What are you reading at the moment?

[Davros sock drawer]

Cool. Hopefully I'll get into both series and will then have plenty to chomp into.

I note that the first Dark Tower book was written when King was 19, so I'm not too sure the quality will be all that...

[Lovelyman]

I never got on with the Dark Tower, but I know other love it.

I would HIGHLY recommend the First Law trilogy by Joe Abercrombie. The books rattle along at a fair pace and are really exciting and have great characters.

Best trilogy I have read for a long time.

[pauc]

Cool. Hopefully I'll get into both series and will then have plenty to chomp into.

I note that the first Dark Tower book was written when King was 19, so I'm not too sure the quality will be all that...

King spruced up the book in later editions. I don't know if he added anything of value though, I was a latecomer to the series.

Edit: A quick google suggests the 2003 editions where the first revised ones.

I would HIGHLY recommend the First Law trilogy by Joe Abercrombie. The books rattle along at a fair pace and are really exciting and have great characters.

I bought The Blade Itself today. \o/

[Davros sock drawer]

Ah yes, I've got the revised one.

[Lovelyman]

King spruced up the book in later editions. I don't know if he added anything of value though, I was a latecomer to the series.

Edit: A quick google suggests the 2003 editions where the first revised ones.

I bought The Blade Itself today. \o/

Lucky you. The sequels get better and better.

[pauc]

What pleases me is that the trilogy is out and ready for me to read. If I do take a shine to it it can be plucked from a shelf and read.

Unlike Patrick Rothfuss and Scott Lynches individual works in which I must sit and wait for the next installment.

I know it takes a long time for a good polished book (and honestly I'm glad they take alot of time) but I really enjoyed The Name of The Wind and I'm hankering for the next installment.

[Lovelyman]

I think abercrombie is churning out books at the rate of just under one per year, and so far they've gotten better and better. Best served cold is out this June I think.

[moosegrinder]

Ah yes, I've got the revised one.

I dunno about the newwer ones (mines a 197something paperback) but The Gunslinger is interesting, yet doesn't make much sense on it's own. In fact it's not that it makes sense, it's that you appreciate more when you read a few more of the books. It has so many brilliant ideas throughout the series. I hope you get on with it.

[Silent Runner]

I went out to pick up some fantasy titles yesterday but couldn't find anything I liked the look off so I grabbed a couple of thrillers instead. I started Dennis Lehanes Shutter Island this morning and I'm about 200 pages in.

Finished this last night. I thought it was really good but

I’m a bit disappointed with myself that I didn’t spot the anagram right from the start.

[cassidy]

I think abercrombie is churning out books at the rate of just under one per year, and so far they've gotten better and better. Best served cold is out this June I think.

Yup read a reveiw of Best Served cold and it sounds as full of nasty characters as his last book. I cannot wait.

I also have a feeling some characters from First Law may be making an appearance.

[Lovelyman]

I reckon Logan by what I read in one review (a barbarian trying to sort out his life)...

[cassidy]

I reckon Logan by what I read in one review (a barbarian trying to sort out his life)...

That instantly makes the book a must buy if true. But I have a feeling it could be a different one from The First Law books.

[TheShend]

Finished Animal Farm last night.

Poor Boxer

[Lovelyman]

That instantly makes the book a must buy if true. But I have a feeling it could be a different one from The First Law books.

I just read another review. It's Shivers, apparently

[therealjohnpeat]

I'm trying quite hard to read "The Idiot" by Doestovevsky but it's MUCH harder going than Crime and Punishment was

[gone now bye]

I've been reading a bunch of plays lately. Read Moliere's Don Juan earlier this week, and also Kneehigh Theatre's Tristan and Yseult, The Bacchae, The Red Shoes and The Wooden Frock. All absolutely brilliant - even off the page, they're immensely colourful, spectacular and inventive.

Now I'm back to reading what I SHOULD have been reading for my course: Sam Sevelon's The Lonely Londoners, Angela Carter's Wise Children, and lots of background reading about Modernism.

[Jamie John]

The House of the Dead by Dostoyevsky. Pretty interesting after about one hundred pages. He'll give you about ten pages of intense but prolonged description before dropping in some truly shocking lines or two, about the prisoners not being at all fazed by the staggering number of cockroaches in their cabbage soup and similar atrocities of prison camp life. It's hard work keeping up with all the different names, middle name and nick names at times but I'm enjoying it.

[sith]

I was bored so I started reading my sisters Twilight book and now I cant put it down

[Captain Novaforce]

Yeah I'm filling that one under guilty and embarrising pleasure

[Silent Runner]

Ever wondered what the Drunken Bakers would be like if one of them relocated to Swansea and was working as a Private Investigator? Well wonder no more.

I picked this up on a whim because it's published by Serpents Tail who publish some of my favourite writers; George Pelecanos, Walter Mosely, Ken Bruen and loads more. So they 're normally a good judge of crime fiction. I'm about 100 pages in and it's superb, a down on his luck P.I and a heroin addict try to get by and keep themselves in a state of blissful oblivion. Their problem is that the world is conspiring against them, no one will sell them drugs and various gangs seem out to get them. It's the second in a series but I haven't read the first. I'll be grabbing that ASAP.

[Mercury]

Someone mentioned that Simon Kernick was the English Harlan Coben so I picked up this:

Great opening and I haven't been able to put it down since.

[McFly]

I never got on with the Dark Tower, but I know other love it.

High 5 yo, absolutely hated that shit.

[fatoy.japa]

Just finished Godel, Escher Bach by Douglas Hofstader.

I don't know what I expected from it, really. It didn't say anything 'new' (i.e. that I hadn't sort of considered already), it wasn't particularly well written, some of the arguing was incredibly petulant and the humour falls flat more often than not... but, I really liked it. I suppose it's a product of its time - I read most of it to myself in Noah Wyle's Pirates of Silicon Valley voice. The 20th anniversary preface needs excising pronto, though. Nothing quite sours you on a book like having the author complain how he's almost universally misunderstood but refusing to revise his work before you've even started.

Anyway, I've started The Big Sleep. I knew Raymond Chandler went to the same school as P. G. Wodehouse but I still wasn't prepared for the opening chapters to be as sharp and funny as they are.

[McFly]

^^^ Yeah i love that book, The BIg Sleep i mean.

[Danster]

Okay finished Dark Tower Book 2, all good so far IMO. I know that the next two books are a bit of a slog but I must finish this series.

Also read No Country For Old Men. I had no idea of the storyline and dived straight in. It's a bit bleak and nasty but fascinating and very compulsive.

I must admit I was suprised by Moss' death, don't know why, I should have seen it coming really the story being more about Chiggy-whatisface and the sheriff.

Can anybody tell me what period it was set in though? I'm guessing the 90s, otherwise Moss would have been too young to have been in Nam. EDIT: Either that or he lied about his age...

[moosegrinder]

So, I'm about a 3rd into Game Of Thrones (I know, I take ages with books) and it's rather good. A lot of the characters are absolute cunts, and the world he's created is really quite bleak. So yeah, thumbs up so far.

[Colonel Panic]

Okay finished Dark Tower Book 2, all good so far IMO. I know that the next two books are a bit of a slog but I must finish this series.

Also read No Country For Old Men. I had no idea of the storyline and dived straight in. It's a bit bleak and nasty but fascinating and very compulsive.

I must admit I was suprised by Moss' death, don't know why, I should have seen it coming really the story being more about Chiggy-whatisface and the sheriff.

Can anybody tell me what period it was set in though? I'm guessing the 90s, otherwise Moss would have been too young to have been in Nam. EDIT: Either that or he lied about his age...

I think it was set in the 80s.

[gone now bye]

Samuel Beckett's Endgame.

I'm having to write an essay on it for my course, but it's become one of my all-time favourite plays. Beckett is a fucking GOD.

Anybody read it?

[Guest]

I just finished Atomised in 3 days. Initially, I thought it was sensationalist. How wrong I was. The ending blew me away. The way in which philosophical and scientific threads were tied together into a fictional narrative with a very french persona, was almost miraculous in terms of delivery. A must read, even if it made me want to jump off the nearest bridge.

[David Kenny]

Samuel Beckett's Endgame.

I'm having to write an essay on it for my course, but it's become one of my all-time favourite plays. Beckett is a fucking GOD.

Anybody read it?

Many times. My second favourite Beckett work probably after Malone Dies, or maybe Murphy, or perhaps Godot.

Anyway, he really is a genius, there's never been anyone like him, before or since.