• General
  • What have you read recently?

Blake Crouch - Dark Matter. It’s been made for Apple TV+, premiering in May, and starring Joel Edgerton with Jennifer Connelly. A multiverse scifi, with a lot of WTF moments, and will probably make a very entertaining TV show, because it was plotted very well. But the writing was pretty bad. I’d compare it to DaVinci-code in terms of the language. That was the book I was most reminded of when reading this.

    Am reading Champion Thinking by Simon Mundie.

    Mainly because I was his best man.

    Homegrove i like Blake Crouch and I really enjoyed Dark Matter. And yeah, it’s a bit like Dan Brown / Da Vinci code in the sense that it’s pure entertainment without any real emotional core.

      I just finished Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane. Probably not his best and takes a while to get going but worth it when it does.

      4.5 / 5

      Also finally got round to Infinte Ground by Martin MacInnes - super weird

      2 / 5

      C_J my problem was mainly with the language. The dialogue was just shit. The TV show will probably be great. It’s good TV language, not for novels.

      Homegrove All his books are so obviously written to be turned into tv shows. Did kind of enjoy this one but yeah…. the writing is shocking in places.

      Been reading James Clavell - Tai Pan (pt 2 of the Asian saga after Shogun) for about 3 months now. It’s literally 6 books combined into one monster book. Epic doesn’t do it justice. Not as good as Shogun so far but still excellent.

      Still, when you consider that after 40 ish years old, you’ve only got about 4 or 5 hundred books left before you pop your cloggs, should you really be nuking a noticeably large amount of that for one book.

      14 days later

      Starter Villain by John Scalzi. Entertaining.

      This is the first book I’ve completed reading since February of last year. My reading mojo declined heavily. 🙁

      10 days later

      Jo Nesbø - Killing Moon

      The usual lengthy, hard-boiled Harry Hole caper: drugs, sex, murder, booze, regret.

      Quite good, though, when it gets going. 👌

        C_J I started reading the HH series, but never got beyond the third or fourth. Found them pretty samey…

        Currently reading Candy - Luke Davies. Harrowing. 👍

        JonQPublik I loved Shades of Grey, and like you want that sequel

        Jon, have you gotten into Red Side Story yet?

          Skagboys by Irvine Welsh.

          First half excellent and the Sick Boy/Maria story is the darkest thing I’ve read in a long time.

          Second half shite.

          JonQPublik It’s defo worth it, but be warned, I think it’s the last in the series, rather than the trilogy we were promised.

            Operation Chastise (The Dam Busters)

            Incredible war time story, Barnes Wallis was some inventor

            Finised Tai Pan last night. 4 and a half months. Fucking hell. Bought the next one in the saga (‘Gai Jin’) but it’ll be a while before I pick it up.

            2 months later

            Stephen King has a new short story collection out, that has a sort of sequel to Cujo in it, so I thought it best to reread said novel, as I’ve only read it once, and it was 30 years ago and in Finnish. Jesus Christ I’m struggling with it. King’s worst book, and I’ve read Roadwork and Thinner. Just 304 pages, and it’s taken me 4 days to get halfway through it. He famously has said he can’t remember writing it, due to being REALLY into drugs and booze at the time, and it shows.

            Not seen the movie ever, it’s apparently held up pretty good for a movie where the rabid dog is a man in a suite half the time.

            • Amps replied to this.

              Homegrove held up pretty good for a movie where the rabid dog is a man in a suite half the time