I reread Dune, and the read Dune Messiah for the first time in preparation for Villeneuve’s Dune Part 2. Messiah was a sort of an epilogue to the story of Paul Artreides, set 12 years after Dune. You can see how it influenced George RR Martin with the Game of Thrones-books. It was 300 pages of people scheming and plotting against each other with no action, and exactly one worm.
Homegrove It was bobbins. Can only imagine there’s going to be massive changes to make it coherant for the movie. I’ve heard Children of Dune is better but I dunno if I can be arsed reading it.
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.
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.
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.
Am reading Champion Thinking by Simon Mundie.
Mainly because I was his best man.
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.
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
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.
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. 🙁
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?
Amps I haven’t. I still need to buy it too. 🙄
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.
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.
Amps I just discovered I have to wait until May 7 for RSS 🙄
Operation Chastise (The Dam Busters)
Incredible war time story, Barnes Wallis was some inventor
JonQPublik Worth the wait!
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.
