Good books you've read recently.

[User482]

I have to say I picked it up with great expectations and put it down at various intervals until about half way when I realised my life was passing me by. That was ten years ago and I still haven't finished it.

That happened to me too. Then I picked it back up and re-read it from the beginning. I thought it was outstanding.

 

[cisamcgu]

Just starting "Birdsong", and just finished the Praxis trilogy (Sci-fi space opera !)

 

[Glow worm]

Any good books out there at the moment?


I've always liked travel books, which is a bit strange as I feel ill if I have to leave East Anglia! Yarmouth's the Far East for me. Still, I really enjoyed Horatio Clare's slightly quirky 'A Single Swallow'. It's about Mr Clare's travels over land from Cape Town to his home in Wales, following the swallows as they migrate from Southern Africa in February to Wales in May. A Great read and some cracking anectodes. If you are a bit of a birder like meself (I'm a pretty crap one though), you'll love it.

I'm currently half way through Josie's Dew's bicycling travels around New Zealand. (I'd be interested to know what fellow cyclists think of her). I once hitched around NZ so it's fun reading her take on the place and its wild weather - and drivers. Her book on cycling around the UK coast was pretty good too. I also read her book about crossing the USA but found about 85% of it was about Hawaii and 15% on the cross continental journey east!

If anyone's read her book about travelling to NZ by ship from the UK I'd be interested in a reveiw (Saddled at Sea).

Other than that, it's Norwich City - The Glory Years (I'ts an extermely thin volume).

Regards to all and have a cycletastic weekend.
Giles.

 

[longers]

I've just read Karen Darkes "If you should fall". A good account of an active person following paralysis in a climbing accident. Saw her on the round of talks she did and she's an inspirational woman.

Started "Endurance" by Alfred Lansing about Shackletons last voyage, very good so far. Hope it's got a happy ending.

 

[ColinJ]

I've just read Karen Darkes "If you should fall". A good account of an active person following paralysis in a climbing accident. Saw her on the round of talks she did and she's an inspirational woman.

Sounds like a great book. She went to Calder High school, Mytholmroyd. I remember her accident being reported in the local paper and had wondered what had become of her since then.

 

[gary r]

Just starting "Birdsong", and just finished the Praxis trilogy (Sci-fi space opera !)

Birdsong is a great book, im reading "A drink with Shane Macgowan" Scary !! i dont know how he is still alive !!!

 

[Crankarm]

Just starting "Birdsong", and just finished the Praxis trilogy (Sci-fi space opera !)

Yes Sebastian Faulkes' Birdsong is good. The last chapters where Faulkes describes the forgotten war underground, the laying and detonating of explosives to destroy the enemy tunnels, are terrifying IMHO. Took me some weeks to get the immediate images he describes from my mind.

Just as moving is Milligan's War and Adolf Hitler: My Part in his Downfall both obviously by Spike Milligan. Captures the utter futility of war and the farce of the military. The guy was a genius. Far better than Heller's Catch 22 IMHO.

 

[cheadle hulme]

I read "Stalingrad" and "Berlin" by Antony Beevor. Both very good accounts from a military point of view, but bogged down with too much detail.

I read Stalingrad on holiday, I thought it would be quite heavy, but it was engrossing. A lot of detail as you say, but he is meticulous in his research.

I'm reading Berlin now, don't tell me the ending!

 

[Crankarm]

I've always liked travel books, which is a bit strange as I feel ill if I have to leave East Anglia! Yarmouth's the Far East for me.

Perhaps you'd like Anne Mustoe's book - A Bike Ride 12,000 miles around the world. She's a sort of more heavy weight Josey Dew. I don't mean physically, but the things she writes about. She doesn't neglect the cycling narrative either. She does a lot of research. She's a retired head teacher which explains why her books are more 'learned' shall we say although she doesn't preach.

Other famous travel authors are Freya Starck and Dervla Murphy.

I liked Nick Danziger's Travels - Beyond Hidden Frontiers journeying through southern Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tibet and China in the 1980s very much and then his follow up book Danziger's Adventures from Miami to Kabul a few years later.

 

[Rohloff_Brompton_Rider]

jeffrey deaver.

bloody river blues. shortish slow but surprisingly un put downable

 

[PBancroft]

Read The Gangs of New York (1928) by Herbert Asbury whilst on hols in August.

Cracking semi-fictional stuff about, erm, the gangs, slums and corruption of New York in the 19th century.

I've got that waiting for me on Mount Toobie at the moment.

Last book I read which I really couldn't put down was The Painted Man by Peter V. Brett - if you like fantasy at all, its a cracking read.

 

[another_dave_b]

Recently read A Computer called Leo, supergood.

 

[Perfect Virgo]

Two startling stories of self-discovery, both exquisitely written:

Wally Lamb - I Know this much is True
Jackson Tippett McCrae - The Bark of the Dogwood

 

[Yellow Fang]

Recently read Freakonomics. I bought it for my dad, but was around his house a fortnight ago and read nearly all of it in one day.

 

[Glow worm]

Perhaps you'd like Anne Mustoe's book - A Bike Ride 12,000 miles around the world.

Thanks for the tips. All will be on my Christmas list for Mrs G! I think I heard Anne Mustoe on a radio programme some time ago and I remember thinking 'I must read some of her stuff' but never got around to it, so thanks for the reminder.

Regards,
Giles.