Books 2nd Edition, Foreword by m0r1arty Options

[Sostie]

Now half way through Gaiman's Anansi Boys.

Finished last night. It was alright.

[widowspider]

Finished Espresso Tales by Alexander McCall Smith earlier this week - enjoyable novel about the residents of a house that is divided into flats in Edinburgh. My favourite character is Bertie, the precocious 6-year old whose dreadful mother pushes him to yoga classes and saxophone lessons and Italian, while all he really wants to do is look at trains and not have to wear pink dungarees. Not a work of genius, but nice to read on the train.

I'm now reading Amazing Disgrace by James Hamilton-Paterson, which is the follow up to Cooking With Fernet Branca that I read earlier last year. The main character, Gerald Samper, is a somewhat effete ghost writer of sporting heroes' biographies who lives in a villa in Tuscany and despairs of doing something more with his life. His passion for food peppers the novels, such as making a souffle with cow's brains and other such oddities, but the tone is witty and sarcastic and it also speeds my ride to work each day.

[Crutch]

I'm two thirds through Hannibal Rising. Harris surely didn't want to write much more than a shooting script for the movie. I think, he lost interest in the character whose story he's trying to tell. There isn't as much inhumane cruelty as in "Hannibal" and there isn't any sign, that he was attempting to write a good book or at least a book that's breathing the spirit of the previous Lecter novels. I don't think anyone wanted this book, except Harris' bank-accountant and Dino De Laurentis.

[thirtyhelens]

The Devil In the White City was terrific, tho quite dark - I really wanted something lighter, and I picked up the paperback of Into the Volcano by Forrest DeVoe Jr. (pen name; real name, Max Phillips) at work. First in a Cold War, American pulp - meets - Fleming series about a male/female spy team called Mallory & Morse. Barely cracked the cover last night but I can already tell it's going to be a) no ground-breaker, yet b) quite a lot of fun.

This post has been edited by thirtyhelens: Mar 19 2007, 08:10 PM

[widowspider]

I also just finished The Devil in the White City - superbly written non-fiction novel. Really loved it.

I then read The Sense of Paper by Taylor Holden, which was an impulse pick-up at the library in the 'new fiction' section. It's a really great book.

[Douglas Nicol]

I've finished re-reading a number of the Wing Commander novels that were based off the games, NOT the awful film.

Anyone who played the games and enjoyed them should hunt them down..

They are..

Action Stations (Almost like a prequel showing the start of the Earth-Kilrathi war and a newly commisioned Ensign Geoffrey Tolwyn)
Freedom Flight (Takes place during the secret mission expansion)
End Run (Covers a covert raid on Kilrah, a MUST READ)
Fleet Action (A follow on from End Run, also a must read)
Heart of the Tiger (Basically a novelisation of Wing Commander III)
False Colors (Covers events in the Landreich between WCIII and IV, quite an interesting read)
The Price of Freedom (Wing Commander IV novelisation)

[maian]

Finished Easy Riders, Raging Bulls over the weekend.Superbly written and highly entertaining. It's shattered my illusions about many of the great directors of our time whilst simultaneously making me realise that Hal Ashby is a real lost talent. The end of the book nearly had me in tears.

[Mellanie]

Just finished Outdoors by Bailey Ferry and I think I need hosing down. One of the funniest, strangest reads, but I love his writing style, utter madness. Next is Northern Lights, Pullman, which I think I have been missing out on, according to a dear, occasionally evil, friend - we all have them. Then Steinbeck, a fat book of his complete works, what a hack!
Well, for anyone that is interested, that's my twopenneth!!!!

[thirtyhelens]

making me realise that Hal Ashby is a real lost talent. The end of the book nearly had me in tears.

Yup. Heartbreaking. And an excellent book; see the accompanying documentary if you can, the book is more detailed and thus better but the interviews are good.

I'm in love with this DeVoe feller, BTW. (See above). It's like bizarro-Avengers - Steed is a strapping Texan with a penchant for Asian girls, and Mrs. Peel is a WASPy ice queen who could kill you with her pinky. Fun, fun, fun.

[Jimmy Green]

I've just finished Dog Eat Dog by Eddie Bunker. I've also read The Animal Factory and Little Boy Blue... he's a very underrated writer.

[Zoe]

Has anyone started the new Ian McEwan yet? I think I'm going to go out and buy it at lunchtime, I'm too excited to wait for it to drop in price.

Read the Times review on Saturday and it sounds amazing (no surprises there).

On Chesil Beach

Hysterically the Mail review seems to equate quality with quantity!

Is Ian McEwan's new book, as advertised, a novel? Although the publishers have tried to make a short story long, eking out its 40,000 words across small pages to resemble a proper book, as a typical paperback it would amount to no more than 100 pages.

Value for money aside, one wonders whether such brevity can truly encompass the depth and scope we expect from the novel form.

I wonder if they'd say the same about 'Breakfast at Tiffany's'?

Value for money aside (ha!), I can't wait to read it.

Extract here

[mcraigclark]

Has anyone started the new Ian McEwan yet? I think I'm going to go out and buy it at lunchtime, I'm too excited to wait for it to drop in price.

Read the Times review on Saturday and it sounds amazing (no surprises there).

On Chesil Beach

Hysterically the Mail review seems to equate quality with quantity!
I wonder if they'd say the same about 'Breakfast at Tiffany's'?

Value for money aside (ha!), I can't wait to read it.

Extract here

I finished an advance of it a few weeks ago. It is predictably wonderful; the narrator is the bast part. It is very small, and expensive for its size, but fans of McEwan won't be disappointed.

Publisher's Weekly took issue with its length as well.

[Zoe]

Nothing wrong with economy of language, and I don't mind it being expensive, I love my McEwan hardbacks.

Thanks for that Craig, I am even more excited.

Is it possible to be an Ian McEwan fangirl?

[Jimmay]

On Chesil Beach

Ah, Chesil Beach, the largest Tombolo in the U.K.

You can take the man away from Geology, but you can't take Geology out of the man.

Book sounds good by the way.

[Jubei]

Chesil Beach is awesome, don't know about the book.

I've just finished Sister Alice by Robert Reed. I read a book of his called Marrow which was really good, but was immediately put off Sister Alice when I first started reading it. I tried again recently and was much more impressed, although it is a bit confusing. The ending was a little too open to my liking, didn't tell you what happened or what the titular characters motivatioons really were. An interesting take on humans evolution and the technologies that will fuel it though. For those of us who like the techno-aspect of Sci Fi, there's plenty there to satify. God-like people in the future are made mostly of 'talents', large and small machines made from baryonic or dark matter and energies that they drag through space with them and give them unnatural abilities, but visualised as additional hands/eyes etc. Sometimes it gets a bit confusing though, reading through the reality and the metaphor.