Off Topic Chazz's Book Club

At least we have read these books anyway, people ought to give them a go and see what they think.

 

Books are very subjective... Anyway, this year so far:

RECOMMENDED
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August - Claire North
The Humans - Matt Haig
Ghostwritten / The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet / The Bone Clocks - David Mitchell
Trigger Warning / The Ocean at the End of the Lane - Neil Gaiman

NOT BAD
Us - David Nicholls
The End of the World Running Club - Adrian Walker
John Dies at the End - David Wong
The Girl with All the Gifts - MR Carey
Ready Player One - Ernest Cline
Stone Mattress - Margaret Atwood

OLDER RE-READS (Recommended)
Ragged Trousered Philanthropists - Robert Tressell
Skag Boys / Trainspotting / Porno - Irvine Welsh
The Man in the High Castle - Philip K Dick
The History of Mr Polly - HG Wells
The Illuminatus! Trilogy - Robert Anton Wilson

Currently reading The Martian by Andy Weir. It's not really floating my boat at the moment...

 

Agreed, everyone has different tastes. If you like the genre you should definitely try the gentleman bastard series. It's a bit different, it's about a bunch of thieves rather than kings, queens, armies, demons and wars etc. but I couldn't recommend it highly enough. It's witty, funny, clever, charming, and dark, brutal and gruesome all in one.

The review on this link puts it better than I ever could http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/85637389

 

Think I'm gonna read Dr Sleep next, sequel to The Shining. I don't expect it to be half as good as the original but I tend to read most of what Stephen King writes regardless.

 

The Maze Runner books are better than the film. Probably for a younger audience, mind.

 

Just finished reading Ready Player One for the third time. A superb book.

 

I'm just finishing Flat Earth News by Nick Davies. It's one in a number of books of been reading about how we're all susceptible to manipulation by groups announcing lies and distortions as fact to achieve their own ends and influence opinion, and how these manipulations can become accepted 'facts', with dissenters hounded or silenced.

I reckon some on here have knowledge of this sort of thing, so I'd be interested in any recomendations for further reading.

 

You make it sound like novels should be self-help books for some reason.

Novelists are not doctors, they're creative people, just like Mozart or Van Gogh, and the highest achievers in creative fields are often those whose brains are wired differently from those of 'normal' people. Hence the problems they have in life.

 

The great novelists have the ability to draw from real life experience or have at least observed real life experience close at hand combined with a furtive imagination yet retaining the discipline of a normal person to get the story down on paper. They'll probably be the unassuming normal looking chaps in the corner of the bar or office quietly watching the gobshites and drama queens.

 

Well novels are often said to be"improving".

I just feel if fine writers really have great insight into the human condition then why haven't they been able to apply it to their own lives?

Obviously Van Gogh was insane and anyway I'm only talking about writers and not other types of artist.

 

I'm reading The Nowhere Men by Michael Calvin. Its about football scouts. Fascinating stuff, really opens your eyes to what goes on.

 

Have been reading a lot of the new Star Wars novels recently (surprise surprise), currently reading/listening Lost Stars by Claudia Gray, it's the best of the bunch so far.

 

Re reading Project Rainbow by Rod Ellingworth. Good read about the rise of British cycling culminating in winning the rainbow jersey.

 

I have the first two volumes of The Gentleman Bastard series at home, ready for my next long haul trip. I have heard good things, and now another endorsement.

I have read the first 3 in the Malazan series. It's not my favourite but will keep going.

I've recently finished the first two installments in Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive series ("The Way of Kings" and "Words of Radiance"). Highly recommended but possibly a long wait until book 3 ("Oathbringer" or "Stones Unhallowed" depending on which source you believe).

 

You won't be disappointed. Unless you've got a boring sense of humour, are overtly PC and a bit squeamish.

The Malazan books, I don't really know how to describe them. I like things to be dry, dark, brutal and unpredictable. It ticks all those boxes but it's a bit grandiose. That's ok with me, as I don't get lost, but it's slow pace and the background of the book is lacking. A lot of the world seems to be pulled out a hat with little plausible logic behind it, but the story itself is worth soldiering on for. Never know what's going to happen.

Those Sanderson books were ok, got really in to the first, the second seemed a bit childish and I think he completely lost it at the end of the second. Went completely ott and destroyed all the suspense and mystery.

 

Let me know what it's like when you've finished. Sounds like something I'd like to read.

 

Sanderson finished off Robert Jordans series because Jordan died, don't think I will get to the end though myself get caught up with other books. Reading Antony Beevors book about World War 2, always had an interest in the conflict as my grandad was at Dunkirk and Normandy (13th day so probably lucky), was one of the first people into Brussels when it was liberated, buried lots of his mates.

 

Beevor's brilliant. I've got Stalingrad, Spanish Civil War, D-Day, The Fall of Berlin. I've not yet found/read his WW2 overview, the one you're into.

 

Like Mrs BMB my wife is the voracious reader in the family...rattling through 2-3 a week...mainly novels PD James, Ruth Rendell, Jane Gardem, Kate Atkinson, Ian Rankin etc. I'm finally getting round to catching up on my reading after retiring from my consultancy after 50 years in the business earlier this year.

Firstly after watching the first season of the brilliant Masterpiece Theater series on Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII...Wolf Hall..I'm reading Hilary Mantel's trilogy on which the series is based, starting with "Wolf Hall" and "Bring Up The Bodies". The third and final book is due out shortly. Then I read Stephen Ambrose's amazing story of the Lewis and Clark pioneering cross-country expedition which opened up the American West in 1804-06 "Undaunted Courage", and am working my way through Stephen Oates life of Abraham Lincoln..."With Malice Toward None" (hard going).

 

Man Booker announced today, anyone interested?

I'm going to give A Brief History Of Seven Killings a go.