Best reads - Club Together Book Club?

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  • nelliethehooker
    nelliethehooker Club Member Posts: 13,636 ✭
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    edited June 2019 #302

    I'm 2/3rds of the way thro' it. Both funny and serious. Will have to keep our eyes open for the 99p offer on fourth in the trilogy!!laughing

  • Wherenext
    Wherenext Club Member Posts: 10,586 ✭✭✭
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    edited June 2019 #303

    Just bought a book I read ages ago but now selling for £0.99 on Kindle

    A big boy did it and ran away by Christopher Brookmyre

    The author does like everyone to know how clever he is and there are times when I want the characters to speak in different ways rather than sound like they were taught by the same English teacher but the yarn is a good one and I still bought more of his books or borrowed them from the library and one or two or them ard laugh out funny, particularly One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night.

  • Tinwheeler
    Tinwheeler Forum Participant Posts: 23,134 ✭✭✭
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    edited July 2019 #304

    Damien Boyd's 9th DI Nick Dixon book, Beyond The Point, is in Amazon deals today at 99p!

    https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07KHV8F98/ref=s9_acsd_hps_bw_c_x_1_w?pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_s=merchandised-search-8&pf_rd_r=ES6DC7K9ZH42WBWMDZAP&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=26b39a83-11e4-487f-9168-0cd1f0002feb&pf_rd_i=341677031

     

  • ABM
    ABM Forum Participant Posts: 14,578
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    edited July 2019 #305

    Since so many of you book worms appear to be re-reading books from your past Ive got the bug and will have to go back to the Thomas Covenant books and see if I can make a better job of the Second Chronicles this time around !!

  • brue
    brue Forum Participant Posts: 21,176 ✭✭✭✭✭
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    edited July 2019 #306

    Adrian Mole's been on the radio again. I've been listening to the "Prostrate Years" being read on Book at Bedtime, radio 4. I read the book a few years back, a mix of funny and sad and the usual acutely observant. I miss Sue Townsend's writing.

  • DavidKlyne
    DavidKlyne Club Member Posts: 13,856 ✭✭✭
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    edited July 2019 #307

    Quite a long time ago a former colleague gave me Bill Bryson's book The Road to Little Dribbling. It sits in the motorhome and now and then I read a chapter or two. I like Bryson books as we seem to share a similar sense of humour. Well today I finished the book so no more giggling out loud as I read it. Well worth a read if you don't mind an outsiders view of us Brits!!!

    David

  • nelliethehooker
    nelliethehooker Club Member Posts: 13,636 ✭
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    edited July 2019 #308

    OH got it yesterday...thanks for the heads up.

  • Tinwheeler
    Tinwheeler Forum Participant Posts: 23,134 ✭✭✭
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    edited July 2019 #309

    👍🏻👍🏻

    It's £4.99 today.

  • milliehull
    milliehull Forum Participant Posts: 4,754 ✭✭✭
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    edited July 2019 #310

    I love Bill Bryson's books David. Notes from a Small Island is a wonderful read.  I love his sense of humour.

  • Bakers2
    Bakers2 Forum Participant Posts: 8,191 ✭✭✭
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    edited July 2019 #311

    I too enjoy Bill Bryson's since of humour and his way of looking at us brits and our island.

    Brue I'm listening to Adrian Mole on Radio 4 but just after noon. Bedtime listening is The Archers on iPlayer,  sorry Sounds.

    We tend to have audio books or radio 4 programmes iPlayer things like ramblings, open country etc on  as white noise overnight, these days via Bluetooth speaker.

    I'm aiming to 'find' the latest Logan McRae books cheaply 😉😉 but in the meantime am read Eric Idle always look on the bright side. Hadn't settled to much reading since OH left hospital but getting back in to it.

  • DavidKlyne
    DavidKlyne Club Member Posts: 13,856 ✭✭✭
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    edited July 2019 #312

    Millie

    If you have not already read it you might like "Neither Here Nor There" which is a about a trip he did through Europe. 

    David

  • Wherenext
    Wherenext Club Member Posts: 10,586 ✭✭✭
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    edited July 2019 #313

    I always enjoy Bill Bryson books. Liked the one he wrote about Australia, Down Under?, and a few set in America. Found he was a bit more downbeat about the UK in Little Dribbling but can't say I blamed him.

    A fine champion of Rambling and also Keep Britain Tidy.

  • moulesy
    moulesy Forum Participant Posts: 9,402 ✭✭✭✭✭
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    edited July 2019 #314

    "I'm aiming to 'find' the latest Logan McRae books cheaply 😉😉 but in the meantime am read Eric Idle always look on the bright side."

     

    I'll be interested to know what you think of Eric Idle's book. I enjoyed the first half with all the Python references but got a bit irritated by so much blatant name dropping in the second half.

  • Wherenext
    Wherenext Club Member Posts: 10,586 ✭✭✭
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    edited July 2019 #315

    I have a couple of Kindle books stacked up to read but on returning our OS maps from the recent holiday to the library (use them or lose them) I saw a book that took my interest.

    1606 William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear by James Shapiro

    An account of the Political, social and economic times that existed at the time that WS wrote King Lear, Macbeth and Anthony and Cleopatra and the influences that may have led him to write them. Interesting stuff, early days, but a good book to read in small chunks before sleep.

  • nelliethehooker
    nelliethehooker Club Member Posts: 13,636 ✭
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    edited July 2019 #316

    Got it at the right time then!!laughing

  • moulesy
    moulesy Forum Participant Posts: 9,402 ✭✭✭✭✭
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    edited July 2019 #317

    For anyone who enjoyed the rather quirky "Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry" by Rachel Joyce, I've just started the "companion" book "The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennesy". Signs are it's going to equally quirky.

    (Picked it up for 50p at Putts Corner having been kindly left by a previous reader! smile)

  • JayOutdoors
    JayOutdoors Forum Participant Posts: 572
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    edited July 2019 #318

    Been reading more detective novels - Sally Spencer’s DCI Monica Paniatowski books and Mick Herron’s Slough House spy novels.  Also picked up a book by Michael Jecks which I enjoyed – No Law in the Land, a medieval mystery.  May read more of his when I see them.  Saw Harlan Coben being interviewed briefly this morning on TV so may look out some of his books.  I can only remember reading 1 a long time ago.

  • nelliethehooker
    nelliethehooker Club Member Posts: 13,636 ✭
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    edited July 2019 #319

    I really like Harlan Coben's Myron & Mickey Bolitar series. As with other good series it's best to start at the beginning, in this case Deal Breaker,

  • nelliethehooker
    nelliethehooker Club Member Posts: 13,636 ✭
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    edited July 2019 #320

    For anyone who enjoyed the rather quirky "Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry" by Rachel Joyce,

    I see that this book is on offer on Kindle at 99p at the moment, which I guess is a bargain, especially as it appears to be recommended by M, so I've just got it!!

  • Bakers2
    Bakers2 Forum Participant Posts: 8,191 ✭✭✭
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    edited July 2019 #321

    Well I reckon you did well to get to about halfway, 272 pages makes that around 136 pages or so. I'm on page 94 and have been feeling very similar for several pages. In fact I haven't picked it up for ages and I'm not sure I'll finish it. 

    Stephen Fry's quote in the front 'Funny, wicked, naughty, eye-popping and compulsively joyously brilliant' does tie in with my reading of it, maybe I'm not in the 'in crowd'?

    Might lash out full price on latest Logan McRae, but that's got mixed reviews!

  • moulesy
    moulesy Forum Participant Posts: 9,402 ✭✭✭✭✭
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    edited July 2019 #322

    Just in time for our trip to Cornwall I managed to pick up Kate Atkinson's latest Jackson Brodie adventure "Big Sky" from our local library. It's the fifth and, I believe, the last, in the series based around her accident-prone private detective.  She is such a clever writer - you never know how many separate stories are interlinked in her books until pretty much the end.

    Good holiday reading - a lot lighter than most other detective stories.  If you haven't come across them yet I can certainly recommend them, but go back to the first story - "Case Histories" and read them in order to really appreciate them. smile

  • nelliethehooker
    nelliethehooker Club Member Posts: 13,636 ✭
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    edited July 2019 #323

    Just finished it and can thoroughly recommended it. Will have to look out for the next 2 by Rachel Joyce.

  • moulesy
    moulesy Forum Participant Posts: 9,402 ✭✭✭✭✭
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    edited July 2019 #324

    I picked up a copy of "Natural Causes" by James Oswald from our site book swap the other day. The first in a series featuring Inspector Tony McLean. Set in Edinburgh I was expecting it to be a bit of a Rebus rip off. But it's quite different,  not as intricate as Rebus, not as humorous as Logan McRae. Oswald is a horror writer turned detective writer and there's a bit of the supernatural in this book. Now on the second in the series "The Book of Souls" which is a more traditional whodunit. Good stuff if you like that sort of thing (which I do!) smile

  • nelliethehooker
    nelliethehooker Club Member Posts: 13,636 ✭
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    edited July 2019 #325

    Great series, M. I'm waiting for No.6 to appear in a charity shop or drop to 99p on Kindle, but I think that I'll have a long wait. Have you tried any by Pete Brassett's DI Munro series. The first - She- is just a "get to know to main characters" really but the rest are easy reading and follow on. They are sited around Dumfries and Ayr, using actual locations.

  • moulesy
    moulesy Forum Participant Posts: 9,402 ✭✭✭✭✭
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    edited July 2019 #326

    No, haven't come across that series yet. I'll keep my eyes peeled for them. Mind you, I've got the latest Logan McRae and David Raker books waiting at the library when we go home and the Tom Thorne reserved so that'll keep me going for a little while! wink

  • nelliethehooker
    nelliethehooker Club Member Posts: 13,636 ✭
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    edited August 2019 #327

    For those out there who haven't read any of Stuart McBride's Logan MacRae series of detective books the first in the series, Cold Granite, is on sale at Kindle for 99p at the moment. Can highly recommend the whole series, especially if you like gritty detective books with a sense of humour.

  • Bakers2
    Bakers2 Forum Participant Posts: 8,191 ✭✭✭
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    edited August 2019 #328

    I can only agree with nelliethehooker post above. Very readable.

    I'm waiting on the latest one from this year - might have to pay in full as not been cheap on Kindle and haven't found it in a charity shop yet!

  • moulesy
    moulesy Forum Participant Posts: 9,402 ✭✭✭✭✭
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    edited August 2019 #329

    I have the brand new one "All that's dead" waiting in the library for me - 95p to reserve - bargain! smile

  • DavidKlyne
    DavidKlyne Club Member Posts: 13,856 ✭✭✭
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    edited August 2019 #330

    I enjoy my political biographies ( of all colours!) Just finished Gordon Brown's "My Life,OurTimes". It was a long read and it has taken me quite a while to get through it. For obvious reasons I can't really go into details but perhaps one observation could be allowed that I was not convinced, from what he wrote, that he was comfortable being PM. 

    Now reading something completely different, Nora Krug's, Heimat, will report back.

    David

     

  • DavidKlyne
    DavidKlyne Club Member Posts: 13,856 ✭✭✭
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    edited August 2019 #331

    Very unusual for me to have consecutive reviews of books as I am usually a slow reader. I have just finished Nora Krug's Heimat. Heimat is a word that does not seem to have a direct English translation but roughly means homeland or that part of the country that you most closely associate with. Nora Krug is a second generation (after the Second World War) German who had a degree of angst as to what the immediate previous generations may have been responsible for in the war and she sets out to discover the good or bad. Essentially in the end, and no doubt much to her relief,  she establishes that none of her relations did anything that she felt she would be ashamed of. In no way is she excusing the rise of Nazi Germany but she was more concerned from a personal level. The book is also unusual in the way it is laid out and I attach a couple of photos to illustrate the point. 

    David

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