sticky sherbert
Well-Known Member
- Location
- here
PaulB said:
I will agree on that count, took me a few pages to pick up the language changes but still a top read. My fave author
Good books you've read recently.
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I will agree on that count, took me a few pages to pick up the language changes but still a top read. My fave author
another_dave_b said:No, but it's a great title. I can recommend I Am David, or if you're read out, the Dave channel has some good stuff.
So no then.
I usually throughout the year collect about four books for a tour, the next one being the baltics cycle camping. I have got this potentially brilliant one by the french guy who wrote Maigret....for the older fraternity who can remember him. Another book is short translated russian stories...pushkin etc...........two down, two to go.....The worst thing about touring is not having enough time.......but soon I will retire and then its a one way ticket to India..........
Aperitif
Meme bar
- Location
- ...I don't have much idea - really.
Good luck soltour!
Have you read 'Germinal' - Zola, or 'Down and Out in Paris and London' - Orwell?
Powerful stuff. Hope you will be writing your adventures in the Touring and Expedition section of this forum...
Have you read 'Germinal' - Zola, or 'Down and Out in Paris and London' - Orwell?
Powerful stuff. Hope you will be writing your adventures in the Touring and Expedition section of this forum...
threebikesmcginty
Corn Fed Hick...
- Location
- ...on the slake
The Groucho Letters. Letters to and from Groucho Marx - an excellent read!
Proud2Push
Active Member
- Location
- North London
"Reflections on a Summer Sea," by Trevor Norton.
I've just finished reading this book, picked up in a charity shop. Although I have no particular interest in marine biology, I loved Trevor Norton's prose and humour. It describes student field trips in the 60s and 70s to a sea inlet in Cork the brilliant but eccentric scientists who ran them, and an Ireland that sadly no longer exists. Highly recommended.
I've just finished reading this book, picked up in a charity shop. Although I have no particular interest in marine biology, I loved Trevor Norton's prose and humour. It describes student field trips in the 60s and 70s to a sea inlet in Cork the brilliant but eccentric scientists who ran them, and an Ireland that sadly no longer exists. Highly recommended.
soltour said:
Someone bought me 6 of this series for my birthday - original cost 1/6d each.
Great read, simple but good!
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brokenbetty
Über Member
- Location
- London
PaulB said:
I read it about the same time and really enjoyed it, though I found some of the ideas about the future a little too pat ('ello Moto). My favourite Will Self book is still Great Apes, I love the social satire.
For me the thing that makes a book great is if I find it sticks in my head and from then on makes me see something partly through the author's eyes. Will Self is great for this: business meetings for me now always have a slight hint of Dr Busner asserting his authority by climbing to the highest point in the room and throwing sh*t around
and a bit of me firmly believes there is a suburb in London where the dead live. (Self called it Dulston but I always think of it as Dulwich.)I recently read "A Prayer for Owen Meany" and thought it was fantastic, very warm and human. I like books which happen in the mundane world but have something magical or otherworldly in them. (I don't however like fantasy, unless it's Terry Pratchett)
I picked up "The Historian" knowing nothing about it and was absolutely gripped by it right up to the end, when unfortunately it was a bit rubbish. But the book is still worth reading: it's about a girl who finds a book in her father's papers, and the story of how he had found the book and through it became connected to a series of researchers who had tried and failed to find the grave of Dracula / Vlad the Impaler. The earlier researchers leave notes and research which are found later ones, so you have a multi-layered story that revisits the same places and events at different times with different people.
The other one that I've read recently that stuck with me was The Orphan's Tales. The only way I can describe it is fractal - a storyteller starts a story in which the protagonist meets a storyteller, who starts a story in which the protagonist...so you whirl in and out of stories as they wind around each other. It's kind of annoying at first as all you get are stories starting, but once you start coming back to them it gets much more readable. (Unlike If on a Winter's Night a Traveller..., which is just annoying and in my opinion only exists because someone's theory said it had to).
JtB
Prepare a way for the Lord
- Location
- North Hampshire
Not watching much television I tend to get through rather a lot of books. At the time this CC thread was active there wasn't anything I'd read recently worth mentioning, but yesterday I finished reading a book called "Welcome to Hell". This is an autobiography by Colin Martin which tells the story about how he was swindled out of a fortune and how he then tracked down the man who conned him and was subsequently attacked by this man's body guard. During the fight then followed the body guard was injured and sometime after the fight the body guard was found dead. Colin Martin was subsequently arrested for murder, tortured, denied a fair trial and spent nearly eight years in a Thai prison. The book reveals how corruption is at the core of every level of the Thai system from prison guards to high court judges and reveals the extent to which one human can inflict cruelty and brutality upon another human. During the two days I spent reading this book I got a small glimpse of Colin Martin's eight year plight and I really can't understand how he managed to maintain his sanity to emerge at the end, still such a decent and humane person. As Colin Martin observes at the end of the book, so many people know what's going on, but Thailand's population and the world's public are just indifferent. For me this was a very disturbing book indeed, in fact the most disturbing book I think I've ever read.
Dave Davenport
Guru
- Location
- Hampshire
ChrisKH said:
Read that a couple of months ago, was gripping and absorbing.
Dave Davenport
Guru
- Location
- Hampshire
Had read a couple of his other books and thought they were ok'sh but Cormack MaCarthy's 'The Road' is outstanding.
Ghost Donkey
Guest
Born to run by Christopher McDougal. The author describes it as starting with him trying to find out why he can't run without getting injured. An excellent book about ultra running as well as a tribe of native Mexican runners. While it's a running based book you don't need to be a runner to appreciate it. There's also lessons in human physiology and a scathing attack on the running shoe industry. I can't recommend this book enough.
domd1979
Veteran
- Location
- Staffordshire
At the moment I am mostly reading The Age of Absurdity by Michael Foley.
