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Which Book Are You Reading thread

Monoethnic Social Club said:
Hahahahahah It was the ONE thing my parents never begrudged me (nor I my children) ... I never got the toys I asked for but "Santa" (yes Santa - not you you degenerate) always brought me a pile of books... I was the nerdy kid that had read ALL of the following years English syllabus during the holidays together with the "recommended reading" plus anything else on the topic... yes I did cop a lot of slaps from the other kids... toughened me up I suppose...
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My father read to us kids in very expressive and entertaining style (much as I read to you as a little tacker :P). Classics like Gulliver's Travels, Robin Hood and One Thousand and One Nights over many, many nights.

I think my love of books might stem from that in a big way. Always been happy to slip between firm covers and be absorbed for hours at a time.

The move from paper to electronic media for attention grabbing activities is a greater loss than any young person who does not read books could ever realise. Building your own imagination instead of being given a choice of ideas to select from is no small thing.
 
RIMB said:
I read mostly all Science Fiction/Fantasy to unlock my imagination and satisfy my heroic need.

David Gemmell is my favourite author. From the Legend sort of stories/series on one hand with believable 'life' and the hack and slash, occasional humour and the odd desktop calendar worthy quote to a post apocalyptic Wolf in Shadow with Jon Shannow, the Jerusalem Man. If you like Feist (which I do) then Gemmell may also appeal to you. I prefer his own stories over his historic re-creations like Troy and the Lion of Macedon but they were all good reads. Somewhat like Stephen King and Bryce Courtenay for his story telling ability.

I like Alan Dean Foster (who wrote novelizations of some huge movie franchises) who has some books I like a lot with Sentenced to Prism up at the top. Also wrote The Man Who Used the Universe among many other books worth a read. The Spellsinger series is a lot lighter and 'amusing' if that is your thing.

Roger Zelazny's Amber series and Changeling books were one of my first Sci Fi reads and for that he holds a place in the top group.

Mike Jeffries wrote some good stories/series although it has been a while since I went back to them.

Tim Powers' The Drawing of the Dark is another good stand alone story.

Don't overlook the penguin classics in their Roar coloured uniforms either. John Wyndham's Web, Day of the Triffids, Chocky, The Kraken Wakes just to name a few can be a bit old fashioned in the reading but still excellent stories.

I am not interested in joining a book club or discussion group but I have read an absolute shitload of science fiction/fantasy novels and series.

Good must eventually overcome evil in my books, and if a book is not worth reading many times over many years it is not worth reading!
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Big sci fi fan but not sci fi fantasy. Prefer stuff in the realms of 'possibility'.

Aasimov and Arthur C Clarke were 2 of my favourites back in the day.

Big fan of the Expanse books and the subsequent TV series.

Military novels where they insert a character into battles in history are a good too. The Sharpe series by Bernard Cornwell are great. Sharpe is a British rifleman.

Each book is about a seperate campaign. Waterloo, siege of Lisbon, Nelson's armada, french invasion of Portugal, peninsular battle etc.

Most of the stuff in there is well researched and fairly historically accurate. Besides the main protagonist and one or 2 other recurring characters the rest of the characters are actual historic figures.
 
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A few I have done recently

Short History of Everything - Bill Bryson. More interesting than I thought it would be. Basic history
Guns, Germs and Steel - Jared Diamond good
Also 100 years of solitude just finished
 
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Muz said:
Big sci fi fan but not sci fi fantasy. Prefer stuff in the realms of 'possibility'.

Aasimov and Arthur C Clarke were 2 of my favourites back in the day.

Big fan of the Expanse books and the subsequent TV series.

Military novels where they insert a character into battles in history are a good too. The Sharpe series by Bernard Cornwell are great. Sharpe is a British rifleman.

Each book is about a seperate campaign. Waterloo, siege of Lisbon, Nelson's armada, french invasion of Portugal, peninsular battle etc.

Most of the stuff in there is well researched and fairly historically accurate. Besides the main protagonist and one or 2 other recurring characters the rest of the characters are actual historic figures.
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Alan Dean Foster is more Sci Fi than Sci Fantasy - no goblins, fairies and magic in the two books I mentioned just the good old extrapolation of what scientifically could exist. 'The i Inside' and the other two book I mentioned are more of the standard Sci Fi.

Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat series (at least up to and including A Stainless Steel Rat is Born) are also among my favourites for light entertainment. But he has also written a lot of good books/series that fall into clean Sci Fi rather than Sci Fantasy and don't have the constant twisted humour of the Stainless Steel Rat - including the Deathworld Trilogy, Invasion: Earth, and Spaceship Medic. Spaceship Medic is a particularly well done story.

I have been tempted by the Sharpe series many times but never bit. I will start at book 1 in the order he released them and see where it leads me. The Gemmell appeal for me is that although his stories do include supernatural elements, the rest of the fabrication is realistic and human natured - with detail and strategies in military camps/battles/fights that ring true as far as heroic fiction goes anyway.
 
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Monoethnic Social Club said:
Hemmingway was a degenerate and a drunk .... and on and on... Stil (in my eyes) the absolute GOAT and will happily read For whom the bell tolls over and over and over again....
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Mono - I have never read For Whom the Bell Tolls, and I feel lessened by that. I ordered it online last night on your no fault recommendation and am looking forward to it too when it comes in the next couple of days. Can't stand reading eBooks - give me the real thing every time.
 
RIMB said:
Mono - I have never read For Whom the Bell Tolls, and I feel lessened by that. I ordered it online last night on your no fault recommendation and am looking forward to it too when it comes in the next couple of days. Can't stand reading eBooks - give me the real thing every time.
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Mate I really hope you enjoy it... I like alot of Hemmingways stuff, Old Man and the Sea, the Pearl is a great little novella.. but FWTBT is a masterpiece. Read it and lets chat :) One of my two absolute all time go to books when feeling like immersing myself in language and narrative .. the other is Lord of the Flies.... yes yes Im a humanist I know :)
 
tsf said:
A few I have done recently

Short History of Everything - Bill Bryson. More interesting than I thought it would be. Basic history
Guns, Germs and Steel - Jared Diamond good
Also 100 years of solitude just finished
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Anything by Bryson is good. 1927 is a good one of his.

He has one on the body. Every chapter deals with a different organ.

I've read guns germs and steel. Good as well.

Explains why agricultural got started in some places but not others.
 
Just finished IN TOO DEEP: LEIGH CHILD & ANDREW CHILD.

It was a good read, like all Leigh Child books. His brother, Andrew, has co- written the recent books. I thought there was little difference between Leigh and Leigh/Andrew, but a more observant female reader, stated on another forum that since Andrew has started co- writing there is no explicit sexual detail, no minute detail of guns, and two other traits of Leigh's that had disappeared. I felt like a goose ! They were 4 good points of difference! I hadn't noticed!

I thought the style, grammar and linguistic structures, were similar. Fast paced, fluent style of writing, using many short sentences, but occasionally adding a long detailed sentence.

In IN TOO DEEP I didn't think Reacher had a sufficient reason to become bogged down in the investigation. He woke up having been in a car accident and had lost his memory. To the credit of the Childs, they usually have strong female characters, who in one way or another, end up being involved in the story problem that confronts Reacher. In this book, it is former female FBI agent, Knight.

In the earlier Reacher books, his former Sergeant Frances Neagley, in the Military Police, ends up assisting in many of the books. She is capable and formidable too.

For those who don't know the Childs' Jack Reacher protagonist, he is a former Major in the American Military Police. At some stage he decided to quit the army and travel around the states with no fixed address. Trouble seems to always find him. He is a crash hot investigator, and a huge imposing man, who is quite formidable. He invariably is wrongly accused of being a suspect in police investigations.

There is a screen series on Amazon, featuring the actor, Alan Ritchson, as Reacher. He is perfect for the role.
 
Monoethnic Social Club said:
Mate I really hope you enjoy it... I like alot of Hemmingways stuff, Old Man and the Sea, the Pearl is a great little novella.. but FWTBT is a masterpiece. Read it and lets chat :) One of my two absolute all time go to books when feeling like immersing myself in language and narrative .. the other is Lord of the Flies.... yes yes Im a humanist I know :)
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I feel like I'm reading pulp fiction compared to you, Mono!

Read Hemingway as a student, to study.
 
Decentric said:
I feel like I'm reading pulp fiction compared to you, Mono!

Read Hemingway as a student, to study.
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Hahahaha no mate, I refute that... NOTHING is pulp ficiton, ALL lit is worthy in my eyes... Matthew Riley is no better or worse than Jeffery Archer.... or even ... James Paterson (sorry did a little vom there) was just talking about GOAT stuff ... .forgot to mention Steinbeck too btw.. East of Eden ... just great :)

If you thought I was a little passionate about Hellas dont get me started on "a good book"
 
Muz said:
Military novels where they insert a character into battles in history are a good too. The Sharpe series by Bernard Cornwell are great. Sharpe is a British rifleman.

Each book is about a seperate campaign. Waterloo, siege of Lisbon, Nelson's armada, french invasion of Portugal, peninsular battle etc.

Most of the stuff in there is well researched and fairly historically accurate. Besides the main protagonist and one or 2 other recurring characters the rest of the characters are actual historic figures.
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Have read most of the Sharpe series written by Cornwell. Have seen all of the series ( most for free on You Tube) on screen too, starring Sean Bean.

Have read the first 3 of the Starbuck series, but can't ever find the 4th, and final book, The Bloody Ground, in second hand bookshops. Nathaniel Starbuck is the main character. The era is the American Civil War.

I've read all the The Last Kingdom series, featuring Uhtred. There is a good screen series, The Last Kingdom, on Netflix too, featuring Alexander Dreyman, playing Uhtred.

The only issue I have is in the final corollary to the series, or film, I can't remember, Seven Kings Must Die, the conclusion isn't satisfactory - and differs from the last book!

The setting in the Last Kingdom is in the era of Alfred The Great and afterwards.

I've just seen an Arthur Pendragon series on STAN, which was good. It was in the era of King Arthur. Haven't found the books written by Cornwell - yet.

I've also read stand alone Bernard Cornwell books - historical fiction and one contemporary spy book. Leigh Child rates him the best author in the genre - military historical fiction. As Muz says, some of the characters are fictitious, but some are genuine historical figures, like King Alfred, General Lee, Duke Of Wellington - and - the books tend to be mostly historically accurate.

I think Cornwell is a very good author, like Leigh/Andrew Child - but - I think he is slightly dated. Most of the female characters are passive. Often their future depends on the actions of men. The notable exceptions were Brida in Last Kingdom, who was heroic, then turned into a villain; Comandante Teresa Moreno, Sharpe's first wife; and Aethelflaed, King Alfred's daughter.
 
Monoethnic Social Club said:
Hahahaha no mate, I refute that... NOTHING is pulp ficiton, ALL lit is worthy in my eyes... Matthew Riley is no better or worse than Jeffery Archer.... or even ... James Paterson (sorry did a little vom there) was just talking about GOAT stuff ... .forgot to mention Steinbeck too btw.. East of Eden ... just great :)

If you thought I was a little passionate about Hellas dont get me started on "a good book"
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I've caught up reading fiction in the last few years.

For decades I was either a student, or teacher. I had to read a lot of texts for work. Didn't really get into reading fiction till I semi- retired.

Decades ago I had a year working as a cable watcher in the Pilbara. I could read a lot at work!
 
tsf said:
Why are you obsessed with cocks? It’s really weird.
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I've put Vo2 Max on Ignore. He has stalked me for nearly 20 years online and offline.

His previous history is Chips Rafferty on TWG, and 442/IS as well. Plus he was Judy Free on 442. He also posts as Steve Monasphagetti on Anarchy.

Vo2Max's passion in life is trolling and attention-seeking online. I see nothing he posts on G and G FC, unless I don't log in, and accidentally see him post. Same behaviour - always trolling.

He does not like being Ignored, as he is quite attention- seeking, immature socially, but long in the tooth chronologically. Alternatively, report him to the Mod panel - he has already had many enforced ' holidays' from G and G. He boasts about it to his frenemies on Anarchy.

I constantly see others responding to Vo2Max - irritated by his demeanour. I don't know what he is posting, but have a pretty good idea. He is persistent at trying to annoy others, troll and derail threads. Just put him on Ignore, until his next G and G FC imminent ban. It shouldn't be too far away!

I'm sure Vo2Max does not like reading books, because he can't troll anyone whilst reading. He has withdrawals.
 
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