Books you are reading

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szola
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Re: Books you are reading

Post by szola »

Image

An easy sci-fi read, if you want to be somewhere else in time
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WHU Independent
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Re: Books you are reading

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The Last Day Of Hitlers Life. A short, less than 200 page book, that is excellent written by a Historian who's name I've forgotten!

A short, punchy yet detailed book that actually goes way and beyond the books title. He draws from Primary sources - Hitlers body guard, cook, secretaries, Chaufers etc - and puts together a detailed picture of what it must be like ine the final days of the bunker. A gripping read - i devoured it in one sitting.

The Bone Arch - A Warhammer 40 K book. The sceond book in the Indonitus Crusade. Gulliman is back and strikes back at the forces of Chaos, trying rescue a certain planet that has big implications for the spread of evil. But his plans are set to fail.. can he get them back on track?
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Korea Hammer
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Re: Books you are reading

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Bessie Head - The Collector Of Treasures and Other Botswana Village Tales

A brilliant collection of short stories, mainly about the lives of Botswanan women, and written in a colourful and direct style.
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Korea Hammer
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Re: Books you are reading

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Bessie Head - Maru

An atmospheric and strange story of cast prejudice and jealousy in Botswana. I read this over 30 years ago at university and just revisited it having found the short stories in a charity shop. Very good.
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Korea Hammer
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Re: Books you are reading

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Sang Young Park - Love In The Big City

Incredible really, how much things have changed in Korea in the last 20 years, a country in which I was regularly told homosexuality didn't exist back in the noughts. This bestselling zeitgeisty novel about the life of a gay Korean man in Seoul might not be the best written book I've read this year, but it may be of the most important.
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Re: Books you are reading

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Damon Galgut - The Promise

The Booker Prize winning story of the decline of a racist white South African family. There is a lot to enjoy about this and I read its 300 pages in two days, but I wasn't 100% sold on a couple of things about the tone and narrative style, as well as an oddly ill-fitting supernatural undercurrent.
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Plashet Grove Pete
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Re: Books you are reading

Post by Plashet Grove Pete »

"And What Do You Do....?" by ex-MP Norman Baker. A fascinating expose of how the Royal Family are ripping us off and treating us all with utter contempt. Some of the waste and hypocrisy exposed is almost unbelievable, and the lack of legal action against the author from the Palace suggests he's got them bang to rights.

Read it and storm the palaces ....
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Re: Books you are reading

Post by Burnley Hammer »

Just started reading 'End to End' - a persons account of walking from Lands End to John O Groats. I'd love to do that myself at some point in the future when I have more money.
Misko
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Re: Books you are reading

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I have to confess that I had never read anything by George Orwell until very recently. I have now read 1984 and have just finished Animal Farm. Better late than never, and I am glad I did read them in English, and not translated.
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sword
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Re: Books you are reading

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I like long series' of books, preferably a dozen or more.
Just started on Killing Floor, the first in the Jack Reacher series, never realised there were so many, I may be some time... :short:
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smuts
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Re: Books you are reading

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sword wrote: Fri Feb 17, 2023 3:27 pm I like long series' of books, preferably a dozen or more.
Just started on Killing Floor, the first in the Jack Reacher series, never realised there were so many, I may be some time... :short:
My dad loves these so started reading them so I could chat with him about them.

You may want to take a break after a few...they do tend to get a bit familiar after a while. There was one where half the bloody book was Reacher going backwards and forwards to the villains base again and again.

They're all readable though. :newthumb:
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pablo jaye
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Re: Books you are reading

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Misko wrote: Fri Feb 17, 2023 2:56 pm I have to confess that I had never read anything by George Orwell until very recently. I have now read 1984 and have just finished Animal Farm. Better late than never, and I am glad I did read them in English, and not translated.
Misko - I think many of us will have to confess to not having read any George Orwell … in any language. Me
included! I do admire how non-native English speakers will easily converse in our language.

If you fancy a challenge, try reading Irvin Welsh’s ‘Trainspotting’ - the Edinburgh dialect and slang was tough going for this English speaker.
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Re: Books you are reading

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pablo jaye wrote: Fri Feb 17, 2023 4:59 pm Misko - I think many of us will have to confess to not having read any George Orwell … in any language. Me
included! I do admire how non-native English speakers will easily converse in our language.

If you fancy a challenge, try reading Irvin Welsh’s ‘Trainspotting’ - the Edinburgh dialect and slang was tough going for this English speaker.
One of the reasons why I joined here in the first place, and why I stuck around afterwards, was to practice English. Learning English is rather easy for many non-native speaker for the simple reason that it is basically everywhere. You learn it without noticing that you do.

I had no problem reading Orwell, the language was rather easy to deal with. I actually found The Great Gatsby more tedious to read because of the language for example. I will look for Trainspotting, it may be fun!
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Re: Books you are reading

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I collect Doc Savage books (Batam editions) and found one I didn't have in a bookstore yesterday. The yellow Cloud.

Basically a Yelow could is decending and makingTop Secret US military airplaines vanish. One of Doc's Aides - Renny - is flying one of the planes so Doc investgates. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/491 ... llow-cloud


A rollocking good classic pulp ficton read that was a page turner from beginning to end. Not classic Doc, but enjoyable all the same. What's more amazing is that Kennith Robeson, the author, wrote the book in the early 30's has a massive and impressive imagination. From massive WW2 like submaries, to mini machine guns that fire "mercy" bullets, massive sipersonic jets, gyrocopters, Short take off and Landing planes. computers - he's developed a lot of it in his books. Also the book sprts an incredible BAMA drawn cover.

if you like 1930's deective fiction with a sliht SF twist - Doc Savage is for you.

And if anyone out there has and Doc books and want to get ris of them, send me a PM please.
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Korea Hammer
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Re: Books you are reading

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Leonardo Padura - The Man Who Loved Dogs

This nearly 600-page story detailing the events leading up to the assassination of Trotsky is admirably detailed and really reads as much like a history book as a novel at times. I found parts of it a bit of a slog, if I'm honest, although it's an impressive work.
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Re: Books you are reading

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Taking a break from yet another re read of 'The Passenger', I'm back with an old favourite Robert Tressell's 'The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists'.
Spammy The Vee
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Re: Books you are reading

Post by Spammy The Vee »

Not sure there's many reading this that will have a connection or interest in South West London, but I recently finished Charlie Gere's 2022 "World's End". It's a personal history and perspective of "the wrong end of the Kings Road' and I found it very interesting. I had no idea that the area and other parts of Chelsea were so heavily bombed in WW2. Not for everyone but a good, slim read."
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Re: Books you are reading

Post by Plashet Grove Pete »

Tenbury wrote: Mon Feb 27, 2023 6:59 am Taking a break from yet another re read of 'The Passenger', I'm back with an old favourite Robert Tressell's 'The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists'.
Confess I found TRTP very hard work. I think it's an important and influential work, but talk about hammering home the message with a sledgehammer for about 400 pages.
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pablo jaye
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Re: Books you are reading

Post by pablo jaye »

Just finished Nige Tassell’s ‘Whatever Happened To The C86 Kids’.

A look back at that seminal cassette released by The NME in 1986, he travels the country seeking out what some of the band members are now up to. Some interesting stories, The Pastel’s drummer Bernice Simpson is now a big cheese in the Pharmaceutical world, some artists still a going concern whilst others barely lasted beyond the release of the cassette and then went back to obscurity and a more conventional life.

Many appeared to regret not donating better songs than they did and listening to the album again - some tunes have dated better than others.

A decent read for 80s indie-kids like me!!
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Re: Books you are reading

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William Burroughs ~ The Soft Machine

I picked up a nice looking copy of this infamous 1961 novel from a charity shop recently, and read it this afternoon instead of watching the second half of the game. Turns out, either way I was looking at a Saturday afternoon filled with horror, hate and disgust.

This is part of a trio of novels that Burroughs wrote using the cut-up technique, as though protesting against language itself as a tool which controls the ways in which we think. The book is ridiculously graphic/obscene and impossible to follow in any normal sense, even though it all revolves around some sort of space mind control story. Allegedly.

I would say it's of interest to people who like words and experimentation and who have a high threshold for offensive material. It is, however very challenging reading. A challenge to reading itself, even.
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