Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Current Reading - Books best thread

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    Originally posted by Lang Spoon View Post
    Oh yeah his travel books were great. Waspish but never dull. That whole genre seems about dead now, travel writing if done at all is often combined with fairly sketchy popular history or trying too hard “characters” filling the pages with wacky drivel, 10th rate Bryson stuff (and I don’t like Bryson to start with).
    Maybe not, see my post above (not quite "travel" but generates the same excitement.)

    Comment


      I'm reading Paul Merton's autobiography at the moment, it's an easy read and quite good once I was able to stop reading it in his voice.

      I have also recently read another one of the Freakonomics books, it was ok but nothing new from their podcasts or other theories.

      I'm enjoying using the local library as I'm accessing books I'd not normally pay for.

      Comment


        Tim Moore is not bad, but light. He is less full of himself than Stuart Maconie, in that he is capable of self-deprecation and seems to actually do some proper location research, like actually staying in the worst hotels, etc in his badly titled You are Awful (But I Like You): Travels in Unloved Britain

        Nul Points is good on the Eurovision Song Contest, including some decent research and a fair amount of empathy. Again I think he puts more effort into it than Maconie would have done.

        Comment


          That’s quite a story alright Amor, exactly what I’d like to read on the freezing Sunday to come.
          Last edited by Lang Spoon; 23-02-2018, 00:38.

          Comment


            Just read a Mick Herron book - “Slow Horses”. There were 5 or 6 by him in the same Chester-leStreet charity shop but I only bought 2.
            He has local connections but now Oxford-based.

            Entertaining and nicely-toned spy thriller.

            Comment


              Tim Moore’s cycling journey books are all great. I remember the Santiago pilgrimage with donkey one very fondly, too.

              Comment


                The Berlin 1936 book by Oliver Hilmes just showed up on my kindle so I guess it;s out in English now.

                Comment


                  I liked Dave Gorman's Too Much Information without being blown away by it. It's not really a comedy book, more like a semi-serious observational piece. It's lightweight, no swearing, only one LOL joke, but interesting enough to get me through a train journey, say.

                  Comment


                    I've been on holiday this week and treated myself to a book in a proper bookshop before coming away. The book was 'The Boy on the Bridge', which is a sequel / prequel / same universe companion to 'The Girl with all the Gifts'.

                    I loved TGWATG when I read it last year. It's a zombie book, but not really about zombies. I had high expectations of TBOTB and it didn't disappoint. Not as original as TGWATG obviously, but really expanded on things well, brought in some new characters, explained a few things, expanded the setting.

                    There's a creeping sense of doom throughout. As the reader you know what each character is doing and their motivations, but the characters don't know, so you can see how they are collectively missing the opportunities to save themselves. I wasn't completely convinced by the titular character and there are a couple of inconsistencies in the way the pathogen that turns people into killer zombies works. But I have no real complaints.

                    Comment


                      OK. Being snowed in while on holiday means this morning I read a Stephen King novella I found in an Oxfam a few days ago. 'Blockade Billy' is a short story about a baseball prodigy who was excised from the record books. It's written as a reminiscence by Billy's former coach who is now in a nursing home. I enjoyed it, mainly because it captures that low grade dirt of professional baseball in the late 50s.

                      There are a couple of surprising epithets and words in it. Something is described as "no wider than a cunt's hair" which I found a bit out of place. Maybe because I'd not heard that description before.

                      There's also a short story called 'Morality', which is classic deal with the devil stuff. It felt like it was trying to be clever and revelatory about the human condition. But it wasn't.

                      Comment


                        Bit worried I'd run out of reading material then found Mrs Thistle had brought Coraline by Neil Gaiman. Score!

                        Comment


                          My snowbound read this week was Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, a debut novel by Gail Honeyman that’s picked up some gongs. Funny & sad, well written without being verbose, and a thought-provoking joy to read.

                          Comment


                            Just finished Gareth Thomas's autobiography, it's an amazing and compelling read. I cannot recommend it enough.

                            Comment


                              https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football/

                              This is the strangest thing I’ve ever read. I don’t know what to make of it, but it’s the first “e-book” I’ve seen the point of.

                              Comment


                                Are you not familiar with Jon’s work?

                                He’s been doing this kind of thing for years.

                                Comment


                                  Nah, this is all new. And headspinning brilliant.

                                  Comment


                                    Speaking of Roman stuff: the hot new pop bestseller on Rome is The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease and the End of an Empire. And it's pretty good. The argument here is twofold: first, that the golden age of rome depended on some very specific climatic conditions which by the late second century were starting to disappear and second, that two or three very specific waves of plague - combined with weaker food supplies due to a changing climate - is what really did in first the roman empire and then later the Byzantines. The next-to-last chapter on the plague of Justinian is pretty mind-boggling since he suggests the Byzantines lost something like 40% of their population in a matter of months. It's good, maybe a little too heavy on disease biology for my tastes but deffo worth a read.
                                    Last edited by Anton Gramscescu; 13-03-2018, 20:12.

                                    Comment


                                      Originally posted by Anton Gramscescu View Post
                                      The Berlin 1936 book by Oliver Hilmes just showed up on my kindle so I guess it;s out in English now.
                                      I did read this, btw. Liked it but didn't love it. It was kind of a fun way to take a slice of the Nazi regime and dissect it and show what every day life as like. But maybe not the best two weeks of the Nazi regime to show its true awfulness. So it kind of felt like it was trying to emulate Moscow 1937 but was too short to accomplish the task. And it wasn't even consistently good on the Games themselves (again, too short).

                                      Comment


                                        I dunno Bruno. Literacy did mostly disappear, but for your average proto peon, life may have been better than in the Classical slave villa and urbanised World (which even in the good times, could be filled with war bands and nastiness). For someone who was above unfree status, the Anglo Saxon lifestyle may have been a lot more attractive, even somewhat egalitarian compared to the strict hierarchies of the Romano-British hybrid civilization. (And may help explain An English identity being adopted by most, without any real evidence of large scale population displacement or patterns of massacres).
                                        Last edited by Lang Spoon; 14-03-2018, 21:02.

                                        Comment


                                          Read Nicola Barker's H(a)ppy today. I really wanted to like it. I enjoyed Darkmans and The Yips. But this... just didn't take. A future world with little sense of what it was really like. Literary devices that I feel like I've read versions of before.

                                          Comment


                                            I've just finished The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne on Audible.

                                            I didn't know anything about him before I started. Just by looking at my user name you can guess that I'm quite a fan of long term, chronological, fictional biographies. But I thought this was a beautiful, intelligent book. Extremely intense and personal about Irish social history.

                                            I'd be interested to know any Irish board members' views on both the book and the author.

                                            Comment


                                              Originally posted by Bruno
                                              "Dark Ages were awfully dark" camp
                                              I am very tired because the kitten we're looking after did not let me sleep last night, and I had to read this three times because the first two times my brain understood, "Dark ages were awfully camp".

                                              That is all.

                                              Comment


                                                You could have commissioned a sitcom from that premise in the Golden Age of ITV.
                                                Last edited by Lang Spoon; 17-03-2018, 02:10.

                                                Comment


                                                  Originally posted by Antepli Ejderha View Post
                                                  Just finished Gareth Thomas's autobiography, it's an amazing and compelling read. I cannot recommend it enough
                                                  Cool. What did he think of Paul Darrow?

                                                  Comment


                                                    Last night I finished English for he Natives: Discover the Grammar You Don't Know You Know by Harry Ritchie. A recommendation from my new Society for Editors and Proofreaders friends. Pretty interesting.

                                                    Tonight I'll start something else. Haven't decided what yet, though.

                                                    Comment

                                                    Working...
                                                    X