What book are you reading at the moment

Smurfin

Stream:

Joe Abercrombie has written a trilogy called The First Law - The Blade Itself, Before They Are Hanged, and Last Argument of Kings.  Stunning in every respect and completely different in style to anything out there.

Scott Lynch is part way through The Gentlemen ******* Sequence, which so far is comprised of The Lies of Locke Lamora and Red Seas Under Red Skies.  Lies is very much a twisted fantasy take on Oliver Twist - just read the first 2 or 3 pages and I guarantee you'll be hooked

I have 3 of Erickson's novels sitting on my shelf, but couldn't get past the first 300 pages of Gardens of The Moon - just didn't grab me, and I thought it was confusing and I didn't actually care for any of the characters.  Apparently the series suffers from many cases of deus ex machina which I hate....

PoochJD

Hi,

Two great books some of you may enjoy, are:

"Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets" and the companion volume "The Corner: A Year In The Life Of An Inner-City Neighbourhood" both of which are now out in very thick paperback format, by David Simon and Edward Burns.

Both are the original source works for the two acclaimed TV shows "Homicide: Life On The Street" and "The Corner" respectively.

Recommended retail price for both works is £12-99 each, but can be bought cheaper on Amazon.co.uk.


Pooch

Stream62

Will add Abercrombie and Lynch to my 'to read' list, they sound quite interesting.

Agree that the first one can be a bit much, he jumps straight in with a huge range of characters and seems to expect you to know the history etc staright away. I was tempeted to give up halfway through myself but it just suddenly clicked and now I can't get enough. They seem to be building really slowly into some kind of climax, can't imagine how he'll do it though with the hundreds of major players he is throwing around!

Mark Botwright

Are you working on commission?

PoochJD

Hi Mabo,

I wish! No, in all honesty, they're just damn good reads!


Pooch

Mark Botwright

Oh i know, i've got A Year on the Killing Streets but The Corner book/series completely passed me by - i must look into it.

imightbewrong

I've just finished the third Malcolm Gladwell book - Outliers - very interesting read about patterns to and hidden reasons for success.

Like spotting that 70% of all major-league ice hockey players are born in January-April.

Also recommend his other two books.

Starting to read Bad Science now - ripping apart pseudo/bad science presented by the media (MMR, Gillian McKeith, MRSA, etc).

ADC

Just a heads up for people interested in these I picked both books up for £7 and £9 respectively at my local HMV store.

Singh400

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell – A book I had been meaning to read for ages. Everyone is always going on about it nowadays and how we are turning into an ‘Orwellian’ society. Thankfully, we are not that bad, however you can see if unchecked our privacy will slowly be eroded away.

7/10

Toasty

Just finished Self Help, by Edward Docx, which was a good read, and just starting A spot of Bother, by Mark Haddon.