What book are you reading atm??

Collie D

gutenberg wrote: »

Major Max, I would be curious to hear what you think of I Am Pilgrim, it seems to come very highly recommended. I have a long journey coming up and am wondering about purchasing it for the Kindle (sorry, I can't seem to quote you...).

It's a good old fashioned thriller. Good story, interesting characters and a page turner. None too taxing on the brain and easy to get into. Exactly the kind of thing I would be looking for on a long trip.

JohnMearsheimer

At Home by Bill Bryson. Very entertaining and informative as usual.

Skippy dies. It's a good read. Quite enjoying it.

Scuid Mhór

Finished Gravity's Rainbow last night, absolutely incredible. I think my heart might have stopped at one point. Don't saunter through life without trying to read this at least once.

IvyTheTerrible

gutenberg wrote: »

I have finally started A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson. It's a companion novel to Life After Life, which I absolutely love.

Major Max, I would be curious to hear what you think of I Am Pilgrim, it seems to come very highly recommended. I have a long journey coming up and am wondering about purchasing it for the Kindle (sorry, I can't seem to quote you...).

I tried to read it recently and couldn't finish it. Thought it was really badly written and clichéd!

Collie D

IvyTheTerrible wrote: »

I tried to read it recently and couldn't finish it. Thought it was really badly written and clichéd!

I knew somebody would disagree with me :-)

Can be a bit clichéd all right which is why I called it an old fashioned thriller. It's all subjective really but I found it to be a nice switch the brain off and enjoy novel. Obviously not everyone's cup of tea but sometimes you just need to watch Terminator rather than Schindler's List and for me the same applies to reading I think.

Terminator is a great movie by the way. Was just first action movie that came to mind.

IvyTheTerrible

Collie D wrote: »

I knew somebody would disagree with me :-)

Can be a bit clichéd all right which is why I called it an old fashioned thriller. It's all subjective really but I found it to be a nice switch the brain off and enjoy novel. Obviously not everyone's cup of tea but sometimes you just need to watch Terminator rather than Schindler's List and for me the same applies to reading I think.

Terminator is a great movie by the way. Was just first action movie that came to mind.

Oh don't get me wrong, I love Terminator and Schindler's List, I love books that are just popcorn if you get me. But, IMO, there is well written popcorn, and badly written popcorn. I'm not a book snob, that's all.

brinty

IvyTheTerrible wrote: »

Oh don't get me wrong, I love Terminator and Schindler's List, I love books that are just popcorn if you get me. But, IMO, there is well written popcorn, and badly written popcorn. I'm not a book snob, that's all.[/QUOTE]

You sound like a total book snob saying something like that

Still buried in Ken Follet Fall of Giants. about half way through ti

Menas

Just finished "The truth about the Harry Quebert affair'...all 614 pages of it. Not a bad read but a few too many twists and turns for my liking.

Have started 'The Goldfinch'...sure its only 860 pages long...should be finished by christmas.

Mars Bar

JohnMearsheimer wrote: »

At Home by Bill Bryson. Very entertaining and informative as usual.

This is what I'm reading too and I'm finding it hard to enjoy as I read a few paragraphs and then I'm out like a light. I used to be about to finish a book in 3 or 4 days! It is interesting though.

GLaDOS

Started The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham last night, after someone mentioned it in here awhile ago. Already really enjoying it, really like his writing style. Can see myself checking out his other work.

eviltwin

Just started HHhH by Laurent Binet. Looks promising.

Ice Storm

eviltwin wrote: »

Just started HHhH by Laurent Binet. Looks promising.

I'd be interested to know what you think. I only heard of this recently when I was in Prague and visited the scene of events in this book.

Vojera

Vojera wrote: »

What do you think of it? I got it in a 3 for 2 in Eason last year but haven't gotten around to it yet.

I'm on Volume 10 of Sailor Moon. Parts of the story are quite silly and repetitive but I'm enjoying it nonetheless. It feels like it's ramping up to a conclusion now anyway.

I'm only 6 chapters in, but it's sound so far; each chapter alternates between 2 different boys; I'm intrigued as to where it's headed

Birneybau

brinty wrote: »

IvyTheTerrible wrote: »

Oh don't get me wrong, I love Terminator and Schindler's List, I love books that are just popcorn if you get me. But, IMO, there is well written popcorn, and badly written popcorn. I'm not a book snob, that's all.[/QUOTE]

You sound like a total book snob saying something like that

Still buried in Ken Follet Fall of Giants. about half way through ti

Sounds more discerning than anything else. It's a fact that books are either well written or not. Does not make one a snob for saying so.

Birneybau

ScienceNerd wrote: »

Started The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham last night, after someone mentioned it in here awhile ago. Already really enjoying it, really like his writing style. Can see myself checking out his other work.

It's fantastic. My neighbour has a thin tree that sways and it gives me the willies having read that.

scream

Currently reading Remembrance of the Daleks by Ben Aaronovitch featuring the 7th Doctor and Ace. Also working slowly through an anthology called The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories by Michael Cox & R. A. Gilbert.

tom tit tot

The Eye of the World, by Robert Jordan

Reading Dune for the first time and playing Mass Effect at the same time.. Both are great and it could be the start of a year of sci-fi.

ZzubZzub

Just finished reading Red Rising, by Pierce Brown. (book 1 of 3) A sci fi book, described as Enders Game meets Hunger Games meets Game of Thrones. I think that description doesn't do it justice.

Absolutely brilliant book. Kinda reminded me of some 40k books. Well written, and I'm genuinely devastated that I've nearly finished it, drawing out the last 20 pages to make it last! #2 gets delivered Wednesday. I'm not looking forward to the long wait to the 3rd one!!


The Earth is dying. Darrow is a Red, a miner in the interior of Mars. His mission is to extract enough precious elements to one day tame the surface of the planet and allow humans to live on it. The Reds are humanity's last hope.

Or so it appears, until the day Darrow discovers it's all a lie. That Mars has been habitable - and inhabited - for generations, by a class of people calling themselves the Golds. A class of people who look down on Darrow and his fellows as slave labour, to be exploited and worked to death without a second thought.

Until the day that Darrow, with the help of a mysterious group of rebels, disguises himself as a Gold and infiltrates their command school, intent on taking down his oppressors from the inside. But the command school is a battlefield - and Darrow isn't the only student with an agenda.

FreeFallin94

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. Chilling in parts, and I'm only 100 pages in.

chops018

I'm in the middle of Stephen King's 11/22/63 and it is very entertaining so far. Hasn't been a boring chapter yet.

I am thinking of sticking with Stephen King and getting The Tommyknockers next, although I see on the wiki page it says that the author himself looked back on the novel unfavorably, describing it as "an awful book." Has anyone read it and what do they think?

eisenberg1

chops018 wrote: »

I'm in the middle of Stephen King's 11/22/63 and it is very entertaining so far. Hasn't been a boring chapter yet.

I am thinking of sticking with Stephen King and getting The Tommyknockers next, although I see on the wiki page it says that the author himself looked back on the novel unfavorably, describing it as "an awful book." Has anyone read it and what do they think?

I did, years ago. I thought it was awful, and I would be a fan of King.

Rubberlegs

chops018 wrote: »

I'm in the middle of Stephen King's 11/22/63 and it is very entertaining so far. Hasn't been a boring chapter yet.

I am thinking of sticking with Stephen King and getting The Tommyknockers next, although I see on the wiki page it says that the author himself looked back on the novel unfavorably, describing it as "an awful book." Has anyone read it and what do they think?

11/22/63 is absolutely brilliant, one of his best in recent years. I read The Tommyknockers years ago, I think I found it a bit hard going from what I remember. It is one of his forays into science fiction which would not be my favourite story type. The only King book that I had to give up on was Dreamcatcher, I must dust it off and give it another go sometime

I've just finished Joshua Rubenstein's brilliant biography of Trotsky.

http://www.amazon.com/Leon-Trotsky-Revolutionarys-Jewish-Lives/dp/0300198329

I first investigated Trotsky when I was 17, and a friend told me he was the Russian Napoleon. This sparked my interest, but unfortunately every biography I started (and never finished) was as boring as a Tolstoy novel. How could such a great man be reduced to such a tedious telling?

Well finally, here is a great Trotsky biography (in less than 250 pages).

If anyone is considering reading Trotsky's biography, avoid Ivan Deutcher's 'classic' and go for this one instead.

In keeping with my interest in tyrants and would-be-tyrants, does anyone know of a good Franco biography?

coolhull

eisenberg1 wrote: »

I did, years ago. I thought it was awful, and I would be a fan of King.

I agree, and I'm a big King fan. His really early stuff was the best. Books like Carrie, The Shining,, The Stand, Misery, The Green Mile were all brilliant. Tommyknockers, Insomnia, and the Dark Tower series were all total sh*te

Barna77

Read Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin. Sometimes it felt a bit pretentious. Short book, took me a week to read.

Reading Elizabeth Bowen's The Heat of the Day. It's taking me a while to get into it.

K-9

Finished 1984, very good but from reading bits and pieces about Orwell, not that original. Seems a lot was owed to a Russian book called We.

The other thing is I finished 2 brothers by Ben Elton and when you consider the time frames, 1984 seems to be describing the Nazi regime, but a few years later. 2 Brothers is very good, its the book I always knew Elton had in him. Poignant, scary and plenty of dark humour. He does a good job of highlighting the stupidity of some of the laws, but people were willing to swallow it.

Things like the Nazi Youth, propaganda, censorship etc are in 1984 so taking it in that context, it doesn't seem very futuristic at all.

One thing that gets forgotten is that Germany was starting to recover from the hyper inflation and collapsed economy by 1928/29 but then the crash happened.

As a warning note though still very relevant.

GLaDOS

ScienceNerd wrote: »

Started The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham last night, after someone mentioned it in here awhile ago. Already really enjoying it, really like his writing style. Can see myself checking out his other work.

Birneybau wrote: »

It's fantastic. My neighbour has a thin tree that sways and it gives me the willies having read that.

Finished it there, fantastic book, absolutely loved it. Shall definitely be checking out his other work.

Moving onto Stephen King's son: Joe Hill, Heart Shaped Box.

quickbeam

ScienceNerd wrote: »

Finished it there, fantastic book, absolutely loved it. Shall definitely be checking out his other work.

I've read Trouble With Lichen, The Kraken Wakes and The Chrysalids. All fantastic but "Triffids" is still my favourite. The Midwich Cuckoos I've not read yet, but it's on the list.