Books - What are you reading?

Booker Shortlist entry , Half way through and it's great -

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Horror recommendations and some sound great-
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/oct/29/chapter-and-curse-is-the-horror-novel-entering-a-golden-age

Thanks for sharing, popped a few of those on my reading list.

Your very welcome- I've ordered A Head Full of Ghosts & The Only Good Indians for starters.

Speaking of Booker Shortlists, I've just started Damon Galgut's The Promise, and it's been great so far. Central to the writing is how the narrator swiftly slips into the minds of a large variety of characters, then briefly sums up the situation they are in according to them. Since there are conflicts and tension all over the place, everything is given a nice balance through this recounting of multiple viewpoints.

@EB recommended this and wow I enjoyed it! I too would thoroughly recommend it.

It’s nice to read something concerning Russia and Siberia that makes you fully realise the horrors and sheer despair but actually has a happy ending. The fact that this is a true story is incredible.

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If you fancy another true life survival story in 90's Siberia, The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance by John Vaillant is a fantastic read

Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household was a cracking read,if you like escape/evasion thrillers. Good pace to it, I found it quite unputdownable.

I'm halfway through "The Only Good Indians" by Stephen Graham Jones from that list. I'm not really in to it, the writing style is a bit "young adult", lots of annoying sarcastic characters.
The perspective it's written from is pretty interesting though, in the sense of it being an insight in to how the author feels towards his place as a native American in the modern US.
I'm happy to pass my copy on to anyone that's interested when I'm finished with it.

Glad you enjoyed it. Its probably 15 years since I last read it, could definitely read it again

Blood’s a Rover, James Ellroy. In an almost parodic reflection of the structure and pacing of your typical Ellroy novel it took me about 2 years to read the first 300 pages and about 2 weeks to read the last 300 pages.

Along with the rest of the trilogy, it’s brutal, searing, occasionally very moving. I’m not sure I will read another Ellroy novel for a very long time, if ever. Onto something lighter and snappier now, so that I can carry on this minor reading habit I have managed to re-establish.

I love Ellroy but the longer ones can be hard. I'm about halfway through Perfidia so still have 400 pages to go.

I have Perfida sitting on the shelf over there. Not sure it’s going to get read in the next 20 years or so. Maybe after I’ve retired.

Lol as if retirement is still going to be a thing by the time I reach that age

Finished reading The Corner (by the guys who then did the Wire). Not sure how I feel about it. It was mainly a depressing read without that much really happening. It did keep me reading for 700 pages though so must have been decent.

I did assume it was semi-fictionalised with characters being a composite of various people, didn't realise until the epilogue that it was recounting actual people.

Anyone read Empire of Pain by Keefe? Hovering over the buy button...

Anyone recognise this book (no, I don't have a better quality image of it)?

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Is it a woman in a red dress at Stonehenge

I’m doing some laid back Anthony Horowitz reading. I think it’s called the word is murder. It’s quite nice reading something light and easy.

@moocher found it:-

https://www.waterstones.com/book/american-spy/lauren-wilkinson/9780349700984

Well done! That wasn’t easy

Currently enjoying I am not Sidney Poitier by Percival Everett.

Top work - I tried and failed.

I'm reading Simon Schama's History of Britain (1770-2000).

I bought the set ahead of training to be a history teacher, but never really got round to it. That was about 9 years ago.

It's really well-written and engaging, and what annoyed me at first - the fact that it focuses on a few, mainly middle-class people as "spirit of the age" type examples, actually makes it much more readable than if it were a political history or more of an in-depth work.