Books - What are you reading?
Discussion
This is London by Ben Judah. Fascinating and depressing in equal measure, for those of us who don't do London everyday, but are very frequent visitors for work and pleasure, it's a disturbing insight into a sub-strata of society that few will be familiar with.
2 sittings, 2/3 complete.
2 sittings, 2/3 complete.
As expected - lots of noir including dames / broads / hoods / saps and brass knuckles and of course 45's. Loose dresses spilling open and the hero gets a good kicking several times over but makes it through to the end.
Until now I've never read a Spillane book and it was finished over Christmas. Not really my first choice but must be a 'right of passage' for every reader. I won't take anything away from it as I quite enjoyed the pace and style.
By choice I would lean to the Elmore Leonard / Richard Stark 'Parker' book genre.
Just don't. It was an Xmas stocking filler and reads like a typical Guardian newspaper story with the names of the Five inserted for credibility. Total cr@p.
Will start it later today. I assume everybody knows the story - seen various film versions already but never read the book and really looking forward to it.
Incidentally the Spillane and Highsmith books were a bargain £5 BOGOF.
Edited by BryanC on Thursday 29th December 16:22
My journey through the gulags (Solzhenitsyn) has been temporarily put on hold while I read "The Trial of Henry Kissinger" by Christopher Hitchens.
Hitchens manages to provide pretty much the full paper and witness trail for proving Kissinger's complicity in exploits in Bangladesh, Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos), Chile and Cyprus.
Hitchens manages to provide pretty much the full paper and witness trail for proving Kissinger's complicity in exploits in Bangladesh, Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos), Chile and Cyprus.
This Thing of Darkness by Harry Thompson.
I was given this by a friend and for some unknown reason I wasn't expecting much from it.
I have been very pleasantly suprised. It follows the friendship between a very young Captain
of HMS Beagle and Charles Darwin and the twin obsessions that tore the friendship apart.
Unfortunately, this was to be Thompsons one and only novel, succumbing to cancer, aged 45 in 2005.
I was given this by a friend and for some unknown reason I wasn't expecting much from it.
I have been very pleasantly suprised. It follows the friendship between a very young Captain
of HMS Beagle and Charles Darwin and the twin obsessions that tore the friendship apart.
Unfortunately, this was to be Thompsons one and only novel, succumbing to cancer, aged 45 in 2005.
This Thing of Darkness by Harry Thompson.
I was given this by a friend and for some unknown reason I wasn't expecting much from it.
I have been very pleasantly suprised. It follows the friendship between a very young Captain
of HMS Beagle and Charles Darwin and the twin obsessions that tore the friendship apart.
Unfortunately, this was to be Thompsons one and only novel, succumbing to cancer, aged 45 in 2005.
I was given this by a friend and for some unknown reason I wasn't expecting much from it.
I have been very pleasantly suprised. It follows the friendship between a very young Captain
of HMS Beagle and Charles Darwin and the twin obsessions that tore the friendship apart.
Unfortunately, this was to be Thompsons one and only novel, succumbing to cancer, aged 45 in 2005.
BryanC said:
Just don't. It was an Xmas stocking filler and reads like a typical Guardian newspaper story with the names of the Five inserted for credibility. Total cr@p.
200Plus Club said:
For whom the bell tolls by Mr Hemmingway
:-)
Wife got it me for Christmas as a stocking filler!
Not Hemingway's (one M) best book , but after The Old Man and The Sea, his most famous . Curiously he is now almost forgotten , despite being an utterly peerless author . Nobody can write such spare prose so elegantly and to such effect. :-)
Wife got it me for Christmas as a stocking filler!
If you enjoy it do try A Moveable Feast - about his days in Paris as a young man, but written from the perspective of an older man. I think it 's his best work and the older I get the more moving it is- I re-read it every few years
coppice said:
200Plus Club said:
For whom the bell tolls by Mr Hemmingway
:-)
Wife got it me for Christmas as a stocking filler!
Not Hemingway's (one M) best book , but after The Old Man and The Sea, his most famous . Curiously he is now almost forgotten , despite being an utterly peerless author . Nobody can write such spare prose so elegantly and to such effect. :-)
Wife got it me for Christmas as a stocking filler!
If you enjoy it do try A Moveable Feast - about his days in Paris as a young man, but written from the perspective of an older man. I think it 's his best work and the older I get the more moving it is- I re-read it every few years
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