What Are You Currently Reading?

First topic message reminder :

As the title suggests; this is just a post to find out what people are currently reading (I don't want any sarcastic comments stating "This thread" )

I'm currently reading What The Night Knows by Dean Koontz. I'm only about 19 chapters in, but it's really good so far.

I finished Shattered Bones by Stuart MacBride at the weekend. That was okay, but the editing was poor so it detracted from my enjoyment a little.

Actually that is another question for this thread. Is it just me, or does sloppy editing bother you? I'm talking in terms of spelling mistakes, double words etc. I find it really off putting and I can't really explain why. I guess it could be because it interupts the flow of the story.

It really grinds my gears

Duty281 wrote:A positively delightful biography of Edward III written by Ian Mortimer that I had always meant to get around to reading.

Cringeworthy for a historian to "nuthug" anyone in this fashion. Its brilliantly and thoroughly researched and well presented arguments but absolute nuthuggery of the d4/manny kind.

Have you ever read Roger Kahn's biography of Jack Dempsey shah, you would rupture a spleen. Imagine if D4 wrote a biography of Manny and you're getting close.

i'll read it when I run out of things to complain about in my admittedly comfortable life.

Necroscope series a By Brian Lumley

well worth a read as an alternative to the new, Lamer vampires.

rick_dagless wrote:Necroscope series a By Brian Lumley

well worth a read as an alternative to the new, Lamer vampires.

Read 'em all years ago. Excellent stuff and would be worth considering as movies now give the advances in CGI. Lumley did few spin off's some while back (Necroscope - The Lost Years) in two parts which felt like a bit of a cash-in and he's also done a new thing about E-Branch which has a very tenuous link to Harry Keogh and, as such, annoys me.

I think my favourite ones though are Blood Brothers, The Last Aerie and Blood Wars

i have just finished deadspeak at the mo and i am really looking forward to the blood wars by all accounts DAVE

the guy who gave me the first one can not recommend blood wars enough.

Totally agree they would now make a cracking set of movies!

eeeh just talking about it makes me want to read 'em again!

DAVE667 wrote:eeeh just talking about it makes me want to read 'em again!

would not be the worse thing you could pick up and read to be honest mate

its always horrible when you rush to get to the end of a book (or series) and then are gutted when it is done.

i have just given a friend the first 3 of the Riftwar Saga by Feist, and he is almost at the end and trying to find excuses not to finish it

Read a couple of jeffrey archer novels. Am sad to say I enjoyed em. Thankfully I didnt pay for em - someone left em on their old pc but still worth a read.

ive been reading robin hobb books, for anyone into their fantasy would highly recommend. just finished the third trilogy. read them all back to back so done, farseer trilogy, liveship, and tawny man all in short space of time. good nine books ive gone through and just bought the next ones

Re-read Tolkien's Children of Hurin. Dark, antiheroic fantasy formulated long before it was a trend, riffing on Scandinavian epics and the Iliad. So bleak it hurts. All in all, an excellent work

Galted wrote:

Mind the windows Tino. wrote:

Galted wrote:

Rowley wrote:Just finished American Pastoral by Philip Roth excellent read will definitely get some more of his books. Have just started Lost At Sea by Jon Ronson. Love Ronson, is a geniunely funny writer about subcultures and general human weirdness.

Read American Pastoral on your recommendation (having previously read Portnoy's Complaint by the same author) & enjoyed it immensely.  Roth isn't the most forgiving author, I occasionally had to reread sentences having forgotten the beginning by the time I reached the end, but well worth the effort.

Galted, I said the same to Jeff, but try 'The Plot against America' next.  If you enjoyed AP I think you would like it.  I know what you mean about the writing, but once you have gotten your head round the prose the content is brilliant.

Fantastic author and American Pastoral is superb.

Cheers Tino, have just ordered it off Amazon.  It better be good or you owe me one pound and fifty-seven pence.

Finished The Plot Against America.  Good call, chaps, really enjoyed it.  Only drawback was that I'm extremely gullible and it may have distorted American & WWII history for me - can see myself referring to "President Lindbergh".

Galted wrote:

Galted wrote:

Mind the windows Tino. wrote:

Galted wrote:

Rowley wrote:Just finished American Pastoral by Philip Roth excellent read will definitely get some more of his books. Have just started Lost At Sea by Jon Ronson. Love Ronson, is a geniunely funny writer about subcultures and general human weirdness.

Read American Pastoral on your recommendation (having previously read Portnoy's Complaint by the same author) & enjoyed it immensely.  Roth isn't the most forgiving author, I occasionally had to reread sentences having forgotten the beginning by the time I reached the end, but well worth the effort.

Galted, I said the same to Jeff, but try 'The Plot against America' next.  If you enjoyed AP I think you would like it.  I know what you mean about the writing, but once you have gotten your head round the prose the content is brilliant.

Fantastic author and American Pastoral is superb.

Cheers Tino, have just ordered it off Amazon.  It better be good or you owe me one pound and fifty-seven pence.

Finished The Plot Against America.  Good call, chaps, really enjoyed it.  Only drawback was that I'm extremely gullible and it may have distorted American & WWII history for me - can see myself referring to "President Lindbergh".

So I don't owe you £1.57 then. Glad you enjoyed it.

I'm a quarter of the way through Game of Thrones and unsure as to whether I like it or not.

Don't know if it was a mistake reading it after seeing the series

Next up is The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, inspired by the Culture Cup. Was a bit annoyed when it arrived and I discovered it's only fifty-odd pages long.

Galted wrote:Next up is The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, inspired by the Culture Cup.  Was a bit annoyed when it arrived and I discovered it's only fifty-odd pages long.

That's at least 100 days tied up for you.

Mind the windows Tino. wrote:

Galted wrote:Next up is The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, inspired by the Culture Cup.  Was a bit annoyed when it arrived and I discovered it's only fifty-odd pages long.

That's at least 100 days tied up for you.

I know most of the letters now so it shouldn't take me too long.

Galted wrote:Next up is The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, inspired by the Culture Cup.  Was a bit annoyed when it arrived and I discovered it's only fifty-odd pages long.

Those are the best sort of classics. You can pass yourself off as erudite and well read without having to plough through Crime and Punishment for the next six months of your life. Hearts of Darkness and The Great Gatsby are similarly brief affairs that will do wonders to rid you of the image of an uncultured oaf.

Rowley wrote:

Galted wrote:Next up is The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, inspired by the Culture Cup.  Was a bit annoyed when it arrived and I discovered it's only fifty-odd pages long.

Those are the best sort of classics. You can pass yourself off as erudite and well read without having to plough through Crime and Punishment for the next six months of your life. Hearts of Darkness and The Great Gatsby are similarly brief affairs that will do wonders to rid you of the image of an uncultured oaf.

Have read The Great Gatsby which was quite enjoyable, will give Heart of Darkness a go.  Have actually read Crime and Punishment, thought it was just confused waffle.  Read the summarised version on Shmoop to see if I was missing anything and was still confused waffle.

Shmoop, by the way, is another clever way of getting rid of the image of an uncultured oaf - all the classics in chapter by chapter summary so you can recall plot points and characters in the middle of pretentious conversations and amaze the people you want to be your friends.

I have also read Crime and Punishment, could follow it but comfortably could have got rid of all the letters to his sister and still had the same story at half the length. Have Moby Dick still sat on the bookcase taunting me, must really tackle it at some point.

Crime and punishment nearly made my eyes explode, so did the rest of his works but I was a little disappointed - was expecting a masterpiece.

Also to the poster who was reading the count of monte cristo - might want to read Jeffrey Archers A prisoner by Birth - its a contemporary version and its rather good.

Read Crime... when I was 17 as I was doing my English Lit A Level and wanted to compare/contrast the themes of that and "1984." My English teacher was delight as he was sick and tired of reading essays comparing and contrasting "1984" and "Brave New World".

I believe he may have been less than impressed after reading my assignment.

Stephen Fry also did a modern version based on it Shah called the Stars Tennis Balls which is worth a read.

Yeah I read it - A Newspaper book review said something that stuck in my head -"It's like clockwork, but you don't need to buy a book to tell the time". I prefer the longer slower reads - by Dumas and Archer (god forgive me)

NICE TO SEE THE WORDS "ARCHER" AND "DUMBASS" IN THE SAME SENTENCE

Balham to Bollywood - Chris England.

It's a re-read for me. Really enjoyable account of a trip to India where a bunch of jobbing actors/amateur cricketers film Lagaan, a story set in the British Raj where army officers challenge a small Indian village to a high-stakes game.

Rowley wrote:I have also read Crime and Punishment, could follow it but comfortably could have got rid of all the letters to his sister and still had the same story at half the length. Have Moby Dick still sat on the bookcase taunting me, must really tackle it at some point.

Don't bother, if you like waffle, read the far superior Hugo or go to Florida

I've just started reading the first Game of Thrones book last night.  Wasn't sure if I should having already watched the TV series but it was on the bookcase and I gave in.  Read about 100 pages in one sitting and was hooked already.

Just finished The Religion by Tim Willocks which was enjoyable but my god he is a pompous writer sometimes.  I think that book could have been about 300 pages shorter if he wasn't spending so much time delighting us all with his command of the English language.  Just say "someones head has been cut off", rather than take 2 pages to tell us.

A few people on here (Jeff, Dave?) have recommended one of his earlier books (Green River Rising) but I am not sure if I can face it now.

Green River Rising is infinitely better than the Reigion Tina. Is a lot shorter and the prose is a lot less flowery. If you got annoyed with The Religion avoid the follow up which takes the worst elements of Willock’s writing to extremes.

Rowley wrote:Green River Rising is infinitely better than the Reigion Tina. Is a  lot shorter and the prose is a lot less flowery. If you got annoyed with The Religion avoid the follow up which takes the worst elements of Willock’s writing to extremes.

Thanks Jeff.  There is no way I would be reading the follow-up, but I will give Green River Rising a go then.

The Religion frustrated me, I did genuinely enjoy it, but I just found it too long and too pretentious to rave about.  I don't mind long books but only if they deserve to be, not just so the writer can show off.

Am making my way through Karen Armstrong's biography of the prophet Muhammad at the moment. Have never been a religious person really (have to admit I've started, erm, dabling shall we say in Christianity to an extent again in a very warped way which my dear old Gran would be appalled by!) but I try to take as keen an interest as I can in how religions were formed, shaped etc and how so much tension has arisen between them all.

Am enjoying it so far and Armstrong does have the knack of simplifying without dumbing down which is impressive. Am already much wiser on the subject, having only read about half the book so far, than I was a little while back.

Rowley wrote:Green River Rising is infinitely better than the Reigion Tina. Is a  lot shorter and the prose is a lot less flowery. If you got annoyed with The Religion avoid the follow up which takes the worst elements of Willock’s writing to extremes.

Imagine "Con Air" set in a regular prison with infinitely more graphic violence and you have GRR. IF you like that then read Stephen Hunter's "Dirty White Boys" as well.

Just in the middle of the Third Kingdom by Terry Goodkind. It's the second book in a new series following on from the Omen Machine. It's excellent and highly imaginative. I'm loving it.

About halfway through Moneyball. Really enjoying it so far, for a non baseball fan like me it is mind blowing how they used to select players in the draft. As a sportsfan and a statistics geek it is a great book. Haven't seen the film, but would definitely recommend the book so far.

Rowley wrote:I have also read Crime and Punishment, could follow it but comfortably could have got rid of all the letters to his sister and still had the same story at half the length. Have Moby Dick still sat on the bookcase taunting me, must really tackle it at some point.

If you think that Crime and Punishment could have been trimmed, wait until you read Moby Dick. It would be twice the book if it were half the length. I once read a review which offered the hypothesis that the rhythm of the book is used as a literary device reflecting the experience of the characters: The seemingly interminable descriptions of life aboard a whaling vessel therefore serve to illustrate the boredom experienced by a whaling crew. It's a lovely theory, but I'd still rather Melville cut 200 pages from the book.

jbeadlesbigrighthand wrote:

Rowley wrote:I have also read Crime and Punishment, could follow it but comfortably could have got rid of all the letters to his sister and still had the same story at half the length. Have Moby Dick still sat on the bookcase taunting me, must really tackle it at some point.

If you think that Crime and Punishment could have been trimmed, wait until you read Moby Dick. It would be twice the book if it were half the length. I once read a review which offered the hypothesis that the rhythm of the book is used as a literary device reflecting the experience of the characters: The seemingly interminable descriptions of life aboard a whaling vessel therefore serve to illustrate the boredom experienced by a whaling crew. It's a lovely theory, but I'd still rather Melville cut 200 pages from the book.

 
I see your Moby Dick ( ) and raise you Atlas Shrugged.  Could've been a quarter as long and contained the same amount of sh1tness.  Page after page of absolute drivel repeated ad nauseam.

Galted wrote:

jbeadlesbigrighthand wrote:

Rowley wrote:I have also read Crime and Punishment, could follow it but comfortably could have got rid of all the letters to his sister and still had the same story at half the length. Have Moby Dick still sat on the bookcase taunting me, must really tackle it at some point.

If you think that Crime and Punishment could have been trimmed, wait until you read Moby Dick. It would be twice the book if it were half the length. I once read a review which offered the hypothesis that the rhythm of the book is used as a literary device reflecting the experience of the characters: The seemingly interminable descriptions of life aboard a whaling vessel therefore serve to illustrate the boredom experienced by a whaling crew. It's a lovely theory, but I'd still rather Melville cut 200 pages from the book.

 
I see your Moby Dick ( ) and raise you Atlas Shrugged.  Could've been a quarter as long and contained the same amount of sh1tness.  Page after page of absolute drivel repeated ad nauseam.

Interesting - that's long been on my to-read list (albeit quite a long way down). The main thing that has put me off it so far is the fact that most people who like the book seem to be absolute t*ssers. I think you may have just pushed it even further down the list, or possibly off it entirely.

jbeadlesbigrighthand wrote:

Galted wrote:

jbeadlesbigrighthand wrote:

Rowley wrote:I have also read Crime and Punishment, could follow it but comfortably could have got rid of all the letters to his sister and still had the same story at half the length. Have Moby Dick still sat on the bookcase taunting me, must really tackle it at some point.

If you think that Crime and Punishment could have been trimmed, wait until you read Moby Dick. It would be twice the book if it were half the length. I once read a review which offered the hypothesis that the rhythm of the book is used as a literary device reflecting the experience of the characters: The seemingly interminable descriptions of life aboard a whaling vessel therefore serve to illustrate the boredom experienced by a whaling crew. It's a lovely theory, but I'd still rather Melville cut 200 pages from the book.

 
I see your Moby Dick ( ) and raise you Atlas Shrugged.  Could've been a quarter as long and contained the same amount of sh1tness.  Page after page of absolute drivel repeated ad nauseam.

Interesting - that's long been on my to-read list (albeit quite a long way down). The main thing that has put me off it so far is the fact that most people who like the book seem to be absolute t*ssers. I think you may have just pushed it even further down the list, or possibly off it entirely.

 
If I think a film or book is really bad I normally would still encourage people to watch or read it to judge for themselves but this is just a waste of your life unless you can speed read at a sickening rate.  Read the 1 star reviews on Amazon instead, they pretty much sum it up.  Or, even better, read the chapter by chapter summary on Shmoop.

JDizzle wrote:About halfway through Moneyball. Really enjoying it so far, for a non baseball fan like me it is mind blowing how they used to select players in the draft. As a sportsfan and a statistics geek it is a great book. Haven't seen the film, but would definitely recommend the book so far.

Moneyball is brilliant, I am a baseball fan but would recommend it even to non fans. Lent it to a mate who hated the game and even he enjoyed it. The film is also well worth a watch dizzle but the book is absolutely brilliant.

Rowley wrote:

JDizzle wrote:About halfway through Moneyball. Really enjoying it so far, for a non baseball fan like me it is mind blowing how they used to select players in the draft. As a sportsfan and a statistics geek it is a great book. Haven't seen the film, but would definitely recommend the book so far.

Moneyball is brilliant, I am a baseball fan but would recommend it even to non fans. Lent it to a mate who hated the game and even he enjoyed it. The film is also well worth a watch dizzle but the book is absolutely brilliant.

The film's definitely now on my must watch list. I've never watched a baseball game in my life but picked the book up on the recommendation of a friend and I'm so glad I did. I really enjoyed The Secret Race by Tyler Hamilton about doping in cycling, but Moneyball has easily surpassed it as the best sports book I've read.

Would tend to agree re it being the best sports book ever. Feel like I am cheating on my boxing book collection saying that but it genuinely is that good.

"THe secret race"......by Tyler Hamilton......

Part of Lance Armstrong's team for seven seasons........outlines the incredible professional system in place in doping the cyclists during Armstrong's reign.......

What was taken and the lengths taken to covering up.......

Amazing read..

Recently read it myself Truss. Great read. Unbelievable the way it was covered up and the amount involved.

Have started reading Game of Thrones. Got through the 1st book in a week and halfway through the 2nd. Loving it. I can't put them down. Best I've read since lord of the rings and Tolkein's other middle earth stories which I can barely remember.

The Boss wrote:Recently read it myself Truss. Great read. Unbelievable the way it was covered up and the amount involved.

Have started reading Game of Thrones. Got through the 1st book in a week and halfway through the 2nd. Loving it. I can't put them down. Best I've read since lord of the rings and Tolkein's other middle earth stories which I can barely remember.

Read slower. Much, much slower. If you don't you'll end up getting to the end of book 5, looking forward to book 6, only to realise that it is at least a year away from release, with the final book coming a good few years after.

Might just have to do a bit if work instead then mate!

Halfway through The Road after picking it up last week. It's been mentioned on here before. I think I recall superfly being a fan. I've already seen the film, which I kind of wish I hadn't now as I'm not really feeling the suspense of the book like I should be.
 
I must admit too, I wasn't a fan of the writing style at first but once used to it, it's ok. Not like I imagined though. Despite all that, don't get me wrong, very good so far overall.
 
As an aside, I managed to pick it up for nothing. I went for dinner at a friend of the missus' who is leaving town and her ex-and-future-husband (it's complicated) gave me free reign on his book shelf, so he doesn't have so many to take with him/them.
 
As well as The Road, I got Shantaram (which I've wanted to read for years), The Wasp Factory (Banks), Dead Souls (Gogol), The Hitchhiker's Guide... (Adams), A Portrait of The Artist... (Joyce), Love in a Fallen City (Chang), Coraline (Gaiman) and Candide, by Voltaire, that my missus picked up and has some mucky pictures in it.
 
So a lot to get through.

I've just bought Shantaram for the missus, Il Gia.

I've heard it's a terrific read, and can't wait to get stuck in to it myself once she has had the honours.

I think it'll be a particularly interesting read given that I briefly tasted life in India last year. Look forward to discussing at some point in future!

Britain After Rome: The Fall and Rise: 400 to 1070 by Robin Fleming

Fists of Fury wrote:I've just bought Shantaram for the missus, Il Gia.

I've heard it's a terrific read, and can't wait to get stuck in to it myself once she has had the honours.

I think it'll be a particularly interesting read given that I briefly tasted life in India last year. Look forward to discussing at some point in future!

 
For sure mate. I've heard good things about it. It'll need to be good to keep my interest all the way through too as it's bloody massive. The last book I read that thick was War & Peace. Six months I'll never get back, right there.