in their own right and I want to own them, not borrow them. They're also very personal things to me they bring me up when I'm feeling down, they take me to places I'd never otherwise see, they bring me closer to loved ones and help me to shut out the problems of the real world when I need them to, they remind me of how little I know and inspire me to learn all I can.

They carry memories, of the places I bought them and the people who gave them to me. Of the people around me when I read them and discussed them.
When my grandad passed away I made sure that I got his book collection, I keep them on my shelf and think of him everytime I see them or read them. His books carry his imprint on every page, the underlined passages, the folds in the corners (a terrible habit - that I share :greengrin), the smell of his pipe embedded in the paper. To be honest he wasn't a big reader but to me every book becomes a little part of the person who reads it. I'm not religious but I treasure his copy of the bible because I know it was something deeply important to him.
Alongside my photographs, my books are probably my most precious possession. Sad I know! They're a bugger to dust though :greengrin

At the same time I recognise that most people don't feel like that! Libraries are a wonderful thing and to me their general availability is maybe one of the best things about us as a society. I use libraries a lot but it doesn't stop me from wanting to own rather than rent :greengrin

Borders closing down was the biggest retail loss of the recession for me, I was gutted! But Iit didn't stop me from grabbing a hell of a lot of books in their closing down sale :greengrin

[discman]

There could be something in that I suppose, I certainly am proud of my books, but I have to say that in general I think you're more likely to get the opposite reaction. Far from being admired/valued I tend to find there's a bit of a stigma attached to having a large book collection. Its not something I'd boast about to anyone I know, if anything I'm embarassed when people first come to my house and see them.

I just find something intrinsically worthwhile about books. To me they're beautiful objects in their own right and I want to own them, not borrow them. They're also very personal things to me they bring me up when I'm feeling down, they take me to places I'd never otherwise see, they bring me closer to loved ones and help me to shut out the problems of the real world when I need them to, they remind me of how little I know and inspire me to learn all I can.

They carry memories, of the places I bought them and the people who gave them to me. Of the people around me when I read them and discussed them.
When my grandad passed away I made sure that I got his book collection, I keep them on my shelf and think of him everytime I see them or read them. His books carry his imprint on every page, the underlined passages, the folds in the corners (a terrible habit - that I share :greengrin), the smell of his pipe embedded in the paper. To be honest he wasn't a big reader but to me every book becomes a little part of the person who reads it. I'm not religious but I treasure his copy of the bible because I know it was something deeply important to him.
Alongside my photographs, my books are probably my most precious possession. Sad I know! They're a bugger to dust though :greengrin

At the same time I recognise that most people don't feel like that! Libraries are a wonderful thing and to me their general availability is maybe one of the best things about us as a society. I use libraries a lot but it doesn't stop me from wanting to own rather than rent :greengrin

Borders closing down was the biggest retail loss of the recession for me, I was gutted! But Iit didn't stop me from grabbing a hell of a lot of books in their closing down sale :greengrin



Change your friends:greengrin


Second paragraph encapsulates everything myself and probably all "posters" on here love books, your 3rd para was both personal and moving and immediately made me think of my own grandad, such is the power of the written word,and not atall sad!


Rent? Theyre freeeeeeeeee:greengrin


I actually missed the sale. : )

[Lucius Apuleius]

Hmmm, finished The Shack and my head is messed up. Really thought I had downloaded an easy to read wee book. Wrong. Anyway, on to the next one, Follett or CJ Sansom, not made my mind up yet. Downloaded both of them.

I don't really get this large library thing to be honest. A book is a book is a book and once read that is it, except for what I deem the classics and of course my Hibs books. The brother in law!!!!!! Now there is one seriously messed up bibliophile. Rooms of them and I mean that literally. Last I looked in his living room he had about 20 copies of the one bloody book!!!! See if anyone can guess what it is. Some of them are even in the original language which he cannot understand! Mental man. I once borrowed a paperback novel from him as I had ran out of books and he let me borrow one. Week later he phoned and asked me if I had finished it!! Still love the man to pieces though, great bloke, just weird.:greengrin

[Twa Cairpets]

There could be something in that I suppose, I certainly am proud of my books, but I have to say that in general I think you're more likely to get the opposite reaction. Far from being admired/valued I tend to find there's a bit of a stigma attached to having a large book collection. Its not something I'd boast about to anyone I know, if anything I'm embarassed when people first come to my house and see them.

I just find something intrinsically worthwhile about books. To me they're beautiful objects in their own right and I want to own them, not borrow them. They're also very personal things to me they bring me up when I'm feeling down, they take me to places I'd never otherwise see, they bring me closer to loved ones and help me to shut out the problems of the real world when I need them to, they remind me of how little I know and inspire me to learn all I can.

They carry memories, of the places I bought them and the people who gave them to me. Of the people around me when I read them and discussed them.
When my grandad passed away I made sure that I got his book collection, I keep them on my shelf and think of him everytime I see them or read them. His books carry his imprint on every page, the underlined passages, the folds in the corners (a terrible habit - that I share :greengrin), the smell of his pipe embedded in the paper. To be honest he wasn't a big reader but to me every book becomes a little part of the person who reads it. I'm not religious but I treasure his copy of the bible because I know it was something deeply important to him.
Alongside my photographs, my books are probably my most precious possession. Sad I know! They're a bugger to dust though :greengrin

At the same time I recognise that most people don't feel like that! Libraries are a wonderful thing and to me their general availability is maybe one of the best things about us as a society. I use libraries a lot but it doesn't stop me from wanting to own rather than rent :greengrin


Great post barca.

As I work bases at home, my "office" (essentially the back room with a desk) doubles as my bookstore/library, so my books are rarely seen by anyone other than me. I love having them in there. Coupled with my obsessional devotion to keeping them in mint condition as much as I can, the shelves do tend to look like a bookshop. I have no idea why this should give me make me happy, but it does.

I use libraries for books on CD, which are great for driving. I've been up and down to England and the Highlands a couple of times in the last fortnight, and yesterday just finished listening to Catch 22 again. Excellent stuff - Milo Minderbinder and Colonel Cathcart have to be amongst the most frustratingly brilliant characters ever created.

[--------]

Great post barca.

As I work bases at home, my "office" (essentially the back room with a desk) doubles as my bookstore/library, so my books are rarely seen by anyone other than me. I love having them in there. Coupled with my obsessional devotion to keeping them in mint condition as much as I can, the shelves do tend to look like a bookshop. I have no idea why this should give me make me happy, but it does.

I use libraries for books on CD, which are great for driving. I've been up and down to England and the Highlands a couple of times in the last fortnight, and yesterday just finished listening to Catch 22 again. Excellent stuff - Milo Minderbinder and Colonel Cathcart have to be amongst the most frustratingly brilliant characters ever created.


Same here, TC. Obsessive-compulsive sometimes comes into my mind (about myself, that is), but I reassure myself that it's books we're talking about, not teapots or dolls or stuff like that.

BTW - thanks for the heads-up about "The Battle Cry of Freedom" - half way through it now, and enjoying it hugely. Exactly what I've been looking for for a long time, a connected, readable account of the Civil War, its origins and its consequences. A great stepping-off place for further reading; puts the reading I've already done into context.

(And I got a very nice clean second-hand copy from Amazon for less than £10 - in fact, I don't think the previous owner had ever opened it. :thumbsup: )

[Hibs Class]

Hmmm, finished The Shack and my head is messed up. Really thought I had downloaded an easy to read wee book. Wrong. Anyway, on to the next one, Follett or CJ Sansom, not made my mind up yet. Downloaded both of them.

I don't really get this large library thing to be honest. A book is a book is a book and once read that is it, except for what I deem the classics and of course my Hibs books. The brother in law!!!!!! Now there is one seriously messed up bibliophile. Rooms of them and I mean that literally. Last I looked in his living room he had about 20 copies of the one bloody book!!!! See if anyone can guess what it is. Some of them are even in the original language which he cannot understand! Mental man. I once borrowed a paperback novel from him as I had ran out of books and he let me borrow one. Week later he phoned and asked me if I had finished it!! Still love the man to pieces though, great bloke, just weird.:greengrin

The Bible, the Guinness Book of Records or the Pears Cyclopaedia?

[Lucius Apuleius]

The Bible, the Guinness Book of Records or the Pears Cyclopaedia?

Nah, foreign author, foreign language, non reference, classic. Think 1200s (I think :greengrin)

[--------]

Nah, foreign author, foreign language, non reference, classic. Think 1200s (I think :greengrin)


Dante?

The Decameron? :cool2:

[GhostofBolivar]

Same here, TC. Obsessive-compulsive sometimes comes into my mind (about myself, that is), but I reassure myself that it's books we're talking about, not teapots or dolls or stuff like that.

BTW - thanks for the heads-up about "The Battle Cry of Freedom" - half way through it now, and enjoying it hugely. Exactly what I've been looking for for a long time, a connected, readable account of the Civil War, its origins and its consequences. A great stepping-off place for further reading; puts the reading I've already done into context.

(And I got a very nice clean second-hand copy from Amazon for less than £10 - in fact, I don't think the previous owner had ever opened it.... :thumbsup: )

Why are you not reading Clockers (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Clockers-Richard-Price/dp/0747598207/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1287723367&sr=8-2)? It's a great book. You'll love it.

[Lucius Apuleius]

Dante?

The Decameron? :cool2:

Take a bow sir. Divine Comedy. I guess it keeps him happy. :greengrin

[--------]

Take a bow sir. Divine Comedy. I guess it keeps him happy. :greengrin


I'm assuming it's The Divine Comedy? I read it once (in Cary's English translation) and I'd say there ain't a lot of laughs in it.

Cannae read Italian, but I HAVE read 'Beowulf' in the original Anglo-Saxon, and 'Gawain and the Green Knight' in what must be the most excruciating dialect of Middle English ever.

I need to get a life, Gordon. :rolleyes:


FAO Ghost of Bolivar: Genius I may be, but I still can't read more than one book at a time. I'll get round to "Clockers" as soon as Sherman finishes with Georgia, OK?

[Twiglet]

Hmmm, finished The Shack and my head is messed up. Really thought I had downloaded an easy to read wee book. Wrong. Anyway, on to the next one, Follett or CJ Sansom, not made my mind up yet. Downloaded both of them.

I don't really get this large library thing to be honest. A book is a book is a book and once read that is it, except for what I deem the classics and of course my Hibs books. The brother in law!!!!!! Now there is one seriously messed up bibliophile. Rooms of them and I mean that literally. Last I looked in his living room he had about 20 copies of the one bloody book!!!! See if anyone can guess what it is. Some of them are even in the original language which he cannot understand! Mental man. I once borrowed a paperback novel from him as I had ran out of books and he let me borrow one. Week later he phoned and asked me if I had finished it!! Still love the man to pieces though, great bloke, just weird.:greengrin


Was the Shack any good though? I have at least 2 copies (bad memory and money off book in Wesley Owen don't mix with me) and have never got round to reading it. I'm not a strong reader, but if the book captures I can get through them.

An author I love is Jostein Gaarder. He's a Norwegian author, most famous for Sophies world which is mega hard to read. I've made 3 attempts to read it and only got as far as chapter 10 I think.
My favourite book of his is The Christmas Mystery which is about a wee kid who meets all the characters from the Christmas story (wise men, shepherds, etc). It's an easy read and really gets me in the mood for Christmas.

[Beefster]

Just got a Kindle as an early Christmas present so I'll be using this thread to fill it up with some good reading!

PS Can't recommend the Kindle enough.

[s.a.m]

There could be something in that I suppose, I certainly am proud of my books, but I have to say that in general I think you're more likely to get the opposite reaction. Far from being admired/valued I tend to find there's a bit of a stigma attached to having a large book collection. Its not something I'd boast about to anyone I know, if anything I'm embarassed when people first come to my house and see them.

I just find something intrinsically worthwhile about books. To me they're beautiful objects in their own right and I want to own them, not borrow them. They're also very personal things to me they bring me up when I'm feeling down, they take me to places I'd never otherwise see, they bring me closer to loved ones and help me to shut out the problems of the real world when I need them to, they remind me of how little I know and inspire me to learn all I can.

They carry memories, of the places I bought them and the people who gave them to me. Of the people around me when I read them and discussed them.
When my grandad passed away I made sure that I got his book collection, I keep them on my shelf and think of him everytime I see them or read them. His books carry his imprint on every page, the underlined passages, the folds in the corners (a terrible habit - that I share :greengrin), the smell of his pipe embedded in the paper. To be honest he wasn't a big reader but to me every book becomes a little part of the person who reads it. I'm not religious but I treasure his copy of the bible because I know it was something deeply important to him.
Alongside my photographs, my books are probably my most precious possession. Sad I know! They're a bugger to dust though :greengrin

At the same time I recognise that most people don't feel like that! Libraries are a wonderful thing and to me their general availability is maybe one of the best things about us as a society. I use libraries a lot but it doesn't stop me from wanting to own rather than rent :greengrin

Borders closing down was the biggest retail loss of the recession for me, I was gutted! But Iit didn't stop me from grabbing a hell of a lot of books in their closing down sale :greengrin


I once voiced concerns about my need to keep and cherish my books to someone. He said, "Don't be daft - it represents your personal journey."

If you can get over the the fact that this sounds a bit w***y, I think that this sums it up for me, and kind of covers what you're saying there.

[Lucius Apuleius]

I'm assuming it's The Divine Comedy? I read it once (in Cary's English translation) and I'd say there ain't a lot of laughs in it.

Cannae read Italian, but I HAVE read 'Beowulf' in the original Anglo-Saxon, and 'Gawain and the Green Knight' in what must be the most excruciating dialect of Middle English ever.

I need to get a life, Gordon. :rolleyes:


FAO Ghost of Bolivar: Genius I may be, but I still can't read more than one book at a time. I'll get round to "Clockers" as soon as Sherman finishes with Georgia, OK?

:greengrin At least I have an excuse for the amount of reading I do stuck in this place. Still could not force myself with Dante though.


Was the Shack any good though? I have at least 2 copies (bad memory and money off book in Wesley Owen don't mix with me) and have never got round to reading it. I'm not a strong reader, but if the book captures I can get through them.

An author I love is Jostein Gaarder. He's a Norwegian author, most famous for Sophies world which is mega hard to read. I've made 3 attempts to read it and only got as far as chapter 10 I think.
My favourite book of his is The Christmas Mystery which is about a wee kid who meets all the characters from the Christmas story (wise men, shepherds, etc). It's an easy read and really gets me in the mood for Christmas.

It was OK. As I said, kinda screws the head up. Sophie's World I actually quite enjoyed.

[LiverpoolHibs]

I just finished reading Lanark: A Life in Four Books by Alasdair Gray. It was brilliant! It has been described as Glasgow's Ulysses but I found far more accessible and enjoyable. There is a really cool bit in the epilogue (which is 3 chapters before the end) where the protagonist meets the author and they argue about how the story is going to end!

Lanark is great. Alasdair Gray's appearing at the Edinburgh Radical Book Fair on Sunday if you're interested and weren't aware.

http://www.word-power.co.uk/viewEvent.php?id=2865

[number 27]

A quick word for libraries, I find that not only do they keep costs down but that I also take a wee gamble on books or writers I would not normally spend money on.

Doing this has led to a load of really good stuff (and some rubbish) and if you like a new writer you can always buy their other works.

I dont reckon they will be around for much longer so use your libraries while you can.:wink:

[goosano]

I've just finished Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. It's one of the most powerful books I've ever read-truly sparkling prose. Here's an example

The judge cracked with the back of an axe the shinbone on an antelope and the hot marrow dripped smoking on the stones. They watched him. The subject was war.
The good book says that he that lives by the sword shall perish by the sword, said the black.
The judge smiled, his face shining with grease. What right man would have it any other way? he said.
The good book does indeed count war an evil, said Irving. Yet there’s many a bloody tale of war inside it.
It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way.
He turned to Brown, from whom he’d heard some whispered slur or demurrer. Ah Davy, he said. It’s your own trade we honor here. Why not rather take a small bow. Let each acknowledge each.
My trade?
Certainly.
What is my trade?War. War is your trade. Is it not?
And it ain’t yours?
Mine too. Very much so.
What about all them notebooks and bones and stuff?
All other trades are contained in that of war.
Is that why war endures?
No. It endures because young men love it and old men love it in them. Those that fought, those that did not. . . . War is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one’s will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god.

Great stuff

Also very good was We, The Drowned by Carsten Jensen, a Danish author that I saw at the book festival. A fictional tale set in his own home town, telling the tale of 4 generations of Danish sailors ending at the Second World War. Delightful story telling

[--------]

Or as my friend from the South calls it "The war of Northern Aggression" !!



Hm. Is that before or after he goes out to light crosses on people's front lawns? :cool2:


Maybe HE should get a copy of McPherson too - it's very good and extremely enlightening about all sorts of aspects of the war.

Tell him from me that Bobby Lee was a pillock.

[--------]

:greengrin At least I have an excuse for the amount of reading I do stuck in this place. Still could not force myself with Dante though.




Likesay - he has a strange idea of what passes for comedy. I suppose 'Inferno' was a good way to get back at all the dead folks he didn't like - put 'em up to their necks in human excrement for eternity....

BTW. Have you read Calvin's "Institutes"? Just joking. A sure and certain cure for insomnia old John. :wink:

[haagsehibby]

Hm. Is that before or after he goes out to light crosses on people's front lawns? :cool2:


Maybe HE should get a copy of McPherson too - it's very good and extremely enlightening about all sorts of aspects of the war.

Tell him from me that Bobby Lee was a pillock.

I'll be sure to mention it to him :wink: Actually he's not a bad guy. The book sounds great and I will definitely buy it. I've often wondered if individual states in the US are part of a voluntary union and may secede if they want to (but that's a whole new thread !!). Maybe this book can shed some light.

[jakki]

The first school book that I read and enjoyed was Lord of the Rings. We had to read the 1st chapter for our next English lesson but by then I had read the whole book.I found it exciting and not dull as with the other books on the syllibus. Since then, I have enjoyed reading books,a variaty from the Falkenhurst series to Mary Stewart's ones.
Schools should make their reading lists more interesting.

[Twa Cairpets]

Reading "The Lost City of Z" by David Grann at the moment.

If ever you've fancied going to the Amazonian rain forest, dont read this. It's the (true) story of Percy Fawcett, an explorer from the early 20th century. Apart from the protagonist being suitably barmy and stiff-upper-lip Englishman, the stories of flesh eating killer bees, vampire bats, tiny fish that swim and lodge up yer bits, gnats attracted to sweat that lay eggs under your skin poisonous caterpillars and snakes that can eat a deer whole are enough to give you nightmares.

Great read though.

[hibsbollah]

Been on holiday for two weeks so had plenty of opportunities for reading. Half way through Ron Powers' biography of Mark Twain, brilliantly written.

Ian Rankin's new one-The Complaints-not up to much at all. The plot is just a rehashed Rebus so why change the protagonist?

Just finished 'The Spirit Level', an inspirational idiots guide to equality economics. Highly recommended for the left-of-centre among us:greengrin

I honestly can't recommend Sebastian Foulkes 'A Week in December' enough. The most accurate contemporary novel ive ever read i think. R Tranter and John Veals-havent we all met someone like that?

[One Day Soon]

Been on holiday for two weeks so had plenty of opportunities for reading. Half way through Ron Powers' biography of Mark Twain, brilliantly written.

Ian Rankin's new one-The Complaints-not up to much at all. The plot is just a rehashed Rebus so why change the protagonist?

Just finished 'The Spirit Level', an inspirational idiots guide to equality economics. Highly recommended for the left-of-centre among us:greengrin

I honestly can't recommend Sebastian Foulkes 'A Week in December' enough. The most accurate contemporary novel ive ever read i think. R Tranter and John Veals-havent we all met someone like that?

Was told the same thing about the Rankin book just yesterday by someone else.

I'm reading Primo Levi at the moment - 'If This Is A Man'. An incredible almost matter of fact account of the Nazi dehumanisation and systematic obliteration of the Jews and other persecuted groups. Somehow he also portrays the essential indestructible essence of humanity amid the brutalisation. A great book.

[--------]

I'll be sure to mention it to him :wink: Actually he's not a bad guy. The book sounds great and I will definitely buy it. I've often wondered if individual states in the US are part of a voluntary union and may secede if they want to (but that's a whole new thread !!). Maybe this book can shed some light.


McPherson explains those issues pretty clearly, I'd say. The book is 20 years old or so, and has the usual limitations of a single-volume history of a major period/issue but it's clarified my mind about a number of things, so that I'm now fairly confident about looking for more detailed reading on specific topics.

BTW, Mark Twain's "Life on the Mississippi" is a lovely book - an eye-witness account of the antebellum riverboat society. My favourite of all his books. William Faulkner's another fictional writer well worth exploring for the picture he conveys of the Deep South. "Go Down, Moses" and "The Unvanquished" are good ones to start with, IMO.

[LiverpoolHibs]

I wasn't aware of that he was speaking. I will definitely go along. I read that his exhibition (I think it opened today) is on at the Talbot Rice Gallery. Some of the art appears in Lanark and is depicts various characters and events from the story. I will no doubt catch that at some point too.

Hope you didn't go out of your way to get to that! Very disappointing he pulled out.

[--------]

Been on holiday for two weeks so had plenty of opportunities for reading. Half way through Ron Powers' biography of Mark Twain, brilliantly written.

Ian Rankin's new one-The Complaints-not up to much at all. The plot is just a rehashed Rebus so why change the protagonist?

Just finished 'The Spirit Level', an inspirational idiots guide to equality economics. Highly recommended for the left-of-centre among us:greengrin

I honestly can't recommend Sebastian Foulkes 'A Week in December' enough. The most accurate contemporary novel ive ever read i think. R Tranter and John Veals-havent we all met someone like that?

:agree: Oh yes. Great man, Twain, great bio. :agree:

[hibsbollah]

:agree: Oh yes. Great man, Twain, great bio. :agree:

I'll be looking out more things by Powers. Right up there with Roy Jenkins' 'Churchill' as the best biography ive read.

What struck me about Twain (or Clemens), is that he seems to have witnessed a ridiculous number of defining moments in the 19th Century, first hand. A bit like an earlier-day Forrest Gump.

[--------]

I'll be looking out more things by Powers. Right up there with Roy Jenkins' 'Churchill' as the best biography ive read.

What struck me about Twain (or Clemens), is that he seems to have witnessed a ridiculous number of defining moments in the 19th Century, first hand. A bit like an earlier-day Forrest Gump.

I suppose that a man born when Sam Clemens was born, who died when Sam Clemens died, and who went from the Mississippi valley to California and back to Connecticut when he did who just be there...

He never quite seemed to grow up. :confused:

BTW - if you like biography, try Claire Tomalin's "The Unequalled Self" on Samuel Pepys. Very good.

[Lucius Apuleius]

Well I didn't start either of the two I said I was going to. Found one on my reader that I had downloaded a few months ago and had not started it so went for that instead. The Passage by Justin Cronin. Second book in a row that starts off as something then just totally changes into something else!!! 800 pager so will stick with it. Pretty weird though.

[Marabou Stork]

'Clockers' is a brilliant book. 'Ladies Man' by the same author is well worth a read as well.

[Leicester Fan]

I've read about 100 pages of Michael Conolley's Nine Dragons. Bit slow so far.

[Pretty Boy]

Just started reading 'The Long War- The IRA and Sinn Fein'.

A narattive history of the IRA and Sinn Fein over the last 100 years by Brendan O'Brien. Generally been well received over the years by critics and historians as well as those on both sides of 'the troubles'. Enjoying it thus far.

[bringbackbenny]

Anyone else with a penchant or 20th century communist dictators?

Read Mao The unknown story (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mao-Story-Jung-Chang/dp/0099507374/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1288961047&sr=1-1)earlier in the year and just finished Stalin : Court of the Red Tsar (http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_28?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=stalin+court+of+the+red+tsar&sprefix=stalin+court+of+the+red+tsar). Highly absorbing/grim, the only minor difficulty being it requires a great deal of concentration/thought to focus on the cast of 1000's with very similar chinese/russian surnames

[Expecting Rain]

I've just finished Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. It's one of the most powerful books I've ever read-truly sparkling prose. Here's an example

The judge cracked with the back of an axe the shinbone on an antelope and the hot marrow dripped smoking on the stones. They watched him. The subject was war.
The good book says that he that lives by the sword shall perish by the sword, said the black.
The judge smiled, his face shining with grease. What right man would have it any other way? he said.
The good book does indeed count war an evil, said Irving. Yet there’s many a bloody tale of war inside it.
It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way.
He turned to Brown, from whom he’d heard some whispered slur or demurrer. Ah Davy, he said. It’s your own trade we honor here. Why not rather take a small bow. Let each acknowledge each.
My trade?
Certainly.
What is my trade?War. War is your trade. Is it not?
And it ain’t yours?
Mine too. Very much so.
What about all them notebooks and bones and stuff?
All other trades are contained in that of war.
Is that why war endures?
No. It endures because young men love it and old men love it in them. Those that fought, those that did not. . . . War is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one’s will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god.

Great stuff

Also very good was We, The Drowned by Carsten Jensen, a Danish author that I saw at the book festival. A fictional tale set in his own home town, telling the tale of 4 generations of Danish sailors ending at the Second World War. Delightful story telling

Genius.

[matty_f]

Anyone read Crime, by Irvine Welsh?

I borrowed it from the library last week, but haven't really got started on it yet. I'm not sure about the subject matter, tbh - could be because I've got two young daughters myself, but I fancy reading the book, just not too sure how dark it's going to be.

Thoughts from those that have read it?

[Danderhall Hibs]

Anyone read Crime, by Irvine Welsh?

I borrowed it from the library last week, but haven't really got started on it yet. I'm not sure about the subject matter, tbh - could be because I've got two young daughters myself, but I fancy reading the book, just not too sure how dark it's going to be.

Thoughts from those that have read it?

I've read it mate - I enjoyed it. I wasn't sure where it was going but it turned into an enjoyabe story.

I'll give you a loan of it to save you getting your library card stamped if you want?

[heretoday]

Just cast aside Virginia Woolf for the nth time. Mrs Dalloway.

I know she's supposed to be the great early C20 modernist writer but I can't get into her at all. No sense of humour anywhere in the narrative. Unlike say Jane Austen whose irony is cutting.

Anyway it's back to Patrick O'Brian and Capt Aubrey blasting the Frenchies. :greengrin

[HibeeEmma]

reading a book at the moment called "jungle capitalists" - it's about the company "united fruits" who they claim destroyed Latin America.

Interesting stuff but certainly not an easy beach read

[One Day Soon]

Ok, now finished Primo Levi's 'If this is a man'. Utterly outstanding.

Now half contemplating 'War and Peace' but it is so huge that I wonder before I start what will take a long time to complete whether there are any strong opinions either way on it? With a young family reading time is precious and limited so I don't want to begin something I will regret. Anyone read it?

[GhostofBolivar]

reading a book at the moment called "jungle capitalists" - it's about the company "united fruits" who they claim destroyed Latin America.

Interesting stuff but certainly not an easy beach read

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1920UnitedFruitCompanyEntrance.jpg

United Fruits (now Chiquita) and it's involvement in human rights abuses, support for dictatorships and complicity in military coups the length of Latin America is well known and documented. I'm surprised their bananas aren't red, the blood that's on their hands.

But that's something for another thread.

[hibsbollah]

Ok, now finished Primo Levi's 'If this is a man'. Utterly outstanding.

Now half contemplating 'War and Peace' but it is so huge that I wonder before I start what will take a long time to complete whether there are any strong opinions either way on it? With a young family reading time is precious and limited so I don't want to begin something I will regret. Anyone read it?

War and Peace totally defeated me. It wasnt the length of the book that was the problem but the number of characters, I was totally lost about a quarter of the way in and gave up. Anna Karenina which is the other Tolstoy I read and enjoyed, its totally different, much more about simple themes than War and Peace but equally as well written and thought provoking.

[One Day Soon]

War and Peace totally defeated me. It wasnt the length of the book that was the problem but the number of characters, I was totally lost about a quarter of the way in and gave up. Anna Karenina which is the other Tolstoy I read and enjoyed, its totally different, much more about simple themes than War and Peace but equally as well written and thought provoking.

I glanced at it last night and the sheer volume made me think I would need some serious peace and quiet to be able to get through it. With 6 and 4 year olds around that is never going to happen. If its also a complicatedly broad cast of characters I may have to think again.

Perhaps Twelfth Night instead.

[LiverpoolHibs]

Just cast aside Virginia Woolf for the nth time. Mrs Dalloway.

I know she's supposed to be the great early C20 modernist writer but I can't get into her at all. No sense of humour anywhere in the narrative. Unlike say Jane Austen whose irony is cutting.

Anyway it's back to Patrick O'Brian and Capt Aubrey blasting the Frenchies. :greengrin

I'm frankly disgusted. :greengrin

Mrs. Dalloway is one of very few absolutely perfect novels.


Ok, now finished Primo Levi's 'If this is a man'. Utterly outstanding.

Now half contemplating 'War and Peace' but it is so huge that I wonder before I start what will take a long time to complete whether there are any strong opinions either way on it? With a young family reading time is precious and limited so I don't want to begin something I will regret. Anyone read it?

I really don't think War and Peace deserves the reputation for impenetrability that it has. The first hundred or so pages are a bit of a struggle but it's a really, really fun read after that. Hibsbollah is right about the number of characters (and it's more than that, each individual character tends to have upwards of five nicknames, diminutives etc.) causing a bit of a problem to begin with but you get to grips with it very quickly.

[--------]

Just cast aside Virginia Woolf for the nth time. Mrs Dalloway.

I know she's supposed to be the great early C20 modernist writer but I can't get into her at all. No sense of humour anywhere in the narrative. Unlike say Jane Austen whose irony is cutting.

Anyway it's back to Patrick O'Brian and Capt Aubrey blasting the Frenchies. :greengrin


Have to agree with you about Woolf - I find her Awfully Awfully Serious-Minded, a bit like a rather repressed schoolmarm.

Austen I like - her novels are beautifully written - a reall wee nippy sweetie, I'd say. Two well-written biographies are the ones by David Nokes and Claire Tomalin.

One eminent Victorian whose writing I JUST CANNOT STAND is George Eliot - she must be THE most boring woman ever born. "Middlemarch" is pure unadulterated hell on wheels.

[easty]

Anyone read Crime, by Irvine Welsh?

I borrowed it from the library last week, but haven't really got started on it yet. I'm not sure about the subject matter, tbh - could be because I've got two young daughters myself, but I fancy reading the book, just not too sure how dark it's going to be.

Thoughts from those that have read it?

I'm coming into this thread late so I don't know if it's been covered before but has anyone read Reheated Cabbage by Irvine Welsh?

I read it a while back but I still remember the first story had me in stitches.


Now I don't really have time for much reading, doing Open Uni so mostly reading the textbooks......not worth talking about them!

[khib70]

Have to agree with you about Woolf - I find her Awfully Awfully Serious-Minded, a bit like a rather repressed schoolmarm.

Austen I like - her novels are beautifully written - a reall wee nippy sweetie, I'd say. Two well-written biographies are the ones by David Nokes and Claire Tomalin.

One eminent Victorian whose writing I JUST CANNOT STAND is George Eliot - she must be THE most boring woman ever born. "Middlemarch" is pure unadulterated hell on wheels.
Have to agree with all that, especially relating to George Eliot. She shares with Woolf a certain earnest humourlessness which make the novels heavy going despite frequently fascinating themes. Jane Austen avoids this with searingly clever dialogue and a tendency to sound like she's enjoying the writing process.

It's actually possible to write novels on deep and dark themes, and at considerable length while using humour to drive things along. From "Bleak House" to "Catch 22" this is to me the sign of a novelist of real quality. No matter how vital and relevant your themes or fascinating your setting, turgid prose will simply cause the reader to put the book down. See Scott, Sir Walter, James, Henry and countless others!

[HibeeEmma]

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1920UnitedFruitCompanyEntrance.jpg

United Fruits (now Chiquita) and it's involvement in human rights abuses, support for dictatorships and complicity in military coups the length of Latin America is well known and documented. I'm surprised their bananas aren't red, the blood that's on their hands.

But that's something for another thread.

Yea that's the one. Didn't know much about it before this book but it's all being revealed now! Shocking stuff

[Pretty Boy]

I'm coming into this thread late so I don't know if it's been covered before but has anyone read Reheated Cabbage by Irvine Welsh?

I read it a while back but I still remember the first story had me in stitches.


Now I don't really have time for much reading, doing Open Uni so mostly reading the textbooks......not worth talking about them!

Reheated Cabbage was a bit hit and miss for me.

A couple of cracking wee stories in there and a few that weren't all that great. I've found that about a lot of Irvine Welshs' later work. Some of it has been really enjoyable and i've found other stories/novels quite tedious.

[LiverpoolHibs]

Have to agree with you about Woolf - I find her Awfully Awfully Serious-Minded, a bit like a rather repressed schoolmarm.

Austen I like - her novels are beautifully written - a reall wee nippy sweetie, I'd say. Two well-written biographies are the ones by David Nokes and Claire Tomalin.

One eminent Victorian whose writing I JUST CANNOT STAND is George Eliot - she must be THE most boring woman ever born. "Middlemarch" is pure unadulterated hell on wheels.


Have to agree with all that, especially relating to George Eliot. She shares with Woolf a certain earnest humourlessness which make the novels heavy going despite frequently fascinating themes. Jane Austen avoids this with searingly clever dialogue and a tendency to sound like she's enjoying the writing process.

It's actually possible to write novels on deep and dark themes, and at considerable length while using humour to drive things along. From "Bleak House" to "Catch 22" this is to me the sign of a novelist of real quality. No matter how vital and relevant your themes or fascinating your setting, turgid prose will simply cause the reader to put the book down. See Scott, Sir Walter, James, Henry and countless others!

She was a manic depressive and victim of childhood sexual abuse writing in the immediate aftermath of the First World War; it's not exactly a surprise she's not a particularly funny writer! Though I don't think she was over-earnest or repressed.

I'm not a massive fan of Eliot apart from Daniel Deronda which I think is brilliant and much more enjoyable than Middlemarch.

I'm completely with you on Walter Scott (though not Henry James); mind-numbingly dull. I've always found it absolutely hilarious and perfectly fitting that Tony Blair said Ivanhoe was his favourite ever novel. Imagine that.

[Greentinted]

She was a manic depressive and victim of childhood sexual abuse writing in the immediate aftermath of the First World War; it's not exactly a surprise she's not a particularly funny writer! Though I don't think she was over-earnest or repressed.

I'm not a massive fan of Eliot apart from Daniel Deronda which I think is brilliant and much more enjoyable than Middlemarch.

I'm completely with you on Walter Scott (though not Henry James); mind-numbingly dull. I've always found it absolutely hilarious and perfectly fitting that Tony Blair said Ivanhoe was his favourite ever novel. Imagine that.


Funny, I'm the opposite. Henry James is the master of self-strangling convolution but after persevering with Sir Walter I find myself engrossed in his work. I should say this quietly but for me his best is The Heart of Midlothian (the evocation of the Porteous Riot is a masterclass in historical writing) and the later Waverley Novels written when he was sick, exhausted and heavily medicated make very interesting reading - The Abbot for example is an insight into a crumbling mind.
I enjoy the fact that Jane Austen disliked WS, but even she said 'the author of Waverley - Scott published anonymously - has no business writing novels of this quality'. Perhaps giving credence to the latest theory that the over-rated Austen did not actually (physically) write the books that bear her name.

[--------]

She was a manic depressive and victim of childhood sexual abuse writing in the immediate aftermath of the First World War; it's not exactly a surprise she's not a particularly funny writer! Though I don't think she was over-earnest or repressed.

I'm not a massive fan of Eliot apart from Daniel Deronda which I think is brilliant and much more enjoyable than Middlemarch.

I know, LH. I guess I just don't really like her books. Just as i really don't like Eliot at all.


I'm completely with you on Walter Scott (though not Henry James); mind-numbingly dull. I've always found it absolutely hilarious and perfectly fitting that Tony Blair said Ivanhoe was his favourite ever novel. Imagine that.

The early Waverley novels ("The Antiquary", "Old Mortality", "The Heart of Midlothian", for example) are the strongest of Scott's writing and seriously considerable historical novels. The later ones like "Ivanhoe" and "Kenilworth" are dross. Blair's a twonk.

I much prefer Hogg - "The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner" is a truly awesome novel and one I go back to over and over again - or Stevenson - "The Master of Ballantrae" for example - or even John Galt - "The Annals of the Parish" or "Ringan Gilhaize" are well worth reading (and entertaining) - to Scott.

Henry James? I'm afraid I just can't get into the later novels like "The Ambassadors", but "The Portait of a Lady" is a masterpiece IMHO, and "The Turn of the Screw" is one of the best short novels ver written.

And talking of short novels - Conrad's "Heart of Darkness", anyone?

[TrickyNicky]

I'm reading The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde .

Seems so ahead of it's time, and the language is like hit after hit!

There are a few of those Irvine Welsh moments in there for fans of his too, which is funny considering the 100 odd years between novels!

[hibsbollah]

The early Waverley novels ("The Antiquary", "Old Mortality", "The Heart of Midlothian", for example) are the strongest of Scott's writing and seriously considerable historical novels. The later ones like "Ivanhoe" and "Kenilworth" are dross. Blair's a twonk.

I much prefer Hogg - "The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner" is a truly awesome novel and one I go back to over and over again - or Stevenson - "The Master of Ballantrae" for example - or even John Galt - "The Annals of the Parish" or "Ringan Gilhaize" are well worth reading (and entertaining) - to Scott.

Henry James? I'm afraid I just can't get into the later novels like "The Ambassadors", but "The Portait of a Lady" is a masterpiece IMHO, and "The Turn of the Screw" is one of the best short novels ver written.

And talking of short novels - Conrad's "Heart of Darkness", anyone?

I LIKE Ivanhoe. Its just a light historical romp but theres nothing wrong with that. Heart of Darkness was a bit wrapped up in empirical notions of the scary native for my liking. You can almost taste his fear of the big bad black man.

[--------]

I LIKE Ivanhoe. Its just a light historical romp but theres nothing wrong with that. Heart of Darkness was a bit wrapped up in empirical notions of the scary native for my liking. You can almost taste his fear of the big bad black man.


That isn't how I read "Heart of Darkness". :confused:

[discman]

That isn't how I read "Heart of Darkness". :confused:


me either! Though I arrived at it via Apocalypse Now, having read Dispatches

by Michael Herr I read that Francis Ford Coppola was making a movie on the Vietnam war based on these two books, got it liked it and when I saw the movie and thought it captured the idea of mans journey to "find himself"

It captured a lot about what the seventies was about and what people were into at the time,maybe you had to be there,but i'm guessing a lot of people discovered the book through this route :cool2:

[barcahibs]

I once voiced concerns about my need to keep and cherish my books to someone. He said, "Don't be daft - it represents your personal journey."

If you can get over the the fact that this sounds a bit w***y, I think that this sums it up for me, and kind of covers what you're saying there.

Thats a great statement, I can agree with that 100%, even if it does sound a bit w***y :greengrin



A quick word for libraries, I find that not only do they keep costs down but that I also take a wee gamble on books or writers I would not normally spend money on.

Doing this has led to a load of really good stuff (and some rubbish) and if you like a new writer you can always buy their other works.

I dont reckon they will be around for much longer so use your libraries while you can.:wink:

definitely agree with the bit in bold, thats a really good point and is somethign I do use my library for a lot.

On that point though, the Mrs has just informed me that I'm buying her a kindle for her Christmas and one of its features is that it allows you to download the first few chapters of many books for free, letting you try before you buy.
If she gets a kindle I'm going to want one too but I'd really hate to lose my library so I'll still be using it as much as possible.


Reading "The Lost City of Z" by David Grann at the moment.

If ever you've fancied going to the Amazonian rain forest, dont read this. It's the (true) story of Percy Fawcett, an explorer from the early 20th century. Apart from the protagonist being suitably barmy and stiff-upper-lip Englishman, the stories of flesh eating killer bees, vampire bats, tiny fish that swim and lodge up yer bits, gnats attracted to sweat that lay eggs under your skin poisonous caterpillars and snakes that can eat a deer whole are enough to give you nightmares.

Great read though.

Thats just gone on the list! This thread is going to bankrupt me.





And talking of short novels - Conrad's "Heart of Darkness", anyone?

Read it with my girlfriend as one of our 'shared' :jamboak: books. I actually quite enjoyed it, though I found it a bit disjointed and jarring at times. She hated it however, I had to pretty much literally drag her through it, refusing to speak to her at weekends til she'd read her allotted pages :greengrin.

I think maybe that to really get into it you have to know the background of what was going on in the Belgian Congo (and elsewhere of course) at the time that Conrad was writing and how that was being perceived in Europe. I was studying the history of the European empires at the time we read it so it gripped me from that perspective but without that reference she really struggled and found the whole thing impenetrable. Also, maybe I'm totally wrong, but I thought it was more about the big very bad white man than the 'just trying to survive' black man?

I Finally made it through Churchills Wizards but it was a real chore towards the end, just not what i was expecting. I was looking for great tales of derring do and boffins banging together contraptions in Nissen huts but somehow it all just came across as really dull posh people messing about - some of whom only seem to have been peripherally involved in the whole thing in any case. The author only seems to skim the surface of the stories, he'll mention something interesting and then take it nowhere before veering back into a general history of the wars which has been covered better elsewhere. I wonder if he's been hampered by a lot of the detail still being classified, especially on the WW2 stuff.

Sharpes Fortress was ok, Unfortunately I think it suffered from being read straight after Sharpes Triumph and Sharpes Tiger (got them in a pack for much cheapness :greengrin). They're very similiar books and it was all seeming a bit repetitive by the end. I'll read more Sharpe books but think I'll leave them for a while.

Peacemakers by Margaret Macmillan was superb, an account of the Paris Peace conference that led to the various Versailles treaties after WW1. Reading this its utterly astounding that any treaty was produced at all and it highlights the tragic waste of an opportunity that the whole thing represented. They went to some absolutely Herculean efforts to produce something but of course with hindsight we can see its just utterly doomed from the start and you can't help despairing about what you know it leads to.
Brilliantly researched and goes into some great detail. There's some fabulous anecdotes about the personalities and egos involved, from the frustration of the 'Big Three' as they watch the opportunity slip through their fingers, to the claims and demands of the minor powers determined to get their voice heard. First class IMO, I'd recommend it to anyone with an interest in WW1.

Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde was really good too but it was only the first in a series and ended on a cliffhanger. Think I'll leave it till a few more are out before I try and read anymore, I just get too confused otherwise and end up having to read the first one again to remind me who's who.
Basic synopsis is its the story of a small town of people living in some sort of authoritarian 'almost England' in a post apocalyptic world. They're living at a kind of early-mid 20th century level surviving by picking through the ruins of a high technological society which they can't remember or understand. The twist is that for some (yet to be explained) reason each member of society can only see a small part of the visible spectrum and society is divided into a hierarchy with those who can see colours, especially those who can see reds, lording it over a downtrodden worker caste who can see only shades of grey.
Its actually a pretty dark, grim novel but its all done with brilliant comic undertones, one subplot revolves around the fact that the ruling bureaucracy has for some bizarre reason forbidden the manufacture of spoons, meaning that people will go to great lengths to get hold of a soup eating utensil of their own :greengrin

Bad Science was also brilliant, should be required reading for anyone who's ever been exposed to medical journalism. It thoroughly discredits the claims of many modern medical fads and the charlatans who are making money from them. Its really well pitched, at a level where even a moron like me can follow it but with plenty of detail to back everything up. Does a great job of explaining how medical (or any scientific) studies should be performed and how the data from them can be misinterpreted or manipulated. Theres also a great section on the power of the placebo effect and the incredible ability of the mind to influence healing (and suffering) and pain perception.

I also read the 'Domination' or 'Draka' series of books by SM Stirling. They chart the alternate history of a world which diverges from our own after the American Revolution, when the defeated British Loyalists are resettled in South Africa instead of Canada.
From this beginning they forge a sadistic slaveholding superstate which comes to dominate first all of Africa and eventually all of the World outside a few allied democracies, centred on the USA, left in the aftermath of a WW2 even more horrific than our own. The first book focuses on WW2 and its gruesome aftermath as the Domination brutally enslaves Western Europe and the rest of the series deals with the runup to and conclusion of the 'Final War' fought throughout the Solar System between the opposing superstates of the Domination and the democratic alliance.
Its good, thrilling stuff, there are plot holes you could drive a bus through and you have to gloss over exactly how some of the alternate history could actually have happened but it all cracks along at a fair enough pace and is enjoyable enough that I could forgive it most of the problems.
There is a slight 'America, ****** yeah' undertone - the author openly admits he views our USA as the best possible state that European colonisation could have created and he is trying to write about a world where a European colony became a sort of 'Antiamerica', going as badly wrong as (in his opinion) America went right in the real world. It doesn't affect the story at all but I always had this in the back of my mind as I was reading.
I'm going to have to read up on Nietzsche as his philosophy has a big part to play in Draka society and I suspect I missed a bit of what was going on as I know nothing about him.

There is also a really trashy, but fun, related novel Drakon which deals with what happens when a high tec accident sends one genetically engineered super draka through a wormhole into our 20th America and a book of very hit and miss short stories, Drakas!, by other authors set in the same world.

Just been to the library (:greengrin) so next up I've got Coward on the Beach by James Delingpole and Blighty:the quest for Britishness, by the authors of Is it just me or is everything S**t? I'm also determined to re-read the Nights Dawn trilogy and have Freakonomics, Scotland the Autobiography and Gavin Menzies '1421 the year China discovered the world' staring at me from the shelf :greengrin

[hibsbollah]

Reading "The Lost City of Z" by David Grann at the moment.

If ever you've fancied going to the Amazonian rain forest, dont read this. It's the (true) story of Percy Fawcett, an explorer from the early 20th century. Apart from the protagonist being suitably barmy and stiff-upper-lip Englishman, the stories of flesh eating killer bees, vampire bats, tiny fish that swim and lodge up yer bits, gnats attracted to sweat that lay eggs under your skin poisonous caterpillars and snakes that can eat a deer whole are enough to give you nightmares.

Great read though.

That sounds almost exactly like a great book i read about 5 years ago; Remond O'Hamlon's 'Congo Journey', but obviously about the Congo not the Amazon. Hilariously funny story of a posh doddery idiot lost in a crazy jungle world.

Barca's right in that the Heart of Darkness is properly understood through the lens of empire and turn of the century debates about empire, race, eugenics etc. The appropriation of the story by Francis Ford Coppola generated a lot of new interest in the book from the 80s onwards, and a lot of academics and reviewers of the baby-boomer generation liked to focus on the ***** metaphor of 'a journey into oneself', and found it difficult to divorce the text from the Vietnam experience. These reviewers ignored the more obvious stories it told about Western attitudes to 'the native' and the 'dark continent'. Conrad did show western brutality towards the African but the subtext was something a bit more uncomfortable.

Thats my (admittedly also slightly *****:greengrin)take on it anyway.

[LiverpoolHibs]

That isn't how I read "Heart of Darkness". :confused:


me either! Though I arrived at it via Apocalypse Now, having read Dispatches

by Michael Herr I read that Francis Ford Coppola was making a movie on the Vietnam war based on these two books, got it liked it and when I saw the movie and thought it captured the idea of mans journey to "find himself"

It captured a lot about what the seventies was about and what people were into at the time,maybe you had to be there,but i'm guessing a lot of people discovered the book through this route :cool2:


Read it with my girlfriend as one of our 'shared' :jamboak: books. I actually quite enjoyed it, though I found it a bit disjointed and jarring at times. She hated it however, I had to pretty much literally drag her through it, refusing to speak to her at weekends til she'd read her allotted pages :greengrin.

I think maybe that to really get into it you have to know the background of what was going on in the Belgian Congo (and elsewhere of course) at the time that Conrad was writing and how that was being perceived in Europe. I was studying the history of the European empires at the time we read it so it gripped me from that perspective but without that reference she really struggled and found the whole thing impenetrable. Also, maybe I'm totally wrong, but I thought it was more about the big very bad white man than the 'just trying to survive' black man?

I think hibsbollah is pretty much right; it's undeniably racist.

Though it's not just fear, it's the archetypal repulsion/attraction dynamic that you get in most colonial literature, probably most typically in Kipling, where the white figure's encounter with the non-white Other is always framed in this duality of great attraction to their supposed atavism, beastiality and primitivism whilst also being repulsed by it. That the Other tells us things about what is actually at our heart ('The horror! The horror!' as Kurtz says) but that that has been attentuated by Western progress. Conrad was, erm, a little bit obsessed with this sort of thing - especially if you think about how Kurtz is described as a polymathic genius who then has to abandon all of this once in Africa in order to fit with the natives. He can only understand it by throwing off European culture. His intelligence is of no use whatsoever because Africa is a land without culture or intelligence. I don't know how anyone could read a passage like this and deny that it's just about as bad as it gets;

And between whiles I had to look after the savage who was fireman. He was an improved specimen; he could fire up a vertical boiler. He was there below me and, upon my word, to look at him was as edifying as seeing a dog in a parody of breeches and a feather hat walking on his hind legs. A few months of training had done for that really fine chap. He squinted at the steam-gauge and at the water-gauge with an evident effort of intrepidity -- and he had filed his teeth too, the poor devil, and the wool of his pate shaved into queer patterns, and three ornamental scars on each of his cheeks. He ought to have been clapping his hands and stamping his feet on the bank, instead of which he was hard at work, a thrall to strange witchcraft, full of improving knowledge.

It's not even really anti-colonial as people claim it's just antipathetic to the brazenly exploitative and brutal colonialism that was a feature of the Belgian Congo, a colonialism that wasn't wrapped up in ideas of betterment and liberality. The objection, I think, is to finance and business at the expense of adventurism.

Which gets you into Sartre's argument about whether a racist work of literature can ever be considered 'great' or even 'good'. I think it can, with caveats and mainly because Heart of Darkness is so wonderfully written that I can't really bring myself to discount it, whereas Chinua Achebe famously thought it couldn't. Edward Said wrote a pretty good critical defence of it in Culture and Imperialism.

HoD's only challengers, to my mind, for the greatest novella are The Dead, Metamorphosis, Bartleby the Scrivener and Of Mice and Men.

[haagsehibby]

McPherson explains those issues pretty clearly, I'd say. The book is 20 years old or so, and has the usual limitations of a single-volume history of a major period/issue but it's clarified my mind about a number of things, so that I'm now fairly confident about looking for more detailed reading on specific topics.

BTW, Mark Twain's "Life on the Mississippi" is a lovely book - an eye-witness account of the antebellum riverboat society. My favourite of all his books. William Faulkner's another fictional writer well worth exploring for the picture he conveys of the Deep South. "Go Down, Moses" and "The Unvanquished" are good ones to start with, IMO.

Ok I've ordered the McPherson book and waiting for it to arrive. As usual if you order online you get the usual "other users also ordered etc", one of the books recommended is The Killer Angels by Michael Sharra - so I bought that as well. It's a novel about the Battle of Gettysburg. Have you read it ?

[Twa Cairpets]

Ok I've ordered the McPherson book and waiting for it to arrive. As usual if you order online you get the usual "other users also ordered etc", one of the books recommended is The Killer Angels by Michael Sharra - so I bought that as well. It's a novel about the Battle of Gettysburg. Have you read it ?

Killer Angels is a pretty good novel if you like that sort of thing (which fortunately I do). It can get a little bit sentimentally heroic on occasion, but its not an exacting read and is historically pretty accurate.

If you've seen the film "Gettysburg", it was based on the novel and followed it very loyally.

[hibsbollah]

I think hibsbollah is pretty much right; it's undeniably racist.

Though it's not just fear, it's the archetypal repulsion/attraction dynamic that you get in most colonial literature, probably most typically in Kipling, where the white figure's encounter with the non-white Other is always framed in this duality of great attraction to their supposed atavism, beastiality and primitivism whilst also being repulsed by it. That the Other tells us things about what is actually at our heart ('The horror! The horror!' as Kurtz says) but that that has been attentuated by Western progress. Conrad was, erm, a little bit obsessed with this sort of thing - especially if you think about how Kurtz is described as a polymathic genius who then has to abandon all of this once in Africa in order to fit with the natives. He can only understand it by throwing off European culture. His intelligence is of no use whatsoever because Africa is a land without culture or intelligence.

Thats my take on it, absolutely:agree: Thats not to say Konrad should be subject to pilloring as a 'racist author' by 21st century reviewers, its just illustrative of the different attitudes of the time.

[discman]

I think hibsbollah is pretty much right; it's undeniably racist.

Though it's not just fear, it's the archetypal repulsion/attraction dynamic that you get in most colonial literature, probably most typically in Kipling, where the white figure's encounter with the non-white Other is always framed in this duality of great attraction to their supposed atavism, beastiality and primitivism whilst also being repulsed by it. That the Other tells us things about what is actually at our heart ('The horror! The horror!' as Kurtz says) but that that has been attentuated by Western progress. Conrad was, erm, a little bit obsessed with this sort of thing - especially if you think about how Kurtz is described as a polymathic genius who then has to abandon all of this once in Africa in order to fit with the natives. He can only understand it by throwing off European culture. His intelligence is of no use whatsoever because Africa is a land without culture or intelligence. I don't know how anyone could read a passage like this and deny that it's just about as bad as it gets;

And between whiles I had to look after the savage who was fireman. He was an improved specimen; he could fire up a vertical boiler. He was there below me and, upon my word, to look at him was as edifying as seeing a dog in a parody of breeches and a feather hat walking on his hind legs. A few months of training had done for that really fine chap. He squinted at the steam-gauge and at the water-gauge with an evident effort of intrepidity -- and he had filed his teeth too, the poor devil, and the wool of his pate shaved into queer patterns, and three ornamental scars on each of his cheeks. He ought to have been clapping his hands and stamping his feet on the bank, instead of which he was hard at work, a thrall to strange witchcraft, full of improving knowledge.

It's not even really anti-colonial as people claim it's just antipathetic to the brazenly exploitative and brutal colonialism that was a feature of the Belgian Congo, a colonialism that wasn't wrapped up in ideas of betterment and liberality. The objection, I think, is to finance and business at the expense of adventurism.

Which gets you into Sartre's argument about whether a racist work of literature can ever be considered 'great' or even 'good'. I think it can, with caveats and mainly because Heart of Darkness is so wonderfully written that I can't really bring myself to discount it, whereas Chinua Achebe famously thought it couldn't. Edward Said wrote a pretty good critical defence of it in Culture and Imperialism.

HoD's only challengers, to my mind, for the greatest novella are The Dead, Metamorphosis, Bartleby the Scrivener and Of Mice and Men.

Is ralph ellison's "invisible man" in this category? also a writer I read in my 20's was upton sinclair's lanny bud series loved them! I think steinbeck is another great american writer of mice and men was just one of many great books all,fiction/non fiction that are worth checking out!

[LiverpoolHibs]

[/B]

Is ralph ellison's "invisible man" in this category? also a writer I read in my 20's was upton sinclair's lanny bud series loved them! I think steinbeck is another great american writer of mice and men was just one of many great books all,fiction/non fiction that are worth checking out!

Invisible Man is pretty lengthy, excellent novel though.

I keep meaning to read more Upton Sinclair, I've only read The Jungle which is fantastic. A pretty incredible man all round.

[--------]

Invisible Man is pretty lengthy, excellent novel though.



:agree: Very good. :agree:

[Hibees07]

Pretty sad but I've just read 'Twilight', 'New Moon' & 'Eclipse' by Steph Meyer. I'm currently reading 'Breaking Dawn' the final book in the series.

I slagged my wife for matching the movie 'Twilight' then I ended up reading the book and got totally engrossed. :agree:

[Twiglet]

I'm looking for something new to read. I've just finished Jodi Picoults "Perfect Match" (I'm female by the way, so I'm allowed to read Picoult). Though, to be said, I found the surprising moral questions raised thought provoking.

Does anyone have a suggestion of waht I can read next? I'm not looking for anything heavy as I generally read on my lunch break and I'm not really into crime, or anything like that, more general fiction.

[GhostofBolivar]

Pretty sad but I've just read 'Twilight', 'New Moon' & 'Eclipse' by Steph Meyer. I'm currently reading 'Breaking Dawn' the final book in the series.

I slagged my wife for matching the movie 'Twilight' then I ended up reading the book and got totally engrossed. :agree:

Sexist drivel (http://www.cracked.com/funny-36-twilight/)

Why people read Twilight and Harry Potter when they could read Neil Gaiman instead is a genuine mystery to me.

[duncs]

I'm current reading David McCullogh's excellent biography of the 2nd President of the United States, John Adams. Absolutely captivating, although lengthy - which is absolutely understandable considering the times that Adams lived through.

I'm also reading Chris Mullin's excellent diaries, this the second part, Decline & Fall is from 2005-2010 and follow's the sublime A View from the Foothills. It really does tear away any notions that backbench MPs live a glamourous life.

[--------]

Sexist drivel (http://www.cracked.com/funny-36-twilight/)

Why people read Twilight and Harry Potter when they could read Neil Gaiman instead is a genuine mystery to me.


Do I detect a touch of cultural fascism here? :cool2:


As they say, the fruit never falls far from the tree..... :devil:

[Twa Cairpets]

I'm looking for something new to read. I've just finished Jodi Picoults "Perfect Match" (I'm female by the way, so I'm allowed to read Picoult). Though, to be said, I found the surprising moral questions raised thought provoking.

Does anyone have a suggestion of waht I can read next? I'm not looking for anything heavy as I generally read on my lunch break and I'm not really into crime, or anything like that, more general fiction.

I've occasionally dipped into P. J. Tracy novels (thrillers) as a bit of holiday reading or to take a break from whatever period of history I've got lightly obsessional over. The first one "Want to Play?" I think was the best, the others are ok too though. Worth a look maybe.


Why people read Twilight and Harry Potter when they could read Neil Gaiman instead is a genuine mystery to me.

I loved Harry Potter, personally. If you want to be snooty on books, then look down your nose at anyone who thinks Jeffrey Archer writes a mean tome...

[GhostofBolivar]

I loved Harry Potter, personally. If you want to be snooty on books, then look down your nose at anyone who thinks Jeffrey Archer writes a mean tome...

Fair enough. I tried to read a Harry Potter and didn't like it. I am willing to concede that it might be me rather than the books themselves.

Twilight is purely terrible. I don't really mind that people read the books - at least it gets them reading - but they shouldn't get upset when I make fun of them for it. The only exception I make here is if they're a 13 year-old girl who doesn't know any better.

I do mind that more people don't read Neil Gaiman, who's a far superior writer to both Meyer and Rowling and whose books should be read by more or less everyone.

Alan Moore too. More people should read his work.

[haagsehibby]

Fair enough. I tried to read a Harry Potter and didn't like it. I am willing to concede that it might be me rather than the books themselves.

Twilight is purely terrible. I don't really mind that people read the books - at least it gets them reading - but they shouldn't get upset when I make fun of them for it. The only exception I make here is if they're a 13 year-old girl who doesn't know any better.

I do mind that more people don't read Neil Gaiman, who's a far superior writer to both Meyer and Rowling and whose books should be read by more or less everyone.

Alan Moore too. More people should read his work.

What would you recommend as a starter for Neil Gaiman ?

[GhostofBolivar]

What would you recommend as a starter for Neil Gaiman ?

The Graveyard Book (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/oct/25/booksforchildrenandteenagers-neilgaiman)

Or The Sandman series if you like graphic novels.

[Sick Boy]

I'm travelling at the moment and was hoping to while away some of the hours engrossed in a good book but they're ridiculously expensive over here in New Zealand. $40 (£20) for something that costs about £8 back home. :grr: What's with that?

[Mixu62]

I'm travelling at the moment and was hoping to while away some of the hours engrossed in a good book but they're ridiculously expensive over here in New Zealand. $40 (£20) for something that costs about £8 back home. :grr: What's with that?

Can't say I've noticed books being expensive here but then when I arrived the exchange rate was almost $3NZ to the pound, and now it's closer to 2. If you find yourself passing thru Auckland, check Evergreen Books in Devonport. It's a big 2nd hand place with everything from bestsellers to rare 1st editions. Either that or Timeout in Mount Eden Village. Another wee independent, they often have really good sales. I find the independent ones are better than the big retailers like Whitcoulls or Borders (who are owned by the same company in NZ & Aus by the way).

[--------]

I've occasionally dipped into P. J. Tracy novels (thrillers) as a bit of holiday reading or to take a break from whatever period of history I've got lightly obsessional over. The first one "Want to Play?" I think was the best, the others are ok too though. Worth a look maybe.



I loved Harry Potter, personally. If you want to be snooty on books, then look down your nose at anyone who thinks Jeffrey Archer writes a mean tome...



The HP books are OK as a cure for insomnia. Dennis Wheatley for kids.... :rolleyes:


Finally got around to reading 'Clockers'. It's not bad....

[GhostofBolivar]

The HP books are OK as a cure for insomnia. Dennis Wheatley for kids.... :rolleyes:


Finally got around to reading 'Clockers'. It's not bad....

Not bad?

Despair I do.

It's not bad enough that parts were lifted straight from it and used verbatim in The Wire.

Lush Life by the same guy is really good too.

[bingo70]

I'm a relative newbie to this reading lark, was my new years resolution last year to start reading instead of watching pish on the tele i didn't enjoy, probably about the only resolution i've ever stuck to.

Not read the whole thread as i've been busy watching pish on the tele :wink: so apologies if these have already been mentioned but best books i've read so far are "Jihad", maradona's "hand of god" biography he tried to get banned and i'm reading howard marks book, "mr nice" just now and it's class as well.

[Wembley67]

Anyone else find this thread title massively patronising :grr:

:cool2:

[--------]

Not bad?

Despair I do.

It's not bad enough that parts were lifted straight from it and used verbatim in The Wire.

Lush Life by the same guy is really good too.



The Wire?

Is that any good? :cool2:



:wink:

[khib70]

I see a few people on here like Alasdair Gray. Always a good sign. Anyway you might be interested in this exhibition of his artwork, since the drawings etc are so central to his work. Details here:-

http://www.ed.ac.uk/news/all-news/gray-011110

My personal favourite was the error slip which appeared in one of his books and read "This slip has been inserted in this book by mistake" :greengrin

[Mixu62]

I'm a relative newbie to this reading lark, was my new years resolution last year to start reading instead of watching pish on the tele i didn't enjoy, probably about the only resolution i've ever stuck to.

Not read the whole thread as i've been busy watching pish on the tele :wink: so apologies if these have already been mentioned but best books i've read so far are "Jihad", maradona's "hand of god" biography he tried to get banned and i'm reading howard marks book, "mr nice" just now and it's class as well.

That's an excellent new years resolution! I might try that myself this new year. I enjoyed Mr Nice and also Mrs Marks, the one written by his wife about her experiences during that crazy time. Even though every book they've released since Mr Nice has been a shameless attempt to cash in, but hey, who can blame them. If you like sport biography, I enjoyed Collina's book, but might not be everyone's cuppa. Very analytical, as you'd expect I suppose.

[OtterHibee]

I'm looking for something new to read. I've just finished Jodi Picoults "Perfect Match" (I'm female by the way, so I'm allowed to read Picoult). Though, to be said, I found the surprising moral questions raised thought provoking.

Does anyone have a suggestion of waht I can read next? I'm not looking for anything heavy as I generally read on my lunch break and I'm not really into crime, or anything like that, more general fiction.

That one is still sitting on my bookshelf waiting to be read having bought it a couple of years ago. I've read "Keeping Faith" and "My Sister's Keeper" (much, much better than the film) so far and enjoyed both, so I don't expect to be disappointed.

I constantly have a book on the go, though other than Ian Rankin, I don't tend to favour particular authors, rather prefer to stick to particular genres.

As an aside, is anyone else familiar with the site lovereading.co.uk (http://www.lovereading.co.uk/)? I find it useful for seeking out new material to read, aided by the ability to download extracts of each book (usually the first chapter). Well worth a look if you're into reading :agree:

[Twa Cairpets]

Having just read a book mentioned earlier in the thread about a lost explorer in the Amazon "The Lost City of Z", I thought I'd jump over to West Africa to read this book about the survivors of a shipwreck of Western Africa in 1812.

Riveting stuff - the phrase "Ye Gods" comes to mind frequently when you read what these guys, sold into slavery suffering depridation, beating and extremes of heat, thirst and hunger went through. I wouldnt have lasted long for sure - really worth a look if you like that kind of thing (books on acts of historical personal fortitude, that is, not depridation and beating).

[GhostofBolivar]

The Given Day by Dennis Lehane. Absolutely stunning.

[--------]

The Given Day by Dennis Lehane. Absolutely stunning.


Two-thirds through 'Clockers' now - very good indeed. :agree:

[LiverpoolHibs]

I see a few people on here like Alasdair Gray. Always a good sign. Anyway you might be interested in this exhibition of his artwork, since the drawings etc are so central to his work. Details here:-

http://www.ed.ac.uk/news/all-news/gray-011110

My personal favourite was the error slip which appeared in one of his books and read "This slip has been inserted in this book by mistake" :greengrin

Was there a couple of weekends back - fantastic exhibition. Made me even more annoyed that he pulled out of the Radical Book Fair.

[heretoday]

I can recommend Bomber Boys by Patrick Bishop - about WW2 Bomber Command.

There are plenty of personal accounts from bomber crews and informative but not long-winded stuff about the strategy of dropping bombs on civilians which had its critics even during the war - though not among the people of London or Coventry who had suffered early doors in the Blitz.

The Nazis dubbed the bombers "terror fliers" - cheeky monkeys that they were.

[NAE NOOKIE]

For footy books have a read of " pointless " its about a season following East Stirling and is very funny in places and gives a real insight into what it takes to keep a small club going.

Just finished reading Heartfelt ( supping Bovril from the devils cup ) Its not really a book about the merits of supporting Hibs or the Yams, but more about human bonding. In fact its probably as good an example of 'Stockholm syndrome' in action as you will find.

[GhostofBolivar]

I thought this was a spectacularly stupid piece of writing. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/dec/12/genre-versus-literary-fiction-edward-docx)

[hibsbollah]

I thought this was a spectacularly stupid piece of writing. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/dec/12/genre-versus-literary-fiction-edward-docx)

Why, whats wrong with it? I thought it was quite perceptive, especially this bit;

These are the reasons, too, why a bad thriller or detective novel or murder mystery will feel so much better than a bad literary novel – why it might even thrive. Even in a bad genre book, you've still got the curiosity and the reassuring knowledge that the writer will eventually deliver against the conventions. Bad literary fiction, on the other hand, is mostly without such fallback positions and is therefore a whole lot worse.

I've never read Larsson, so I couldnt comment on how bad he is or otherwise (My wife reads it, they're usually called something like The Girl Who Stubbed Her Toe or something like that). But slagging off Dan Brown is perfectly fair game. I'd rather be stuck in a lift with George Fowlkes than read anything by him again.

[GhostofBolivar]

Why, whats wrong with it? I thought it was quite perceptive, especially this bit;

These are the reasons, too, why a bad thriller or detective novel or murder mystery will feel so much better than a bad literary novel – why it might even thrive. Even in a bad genre book, you've still got the curiosity and the reassuring knowledge that the writer will eventually deliver against the conventions. Bad literary fiction, on the other hand, is mostly without such fallback positions and is therefore a whole lot worse.

I've never read Larsson, so I couldnt comment on how bad he is or otherwise (My wife reads it, they're usually called something like The Girl Who Stubbed Her Toe or something like that). But slagging off Dan Brown is perfectly fair game. I'd rather be stuck in a lift with George Fowlkes than read anything by him again.

He cherry-picks his targets and then applies them to a whole genre, then applies that genre to all genres.

Is he seriously trying to tell me that Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett produced work of lesser value because they wrote detective novels?

The Naked and the Dead and Catch-22 are war novels - clearly they must therefore be terrible. Beowulf and The Lord of the Rings are fantasy - and so on.

Not to mention that 'literary fiction' is every bit a genre as crime and sci-fi. There are genuinely great novels that are 'constrained' by being 'genre works' and any number of 'literary works' that are total drivel.

The whole article comes across as nothing more than simple envy. A man who doesn't make as much money as he'd like to trying to console himself that his work is of more value than others. Arguing whether Larsson and Dan Brown are any good or not is one thing, but he's saying entire forms of literature have no merit because he thinks those writers are terrible.

[--------]

He cherry-picks his targets and then applies them to a whole genre, then applies that genre to all genres.

Is he seriously trying to tell me that Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett produced work of lesser value because they wrote detective novels?

The Naked and the Dead and Catch-22 are war novels - clearly they must therefore be terrible. Beowulf and The Lord of the Rings are fantasy - and so on.

Not to mention that 'literary fiction' is every bit a genre as crime and sci-fi. There are genuinely great novels that are 'constrained' by being 'genre works' and any number of 'literary works' that are total drivel.

The whole article comes across as nothing more than simple envy. A man who doesn't make as much money as he'd like to trying to console himself that his work is of more value than others. Arguing whether Larsson and Dan Brown are any good or not is one thing, but he's saying entire forms of literature have no merit because he thinks those writers are terrible.



I notice he has 'Crime and Punishment' down as a 'thriller'. Right. That disposes of him as an intelligent and perceptive reader, then. I really don't think that Dostoevsky wrote C&P with that in mind, myself.

Anymore than Tolstoy wrote 'Anna Karenina' as a sort of high-brow soap-opera....

Docx makes a big thing about the opening passages of 'The Dragon Tattoo' - perhaps if he'd carried on reading - maybe even actually read the novel? - he might have worked out why Larsson wrote that passage, even why he began the novel with it. There IS a point to that conversation - it's one end of a thread that Larsson develops through the progress of the first novel, into the second, and which he completes and ties off in the third.

I'm a fan of film noir, but I'd be the first to admit that a lot of examples of the genre are pretty ropey. However I would defy anyone with eyes and a brain to suggest that 'Touch of Evil' isn't an awesome piece of film-making, or that 'Sunset Boulevard' or 'The Maltese Falcon' aren't outstanding works of the cinema. Bad film noir is bad because it's bad - not because it's film noir.


Here's a 'plot introduction' for Docx's fist novel, 'The Calligrapher':

Narrated by Jasper Jackson, an accomplished calligrapher and serial seducer living off Warwick Avenue, London; it tells how his seemingly perfect life unravels when his most recent infidelity is discovered and his girlfriend Lucy leaves him. Jasper though is soon captivated by a new neighbour, Madeleine, whilst he is commissioned to transcribe the Songs and Sonnets of John Donne for a wealthy American businessman. The book describes his growing love and commitment to Madeleine, illuminated by observations from the sonnets he is transcribing. But will his relationship with Madeleine last?

(I'm tempted to ask, 'Who cares?')

A review: http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2003/11/09/in_war_and_peace_two_selfish_seducers_follow_their _blissfollow_their_bliss/

What 'genre' would you say he was writing in? Pretentious pseudo-intellectual luvvie poseur? :cool2:

[Leicester Fan]

The first of the Millennium triology was a good book, though with a bit more editing could have been better. The second 1 wasn't bad but I was disappointed with the third. I sort of see what the man was saying about it being amateurish though this might be something to do with the translation.

I think I've read most of Dan Brown's books, mainly due to the hype around them, I just wanted to see what the fuss was about. They're mainly formulaic garbage with a few interesting factoids throw in. I never actually finished one without thinking that I've wasted my time but I'll still probably buy the next one.

[hibsbollah]

He cherry-picks his targets and then applies them to a whole genre, then applies that genre to all genres.

Is he seriously trying to tell me that Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett produced work of lesser value because they wrote detective novels?

The Naked and the Dead and Catch-22 are war novels - clearly they must therefore be terrible. Beowulf and The Lord of the Rings are fantasy - and so on.

Not to mention that 'literary fiction' is every bit a genre as crime and sci-fi. There are genuinely great novels that are 'constrained' by being 'genre works' and any number of 'literary works' that are total drivel.

The whole article comes across as nothing more than simple envy. A man who doesn't make as much money as he'd like to trying to console himself that his work is of more value than others. Arguing whether Larsson and Dan Brown are any good or not is one thing, but he's saying entire forms of literature have no merit because he thinks those writers are terrible.

I honestly dont think thats what he's saying:confused: I dont think he's saying Raymond Chandler or Norman Mailer must have produced 'terrible' novels because they were genre novels, he's saying that these authors' first job was to do storytelling, not make a work of art.

If i'm wrong and i've misunderstood his point, then I agree with you, its nonsense to belittle works of literature because of what genre they are supposedly attached to. (i'm a massive fan of film noir, to take Doddie's example, which is probably the trashiest genre out there:greengrin)

[--------]

The first of the Millennium triology was a good book, though with a bit more editing could have been better. The second 1 wasn't bad but I was disappointed with the third. I sort of see what the man was saying about it being amateurish though this might be something to do with the translation.

I think I've read most of Dan Brown's books, mainly due to the hype around them, I just wanted to see what the fuss was about. They're mainly formulaic garbage with a few interesting factoids throw in. I never actually finished one without thinking that I've wasted my time but I'll still probably buy the next one.


As you'll have guessed, I like 'Milennium' a lot. I probably need to read it again to firm up my judgement of it as a trilogy of connected novels, and I hope to have time to do that in the New Year.

I'm afraid Dan Brown sends me to sleep. This is NOT, btw, because of disapproval of his subject-matter - I just don't find he holds my attention. He doesn't write the sort of fiction that grabs me, but if other folks read him, fair enough. I have no right to look down on people because of their taste in reading-matter.

(That doesn't mean to say I don't, just that I'm admitting I have no right to do so. :devil: )

Docx's article seems to me to be a petty and snobbish attack on popular reading - people read Brown and Larsson and Lee Child, and they don't read Docx, so therefore Brown and Larsson and Lee Child must be bad writers relying on the structures of a particular genre for their popularity. How much more difficult it must be to write "a witty, deftly written, honest comedy of manners" like "The Calligrapher" - a novel which appears to be just as formulaic and genre-defined as the books he's putting down - than it is to write a 'generic thriller' that people actually read....

Writers operate on all sorts of different levels; readers do, too. Maybe Docx is a much better, and deeper, writer than I give him credit for. Perhaps he's the Evelyn Waugh of the 21st century. I know one thing, though - he ain't no literary critic worth the name.

[--------]

I honestly dont think thats what he's saying:confused: I dont think he's saying Raymond Chandler or Norman Mailer must have produced 'terrible' novels because they were genre novels, he's saying that these authors' first job was to do storytelling, not make a work of art.

If i'm wrong and i've misunderstood his point, then I agree with you, its nonsense to belittle works of literature because of what genre they are supposedly attached to. (i'm a massive fan of film noir, to take Doddie's example, which is probably the trashiest genre out there:greengrin)



:greengrin

Film noir provided a living for a host of bad actors and actresses otherwise unemployable in the film industry.

It also produced a number of very good films, some of which transcend the genre to the extent of being masterpieces.

"A Touch of Evil" (Orson Welles, Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh); "Sunset Boulevard" (William Holden and Gloria Swanson); "The Maltese Falcon", "The Big Sleep", "Key Largo" (Bogart); for example, all black-and-white, all to a greater or lesser degree classics, each in its own way.

Is "Night of the Hunter" film noir? I think it is - awesome.

"Cape Fear" - unforgettable if only for Bob Mitchum's performance as Max Cady.

And what about "The Third Man"? :cool2:

But then there are all the 'B' movies with guys like Alan Ladd and William Bendix and Brian Donleavy; or embarrassments like Orson Welles's cod-Irish accent in "The Lady From Shanghai" or that creakiest of plot-lines, "Double Indemnity"...

But I love 'em all... :devil:

[Pretty Boy]

I notice he has 'Crime and Punishment' down as a 'thriller'. Right. That disposes of him as an intelligent and perceptive reader, then. I really don't think that Dostoevsky wrote C&P with that in mind, myself.

Anymore than Tolstoy wrote 'Anna Karenina' as a sort of high-brow soap-opera....

Docx makes a big thing about the opening passages of 'The Dragon Tattoo' - perhaps if he'd carried on reading - maybe even actually read the novel? - he might have worked out why Larsson wrote that passage, even why he began the novel with it. There IS a point to that conversation - it's one end of a thread that Larsson develops through the progress of the first novel, into the second, and which he completes and ties off in the third.

I'm a fan of film noir, but I'd be the first to admit that a lot of examples of the genre are pretty ropey. However I would defy anyone with eyes and a brain to suggest that 'Touch of Evil' isn't an awesome piece of film-making, or that 'Sunset Boulevard' or 'The Maltese Falcon' aren't outstanding works of the cinema. Bad film noir is bad because it's bad - not because it's film noir.


Here's a 'plot introduction' for Docx's fist novel, 'The Calligrapher':

Narrated by Jasper Jackson, an accomplished calligrapher and serial seducer living off Warwick Avenue, London; it tells how his seemingly perfect life unravels when his most recent infidelity is discovered and his girlfriend Lucy leaves him. Jasper though is soon captivated by a new neighbour, Madeleine, whilst he is commissioned to transcribe the Songs and Sonnets of John Donne for a wealthy American businessman. The book describes his growing love and commitment to Madeleine, illuminated by observations from the sonnets he is transcribing. But will his relationship with Madeleine last?

(I'm tempted to ask, 'Who cares?')

A review: http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2003/11/09/in_war_and_peace_two_selfish_seducers_follow_their _blissfollow_their_bliss/

What 'genre' would you say he was writing in? Pretentious pseudo-intellectual luvvie poseur? :cool2:

Just a snippet of the New york Times review of 'The Calligrapher'.

Too often in ''The Calligrapher,'' however, the border separating comic sublimity from mere bombast is violated. An annoying and pretentious London club is given this annoying and pretentious sendup: ''Situated in a fashionably dismal Soho back alley, it is silted up most days of the week with the detritus of humanity -- fabulously talentless men and women who ooze and slime through the half-light in a ceaseless search for the dwindling plankton of each other's personalities.'' This doesn't sing, it thumps.

Docx, a columnist by trade, frequently writes like a columnist by habit, in terse editorial sound bites. Worse, he occasionally seems like a don marveling at his own diary entry. (''Au sujet de: I must mention that my explorations in the magnificent world of tea came to an end two or three years ago when I at last beheld the regal splendor of Darjeeling.'')

Sounds like a book i would avoide like the plague. Give me something by the 'amateurish' Larsson over that nonsense anyday.

[hibsbollah]

:greengrin

Film noir provided a living for a host of bad actors and actresses otherwise unemployable in the film industry.

It also produced a number of very good films, some of which transcend the genre to the extent of being masterpieces.

"A Touch of Evil" (Orson Welles, Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh); "Sunset Boulevard" (William Holden and Gloria Swanson); "The Maltese Falcon", "The Big Sleep", "Key Largo" (Bogart); for example, all black-and-white, all to a greater or lesser degree classics, each in its own way.

Is "Night of the Hunter" film noir? I think it is - awesome.

"Cape Fear" - unforgettable if only for Bob Mitchum's performance as Max Cady.

And what about "The Third Man"? :cool2:

But then there are all the 'B' movies with guys like Alan Ladd and William Bendix and Brian Donleavy; or embarrassments like Orson Welles's cod-Irish accent in "The Lady From Shanghai" or that creakiest of plot-lines, "Double Indemnity"...

But I love 'em all... :devil:

Now you're talking:thumbsup:Double Indemnity is absolute genius, GENIUS. Bogart was king of the noir, Dark Passage is one you should check out. I always thought Hitchcock was like a film noir director as well; Suspicion, Dial M for Murder, Rear Window.

I've never seen A Touch of Evil, will investigate further:greengrin

[LiverpoolHibs]

I thought this was a spectacularly stupid piece of writing. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/dec/12/genre-versus-literary-fiction-edward-docx)

I think its main problem is in being spectacularly boring rather than spectacularly stupid. It's just a rehashing of what hundreds and hundreds of literary critics - Harold Bloom and Queenie Leavis particularly - have written on the necessary delineation between genre and literary fiction with no real discussion of what's particularly different about Dan Brown (who I don't think should even be considered an author) and Stieg Larsson (who I don't think is very good but is clearly a good few notches above Brown) in this regard.

If he'd maybe discussed what's substantially different about, say, a detective novel or a fantasy novel and a bildungsroman, a kunstlerroman or a roman a clef then he might have been able to make a semi-original argument - as it stands it's just a fluff piece with **** all to say.

The obvious retort to him would be Shakespeare. Is he less of a writer because he works within the confines (whilst obviously often playing around with it) of tragedy, comedy, or the sonnet form? Is he even lesser because he not only did that but often based plays wholesale on already existing works? For that matter, is free verse intrinsically better than metred verse?

There's certainly a point to be made on the subject, it's just that he never makes it.

N.B. I really like that D'Israeli quote, though.

[--------]

Now you're talking:thumbsup:Double Indemnity is absolute genius, GENIUS. Bogart was king of the noir, Dark Passage is one you should check out. I always thought Hitchcock was like a film noir director as well; Suspicion, Dial M for Murder, Rear Window.

I've never seen A Touch of Evil, will investigate further:greengrin

For 'Touch of Evil', make sure you get the 1986 restored cut, as Welles intended the film to be. It's Welles at his absolute best IMO, older, overweight, and horrible. Well worth the trouble of getting it, honestly. Akim Tamiroff, Zsa Zsa Gabor, and Marlene Dietrich, plus a lot of very good 'stock' actors - if you know 'Citizen Kane' you'll recognise the faces.

I will acquire Dark Passage very soon. Thanks for the tip.

'Double Indemnity' may have a creaky plot line - would he really be killed falling off a train at that speed? And the apartment door opening outwards? But MacMurray, Stanwyck and Edward G are brilliant. Wonderful opening sequence, too.

I really like 'The Asphalt Jungle', too.

[barcahibs]

Was given a kindle for Christmas and have to say that despite my reservations I'm absolutely loving it so far.

The screen is totally natural to read, like looking at a proper book page, its nothing like normal electronic screens. The inbuilt dictionary is really handy and the ability to highlight something and then look it up on google or straight onto wikipedia is fantastic.

Theres some great bargains to be had in the free books section. I'm currently reading Ephraim Douglas's Great Britain and the American Civil War which is a really readable and (so far) thorough account of Britain's role in that conflict - free on Kindle, £25 otherwise. Just finished Jerome K Jerome's Three Men in a Boat and Three Men on a Bummel (not as dodgy as it sounds :greengrin ), both great reads. I've downloaded 50 or so classics, history, science and Scottish interest books for free so far. I would be interested to hear any recommendations from other kindle users?

I have spent some money, 75p for the complete works of Robert Burns and 75p for a classic Sci fi anthology with 20 books from the likes of HG Wells, Jules Verne and Arthur Conan Doyle. Could probably have got them all free but its handy having them together.

It handles PDFs very well so far, I've downloaded PDF versions of all my OU coursebooks onto it and they work fine.

You can download a free sample of any book which is really useful for sorting out the dross.

You can adjust the text size, meaning I can read it without my glasses which is handy sometimes.

I was a bit dubious about pictures but they display really well - albeit only in black and white.

Battery life is really good, its only been charged once since I got it at Christmas - and that was mainly because I was running the battery down using the wifi constantly.

On the downside
The free books aren't all that well organised, many don't have a synopsis or any reviews so its a bit hit and miss what you get.

It doesn't preserve page numbers so its useless for referencing.

There's a 'back' button (which takes you through a history of your recent actions) but no 'forward' button, if you accidentally go too far back there's no quick way to fix it.

Many books are no cheaper on Kindle than they are to buy a physical copy. This just seems wrong somehow.

The text to speak function is pretty rubbish, the computerised voice doesn't pause naturally like a person would and just sounds weird.

Its a bit fiddly to flick back a few pages to check something or flick forward to see where the end of the chapter is. This is countered a bit by the fact that there's a search function so if a character or plot point pops up which you've forgotten the earlier details of, you can quickly refresh your memory.

I think you're supposed to read it one handed but I find this really awkward. It doesn't feel natural holding it upright with both hands either. You can however rotate the screen and read it 'sideways' which is easier with two hands. Or buy one of the covers which gives an extra bit for your spare hand to cling onto.

It's too light. This is related to the above, it doesn't quite feel natural to hold as its lighter than a book should be. I'm hoping I'll get used to this.

Its not waterproof. Theres a market out there for anyone who can make a case so it can be read in the bath!

There's no way to lend books. The mrs got one as well and its a bit rubbish that we can't share books. Though I suspect there's a way round this :devil:

So far I'd really recommend it to anyone though I have to say I'm still going to be buying hard copies of my 'most wanted' books :greengrin

[Greentinted]

After a bit of swithering I took a chance with the Sony eReader and aye, its a decent bit of kit if you're into your reading.
For free downloads compatable with most formats including Kindle this site (http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page) is brilliant, particularly if your into your 'classics'. There are a lot of hard-to-get or otherwise expensive texts (I was mighty relieved to be able to acquire a workable download of Lockhart's Life of Walter Scott for instance - a seriously expensive text in hard copy) and the eBook technology would appear to pay for itself with less than 20 or so downloads (good going when you think that the basic models can handle 1600 at any one time).

[--------]

Was given a kindle for Christmas and have to say that despite my reservations I'm absolutely loving it so far.

The screen is totally natural to read, like looking at a proper book page, its nothing like normal electronic screens. The inbuilt dictionary is really handy and the ability to highlight something and then look it up on google or straight onto wikipedia is fantastic.

Theres some great bargains to be had in the free books section. I'm currently reading Ephraim Douglas's Great Britain and the American Civil War which is a really readable and (so far) thorough account of Britain's role in that conflict - free on Kindle, £25 otherwise. Just finished Jerome K Jerome's Three Men in a Boat and Three Men on a Bummel (not as dodgy as it sounds :greengrin ), both great reads. I've downloaded 50 or so classics, history, science and Scottish interest books for free so far. I would be interested to hear any recommendations from other kindle users?

I have spent some money, 75p for the complete works of Robert Burns and 75p for a classic Sci fi anthology with 20 books from the likes of HG Wells, Jules Verne and Arthur Conan Doyle. Could probably have got them all free but its handy having them together.

It handles PDFs very well so far, I've downloaded PDF versions of all my OU coursebooks onto it and they work fine.

You can download a free sample of any book which is really useful for sorting out the dross.

You can adjust the text size, meaning I can read it without my glasses which is handy sometimes.

I was a bit dubious about pictures but they display really well - albeit only in black and white.

Battery life is really good, its only been charged once since I got it at Christmas - and that was mainly because I was running the battery down using the wifi constantly.

On the downside
The free books aren't all that well organised, many don't have a synopsis or any reviews so its a bit hit and miss what you get.

It doesn't preserve page numbers so its useless for referencing.

There's a 'back' button (which takes you through a history of your recent actions) but no 'forward' button, if you accidentally go too far back there's no quick way to fix it.

Many books are no cheaper on Kindle than they are to buy a physical copy. This just seems wrong somehow.

The text to speak function is pretty rubbish, the computerised voice doesn't pause naturally like a person would and just sounds weird.

Its a bit fiddly to flick back a few pages to check something or flick forward to see where the end of the chapter is. This is countered a bit by the fact that there's a search function so if a character or plot point pops up which you've forgotten the earlier details of, you can quickly refresh your memory.

I think you're supposed to read it one handed but I find this really awkward. It doesn't feel natural holding it upright with both hands either. You can however rotate the screen and read it 'sideways' which is easier with two hands. Or buy one of the covers which gives an extra bit for your spare hand to cling onto.

It's too light. This is related to the above, it doesn't quite feel natural to hold as its lighter than a book should be. I'm hoping I'll get used to this.

Its not waterproof. Theres a market out there for anyone who can make a case so it can be read in the bath!

There's no way to lend books. The mrs got one as well and its a bit rubbish that we can't share books. Though I suspect there's a way round this :devil:

So far I'd really recommend it to anyone though I have to say I'm still going to be buying hard copies of my 'most wanted' books :greengrin


After a bit of swithering I took a chance with the Sony eReader and aye, its a decent bit of kit if you're into your reading.
For free downloads compatable with most formats including Kindle this site (http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page) is brilliant, particularly if your into your 'classics'. There are a lot of hard-to-get or otherwise expensive texts (I was mighty relieved to be able to acquire a workable download of Lockhart's Life of Walter Scott for instance - a seriously expensive text in hard copy) and the eBook technology would appear to pay for itself with less than 20 or so downloads (good going when you think that the basic models can handle 1600 at any one time).



Hmmm. :hmmm:

Never tried either of these doofers, but I suspect I'd still rather have the book in my hand.

On the other hand, one of these might solve the problem of how I fit all my books into a much smaller house when I retire....

BTW - I can recommend "The Given Day" (Lehane) and "The Way Home" (Pelecanos).

And also an excellent, if rather depressing, bit of history - Donald Rayfield, "Stalin and His Hangmen", an account of dear old Uncle Joe and his Famous Five - Dzerzhinski, Menzhinski, Yagoda, Yezhov and Beria.

Horrible bunch of chaps all round, really, and a bit worrying to realise that these guys were the darlings of the British Labour Left throughout the period in question....

[Leicester Fan]

Hmmm. :hmmm:

Never tried either of these doofers, but I suspect I'd still rather have the book in my hand.


Don't knock it till you've tried it, these e-books are fantastic.

[Greentinted]

Hmmm. :hmmm:

Never tried either of these doofers, but I suspect I'd still rather have the book in my hand.

On the other hand, one of these might solve the problem of how I fit all my books into a much smaller house when I retire....


I don't look on it as a replacement for books just something which offers a bit of an alternative in the right context (good for travel what with baggage weight restrictions, and speaking as a bloke in a small flat with approx 4000 books, as you say, space saving is a major plus point as is the alleviation of wallet pressure)
I never throw a book out (that's a criminal offence in my book) but unless I somehow manage to overthrow the local aristocracy and sequester a small, yet spacious, stately hoose, so far as my so-called 'classic' collection is concerned, it seems the way to go.

[heretoday]

Whatever turns you on. I'll stick with paperbacks from the charity shop or library books.

It's what's between the covers that matters, not the medium.

[Twa Cairpets]

I got a Kindle at Christmas too - loving it so far. Wont replace books, but if youre away/travelling saves carrying half a library to read something matching your mood.

Just finished reading Shackeltons "South" about the 1914-16 antarctic expedition on it (free). Absolutely stunning read. Anyone who was bitching about the weather in December should read this to get a wee bit of perspective...

[PeeJay]

Just read War by Sebastian Junger /author of The Perfect Storm - an interesting insight into young guys in Afghanistan at a front-line post in the Korengal Valley and how they deal with firefights on an almost everyday basis - I found it captivating reading - he also made a feature-length documentary film entitled "Restrepo" along with Tim Hetherington - an English photojournalist, detailing on video the events in the book. It's not a book about the politics of the war, i.e. right or wrong, but how young men deal with it - or don't (as in when they return home).

[LiverpoolHibs]

Just read War by Sebastian Junger /author of The Perfect Storm - an interesting insight into young guys in Afghanistan at a front-line post in the Korengal Valley and how they deal with firefights on an almost everyday basis - I found it captivating reading - he also made a feature-length documentary film entitled "Restrepo" along with Tim Hetherington - an English photojournalist, detailing on video the events in the book. It's not a book about the politics of the war, i.e. right or wrong, but how young men deal with it - or don't (as in when they return home).

Restrepo is absolutely great. I've read quite a few of Junger's articles about Afghanistan (which are certainly not apolitical, I don't think Restrepo is either) but I'll have to get hold of War.

Just about to finish True Grit by Charles Portis before I go and see the film. I can't believe I haven't read it before, it's superb and I really hope it gets more widely read as a result of the film.

[Jim44]

I read a lot.

I like true crime as well as fictional crime thrillers by the likes of James Patterson, Lee Child and Michael Connelly. I also read a lot of books about WW2

Snap.

[barcahibs]

For free downloads compatable with most formats including Kindle this site (http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page) is brilliant, particularly if your into your 'classics'.

Good shout, I think thats where I eventually found a Conneticut Yankee in King Arthur's court which Amazon wanted me to pay for :grr:

If you go to the Amazon website and check the free books section in its kindle store it provides a load of links to other non-Amazon websites which provide free books. They should work just as well with non kindle book readers.


I don't look on it as a replacement for books just something which offers a bit of an alternative in the right context (good for travel what with baggage weight restrictions, and speaking as a bloke in a small flat with approx 4000 books, as you say, space saving is a major plus point as is the alleviation of wallet pressure)
I never throw a book out (that's a criminal offence in my book) but unless I somehow manage to overthrow the local aristocracy and sequester a small, yet spacious, stately hoose, so far as my so-called 'classic' collection is concerned, it seems the way to go.

Its space saving which is the big thing for me, there is literally nowhere else in my flat to put books, I've got a pile beside my phone which are never going to find a home as it is. I generally want to take 4-5 books on holiday with me too and this is going to be a real space/weight saver. When I was wee my mum used to make me leave any books I'd read on holiday behind to save space... I still feel the trauma.


Whatever turns you on. I'll stick with paperbacks from the charity shop or library books.

It's what's between the covers that matters, not the medium.

Thats kind of the point I was trying to make. I was against book readers because they weren't 'real books' but having used one I'm now prepared to admit that in most cases it is the content that matters not the medium.

As I said before though there are still many books that I'm going to continue buying 'real' copies of because books are still beautiful objects in their own right. I'm mainly loving the kindle for the access its giving me to free or cheap books which I've always wanted to read but which aren't in my local library and which I would never have justified buying.

I'll also still be visiting my favourite shop in the world - Leakey's second hand bookstore in Inverness whenever I can.


I got a Kindle at Christmas too - loving it so far. Wont replace books, but if youre away/travelling saves carrying half a library to read something matching your mood.

Just finished reading Shackeltons "South" about the 1914-16 antarctic expedition on it (free). Absolutely stunning read. Anyone who was bitching about the weather in December should read this to get a wee bit of perspective...

I have South downloaded and in my queue to read. In a similiar vein I also have Isabella Byrd's The Englishwoman in America, Cook's journals of his expeditions to Australia and the South Pole and Richard Francis Burton's First Footsteps in East Africa. All free.

[--------]

Almost thou persuadest me... to get a Kindle. :greengrin

It hadn't dawned on me how easy it must be to transport a library in one.

Hm - this I must think about....

Shackleton's "South" is indeed a remarkable piece of writing - a companion piece might be "South With Endurance - Shackleton's Antarctic Expedition 1914-1917; the Photographs of Frank Hurley". I got it as present about 7 years ago - it has some of the most amazing Antarctic photographs I've ever seen. Especially considering the equipment Hurley had with him and the hardships the expedition went through.

[heretoday]

A Quiet Flame - Philip Kerr. One of the second wave of his detective stories.

Starts in 1950 Argentina and flashes back to 1932 Berlin.

Disappointing. It ends up as an unconvincing caper and loses the plot completely.

[Hiber-nation]

I saw the Hibernian Annual 2011 for a quid in Sports Direct today....

[Mixu62]

I saw the Hibernian Annual 2011 for a quid in Sports Direct today....

Does it start in a blaze of glory then fall apart half way through?!:devil:

Just recently finished For Whom the Bell Tolls, and now halfway thru Beggars Banquet by Ian Rankin. Both excellent. Picked up a complete works of Hemmingway in a 2nd hand place over here in Auckland, all 6 novels in 1 doorstop of a tome. Snows of Kilimanjaro is next. (apologies if spelled wrong)