I've been reading a series of books by JD Kirk I guess you'd loosely call them police procedural crime thrillers the main character is a DCI but the real star is another character called Bob Hoon who was treated to his own spin off series of books that had me laughing out loud whilst rooting for this foul mouthed anti-hero.
I've found loads of series I'd have never even seen in a book shop by using a kindle for the last decade or so. Some other relatively unknown authors I've discovered this way include Jonathan French who has produced a fantasy series revolved round clans of half orc things that live by a similar code to 1% biker gangs. Long reads but decent if you like the genre and its really a first foray into that for me apart from stuff like A song of ice and fire and Lord of the rings.
DC Alden, he is a really good writer, not afraid to lob a huge u turn of a twist in, builds his characters really well and creates believable worlds with unbelievable situations. His invasion series is phenomenal, doesn't require a thesaurus to get through but is very entertaining, tense and had me hooked. Same for a guy called John Birmingham, I've just finished a 3 book series about the Chinese launching a cyber attack on the worlds supply chain infrastructure and the fun ensues from there
Robert White is another relatively unknown who has a couple of series' in his locker, one revolving round an ex-military bloke and his friends, another around a big detective seargent set in Preston as are a couple of his stand alone novels.
My favourite though is easily John Niven, he had a scratch at writing with Music from the big pink but truly hit his stride with the fantastic "kill your friends" which was subsequently made into a film that tries admirably but doesn't come close to how good the book is. The only dud is his stab at a thriller called cold hands but every other novel he has written has had at least one paragraph or chapter in a couple of cases that has had me putting the book down to compile myself.
The sunshine cruise company is a very, very funny romp of a book that I think is the most rounded one he has done, I think Richard Osman read it and thought "if only someone could write something like this for the masses and appear on the Sunday Times bestselling list" before he came up with his Thursday night murder club series
None of his books are for anyone who has a problem with very graphic, visual, violent sexual imagery or do not like vulgarity. He is probably a Irvine Welsh-lite as Welshs books tend to have a much darker undertone and a lot more pages,
If you like crime novels I have just finished and enjoyed reading Snap by Belinda Bauer. It was recommended on a TV book review programme a few months ago and was long listed for the Man Booker prize back in 2018.
I’ve just finished the novel ‘Demon Copperhead’ by Barbara Kingsolver. I love her writing and the way she weaves social and global issues with American working class communities, family life and characters life stories , This is a long book and you are taken through a hard life of a boy growing up in almost Ozark hillbilly drug ridden territory, but it’s worth it and left me with a strong connection to the characters and faith in humanity
If you like crime novels I have just finished and enjoyed reading Snap by Belinda Bauer. It was recommended on a TV book review programme a few months ago and was long listed for the Man Booker prize back in 2018.
Shirk, Rest and Play - co-written by our very own @Vincenzo .
The ultimate self-help book, full of great tips how on to not give a s***. Laugh out loud funny in parts. If you follow the adventures of Roxy, Half-life and the others on the Deserter website, it's a must.
Otherlands - a world in the making by Thomas Halliday
its a look at how planet Earth looked 20,000 years ago, 4 million years ago and further chapters right up to 550 million years ago.
To be honest 99% of it went totally above my non-scientific head, although interesting at the same time. I’ve handed the book to my wife with the suggestion that if she finds it too heavy going she at least reads the Epilogue which I found very interesting (and understandable). It is a look at the planet now, the effects of climate change and what we can do to help solve it.
one interesting fact is that humans make up, by mass, 36% of all mammals. A further 60% of all mammals are domesticated, cattle, swine, sheep, horses, cats and dogs. 60% of birds on Earth are domestic chickens. Only 4% of all mammals mass on Earth are wild.
About 100 pages in to Chris Frantz’s Remain In Love - excellent read so far and recommended for Talking Heads fans.
Recent reads - all really excellent - have been Will Sergeant’s Bunnyman; Jarvis Cocker’s Good Pop Bad Pop; and pick of the bunch, Johnny Marr’s Set The Boy Free.
Just finished Billy Connolly's autobiography, Windswept and Interesting.
Always preferred Billy's travel shows to his comedy, but really enjoyed this book - which has a bit of everything - told in his very own scatter gun style. Happy, amusing, sad, interesting, in no particular order, but an engaging, simple read and well worth it in my opinion.
Left You Dead - Peter James. A Roy Grace thriller with a sad, emotional sub-plot. The main plot is as clever and page turning as always with Peter James, a wife missing, presumed murdered - except we know all along she isn't... The new TV series starts on Sunday, and we are going to see the stage version of Wish You Were Dead in Brighton on Monday. Great time to be alive if you like Roy Grace.
The Romantic by William Boyd. Similar to a previous book of his, Any Human Heart,
The Romantic is the life story of a fictional character, Cashel Greville Ross who lived from 1799-1882. Lots of adventures, interwoven with real people from those times, with him visiting and living in Europe, India, the USA and Africa. Can see this being adapted for TV as was Any Human Heart. Highly recommend it.
Just finished 'Stranger in a Strange Land' by Robert A Heinlein. I read a lot of science fiction. Parts of this are amazingly well written but it's a struggle to get through the full unabridged version. In my opinion it's very clever but overrated overall.
Just finished the novel All That Man Is by David Szalay, a lovely bit of writing probing the inability of men to find meaning in their lives, particularly in their various relationships, with some reflecting on death and eternity as the string of stories conclude.
About 100 pages in to Chris Frantz’s Remain In Love - excellent read so far and recommended for Talking Heads fans.
Recent reads - all really excellent - have been Will Sergeant’s Bunnyman; Jarvis Cocker’s Good Pop Bad Pop; and pick of the bunch, Johnny Marr’s Set The Boy Free.
Review on Amazon This made me laugh on Johnny Marr
I feel sorry for the bass player and drummer. What it must have been like playing with this self-aggrandizing twit and having to put up with Steven Morrissey too makes me shudder with revulsion. Having been in the music business myself I know from personal experience what utter egoists singers and guitar players can be. This book just bears out that statement. Not only that, but The Smiths are the second worst band to come out of Manchester after Oasis - the lead singer and guitarist of whom have just as much attitude as this dweeb. The 'best band in the world'? Don't make me laugh. And this guy's guitar playing is just finger-picking and noodling that's been saturated in chorus and delay. In other words, it's rubbish. Two stars, because it's fairly readable, and the first part was just about bearable. But OMG, I feel like burning it now and stamping the ashes into the dirt.
I stopped reading at some point and figured I should get back into it. Can anyone recommend a book that will really immerse me and get me back into reading?
Two book series that got me back into reading were the following. Both really good, I've especially enjoyed the Harry Bosch books.
Sci-Fi: The Expanse Books by James S.A. Corey Crime: The Harry Bosch Books by Michael Connelly
On-track for my aim of reading at least a book a month in 2023 (x2 young kids and only 1 day a week commuting has massively slowed down my reading compared to a few years ago!) Deliberately trying to mix up genres as much as possible taking recommendations from friends etc (and some on here), and so far I've done:
Mayflies - Andrew O'Hagan Where The Crawdads Sing - Delia Owens The Road - Cormac McCarthy Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurty
I've lucked-out as really enjoyed all of the above despite them all being quite different. And just started Pompeii by Robert Harris, so far so good...
On-track for my aim of reading at least a book a month in 2023 (x2 young kids and only 1 day a week commuting has massively slowed down my reading compared to a few years ago!) Deliberately trying to mix up genres as much as possible taking recommendations from friends etc, and so far I've done:
Mayflies - Andrew O'Hagan Where The Crawdads Sing - Delia Owens The Road - Cormac McCarthy Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurty
I've lucked-out as really enjoyed all of the above despite them all being quite different. And just started Pompeii by Robert Harris, so far so good...
Those are all very good books - Lonesome Dove and The Road are particularly great. Pompeii is decent too though not quite to to the standard of his Cicero series.
Two I have recently read were Jo Nesbo's Nemesis and Ian Rankin's A Song for the Dark Times. The former was a slow starter, and felt below Nesbo's usual standards, but it picked up along the way and had a good ending. The latter classic Rebus, with plenty of Siobhan Clarke and Malcom Fox in the mix too, along with one of the great villains of literature (IMHO) Ger Cafferty. Great story involving a number of murders, seperated by time and distance, but possibly interwoven. Recommended.
Two I have recently read were Jo Nesbo's Nemesis and Ian Rankin's A Song for the Dark Times. The former was a slow starter, and felt below Nesbo's usual standards, but it picked up along the way and had a good ending. The latter classic Rebus, with plenty of Siobhan Clarke and Malcom Fox in the mix too, along with one of the great villains of literature (IMHO) Ger Cafferty. Great story involving a number of murders, seperated by time and distance, but possibly interwoven. Recommended.
I find Rebus in general a great read. Ian Rankin is a very talented author in my opinion.
Am sure this will have been recommended already as I am late to it, but have recently finished A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. I believe it is currently being adapted for TV with Ewan McGregor. It really is one of the best books I have read in the past few years.
Have also just finished the first of the Shardlake novels by C.J. Sansom set in the 16th century around the time of the dissolution of the monasteries under Cromwell. Latter day murder mysteries and gives you a real flavour of the times.
Am sure this will have been recommended already as I am late to it, but have recently finished A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. I believe it is currently being adapted for TV with Ewan McGregor. It really is one of the best books I have read in the past few years.
Have also just finished the first of the Shardlake novels by C.J. Sansom set in the 16th century around the time of the dissolution of the monasteries under Cromwell. Latter day murder mysteries and gives you a real flavour of the times.
Completely agree, great book - probably my favourite from those I read last year.
Am sure this will have been recommended already as I am late to it, but have recently finished A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. I believe it is currently being adapted for TV with Ewan McGregor. It really is one of the best books I have read in the past few years.
Have also just finished the first of the Shardlake novels by C.J. Sansom set in the 16th century around the time of the dissolution of the monasteries under Cromwell. Latter day murder mysteries and gives you a real flavour of the times.
Completely agree, great book - probably my favourite from those I read last year.
Excellent book. His other two (Rules of Civility and thr Lincoln Highway) are also really good.
Currently reading Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. Excellent re-telling of David Copperfield but set in 1990s Virginia at the start of the Oxycontin crisis.
Just finished Charles Dickens: A Life, by Claire Tomalin. A great read that praises Dickens the writer if not always Dickens the man. Living in Broadstairs now, this seemed a must read.
Louise Welsh, English author lived in Scotland for years and seemingly no relation to the notorious Irvine .. 'The Cutting Room', written in 2002 from the 1st person perspective of a homosexual man .. VERY good read i m o .. she's recently written a follow up with the same protagonist 20 years later .. I await it's delivery with high expectations
Dead Man's Blues by Ray Celestin. The second in the "City Blues Quartet". Set nine years after The Axeman's Jazz, the main protaganists have moved north to Chicago and are both working for the Pinkerton Detective agency. Cracking read, involving Al Capone and his henchmen, and Louis Armstrong is a fringe character once again. Based around true stories with some poetic licence and juggling of the timelines of the real events, it is a great book if you like detective fiction. Can be read as a standalone, but better to read the first one, first.
Have all four books on the shelf, read the first and well into the second. Great reads that let you drink in the atmosphere of the place and the time. Thanks for the recommendation.
Here is Ray Celestin's explanation describing the juxtaposition between the Mafia and the jazz music which provides the setting of his stories through the decades.
There's this weird parallel history with the music industry and the mob and Louis Armstrong, in particular.
The 'mafia' first came to prominence in New Orleans, just before jazz was born. Then in 1920s the focus of jazz shifted to Chicago, just when Al Capone and the Chicago outfit was at its height.
It's really strange how they went hand in hand through the 20th century.
Prohibition was a big part of it. Back during Prohibition the gangsters controlled the speakeasies and they employed the jazz musicians to play in them. When Prohibition ended, a lot of those gangsters got into the music industry as legit / semi-legit businessmen / record label men / bookers / agents / managers. Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday's manager was a former Capone stooge who used to run a speakeasy for Capone. The guys who started MCA (the largest talent agency in the world for many decades) were former Capone guys, too. All these mob-affiliated guys were huge in the entertainment industry for decades and they only really got ousted in 70s and 80s when Disney and all the other corporations took over the industry.
That’s so interesting about “A Gentleman in Moscow”. I am coming to the end of this excellent book and was going to write about it. If anyone had asked me whether I was interested in reading a book about Russian aristocracy in the early half of the twentieth century I would probably have demurred but it came highly recommended. But it completely drags you into the life and times and written in a form somehow completely in keeping.
Am sure this will have been recommended already as I am late to it, but have recently finished A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. I believe it is currently being adapted for TV with Ewan McGregor. It really is one of the best books I have read in the past few years.
Have also just finished the first of the Shardlake novels by C.J. Sansom set in the 16th century around the time of the dissolution of the monasteries under Cromwell. Latter day murder mysteries and gives you a real flavour of the times.
Completely agree, great book - probably my favourite from those I read last year.
Excellent book. His other two (Rules of Civility and thr Lincoln Highway) are also really good.
i m o Rules of Civility is a good read, but The Lincoln Highway is overcooked and unwieldy, too clever for its own plots .. Gentleman in Moscow is the pick of the trio
Comments
I've found loads of series I'd have never even seen in a book shop by using a kindle for the last decade or so. Some other relatively unknown authors I've discovered this way include Jonathan French who has produced a fantasy series revolved round clans of half orc things that live by a similar code to 1% biker gangs. Long reads but decent if you like the genre and its really a first foray into that for me apart from stuff like A song of ice and fire and Lord of the rings.
DC Alden, he is a really good writer, not afraid to lob a huge u turn of a twist in, builds his characters really well and creates believable worlds with unbelievable situations. His invasion series is phenomenal, doesn't require a thesaurus to get through but is very entertaining, tense and had me hooked. Same for a guy called John Birmingham, I've just finished a 3 book series about the Chinese launching a cyber attack on the worlds supply chain infrastructure and the fun ensues from there
Robert White is another relatively unknown who has a couple of series' in his locker, one revolving round an ex-military bloke and his friends, another around a big detective seargent set in Preston as are a couple of his stand alone novels.
My favourite though is easily John Niven, he had a scratch at writing with Music from the big pink but truly hit his stride with the fantastic "kill your friends" which was subsequently made into a film that tries admirably but doesn't come close to how good the book is. The only dud is his stab at a thriller called cold hands but every other novel he has written has had at least one paragraph or chapter in a couple of cases that has had me putting the book down to compile myself.
The sunshine cruise company is a very, very funny romp of a book that I think is the most rounded one he has done, I think Richard Osman read it and thought "if only someone could write something like this for the masses and appear on the Sunday Times bestselling list" before he came up with his Thursday night murder club series
None of his books are for anyone who has a problem with very graphic, visual, violent sexual imagery or do not like vulgarity. He is probably a Irvine Welsh-lite as Welshs books tend to have a much darker undertone and a lot more pages,
The ultimate self-help book, full of great tips how on to not give a s***. Laugh out loud funny in parts. If you follow the adventures of Roxy, Half-life and the others on the Deserter website, it's a must.
its a look at how planet Earth looked 20,000 years ago, 4 million years ago and further chapters right up to 550 million years ago.
To be honest 99% of it went totally above my non-scientific head, although interesting at the same time. I’ve handed the book to my wife with the suggestion that if she finds it too heavy going she at least reads the Epilogue which I found very interesting (and understandable). It is a look at the planet now, the effects of climate change and what we can do to help solve it.
one interesting fact is that humans make up, by mass, 36% of all mammals. A further 60% of all mammals are domesticated, cattle, swine, sheep, horses, cats and dogs. 60% of birds on Earth are domestic chickens. Only 4% of all mammals mass on Earth are wild.
Recent reads - all really excellent - have been Will Sergeant’s Bunnyman; Jarvis Cocker’s Good Pop Bad Pop; and pick of the bunch, Johnny Marr’s Set The Boy Free.
Always preferred Billy's travel shows to his comedy, but really enjoyed this book - which has a bit of everything - told in his very own scatter gun style. Happy, amusing, sad, interesting, in no particular order, but an engaging, simple read and well worth it in my opinion.
Not to everyone's liking but he's probably my favourite author.
Has anyone read Sabbath's Theatre? I've heard it's up there with his best work and prob next on my list from him.
The Romantic is the life story of a fictional character, Cashel Greville Ross who lived from 1799-1882. Lots of adventures, interwoven with real people from those times, with him visiting and living in Europe, India, the USA and Africa. Can see this being adapted for TV as was Any Human Heart. Highly recommend it.
I read a lot of science fiction. Parts of this are amazingly well written but it's a struggle to get through the full unabridged version.
In my opinion it's very clever but overrated overall.
I feel sorry for the bass player and drummer. What it must have been like playing with this self-aggrandizing twit and having to put up with Steven Morrissey too makes me shudder with revulsion. Having been in the music business myself I know from personal experience what utter egoists singers and guitar players can be. This book just bears out that statement. Not only that, but The Smiths are the second worst band to come out of Manchester after Oasis - the lead singer and guitarist of whom have just as much attitude as this dweeb. The 'best band in the world'? Don't make me laugh. And this guy's guitar playing is just finger-picking and noodling that's been saturated in chorus and delay. In other words, it's rubbish.
Two stars, because it's fairly readable, and the first part was just about bearable. But OMG, I feel like burning it now and stamping the ashes into the dirt.
Sci-Fi: The Expanse Books by James S.A. Corey
Crime: The Harry Bosch Books by Michael Connelly
Mayflies - Andrew O'Hagan
Where The Crawdads Sing - Delia Owens
The Road - Cormac McCarthy
Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurty
I've lucked-out as really enjoyed all of the above despite them all being quite different. And just started Pompeii by Robert Harris, so far so good...
Have also just finished the first of the Shardlake novels by C.J. Sansom set in the 16th century around the time of the dissolution of the monasteries under Cromwell. Latter day murder mysteries and gives you a real flavour of the times.
'The Cutting Room', written in 2002 from the 1st person perspective of a homosexual man .. VERY good read i m o .. she's recently written a follow up with the same protagonist 20 years later .. I await it's delivery with high expectations
Here is Ray Celestin's explanation describing the juxtaposition between the Mafia and the jazz music which provides the setting of his stories through the decades.
There's this weird parallel history with the music industry and the mob and Louis Armstrong, in particular.
The 'mafia' first came to prominence in New Orleans, just before jazz was born. Then in 1920s the focus of jazz shifted to Chicago, just when Al Capone and the Chicago outfit was at its height.
It's really strange how they went hand in hand through the 20th century.
Prohibition was a big part of it. Back during Prohibition the gangsters controlled the speakeasies and they employed the jazz musicians to play in them. When Prohibition ended, a lot of those gangsters got into the music industry as legit / semi-legit businessmen / record label men / bookers / agents / managers. Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday's manager was a former Capone stooge who used to run a speakeasy for Capone. The guys who started MCA (the largest talent agency in the world for many decades) were former Capone guys, too. All these mob-affiliated guys were huge in the entertainment industry for decades and they only really got ousted in 70s and 80s when Disney and all the other corporations took over the industry.