Books - What are you reading?

Oh amazing - that’s not a resource I really knew about. Nice one!

He has lots of books that seem to be the kind of thing I'd enjoy but I remember reading one of his short stories and it was pretty poor so I've not got round to anything else.

It is getting a bit difficult to find modern, old school, space opera sci-fi that isn't heavy on the author's moralising I find though.

I've been reading through Adrian Tchaikovsky's space opera stuff and enjoying it. Currently on the latest book in the Final Architecture series.

I'd also recommend To Sleep under a sea of stars. I've not actually finished it yet, but so far very good.

Re Benjamin Myers books, The Offing is absolutely superb, but I do tend to enjoy a good post war yarn, be it books or film.
Pig Iron is just as well written, but I am finding it hard going, but still enjoying it, thinks it's because it's written using NE dialect, which like most other dialects needs it's own dictionary.
Ordering Gallows Pole and The Beastings sometime this week.

Great find in a village book shelter this morning!

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Just finished 1Q84, my first and last Murakami book.
Am I alone in finding him tedious?

I like him, although not read that one.

Having said that I bought a book of his short stories recently and have no real desire to read it.

But that's probably a symptom of a wider reading malaise.

Are there no good books left?

He's really hit and miss. That's not a great one imo! My personal favourite is A Wild Sheep Chase. Or a short story he wrote called "Barn Burning". I'd probably have given up on him if 1Q84 was my first experience as well to be fair.

'Wind up bird chronicle' was decent.

Been years since I read it, but it was a trendy one at the time. Also the first Murakami I read. I enjoyed the first half but thought it dragged a lot, and I was ready for it to be done about 2/3 of the way through.
I read Short Stories a year or two ago. It was fine...

Great book. There’s a decent bike tour there…

Norwegian Wood is good in a kind of Toxic Romance kind of way

What I talk about when I talk about running is excellent

And Wind up Bird Chronicle

Thanks all, probably shouldn't have started with such a tome.

Finished these two

Now onto this

Any good kindle unlimited reccos for holiday please?

I've been working my way through the Earthsea books by Ursula K Le Guin. I've finished all of the novels and am on to the last of the related short stories. With the exception of The Other Wind which was just "alright", I've loved them all. I'm not massively in to fantasy, I've read the Lord of The Rings books and not much else. I love Le Guin though. They're not super cheesy and get pretty dark in places, a lot more so than I was expecting. I might have to reread them sooner rather than later.

If anyone else has a guilty affection for what I loosely term 'adventure fantasy' (Patrick Rothfuss, Joe Abercrombie, Mark Lawrence, Brandon Sanderson etc) then I thoroughly recommend Empire of the Vampire by Jay Kristoff. May be the best of that type I've read since the name of the wind. Properly entertaining stuff and well written. Just devoured it in a day of holiday.

Just finished Ulysses!
It was really quite good...though a bit ramble-y in places.
It's probably best listened to rather than read....like Under Milk Wood (IMHO)

Cheers, I'll add that to the list.

Although I very much enjoyed the Name of the Wind I'm not sure if I'd have bothered with that and the sequel if I'd known that it's 12 years and counting on the publication of the third book.

And, in sharp contrast to 1Q84, I just finished Piranesi, a little jewel of a story.
Highly recommended.

I've been working my way through the Earthsea books by Ursula K Le Guin.

The original trilogy or those three plus the extra book she wrote years later to apologise for the misogyny of the first three? I loved those books as a kid but even then I thought "Weak as women's magic, wicked as women's magic" was a bit odd.

Still venerate the original trilogy, fwiw, despite knowing even more how dodgy they were in that respect.

Hmmm, I might have got completely the wrong end of the stick but knowing Le Guin's politics and having read some of her other work which tackles gender, it didn't come across as outright misogynistic to me. It read more as a commentary on misogyny and how women are portrayed in literature. I may be giving her too much credit though, I've not read up on it much to be honest!