saturdaygig Posted April 13, 2012 Share Posted April 13, 2012 bought American Pastoral by Philip Roth Its a mountain of a thing. You have to work but you get rewarded for it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rodders Posted April 13, 2012 Share Posted April 13, 2012 I can recommend Roger Moorhouse' 'Life in Berlin 1939-1945', having flicked through it recently. I know there's one or two, Mike!, who enjoy that period. Slices up in easy to read segments too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coda Posted April 13, 2012 Share Posted April 13, 2012 Finished reading The Trial. **** me that is a bleak, paranoid, claustrophobic book. I was sure I knew how it was going to finish until I got to the end and my predication was totally wrong. Just started this. The Allies have lost WWII. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leemond2008 Posted April 16, 2012 Share Posted April 16, 2012 Not a book as such but I went out today and bought the marvel encyclopaedia for £30 today. Cant wait to get in and geek it up Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GarethRDR Posted April 16, 2012 Share Posted April 16, 2012 Finished reading The Trial. **** me that is a bleak, paranoid, claustrophobic book. I was sure I knew how it was going to finish until I got to the end and my predication was totally wrong. Just started this. The Allies have lost WWII. Excellent book. You can't go wrong with a bit of Dick. Arf arf. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PussEKatt Posted April 17, 2012 Share Posted April 17, 2012 I read books about football, true crime and WW II.The best book I have read would be "Band of Brothers" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
endof Posted April 17, 2012 Share Posted April 17, 2012 non-fiction only for me i already live in a fictional world... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjmooney Posted April 17, 2012 VT Supporter Share Posted April 17, 2012 Recently finished 'From Here to Eternity'. Fantastic book. I then watched the film (again) for comparison - and there is none. If you've seen it you'll know the famous bits - Burt Lancaster rolling around in the surf with Deborah Kerr, Frank Sinatra's death scene, etc. It's a good film - very good in fact - but a pale shadow of the book, which is incredibly intense. Basically it's a grim depiction of life in the US Army on the brink of WWII, with lots and lots of brutal violence and joyless sex. But it really stays with you after you've read it. For a total antidote I'm currently on LeCarre's 'A Small Town in Germany' - dry, austere, understated and very British. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Awol Posted April 17, 2012 Share Posted April 17, 2012 Recently finished "With the Old Breed at Pelilu and Okinawa" by Eugene Sledge, which was absolutely excellent. Currently reading "Monsoon" by Robert Kaplan which is an insightful look at the history, prersent and future of the nations around the Indian Ocean Rim. Well worth the effort for anyone interested in the region. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjmooney Posted April 17, 2012 VT Supporter Share Posted April 17, 2012 Yes, Sledge's 'Old Breed' is fantastic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Rev Posted April 17, 2012 Share Posted April 17, 2012 Yeah, I read that too. Mostly inspired to read it after seeing The Pacific which borrowed heavily from it. Interestingly so did the videogame Call of Duty: World at War. New Irvine Welsh book is out this week, a prequel to Trainspotting (which still remains one of my favourite books ever) and I will be picking that up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xela Posted April 17, 2012 Share Posted April 17, 2012 I'll be picking up Skagboys as well this week. As with Rev, Trainspotting is one of my favourite books. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Designer1 Posted April 17, 2012 VT Supporter Share Posted April 17, 2012 Talking of Welsh, the movie version of Filth is due for release this year. His best book imo. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Rev Posted April 17, 2012 Share Posted April 17, 2012 How will that work? The book relies so heavily on internal monologues for much of its plot and humour it would be difficult to capture on film. Agreed about it being his best book though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villa4europe Posted April 17, 2012 Share Posted April 17, 2012 bout half way through barca the making of the greatest team in the world good stuff, large bits of it are more of a memory jogger than new info and graham hunter comes across as a bit more barca bias than he does in interviews, you often get the sense that he really doesnt like mourinho Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villaajax Posted April 17, 2012 Share Posted April 17, 2012 Has anyone read Tietam Brown by Mick Foley? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chindie Posted April 23, 2012 VT Supporter Share Posted April 23, 2012 It's World Book Night tonight, apparently. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjmooney Posted April 23, 2012 VT Supporter Share Posted April 23, 2012 It's World Book Night tonight, apparently.And Shakespeare's birthday. And Shakespeare's "death day" And Saint George's Day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chindie Posted May 8, 2012 VT Supporter Share Posted May 8, 2012 Well I finally finished Perdido Street Station. That last 200 pages was a slog. It feels like someone world building rather than telling a plot throughout it's 800 odd pages and I think it's that makes it so tedious. Mieville writes it in such a manner that, for example, no-one ever just walks down a street, it's always a specific street with a specific history and theres detailed description of whats going on and theres constant reference to the world he's made and it's systems and so on. It doesn't help that it's a world that has aspects that are intriguing, and aspects that make you go 'Oh **** off', or are hackneyed 'weird' - Scarab headed women, yeah no tah. I've moved onto another Iain M Banks, Inversions. The first hundred pages are good, it follows 2 narratives that appear to tell, so far, stories of 2 regimes on the same medieval-esque planet that, no doubt, are going to come together soon enough somehow. It's also rather obviously a Culture book, despite not explicitly saying so. The book has hinted even in the first 100 pages at it being a book about how the Culture deals with societies it encounters that are outside it's influence. The 2 major characters in the narrative are obviously members of the Culture's organisation that deal with problems it encounters, in often shady or underhand ways, Special Circumstances. It's basically a Culture novel seen from the other side, from the society that the Culture is investigating as to how it should deal with. Should be good. Got his new straight fiction book, Stonemouth, waiting as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
legov Posted June 4, 2012 Share Posted June 4, 2012 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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