Books The BOOK thread

kps88 said:
Right lads I'm off on a holiday in 2 days time which will involve a lot of travelling, so plenty of reading time. I've got bunch of books long overdue a read, I was hoping you could help rate them for me since most of these are pretty old and might not have aged very well:

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Dune
Catcher in The Rye
Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Midnight's Children
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I've read these four. All very good books in their own right. Dragon Tattoo is fast paced and hard to put down once you start it. Dune is a fantasy classic
and if you like that genre, you will probably love it. Midnights Children is imo Rushdies best work and Catcher is an all time classic.
 
Getting it delivered today. Flipkart got the imported edition pretty quickly :D
 
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August 25th :D
 
I posted the following in the "Quick Survey" thread and just noticed we have a book thread! Good work Liv.

Anyway...

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You won't be able to put it down after starting it. It's about a bloke who has everything and is bored of life so decides to live his life by letting the roll of a dice decide the outcome.

Buy it, you won't regret it I promise!
 
I finished reading Pillars of the Earth a short while back and I must say, its a brilliant book. Very good character development and integration with the historical events taking place at the time. Definitely recommend it to anyone. You've got to have a bit of patience though as its just over 1000 pages and some parts are perhaps slower than others but well worth the effort.

Just started reading the sequel which features the ancestors of the first book. About half way through but again a cracking read.
 
TheGame said:
I finished reading Pillars of the Earth a short while back and I must say, its a brilliant book. Very good character development and integration with the historical events taking place at the time. Definitely recommend it to anyone. You've got to have a bit of patience though as its just over 1000 pages and some parts are perhaps slower than others but well worth the effort.

Just started reading the sequel which features the ancestors of the first book. About half way through but again a cracking read.
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Both are quite good. The Pillars of the Earth miniseries is a decent adaptation as well.
 
Plan M said:
I posted the following in the "Quick Survey" thread and just noticed we have a book thread! Good work Liv.

Anyway...

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You won't be able to put it down after starting it. It's about a bloke who has everything and is bored of life so decides to live his life by letting the roll of a dice decide the outcome.

Buy it, you won't regret it I promise!
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It's tedious shit. One of the Luther stories was based on the same premise.
 
100 pages into Eric Metaxas' 'Bonhoeffer' biography. Excellent stuff so far, very much recommended.
 
TheGame said:
I finished reading Pillars of the Earth a short while back and I must say, its a brilliant book. Very good character development and integration with the historical events taking place at the time. Definitely recommend it to anyone. You've got to have a bit of patience though as its just over 1000 pages and some parts are perhaps slower than others but well worth the effort.

Just started reading the sequel which features the ancestors of the first book. About half way through but again a cracking read.
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Glad you liked POTE.

I was initially quite disappointed that World Without End was set so far after POTE, but I soon felt myself immersed in the story and enjoyed the sequel as much as the first story.

I've yet to watch the TV miniseries, although will try and get round to it at some point.
 
Heardy said:
Glad you liked POTE.

I was initially quite disappointed that World Without End was set so far after POTE, but I soon felt myself immersed in the story and enjoyed the sequel as much as the first story.

I've yet to watch the TV miniseries, although will try and get round to it at some point.
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Good choice mate! TV series looks good, seen the first 2 episodes and they've deviated from the book slightly but it looks good.

Hoping to start Game of Thrones after World Without End.
 
TheGame said:
Good choice mate! TV series looks good, seen the first 2 episodes and they've deviated from the book slightly but it looks good.

Hoping to start Game of Thrones after World Without End.
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That's next on my list once I've finished with Stephen King's The Stand!

I've struggled to stay out of the Game of Thrones threads out of pure curiousity!
 
Heardy said:
Glad you liked POTE.

I was initially quite disappointed that World Without End was set so far after POTE, but I soon felt myself immersed in the story and enjoyed the sequel as much as the first story.

I've yet to watch the TV miniseries, although will try and get round to it at some point.
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I actually don't mind that the sequel was set so far later. I think we got to spend enough time with the characters from POTE, who grew up in front of our eyes, that we didn't need to rehash any more stories with them in their old age or read about their kids. In a way that would cause us to always be comparing the characters to the original, but distancing the new characters from the old lets WWE be its own story.
 
Read The Hunger Games. I really don't see the hype, or even why amazing writers like STephen King find this stuff good. It was such an easy read, and I'm onto book 2. Only because I don't like stopping what I didn't finish.
 
Read some excellent books this summer:

The Cider House Rules - John Irving
The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler
Treasure Island - R.L.Stevenson
We need to talk about Kevin - Lionel Shriver
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - R.L. Stevenson
Cities of the Plain - Cormac McCarthy
Mother Night - Kurt Vonnegut
One Day - David Nicholls
A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway
Captain Corelli's Mandolin - *Louis de Bernieres
 
Because I'm a bit of a bookworm, finished Catching Fire of Hunger Games last night. I must admit, with all the violence and killing in the book, I don't know why it qualifies as young adult. :lol:

Nearly finished on Neil Gaiman's Smokes and Mirrors as my book for today, a collection of short stories that Gaiman has written over the years. Some of the stories I like, some just aren't my cup of tea. Some brilliant stuff, though.
 
I'm currently reading Fundamentals of Stellar Astrophysics by G. Collins.

Oh and Moby Dick.

I'm doing the wrong degree.
 
Am about to start reading When God was a Rabbit.
 
Plan M said:
I posted the following in the "Quick Survey" thread and just noticed we have a book thread! Good work Liv.

Anyway...

41A3ETKBV1L._SL500_AA300_.jpg


You won't be able to put it down after starting it. It's about a bloke who has everything and is bored of life so decides to live his life by letting the roll of a dice decide the outcome.

Buy it, you won't regret it I promise!
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peterstorey said:
It's tedious shit. One of the Luther stories was based on the same premise.
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:confused:

I found it hilarious and interesting. Whatever it is I don't see how it could made it out to be tedious.

I wouldn't really bother with the follow-up book, mind... but The Dice Man had me in the first few paragraphs... The first attempt in the book to follow the will of the die results in a reprehensible intention that's carried out in a sheepish and awkward fashion, for both the perpetrator and the "victim". Funny as Hell.
 
Dresilved said:
Drood was an excellent read
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For a book that promised so much it became very quickly just the random ramblings of the main protaganist, and the supposed twist was obvious from the instigation point. I read the entire book through waiting for some type of uber catch that would mark it as brilliant. Instead it turned out to be a diary of a bore that happened to have the odd small bits of drood in it. Do I care about his every meal over a ten year period, no. Do I care about the main characters viewpoints of historic authours of the time when they go on forever and end up feeling like filler instead of moving the story forward. Now don't get me wrong, some of the events I thought were fantastic but they were to few and far between. Also after the Hatchery event, the book never reached those heights again. There's only so much character development you can take, and when it comes at the cost of the plot when we've already established the main character is a neurotic schizophrenic mysogynist junkie within the fitrst 50 pages, to then have it go on for a further 700 pages just becomes dull. It's felt like it was constantly building up to something that never happened, so much so that the supposed finale for Wilkies character development (graveyard scene) seemed so timid in comparison to what had happened before that it didn't seem to matter. The final chapters remarks on his character by the american woman and the reviews of his readings described the whole book to me.
 
I really enjoyed The Terror, but then, the Franklin Expedition tragedy is an epic mystery in itself, even without fictionalisation.
 
Anyone read 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey? Just finished reading it, and it was a bit eye opening and he's got great points; though most of them are just sourced from classic and modern philosophical thinkers such as Aristotle and Victor Frankl. Plenty of what he says I've encountered in philosophy and even theology class. It's a good book, and I'm sure anyone who reads it will learn something new to apply, but I feel that overall, with the way he's structured the habits sort of went down in the end, being too specific with certain activities and whatnot.
 
Anyone read Storm Front by Jim Butcher? It was pretty enjoyable and an interesting idea. It's not amazing, but it was solidly entertaining.
 
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