The book thread

We keep talking about books on Mundane, but this will not do, so here's a dedicated thread.

My recent (ish) best reads include:

:study:Mudbound by Hillary Jordan (life in the Deep South in the 1940s).

:study:The Help by Kathryn Stockett (made into an Oscar winning film, all about the lives of maids in segregated Mississippi); having read that there's a possible plagiarism case against Stockett, I might have gone off this a bit.

:study:Engleby by Sebastian Faulks (Faulks' usual fantastic writing combined with a lead character who's so well drawn, if strange, that the ending's kind of surprising, kind of not).

:study:Camilla Lackberg's series of crime novels, set in a small seaside town in Sweden (could be Looe!) and featuring a writer and police officer; a couple of them go very deeply into issues like Sweden's role in WWII, child abuse and the like.

:study:The Martin Beck series by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, originally published in the 1970s. Made the mould for socially conscious crime writing.

:study:A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. First read this about twenty years ago, and was blown away. Re-read it about a year ago, and was blown away again. Difficult to describe without giving it all away, but it's a life changer.

:study:Anything by Michael Connolly, Jo Nesbo, Robert Crais, Lawrence Block (especially the Matt Scudder series, which must be some of the best fiction about alcoholism) and - of course - Stieg Larsson's Girl trilogy.

Yes, I do read a lot - voraciously, indeed. I read every day, regardless of anything else I've got on, and my idea of a hell is not having anything good to read. And yes, there's a bit of a crime concentration going on, but the well written, intelligent kind has a huge amount to say - I'm just reading a Michael Connolly which is all about the US financial crisis.

I have read none of those books or any of those authors. Except I recently read Sebastian Faulks' James Bond novel - "Devil May Care" - in which he was choosing to write in a particular genre - and it was like reading a comic without pictures.

I am currently reading "Kleinzeit" by Russel Hoban. I read the same author's "Pilgerman" recently. I like his off-the-wall style. In fact I think I'll go and sit in the sun for a while and read some more before I go out.

I was reading Gilad Atzmon's 'exploration of Jewish Identity politics' "The Wandering Who?" but my daughter wanted it back. Bloody children!

I have just been loaned Julian Barnes' "The Sense of an Ending". I've never read any of his stuff before.

Julian Barnes' A History of the World in 101/2 Chapters was stunning. Not read anything else by him, or if I have it hasn't stuck.

(That was the best way of doing a half I could manage, by the way.)

A few recommended reads from the other end of Devonport:

Politics/Current Affairs: The Vote - How it was won and how it was undermined - Paul Foot; undoubtedly his magnum opus, a compelling history of democracy and parliamentary politics in Britain. From the Levellers, Chartists onto New Labour and the present day, it really is Foot at his best. He died before it could be completed, but his partner finished the job. A masterpiece. Oh, and of course he was a dyed in the wool Argyle fan.

Satire: Country of the Blind - Christopher Brookmyre. In fact, anything that Brookmyre has written. Black humour, some genuinely laugh-out-loud moments, and high quality political and social satire. The man's a genius. An American equivalent would be Carl Hiassen. If you ever think about visiting Florida, you should read Hiassen first.

Crime: Mark Billingham's 'Inspector Thorne' series. Superb research, compelling characters and high-quality plots. Well worth looking for.

Non-Fiction/Modern British History: Tony Benn's Diaries. Whatever your view of his politics, Benn has been at the heart of Parliament and Government all his life - literally. The diaries reflect his changing views, give insight into many hugely important events in this country's history, and are also intensely personal - the volume that covered his wife's fight against cancer, and subsequent passing, have to rank as amongst the most moving prose I have ever read. The man is living history, and has evolved to become a national treasure.

Brookmyre's brilliant, Andy, I agree. Read all of his stuff bar the latest one, as has the wife.

Peggy - I read a Prayer For Owen Meany on a coach journey to somewhere in Europe (it was a long time ago). The bit with the nativity play had me in stitches. The rest of the passengers weren't impressed with my protracted guffawing but I couldn't help myself.

More talk when I'm not meant to be writing words about videogames

I quite literally don't have time to read these days. However, the missus reads constantly. Deep, meaningful stuff, that usually has a picture of a stiletto or a handbag on the front...

One I did read, probably around 10 years ago now was, 'A Season with Verona', by Tim Parks. An Englishman living in Italy, it tells his story of a season travelling home and away with Verona - Italy's equivalent of Millwall, in terms of their relatively small but partisan Ultra following. V.Good.

Czarcasm wrote:

I quite literally don't have time to read these days. However, the missus reads constantly. Deep, meaningful stuff, that usually has a picture of a stiletto or a handbag on the front...

Handy the way they've made it possible to judge books by their covers though, innit?

Pastel pink and or purple? Girly nonsense. Ignore.

Black with vivid pinks, greens and blues? Weirdy fantasy stuff. Ignore.

And so on

Last book I read was a Terry Pratchett who I find very amusing.

Terry Pratchett makes me laugh, too, but I always seem to run out of interest before the end of his books.

Seeing we're also doing non-fiction, I can recommend Mark Kermode's two books if you're into cinema. Also, I went through a patch of reading lots of stuff about, er, unusual people recently: Louis Theroux's book about the people from his weird weekends was both funny and tragic, and Jon Ronson's written some good stuff, especially The Men Who Stare at Goats. That was made into a film which was both excellent and starred George Clooney, thus ticking two boxes for me

My other non-fiction reading (I always have two books on the go: fiction for nap times and bedtimes, and non-fiction for reading in the comfy chair, usually in the daytime ...) is art books - biographies, technical stuff, histories and so on. Always with loads of colour pictures, of course.

Oh - and I keep the complete Winnie the Pooh stories in the bedside table so they're close when I need them.

Reading Alan Clarke's diaries on the Kindle at the moment.

Damned fine read. The man made a lot of sense, back in the day when you didn't have to be just as PC as you do now. He also makes me cringe too though.

I do realise that being a fan of a (albeit deceased) right wing Tory on here may not go down well................


Might have to bring a food tester to the FM!!!

That's the best kind of Tory.

Just read Riddley Walker.

I enjoyed it. I found that I couldn't just skim 10 minutes here and there, I had to read in longer sessions to get back into it again. I think I might read it again now to pick out bits I might have missed - of which I imagine there are several.

Some Irish chap (Unionist) has left an Andy McNab book in the place we're staying which I'll peruse at some stage. Imagine that, chaps, an Irishman reading Andy McNab - the former SAS soldier who served in Ireland during the troubles! This chap is clearly no potshotter from the boggy hedgerows! He no doubt yearns for the day when shaky Irish independence collapses and he can proudly fly the Union Jack and belt out GSTQ in the front garden of his Dublin home again.

Mock, Fifty Dead Men Walking is an excellent read.

I wouldn't be too quick to paint your Paddy as a card carrying UVF member!! My wife is a catholic from the North and a firm unionist. Her brother is as far the other way as you could imagine, to the point of down right embarrassing.

I have tried and failed to complete "20 Letters to a Friend" (Svetlana on Stalin/Russia/Life etc) many times. Currently on Radio 4 as Book of the Week. Compelling and will attempt to read it from start to finish in the future.

Started on Stieg Larsson's Millenium Trilogy. Starts well so am hoping to complete it, breaking it up with others to keep from over-exposure.
(Edit Too many "s" in Larsson).
Presently restoring a house after a fire, so fall into bed and read about 6 lines so books will take a long to complete. Still no rush.

Merv Plummer.

The Andy McNab book was pretty poor. I think it was 400 odd pages, and over 100 chapters! I guess this was trying to be a fast paced thriller. It was mildly interesting in terms of his interpretations of international relations in a region I didn't know much about, but not much of a story.

I want to read 'The long walk' by Slavomir Rawicz.

Mock Cuncher wrote:

I want to read 'The long walk' by Slavomir Rawicz.

Now that's an interesting thing. I read that book back in my yoof, and was mesmerised by it. Then, I'm not sure when, there was a big scandal over allegations that it wasn't entirely true. Then I heard it had been made into a film, and assumed the allegations must have been disproved, but going by this there's still quite a lot of doubt.

I'd still read it though!

The film is visually stunning, but I'm not sure you can convey a 3000mile walk into 2 hours and retain a decent story as well as truly reflect the effort involved. I also heard the allegations...I don't think it matters too much. I'm sure not all of it is recalled correctly, but there must be some element of truth. I've read that there are too many references which are spot on in terms of location for it to be entirely untrue. And as you say, who cares if it is a good book anyway! Will purchase when back in the UK probably.

Mock Cuncher wrote:

Just read Riddley Walker.

I enjoyed it. I found that I couldn't just skim 10 minutes here and there, I had to read in longer sessions to get back into it again. I think I might read it again now to pick out bits I might have missed - of which I imagine there are several.

Some Irish chap (Unionist) has left an Andy McNab book in the place we're staying which I'll peruse at some stage. Imagine that, chaps, an Irishman reading Andy McNab - the former SAS soldier who served in Ireland during the troubles! This chap is clearly no potshotter from the boggy hedgerows! He no doubt yearns for the day when shaky Irish independence collapses and he can proudly fly the Union Jack and belt out GSTQ in the front garden of his Dublin home again.

Pleased (& relieved) you enjoyed it.

I've just finished "Kleinzeit" by Hoban. A much lighter read but an interesting & fun book.

knecht wrote:

Mock Cuncher wrote:

Just read Riddley Walker.

I enjoyed it. I found that I couldn't just skim 10 minutes here and there, I had to read in longer sessions to get back into it again. I think I might read it again now to pick out bits I might have missed - of which I imagine there are several.

Some Irish chap (Unionist) has left an Andy McNab book in the place we're staying which I'll peruse at some stage. Imagine that, chaps, an Irishman reading Andy McNab - the former SAS soldier who served in Ireland during the troubles! This chap is clearly no potshotter from the boggy hedgerows! He no doubt yearns for the day when shaky Irish independence collapses and he can proudly fly the Union Jack and belt out GSTQ in the front garden of his Dublin home again.

Pleased (& relieved) you enjoyed it.

I've just finished "Kleinzeit" by Hoban. A much lighter read but an interesting & fun book.

I think it just takes adjusting to, hence my comment about not being able to read it in 10 minute bursts (I did so a couple of times and realised I had no idea what I'd just read).

As I say, re-reading it will help. I also am sad enough to look up real-life Kent to work out what some of the references are to

I never did that with Kent. But when I recently read his "Pilgerman" I did spend some time reading about Antioch's battles, earthquakes and its Jewish population.

Started my reading group book this afternoon - A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon, the Curious Incident writer - and before I knew it I'd done 100 pages. Laughed out loud several times, not least at the following:

Quote :

The vicar ... clearly knew nothing about Alan.

On the other hand if you never set foot in a church when you were alive you could hardly expect them to pull out all the stops when you were dead. And no one wanted the truth ('He was a man incapable of seeing a large-breasted woman without making some infantile remark. In later years his breath was not good.')

Looking forward to the next 400 pages very much

It may come as a shock to some but I'm a bit of a sci fi geek when it comes to books, Iain M. Banks and Alastair Reynolds being two of my favourite authors. They both write BIG sci fi with BIG concepts and BIG space ships and they're both brilliant, especially Reynolds' Revelation Space trilogy and Banks' Culture novels. (Was lucky enough to go the pub with Banks and a few of my colleagues after he did a book reading in Bath. I bought him a pint and we talked about videogames and the city's history. It made me very happy.)

The last thing I read was the latest in Malcom Pryce's Louie Knight series, The Day Aberystwyth Stood Still. I was a bit retiscent about reading them, what with them being pastiches of the likes of Raymond Chandler (my all-time fave author) but they're actually very funny, and plenty dark enough. If you've not heard of them, they're gumshoe pulp with a Welsh loser taking the place of Chandler's Phillip Marlowe and set in a surreal reimagining of present-day Aberystwyth.

Currently dabbling with China Miellville's Kraken. My friend recommended his stuff, and he has won a fair few awards, but I'm not really sure about it and it's taking me ages to finish. It's sort of about a giant squid that gets stolen from the Natural History Museum, and that triggers the beginning of the end of the world.

Always reading cricket books, too, although I'm still waiting for 'How To Captain A Village Fourth XI' by T.R.N. Green to come out

Peggy wrote:

The Martin Beck series by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, originally published in the 1970s. Made the mould for socially conscious crime writing.

My all time favourite series of books.

I also love the Amsterdam cop series by Janwillem Van De Wetering after being seduced by the title of the first one I read 'The Perfidious Parrot'

Other favourite authors include Paul Micou foremost for 'The Death of David Debrezzi' and Hakan Nesser a Swede writing Dutch crime novels

Currently reading 'Dream Of Ding Village' by Yan Lianke after reading 'Serve the People'

I did go through a sci-fi period many years ago.... I lost interest very quickly.

BUT the book I have re-read more than any other is a sci-fi called "Tiger! Tiger!" by Alfred Bester (I think it has been renamed nowadays). I don't know quite what brings me back to it but I must have read it half-a-dozen times or more over the years.


Today I finished Julian Barnes' Booker Prize winner "Sense of an Ending". It took me two days. Fascinating stuff! And infinitely better than the disappointment that was last year's winner.

Only sic fi books I've read and very much enjoyed btw is the Bill The Galactic Hero series by Harry Harrison. Totally bonkers but very good.