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Golden Oldies out there...what books are you reading right now?


Guest Jetsun Milarepa

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sparklingstars

I love Terry Pratchett! One of the items on my bucket list was to meet him in person, but then of course he died so that will never happen.

I'm between books at the moment. I just finished reading On The Move, by Oliver Sacks (another of my heroes who died before I had the opportunity to meet him).

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Guest Jetsun Milarepa

Oh, Oliver Sacks! I read that book as well....what an interesting man! And what a life!

I'm between books right now, no doubt I'll be up to the library tomorrow...

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I really like the Space Captain Smith books - fun and funny space opera novels. (it was fun to see the sign for Didcot as I passed through on the train from Bristol to London when I was in the UK)

I am currently reading The Man-Kzin Wars, by Larry Niven, et al. More space opera/sci-fi stories, these ones written by various authors in a shared universe.

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I'm going to start reading White Trash: the 400-Year Untold History of Class in America. After I finish a Sherlock/Mary Russell book.

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Guest Jetsun Milarepa

I've just watched a documentary on how Scots and Irish started the first Ku Klux Klan group.....how NOT proud of that I am! The white trash book reminded me of that. Sounds like a good read though, we kind of have the same thing going in the UK, a book called 'Chavs' these poor people seem to be our 'white trash'

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Just finished an excellent nonfiction book titled Eve of a Hundred Midnights, by Bill Lascher. It’s the compelling and extremely well-researched story of a young American foreign correspondent who covered the early stages of WWII from the Pacific front; he and his wife, an accomplished writer herself, eventually had to flee the embattled Philippines for their own lives. It's an informative and gripping slice of history.

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Guest Jetsun Milarepa

That sounds like a good one for the list....I'm reading 'Gurkha' which is gripping as well. I spent some time in Nepal, so I know a bit about Gurkhas, they are a real crack team in the British army, tough people.

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Guest Jetsun Milarepa

Bashed through the Gurkhas! Brilliant book! Now on to Ben Kane's 'Hunting the Eagles' which is about the loss Rome suffered during Augustus/Tiberius' reign when the Germanic tribes rose up and Arminius united them all, probably the first Germans....

I like Ben Kane's stuff. His first books were a trilogy about the 'lost legion' and they were gripping.

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sparklingstars

I'm about 5 pages from the end of The Trespasser, by Tana French. Great book by one of my favorite authors. Now I have to decide which book to start next. I have about 8 books in my to-be-read stack.

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Howdy, bookworms. (Anybody there?)

 

I'm not actually reading anything at the moment: the nights are drawing in and I don't like reading under the electric light. ...However, I thought I'd share with you my pick of the titles I got through during the summer.

 

Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon - Mark Hodder

My favourite, this. The epic-length third installment of the totally mind-bending 'Burton & Swinburne' steampunk sci-fi series. Impossible to summarize, really, in just a couple of sentences, but the kind of novel that might have been written if Messrs Conan Doyle, Wells (H.G.) and Rider Haggard had put their heads together. Think Holmes and Watson, sat atop giant steam-powered spiders, chasing nefarious Prussian types across 19th century Africa; think genetically engineered plant-monstrosities and beast-soldiers; think a world teetering on the edge of all-out war, and think a quasi-mystical, extra-terrestrial gemstone capable of reshaping time. It's kind of like that.

 

That Dark Remembered Day - Tom Vowler

Down to earth with a bump for this, my second favourite. A carefully studied and deeply poignant psychodrama revolving around an 'incident' that takes place in a small English market town in 1982 when a soldier returns home from fighting in the Falklands War suffering from what would nowadays be recognised as PTSD. ...There's a sting in the tail near the end of this book which isn't unexpected: you know before you get to it there's a vital piece missing from the jigsaw. But when it strikes it's devastating: so, so sad. I put off reading any further books for a couple of weeks after finishing this one: I didn't want to diminish it's impact.

 

The Loney - Andrew Michael Hurley

My No.3. A strange and darkly atmospheric horror story in which a devout Catholic family (together with a couple of friends and an easy-going parish priest) go on a pilgrimage to visit an all-but-forgotten religious shrine in the wilds of north-west England. The mother, especially, is a fervent believer in the power of prayer and is convinced a miracle will cure her eldest son of his learning difficulties. ...File next to Pet Cemetery, perhaps? It's not the same, but there's a similar vibe to it.

 

Belt Three - John Ayliff

Inspired, perhaps by the Star Trek episode 'The Doomsday Machine', the film Bladerunner and Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World, this is a futuristic space adventure set at a point in time several hundred years after the earth has been blown to pieces (quite literally that) by giant alien machine-creatures known as Worldbreakers. Humanity - divided into a privileged 'trueborn' elite and an expendable workforce of clones - lives on, though, inside artificial habitations bolted onto the larger fragments of it's former homeworld. ...However, the Worldbreakers haven't gone away: they're feeding. Slowly but surely, the remains of planet earth are being devoured!

 

A Red Sun Also Rises - Mark Hodder (again)

An eccentric and very British take on the American pulp science-fantasy stories of the 1910s, '20s and '30s: kind of Lewis Carroll meets Edgar Rice Burroughs. About a young 19th century missionary priest and his trusty (female) hunchback assistant who find themselves transported to a far-off alien world where there are monsters to be fought, there's an existential mystery to be solved, and where the crustacean-like natives have refashioned themselves into bizarre caricatures of Victorian aristocrats and the working class. ...Possibly the weirdest book I've ever read (but then I've never actually read any Lewis Carroll). The more I think about it, the more I like it.

 

The Chrysalids - John Wyndham

Although some of the character dialogue may, at times, seem a little - I dunno - formal? (old-fashioned) and there's some rather clunky exposition towards the very end of the tale, this is still, surely, one of THE great dystopian novels - as resonant today as it was when it was first published back in 1955. A nightmare vision of a (post-apocalyptic) future society in which religious fundamentalists call the shots and where anyone found in possession of even the tiniest physical abnormality is deemed to be sub-human, a living blasphemy against the 'true image' of God, hateful in the sight of God, to be - in one way or another - disposed of. ...If you've never read The Chrysalids, I urge you: DO SO. It'll scare the pants off you.

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Guest Jetsun Milarepa

Hi Greenbeard! Wow have you been busy! That's a goodly list of titles and all well read. Welcome, there are other readers about, I sometimes see other threads with books in them as well.

Right now, I just finished Ben Kane's 'Hunting Eagles' which is the second in a trilogy about Publius Quintillius Varus' disastrous German campaign and its aftermath. Can't wait to read the next one, but as far as I know the author has disappeared to Italy to walk from Capua to Rome dressed as a legionary! Talk about putting your money where your mouth is! Everything he raises is going to the Combat Stress charity, which would suit your character in the Dark remembered Day.

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  • 4 weeks later...
Guest Jetsun Milarepa

I just realised with great irony how I'm half way through a book called 'The Despot's Accomplice' by Brian Klaas.

It's about the illusion of democracy an the way it has actually helped despotic regimes to flourish, weirdly enough as a side effect of the worldwide promotion of democratic government.

It's not my book, my daughter pre ordered it last year when she was living with me and it just came , so I just read....but some of the stuff in it is quite scary.

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  • 3 weeks later...
Guest Jetsun Milarepa

Found an interesting book today, I'll pass it on to my daughter when I finish it (I can add it to her presents!).

It's called 'Happy' by Derren Brown. He's a famous illusionist, a bit like Penn and Teller in that he debunks all the fakery, but he's very good at reading people. So far it's about our modern idea of happiness, which appears to be making people more anxious than happy! 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I am currently reading The Time Travelers book one in The Gideon Trilogy. I like it so far. It is a fantasy sci if story.

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I looked at my previous post - funny thing is I'm reading another Man-Kzin Wars book (volume XIII this time), but I did read a few other books in between. I read

The Saint in London (Simon Templar adventures)

Beau Sabreur (by the same author who wrote Beau Geste)

Arabella of Mars (steampunk airships sailing between Earth and Mars)

The Saint Intervenes (Simon Templar adventures)

 

Not sure if I will quite match last year's number of books read, but that's okay. :) 

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imnotafreakofnature!

Just started Living Your Yoga by Judith Lassater, but I'm not far enough into it to have formed an opinion yet.

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Getting a new Kindle for Christmas - think I may start off with the first of Kathy Reich's books.

 

Loved John Wyndham -an author to revisit :)

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Just started reading Warlock Holmes: A Study in Brimstone - so far I am enjoying it. :)

It's a humorous parody of some other book.

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Can't say I was gadget free yesterday but managed to stay off the 'net'. Got my Kindle fire and discovered John had already downloaded some Kathy Reichs books - and she is an awesome author. Got 75% through my first yesterday, going to have to do some tidying up today though :D

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imnotafreakofnature!

Got $75 worth of Amazon gift cards for cmas and I've already spent it all! Most of it went to Tolkein books - I've been a fan since the late 70s, long before the movies were even a spark in Hollywood's eye - but I haven't read any of them in years. I also downloaded some of Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next books on my Kindle. I also spent a little time on cmas eve at my local Goodwill (my favorite bookstore! lol) and bought The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (which I've just started - I want to read the books before seeing the movies) and The Girl Who Played with Fire. They didn't have the third one, but I'm sure they will at some point, so I'll get it later.

 

Happy New Year reading, everybody! :D

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imnotafreakofnature!

Just finished The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and started The Girl Who Played with Fire.

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Careful,  I did that in one sitting overnight,  finishing 40 minutes before starting a twelve hour shift,  but it was worth it 

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Tom McFerran

The Danish Girl, my daughter took me to see the movie and I couldn't stop thinking about it, so I bought the book. An absolutely fascinating movie, the book I am finding even more fascinating. I went (also with my daughter) to see the movie Carol, with Cate Blanchett, wonderful. All of my life I have been haunted by the knowledge that I was born in the wrong body, ah well, maybe in my next life who knows.

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On 12/31/2016 at 3:18 PM, imnotafreakofnature! said:

Just finished The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and started The Girl Who Played with Fire.

I loved that series. Read the books and have all the movies. I'm so sad the author died...no more books:mellow:

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David Lagercrantz has written a fourth book "The Girl in the Spider's Web" and it's possible there could be up to ten over time. That was Stein Larsson's original estimate 

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