[iain]

Jagged Red Line by Nick Williams.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jagged-Red-Line-ebook/dp/B009T8XBD2

This is quite a book.

I was looking for something new when you posted this and I finished it last night. I was hoping I'd make it last a little longer.
I wasn't sure about his writing style at first but clearly got over that quickly, incredible story.


I know others have talked about Hyperion on here, I've not long finished The Fall of Hyperion, are the Endymion books as good?

[Will Hunt]

Homage to Catalonia. As is his way, Orwell completely sucks you into the narrative and gives a comprehensive account of his deployment with the POUM during the Spanish Civil War. The explanation of the reasons for the in-fighting between the socialists and communists, and the the revolutionaries is one of the more interesting things about the book but is segregated into separate chapters so you can skip if you want.

[Falling Down]

December and Christmas reading.

Pulphead by John Jeremiah Sullivan. Really great writing on an eclectic and sometimes challenging range of subjects. Essays include his brothers accidental electroction; Bunny Wailer interviewed in Jamaica; living in the residence of an ancient man of Southern letters and Axl Rose.

Boneland by Alan Garner. A blend of the theme of Thursbitch and the characters of the Wyrdstone stories brings an adult finish and flourish to the series of children's books from the 70's.  I have to say I preferred Thursbitch and The Stone Quartet but this is a great book nevertheless and clearly an itch the author needed to scratch.

Train Dreams - Denis Johnson.  A perfect novella that deserves five stars or more.  An history of the American 20th century told through the eyes and story of one man.  One of the best books of 2012.

KLF: Chaos, Magic, Music, Money by J M R Higgs.  Interesting and entertaining ebook that's more about discordianism, dada, chaos and Robert Anton Wilson than it is about Jimmy Cauty and the KLF.  Good if this stuff is of interest.

Museums without Walls by Jonathon Meades.  Meades! in writing! all the essays! essential!

Heavy Duty People by Iain Parke.  Novel based upon the Northern biker wars a few years back.  Noir'ish and interesting for the subject matter.  The author clearly got further inside of a closed culture than Hunter S Thompson ever did. 

Stags Leap by Sharon Olds.  I've been to the winery and have a bottle of the Cabernet that the poet named this anthology after in my limited wine collection.  It was the favourite wine of Old's and her husband until their separation which this collection describes in excruciating and moving details.  Very, erm, relevant for me but equally as rewarding I suspect for the casual reader.

 

[andy popp]

Stags Leap by Sharon Olds.  I've been to the winery and have a bottle of the Cabernet that the poet named this anthology after in my limited wine collection.  It was the favourite wine of Old's and her husband until their separation which this collection describes in excruciating and moving details.  Very, erm, relevant for me but equally as rewarding I suspect for the casual reader.

Olds has just this evening won the T.S.Eliot Prize with this collection. You've given me the final nudge to read it.

[andy popp]

Great stuff Ben, more for the list.

January reading:

'Kreutzer Sonata,' Tolstoy: adultery, murder, train rides. Slight but creepy.

'Bad News,' Edward St Aubyn - second of the Patrick Melrose novels, just gets darker ... and funnier. Can't wait for vol. 3

'Art in Nature,' Tove Jansson - short story collection, the least satisfying of Jansson's adult fiction. Never quite feels like a cohesive collection.

'Crossing to Safety,' Wallace Stegner - a novel tracing the lives of two American families from the 30s to the 60s; a tribute to ordinary lives. Occasionally cloying, sometimes beautiful, ends powerfully and movingly.

Got a good way into Tim O'Brien's Vietnam short story collection 'The Things they Carried' last night; think this is going to be superb. Also read the best part of two books on the history of clerks in Victorian England but you may not want to know about them

As FD has made the bold leap into poetry I'll recommend:

'Burying the Wren,' Deryn Rees-Jones: written in response to the death of the author's husband; frighteningly raw. Have also been exploring Edward Thomas' Collected Poems.

[Falling Down]

Olds has just this evening won the T.S.Eliot Prize with this collection. You've given me the final nudge to read it.

Funny coincidence.  Well deserved.

I must now read the Melrose novels by Edward St Aubyn, I've been meaning to for ages but they are now firmly on the the list.

[lagerstarfish]

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
I read this about 15 years ago, but recently listned my way through the audio book while walking between work sites

A cracking bit of sci-fi

I mention it because it has been made into a film which comes out later this year. Hopefully the film will be pretty good, but for those of you who like sci-fi it might be a good idea to read the book first - just so the film can't ruin it for you

I didn't rate his related novel Speaker For The Dead as much - still good, but not anywhere near as good as Ender's Game

[Rocksteady]

I love this thread for ideas of books which I'd otherwise never find.

Books I've read in December and January so far:

The Gathering Storm & The Towers of Midnight by Robert Jordan/Brian Sanderson - I re-read these in preparation for the release of the final Wheel of Time novel, A Memory of Light, which I'm reading at the moment. No point reading these books if you haven't read the other 11(!) Wheel of Time novels. I think this is my favourite fantasy series, despite a couple of awfully meandering and pointless books in the series. Massive scope and complexity of story, utterly epic in scale.

Father Goriot - Balzac. Never read any Balzac before, I really liked this after a slow start. I thought the depictions of human emotion were extremely accurate. I read somewhere that the proper subject of literature was the human soul, in conflict with itself, and this fits the bill perfectly.

Cloud Atlas - David Stephen Mitchell. Picked this up off a bookshelf in a villa in Mallorca 2 years ago but left before I could finish it. Love my Kindle for this sort of thing. I actually think this novel is a pretty big achievement - a weird sort of story across 6 characters in different centuries. So moves from historical novel to crime thriller to sci-fi to post-apocalyptic. And pretty much nails them all. Some very interesting and distinct voices in this book. I don't know if I understood the story arc but I liked it.

The Dharma Bums - Jack Kerouac. Never read anything by Kerouac before, loving this book so far. Buddhism against a background of '50s America. Strikes me as a novel that would appeal to many climbers, as people who like to get out and experience the wildernesses of the world.

[casa]

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
I read this about 15 years ago, but recently listned my way through the audio book while walking between work sites

A cracking bit of sci-fi

I mention it because it has been made into a film which comes out later this year. Hopefully the film will be pretty good, but for those of you who like sci-fi it might be a good idea to read the book first - just so the film can't ruin it for you

I didn't rate his related novel Speaker For The Dead as much - still good, but not anywhere near as good as Ender's Game

Just finished the quartet in the 'Enders' series. Yes, the first is a good book. However, the rest get progressively worse.

[SA Chris]

Cloud Atlas - David Stephen Mitchell. Picked this up off a bookshelf in a villa in Mallorca 2 years ago but left before I could finish it. Love my Kindle for this sort of thing. I actually think this novel is a pretty big achievement - a weird sort of story across 6 characters in different centuries. So moves from historical novel to crime thriller to sci-fi to post-apocalyptic. And pretty much nails them all. Some very interesting and distinct voices in this book. I don't know if I understood the story arc but I liked it.

I agree and really enjoyed it. It's being made into a film, due for release soon, god knows how they will deal with that!

I'm also impressed at the rate at which you guys read. I average about a book a month!

[butters]

The Gathering Storm & The Towers of Midnight by Robert Jordan/Brian Sanderson - I re-read these in preparation for the release of the final Wheel of Time novel, A Memory of Light, which I'm reading at the moment. No point reading these books if you haven't read the other 11(!) Wheel of Time novels. I think this is my favourite fantasy series, despite a couple of awfully meandering and pointless books in the series. Massive scope and complexity of story, utterly epic in scale.

That is an awful lot of reading - waiting for the last one to be issued in paperback before I read the lot in one go.

Picked up The Game of Thrones series before Christmas and that is just awesome - he screws the narrative a bit in two of the books by splitting them geographically but the writing is overall very good indeed with all sorts of Machiavellian characters being thrown into the mix with a fair bit of death distributed evenly between the good and the bad. 

Unfortunately another series that is not complete yet and the last book ended in multiple cliffhanger story lines which is not so bad when you have the next book in the series to get on with. Unfortunately the penultimate part is due for release in 2015 so that would probably mean the final part is out in 2018/2019 judging by his previous release dates.   

[Rocksteady]

Picked up The Game of Thrones series before Christmas and that is just awesome...Unfortunately another series that is not complete yet and the last book ended in multiple cliffhanger story lines which is not so bad when you have the next book in the series to get on with. Unfortunately the penultimate part is due for release in 2015 so that would probably mean the final part is out in 2018/2019 judging by his previous release dates. 

Tell me about it. Started reading Game of Thrones in 2000 when I was at Uni, tore through the 4 available in a few months and had to wait about 5 years for the next one, which when it came was quite disappointing.

I have a theory about these books of big series - evident from the Song of Ice and Fire, Wheel of Time and even worse in the Harry Potter books. At some point, the author becomes too big to edit. That is, they've sold so many books that the editors don't dare to second guess them. Which means the reader is left with sluggish books with storylines going all over the place as the author's whims take them.

I hope George R.R. Martin sorts out the last few books of the Song of Ice and Fire and makes them as magnificent as the first few.

On another note, another book I read in November-December which I think is worth a mention is 'The Seven Pillars of Wisdom' - T.E. Lawrence's account of his war in Arabia. I had to persevere with it quite a bit as it is MAHHHOUUUSIVE and, at the start, extremely slow-paced. It's also hard to get over what feels like racist depictions of Arabs, but he's just speaking with the voice of his age. I just find it odd that he would spend so much time with people and still paint them with generalisations. Could be his character, or the fact that he is reconstructing his experiences in retrospect. Anyway, his desciptions of the desert are what stayed with me. Haunting, terrifying, wonderful. Makes me want to go climbing in Wadi Rum. Later in the book he is going on raids all over Arabia and basically winning the First World War in the Middle East, which is really interesting. The film doesn't do a bad job of depicting this book. If you like the film, worth checking out the book. If you didn't like the film, don't read the book.

[Falling Down]

I'm also impressed at the rate at which you guys read. I average about a book a month!

You have two very young children (and spend too much time on t'internet  )

[Falling Down]

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

On the list now.

[Falling Down]

I've tried to read Game of Thrones a couple of times now but fallen at the first hurdle.  Too much worldbuilding?  I loved the TV series though..

[Fiend]

Bought a Kobo and started to read a lot more:

Hannu Rajkaemriamnrie(sp) - The Fractal Prince - outlandish very-far-future sci-fi that treads an extremely fine line between fearsome creativity and utter gibberish. Hard to know what is going on but entertaining in a way.

Peter F Hamilton - Great North Road - long-winded and rambling multi-layered sci-fi, quite more-ish and an interesting glimpse of a diverse, and sometimes down to earth, future.

Keith Brookes - alt.human / Harmony - short sci-fi snapshot of humans in a crazy alien world, quite like Perdido Street Station light. Slight cyberpunk-esque annoyances but pretty intriguing.

Adam Roberts - Yellow Blue Tibia - typically dour, creative and unusual sci-fi / surreal fiction, full of curtly dislikeable characters and a definite sense of mystery, albeit one that is fairly resolved, eventually.

Nothing I'd particularly recommend compared to stuff I probably recommended a while back (Dan Simmons - The Terror, Graham Joyce - The Silent Land, China Meiville - The City And The City, the usual by Banks, Reynolds etc).

[DaveC]

Museums without Walls by Jonathon Meades.  Meades! in writing! all the essays! essential!

Cheers for mentioning this, out here in the cultural abyss that is provincial Oz we here nothing about Meades and his doings. Now all I need is for somebody to get his series on Scotland and France copied onto DVD and mailed out and we'll be really happy!

PS Ordered the book from the UK last Thursday night and it arrived this morning (Tuesday), barely 100 hours from ordering it out of Gloucester and it arriving here, amazing!

Polished off about 40 books in the course of last year, the top 5 were probably:
The Sea, A Cultural History - John Mack
The Dutch Republic - Jonathan Israel
Travels with Herodotus - Ryszard Kapuscinski
The Great Sea - David Abulafia
Arguably - Christopher Hitchens

I have nearly 140 unread titles on the shelf now, aiming to get through around 50 this year.

[SA Chris]

You have two very young children (and spend too much time on t'internet  )

Only at work! And even pre kids I never had the time.

[Rocksteady]

My commute is roughly 40min each way on the tube - that's when I do a lot of my reading. Also before going to bed, or sometimes at the weekend before getting out of bed.

Been a bit of a MASSIVE geek  and kept a journal of books I've read over the last 2 years. 49 in 2011, 64 in 2012. Roughly 25% fantasy novels and 25% 'classic' literature over both years. Rest a mix between 20th century classic novels, crime, biography/journalistic/history/self-help, crime/thriller/action. This year want to read more science and more good modern novels.

For 2012 my top 5 favourites would be:

The Dark is Rising sequence - Susan Cooper. Superb stories deeply embedded in the British countryside. The best kind of children's books. Reminded me of Alan Garner in the best possible way. I wish I'd read them when I was 11 or 12 as they would have been my favourite books.

Dune - Frank Herbert. Can't believe I hadn't read this before (bit put off by David Lynch's film). Thought the book was magnificent - a twisting, clever, brutal story, great characters. Wouldn't bother reading any of the sequels though.

Les Liaisons dangereuses - Choderlos de Laclos. Best 'epistolary' novel I've ever read - better use of the medium even than Dracula. Clever unveiling of character and story through the sequence of letters. Sexy, dark, memorable.

She - Rider Haggard. This was such a weird story, it blew me away. Kind of a cross between a historical novel, a travelogue, and a fantasy. Super imaginative. Melodramatic and roughly written in places - apparently the author pretty much bashed it out perfect in one sitting over a few days!? Purest inspiration.

The Chimp Paradox - Dr Steve Peters. A self-help book based on a very clever metaphor that is grounded in psychology. Endorsed by Olympic Gold medal winners among others.

Honourable mentions to John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath and Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy.
 

[Falling Down]

Museums without Walls by Jonathon Meades.  Meades! in writing! all the essays! essential!

Cheers for mentioning this, out here in the cultural abyss that is provincial Oz we here nothing about Meades and his doings. Now all I need is for somebody to get his series on Scotland and France copied onto DVD and mailed out and we'll be really happy!.

Here let me help you with that Meads Shrine 

[andy popp]

Les Liaisons dangereuses - Choderlos de Laclos. Best 'epistolary' novel I've ever read - better use of the medium even than Dracula. Clever unveiling of character and story through the sequence of letters. Sexy, dark, memorable.

Ah, another fan of the epistolary. May I recommend David Grossman's Be My Knife a very intense epistolary novel of obsessive love between two people who never meet: claustrophobic and brilliant.

BTW, on Vol.4 of the Melrose novels. Back on top form after a slight lull in Vol.3.

[Fiend]

25% fantasy novels

Any good recommendations? I like fairly darkish fantasy with good world-building and a strong sense of place (both of which are usually very weak in fantasy compared to sci-fi)

[andy popp]

25% fantasy novels

Any good recommendations? I like fairly darkish fantasy with good world-building and a strong sense of place (both of which are usually very weak in fantasy compared to sci-fi)

Gormenghast trilogy, if you've not read it. Surprised Rocksteady only gave this an also ran status.

[DaveC]

Here let me help you with that Meads Shrine 

Of course I should have thought of YouTube. Thanks for the reminder. T'intenet has been total crap here until recently but we're about to change over to a new and much faster service so I know what will be first thing on the viewing list!

Cheers FD

[Monolith]

Finally read and greatly enjoyed The Picture of Dorian Gray by Wilde recently. Still not too much headway with Ulysses  second time around but I'll finish it by the end of the month. I thought I enjoyed stream of consciousness Sartre-style literature and there are some great moments within, just SO many references not understood (as per Joyce's intention  )

Also finally got stuck into Thomas Mann and his short stories. Summary - Little Herr Friedemann was a very melancholic story.
I'm glad it wasn't strung out over any more pages but was impressed by Mann's ability to condense a narrative without appearing overly abrupt. 

Has anybody read Lorna Doone? Countryfile generated interest at the weekend if only for putting in the University Challenge knowledge tank.