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A jolly good read?

sycophantia said:
Couple of books I've read recently that surprised me, The Final Testimony of Raphael Ignatius Phoenix is a strange tale of a guy that decides to commit suicide on his 100th birthday and leaves his suicide note as a story of his life in which he commited a number of murders......strangely compelling.
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I'm getting this one. Sounds fascinating. Thanks :)
 
Anyone who likes Bernard Cornwell style historical fiction, worth checking out Lancelot by Giles Kristian. Yes its yet another take on the Arthurian legend, but different enough and its a stand alone novel rather than a series which makes a nice change
 
The Girl Who Smiled Beads by Clemantine Wamariya. Very moving and at times heartbreaking. About 2 sisters who flee from the Rwandan Massacre and their story of survival.
 
I'm trying to read Wittgenstein at the moment. Partially as I'm running out of books that I haven't read before. Hopefully the winter festival will bring some respite.
 
SLA said:
He's probably my favourite author currently writing and I don't think he's written anything I haven't really enjoyed. Somewhat difficult to recommend one over the others as they're all quite different. If you like out-and-out fantasy stuff, The Bone Clocks is excellent. If you like to have your head messed with Ghostwritten and No.9 Dream are probably the ones to go for. Black Swan Green is bit more of a straightforward semi-autobiographical tale of English teenage life in the 80s. Thousand Autumns is like nothing else - a historical novel set in Japan.

And he's a year younger than me which makes me very cross.

Edit: actually, he's 13 days younger than me, which makes me even crosser for some reason.
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Right, I've finally got my hands on a David Mitchell book. I am reading The Bone Clocks and have just finished the 2nd section/story. I'm not exactly sure what is going in but I am really enjoying it!

I also have Cloud Atlas and Thousand Autumns on reserve at the local library.
 
Tyrannosaurus Dan said:
Right, I've finally got my hands on a David Mitchell book. I am reading The Bone Clocks and have just finished the 2nd section/story. I'm not exactly sure what is going in but I am really enjoying it!

I also have Cloud Atlas and Thousand Autumns on reserve at the local library.
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Cool. You probably have to get used to getting lost with his books. Part of the fun.
 
Tyrannosaurus Dan said:
Right, I've finally got my hands on a David Mitchell book. I am reading The Bone Clocks and have just finished the 2nd section/story. I'm not exactly sure what is going in but I am really enjoying it!

I also have Cloud Atlas and Thousand Autumns on reserve at the local library.
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have you read any murakami? the wind-up bird chronicle is great.
 
Finally got myself an omnibus of Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser series. I have been meaning to read that for about thirty years.
 
Beneath A Scarlet Sky by Mark Sullivan
Half way through this, so far really good, set in the later stages of WW2 in Italy, based on a true story of an Italian teenager who guides Jewish refugees over the Alps into neutral Switzerland.
Not really ever thought much about Italy's part in the war (apart from silly jokes) but very interesting and a tale of true heroism
 
I have always been an avid reader but I've never really got through my stash of unread books as quickly as I would like so during 2018 I made an effort to up my game a bit. As a result, I read more books than usual last year and also started taking advantage of the local library too.

I'd say that the top 5 books I read during 2018 were:

Fevre Dream - George R R Martin
The Thicket - Joe R Lansdale
The Axeman's Jazz - Ray Celestin
The Marrowbone Marble Company - Glenn Taylor
Summer of Night - Dan Simmons
 
Tyrannosaurus Dan said:
I have always been an avid reader but I've never really got through my stash of unread books as quickly as I would like so during 2018 I made an effort to up my game a bit. As a result, I read more books than usual last year and also started taking advantage of the local library too.

I'd say that the top 5 books I read during 2018 were:

Fevre Dream - George R R Martin
The Thicket - Joe R Lansdale
The Axeman's Jazz - Ray Celestin
The Marrowbone Marble Company - Glenn Taylor
Summer of Night - Dan Simmons
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not read that Simmons! I'll have a look, and at the others.

fevre dream :)
i can still remember staying up all night to finish that along time ago. brill

i still really hope you've fahrenheit 451'd that rothfuss shitness
 
nimrod said:
not read that Simmons! I'll have a look, and at the others.
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The Simmons book is a very Stephen King-esque horror about a gang of kids in a small town in the 1960's fighting off a supernatural threat (sounds very familiar!) It' a good book, though. The only other book of his I have read is The Terror and this one was better.

Don't know if you'd like the others or not. The Lansdale book is a very good western tale, the Celestin book is a crime novel set in New Orleans in 1919 and the Taylor book is another historical novel set between the 1940's and 1960's in Virginia against a backdrop of the Civil Rights movement.

As for the Rothfuss book, I read the first 50 or so pages then put it aside to read something else and haven't picked it up again since. I'll only go back to it in the event of having nothing else to read, you have properly put me off it!
 
Tyrannosaurus Dan said:
The Simmons book is a very Stephen King-esque horror about a gang of kids in a small town in the 1960's fighting off a supernatural threat (sounds very familiar!) It' a good book, though. The only other book of his I have read is The Terror and this one was better.

Don't know if you'd like the others or not. The Lansdale book is a very good western tale, the Celestin book is a crime novel set in New Orleans in 1919 and the Taylor book is another historical novel set between the 1940's and 1960's in Virginia against a backdrop of the Civil Rights movement.

As for the Rothfuss book, I read the first 50 or so pages then put it aside to read something else and haven't picked it up again since. I'll only go back to it in the event of having nothing else to read, you have properly put me off it!
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the crime novel sounds interesting.

Simmons wrote the hyperion series which you'll see in best sci-fi lists. It's epic.
I've also read a weird series of his with a strange connection I think between a future world and ancient greece, where I think the gods were basically aliens. it didn't quite work for me.
The Terror was ok.

the even weirder thing about the rothfuss other than it being so shit was i think frank praised it and suggested it did "multi-timeline" well. i mean there's only one timeline in the book, which involved a guy telling the story of his past, something that will tend to happen most days in normal life in one way or another. it must really blow his mind when someone tells him what they got up to the previous week.
 
I finally got a copy of James Clavell's Shogun for Christmas. I have been interesting in reading it since watching the mini series with Richard Chamberlain in the lead role in the mid-eighties. Finally getting my opportunity when I finish my current reading queue (which is fairly large, so I may bump it up a couple of places).

I really REALLY hope it is good and end up buying all the other Clavell Asia series.
 
Paddingtonwolf said:
I finally got a copy of James Clavell's Shogun for Christmas. I have been interesting in reading it since watching the mini series with Richard Chamberlain in the lead role in the mid-eighties. Finally getting my opportunity when I finish my current reading queue (which is fairly large, so I may bump it up a couple of places).

I really REALLY hope it is good and end up buying all the other Clavell Asia series.
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It is very good! Need to suspend belief at bit at times though. Gai-jin is also very good, the rest tail off a bit, but worth a read - apart from the Iranian revolution one, that's pants.
 
Sold On A Monday by Kristina McMorris. Tells the heart wrenching plight of abandoned childen, children sold, poverty, hunger and other awful shit during the depression. Wouldn't say this is a ' jolly ' read, but one I'm glad I started and finished.
 
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