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Brock Manson
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1 hour ago, PaddockLad said:

Have the folk judging this years Booker prize been informed?....

I’ve pretty much ignored it since Vernon God Little won 

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  • 6 months later...

Read a couple of crackers recently.

 

The Shepard's life. Basically a Shepard in the lakes. Talks about his family history etc. Superb.

 

No more Planet B. Probably the most balanced researched book ice have read about climate change so far. Brilliant.

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10 hours ago, PaddockLad said:

Just started In Plain Sight by Sarah Kendizor......it was published last October. Frankly I’m amazed she’s still alive :cuppa:

 

 

 

Aye I started following her on Twitter recently. Book any good? 

 

I'm reading Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry. Two old Irish gangsters sat in a port in Spain talking, with their story told in flashbacks. Really good - you have to do the voices in your head though for maximum authenticity. 

 

It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, so I thought it might be a bit artsy, but it's really good. 

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3 hours ago, Gemmill said:

 

Aye I started following her on Twitter recently. Book any good? 

 

I'm reading Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry. Two old Irish gangsters sat in a port in Spain talking, with their story told in flashbacks. Really good - you have to do the voices in your head though for maximum authenticity. 

 

It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, so I thought it might be a bit artsy, but it's really good. 

 

It's frightningly (literally) good. 

 

She's a regular on MNSBC, where she sits there and says that the POTUS is the head of one of the world's leading crime families. The fuckin obsequious UK media could learn a thing or two from her....

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  • 1 month later...

easy one sitting read if you've got nowt on and chilling for the day, thoroughly enjoyed it.....

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Live-Outside-Law-Operation-Britains/dp/1846687969/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3TX2ME98UL2UX&dchild=1&keywords=leaf+fielding&qid=1601808422&sprefix=leaf+fiel%2Cstripbooks%2C337&sr=8-1

 

ps.... it's about one of the gang who produced vast quantities of lsd and were bust by operation julie!

Edited by thebrokendoll
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Heard Robert Harris promoting his latest tome “V2”  on Dan Snow’s history hit pod so gave it a go, pretty good, based on the last 4 days of the Germans last ditch attempt to turn the course of the war.  I read Fatherland & Enigma back in 90s so I thought I’d give his other stuff a go starting with Archangel, which I really liked probably because I didn’t know a great deal about the subject matter ie the hangover Russia still feels from 70 years of totalitarianism and explores whether it’s really over. Started the first of his Roman novels this week Pompeii, interesting so far, who knew the head of the Bay of Naples water board was called “The Aquarius”? ....
 

Since lockdown started I’ve caught up with Irvine Welsh’s last 3 Trainspotting novels, all 12 of Bernard Cornwell’s Saxon series (Netflix’s Last Kingdom is based on these, the 13th & last novel in the series is out this month 😢) Cornwell’s Arthurian Trilogy “Warlord” series, Giles Kristian two Arthurian novels, Hiding in Plain Sight by Sarah Kendzior, McMafia by Misha Glennie & How to be right by Janes O’Brein. And others too numerous and poor to recommend...

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I’ve read Pompeii- I really enjoyed it, but then I do nerd out on historical novels. 
If you haven’t read them already, I’d recommend the Shardlake series  by CJ Sansom. 
They’re set in England during the reign of Henry VIII, and the titular character, Matthew Shardlake, is a lawyer hired to investigate shenanigans and chicanery amongst the various swine in Henry’s London. 
Very much like Harris and Cornwell. 

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Trying to think what's been best out of my lockdown reads. "Another Fine Mess" by Tim Moore, in which he drives a rickety Model T Ford across the Trump-voting states, was enjoyable as usual from him - albeit a bit less laugh-out-loud funny, probably because the subject matter is so profoundly depressing. :lol: Chris Brookmyre's latest, "Fallen Angel", was exactly the kind of intelligent but not too challenging thriller I needed over the summer, definitely worth a read (plus it's often 99p on Kindle :yes:). Also been belatedly working my way through Iain M. Banks - I found "Use Of Weapons" surprisingly uplifting for something outright nihilistic in places.

 

Tried to get stuck into some weightier stuff too - "The End of Days" by Jenny Erpenbeck was dark but really good; the joint Booker winner "Girl, Woman, Other" was good too although it didn't blow me away like it seems to have other people.

 

Also read Martin Hardy's "Tunnel Of Love" but that was a disappointment compared with "Touching Distance" - there's a shoddy feel to the writing/proofreading, and I suppose the topic and narrative was always going to be a bit more disjointed than the arc of the Keegan years.

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4 hours ago, Monkeys Fist said:

I’ve read Pompeii- I really enjoyed it, but then I do nerd out on historical novels. 
If you haven’t read them already, I’d recommend the Shardlake series  by CJ Sansom. 
They’re set in England during the reign of Henry VIII, and the titular character, Matthew Shardlake, is a lawyer hired to investigate shenanigans and chicanery amongst the various swine in Henry’s London. 
Very much like Harris and Cornwell. 


One of the current Mrs PL’s favourites...shes often said I’d like them, and I almost certainly would, if it wasn’t for my bitter dislike of that fuckin cunt Henry Tudor  & everything he stood for. I do enjoy this exceedingly petty and to most normal people frankly irrelevant grudge but to me he set forth events that we are still paying fior to this day. His modern reputation is a fuckin joke. A cold blooded murderer, nothing more . I don’t care about the complexities of medieval royal succession or the posh fiction of Hilary Mantel etc about the servile wankers who did his bidding. He was a cunt who has a strangely benign modern day reputation. 

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17 hours ago, PaddockLad said:


One of the current Mrs PL’s favourites...shes often said I’d like them, and I almost certainly would, if it wasn’t for my bitter dislike of that fuckin cunt Henry Tudor  & everything he stood for. I do enjoy this exceedingly petty and to most normal people frankly irrelevant grudge but to me he set forth events that we are still paying fior to this day. His modern reputation is a fuckin joke. A cold blooded murderer, nothing more . I don’t care about the complexities of medieval royal succession or the posh fiction of Hilary Mantel etc about the servile wankers who did his bidding. He was a cunt who has a strangely benign modern day reputation. 

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  • 2 months later...

Broken Greek by Pete Paphides...

 

Reading between the lines, there’s a fair few on here born at the the end of the 60s/early 70s....  I’d encourage all of those individuals to read this, it’s unlikely anyone will be as big a music obsessive as the author was/likely still is, but if you did spend your time taping the top 40 and seldom missed TOTP then you’ll like this. His former trade as an NME scribe obviously helps with this, but his description of his family is likely to be familiar to many regardless of their backgrounds....

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not really a big boxing fan but was looking for something to read and picked up this in me sons bedroom. thoroughly enjoying it up to now and I'd go as far as to say the chapter leading up to and including clay's fight with sonny liston is in a stand alone one of the most entertaining, funny and downright gobsmacking  bits of writing I think I've ever read!   :)

 

 

20201212_120745.jpg

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2 hours ago, thebrokendoll said:

not really a big boxing fan but was looking for something to read and picked up this in me sons bedroom. thoroughly enjoying it up to now and I'd go as far as to say the chapter leading up to and including clay's fight with sonny liston is in a stand alone one of the most entertaining, funny and downright gobsmacking  bits of writing I think I've ever read!   :)

 

 

20201212_120745.jpg

Yeah, I loved that. Norman Mailer’s The Fight is a good read too 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Ready Player 2.

Nothing groundbreaking. Similar love letter to 80s pop culture as the first book but a nice nostalgia trip and an easy holiday read. Read my boy’s copy he got for Christmas in a couple of days.

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