Do we have one of these? can I start a new one if not.

I was under the impression we had a sub-forum for books. Obviously not...

Anywho, after finishing A Dance With Dragons of the Game of Thrones series, I'm now onto Gone Girl. I was impressed with the fast paced introduction of the first few chapters. How Nick's viewpoint is from the present and Amy's is her diary entries from years previous. But as I'm a quarter of the way through, its started to slow down. I'll see it through to the end, but as I'm approaching the middle, I'm becoming underwhelmed.

Next up, the sci-fi big-kid of me is coming out. I've ordered The Maze Runner online.

I'm a fan of the Alex Kava 'Maggie O'Dell' series and anything by Ben Elton. Just reading 'the first casualty' set in the Great War. Good so far

I don't read as much as I used to, or as much as I'd like to - I used to have a job which allowed for plenty of reading opportunities and got through plenty of good books over time!! .....



Personally, I'm a big fan of Robert Ludlum, the Bourne books are top notch - The films, while good, were very unfaithful to the books. Would loved to have seen the books done properly.

For anybody into Ludlum type thrillers, you could do a lot worse than the Terry Hayes's novel, 'I Am Pilgrim'..... Intelligent, tense and very relevant to the political world we presently live in, I wouldn't be surprised to see it made into a movie very soon.

If anyone has read any of the Jack Reacher novels by Lee Child, and then had the misfortune to watch the Tom Cruise film of the same name you'll understand why I'm sympathetic to the post above, and its not just that Tom Cruise is about 12" too short to play the character, thats the least of the films problems.

Anyway, there is a film thread so books - currently reading Toast by Nigel Slater, a very entertaining blog-style biography that you read in bite sized chunks, nothing to tax the brain with and not a food book at all but a candid revelation of his childhood and sexuality, picked it up for a couple of quid on worldofbooks.com, second hand book site - almost as good as Oxfam Bookshop.

I'm a Ludlum fan too and I agree I'd love to see the books made into films that accurately followed the books. Though I have to say I think the Bourne films (bar Legacy) are superb.

Like Patrick O'Brien books too, though that's probably mostly to do with me being a Napoleonic Wars geek.

The problem with turning any Reacher book into a film is expressing Reacher's strategic thinking when he goes into battle. The mental preciseness is almost impossible to portray. The richness of the character's is another problem with the two hours attention span of most cinema goers.

The first Baldacci novel was turned into a film starring Gene Hackman - the film left out the central character all together - bizarre

I am currently reading You by Caroline Kepnes - interesting theme but why do all these American north east coast writers have to try an emulate Jack Karouac. It is so annoying - surely they can come up with a more original style

Since the last time I posted over twelve months ago I've largely limited my intake of physical books to political history - with special emphasis on contemporary American. My best guess puts the number at about sixty or seventy - mostly left of centre, but with a sprinkling of traditional American liberal and even the odd establishment title.

Particularly memorable are:

Jerry Freisa's [i"Toward an American Revolution: Exposing the Constitution and Other Illusions"[/i - sadly now out of print but available second hand. Fascinating that a convincingly and conspicuously patriotic nation of people can paradoxically seem far more conversant with the tenets of their democracy than most folk in Britain demonstrate toward theirs - and yet their faith couldn't be more hopelessly misplaced. Freisa delivers the most powerful argument against the traditional call to "return to the Constitution" in times of political and social strife. Less a response of sensible conservatism - it is in fact the root cause.

Andrew Scott Cooper's [i"The Oil Kings: How the US, Iran, and Saudi Arabia Changed the Balance of Power in the Middle East"[/i - compiled as a result of recently declassified state files which prove the Iranian Revolution and the subsequent strife it caused right up to the present day can largely be pinned on the renegade actions of two men - Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger - who conspired together (without informing anyone in any American state department regardless of rank) to sell more arms to the Shah than he could possibly afford - despite countless warnings that such would ultimately result in an economic catastrophe and massive social unrest. Sans their highly illegal actions - Saudi Arabia would today be unable to destabilise the entire region.

[i"The War Conspiracy"[/i - by Peter Dale Scott. Scott's former Berkeley colleague and good friend, Noam Chomsky, gets all the plaudits (most of which he deserves) - but the limitations of his thinking on global politics and imperialism very quickly become apparent soon into Scott. Indeed, moving from one to the other is like shifting up a dimension of thinking. If there is a more perceptive, intellectually honest and exhaustively rigorous researcher in this field I've yet to find him. WC is one of those rare texts which can completely transform your thinking on issues you had thought were steel-reinforced truths. Once finished it becomes impossible to take seriously the media's oft-blathered assertion that the President of the United States wields unparalleled power. In case study after case study covering over fifty years Scott shows each occupant of the Oval Office fighting vainly to exercise some semblance of control over both the intelligence services and the military whose methods and motivations are hidden even from the "World's most powerful man". A good example being the CIA who despite strict instructions to desist continued running a clandestine counterinsurgency war and assassination program in Laos for two years. Shedding light on a question which historians have never answered satisfactorily - Scott shows this was one of the primary reasons behind Lyndon Johnson's flat refusal to run for a second term despite being the clear favourite to win.

[i"Destiny Betrayed"[/i by Jim DeEugenio - I could have picked several recent scholarly works on the JFK assassination - but perhaps this is the current gold standard. Despite the mainstream media's assertion that the "Case is closed" - anyone familiar with the current state of scholarly research (you know, by people who provide [ucitations and references[/u at the back of their books) knows the opposite was all but proven once people began wading through the glut of declassified documents which Oliver Stone's "JFK" forced congress to release in the mid-90s. We might not know the names of the shooters - but we DO now know Lee Harvey Oswald wasn't the lone assassin. Indeed, it's now fairly certain he was either part of the US's highly-secret false defector program - or he was led to believe he was by his CIA handlers. Odd that the media never mentions the intense interest shown in Oswald by just about every facet of the US intelligence community in the run up to Dallas. Similarly odd that no one wishes to talk about the obvious conclusions that must be drawn when one discovers Oswald was being impersonated in Mexico City despite the fact that only the spooks had the ability to do so in a highly sensitive location. Perhaps the media's reticence to break ranks and claim the obvious is understandable given that they have repeatedly ridiculed contrary views for decades - even though convincing evidence absolving Oswald emerged at the very beginning. To change now would undoubtedly cause people to question their credibility. But surely the more pertinent question must be: [iif they can unashamedly lie and lie and lie on a matter as big as this - what else might they be lying about?[/i

To be honest I haven't read anything fluffy and fiction up till last month (notwithstanding several audiobooks) but right now I'm working through Frederick Forsyth's canon (not Fourth Protocol - which I read as a teen) and I'm pleasantly surprised.

True, his writing style is little more than functional. But his political thrillers are surprisingly well researched, convincingly paced and enjoyable. If he does have a weakness it is in testing the bounds of credulity. Thankfully he intuitively understands that such extravagances are tolerable provided they aren't shoved down your throat with the regularity of sushi on a conveyor. Contrast the like with contemporary authors drawing "inspiration" from the morse code of absurdities 24 (subsequently beaten to the bottom by "The Black List"icon_wink.gif foist upon us. Goodness knows how much time must be wasted by real intelligence agencies untangling reality from fantasy among recruits.

I remember reading The Day of the Jackal and the Dogs of War in my teens, and loved both.

The Day of the Jackal movie made a really good fist of the book, but the Dogs of War movie was nowhere near hitting the mark. Perhaps understandably it ignored all the background dealing and arms trading involved in getting a bunch of mercenaries, but IIRC that background really helped create the sense of impending catastrophe and futility around the whole enterprise.

The Day of the Jackal and Nicholas Montserrat's The Cruel Sea were two of my favourite books as a teenager, both were far more detailled and in-depth than the films made from them but that is the very essence of the book vs film debate, its compulsory to use your imagination with one format while you simply view someone elses imagination with no input from yourself with the other.

Currently also reading An Innocent Man by John Grisham, one of his factual books rather than fiction taking on the cause of a man who served 11 years on Death Row for murder before finally being exonerated by DNA evidence, very readable and for a book that could simply set out the case files in a staid courtroom clerk's voice its quite fast paced and almost designed like a novel.

Also - I'm actually reading books again, not eBooks, strange how I flit between the two.

And finally - I bet Mugwump doesn't have any problems dropping off to sleep on a night, or during the day.

Just starting Without fail the 6th Jack Reacher novel - I need Lee Child to slow down if I want to catch up before I retire!!

I've never really been able to read fiction I usually just stick to autobiographies (sports people mainly) or true crime stuff, I'm currently reading Lester Piggotts autobiography

Fiction is about imagination I suppose - my next book will be Luck by Ed Smith so a factual book around how important luck is in professional sport

Agreed.

That's why I prefer reading a book or listening to a radio drama to watching TV or film. The only exception in recent years being Game of Thrones

It can cause disappointment though. Up to about 30 years ago I used to read the Daily Mirror and avidly read [url=http://www.theauthenticperishers.co.uk/The Perishers cartoon strip[/url, then Maurice Dodd allowed The Perishers to be turned into an animated TV cartoon. It ruined everything for me, the voices on the TV did not match the characters' voices in my head

Game of Thrones is excellent - I find the book a little tedious and over detailed, this is getting worse in the later books. The cast of Game of Thrones is stellar which also helps with the quality of the drama too - Emilia Clarke must be the sexiest woman on TV!!

Agree with that, because it is so disappointing when the characters in films and TV don't look like they did in my head.
I like Stephen King novels, even his Dark Tower ones. Apart from the well known ones, Shawshank and Stand by Me and The Green Mile the films etc are terrible.
Going through a 'detective' phase at the moment, Sophie Hannah and Mark Billingham are filling these dark rugby-less days!

Coincidence or not ?

I often have two books on the go at the same time, it helps to confuse me more.

Anyway, as well as reading the book (proper book) mentioned above "An Innocent Man" by John Grisham, a factual account of a man wrongly convicted as a murderer and serving 11 years on death row for it, I was browsing the excellent Leeds City Libraries eBook loan selection and came across Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood", the true story (indeed he wrote it in a reportage style while the investigation was taking place, he and Harper Lee writing up thousands of pages of notes from interviews ) of a Kansas family who were murdered in their farmhouse home, a fascinating story all the more so because its true and because its written in a novelistic style yet still sticks rigidly to the facts, its still the second largest selling true crime novel.

It was only when I started reading it that I made the connection to the other book laying by my bed, something deep inside just likes reading about murders I think...watch this space.

The Jack Reacher book I am reading is showing much promise - third of the way through as usual a couple of interesting female characters in the plot - hopefully the quality will be maintained to the end

Have you read any Richard North Patterson many of his novels have that feel - could I recommend:
The Race
Balance of power

True Crime is usually all I ever read (interspersed with the odd Val Wood who writes fiction stories about Victorian Hull, the odd biography and a true account style story).

I'm reading Bitter Blood by Jerry Bledsoe atm, a true family affair where a member of the family who is deranged and deluded is having an affair with his first cousin and then goes on a murder spree of other family members. Mr HWS always says if he dies in mysterious circumstances the police will arrest me on account of whats on my bookshelves alone





During the summer I came out of my comfort zone and read a spy true story about Operation Mincemeat, a very good read for anyone interested in spying operations during WW2.

Sequels are a blight on literature. The fantasy and SF genres in particular have suffered a calamitous drop in overall quality because of sequels.

Nowadays if you want to read something intelligent (or just well-written) you must either root out a specialist bookseller with a lot of floorspace (at best most genres receive no more than three floor standing bookshelves) or ride your luck with Amazon.

Whereas the small independents could be relied upon to split three small shelves half-and-half between serialised/movie-TV tie-ins and critically acclaimed/classics twenty years ago - now it's the former occupying 98% of space.

To make matters worse, genre artwork (especially SF) - which was often the foremost reason for purchase by younger readers - has now been dumped by most publishers as they consider it stigmatises the "product". Which is why practically every SF book these days is neutral black, white or god-awful chrome. The exceptions to the rule being cinema/TV tie ins - as if we haven't already seen enough pictures of Darth Vader or Doctor Who ...

I'm up to Gone Tomorrow and Without Fail is probably my favourite so far.

Best casting for Reacher would have been Dolph Lundgren about 20 years ago. That comparison shows you just how far wrong Tom Cruise was.

Not for me - the books are very formularic if that's a word and it depends on the how character driven the books are I suppose. I liked tripwire the best so far