Surely we all read? Share away! As mentioned in the mental health thread a few weeks back, my local comic shop launched a book club they've called "books without pictures". I went along to my first meeting last week and had a blast. We'd been reading Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman that I've read (the first being American God's) and I enjoyed it's lighter tone and the way it was broken down into individual short stories but also written in a way that they all bled together to make one larger story.
At the end of the session we write books down we want to read/share with others and out then into a box. One is drawn out to replace the previous month's title in the group's Facebook poll (which has 3 titles). The book we voted on for March was Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham, so a new book was picked out to replace that in the poll whilst another was omitted from the poll for being there two months running.
My previous reads, from before I joined the book club, were Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris which I found equally sad and inspiring. When I started to read it I thought it might be too much, considering the stage we were at with Charlys treatment, waiting for her surgery date etc but I think it was actually the right book to read at the right time, to read a love story that overcome the most extreme situation nearly anyone could ever imagine. I also read The Mechanics Tale by Steve Matchett. There's a very famous Formula 1 photo of a Benneton car engulfed in flames, well this is written by one of the pit crew/mechanics that was involved in that particular incident and was enjoyable enough but it's more about his career and doesn't get too involved in any of the politics or events of the sport.
I've also got Complete Ghost Stories by Charles Dickens on the go that I dip in and out of as Im finding it a really difficult read.
I'm currently struggling through The Silmarillion (which I got for Christmas), albeit in fits and starts. All valar names just pass straight through my brain without actually registering. I think there's a Manwë? And maybe an Ulmo? The only ones I definitely remember so far are Melkor and Sauron. I've read part of it before, and I got farther than I currently am, so I think it does get easier? I seem to remember the bits with Ungoliant being decent…
On the fantasy front I'm reading Kings of the Wyld which is a very easy page turner. The Discworld influences are obvious, and it doesn't so much slip into cliche as revel in it, but it's all an immense amount of fun. At its heart it's just five mates on a road trip, sort of like a less racist Top Gear with goblins.
I've also just finished The Little Stranger, which was a brilliant is-it-isn't-it-ghost-story. It's the first time a book has ever truly scared me – there are things in there that really get under your skin. Thoroughly enjoyed this one. And I'm about to start The Last Children of Tokyo which I know nothing about, but I liked the title and cover in the bookshop. (Yes I'm shallow.)
I've just finished Milkman by Anna Burns which won this year's Booker Prize. It's set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles and has a very distinctive narrative voice, a rambling stream of consciousness where none of the characters are referred to by name but by their relationship to the narrator (key characters include third brother-in-law, maybe-boyfriend and the eponymous milkman). It has a reputation for being a difficult read but I honestly didn't find that at all and it's a very memorable story about a time and place I have no personal knowledge of at all.
Prior to that I read Days of Wonder by Keith Stuart, who some of you may be familiar with from his work as the Guardian's videogame correspondent or his previous book A Boy Made of Blocks. This is solid Richard & Judy stuff, lightweight stuff really, and I don't think Stuart's what you'd call technically a great writer (the two characters are a thinly-veiled 40-year-old author substitute, and his 15-year-old daughter, and they both sound exactly the same) but for some reason this book really got me where it counts and I couldn't put it down. It's shamelessly emotionally manipulative but really effective and I'm sure it'll be a big success.
Currently halfway through Everything Under by Daisy Johnson which is a dark and unsettling story about a girl who grew up on a canal barge, her fractured relationship with her mother and something that may or may not be stalking the canal. It's got a real dark fairy tale vibe to it and I think it may be going somewhere very strange but I need to finish it before I really know whether it's going to hit the mark or not.
I read two really enjoyable books last month. One was The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band That Burned a Million Pounds by John Higgs which reads like an Adam Curtis breakdown of the act of burning the money but also the scene, beliefs and culture that allowed it to happen. It’s genuinely fascinating and wider ranging than I could have imagined going into it.
The Second was This Is Memorial Device by David Keenan. It’s about a fictional post punk music scene in Airdrie in the 80’s. The novel is made up of a series of interviews/recollections from those involved. It made me feel the way I did when reading Trainspotting for the first time as a teenager which I think is a double edged compliment – the book has a range of voices, some intrigue, comedy, mild shock value and an ability to build a picture of a scene and it’s participants in a similar way to Trainspotting but that comes along with all the problematic aspects of Irvine Welsh’s book.
I work with a guy from Airdrie who has also read it but said he didn’t like it because it was too far fetched that anything like that could have happened in Airdrie in the 1980’s.
I've started reading Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bregman, recently seen at Davos slagging off rich people unwilling to pay their taxes.
I'm not very far in yet - he's still mostly taking about historical ideas of utopia and how much our current world resembles them - but it's much less dry then I expected.
I'm dreading the almost-inevitable moment when I have a fundamental moral or political disagreement with his central premise, at which point I'll have to put it down, but so far he's making some good points.
I’m not getting though books that quickly at the moment, going through spells where I read a lot (most notably when travelling), and then others when I don’t read for weeks at a time.
This was not helped by the last book I read being Stephen King’s It, which is really bloody long. It’s still a very good book, but I really struggled to reconcile to what extent that was because of the expansive nature of it, or despite it.
(Before Gar shouts at me, I should point out that it hasn’t by any means put me off reading more of King’s work, even The Stand, which I’ve already purchased despite understanding it to be similarly lengthy.)
I also finished The Book Thief this morning, which I really enjoyed. I actually only finally got around to reading it because I promised one of the interns I’d read it next (after It, which means she’d left by the time I’d actually started it), having had it sitting on the Kindle for years, but I’m glad I did. A few things I’d heard had made it sound like maybe it’d become the kind of book it was fashionable to hate on, but I thought it was great, and both an easy read (for the way it was written) and not (for the subject matter). It’s genuinely affecting, and while it’s potentially harrowing for younger readers, it’s also not graphic, and it’s underlying messages are hopeful enough that it’s easily recommendable to anyone in the YA range and up.
I read It last year, my first King novel, and found it excessively long and there were times where I just wanted him to get to the point
I love It, it's my favourite King novel, and I've pretty much read them all. A lot of that is down to the character-building that its excessive length allows.
Very long books though… I recently read The Count of Monte Cristo, which is a surprisingly gripping read for a book published in 1844 (although it took me a couple of goes to find a decent translation) but bloody hell that book goes on forever. It's one of the downsides of reading on a Kindle, because I genuinely didn't realise how huge it was, and it took me over two months to work my way through it. It rambles off on incredible tangents - there's one minor character who appears in no more than a couple of scenes about halfway through, yet for some reason he gets a 50-page backstory covering his entire early life, none of which is relevant and none of which helps to inform the book's wider storyline in any way whatsoever. Overall I'm glad I read it, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't also slightly relieved when it finally came to a close.
Oh I definetly enjoyed it and I don't think it would have worked if he hadn't spent so much time with each character, it stands out because each one is given equal treatment and I don't think it would have been half the story if King hadnt have done that. But there were still times that I just wanted something to happen. By contrast, the tales in Charles Dickens' Complete Ghost Stories are short when you look at their page count but they feel like they go on forever.
Neither of them has scared me though.
With the Count of Monte Cristo (which I did love), I think a lot of the tangents are down to the fact that it was originally serialised. It's an issue I have when trying to read a lot of 'classics' – they weren't intended to be read over the course of two weeks in one big book.
I just searched on Wiki and Monte Cristo was published over the course of two years, which would make any book more manageable. Monte Cristo is enjoyable regardless though, which is definitely high praise.
Ah. I never realised that. It does make a lot of sense.
As it stands it does feel like a series of books compressed into one novel - it has four clear acts:
Spoiler - click to showThe framing of Edmond; Edmond's imprisonment and release; his machinations in Paris; and the resolution of his schemes
and separating those out would at least give a framework to the book that it lacks in its current form. Taking out a couple of the elongated flashbacks would help too. But yes, it's still amazingly readable given its age, although it's worth seeking out the Penguin Classics translation rather than the free (and rather literal) translations on the Amazon Kindle Store.
The other long book/series I've always intended to read is Proust's "In Search of Lost Time" which I have as a beautiful 7-piece hardback set I got for my 30th birthday. It's a very impressive but incredibly dated and inaccessible work that I'm determined to get through before I die. When I first tried to read it when I was 30 I got partway through the second book and abandoned it; ten years later aged 40 I made it through the first three volumes and completely failed to make any headway in the fourth. I'll try it again when I'm 50, I guess.
Re: Proust.
Yeah, it's hard work. Someone asked me what it was like while I was struggling with the second volume, and I said that it was like swimming in chocolate: it starts off as a fun thing but is incredibly hard work and soon defeats you utterly.
Not that I've ever swam in chocolate, but you get the idea.
You have to take regular breaks and not try to do it in one go. It took him a lifetime to write and publish, so don't be too hard on yourself by taking some time over reading it.
Just finished The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, which I think might appeal to a few people here. It's kind of a cross between Agatha Christie and Quantum Leap: a murder mystery set in a crumbling country house where the protagonist spends eight days jumping into a different host each day, trying to piece together the sequence of events and crossing paths with his past and future selves.
It's very intricate and clever, hangs together well and has a satisfying conclusion. I do wish it was slightly better written - the style is quite pedestrian and the author (this is his debut novel) doesn't quite bring the characters to life in a way that would really make this sing. I'd love to see someone like Stephen King, who has exceptional ability breathing life into large and diverse casts, take a concept like this and see what could be done with it. But generally it's a very good, very unique novel that's well worth your time.
My book buying is getting worse than my games buying.
Still struggling through that Charles Dickens collection, am about to finish Neil Gaimans Neverwhere for the book club (I'm enjoying it but not as much as I did American God's or Norse Mythology). I also wrote a review of The Psychology of Zelda
https://crispyandsushi.wordpress.com/2019/03/15/the-psychology-of-zelda-linking-our-world-to-the-legend-of-zelda-series/
And the first part of a graphic novel called Malaterre
https://crispyandsushi.wordpress.com/2019/03/17/malaterre-part-one-by-pierre-henry-gomont/
But I've bought a further 6 books since Friday and a count of my bookshelf suggests I have over 20 unread books (and even more on my Kindle)
Oh and I'm sharing the magic of Roald Dahl with my younger two, we've done George's Marvellous Medicine and Fantastic Mr Fox and started The Enormous Crocodile last night.
I’m re-reading The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell and nothing so far has shaken my conviction that it’s the best thing I’ve ever read.
My son has been advised to “read some classics” in preparation for school entrance exams. He’s a good reader but my god some of these books are turgid. The Railway Children and The Secret Garden are like pulling teeth and even The Hobbit is a lot more waffly than I remember. In desperation I’ve given him The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe which is at least a cracking story despite all the God stuff. Anyone able to recommend any children’s classics that have aged like fine wines rather than old cheese?
I did not get along with The Bone Clocks. The opening chapter was electrifying, but then the rest of it was just a hard turn into weirdness that I didn't really click with.
I should probably re-read it, though – the tonal shift shouldn't be so bad with the benefit of hindsight.
Are A Wizard of Earthsea or The Martian Chronicles classic enough?
A Wizard of Earthsea would definitely count but maybe a little dense for a 10-year-old? I don’t know The Martian Chronicles, I’ll check it out. Thanks!
10? how about Watership Down?
That’s a good shout! As long as he doesn’t want to watch the terrifying cartoon as a result.
There's a new one on Netflix (I think) which decided not to add in excessive trauma.
Are the Redwall series considered Classics now?
The definition of "classics" seems to be "books Michael Gove was subjected to as a child". Anything post-1950 is considered a bit racy and the literary merit of any given book is determined by the number of references to petticoats it contains.
I just finished a Red Dwarf novel called, I believe, Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers, which was… fine. It was fine.
It would be better if I'd never seen the TV show, I suspect – as all of the best jokes in the book are lifted verbatim (or occasionally reworded slightly more clunkily) from the TV scripts.
It takes a full third of the novel to reach the point where Lister wakes up post-meltdown; before that there's a lot of worldbuilding for a moon of Jupiter that never gets visited again. It runs through a bunch of plots familiar to anyone who's seen the TV series, albeit slightly remixed and overlapping – Future Echoes, Better Than Life, Me2, Kryten.
Where it really succeeds is building out the scope of the ship and the universe now that the story is freed from the paltry budget of a BBC2 sitcom. The description of the Cat is much more feline than '80s TV makeup could ever realistically achieve.
One weak point, however, is the over-reliance on sex as a punchline. In the TV show, it was slightly more forgiveable because it was always delivered by Rimmer or Lister or the Cat, and could be excused as the perspective of the variously-screwed-up characters. But when it's delivered by an omnipotent narrator, even describing Rimmer's inner thoughts, it's just… kind of icky.
It also ends really abruptly, and doesn't quite provide a resolution to anything.
I read them aaaaages ago and remember enjoying them. As you said, it was nice to see what Red Dwarf would have looked like with unlimited budget. The description of Holly sticks with me, towering hundreds of feet over people, welcome them as they boarded Red Dwarf.
The sequel is worth reading (Better than Life), but the two books after that are a bit naff. They were written after the writing team broke up, one book by each writer, and it's clear they were two parts of one brilliant whole.
I read Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers when I was in year 9 and did a book report on it. That was 20 years ago! Fuck!
My son has been advised to “read some classics” in preparation for school entrance exams.
Have you looked at things like Robinson Crusoe and maybe even some Sherlock Holmes? I was borderline obsessed with Hound of the Baskervilles and I'm sure it was pre-secondary school. One of the things I would still credit in getting me into Conan Doyle was a comic book version of hound of the Baskervilles. I've had a quick look online but can't see the exact one I had but it definitely spurred me onto reading Conan Doyle. Though thinking about it we did have a big set of books abridged for children; Oliver Twist etc. and there might've been some Holmes in that too.
A friend lent me a fantasy/sci-fi-type book called Debris, which I have just this minute finished reading (sort of… I'll get to that).
It's… pretty bad. Unnecessarily dense with terminology, in a way that slows down everything that's going on. It spends an inordinate amount of time worldbuilding, but somehow never seems to give a proper sense of the world.
The copy I've got – which I'm now not convinced my friend has actually read – also appears to have a printing or binding error where about thirty pages from the start of the book have replaced a significant part of the climactic events around page 320. At first I thought it was done kind of flashback or time loop thing, but when I rejoined the story I'd missed a whole chunk of plot.
I'm not sure it was worth reading, though it had its moments and some if the world was pretty interesting.
I just wish it had gotten to the point sooner. There was a lot of setup that in retrospect wasn't necessary or enjoyable.
This month's book club book is Red Earth and Pouring Rain by Vikram Chandra.
I'm quarter of the way through it. The closest thing to it. It's essentially about Indian mythology, there's appearances from Hanuman, Ganesh and Yana and is split between various points in history as Sanjay tells the tale of his own past after he is resurrected within the body of a monkey shot by a young Indian who has returned home from America who's own story breaks up that of Sanjays.
It's very different to what I'd normally read, and certainly not something I'd have known about. The owner of our local comic shop, who is Indian, put it forward for selection as something he read over 20 years ago and wanted to re-read and thus far I'm glad he did so.
Couple of recent reads:
The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner is one I didn't get on with at all although it's highly regarded. It's set in a women's prison so it's never going to be a light read but it's genuinely one of the most depressing books I've ever read. Every single character in it is awful, there's no redemption for anyone, there's barely even a plot so it's just page after page of terrible people doing horrible things to each other. I was glad when I finished it.
By contrast, The Overstory by Richard Powers is absolutely superb. It's basically a massive novel about trees. No, wait, come back. Every character is defined by their relationship to trees, the plot (for the most part) centres around environmental activists fighting to save trees, I don't think there's a single page that doesn't mention trees in some capacity and it's full of beautiful imagery. It's got Great American Novel written all over it - the story spans generations, follows a dozen different characters and criss-crosses the US from state to state - but it's incredibly readable, really quite emotional and ultimately rather uplifting.
You should read The War Between Trees and Grasses by my dad to see how evil those fucking trees really are.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Another classic I’ve not previously read. It’s like an incredibly racist 19th century Horrid Henry. Not dated well.
Are there ANY good fantasy novels out there? Currently slogging through The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie which comes highly rated and it’s painfully generic. Every character’s got a name like a dropped hand of Scrabble tiles and its attempts to be epic just mean that it jumps around every chapter so you can’t remember who anyone was when you swing back around 100 pages later. With crushing inevitability it’s also the first part of a fucking trilogy so it’s not even going to reach a satisfying conclusion. Not sure why I’m bothering tbh.
I couldn't get along with The Blade Itself. Or Prince of Thorns. Or really any of the stuff I saw recommended on Reddit.
Have you read Robin Hobb's stuff? It's a bit different – more literary, less fighty/stabby/explosiony – but for the people who get along with it, it's a little bit special.
And how about The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch, and The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss?
They're pretty big names you've probably already read, but they're the fantasy I've enjoyed the most.
And on the lighter end of the spectrum, Kings of the Wyld is a daft, highly enjoyable read. Not a classic, but I kept turning the pages.
What's more, it's under 500 pages and actually comes to an end. No trilogy waiting in the wings.
I’ve read the first Robin Hobb trilogy after Brian recommended it. Really enjoyed the first book but then the next two got sillier and sillier with talking animals all over the shop and I got quite annoyed with it.
Locke Lamora was good, a bit cartoony/childish but a decent romp. Helped enormously by the fact it was clearly written as a single book with the inevitable not-as-good sequels coming some time later.
I really enjoyed The Fifth Season by N K Jemisin which has a really unique slant on the usual fantasy tropes (helped no end by the fact the author is a female person of colour). But then the second and third books did the Star Wars thing of making an expansive world look really small by having the same six characters involved in absolutely everything, and I burned out without even finishing the trilogy.
Cheers for the recommendations, I will check those out.
I'm reading The Expanse novels at the moment – just finished the third – but I've been getting rather confused by also rewatching the TV show alongside it.
The first season-and-a-bit sticks pretty close to the first book, but after that it starts to diverge more and more. They share most of the same plot points, though they don't always happen in the same order or for the same reason (or to the same characters), which actually makes it worse – half the time something happened in one or the other, it had already happened in the other and I got weird déjà vu.
Gar, have you tried Ursula Le Guin? Her Earthsea books are unique and excellent.
I'm reading The Expanse novels at the moment – just finished the third – but I've been getting rather confused by also rewatching the TV show alongside it.
The first season-and-a-bit sticks pretty close to the first book, but after that it starts to diverge more and more. They share most of the same plot points, though they don't always happen in the same order or for the same reason (or to the same characters), which actually makes it worse – half the time something happened in one or the other, it had already happened in the other and I got weird déjà vu.
Would you recommend them? I found the show very impressive but also extremely dense and I clearly wasn't paying enough attention because I kind of lost the plot threads a bit in the first half of the second season and didn't continue. I keep meaning to go back to it (especially as there's now a lot more of it than there was before) but it also seems like the sort of thing that might work better and be easier to follow as a series of books.
Is the sequence of novels complete or still a work in progress? I lost three months of my life to A Song of Ice and Fire and that fucker's never going to be finished.
Would you recommend them?
Yeah – the writing is a bit pedestrian in places, but varies in style depending on the POV character. The world is great, though, and getting more time to see between the cracks and into corners of the characters that the show had to skip for time or budgetary reasons is pretty cool.
Is the sequence of novels complete or still a work in progress?
The ninth and final novel is due out next year.
Nine?! That’s quite the time investment. Might pick up the first one though and see what I think.
Haven’t read any actual proper sci-fi for years actually. Used to be all over Asimov etc when I was younger. I did pick up Dune for pennies recently though and that’s been on my list for ages so maybe it’ll be a decent change of pace.
I attempted Dune a few years ago, but didn't get very far; describing it as anything "of pace" might not be entirely accurate.
Half of the Dune novel is OK.
I was thinking about reading the Expanse too, after managing the first season a couple of times but running out of steam with it.
The Guardian's been doing lists of "The best XXX of the 21st century" over the last week and they've finally got around to books:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/sep/21/best-books-of-the-21st-century
I've read 5 of the top 10 but only 17 of the list overall. Not even heard of half of these. I've got some catching up to do!
I've only read three of those (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Night Watch, The Amber Spyglass), but given that I've wholeheartedly disagreed with most of the other lists they've done in this series, I don't think I'll be in a rush to follow their recommendations.
I managed to read 39 books and graphic novels/comics/manga last year, partially thanks to the book club I joined (who have now launched a similar thing around comic books) and also thanks to reading Road Dahl stuff to the kids:
The Tattooist of Auschwitz - Heather Morris
The Mechanics Tale - Steve Matchett
Norse Mythology - Neil Hainan
The Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham
The Psychology of Zelda - Anthony M Bean
Georges Marvelous Medicine - Roald Dahl
Malaterre part 1 - Pierre- Henry Forming
Fantastic Mr Fox - Roald Dahl
Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman
Red Earth and Pouring Rain - Vikram Chandra
The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson
Han Solo - Marjorie M Liu, Jason Aaron, Mark Brooks
Captain Marvel vol 1 - Kelly Sue DeConnick, David Lopez
Leviathan Wakes - James S. A. Corey
Matilda - Roald Dahl
Captain Marvel vol 2 - Kelly Sue DeConnick, Mario Tamara, David Lopez
Captain Marvel vol 3 - Kelly Sue DeConnick, David Lopez
A Game of Thrones - George R R Martin
The Sandman: Overture - Neil Gaiman, JH Williams III
Neuromancer - Williams Gibson
Showa 1926-1939 (A History of Japan) - Shigeru Mizuki
Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing - Bob Mortimer, Paul Whitehouse
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
Immortal Hulk vol 1 - Al Ewing, John Bennett
Immortal Hulk vol 2 - Al Ewing, John Bennett
A Clash of Kings - George R R Martin
Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy - Sernii Plokhy
The Witches - Roald Dahl
Record of a Spaceborn Few - Becky Chambers
The Lies of Locke Lamora - Scott Lynch
V For Vendetta - Alan Moore & David Lloyd
A Storm of Swords part 1: Steel and Snow - George R R Martin
Akira volume 1 - Katsuhiro Otomo
These Savage Shores - Ram V, Submit Kumar and Vittorio Astone
If it's a book club book I usually write about them on my blog.
And then this year I finished off
A Storm of Swords 2: Blood and Gold - George R R Martin and am nearing the end of Chernobyl Prayer - Svetlana Alexievich though I started both of those in November/December.
I'm a handful of chapters into the eighth Expanse novel, Tiamat's Wrath, which I'm quite enjoying so far.
There was a plot point in the previous entry which took the wind out of my sails a little with it, but the fourth season of the show on Amazon has reignited my love of the setting.
One of my favourite things when starting a new Expand novel is seeing unexpected, unfamiliar or new names pop up at the start of a chapter, trying to figure out how all the different threads are going to end up tying together. They've all surprised me so far, but I can't help looking for common threads.
I'm hoping to get this one finished before the final book comes out later this year – just not too before. Don't want to be sitting for months on a cliffhanger, after reading these first eight books basically in a row.
I just bought myself three His Dark Materials-adjacent books - The Secret Commonwealth, which is massive, and Once Upon A Time in the North and Lyra's Oxford, which are little novellas set several years before and two years after HDM, respectively.
Currently I'm about halfway through Once Upon A Time in the North, having only started it this evening, but my brain is automatically filling in Lin-Manuel Miranda as Lee Scoresby, so that bit of casting has clearly stuck with me. The writing seems more comfortable than I remember the main series being, and I'm enjoying it, both as a little vignette of my favorite supporting characters and another glimpse of that world.
Handmaid's Tale - depressing (in a good way)
Ready Player One - depressing (in a bad way)
