Nothing wrong with Stephen King, but I know what you mean. I went through a phase of reading some Steinbeck, Dickens and a few other "heavier books", but still go back to the trashy horror and crime section in Smiths everytime.

King is one of the worlds biggest selling authors, so he must be doing something right, sure you will get the people who say his books are cheap horror trash, but these are people who wear slippers and cardigans and listen to radio 4

Yes. I have acopy but I haven't read that one yet.



Do I take it that it wasn't your cup of tea?

I'm afraid not. But I know I can be a bit ranty about stuff like this!

You Jim.... really?

Hard to believe, I know...

Personally don't like Stephen King. Always starts off nice and exciting, but in the last quarter of the book / movie it always goes paranormal and supernatural.

And yet he speaks so highly of you, KJ!

If you want some off-beat and high-tech science fiction, consider Charlie Stross. Singularity Sky is a favourite, but there are plenty of others to choose from.

Neil

I have just started reading Hannibal Rising, hooked within the first few pages.

Best English books I've written...

Raymond E Feist - Magician (THE best book and I found it way better than any Tolkien material - have quite some books of the series that followed).

And I quite loved reading Isaac Asimov when I was like 13-14.

Nowaddays I unfortunately limit myself to reading Top Gear and Auto Italia.

Kayjay, i am a huge Feist and Asimov fan.
You should try and pick up the feist series again, its just gets better and better. Pug and Tomas are such wonderful characters.

If you like Feist and Asimov, I would recommend Peter F Hamilton's books. In my opinion he is the greatest modern Sci Fi writer. I am currently re-reading the Neutronium Alchemist for the fith time. Its wonderfully dark in places and still gives me nightmares.

Gareth

I read Magician (and, ISTR, a couple of the sequels) when I was 13 or 14, but I've never re-read them, even though I enjoyed them at the time. Maybe I should give them another go.

I think I have around 10-11 books of the series, but unfortunately most of them in Dutch. So probably up to 'Shards of a Broken Crown'. I still consider Magician to be THE best as there are so many (easy to follow though!) parallel stories ALL of which are equally exciting. Really - anyone who liked Tolkien should definitely give Magician a go! These books are superb.

Peter Hamilton, yes. Though I find I prefer his earlier stuff - the ones set near future in England - than the later. And anything by Neil Stephenson. And Alistair Reynolds and Iain M. Banks - though if you don't like phonetic English you might want to avoid Feersum Endjinn. It's an interesting experiment but my word it's hard work.

I like Neil Stephenson, but, by god, he can't write a good ending to save his life. After reading Cryptonomicon for the first time I vowed that on any re-reads I'd stop 30 pages from the end, and as for the ending of Snow crash, well the less said the better ...

Well, I'm working my way through the new Stephenson: Anathem at the moment; it's getting better as I get along and I start to understand the background.

And I may have just found the coolest line in science fiction: "Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs. We have a protractor."

No Sci-Fi at all, but I recently finished Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore. Not light reading, I'll grant you, but I usually enjoy this kind of thing.

Interesting stuff, but a bit plodding in places. I'm pretty interested in modern-ish history, and this was good enough, but I'm not sure I'd recommend it unless you are *really* interested in the subject matter - a wikipedia entry is probably almost as informative. Tell you what though, he was a proper scoundrel.

Lately I've been hooked on Salmon Rushdie. I like to read everything an author has written at one time, then I move to another author. You learn a lot more and the stories make more sense. Rushdie has a great combination of wit and realism. I read the "Satanic Verses" first, which hooks anyone, and now am into his newest and most controversial. "The Enchantress of Florence" is a great catch by him and "Midnight's Children" has been another good read.

In middle of The Fighting Man by Gerald Seymour.

Haven't read anything like this since I was a 'Warlord Agent' and looked forward each week to reading the exploits of Union Jack Jackson.

So much easier to read than Marx and Engels Communist Manifesto!

Anyway it mentions Northern Ireland, and an old Fiat so it must be worth reading.

I'm halfway through "Delorean" by John Z. Can't decide if he has a huge conspiracy complex or was genuinely done over by the DEA/FBI/UK Government and US Government!

Well despite having had nothing to fill my days for months now I haven't been reading very much, but I decided to rectify this and, so, I've been on a bit of a reading splurg.

Nation by Terry Pratchett

This was a Christmas present that I've been studiously ignoring since I recieved it and, as it turned out, that was the best couse of action. There's nothing particularly wrong with this book, but that's about the best that can be said for it. It's the story of Mau, a young man living in The Nation, a small South Pacific island in an alternative late 19th century world. As he makes his way back from the Boys' Island, to become a man, he is swept up by a huge tidal wave which, when he finally makes it home, he discovers has also destroyed the rest of the Nation and killed its people. It's also run aground a trouserman ship, The Sweet Judy, and its sole survivor, a ghost girl who calls herself Daphne.

The book tells the story of the growing friendship between the two youngsters from vastly different backgrounds, as they start to build a society from the survivors of the other nearby islands devestated by the wave and as they await the arrival of the cannibals and other trousermen.

The main issue is that this book can't quite decide what it wants to be. It veers between love story and social commentary without ever really hitting on anything interesting or original to say. One can only hope that this doesn't prove to be the capstone on Pratchett's writing career, as he is capable of so much better.

Red Riding - 1974 by David Peace

A completely different theme here, as those who watch Channel 4's excellent trilogy will know.

In the titular year Edward Dunford returns from down South to his native Yorkshire and takes the post of North of England crime correspondent for The Yorkshire Post, which plunges him straight in to the disappearance of a young girl, abducted on her way home from school and who later turns up raped, tortured and brutally murdered, with swan wings stitched to her back.

Although this book fits in to the crime drama genre, one thing it is completely unconcerned with is actually solving the murder (which appears to be linked to similar disappearances starting in 1968, where no bodies were ever recovered). Instead it's a stream of consciousness from Edward as he uncovers police corruption and brutality which seems to lie on the edge of a British revolution. This certainly isn't a book for the squeamish - aside from the bloody murder that lies at its heart there is a graphic depiction of both sex and torture and the Peace does an excellent job of plunging the reader into Dunford's grimy world, where these is nobody he can turn to for salvation.

If you can follow the complex story through this grime, and through Dunford's smoking, drinking and vomiting, then this is an excellent novel which leaves you keen to follow the story through in to the three sequels - 1977, 1980 and 1983.

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

I picked this book up on a whim at the same time as I bought the previous one, which is funny as, on the face of it, there are a lot of similarities. This story is set a year earlier, in 1973, and also centres around the rape and murder of a young girl, this time the 14 year old Susie Salmon, and, as previously, the focus of the book is far from the solving of the crime.

Those superficial details aside this couldn't be a more different tale to the dark world of Red Riding. Following Susie's death she watches, from heaven, life unfold for her family over the next 10 years and sees how her death changes them all.

While this novel doesn't have the hard edge of Peace's work it also doesn't pull any punches, and Sebold builds a very real picture of a family struggling to cope with a terrible loss. It's a beautifully crafted, emotional tale and doesn't rely on schmaltz to get its message over.

Ok being an old un i quite like to read/hold "books" etc as opposed to sitting in front of the PC every night - so can anybody recommend any good reading matter for the coop?
Its just a shame Haynes didnt do one for these fab cars - would have been a good read me thinks...
Cheers all
Lenny

I've been reading "The Life of Senna", it's a good read if F1 and the man himself are of any interest to you.

Gareth

Time for a spot of Thread ressurection.

Recently finished The Black Swan by Naseem Nicholas Taleb. If I had to define it I'd say it was an economics book, but its really about uncertainty, and particularly how we are not able to cope with it, and how we can be entirely blind to it. Its more in the Freakonomics vein, but thats not a fair comparison. Interesting stuff, but it took some work. Taleb is a lively author, and writes in a really engaging way, but some of the things he is trying to explain make your brain ache, as its outside our normal ways of thinking. It also picked up the fudamentally unstable position of the banking industry in 2006 (when it was written) and picks on Fannie Mae as an unstable bank. Crikey. Very provocative, and its still making me think.

If anyone has read it and can recommend similar, please do.

Before that Pies and Prejudice by Stuart Maconie - pretty much what you would expect from Maconie. I found it funny, as a grumpy Northern git myself. Loved the definition of a Northern town - A street with a Superdrug and a Greggs.

Also Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood. Interwoven stories of 3 women in Toronto, and their highly exploitative relationships with a 4th woman, Zenia. These relationships were what brought them together. Its good stuff, as the reader's picture of Zenia builds through the stories of the 3 women, and it leaves you wondering who the real victim was. Atwood books are usually very good. This was no exception.

Just read "Tricks of the Mind" by Derren Brown.

Most enlightning from the master manipulator

Whilst on holiday recently I read a couple of books.

Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks writing as Ian Fleming. It was crap. I could go on so I shall. Imagine someone kidnapped Dan Brown, beat him around the head with a blunt instrument a few times and then forced him to write a James Bond novel. I know it's Bond, but the characters were weak, the plot line was very thin and the twist at the end was apparent from about 4 chapters in. Don't bother unless you only read books to make yourself feel better about the amount of TV you watch.

The Butt by Will Self. Having just read the trash I described above I had high hopes for this book and it really didn't disappoint. From the most innocuous of beginnings with a man giving up smoking by discarding his last burnt down smoke off his hotel balcony, Self manages to create a mysterious and rich land as a backdrop for a great story. The plot overview is that the butt injures a man below and the archaic laws of this strange country mean reparations have to be paid, but it plays out and twists in ways that have your mind racing, not the plot line itself. If you have an attention span longer than "Look, shiny!" then I can't see how anyone couldn't enjoy this novel. One of few new works of fiction that have left me deeply moved and somewhat disturbed when I came to the last page.

I haven't seen the old book review thread pop up here for a while, so rather than trawling through the archives for it I thought I'd start a new thread.

One of the mods is welcome to stitch this on to the end of the old thread, if they can be bothered (and if they can't then what the hell do we pay them for, eh?).

I've actually only got one book to add, but it was one that I loved, so I wanted to write it up ...

Bad Science by Ben Goldacre

Ben Goldacre is both a doctor and a columnist for The Guardian and it's hardly surprising therefore that the main thrust of this book is the relationship between medicine and the media. While he tackles familiar subjects - do alternative medicines work, are nutrionalists frauds, are drug companies evil - the over-riding message is that it's almost impossible for even an intelligent person to make informed decisions based on what's reported in the press.

Given that Goldacre covers such fascinating subjects as how clinical trial work (or are supposed to) and how statistics are gathered and reported this could have been a very dry work indeed, but he's got a witty turn of phrase and, apart from occasionally being a little patronising, he's a pleasure to read.

I suspect that if you have any belief at all in alternative medicines then this book will make you feel, at least, slightly uncomfortable. Alternatively it may make you genuinely angry at how much bunk is pedalled, aided and abetted by the media and, in some cases, governments or even royalty. Either way I'd heartly recommend it - you'll never see a medical item on the news in the same way again.

This is on my "generic online book store" wish list. I also added to my last order but grabed a Dawkins books instead.

The Derren Brown book sounds similar as some of the chapters are regarding stats, alternative medicine and logic traps

I reckon Vickster may have something to say here...!

In book terms, I've mostly read crap lately, as I seem to be addicted to Police Procedural. I read Ian Rankin's post-Rebus Doors Open, but it just wasn't the same without the seedy, smoke-reeking old curmudgeon. The latest Reginald Hill Dalziel and Pascoe was as good as ever (I really enjoy these for my sins), but Lynda LaPlante's Deadly Intent was poorly researched cack. Repeatedly talking about a Mercedes car "jack-knifing" in a motorway accident was the final straw. I won't be rushing to read another of hers...

I did read a few rather more interesting bits and bobs though:

Salam Pax's Baghdad Blog is a great window on what it was like for ordinary Iraqi's in the build-up to and during the second Gulf War. Written with sharp humour and a style that will surprise many with its "Western-ness". My wife recently spent a week working in Baghdad and met the author, who is apparently a thoroughly nice bloke.

The Buddha, Geoff and Me is a light read in novel form that deals with Buddhism and its relevance to everyday life. At times annoying and patronising, but generally quite enlightening (ha!) and without too many pat conclusions, I quite enjoyed it as a beginner's guide.

My favourites of the summer were two books dealing loosely with the same subject (Eastern Europeans coming to the UK to find work). The first is Two Caravans by Marina Lewycka (who wrote Short History of Tractors in Ukranian, though I have yet to read this). We meet a disparate group of mostly illegal workers initially picking strawberries in Kent, though through a chain of amusing and less-amusing events, the main protagonists end up in London and on a quest to get to Sheffield, home to the mythical leader "Vloonki".

Generally light in tone, there is some dark stuff here too. I liked it.

The next book I read turned out to share a theme: The Road Home, by Rose Tremain. This is a much less frivolous-seeming treatment of the subject, but ironically, lacks the extreme nastiness of Two Caravans. Overall, and possibly because the lead character Lev is allowed some fairly big character flaws, I really liked The Road Home. There is a critical look at us, the British, combined with some of the better aspects of our national character. There is tragedy, pain, humour and, eventually, redemption.
Has to be my favourite for some time.

Currently reading Memoirs of a Radical Lawyer by Michael Mansfield. Superb!

Reading this at the moment - it is very interesting as is Dawkins's Modern Science book