Part of the SF Masterworks Collection. Despite being nearly 60 years old the narrative around the manipulation of the truth feels incredibly prescient. Wondering whether David Whitaker had read it before he came up with #DoctorWho story The Enemy of the World. #Books#Bookstodon#SciFi#PhilipKDick
Terry Jones’ Barbarians An Alternative Roman History
Terry Jones & Alan Ereira
Part of my ongoing effort to better educate myself around ancient history, a period I never really got to grips with. Thought initially the bite size sections were helpful in not getting overwhelmed by it all, but progressively felt they may actually have stopped me ever getting into a rhythm with it. Still pretty readable though and I think at least some of it will stick. #Books#Bookstodon#History
The Wonderful World of Ladybird Books for Grown-Ups
Jason Hazeley & Joel Morris
A great idea to finish off a great idea. There aren’t that many books that consistently make you laugh out loud, but Hazeley and Morris have written a lot of them. A book to keep going back and dipping into. Great fun.
Often described as the first mystery novel it’s the first work by Collins I’ve read. The structure works well and Sergeant Cuff is an excellent creation albeit not one who actually takes up huge amounts of the story. The periods he does take centre stage feel remarkably modern, which gives a good idea of the influence the story had on what came later. A few dated aspects as you might expect, but a good read.
A story of how giving up your morals may bring you success, but not happiness. Steinbeck’s final novel and one that showcases his ability to preach his view of the world while building a tight tense story around characters who feel incredibly real. Enjoyed it if that is the right word.
The fourth in Pryce’s Louie Knight series. Set at Christmas this is the darkest of the first four novels while still being very funny in places. There’s an awful lot of threads thrown at this one and I’m not sure they all stick quite as well as earlier entries, but it’s still very enjoyable and the noir Aberystwyth, Louie and his assistant Calamity are all terrific creations.
Despite seeing various different TV and film adaptations I’d never read the novel. As good as some of those are the novel outflanks them all. I can see why it’s regarded as one of the great sci-fi novels. Where Wyndham is so good is in creating a very real sense of a global disaster and building that world, but at the same time keeping it personal and making you care about the individuals. 5⭐️
Enjoyable comedy crime caper set around a Sci-Fi convention full of little in-jokes. It’s fairly light and very easy to read. Whizzed through it in a couple of days.
First Perry Mason novel I’ve read after many years of seeing the TV adaptations. Races along perfectly well with enough mystery involved to keep you wanting to turn the page. I’ll happily pick out some more in the future.
Wodehouse is by some distance my favourite author. The world he created is full of pure joy and I never bore of escaping into it. He’s one of the few authors who I can re-read over and over again. The Mating Season exhibits him at his absolute best with so many lines and turns of phrase that have you smiling ear to ear or chuckling. He was the master.
One of those books that always appears on must-read lists that has nonetheless sat unread on my pile of books for many a year. I regret now not getting round to it earlier. I found the storytelling to be incredibly vivid and though I’m not a great one for re-reading things I can imagine myself coming back to it at some point.
Not my first read of it, but my first for a very long time. Has its strengths as it adds more depth to the Holmes character and the mystery works well enough. On the negative side the Watson-Mary ‘romance’ is pretty weak and obviously there are elements that haven’t aged so well. Overall it’s enjoyable enough without being Holmes at its absolute best.
The Silk Roads: A New History of the World
Peter Frankopan
Really effective. Manages to add context and a new perspective to the changing power dynamics of world history in a really entertaining way. I took a lot from it.
A find in a charity shop that I picked up largely as I had a vague memory of reading bits of it for my A-Level studies. It remains pretty readable and it’s a nice not too involved overview of the Stuart dynasty.
Chocolate and Cuckoo Clocks
The Essential Alan Coren
I was a bit young at the time for Coren’s writing and so really knew him as the very funny man from Radio 4’s The News Quiz or Call My Bluff with Sandy Toksvig at the time. This collection shows why he was considered to be one of Britain’s great comic writers. Some of his early stuff has language that wouldn’t be used today, but it mostly stands up very well.
A really interesting read. It’s I think very successful in achieving what it is trying to do and the characters are incredibly vivid. By the end I was starting to find it quite tiring spending that much time with so many unlikable characters, but it does sort of feel like that was always supposed to be the point to some degree. I’d say I’m glad I’ve read it and I’m also glad it’s ended.
For the most part I really enjoyed this. For an 18th century novel it feels quite modern and it’s interesting how it references the great influence Laurence Sterne had on it. There’s enough amusement in the way the apparently simple story of one man telling another about his past love keeps getting interrupted by other tales to make it enjoyable albeit I was a little weary of the style by the end.
The Frood: The Authorised and Very Official History of Douglas Adams & The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Jem Roberts
Finished coincidentally on what would have been the great writers 71st birthday. I’ve read Jem’s other comedy biographies of I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue, Blackadder, Fry & Laurie and The Beatles and as a comedy geek enjoyed them all.
The influence on Orwell’s 1984 is obvious and there are lots of great ideas and passages within the story. That said while I appreciated it I can’t say I ever felt gripped by it or as engaged with the characters as in 84 or other similar works.
Penguin Plays: Four English Comedies
Volpone by Jonson
The Way of the World by Congreve
She Stoops to Conquer by Goldsmith
The School for Scandal by Sheridan
A nice little collection as part of the Penguin series. Definitely found the two later plays came across better on the page, but there was something to enjoy in them all.
Behind on this list due to struggling to get logged-in for a while so will update to where I have got to.
I often struggle to get as engaged in a collection of short stories as I do in a novel, but there is unsurprisingly some very good stuff in this collection from Greene.
I enjoy Ustinov’s prose and there is some good satirical stuff in there. It’s not laugh out loud funny (but then I find novels rarely are), but it raises a smile often enough. The plotting loses its way at times, but enjoyable enough.
Can’t imagine there will ever be a more definitive book covering the latter stages of the Blair and Brown governments. It’s a weighty tome, but extremely readable.
Really wasn’t sure whether I would particularly enjoy it before I started, but I really loved it. I’ve never actually seen any of the adaptations in full just little snippets that have entered into popular culture so the story was mostly all new to me. A real unexpected delight.
Bleak, dark and deliberately unpleasant satire of the music industry. The bleakness and unpleasantness of practically every character and the extreme violence got a bit much at times and it’s very influenced by American Psycho, but I sped through it and it’s successful at what it is trying to do.
I’m weirdly fascinated by Suez and so have read many books on the subject. This was interesting as it’s the first I’ve read written from the American viewpoint of the crisis.
Bringing me back up-to-date with my most recent finished read. Enjoyed it in the most part although the ever escalating plot had lost me a little by the end.
This one has sat on my shelf for a number of years since I decided it would be a good idea to buy a load of Booker Prize winners. It’s quite a gentle read and pretty short, but I can’t say it really grabbed me. There’s no real plot to speak of, which I don’t mind, but I also wasn’t quite engaged enough in the characters to make up for that.
Debut novel by the national treasure that is Bob Mortimer. The plot is tidy and hangs together pretty well. There are the expected moments of slightly surreal daftness, but with it being tricky to make a novel downright hilarious the element of Mortimer’s work that shines through most is the general sweetness. It’s no game changer, but it’s an enjoyable read with some nice characters.
I’m a total scientific idiot, but occasionally I try and change that with a book. What then happens is there will be a thing early on that makes sense to me and makes me think maybe I’ve cracked it before then getting lost in a world of equations and theories I don’t get and by the end I’ve forgotten that one thing I learned. This was no different, but that is no reflection on the quality of the book.
Another book that does a fabulous job of explaining science. I took Thermodynamics in college almost 50 years ago with all the math and equations. Even though the professor was terrific, this book gives context to where the science of the study of energy transfer came from. It also gives historical context.
Enjoyed it in the main and there is some smart and witty story in there. Suffers reading it now from the fact the world it is satirising doesn’t really exist any more.
Enjoyed the different style and format of it. At the same time not sure I was ever fully engaged. More than interesting enough for me to be glad I read it though.
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams
It’s some years since I last read this and while I remembered it fondly I think it’s even better than I was expecting. A clever, interesting story with all the usual wit of Adams and genuinely laugh out loud funny, which I don’t say often about novels. It’s very good.
A Short History of English Literature by Sir Ifor Evans
Very readable edition of a Pelican book reprinted on numerous occasions, this one in 1967. Occasionally drifts into a sort of snobbishness that would be quite irritating in a modern book, but oddly just feels quite charming given the time and distance from it’s publication.
@Laking86@bookstodon I, for one, would welcome a return of such educated snobbishness in books on serious subjects. I just tried to listen to a podcast of three PhDs discussing a newly published book and the discussion was at the intelligence and vocabulary level of a lunch-room table of not particularly bright middle school students. This is a trend I am all to frequently seeing in the text of new books as well.
@WRNBookReview@Laking86@bookstodon
I'm afraid I have questions about this observation. Which subjects are serious enough to warrant elevated language? How elevated a vocabulary are you talking? I tend to think the more important the topic, the more accessible the language ought to be. A serious conversation at a middle-school 'level' could be useful for a wide variety of audiences....
@mutinyc@Laking86@bookstodon Higher than "That was really some good shit!" (Yes, this is a direct quote from the interviewer.)
I concede the importance of clarity and straight-forwardness in language to make material accessible to a broad audience, but such vernacular denegrates the subject (unless perhaps the subject is actually manure), the presentation, and the public image of what a university professor is, should be, or at least once was.
@WRNBookReview@Laking86@bookstodon
What was the subject? I have some sympathy for your distaste, coming from an aspirationally working/middle class family. However, academia much maligned me for roughly the sort of working class vernacular you're pointing out. For, perhaps, even less. There is a professional class snobbishness that equates rough speak with a lack of intelligence and I caution you that such conflation may be unwise. Intelligence can move even a rough tongue.
@mutinyc@Laking86@bookstodon We're in the same boat. My father only completed 9th grade and my mother 10th; his parents were immigrants and hers were migrant laborers. All were distinctly blue / no collar through and through. They taught me read and write at an early age, bought me a dictionary and a set of encyclopedias on installment payments, and insisted that I should always speak properly so I would have a better chance in life than they did.
My Dad had all the Sharpe books when I was a kid so I would occasionally read bits of them and then watched the TV series. This is the first time I’ve read one since and they remain very readable engaging historical adventure stories. Interesting reading this prequel and seeing how much Sean Bean’s performance clearly influenced Cornwell’s later novels in the series.
This has sat on my shelves unread for some time despite being much acclaimed. I have to say it wasn’t really for me. It did manage to pull me into the story midway through, but by the end I felt it collapsed a little under the sheer weight of criminality in the plot. Unlikely that I will be reaching out to read the rest in the series.
The Lives of the Kings and Queens of England ed Antonia Fraser
Must have been a charity shop purchase some time ago as I have no real recollection of buying it. Very readable little collection of short summaries of each monarch’s reign.
Been jumping in and out of this for the last few weeks and it really is a joy. So clever and funny and something I was sad to finish, but will consistently come back to.
Enjoyed this more as it progressed. Genuinely funny at times and the story of a man accidentally becoming a guru is very engaging and cleverly realised. The elements of the story set around an attempted arranged marriage I enjoyed less and I thought slowed it down a little. Overall a good read despite that.
What was at the time a travelogue now reads as a socio-historical record of inter-war industrial England. Sections of it dragged as often visits to a new town or city meant a trip around another factory, but mostly Priestley is an engaging tourist. The section on Liverpool has not aged well at all.
To be honest I struggled to really get into this. Not totally surprising as I’m often like that with short stories, which this is essentially a collection of albeit with a connecting narrator. Found the final couple more engaging as it felt like there was a little more character development there.
With the world in the state it is in I’ve never been more grateful to escape into the world of my favourite writer. It’s a lovely outing for his most famous creations with plenty that makes me laugh out loud and more than has me smiling contentedly. I’d recommend Wodehouse to anybody and regularly do. There is nothing better.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Hadn’t read this since I was a teenager although I did very recently rewatch the BBC series and it’s not too long since I last listened to the radio series as well. It remains a very funny, well plotted bit of Sci-fi comedy. Adams was the best at what he did.
I finally read the series last year. The first one was really fun and original and I understand why people have liked it so much for so long. I also understand why no one ever talks about the other books.
A short novel written as a play in story form. It’s only 94 pages long meaning it’s a pretty easy read (I started it this afternoon and read it in 2 sittings). There are elements of it that work really well and others that don’t. The characters use language that nobody would ever really use and at first I struggled to connect because of that, but it grew on me. Not my favourite of Steinbeck’s work.
The Girl From U.N.C.L.E: The Birds of a Feather Affair by Michael Avallone
Picked this up when I bought some of The Man From Uncle tie-in novels, which are mostly fun nonsense. This one is also nonsense, but weirdly manages to objectify all the women more than the male led novels and there’s also a big chunk of casual racism. So not amazing.
Penguin Classics Marvel Collection: The Amazing Spider-Man by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko
As somebody who enjoys comic book stories, but is by no means an expert and hasn’t ever been a collector this was spot on for me. A really nice collection of the earliest stories with a nice summary of any skipped over and it all looks beautiful.
The McCartney Legacy Volume 1: 1969-73 by Allan Kozinn & Adrian Sinclair
Absolutely loved this. I’m a huge McCartney fan and not only did I enjoy reading about his early post-Beatles career in minute detail, but it was also great to revisit those early solo and Wings records with the added context the book offers. Heartily recommend to any other fans and I look forward to future volumes.
A novel combining war, cricket and a battle for love. Enjoyed this. It’s jolly in places and then hits you with a bleaker reality. Helps to love cricket as much as I do I would imagine given its importance in the story.
@Laking86@bookstodon funny enough, I never warmen up to HG but Dirk Gently is one of my favorites. And "the long dark teatime of the soul" is so entertaining yet crazy, it does not quite reach the Detective Agency in my oppinion
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