Books - What are you reading?

I’d second the opinion about all Proulx fiction being worth reading, although Barkskins went a bit shit at the death sadly. Her short stories are gems. I’d recommend Tim Gautreaux if you enjoy Proulx and Cormac McCarthy too. Difficult to go wrong with either.

Cheers for all the suggestions, lots I’ve not read that I’ve added to my wishlist. I’ve read the new Abercrombie ones (and the YA ones) which was part of what has me looking for new stuff. I really liked Magican, although the various other ones in the same world were a bit random in quality.

Not read any Patrick Rothfuss, even though it appears I added it to my wishlist many years ago. Will have to actually give one a read. Same with NK Jemisin and a couple of the others that I’d entirely forgotten about.

I think I read the first Earthsea one about 30 years ago and wasn’t a huge fan, same with Gormenghast. Should probably give them another try.

I have the Malazan Book of the Fallen on my Kindle but have never summoned up the will to read it, it seems pretty long.

Plenty of stuff to keep me going for a while now. Thanks everyone.

moonminvalley in november

such a sad, strange book

Im now going to see about adding something from your list of authors to my 'to read' pile. As I agree most fantasy is terribly written, so always looking out for recommendations.

I'd probably prioritise them in the same order in which I listed them

I also think it's worth reading all the Conan stories, but maybe I'm in the minority there.

I enjoyed the Conan books*. They're not clichés, they're the original material that others made into cliché.

• The ones he entirely wrote himself, not the ones posthumously "finished" by various people.
  

On a different note if anyone's interested, I've started reading a book called Invisible Women, it's about gender imbalance in data and how that effects daily life.

Incredibly interesting and opened my eyes to quite a lot of things so far.

+1, good book.

+2 goodbook

Just received this in the post to restore my faith in the world....

re: fantasy books I always recommend Sergei Lukyanenko's "Watch" series
(Night Watch, Day-, Twilight-, Last-, New-, Sixth- is the reading order)

Wizards locked in a centuries old battle have formed a truce and police each other through the Watches (Night Watch are the "good" guys, Day Watch are the "bad" folk)
(witches, wizards, shapeshifter, vampires, etc. all exist in the world and are answerable to the Watches, these are all set in Moscow)

I have read them all multiple times and think they are great
(there was an OK Russian movie based on part of the 1st book, released in the early 2000s and a fairly poor sequel not entirely based on the books, don't let them sway your opinion on the books!)

I paid a few quid extra to get what I thought was a nicer looking edition of Solaris and this turned up instead, far worse than any of the covers I was trying to avoid, ha ha. The perils of eBay book buying.

1 Attachment

🤣

I remembered another one, "16 Ways to Defend a Walled City" by KJ Parker. Nice clever standalone story that's not your usual elves and wizards stuff

I read this not so long ago. Thought it was OK but wasn't a huge fan (can't quite remember why). Was surprised to discover afterwards that it's a pseudonym for Tom Holt.

Yes, I know nothing about Tom Holt so that meant nothing to me when I found out

Let us know what you make of it. I just added it to my audible wish list because the blurb sounded interesting but don’t never heard of the author.

@AlexD - Semiosis was really good. Worth reading the 2nd one too?

If so will add it to my list. Got some Bill Bufords and the Aldiss, but will try Climbers next I think.

Glad you enjoyed it - yeah I enjoyed the second book as much as the first one.

Combining two of my interests. Super interesting as you would expect, cycle touring in such an area. Written by a political scientist and a man who oncee broke the round the world record, so he knows what he's on about. If I had to nitpick, its almost over the top in setting the scene in a descriptive sense. A bit flowery perhaps.

Could anyone recommend any self improvement books? i.e the monk who sold his Ferrari/ the richest man in babylon...

Anything in particular you want to improve?

Does anybody have any experience of these folks:

Bookshop.org

Bookshop.org is an online bookshop with a mission to financially support local, independent bookshops.

Looks like a good start at moving away from Amazon to local book shops (ignoring the fact that the site is hosted on AWS...)

The don't do e-books yet, unfortunately. Hopefully it is just "yet" though.

I've used World of books too rather than amazon. seems legit, but these all usually end up being owned by amazon too!

response times?

Finally got round to reading No Country For Old Men.

A good read but I'd forgotten how annoying Cormac McCarthy's absence of speech marks is. I guess it's a style thing but it makes it really awkward to follow conversations.

Another option is Hive if you can't find what you need, they give a % to independents.