Be Excellent To Each Other

Malc started this thread off last year and I really enjoyed it. Not just to keep up with my own reading, but it was interesting to see what others were reading too and to get recommendations.

I hope people will join in again.

1) Linwood Barclay - Fear the worst

I don't know what I was expecting, but I really enjoyed this. I didn't see some of the plot coming either which was nice. Would recommend.

okay i'll try to do this one this year.

1. James Lovegrove - Sherlock Holmes and the Beast of the Stapletons.

Fun times from the author sporting the closest to Conan Doyle's literary style I've found thus far. Not as good as last year's .. Christmas Demon, but good none the less.

1) Alan Moore, Brian Bolland - Batman The killing Joke, The deluxe edition.

My secret santa book. Contains an evil Joker, a Theme park, an origin story, Batman and a joke.

I enjoyed this as I have not read it before, it also has a pre & post sections explain why it was written.

Gonna try keeping this going this year, rather than flaking out after 3 books.

1.) The House Share - Kate Helm

A 3 for £5 special. Immi's new flatshare seems too good to be true! Affordable rent, a perfect location and a chilled out community vibe! But is there something more sinister lurking behind the yoga sessions and free kimchi? Yes, of course there is!

I never got into this last year. But this time...

1) The Dutch House - Ann Patchett.

If I have to pick one, I go for Bel Canto as my favourite book (I even quite like the film as a result), but had read nothing else by her. I'll fix that this year, starting with this lovely story of how a family is shaped, fractures and hangs together, hung on the hook of a big house. She's a great writer, occasional paragraphs stopping me in my tracks to reflect on how much meaning she has packed in.

That does sound interesting, I'll look out for that.

2) Traitors of Rome (Eagles of the Empire 18) - Simon Scarrow. Adventures of Roman soldiers Macro and Cato. I used to read all of these, but they got a bit samey. Reckon I've missed 8 or so in the series. Still as decent a page-turner as ever, though I finished it thinking "yep, that all fits". Decent, if cardboard cut-out, characters, but nothing special.

1) The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

A short one to kick off the year. A brilliantly written ghost story, with well-drawn characters and an arch narrator.

Its currency is atmosphere rather than shocks and scares, and it's all the more satisfying for it.

I believe it was adapted into a Netflix series recently, though it sounds like it deviates quite markedly from the book.

Would highly recommend (the book, because we're in the book thread)

3) Night Frost - RD Wingfield. I love these. Frost is such a well-drawn character - you could make equally good cases for him as kind-hearted and hard working, if slapdash, or lazy, lucky and miserable, or some other combination of characteristics. There are some decent jokes. They're set 40 or so years ago: although that's in my living memory, the stuff that's a product of when it was written (this one has them walking in on a brand new "enormous" 28 inch TV) are charming rather than clunking - I suppose because technology is just described as a background, not fetishised. I don't know if I ever really watched the TV version, but have certainly seen enough to have David Jason in my head when I read. He fits perfectly - either brilliant casting, or just inescapable given I saw (some of) the TV version first. There are only 10 books, this is the third; I'm bound to read them all, but in no rush, especially as only the first 6 were written by Wingfield.

1) Alan Moore, Brian Bolland - Batman The killing Joke, The deluxe edition.
2) Stella Rimmington - Riptide

This is the sixth book in the series. A very well written spy book. More spooks than Bond. With a very strong female lead.

4) Chessmen of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs. Old-fashioned 'Stories for Boys', where men are men and women are stolen then chased. For all that, there's great invention in the ideas, and there's enough action to keep the pages turning. Green men, Red men; but who is the toughest? There's only one way to find out. And they will fight. Over and over.
This is the fifth of the John Carter books (and already Carter himself barely features), and that might be enough for me, given they're pretty similar. Being so old, they're available for free via Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1153.

And for Rice Burroughs in general: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/48

2. Linwood Barclay - Too close to home

I went straight in for another one and was not disappointed. There was one plot point that I figured out quite early on, but the rest kept me guessing, so I again enjoyed it.

To the point that I have ordered further books by this author that should be here on Saturday.

I better get something else read quickly!

1) Doctor Sleep - Stevie King

It's the sequel to The Shining. It's not as good as The Shining, but that's hardly damning, not a lot is. It was nice to go back into that world, and entertaining enough. Now I can watch the movie!

That's good to hear. I'd started to shy away from his writing as he went more towards fantasy, but I do feel he's learning back towards the horror genre in recent years. I'll give this one a look - thanks.

The series of books starting with Mr Mercedes are excellent. Detective novels with some classic King style thrown over the top

Ooh, they do look interesting. I really dropped out of the loop on his work, but these look good.

I'm keeping an eye out on eBay.

2. Anne Rice - The Vampire Armand.

Very gay. 8/10.

2.) Rebecca -Daphne de Maurier

The unnamed heroine falls in love with and marries the brooding Mr de Winter and returns to the imposing ancestral home of Manderley, where she must infiltrate a criminal gang within the high-octane underground world of street racing!

This is part of my attempt to read more of the "classics". I really enjoyed it. The narattor is both sympathetic and annoyingly limp at times, Mrs Danvers is suitably threatening and the whole thing had a nice aura of menance and suspense. 12 thumbs up!

3.) The Black Cloud - Fred Hoyle

Spooky space shenanigans are afoot! Luckily there are some pipe-smoking Englishmen to fix it, whilst all those foriegns are ineffectual. A Sci-Fi classic, but reads as SOOO old fashioned now.

5) Three Sisters, Three Queens - Philippa Gregory. Told from the viewpoint of Margaret, sister to Henry VIII and Mary, and sister-in-law of Katherine of Aragon. Margaret, Mary and Katherine are the 'three sisters' of the title, but Margaret is less known, hence the story. Really evocatively recreates the sense of growing up destined for power and yet only ever having a tenuous grasp on it - gained by marriage, diminished by children dying, or being born female. At times it can slip into a long line of children being born and then dying, and Margaret's jealousy of the others' position is only occasionally replaced by any empathy, but that changes as times passes and the characters grow old. Margaret was the English Queen of Scotland, a parlous position in itself, and looming over it all is England, Henry and the ructions in the English court, which is portrayed as just the jaunt we know of it. Boleyn appears at the end as the wildcard. A longish book but a good one.

I'm re-reading E F Schumacher's seminal A Guide For The Perplexed, which I first read in my late 20s. It's short, very elegantly written in that it is totally comprehensible, though very studied in its knowledge and sources. I'l review it properly when I've finished it, I'm just flagging it now, as I think it's one of those books that properly helps you stabilise, particularly in times where so much of what we take for granted is being constrained or taken away, and the concomitant stresses that these exigencies deliver. Give it a try, it's a properly thought provoking book.

Away With The Penguins - Hazel Prior. I'm not sure why I picked this up - cheap for Kindle, probably. For the first fifth, I thought it was going to be a fairly trashy story of an old, cranky lady. Then the central idea of the novel, work at a penguin sanctuary bringing people together, hoves in and it totally caught me. It's actually a simple, lovely story about family, penguins and talking about your life.

1) Star Wars: Darth Plagueis - James Luceno

Got this for Christmas a couple of years ago, but I read a few chapters and just never picked it up again. That's not meant to be a reflection on its quality and I can't remember why I stopped reading it.
Anyway, titled after the character that was mentioned in Revenge of the Sith (I think), this covers events up to and including the prequel trilogy. Although it starts with Plagueis killing his own master, the real thread of the story is the rise of Palpatine/Sidious and how he came to be in the position he was in at the start of the Phantom Menace, while name dropping most of the other characters along the way.
Quite enjoyable, but I've lost track of whether it's canon or not anymore.

Confessions of a Curious Bookseller - Elizabeth Green. 2/5; charmless character shows advanced passive-agressiveness, while we occasionally see reasons why she is like that, and there's some redemption at the end, but not enough to justify the journey. It's told mostly through emails, with occasional journal entries, notes left for characters and blog entries. It's pretty well-done, and rolls by, but it just seems such a waste. I'm as soft-as the ground outside after 2021's rain, so it brought a couple of tears, but I reckon the author will do a great job with a different subject.

3. Linwood Barclay - Parting Shot

Really easy reading and always keeps me guessing about a few bits until the end which is nice. I only have one more book of his to go through before it looks like I sart on a series he has written. I better get to eBay quickly!

Is your next one "Bad Move"? I'm reading that now! Enjoying so far, with a little bit of comedy compared to his others.

Yes, just on The Accident now. I'll have to look what else I can get. Totally forgot tonight!

I read station 11 on someone's recommendation from here. It's really well written and a really good example of the gentle apocalypse genre, tightly focusing on individual's stories and using the over arching end of the world plot as a setting. Recommended reading.

4.) Bad Move - Linwood Barclay

I do enjoy Linwood Barclay, really solid thrillers that do exactly what you want them to. Mystery! Suspense! A slight doofus of a protagonist! Corruption!

I'm looking forward to the rest of the series.

Eek, I'm looking forward to the rest of them!

As a testament to how much I am enjoying them, I have a self imposed book-buying ban as I have so many to work through and I really want to make some space. I ordered four of his books from eBay yesterday.

I think that may have been me. Glad you enjoyed it. The author has a new book out, which I have, but haven’t read yet.

Thanks!

5.) The Longest Afternoon - Brendan Simms

A really interesting ( and very short - only 80 pages ) read about the few hundred allied soldiers who held the farmhouse of La Haye Sainte in the middle of the battle of Waterloo and arguably played a big role in the eventual victory. Recommended!

I've finally finished a book this year!

1."The Impeachers" by Brenda Wineapple

A boorish, egotistical, paranoid, and pugilistic man becomes President by accident, badly handles an existential threat facing the US, has massive rows with Congress, and ends up being impeached.

I'm in two minds about this book. On the positive, it does a good job describing the presidency of Andrew Johnson, his relationship with Congress, and the political intrigues leading up to his subsequent impeachment and (SPOILER) acquittal. It provides appropriate background on the lead players, and briefly sums up what happens afterwards. There's a good energy throughout and it's very readable. Most interesting and new to me is Vinne Reams - a well connected sculptress with a studio in the Capitol's basement that became a popular place for plotting.

However, the whole Reconstruction period is messy and horrific, and whilst the book will describe key events and massacres, this only to explain why the politicians acted as they did. It is not a history of Reconstruction, and as such its focus on events in DC, whilst filling a huge gap in my knowledge, means that it all exists some distance away from what was actually going on.

I'll probably keep it as a reference, but it only serves to remind me that US history did not stop in 1865 and to understand events of a century later and our own time, I need to start getting to grips with how things swiftly fell apart t in the decade after Appomattox.

2. Humble Pi: A Comedy of Maths Errors - Matt Parker
A look at what happens when people don't take everything into consideration with numbers/maths/programming, with hilarious (or deadly) results.

Highlights include the time Pepsi offered a $20 million plane for approx $700,000 worth of Pepsi points and trying to work out why email wouldn't go further than 500 miles.

8. James Acaster's Classic Scrapes - James Acaster. Short funny - especially the cabbage story (as seen on Would I Lie to You?), and that even if you've heard it. Helps if you know him, as he has a distinctive voice, that comes through in his writing.

3. Anne Rice - Blood and Gold

Very bisexual 8/10

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3. Linwood Barclay - Parting Shot
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4. Linwood Barclay - The Accident



I really didn't see what had happened until it was explained at the end, very clever. Just another testament to his writing I think. Already got my next one lined up.

9) Nina Stibbe - Paradise Lodge. A young girl works in a care home in the 80s (maybe earlier), and ends up preferring it to school. Nina Stibbe writes funny stories of the everyday, and every one I've read has made me laugh out loud. I doubt this bit will do it on its own, but it gives you an idea of the style:

Oh, and she makes a list of euphemisms and their meaning for the new boss:


It goes on to - in fact, you know what, I can't resist:

2. "Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to YouTube" by Trav SD

A look at the history of silent comedy, from its origins in the traditions of Italian commedia dell'arte through vaudeville thence to its heyday of less than a quarter century, to how its legacy lives on in, of all things, action films.

Obviously most of the book is about silent movies, and as well as the three greats (Chaplain; Keaton; Lloyd) Mr SD discusses in detail the works of lesser-known (to us at least) comics. He's not afraid to gush about the stuff he likes, but isn't afraid to pull his punches when he doesn't like an act or a film (he really, really hates Abbot and Costello, for example). A fun read, but it'd be good if he'd listed all the films mentioned in the text as an appendix as many sparked my interest but I'm going to have to flick back through to remind myself of the titles.

6.) The Holocaust - Laurence Rees

Blinking heck. A really good mix of personal stories, technical detail, the various machinations of the Nazi Party, and the greater context of the war. Bloody hard work to read through, and it's hard not to get "used" to all the horror. I hadn't realised quite how much help the Nazis had from the various occupied countries.

3. Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension - Matt Parker
I really enjoyed the last book I read, so thought I'd try another. This one is a bit less humour, bit more maths, and it's been about 20 years since I left university, and I've not really had much use for that level of maths since, so I did find myself glossing over a few bits as I don't really have any desire to reacquaint myself with things like knot theory again.
I nearly bought a third book, but have realised it's just the last one I read renamed (pesky math) for the American market, so I guess I'll have to read something else instead.

1) The Problem With Men - Richard Herring.


Richard Herring talks about his crusade to point out when International Men's Day is, when people (mostly men) ask , on International Women's Day, when it is. A very funny look into sexism, and other isms.

10) Ann Patchett - Taft. Taft is the family name, and the kids arrive in a new city. The story is told by the bar owner who employs the girl, and ends up suffering the attentions of the boy. It's well, and gently, told, given there's a fair amount of trauma, but not my favourite Ann Patchett book.

3."The Shortest History of Germany" by James Hawes

A dash through 2,000 of history, from Julius Ceasar to Angela Merkel. The pace never lets up as we see the Romans, Charlemagne, the Teutonic Knights, the Reformation, Napoleon, Hitler, and the GDR flash past our train windows (preferably from a DB ICE 3). All in aid of his central argument that the German lands have always been split between the western facing parts and those beyond the Elbe, and that what we think we know about Germany is mostly a Prussian aberration.

It's an easy, engaging read with a wry humour throughout. The argument from geography is compelling, but as this is only a short read one that I'll have to spend more thinking about.

2) John Dies at the End - David Wong

Jesus, I'm not reading much!
Anyway, JDatE is David Wong's first book, and I read one of his later ones last year (Futuristic Weapons and Fancy suits) and really enjoyed it, this one I didn't think was as good, but it was still good. Weird, supernatural shit happens, and it's a bit disjointed (I think you can tell it was originally a serialised web book as it jumps from plot to plot) and John is a really strange character. It's hard to get a read on what he was meant to be like. But it's still good.

Oh, there's a film. I shall watch it.

4. William Shakespeare's The Merry Rise of the Skywalker - Star Wars Part the Ninth - Ian Doescher

I have to admit, I'm not a massive fan of Shakespeare, but it turns out if you use his style of writing, it can make things kind of amusing. This is the last of the Star Wars in the style of Shakespeare books (or Shakespeare in the style of Star Wars), although I'm hoping he might do Rogue One and Solo at some point. There is a Back to the Future one, but that didn't really click with me for some reason.

5. Serenity: Those Left Behind - Joss Whedon, Brett Matthews, Will Conrad

A welcome gift from my secret Santa, set between the series and the film. I should probably have rewatched Firefly beforehand, as I've only seen it twice, and the first of those times was at Grim...'s about 11 years ago (the second was shortly afterwards, not sure the first viewing counts), so I am a bit rusty, but it was enjoyable enough.
Thanks again, Secret Santa (and no, we've still not played that game, sorry).

1: 1984 (Orwell). I thought I’d give this another go as I was 14 or 15 when I last read it, and honestly... it wasn’t that great. I mean, the idea are sound and as an exploration of state control and manipulation it is amazing for the time of writing and feels never more appropriate, but at the same time, gosh, those torture scenes go on forever and everything is just very slow.

2: Piranesi (Susanna Clarke). Rev Owen sent me Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell and it became one of my favourite books. I just adore it. So, when Susanna Clarke bought out a second book I really wanted to read it. I love magical realism, and alternative magical histories, and this just ticked all my boxes. My only sadness that it was so much shorter than her first novel, and I wanted it to go on and on. I hope the next book doesn’t take another 17 years to come out.