FFS - Thanks for the Stewart Lee bit. He was in my favourite comedians list. The best stand up going right now. If someone mentions Dan Brown, Lee beautifully tore him to shreds too. (I love the Harry Potter books by the way. And Blake.)
Not sorted in order, but 5 of my favourites: - Post Office by Charles Bukowski - Ask the Dust by John Fante - Hunger by Knut Hamsun - Trans-Atlantyk by Witold Gombrowicz - Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Celine
The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams Misery - Stephen King The Rats - James Herbert Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Phillip K Dick Mort - Terry Pratchett In no particular order.
Anybody who puts Dan Brown down should volunteer for live cornea donor ship, as they obviously don't need their eyes. Mind you he did wind the Pope up, so garbage has its uses.
Shadow of the wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon No Country for Old Men - Cormac McCarthy Saturday - Ian McEwan Songbird - Sebastian Faulks The Plot Against America - Philip Roth The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson is also a great trilogy that you won't regret investing the time in. Also anything by Lee Child, Mark Billingham, Michael Connoly, Peter James and Vince Flynn is a good read. I admire those who actually enjoyed the classics, ( ie pre 50's ) But they are laboured and slow with far too many adverbs and adjectives to result in a good fast paced read. Fair play if you honestly managed to stay with them, but why use five words when you can use two. A bit like our board really, short and snappy does the trick.
A bit dismissive of our literary cannon there Nines. I guess it comes down to why you're reading. If it's to learn, to wallow in beautiful writing etc etc then Eliot, Proust, Austen, Scott Fitzgerald et al are worth investing the effort. Concentration takes practice. Nothing wrong with a well written snappy thriller - but there's more to it than that. (Really badly written defence of Literature by me.)
Me too - although there's certainly a case to argue for anything in my list being 'better' than any one of his books. Pratchett's Discworld stories are great, and I can read and re-read every one, with the possible exception of those with rincewind in, as for some reason I can't really get enthuserd about someone whose only talent is in staying alive. Give me a City Watch story any time, or one of the few that don't really have any direct character link to other stories, like Mort or Pyramids. And I loved Going Postal and Making Money.
