Stickied What are you reading right now?

[mowgli]

Roman by K.M. Ashman.
Another trilogy this time about The Roman's invasion of Britain in 43 AD. Not the best i've read on the same subject but it's not bad with the books relating the stories of Caratacus and Plautius the Roman commander.

 

[mistermagic]

Finished the Jonathan Wilson book about Argentinian football. Good read all in all but still a football read which makes it tedious after a while. Wilson does well to get on with the multiple World Cups and Copa Americas fairly quickly but a part of me reckons he's only focused his attention on Maradona and Messi leaving some other fine players without true attention (Cambiasso, Ayala, Ortega, Batistuta, Crespo).

Just started a Grisham called Rogue Lawyer. Very good so far.

 

[mowgli]

The Ten Thousand by Paul Kearney.
The first of 2 fantasy novels that are loosely based around the war between Parthia and Rome.

 

[Stevencc]

Porno done. Loved it, prefer it to Trainspotting. It has most of the main characters from the first novel but places them within a more linear, narrative-driven affair than Trainspotting which was sometimes almost a collection of related short stories until the main plot event at the end.

Starting the prequel Skagboys tonight.

 

[Captain Scumbag]

Went to a second-hand book fair yesterday and picked up three J.G. Ballard novels – The Voices of Time, The Drowned World and The Atrocity Exhibition (note: Knockavelli recommended the latter to me about a decade ago) – so the plan is to work through those. I used the adjective "Ballardian" the other day and then thought there was something deeply wrong (as well as pretentious and twattish) about that as I haven't read any his work. Making amends!

 

[mowgli]

Fields Of Glory by Michael Jecks.
First in a trilogy about The Hundred Years War. Starts off with the build up to the Battle of Crecy in 1346 with the last novel focusing on 1o years of the aftermath that leads into The Battle of Poitiers. Fast paced with brilliantly described action and the dreadful conditions the English archers had to endure with the mud and freezing winters.

 

[Leo]

One of the earlier John Rebus novels by Ian Rankin....set just before the turn of the century. Called Black & Blue....enjoying it so far.

 

[mistermagic]

Finished Rogue Lawyer. Was fine. Not his best work but much better than the tripe he's been delivering the past few years.

I picked up a Stephen King in my Christmas shopping spree. It's called Finders Keepers and it's very good so far. A man kills a world-reknowned author in order to write his books posthumously. I must confess that I'm not sold by King just yet as the only book I read of him was the killing of Kennedy (how a guy went back in time via a grocery store). Was shite and horribly long.

 

[TheRedDragon]

The Outsider by Albert Camus. Incredible book about a guy who doesn't play the game that society expects, also really interesting insight into death row psychology....if you're into that sort of thing!

 

[mowgli]

The Black Guard by A.J.Smith.
The first of 4 books in the Chronicles Of The Long War series. It's fantasy which my mate who lent me the books said was like Game Of Thrones but he couldn't be more wrong as i hated GOT but this is a brilliant read with so many characters slowly becoming the one main story. It has sieges,battles,beheadings a-plenty and bloody mayhem with some humour thrown in as well.

 

[Leo]

It has sieges,battles,beheadings a-plenty and bloody mayhem with some humour thrown in as well.

Apologies Mowgli but THAT tickled me.....

 

[mowgli]

Apologies Mowgli but THAT tickled me.....

To be honest mate the humour makes the book more enjoyable with the soldiers quips in the midst of battle,these type of books it works well with my favourite fantasy author David Gemmell the best i've read that makes me laugh while reading somebody having their head removed from their shoulders

 

[Captain Scumbag]

So I finally read JG Ballard’s The Drowned World. It surprised me in several ways.

First, I expected the novel to have a prophetic or cautionary element. You know? The fictional future serving as a stark warning of what will happen if certain present day problems continue unabated. That’s SF 101, isn’t it? Well, there’s none of that here. In the year 2145 the world has become an unbearably hot, fetid, reptile-filled swamp with only a few million human survivors (mostly based in the Arctic and Antarctic circles). Ballard’s explanation for this? Entirely natural changes in solar activity. Never mind farting cows, China building 4,000 power stations per day and everyone ignoring the Kyoto Protocol. Global warming and cataclysmic flooding occurred because, err, the sun got hotter and there was fuck all anyone could do about it. David Icke would approve.

I approve too, though, because this vision (a) doesn’t require pages of tedious exposition, and (b) is more terrifying than any eco-apocalypse predicted by Al Gore or George Monbiot. I sometimes wonder to what degree belief in anthropogenic climate change is attributable to the hopefulness implicit in the idea. Man can destroy the planet, sure, but he can save it too. There’s comfort in that. It assumes a degree of human autonomy that is probably illusory, but comfort is most often found in illusions. Ballard, however, has no time for that crap. Actually he doubles down on the hopeless terror. Man is not only completely powerless to prevent environmental disaster; he is largely powerless to escape its devolutionary effects.

One of the novel’s central ideas is that entirely natural geophysical change can have profound psychological effects. This isn't the standard fear about people behaving like unconscionable shits as soon as civilised order collapses (though there is definitely some of that); Ballard’s more interesting idea is that the memories, fears and instincts of our ancient ancestors are coded into the human genome, that we carry that psychic inheritance; and though it lays dormant in normal climactic conditions, a return a prehistoric climate (Ballard uses the term Triassic repeatedly) can revive these old instincts and patterns of thought. The world is undergoing rapid and radical geophysical change – soaring temperatures, cities submerged underwater, tropical jungles constantly expanding and encroaching – and man, inescapably part of this biosphere, cannot escape a parallel process of reversion, a kind of devolution of consciousness itself.

This is a bloody weird novel. It’s difficult too. If the publisher asked me to write a plot summary for marketing purposes, I could probably write a very arresting one – underwater cities, post-apocalyptic pirates, giant reptiles, explosions, near death experiences, etc. – but it would be misleading to sell it that way. There is a plot and it does include those fantastical elements, but for the most part it feels plotless. The novel’s focus, by and large, is on explaining the protagonist’s thoughts, feelings and impressions as he struggles with physical and psychological change.

Certain books make me wish I’d read more psychoanalytic theory, and this is definitely one. Certain ideas I’m vaguely familiar with – e.g. Freud’s death drive, Jung’s collective unconsciousness, etc. – appear to have influenced Ballard, but my knowledge of these is too sketchy to explain their significance in any useful way. I’m also too scientifically ignorant to judge the credibility of the science, though from a literary PoV I suspect that matters very little.

What I really enjoyed was the descriptive power of Ballard’s writing. The descriptions of the altered landscape – the boiling lagoons, the tropical flora and fauna, the submerged and semi-submerged ruins of a destroyed civilisation – are fantastically vivid. Ballad’s prose is precise, elegant and filled with technical/scientific jargon, but he’s also capable of a languid dreaminess that is both lyrical and deeply poetic. The world he paints in the mind’s eye is not one of brutal desolation and decay but one of surrealistic and demented beauty. I could certainly crap on other aspects of the novel – e.g. the non-compelling plot, the stilted and unconvincing dialogue, the shallow and occasionally racist characterisation – but, frankly, bugger all that. The skill with which Ballard realises his drowned world is what makes me want to read more.

 

[barnet_pls]

So looking for a book - something like l am Pilgrim, or something else related to middle East / war / spying ??

 

[Bobbin']

So looking for a book - something like l am Pilgrim, or something else related to middle East / war / spying ??

Fiction? Non-fiction?

Can recommend Agent ZigZag and/or Double Cross both by the same author.

ZigZag is the true story of Eddie Chapman, a double agent during WWII and Double Cross is about the D-Day spies. Kind of covers your war/spy criteria.

 

[Techno Natch]

Read the 4th book in the Master of War series by David Gilman which is set during the 100 years war. Think it was the best of the series, I recommend the series if you like historical fiction. mowgli basically.

 

[mowgli]

Read the 4th book in the Master of War series by David Gilman which is set during the 100 years war. Think it was the best of the series, I recommend the series if you like historical fiction. mowgli basically.

I've read the first 3 and will buy the 4th later. I hadn't heard of Gilman before but i can see him becoming as popularas people like Simon Scarrow and Bernard Cornwell.

 

[Techno Natch]

I've read the first 3 and will buy the 4th later. I hadn't heard of Gilman before but i can see him becoming as popularas people like Simon Scarrow and Bernard Cornwell.

Yeah they are solid books. A bit slow in places but it all builds nicely and the characters are all brilliant.

Have you read Winter Pilgrim by Toby Clements? These are the first historical fiction books that I've read and really enjoyed both of them.

For a change of pace I'm going to read Good Cop, Bad war next which is written by an ex undercover cop called Neil Woods whose campaigning for drug legalisation.

 

[mowgli]

Yeah they are solid books. A bit slow in places but it all builds nicely and the characters are all brilliant.

Have you read Winter Pilgrim by Toby Clements? These are the first historical fiction books that I've read and really enjoyed both of them.

For a change of pace I'm going to read Good Cop, Bad war next which is written by an ex undercover cop called Neil Woods whose campaigning for drug legalisation.

I'm having a run of fantasy novels at the moment. Not heard of Toby Clements cheers mate i'll look him up.

 

[mowgli]

Yeah they are solid books. A bit slow in places but it all builds nicely and the characters are all brilliant.

Have you read Winter Pilgrim by Toby Clements? These are the first historical fiction books that I've read and really enjoyed both of them.

For a change of pace I'm going to read Good Cop, Bad war next which is written by an ex undercover cop called Neil Woods whose campaigning for drug legalisation.

It's a trilogy mate so you've missed the third one. I've ordered the first book and will let you know if it's my sort of thing or not but the reviews look good.

 

[Techno Natch]

It's a trilogy mate so you've missed the third one. I've ordered the first book and will let you know if it's my sort of thing or not but the reviews look good.

I've read them all.

 

[mowgli]

I've read them all.

I've ordered the trilogy that will arrive today,hope they're as good as you say.

 

[Techno Natch]

I've ordered the trilogy that will arrive today,hope they're as good as you say.

I never buy all the releases just incase. Hope you enjoy.

Is this Toby Clements books? If so there is a new on out in July.

 

[mistermagic]

So looking for a book - something like l am Pilgrim, or something else related to middle East / war / spying ??

John Le Carré is the man you're looking for in terms of spying. I read far too many disappointing books when it comes to the religious war between capitalism and fundamentalism. Give me nice Cold War book anyday.

I'm currently reading Glacé by Bernard Minier. Highly entertaining plot of a horse's head being found on top of a mountain in the French Pyrénnées. Minier's righting is so unfrench too. Very entertaining, pacey and describes what's going on really well. Voltaire and Baudelaire could have learned a lot from this guy.

 

[mowgli]

Hereward by James Wilde.
The first in a series of 6 novels on the life of the Englishman who led the rebellion against William The Bastard after 1066. Fast paced and brutal as you would expect and is hard to put down,i'm halfway through the first novel in just 2 days and each book is around 500 pages.

 

[piézo]

The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende.

It revolves around the stories of generations of Trueba family where the patriarch Esteban Trueba marries the clairvoyant Clara after the death of his fiancée and Clara's older sister Rosa. Blanca, daughter of Esteban Trueba and Clara, then gives birth to Alba, a girl very similar to Rosa and through her the family enters in depth the politic and social revolution started with the previous generations of girls Trueba (formerly Del Valle). At the point I am in the book it gets way less about the spirits then I expected but surprisingly I am enjoying the read. It gets an interesting politics basis about conservatism and socialism that begins in a land property where the workers are explored and evolves to the urban enviroment and polar parties dispute. I am just in the beginning of this transiction rural/urban of the novel and unfortunately this urban part is decreasing my estimation for the story. Hopefully with Alba and the big revolution to come things get better again.

 

[Habbinalan]

The Forensic Record Society by Magnus Mills. Anyone read any of the earlier Magnus Mills offerings?

Just getting into it so will report back later but......

My good lady shares a few but not most of my interests and obsessions. Vinyl and following football teams that usually lose in obscure parts of the country are the two that most puzzle her. She just bought me this and I'm not sure if it's a "thought you'd find it interesting," or "take a look at yourself in the mirror," type present. I'll report back in due course. Meanwhile, has anyone else read any of Magnus Mills' previous novels?

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/07/forensic-records-society-by-magnus-mills-review

".......The Forensic Records Society’s idyll of pint-drinking and beard-stroking is destroyed when a rival society establishes itself on Tuesdays in the same small back room. It calls itself the Confessional Records Society, and has fundamentally different values.

For reasons of their own … they regarded records in a completely different light to us. They viewed them as little more than props and accessories, and saw no intrinsic value in the records themselves. Accordingly there existed a gulf between the two persuasions which could never be bridged.

This leads to “bickering, desertion, subterfuge and rivalry”. It also leads to a story that could be read as a disguised retelling of the Russian revolution, or the Reformation, or the Sunni-Shia schism, or any great human falling out.......".

 

[Habbinalan]

The Forensic Record Society by Magnus Mills. Anyone read any of the earlier Magnus Mills offerings?

Just getting into it so will report back later but......

Quick easy read but barely worth the effort. Spent too much time constructing "clever" parallels and little on the, largely stock, characters - and they were all into 45s, with a general down on LPs.

Back to my pile of Indian novels, starting with the next Amitav Ghosh offering that's been passed to me.

 

[mowgli]

Invictus by Simon Scarrow.
The 15th book in The Eagle series about Roman soldiers Macro and Cato,after having fought in Britain,Germania,Syria now they find themselves posted to Hispania.

 

[SALTIRE]

The Letter of Marque. Book 12 in the Aubrey-Maturin series.