What Are You Reading

[HadleyH]

I read history all the time, and some biography.

I love history!!! :eusa_clap

 

[Lancealot]

Then on to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

You and me both. I can't wait until Sat.

 

[Lancealot]

Finished with Poe, (will look into other author mentioned in his vein,) am now currently reading:

- Secrets of the Samurai: A Survey of the Martial Arts of Feudal Japan, by Oscar Ratti and Adele Westbrook
- The Book of Five Rings, by Miyamoto Musashi
- Death in a Lonely Land, by Peter Hathaway Capstick

All great books.

Capstick is a great author.

 

[carter]

the Harry Starks trilogy Long Firm, He Kills Coppers, and Truecrime by British novelist Jake Arnott

Fredo, Welcome to the Lounge. I'll have to find these books.

I'm reading the Inspector Banks novels by Peter Robinson from beginning to end. Currently on my nightstand are Final Account by Robinson, Tie a Fly, Catch a Trout and Simplified Fly Fishing by S.R. Slaymaker II, and Gould's Book of Fish by Richard Flanagan. I also like crime novels by Julia Spencer-Fleming and Craig Johnson.
I collect slipcased editions of Ed McBain's books.
I have 1st Editions of most of Ernest Hemingway's novels as well as biographical works about Hemingway written by a number of authors.
I have 1st Editions of all the Dark Tower novels by Stephen King.
If I find an author I like, I'll usually try to find everything they have published.

 

[Edward]

Hands up how many of you loungers appreciate fact, such as biographies instead of fiction!

A good bio can be a great story. The last one I read was Alan Alda's autobiography, "Never have your dog stuffed." Fantastic book - I always liked the guy, but even more so now. Other biographies I've enjoyed have included a lot of musicians - Dylan, Hendrix, and Joe Strummer among them. Dee Dee Ramone's auto biog (wherein I think many stories gained much in the telling ) was wodnerfully entertaining, as was John Lydon's "Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs." (The title was the text of a sign on the door of a local pub in the area of Lonson where John Lydon, himself of very Irish parentage, grew up). I enjoyed Douglas Bader's biog, Reach For the Sky, though i'm not in general much of a one for the military stuff. I studied a lot of early 20th Century Irish history at school and have maintained an interest in that - I particularly enjoyed Tim Pat Coogan's biog of Michael Collins, as well as Ruth Dudley Edwards' "Padraig Pearse: The Triumph of Failure." I've also got a few biogs and auto biogs in my signed editions collection (not really something i specifically collect, but I have amassed quite a few over the years). These include Tom Baker (mad as a hatter, lovely guy though), Leonard Nimoy (really nice guy), and - though I didn't meet him - Reggie Kray. I find the Kray thing very interesting as I live around the area that was bang in the middle of their manor - the Blind Begger is one of my locals. I certainly don't buy into the "Krays as folks heroes" nonsense, though equally I'm not keen on some of the extreme demonising of them that has gone on over the years.

Right now, though, I'm wound up at the thought of being less than twelve hours away from the final Harry Potter book!

 

[Smithy]

I love history!!! :eusa_clap

I read a lot of history as well. Having an interest in the RAF during WWII (and especially during the Battles of France and Britain) I devour pilot memoirs, and anything to do with this period.

Even my fiction outings tend to be historical fiction. Although I love classic British crime writing as well.

 

[Estevan]

I do read a lot of WWII books, but I decided to pick up a classic that I NEVER read. "The Catcher in the Rye". I am simply amazed that that book was even published back then. Wow, it's even saucy by today's standards. Awesome read, short, can be read in a matter of a day. Bad thing is you don't want to finish it that quickly. I highly recommend if you haven't read it, get it.

 

[Edward]

I do read a lot of WWII books, but I decided to pick up a classic that I NEVER read. "The Catcher in the Rye". I am simply amazed that that book was even published back then. Wow, it's even saucy by today's standards. Awesome read, short, can be read in a matter of a day. Bad thing is you don't want to finish it that quickly. I highly recommend if you haven't read it, get it.

Excellent book.... though IMO the ultimate American novel will always be The Great Gatsby.

 

[Feraud]

The Coen bros. made McCarthy's No Country for Old Men into a film so I bought the book to read before I see the film.

 

[Estevan]

Excellent book.... though IMO the ultimate American novel will always be The Great Gatsby.

I think that will be my next read.

 

[Salv]

Recently finished the Harry Starks trilogy Long Firm, He Kills Coppers, and Truecrime by British novelist Jake Arnott. A great gangster series in the spirit of Jame Ellroy but set in early to mid-1960s London. Great Mod suit descriptions!

An excellent series, and Arnott neatly manages to tie in almost every Brit youth cult from the early 60s to the late 80s in the shape of Simon Beardsley (one of my favourite characters in the books) and his friends and contacts. I also really like Geezer Gaz in Truecrime, and love his bewilderment at the changes in fashion every time he gets out of prison. And the digs at middle-class wannabe hardmen were spot-on.

If you liked those you might like Howard Baker's Sawdust Caesar, which was published a few months before The Long Firm, and which follows the adventures of a young Mod named Tommy in London in the 60s who enjoys a good ruck, and gets caught up with organised crime after his friend is killed by a gang of rockers. It's every bit as brutal and seedy as the Arnott trilogy, but was apparently based on the authors own experiences as a young Mod.

 

[Pink Dahlia]

Choke by Chuck Palahniuk

Holy crap that's some messed up book but I can't put it down!

 

[Edward]

I think that will be my next read.

I need to read it again myself, it's been a while. I discovered it when I sat english Literature at A level in school, and it was noe of the set texts. I think i read it eight times in those two years. Stunning book - and the best closingl ines of any novel ever.

I'm weeing myself at the thought that in under six hours I'll have the last Harry Potter in my hands, but I'm quite confident it won't have just as stunning a closing line as F Scott Fitzgerald managed.

 

[Smithy]

"The Catcher in the Rye"

Great, great book although it's ages since I read it, might have to pick it up again.

Another great American novel after Edward's suggested "The Great Gadsby" is "To the White Sea" by James Dickey. Disturbing but so beautifully written it hurts (then again Dickey always wrote more poetry than prose). Anyone who's been to the Arctic will appreciate his descriptions of "whiteness" and the purity of the landscape. Sorry to get flowery but one of my favourite novels and my vote for "Best American Novel".

 

[Joie DeVive]

My current reads are:

Inventing Beauty; A history of the innovations that have made us beautiful! by Teresa Riordan

and

1001 Insults, Put-Downs, & Comebacks.
This isn't a how-to manual. It is a collection of quotes from all kinds of people both modern and historic; and some of them have really sharp tongues!

 

[Diamondback]

1001 Insults, Put-Downs, & Comebacks.
This isn't a how-to manual. It is a collection of quotes from all kinds of people both modern and historic; and some of them have really sharp tongues!

Think I have an older edition of that one...

Just promise us you won't try to use any of 'em unless it's an emergency, mmmkay? lol

 

[Joie DeVive]

Just promise us you won't try to use any of 'em unless it's an emergency, mmmkay? lol

I think I can agree to that. But some of them are so good!

Most of them are specifiacally aimed at one person to another anyway. Like this:

"His argument is as thin as the.... soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had been starved to death"
Abraham Lincoln on Stephen Douglas

Ouch!

 

[Harp]

Excellent book.... though IMO the ultimate American novel will always be The Great Gatsby.

I'll nominate Herman Melville's epic, Moby Dick.

 

[Mojave Jack]

Hands up how many of you loungers appreciate fact, such as biographies instead of fiction!

Oh, yeah! AN enthusiastic hand up here. I just finished Too Close to the Sun, the biography of Denys Finch Hatton, and am thinking of starting West with the Night, the Beryl Markham bio. I'm also working my way through Pogue's War, an autobiography by Forrest Pogue, a WWII Army historian. Another great bio were one I read on T. E. Lawrence. A truly fascinating individual, and far more interesting than what made it into the movie (like the first time he went into battle, and shot his own camel in the back of the head, killing it and knocking him unconscious in the ensuing fall for the entirety of the fight). Also in the wigs is the bio of Gertrude Bell, Gertrude Bell: Queen of the Desert, Shaper of Nations. That looks excellent.

Oddly, one of the most interesting biographies I've read in a while was Here on Gilligan's Isle, the autobiography of Russell Johnson. After I learned he was a navigator of B-25s during WWII, and was shot down over Zamboanga in the Philippines, I asked him for a signed photo. I asked him to include his rank and unit from WWII, and hung it up in my office. People that never cared a whit about history before suddenly started sharing stories with me when they saw that the Professor had served! The reaction people had never ceased to amaze me.

 

[cooncatbob]

I just finished "Fall of the House of Habsburg" and I've started "Bismarck and the German Empire" and after that I'll be starting "The Long Fuse" (An Interpretation of the Origins of World War I
Interesting reading but a little dry. lol