Book thread

[josie]

'I, Partridge: We need to talk about Alan' is getting almost universally good reviews. Think I'll have to ask for the audiobook though.

On another note, has anybody read any Rupert Thomson books? I've read most of what he's written and I still can't work out whether I think he's a good author or not! I can't even remember the endings to many of his books, partly I think because he writes in a hypnotic kind of way. Would be interested to hear other people's thoughts on him.

[honeyec]

I bought Stephen King's "11.22.63" for himself for Christmas. It's really for me, though.

A great recommendation for anyone who's into a few tipples is "How to Drink" by Victoria Moore. My sister got it for me last year and I absolutely love it. Fantastic book to dip in and out of and it inspired me to re-introduce cocktail hour in our house. Whisky sour, anyone?

[Peg Leg]

I started the millenium trilogy on St. Stephens day, just finished the 2nd last night.
Some bad translation, but absorbing books thus far, I'm looking forward to the final book!

[honeyec]

Himself also bought 11.22.63 for me for Christmas, I read it last week. It's a real departure for King, very unlike his usual style. THE JFK plot takes a very definite backseat to what is, essentially, a treatise on love and loss but the whole thing is extremely accomplished and I think it will win him a lot of new fans.

So now I'm reading "We Need to Talk About Kevin" by Lionel Shriver, which is hitting quite close to the bone in parts, I have to say.

[Mauler]

Just finished Crashed and Byrned, [the greatest racing driver you never saw]. It won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year a few years ago, its the story of an Irish racing driver called Tommy Byrne who threw away a great career in motor racing. He was supposedly as talanted as Senna, but never got the big breaks in F1. An excellent read.

[honeyec]

Just finished "The God of Small Things", which is on my Lit course. Very enjoyable, very different book. Arundhati Roy has a really distinctive prose style, which I'm not at all looking forward to deconstructing .

[jezzer]

"A Visit From the Goon Squad" by Jennifer Egan. Very good read. Borrows the convention of spending a chapter each on a character and then weaving them together, a lot like how David Mitchell, Colm McCann and Tom Rachman have done it (becoming a bit of a genre).

Very well written, funny, entertaining and just thought-provoking enough not to be self-indulgent.

[Danthefan]

Himself also bought 11.22.63 for me for Christmas, I read it last week. It's a real departure for King, very unlike his usual style. THE JFK plot takes a very definite backseat to what is, essentially, a treatise on love and loss but the whole thing is extremely accomplished and I think it will win him a lot of new fans.

I really enjoyed it but the end left me a bit cold.

Show Spoiler:

Him neither saving JFK nor getting to stay with Sadie I thought was a bit unsatisfying. I was expecting him to have to make a choice, one or the other.

[Skinfull]

Himself also bought 11.22.63 for me for Christmas, I read it last week. It's a real departure for King, very unlike his usual style. THE JFK plot takes a very definite backseat to what is, essentially, a treatise on love and loss but the whole thing is extremely accomplished and I think it will win him a lot of new fans.

I really enjoyed it but the end left me a bit cold.

Show Spoiler:

Him neither saving JFK nor getting to stay with Sadie I thought was a bit unsatisfying. I was expecting him to have to make a choice, one or the other.

Damn I read your spoiler And its on my locker waiting to be read! Why hast to tempted me so!

Bit late to the game here but I just finished Leo's biography and found it quite the compelling read. A real voice to it and some wonderful insight to behind the scenes actions.

[TerenureJim]

Bit late to the game here but I just finished Leo's biography and found it quite the compelling read. A real voice to it and some wonderful insight to behind the scenes actions.

Great minds think alike and all that I guess but I actually read this over the weekend, it's nicely done with the chapter split between reflections on overall past in rugby/life followed with HCup round. Wasn't a huge amount on his personal life in comparison to similar fare from ROG, Quinlan, Jackman, Brennan but I enjoyed the focus on the HCup. Nice easy read as well.

Show Spoiler:

could have covered the final and the half time of same bit better/in a more thorough fashion I thought but it's a minor quibble

[honeyec]

Just bought the Hunger Games trilogy, Skippy Dies and an interesting-looking tome called "Gone". Hmm, what to read first?

I love new books!

[Xanthippe]

Just bought the Hunger Games trilogy, Skippy Dies and an interesting-looking tome called "Gone". Hmm, what to read first?

I love new books!

I thought for a minute there that you'd 'spoiled' the Hunger Games trilogy by announcing that Skippy dies!!!

[TerenureJim]

Recently read Easter's Rising by Simon Easterby, aside from a few historical inaccuricies about Irish history which I found slightly annoying (personal beef about poor research as in don't put something in print unless you know the facts) it's a really great albeit quick read which gives a very interesting slightly outside view on the Irish set up and characters involved in the game here. Also the man clearly just loves the Scarlets.

Good review with a few spoliers here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/rugbyu ... ining.html

Next up I think will either be Temmaire or Nerd Do Well...

[TerenureJim]

Currently making my way through Simon Pegg's Nerd Do Well, it's been almost 100 pages (books only about 400 I think) and he's only about 10 and just cracking on about appearing in local am dram and toys he got for Christmas. So far it's pretty much a bog standard youth of the 1970's/80's childhood. I'll finish it and maybe it'll improve but I probably wouldn't recommend it when compared to the like of "If Chins Could Kill" etc.

[ronk]

Finding the first Hunger Games a bit of light reading to cheer me up after the load of rubbish called "We need to talk about Kevin". As stupid, self righteous and cowardly a book as I've ever had the misfortune to read.

[Hickiefan]

Finding the first Hunger Games a bit of light reading to cheer me up after the load of rubbish called "We need to talk about Kevin". As stupid, self righteous and cowardly a book as I've ever had the misfortune to read.

Recently read WNTTAK too. Found it odd tbh. Agree on the self righteous comment but I did find it very unsettling to read as well. I think having a new baby myself made the baby part more disturbing though. The parents were intrinsically selfish and unsympathetic and all in all I felt a bit empty from the experience.

Due to presence of said baby, have been doing all my reading of late on the kindle app for iPad (in the dark). Not ideal but at least I can read. Was stunned to see some electronic books are more expensive than print versions! How does that work FFS? anyway, if anyone can recommend any good ebooks I'm all ears.

[ronk]

Finding the first Hunger Games a bit of light reading to cheer me up after the load of rubbish called "We need to talk about Kevin". As stupid, self righteous and cowardly a book as I've ever had the misfortune to read.

Recently read WNTTAK too. Found it odd tbh. Agree on the self righteous comment but I did find it very unsettling to read as well. I think having a new baby myself made the baby part more disturbing though. The parents were intrinsically selfish and unsympathetic and all in all I felt a bit empty from the experience.

Due to presence of said baby, have been doing all my reading of late on the kindle app for iPad (in the dark). Not ideal but at least I can read. Was stunned to see some electronic books are more expensive than print versions! How does that work FFS? anyway, if anyone can recommend any good ebooks I'm all ears.

Shiver admits that there's an autobiographical element to the mother. She never had kids herself and the essential premise of the book is justifying her own decision not to have kids by imagining the son she never had as an evil spree killer. Hence, my comment about cowardice by the author. It's self serving, arrogant, sexist, banal and emotionally stunted. The daughter is as caricatured and unrealistic as everyone else. Shriver purports to put a message across about what happens when good parents have bad kids, but really the message is that there's a choice sometimes between career and kids, and Eva is a woman whose life is systematically and utterly destroyed by Kevin, starting before he's ever born. The passages of Kevin's adolescence are relatively brief and they are cursory. It's a side plot.

It's a fascinating and well-timed idea for a book that was spoiled by poor execution but redeemed by the misdirected polemic being confusing enough.

Show Spoiler:

Take for example the passage where she describes her interpretation of Franklin's death and both expresses surprise and chides him over the way he made it so far up the hill after receiving a mortal wound. As if it doesn't make sense! His daughter was being shot up by arrows, but Eva is still clinging to the idea that Franklin hadn't really loved his daughter. What person could think such a thing, much less a parent?

Sure it was futile for Franklin to struggle, but so what. It would also be unrealistic to expect anyone not to in his place.

I understand it's a limitation of the narrative to an extent, but I felt that it suited the author because there was really only one point of view she was ever interested in, hers.

On the ebooks front. There's always downloading. Also, I've been listening to audiobooks a fair bit lately. Great for the train (with noise reducing headphones) and when you're involved in light manual activity (such as making a cup of tea or a sandwich while listening rather than stopping). I've even been listening with the sleep timer on when in bed so I don't go right through it.

Or you could use another app like stanza or bluefire or ibooks, even for some of the books.

[mikey]

Himself also bought 11.22.63 for me for Christmas, I read it last week. It's a real departure for King, very unlike his usual style. THE JFK plot takes a very definite backseat to what is, essentially, a treatise on love and loss but the whole thing is extremely accomplished and I think it will win him a lot of new fans.

So now I'm reading "We Need to Talk About Kevin" by Lionel Shriver, which is hitting quite close to the bone in parts, I have to say.

Just finished 11.22.63 - loved it - you are certainly right about the JFK part really being secondary to the main story....I could not put it down.

[Grumpy Old Man]

On the ebooks front. There's always downloading. Also, I've been listening to audiobooks a fair bit lately. Great for the train (with noise reducing headphones) and when you're involved in light manual activity (such as making a cup of tea or a sandwich while listening rather than stopping). I've even been listening with the sleep timer on when in bed so I don't go right through it.

Tried Audio books but found my attention wandering. Would realise 10 minutes in that I hadn't been listenting to the last three minutes. So didn't work for me.

The price of ebooks is a scandal. I see Apple were taken to court in the US for price fixing, a number of publishers have already settled cases with US authorities as part of the same suit.

[Peg Leg]

Finding the first Hunger Games a bit of light reading to cheer me up after the load of rubbish called "We need to talk about Kevin". As stupid, self righteous and cowardly a book as I've ever had the misfortune to read.

Recently read WNTTAK too. Found it odd tbh. Agree on the self righteous comment but I did find it very unsettling to read as well. I think having a new baby myself made the baby part more disturbing though. The parents were intrinsically selfish and unsympathetic and all in all I felt a bit empty from the experience.

Due to presence of said baby, have been doing all my reading of late on the kindle app for iPad (in the dark). Not ideal but at least I can read. Was stunned to see some electronic books are more expensive than print versions! How does that work FFS? anyway, if anyone can recommend any good ebooks I'm all ears.

Congrats RE: baby.
Apple have some higher priced e/i/?/Books as, when apple was negotiating with the publishing houses for listings on iTunes no one (read- publishing houses) was sure whether iPad would be a success or not and so either declined to release the books to for sale on iTunes or made an offer too high for Apple to agree too! iPad becomes a success and Apple punishes all bad publishing houses for not feeling the fruity love by hiking their costs to sell when they come back to Apple with the tail between their legs.