The "I am currently reading" thread

[alchresearch]

14 hours ago, metalman said:

Terry Pratchett - Snuff. Not a great start, I thought this one was overlong and dragged badly in the middle. Maybe it's just me and I've gone off him.

I think its because of his illness, a few of his later novels lost cohesion., he wrote via dictating to an assistant.  I found "Raising Steam" absolutely terrible, as did many other fans.

 

 

[feargal]

Had a walk along Beeley Wood today, and someone has wrapped up and left half a dozen Terry Pratchett books to help yourself to, all the way up the path to Oughtibridge!  I picked up the only non Pratchett, William Kotzwinkle "the bear went over the mountain". 

[metalman]

6 hours ago, feargal said:

Had a walk along Beeley Wood today, and someone has wrapped up and left half a dozen Terry Pratchett books to help yourself to, all the way up the path to Oughtibridge!  I picked up the only non Pratchett, William Kotzwinkle "the bear went over the mountain". 

Have you ever read Doctor Rat by William Kotzwinkle?

[feargal]

Never even heard of him before today, so I'm interested to start it! 

[Delbow]

I've just read King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild, non-fiction, history. A genuinely eye opening account of Leopold II of Belgium's private colony in Congo, the enslavement and mass murder of Congolese to collect rubber and ivory, the consequent deaths of between 8 and 10 million Congolese, and Leopold's concerted effort to erase what he'd done from the historical record.

[taxman]

Still reading War and Peace. It's a great book but the writing is tiny, which means I struggle to read it at night in bed which is where most of my reading is usually done. Got a week off work soon so will be able to finish it during the day.

[Delbow]

52 minutes ago, taxman said:

Still reading War and Peace. It's a great book but the writing is tiny, which means I struggle to read it at night in bed which is where most of my reading is usually done. Got a week off work soon so will be able to finish it during the day.

Is it like War and Peace? 

[metalman]

February's round up. Still nothing else to do so I've got through a book every couple of days again, mainly the usual mixture of crime and SF except for the second one.

 

Dell Shannon - Knave of hearts. Lt. Luis Mendoza tracks down a serial killer in this early instalment of the series from 1962. Good.

Fred Kitchen - Brother to the ox. The autobiography of a farm worker in the South Yorkshire coalfield in the early part of the last century. Excellent.

Robert B. Parker - Rough weather. Spenser comes up against an old enemy when a society heiress is kidnapped from her wedding. The usual fast-moving, streetwise mixture.

Sylvain Neuvel - Sleeping giants

Sylvain Neuvel - Waking gods

Sylvain Neuvel - Only human. In this SF trilogy, parts of a giant alien robot that have been buried for thousands of years are dug up and assembled, but this attracts the attention of the device's originators. Told in the form of interviews, reports, journals etc. which sometimes made it seem too much like a film script, but I found the whole thing reasonably entertaining. Volumes 1 and 2 were better than the last one however.

Hillary Waugh - Last seen wearing. Another top class police procedural as police chief Fred Ford hunts the killer of a female college student.

Philip Macdonald - The link. Col. Anthony Gethryn investigates the shooting of Sir Charles Grenville, where the main suspects are his wife and the vet who's in love with her. OK.

John Rhode - Mystery at Greycombe Farm. When Farmer Jim's cider store is destroyed by fire, a body is found inside. Dr. Priestley investigates who it was and how he got there. Very good, though as usual you wonder if it was worth the murderer's effort to go to all that trouble.

A. A. Fair - Bachelors get lonely. Private eyes Donald Lam and Bertha Cool investigate murder at a motel. Fair was a pen-name of Erle Stanley Gardner, creator of Perry Mason, and the Lam/Cool books share the same pacy, convoluted plots. Excellent.

Georges Simenon - Account unsettled. Penniless Polish student Elie resents the arrival of rich Rumanian Michel, especially after he seduces the landlady's daughter, and decides he must be punished. Not a Maigret book, but a typical Simenon, full of atmosphere and sense of place.

Annie Haynes - The crime at Tattenham Corner. Racehorse owner Sir John Burslem is shot after going to see his prize horse the day before it runs in the Derby. Inspector Stoddart is on the case. Good, and reprinted a couple of years ago by Dean Street Press, so not completely impossible to get hold of.

Roy Vickers - The whispering death. London is stricken by a series of kidnappings carried out by master criminal The Whisperer. A fast moving thriller from the early 1930s rather than an actual detective story.

 

Now reading: Magnus Mills - All quiet on the Orient Express. A man stays on at a campsite after the end of the tourist season. Mills, like Dan Rhodes, writes about completely unexciting situations and characters in a slightly surreal way, so although nothing really happens, the result is strangely gripping.

[Bargepole23]

19 hours ago, metalman said:

February's round up. Still nothing else to do so I've got through a book every couple of days again, mainly the usual mixture of crime and SF except for the second one.

 

Dell Shannon - Knave of hearts. Lt. Luis Mendoza tracks down a serial killer in this early instalment of the series from 1962. Good.

Fred Kitchen - Brother to the ox. The autobiography of a farm worker in the South Yorkshire coalfield in the early part of the last century. Excellent.

Robert B. Parker - Rough weather. Spenser comes up against an old enemy when a society heiress is kidnapped from her wedding. The usual fast-moving, streetwise mixture.

Sylvain Neuvel - Sleeping giants

Sylvain Neuvel - Waking gods

Sylvain Neuvel - Only human. In this SF trilogy, parts of a giant alien robot that have been buried for thousands of years are dug up and assembled, but this attracts the attention of the device's originators. Told in the form of interviews, reports, journals etc. which sometimes made it seem too much like a film script, but I found the whole thing reasonably entertaining. Volumes 1 and 2 were better than the last one however.

Hillary Waugh - Last seen wearing. Another top class police procedural as police chief Fred Ford hunts the killer of a female college student.

Philip Macdonald - The link. Col. Anthony Gethryn investigates the shooting of Sir Charles Grenville, where the main suspects are his wife and the vet who's in love with her. OK.

John Rhode - Mystery at Greycombe Farm. When Farmer Jim's cider store is destroyed by fire, a body is found inside. Dr. Priestley investigates who it was and how he got there. Very good, though as usual you wonder if it was worth the murderer's effort to go to all that trouble.

A. A. Fair - Bachelors get lonely. Private eyes Donald Lam and Bertha Cool investigate murder at a motel. Fair was a pen-name of Erle Stanley Gardner, creator of Perry Mason, and the Lam/Cool books share the same pacy, convoluted plots. Excellent.

Georges Simenon - Account unsettled. Penniless Polish student Elie resents the arrival of rich Rumanian Michel, especially after he seduces the landlady's daughter, and decides he must be punished. Not a Maigret book, but a typical Simenon, full of atmosphere and sense of place.

Annie Haynes - The crime at Tattenham Corner. Racehorse owner Sir John Burslem is shot after going to see his prize horse the day before it runs in the Derby. Inspector Stoddart is on the case. Good, and reprinted a couple of years ago by Dean Street Press, so not completely impossible to get hold of.

Roy Vickers - The whispering death. London is stricken by a series of kidnappings carried out by master criminal The Whisperer. A fast moving thriller from the early 1930s rather than an actual detective story.

 

Now reading: Magnus Mills - All quiet on the Orient Express. A man stays on at a campsite after the end of the tourist season. Mills, like Dan Rhodes, writes about completely unexciting situations and characters in a slightly surreal way, so although nothing really happens, the result is strangely gripping.

I quite enjoyed the Sylvain Neuvel trilogy. Sci fi isn't my usual thing but this one caught my eye.

 

Currently reading The Fearful Void, Geoffrey Moorhouse on a transit of the Sahara west to east in the early Seventies. So far so good, I like Moorhouse as a travel writer.

 

Just finished Sword Point by Harold Coyle, about a modern war between USSR and USA, in Iran. First in a series of four related books, and was an entertaining if unchallenging read.

 

Just ordered Brother to the Ox on the strength of your recommendation from AbeBooks.

Edited March 1, 2021 by Bargepole23

[wearysmith]

On 28/01/2021 at 12:54, alchresearch said:

I think its because of his illness, a few of his later novels lost cohesion., he wrote via dictating to an assistant.  I found "Raising Steam" absolutely terrible, as did many other fans.

 

 

Yeah, 'Raising Steam' was a good idea but it wasn't even a Pratchett book I reckon. If the poor chap had remained compos- mentis it would never even seen light if day. Read it once, will never again. 

That said, these characters are far too good to never be used again. There's some really good fan-fiction out there. His family should have a rethink about letting real writers, people who Pratchett liked and admired, have a go with the franchise.