What books are we reading at the moment ?

[Legs]

Just beginning Stephen King and Peter Straub's The Talisman.  It's a bit waffly at the start - lots of superfluous description and clunky metaphor.  King is famously economical with adverbs, but, my Lord, there is a hatful of adjectives crammed into this one.

[woollypigs]

Just beginning Stephen King and Peter Straub's The Talisman.  It's a bit waffly at the start - lots of superfluous description and clunky metaphor.  King is famously economical with adverbs, but, my Lord, there is a hatful of adjectives crammed into this one.

I read that back in the 80s, the only thing I can remember about it is that, it was hard work. It was one of the first books I read in English, my Merriam-Webster dictionary got a good old work out.

[T42]

Isn't that the one with Oshkosh B'gosh overalls?  That's about all I remember of it.

[mark]

I'm about halfway through "The Passage of Power", volume 4 of Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson. LBJ may have been an evil bastard and a massive git, but he was definitely a master of the political process.

On a more cheerful note, I just started on "Stonehenge- A New Understanding: Solving the Mysteries of the Greatest Stone Age Monument", Mike Parker Pearson's account of the Stonehenge Riverside Project, and what it taught us about Stonehenge. The last time I was in the UK, I took a tour of Stonehenge that included a chance to enter the inner circle of the monument, as well as a visit to Durrington Walls.

[Mrs Pingu]

Having had a long pause (a year or two) about 45% through The Bickford Fuse by Andrey Kurkov because I got fed up with it, I've picked it up again to have a rest from crime fiction. We'll see if I make it to the end.

I'm still reading this. Gods, it's hard going. I feel like I keep reading the same page and then passing out everytime I go to bed.

[Mr Larrington]

Put it to one side, for there is a new MacBride.  I have not yet read it so cannot comment on whether it contains:

• constant rain
• Reuben Kennedy

[andrewc]

For those who like them , Andrew Cartmel has a new "Vinyl Detective" novel out.  "Flip Back"

[Mrs Pingu]

Ooh they both sound good. Something to look forward to when I eventually finish this book.

[Ham]

Melinda Leigh. Previously noted and avoided as a "Romantic Suspense Author" I ended up randomly reading one of the Morgan Dane and they are perfectly acceptable examples of the formula suspense genre without too much mush at all. Her lead characters are reasonably human and credible, her plots are well crafted and grounded in their locality and sufficiently pacey to keep you turning pages, although they are not hard to put down. 

[Legs]

I read the first chapter of The Magician's Nephew to my 5-year-old last week to break him into it, and so I ended up temporarily putting down The Talisman and reading another tale of travel between worlds.  I'd never read any of the Narnia stories before.  My wife tells me that when she read them as a little, the less-than-subtle Christian subtext was lost on her...

[spesh]

Recent reading reading has included Catch-22 and Doctor Zhivago, and TBH, I think they are both slightly overrated.

Read one conversation in Catch-22 where characters are being deliberately obtuse or are simply talking past each other, and you've pretty much read them all. Some of the introductions to characters suffered from logorrhoea, as if Joseph Heller wanted to show off that he'd eaten a thesaurus. And even though it's a satire, some of what Milo Minderbinder gets up to simply stretches credulity.

The acclaim for Doctor Zhivago was, IMHO, more for it being a work of samizdat WRT one or two characters' ambivalence about the revolution. Boris Pasternak's inconsistent use of the different name forms IAW the eastern Slavic threefold custom meant that early on in the book, I was forever having to refer back to the list of characters at the front of the book to remind myself who was being referred to.

The other criticism offered by reviewers that I agree with is the remarkably fortuitous way in which characters' paths intersected. Pasternak might as well have subtitled the book "It's a small world".

YMMV, of course.

[woollypigs]

I don't think I ever finished catch-22, mainly because everyone I knew at the time of reading (and before) told me this was a very serious book. I just pissed myself at the dark humour and that didn't compute with what I had been told.

[T42]

Recent reading reading has included Catch-22 and Doctor Zhivago, and TBH, I think they are both slightly overrated.

Read one conversation in Catch-22 where characters are being deliberately obtuse or are simply talking past each other, and you've pretty much read them all. Some of the introductions to characters suffered from logorrhoea, as if Joseph Heller wanted to show off that he'd eaten a thesaurus. And even though it's a satire, some of what Milo Minderbinder gets up to simply stretches credulity.

The acclaim for Doctor Zhivago was, IMHO, more for it being a work of samizdat WRT one or two characters' ambivalence about the revolution. Boris Pasternak's inconsistent use of the different name forms IAW the eastern Slavic threefold custom meant that early on in the book, I was forever having to refer back to the list of characters at the front of the book to remind myself who was being referred to.

The other criticism offered by reviewers that I agree with is the remarkably fortuitous way in which characters' paths intersected. Pasternak might as well have subtitled the book "It's a small world".

YMMV, of course.

I read Catch-22 when it came out and enjoyed it, but that was in the 60s. Dunno what I'd make of it now. I read the sequel when it came out and found it boring.

Minderbinder, though: I think he's a pretty good personification of the 1% and the industrial sector: selling the silk from the parachutes to make dresses is a pretty good parallel to the way the US in particular handles the environment. Not to mention using the CO₂ out of the dinghy inflators to make soda-water.  It's Freedom Gas, fellers, and everyone has a share.

[Nuncio]

It's such a long time ago that I tried to read Catch-22 that I forget why I failed to finish it.

[spesh]

It's such a long time ago that I tried to read Catch-22 that I forget why I failed to finish it.

I think that's why I ended up re-reading it.

[Steph]

Just beginning Stephen King and Peter Straub's The Talisman.  It's a bit waffly at the start - lots of superfluous description and clunky metaphor.  King is famously economical with adverbs, but, my Lord, there is a hatful of adjectives crammed into this one.

There is a sequel, 'Black House'. It is much darker.

I actually enjoyed both books, and I have a quote/catchphrase from a major character ("Right here and now!") I have deliberately used several times in dialogue for one of my own characters, Revd Simon Jenkins. Anyone who doesn't cry at the original character in 'Talisman' has no soul.

[Mr Larrington]

The Stranger House ~ Reginald Hill.  Interestingly spooky thriller, though Mr Hill should know that a Mercedes SLK is a strict two-seater so this talk of Father Madero getting his laptop off the back seat is a Foolish Thing.

[hatler]

My dad was a Master Mariner and every bit of fiction with an element of Merchant Navy that passed through his hands was dutifully annotated with corrections. 

[Steph]

Mark Beaumont's latest record book, re his RTW speed ride.

I enjoyed his first one, partly because he put me in it but also because it is in many ways a "touring" book, recording places he rode and people he met. I couldn't get into the new one because it was like that TV programme for his first RTW record, a series of repeated comments about how much food he had to eat. This new book is basically "Got up. Rode in [weather]. crew did [stuff]. Rode [miles], ate [calories]. Rinse and repeat."

[Tail End Charlie]

I've been reading some of the Bernie Gunther books by Philip Kerr (not in order, I just buy them when they're 99p on Kindle). I think they're very good, I like books which give historical context as well as a good storykline. The plots are complicated, so you've got to concentrate, but I like that!

They're about a German detective/ private eye often in Berlin in the years before and after WW 2.

[Mrs Pingu]

This week, I finally finished The Bickford Fuse.
Thank fuck.

Making up for that now with book 3 of The Vinyl Detective.

[fuzzy]

Embedded by Dan Abnett. About an experienced journalist who is attached to a military unit on an off world colony. He thinks the powers that be are hiding something so gets himself chipped into the head of one of the soldiers.

I have read it before a long time ago. Can't remember the salient points so am enjoying it again.

[Kim]

Jools Walker's Back in the Frame.  Unusually for a cycling book, it's quite good.

[nobby]

A Father's day present: Roman Frontiers in Wales and the Marches.
Finding sites I have never heard of despite living near by and having an interest in the period for 50 years.

[Steph]

"Viking Britain" by Thomas Williams.

Sometimes he gets more than a little over the top, but he writes it as a story, full of word play and image, and he has a real knack for finding quotes that are both vivid and apt, as well as rather rude.

On offer for pennies on kindle.