📚 I am currently reading

Didn’t know you could read tbf

:lou_wink_2:

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On a topless beach on a sun lounger with a Pins Class?

Or $0.50 A pint beers?

Yes guilty.

I prefer Lee Child but already read thus years release.

I am Jack Teacher (the real one not the Tom Cruise impost0rr midget)

As mentioned in another thread, just finished the first two Hannibal Lecter books ‘Red Dragon’ & ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ in quick succession.

Both excellent, easy to read, tension builders.

If you’ve seen the movies then you will definitley enjoy them, the plots are basically the same but with all the extra background information you would expect. in Red Dragon particularly there are 3-4 chapters purely on the title character’s childhood and upbrining that molded him into the beast in the book.

What I like most about the books is that they are reffered to as the Hannibal Lecter books, despite the fact that in the first two books he is barely in them which builds you up to the 3rd book where he is the main protagonist. It’s clever writing by Thomas Harris and works well.

Lecter is an anti-hero no doubt about it.

Finished The Good Immigrant the other day. It’s lots of short stories from BAME writers/actors/artist. What it is like to be an immigrant or the child of one. Good read and thought provoking.

Been meaning to pick that up. Lots of people I like have contributed.

That’s one that came out through Unbound isn’t it? I quite like their business model; it seems to be producing some very interesting writing. I recently read The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth which, as a novel written in an approximation of Old English, probably wouldn’t have been picked up by publishers but turned out to be a fantastic read. Very pertinent about nationalism and cultural imperialism.

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After the recent film adaptation of IT I decided to read the book again, depsite this film being much better than the mini-series in the 90s (??) it still lacks a lot from the book.

Definitely worth reading if you don’t want to go to sleep at night.

As an aside the best adpatation of Stephen King books into films, for me, is The Green Mile and Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption (The Stand doesn’t count as that was a TV mini-series). All the rest you need the King imagination part to make the book work, something that always lacks in the films.

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Ew i hate Green Mile. There is a lot I would take before that! Running Man, Stand by me, Carrie

Halfway through The Bottom Corner: A Season with the Dreamers of Non-League Football by Nige Tassell

A really good insight into non-league football and some of the characters that inhabit the nether regions of the football pyramid

Crash by JG Ballard. I saw the film many years ago and wondered how true it was to the book. If anything the book is even more pervy. If you like your sex off the scale kinky, this is for you!

Just finished Antony Beevor’s Stalingrad. It’s a deeply affecting read, or listen as it was in my case. It’s a brilliant study of arguably the most important battle in world history, a titanic struggle between two totalitarian states. As a reader, the only side I could pick was that of the common soldier, sent into this crucible by armchair megalomaniacs that never knew the hardships they were creating or perpetuating, Hitler being especially prone to his own press. Stalin doesn’t come out of this much better as a human being, even though the Soviet Union was the nation that managed to achieve the imperial expansion it sought pre-war, including a large part of Germany.

Along with Verdun, Stalingrad is up there for one of the least-wanted representations of hell on Earth. Human beings so malnourished that when many eventually got food, it killed them, because the body’s ability to process fats had atrophied. A Wehrmacht sent into territory they were told was full of sub-humans, with an order to kill all partisans, and a very loose definition of what a partisan actually was.

The SS, operating behind the front lines, applying Nazi “policy” to any “untermencshen” unfortunate to come their way. POW camps that were just barbed wire enclosures, with no shelter, where soldiers were simply left to die. Summary executions and collective punishment meted out by the Nazis, returned in spades by the Soviets.

Insane decisions from the totalitarian leaders. Stalin disappeared from view in the first three weeks of Barbarossa, simply because he couldn’t believe he was wrong (he’d been warned for months beforehand and attributed it all to a Churchillian plot to bring the Russians into the war), and probably had cause to dwell on the 30K experienced Red Army officers he’d purged in the preceding decade. The last comment I’ll make on the contest between the two leaders, and it’s not one made by the book, but Stalin, whatever else he was, was a man learning harsh lessons from huge mistakes. Hitler was someone convinced that previous success made future success inevitable.

The human cost was incredible. Barbarossa took at least 26m lives. Stalingrad was the furthest the Nazis ever got, and from Beevor’s account, seems to be an illustration of just how depraved and immoral we humans can be when motivated, properly or otherwise.

Arguably humanity’s darkest moment.

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I ‘enjoyed’ this too.

If this sort of thing had been on the syllabus I may have enjoyed History at school.

Still, it’s no Spinning Jenny.

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Just finished reading the Helliconia trilogy (Brian Aldiss), the first 2 were very good I feel he ran out of ideas for the 3rd part.

Still interesting scientific ideas and good social commentary.

Especially liked the idea of necrogenes!

I also learnt some new big words which I am unlikely to remember or use in RL

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The cricket scores and cant find any

Ah been a way from here.

Artemis was OK not as good as The Martian and almost as if it was written as a new movie script.

A meh ok for beach/plane 6/10.

Jack Reachers’ last book was imho one of the best yet. A dramatically small cut down scale and a very informative read on the massive Opiate crisis in US society and it’s impact on relatively normal people. Tom Cruise will ruin it but best read on a long time.

For my upcoming 6 hour no frills B737 flight I had no choice went straight to Dan Brown & Origins. 6 hours in 29" seat pitch and driving at other end I need brain numbing. Made sure it was bearable. So far not as bad as his sequels. Still hate how I get Tom Hanks voice in my head with it though.

Oh and have you never tried cricinfo @philippinesaint ?

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I purchased Ready Player One a couple of years ago, kept meaning to read it. It’s is now queued up on my Kindle app


My son appeared one day with this book in his hands. It had been given to him by a friend on his bus to school. They’d passed it around between themselves like a piece of illicit contraband. Yes, just like his father, my son is a bit of a geek.

Anyway, I decided to read it and actually enjoyed it quite a bit although I wondered to what extent the kids who’d read it understood any of the references. It’s a piece of nostalgic, espcapist nonsense, but fun nonetheless.

My son is now badgering me to take him to see the film.

My son wants to see the film as well but I know if I see the film I won’t read the book.

Talking of nostalgia and kids not getting the reference (a bit OT I know) but have you seen Wreck It Ralph?

Make him read the book. It really is an easy read.

Yes, I saw Wreck it Ralph, but that was a colourful film which the kids could engage with.

See the film at Imax and in 3D while you can. Visually astonishing.

Today, I bought The City and the City by China MiĂ©ville. I saw that it’s been adapted for the Beeb but wanted to read it first.

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