A jolly good read?

[PPB]

With Christmas coming up, and for those of you with daughters age 9 and up, and they enjoy reading, then I can suggest the ' Anastasia Krupnik' series ( think there are 8 books altogether ) . They are well written , funny, and I have just finished reading the last one . I thoroughly enjoyed them and I am way past 9 !!

 

[Paddingtonwolf]

the stepdaughter does need some new books for Chrimbo so I might look into that. She has demolished everything written by Darren Shan and also the entire Twilight series. Might give her a copy of Salem's Lot so she discovers that decent vampires aren't shiny.

 

[So Long Architect]

Cheers, PPB. I will check them out for my girls.

 

[lemonjelly]

Working my way through the Harry Potter's. Don't judge me.

I own them all and enjoyed them all (though book 5 went on a bit too long).

They're a great read from book three but was great reading them to the kids, As the kids get older the books grow too. They get really dark towards the end and the films don't really do them justice though the last few tried really hard.

Agree with everything here.
Order of the phoenix is a poor book - 450 pages of nothing, with a fizzbang ending.
Goblet of fire is a brilliant book.

Agree the films don't come anywhere near to doing the books justice.

t3ch, I have also read the quidditch, fantastic beasts... & beedle the bard books...

I recently read The Casual Vacancy too. I'll do a review when I post up my usual big long list.

 

[lemonjelly]

Just reading Ben Goldacres latest, Bad Pharma. Making me angry.

I know I'm a month late, but can you recall why?
This book is on my christmas present request list.

Basically, is it cos the books is crap (after bad science being so good) or cos of what he's unearthing?

 

[Langers]

Agree with everything here.
Order of the phoenix is a poor book - 450 pages of nothing, with a fizzbang ending.
Goblet of fire is a brilliant book.

Agree the films don't come anywhere near to doing the books justice.

t3ch, I have also read the quidditch, fantastic beasts... & beedle the bard books...

I recently read The Casual Vacancy too. I'll do a review when I post up my usual big long list.

Goblet of Fire is my favourite too.

 

[PPB]

Agree with everything here.
Order of the phoenix is a poor book - 450 pages of nothing, with a fizzbang ending.
Goblet of fire is a brilliant book.

Agree the films don't come anywhere near to doing the books justice.

t3ch, I have also read the quidditch, fantastic beasts... & beedle the bard books...

I recently read The Casual Vacancy too. I'll do a review when I post up my usual big long list.

jelly, I started reading The Casual Vacancy, but ended up putting it down and haven't picked it up since . Would be interested to know if its worth continuing with .

 

[PPB]

Cheers, PPB. I will check them out for my girls.

They are by Lois Lowry. Well worth a read.

 

[lemonjelly]

In brief (as I'll do a full review later) yes. I liked it. Not a happy book. There are a few twists to come in the book - more thanh 1 or 2 you can't see coming.

It isn't the happiest of books. It tells you we all have worries, we all have shortcomings, we're all worrying about stuff, & most of us are not nice.
But yes, worth finishing. How far into the book are you (fnarr just avoided there...)

 

[So Long Architect]

Just ploughing through The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell which is a bit of a monster at 900 pages but it's shaping up to be one of the best books set in WW2 I've read. Utterly disturbing and very compelling. Basically it's the fictional memoir of a Nazi who participated in the worst crimes of that regime and some of the descriptions of the industrialised killing of undesirables are very hard to read but the way it shows the ordinariness and coldness of it all is brilliant.

Good review of it here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/feb/22/history-holocaust-books-jonathan-littell

 

[PPB]

In brief (as I'll do a full review later) yes. I liked it. Not a happy book. There are a few twists to come in the book - more thanh 1 or 2 you can't see coming.

It isn't the happiest of books. It tells you we all have worries, we all have shortcomings, we're all worrying about stuff, & most of us are not nice.
But yes, worth finishing. How far into the book are you (fnarr just avoided there...)

Think I got to ' Wednesday ' and called it a day !!

I will pick it up again as I hate starting a book and giving up on it .

 

[lemonjelly]

It'll pick up pace. Gets faster the further you get into it.

 

[t3ch]

Does Amazon UK get the mound of free books we get over here? Not referring to the open license books either.

I've picked up so many free books I've literally not done any reading since I can't pick. I was going to take a break from Harry Potter since plowing through the first 3, especially since book 4 which is where they start getting longer. Figured I'd read 1-2 other shorter books to break things up, have just ended up not reading at all. Started Goblet of Fire yesterday.

 

[lemonjelly]

What mound of free boks? Are you talking downloads? Or something else?

Goblet of fire is a very faced paced book.

Order of the pheonix is bloody slow, borderline turgid for about 450 pages. You're constantly waiting for something to happen.

 

[t3ch]

What mound of free boks? Are you talking downloads? Or something else?

There are tons of free kindle books daily, plus the daily 90% off specials. I get an email daily with a list of newly free books (the deals usually only last a day or so before they go back to full price) and have amassed a decent number.

 

[lemonjelly]

Ah! Dunno, as I don't have a kindle...
There are huge volumes of out of copyright classics anyway.

 

[t3ch]

Yeah but I've already read the free classics I'm interested in... Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, and Sun Tzu. I tried to read the book on relativity but turns out that's a very poor choice in bathroom or pre-sleep material. The free ones I'm talking about are modern books. Picked this one up today. Sounds pretty interesting.

"The human race created money and finance: then, our inventions recreated us. In Extreme Money, best-selling author and global finance expert Satyajit Das tells how this happened and what it means. Das reveals the spectacular, dangerous money games that are generating increasingly massive bubbles of fake growth, prosperity, and wealth--while endangering the jobs, possessions, and futures of virtually everyone outside finance. "

Mind you the types of books available aren't all so bland. :icon_lol: And you don't need a kindle, just a smartphone. Kindle reading app ftw. And actually, I don't even think you need that... pretty sure you can bind the kindle books to your amazon account without having a kindle device synced.

 

[FrankMunro-371]

Langers daughter seems to have an interesting taste in reading....Al Qaeda.!

 

[Langers]

She obviously wants to be up to speed on current events.....

 

[nimrod]

Got through the 900 or so pages of Dhalgren whilst on holiday. Fascinating book though it absolutely won't be appreciated by everyone - pk dick for instance binned his copy of it. I'd have to rate it v highly based on the puzzle it makes you think about but it's a bit of a slog to get through.

Then read the butcher boy by Patrick McCabe which wasn't as good as I'd expected.

Now about halfway through Nostrilia by cordwainer smith that I've wanted to read for a while.