Books - What are you reading?

Joe Abercrombie.

...as I walked out’ is one of my favourite books.

Sorely tempted to walk/ride the route

I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. The writing is just so good.

Second vote for Joe Abercrombie. Also Patrick Rothfuss and Scott Lynch.

Cheers for the suggestions. Obviously good ones as I've read (and reread) and enjoyed all of Joe Abercrombie and Raymod Feist's stuff.

I've not read either of the other two so will look into them. Looking at my Kindle it seems I bought the first Gentleman Bastard book 6 years ago but never read it.

Also, any suggestions in the fantasy/real world genre. Rivers of London, Benedict Jacka, Steve McHugh, Dresden files, that kind of jazz. It seems to be hugely popular now but a load of them are cheapo Amazon bollocks.

This caught my eye somewhere on twitter today, struck me to say the least, so I ordered the book from a 2nd hand shop. Has anyone on here read it?

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Obvious one is Neil Gaiman if you haven't read any of his stuff

Cheers but I've read quite a bit of his stuff. Should really have included him in my list.

For intelligent space opera, Lois McMaster Bujold's Miles Vorkorsigan series?

I enjoyed Galapagos when I read it last year. I'm pretty hit and miss with Vonnegut but that's one of his better ones in my opinion!

Worth mentioning that the post apocalyptic slant is almost totally irrelevant to the majority of the book!

cheers!

Have you read much other Vonnegut?

@ltc None, not even Slaughterhouse five. Actually I have hardly been reading any books over the past 10 years or so, too much news, stories, social nonsense & bike info on the web... So it's high time I take a break from staring at screens ;-)

For trashy stuff I really do rate Steve McHugh, perfect escapism for me...

Ah ok! Galapagos probably isn't where I'd start with Vonnegut but if you read that and like it you'll probably enjoy things like Slaughterhouse 5 and Mother Night.
Now's as good a time as any to take a break from staring at screens and try and detach from the outside world occasionally!

Glen Cooke's Black Company series is something I've been enjoying. Unfortunately only the first three are available for kindle in the UK for some reason but physical copies of the rest can be found on Amazon etc.

Never heard of her. Any particular book/series you suggest starting on?

@user55129 I read the first of these a few years ago and was undecided. How are the later books?

Cheers

I've read the first of the Gentleman Bastard books. It was OK. Not JA / RF level.

The books mostly have standalone plots, but you may want to start with Shards of Honor, which is the first in the series proper (I wouldn't necessarily bother with Falling Free unless the others grab you). The publication history is a bit complex - there are lots of omnibus editions around (more at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorkosigan_Saga ). Ignore the naff covers many of the books come with - they were originally published by Baen in the US, a publisher whose art department never found an image too pulpy for their like...

Any suggestions for sci-fi, particularly space operas in the vein of the Deathstalker series

Dan Cummings Hyperion and Endymion series is gripping

Book update:-

Finished A Canticle for Leibowitz a while back, will maybe add the sequel to my list to read in the future, then read What if? by Randall Munroe (of xkcd fame) as some light relief.

The Expected Goals Philosophy by James Tippett was next for some nerdy football stats action (I once did quite a bit of research into value betting systems, luckily I worked out that the bookies had most stuff covered and I didn't have the spare cash to make anything worthwhile).

Next on my pile is Brave New World Revisited by Aldous Huxley. Read the original a few years ago and I'd bought this but never read it.

Then I was going to attempt to catch up on the books I never read/finished in our book club (there are 14 of them but a couple I'll pass on unless I'm utterly deperate. The 12 are:-

Tess of the D'Urbevilles, American Pastoral, Stoner, Wuthering Heights, Catcher in the Rye, Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow, Pregnant Widow, The Audacity of Hope, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Never Let Me Go, A Portait Of The Artist As a Young Man, The End of the Affair

Then back to finish off We by Yevgeny Zamyatin as I got 5 pages in to that a while back and then got distracted.

Pile of books to go to the charity shop (whenever things return to normal) slowly increasing.

I was hooked after the first and the next two were very much more of the same. So might not be your thing.

Not to stick my oar in, but....

I cant recommend One Hundred years of solitude enough, one of my favourite books. Also American Pastoral is great.

Never had any time for Thomas Hardy, its all a bit meh to me. If you are in the right mood Wuthering Heights is actually a bit of a blast, you can scream through it in no time. Maybe with Kate Bush in the background...

Ive retreated into comfort reading, things that completely take me out of the present, or are familiar enough be old friends. I have a few on the go...

Started re-reading all The Watch books from Disc World. They get better with age, I am now aware of more of the reference jokes that I missed when I was younger.

War and Peace is also out on the bed side table, a few pages a night is a lovely way to relax the brain.

Reading Player of Games an Ian M Banks, which is incredibly immersive. I only surface from it when I'm hungry, cant be reading it in bed or id never go to sleep.