Books - What are you reading?

Thanks. Doesn’t have to be about war

Just finished The Secret Commonwealth which was much better than The Belle Sauvage in my opinion. Wait for the last one now...

To read next, The Premonition Bureau which is a true story and looks excellent, and All Together Now by Mike Carter of One man and his bike fame. (Which is an excellent read).

Another fan of the Rivers of London books.

One weird thing though. Great chunks of them are set around where I've lived or worked.

Not so surprising for anyone who's lived around London for a few decades maybe but significant parts of False Value are set in Gillingham in Kent where I grew up. Not just Gillingham though, but Twydall fucking shops less than 100 yards from my Mum's house.

Maybe he just likes using shitholes for locations so it's a miserable coincidence.

This Robert Putnam book has cropped up in quite a few things I’ve read in the last year. It’s got the feel of an essay with a fancy cover about it but hey ho. So far so good

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I'm off to Lisbon for the first time soon. My first time abroad since the pandemic began. Any recommendations for fiction set in Lisbon or by Portuguese authors?

Saramago is good, especially if you hate punctuation.

Holiday reading: I was out of the habit of reading, so I was looking for books to inhale; things that would slip down easily, for a week on a beach in Greece.
So I took these:

Neal Stephenson Fall; or, Dodge in Hell
Mieko Kawakami Heaven
Ryu Murakami In the Miso Soup
James Ellroy This Storm

Stephenson was a slog and I resented its size/weight against my luggage limit. Murakami a waking nightmare (quite a palate cleanser tho!). Ellroy I was trying hard to care about these characters - feels like it was written by Ellroy AI. This happens right? Kawakami I haven't touched yet but given my jaded responses to the above, maybe I'll avoid.

Next thing is to try to find a cheap copy of Camporesi's The Land of Hunger to dip back into and lay off the fictions for a while.

Fall is certainly the most disappointing recent Stephenson. Termination Shock is very much a return to form.

Also, for holiday reading a Kindle is essential IMHO. Not only do you avoid bulking out your luggage, if you run out of books it is trivial to obtain more

Thanks for the recommendation!
And yes, the e-reader thing is something I have to take a look at again. I resist devices for reasons I can't quite articulate, even when the reason for is overwhelming.

I resist devices for reasons I can't quite articulate

+1

I’ve never looked back since my kindle. Free books what’s not to like

I used the kindle phone app recently when I'd forgotten my kindle, and while not as good as the actual kindle, it's not disastrous especially in dark mode. Worth a look if you are without reading matter in an emergency

Don Winslow
Power of the dog.
1st part of this dark sex cocaine and Death fueled trilogy.

Pretty amazing read
On par with Joseph Wambaugh

Perhaps even more intense

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Read power of the dog a couple of years ago and really enjoyed it, pretty dark at times!

Parts 1 and 2 are great. The third wasn't much cop and didn't add much.

Thoroughly enjoyed Piranesi, highly recommend it, quite a quick read, only 245 pages, and written in a journal format (mostly).
@Alf0nse cheers for the Rivers of London recommendation, knew I was going to enjoy it when I laughed out loud in the first few pages. May have to order the rest of the series as I don't think it'll take long to finish the first book, rather unputdownable.

Loved Piranesi! I have a signed copy, one of my favourite things.

Some light holiday reading. Finished Dune. Was underwhelmed tbh, dunno what I was expecting but it didn’t do anything I wasn’t expecting. Final third all felt a bit rushed and sketchy.

Moved on to annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer. Much better: creepy and unsettling, conceptually engaging. I hear that books two and three of the trilogy are dross so maybe will avoid.

I'm working my way through the Southern Reach trilogy at the minute, currently halfway through the last book. Annihilation is by far the best of the three but the others aren't all that bad. The second one is very different though, more of a slow burner but gets pretty creepy and tense. The third one is closer in tone to Annihilation so far.

If you've not read it, Roadside Picnic by The Strugatsky brothers is worth a read. Very similar concept to Annihilation. It's the book Tarkovsky's film Stalker is based on.

I hadn’t made the connection with roadside picnic in my head, but you are right the two are very similar, in theme and tone. Love that book.

Finally grinded my way through Three Body Problem.

It's a great premise, but so poorly delivered. So much expositional dialogue from characters that are all but copies of each other.

All super popular books need a bit of circumspection on reading, but this one disappointed massively even with that.

Yes, I remember it seemed a good plot but was really hard work. Saying that I can't remember anything about it now, other than that I didn't like it, and it was only a couple of years ago that I read it so maybe it wasn't even that good a plot.

I just finished 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C Clarke. I enjoyed it a lot, not far off some lesser known Philip K Dick stuff in tone. Are any of the follow ups worth reading? Any other suggestions for his books that are worth a go?

Parts 1 and 2 are great. The third wasn't much cop and didn't add much

The 3rd part, the Border is still brilliant. Especially because if the investment in the characters of the 1st two.