Question What are you reading?

[londonblue]

Enjoying Bill Bryson's The Road to Little Dribbling.His "sequel" twenty years on to "Notes from a small Island".

Loved this:-"Today the fastest train to the west,from Paddington to Penzance,takes five and a half hours to travel 280 miles,at an average speed of about 50 miles and hour....It is like rigor mortis with scenery".

I might have to read that. I loved Notes from a Small Island. One line that has stuck with me since I read it was that he said he "landed in England with more on my mind than in it".

He's brilliant.

For me, I've now read every Frederick Forsyth book, and am now making my way through the Ken Follett back catalogue (I've just read Whiteout and Triple - both very good). I'm just about to start a new one (The Key to Rebecca), but after that I'm having a little detour to read The Girl in the Spiders Web. It'll be interesting to see if Lagercrantz has done Larsson justice.

 

[steveo]

Gray Mountain John Grisham

Grisham books used to be brilliant but he seems to have run out of thrilling endings. This thing just petered out with 3 or 4 story lines still open.

5/10 - not very good.

 

[londonblue]

Gray Mountain John Grisham

Grisham books used to be brilliant but he seems to have run out of thrilling endings. This thing just petered out with 3 or 4 story lines still open.

5/10 - not very good.

I wouldn't have given it 5. I think it was worse than that. It had so much potential, but didn't really get going. However, I suspect the point he was trying to make is that the law isn't always exciting, and that sometime things do just peter out.

However, we know that, and we don't need to read books about it.

I'll still read his next one, because he does throw in a poor one everyone now and again, but is usually back on form pretty sharpish.

 

[steveo]

I wouldn't have given it 5. I think it was worse than that. It had so much potential, but didn't really get going. However, I suspect the point he was trying to make is that the law isn't always exciting, and that sometime things do just peter out.

However, we know that, and we don't need to read books about it.

I'll still read his next one, because he does throw in a poor one everyone now and again, but is usually back on form pretty sharpish.

When I saw how many pages were left and how many loose ends there were I was expecting to find there would be a sequel. But as far as I know there isn't.

 

[MK Shrimper]

Going off Alarming - P2 of Danny Baker's autobiography.

 

[Ricey]

American Sniper - 8/10 - Brilliant book and really great read, shame the film didn't capture the best parts of the book. Also a lot of discrepancies between the book and film. There was no need to Hollywood the film because it's a truly amazing and sad story. Not quite sure Bradley Cooper gets the character right from what I've read.

 

[steveo]

Easy Company. Don Malarkey. Expecting this to be brilliant

 

[Tangled up in Blue]

Svetlana Alexievich's Voices From Chernobyl.Deeply moving.

 

[Tangled up in Blue]

Just started Elvis Costello's Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink.

Great read.

 

[Tangled up in Blue]

Just started Jonathan Franzen's Purity.

Looks like quite a page turner.Good news as its a pretty long book.

 

[Tangled up in Blue]

Billy Bragg.A Lover Sings.

Excellent introduction and notes to this book of lyrics.

I'm old enough to remember when Donovan was touted as the new/next British Dylan.That title rightly belongs to BB.

 

[RHB]

Just finished Warriors of the Storm by Bernard Cornwell, the 9th book in the Saxon Chronicles, on which The Last Kingdom TV series is based. If you've read the other 8, or are a Cornwell fan, you won't be disappointed. Uhtred does the biz from the opening page to the last. Great read.​

 

[Tangled up in Blue]

Just finished Ian Rankis's excellent :*Even Dogs in the Wild.

Rebus is retired these days.Food for thought.I haven't got too much longer either.

*Title is based on The Associates 1980 track https://youtu.be/aLA89-kgixo from the Bowie inspired The Affectionate Punch album.

 

[SonicShrimper]

Finally got the latest Alex Verus, the last two Charlie Higson Enemy books and How to Train Your Dragon. Verus was something of a breather book, Enemy is amazing so far (finishing the last one now), can't wait to get into Dragons. Love those films...

 

[RHB]

Finally got the latest Alex Verus, the last two Charlie Higson Enemy books and How to Train Your Dragon. Verus was something of a breather book, Enemy is amazing so far (finishing the last one now), can't wait to get into Dragons. Love those films...

How's the job hunting going?

 

[SonicShrimper]

Been worse. Christmas helps. Tons of retail stuff.

And The Enemy series is fantastic. I don't know how Higson managed to write a zombie series with Game of Thrones levels of characters, timeline juggling and utter insanity, but he really pulled it out of the hat.

That's the second time I've read a GoT style series in full before Thrones finished. The other one had werewolves and Pokemon. It's brilliant.

 

[Uncle Leo]

Billy Bragg.A Lover Sings.

Excellent introduction and notes to this book of lyrics.

I'm old enough to remember when Donovan was touted as the new/next British Dylan.That title rightly belongs to BB.

Sounds good. My wife and are going to see Billy Bragg at The Union Chapel on Tuesday week. I may use that opportunity to drop some Christmas hints...

 

[Bearded Shrimper]

my mate at work recommended me Full Time which is 'by' Tony Cascarino.
really good, much more about his actual life than the usual sporting biography books

 

[MK Shrimper]

Going off Alarming - P2 of Danny Baker's autobiography.

3 parts Danny? Really....you're hardly Oscar Wilde :stunned:

Did my usual of accidently downloading a 99p Kindle book called My Everything by Katie Marsh. A bit girly, but it's not too bad, and the last time I did that I got a great book that I would never normally read.

 

[SonicShrimper]

Oh, no, not that trick. Kindles are evil sods for "oh, look, that's going cheap, and so's that, and that and that" and before you know it you've spent a fortune on books!