The books and reading thread

[dtaai-maai]

Just had a look at Butcher/Dresden; to be honest, it's not something I'd normally be drawn to - I like my fantasy Tolkien/Eddings-style. However, never let it be said I'm a stick-in-the-mud, so I've downloaded Storm Front and will try it with an open mind.

[dtaai-maai]

I've just had a sci-fi download spree inspired by https://www.polygon.com/21516173/best-n ... obal-en-GB

[dtaai-maai]

https://z-lib.org/
https://www.gutenberg.org/
https://www.bookbub.com/ebook-deals/free-ebooks
https://manybooks.net/

Some handy sites for legal free e-books. I'm sure there are plenty more.

As a matter of interest, I'm looking for a couple of books that I can't find on my usual p2p sources (specifically books 2 & 3 of The Dark God Rises trilogy by Robert Ryan). What are the best sites for books?

[lindosfan1]

DM the book is on kindle

[dtaai-maai]

Yes, I know. I'm after a freebie!

[lindosfan1]

Yes, I know. I'm after a freebie!

If you are an amazon prime member it is free in kindle, I get a lot of books like that.

[dtaai-maai]

As I understand it, you have to pay an extra £7.99 a month for kindle unlimited on top of Prime.

EDIT "Amazon Kindle Unlimited isn't included with a Prime subscription as standard, and unfortunately there are no price reductions available for Prime members. Prime Reading is the Prime-member equivalent automatically included with your subscription, but offers a reduced range"

[lindosfan1]

I checked before I replied, to read is free, to buy is 5.99 have a look on the amazon site the info is all there.

[handdrummer]

Mods, please move this if necessary.

Today, the owner of the Blue and Yellow Book Store, told me she wants to sell it. So, if anyone knows someone who wants to own a bookstore have them contact her.

If I had the money, I'd buy it.

[lomuamart]

Blooming heck, it's been over a year since I did a review of books read. I'll try and rectify that now but some of the older reads will be a bit forgotten so I'll try and concentrate on those books that have really stood out for me.

David Mitchell - Utopia Avenue. I don't find all of his stuff easy to read but the books are good. This one isn't difficult and revolves around a 60s rock band who are just on the edge of "making it" when things start to go wrong. Plenty of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. A decent read.

Douglas Stuart - Shuggie Bain. Won the Booker in 2020. A depressing tale of a young boy growing up in 80s Glasgow with an alcoholic mother, Thatcher years, social depredation etc etc. An excellent book but not exactly jolly,

Carl Hiaasen - Squeeze Me. I enjoy his take on America and its way of life. The books are always savagely critical and funny. This one is a send up of the Trump administration and the man himself and the First Lady - codenamed Mastadon and Mockingbird respectively. Totally outrageous, set in Florida (as are all his books) with a large cast of pythons.

Stuart Turton - The Devil and the Dark Water. The 1600s and the world's greatest detective is being transported back to Amsterdam from Batavia to be executed. But there are strange happenings on the voyage that involve demons, ghosts, murders, superstition and so on and did the detective commit the crime anyway?

I thought this was an excellent read. A book to lose yourself in and imagine being cooped up on a spice ship for months with a lot of nasty things going on.

Sayaka Murata - oh my God. Two books from this lady. The first, "Convenience Store Woman" is, on the face of it, a simple tale about a lady who joins a convenience store chain in Japan and her pretty much empty life but is much more than that and revolves around people losing their identities and becoming robotic in the modern world. I forget the Japanese expressions that are drummed into all employees but the hair on my head still stands up every time I walk into a 7-11 here and get the equivalent in Thai - Aaargh!!

The second, "Earthlings" is way out there. It involves alienation, incest, murder, cannibalism and a whole lot more. A rather difficult book to describe but don't be fooled by the fairly innocent start when the main protagonist is young. It gets pretty hairy after that and ends up with three characters believing they're aliens who have been sent to earth to "whatever" the human race. The finale is outrageous. Sod it, I can't do this book justice. Read it for yourself. You'll love it or hate it - there's no middle ground.

OK, back to earth!!

Abir Mukherjee - A Necessary Evil. Not sure whether I've mentioned this series before but this is the second installment featuring Captain Sam Wyndham of the Calcutta Police Force in 1920s Imperial India. A Maharajaha's son is murdered and Wyndham and his Indian sergeant and called in to clear things up.

There are now four books in the series, with this one being the second. It's not just the clever plots that attract me it's also the author's ability to paint a decent picture of colonial India at the same time. Having been injured during WW1 and having got used to morphine to get over his injuries, Wyndham becomes an opium addict in Calcutta which is a pretty major theme throughout the books.

Try to read the books in order. It's not necessary but you'll lose some character development if you don't. They'll all good romps with a lot of atmospheric writing,

William Boyd - Any Human Heart. I searched high and low for a torrent of this book and finally got one from buksida's recommended site https://b-ok.asia/?regionChanged=&redirect=34220580 I think anything this guy has written is so good and this didn't disappoint.

When I saw it was in diary format, I had doubts as to whether I'd get on with it but I did and it's a huge book. It chronicles the 20th century through the eyes of Logan Mountstuart, from his early years in Montevideo, through an English public school and Oxford and then his development into a mediocre author.

His life takes in the Bloomsbury set, Spanish civil war, Americans in 1930s Paris, espionage, the Baader-Meinhof gang and so on. There's a stellar supporting cast that includes Picasso, Hemmingway and many others. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor during WW2 come out of things particularly badly.

As said, the protagonist is only a middling author and his personal life is a sorry tale of multiple failed marriages, alcoholism and poverty. That said, there are many humourous aspects to the tale. This review doesn't do the book justice by a long shot.

A definite 5 stars and a book that I'll definitely go back and re-read at some point.

Andrew Taylor - The Last Protector. This is the fourth in the historical Marwood and Lovett series and this one revolves around the return to England of Oliver Cromwell's son and all the political intrigues that go with it.

I've enjoyed the whole series so far and fans of historical fiction won't be disappointed, I'm sure.

OK, I think that covers my reading to last December and outlines some of the books that have grabbed my attention. I'll try not to leave it another year before bringing things fully up-to-date.

[sateeb]

William Boyd - Any Human Heart. I searched high and low for a torrent of this book and finally got one from buksida's recommended site https://b-ok.asia/?regionChanged=&redirect=34220580 I think anything this guy has written is so good and this didn't disappoint.

When I saw it was in diary format, I had doubts as to whether I'd get on with it but I did and it's a huge book. It chronicles the 20th century through the eyes of Logan Mountstuart, from his early years in Montevideo, through an English public school and Oxford and then his development into a mediocre author.

His life takes in the Bloomsbury set, Spanish civil war, Americans in 1930s Paris, espionage, the Baader-Meinhof gang and so on. There's a stellar supporting cast that includes Picasso, Hemmingway and many others. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor during WW2 come out of things particularly badly.

As said, the protagonist is only a middling author and his personal life is a sorry tale of multiple failed marriages, alcoholism and poverty. That said, there are many humourous aspects to the tale. This review doesn't do the book justice by a long shot.

A definite 5 stars and a book that I'll definitely go back and re-read at some point.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1631891/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

I don't know how it compares to the book but the mini series ( stellar cast, Jim Broadbent, Tom Hollander etc) was excellent. Torrents are a bit thin on the ground but I managed to find one on LimeTorrents. A 5 star keeper

[dtaai-maai]

Thanks for that, lomu, an interesting read in its own right. I've now got William Boyd and Andrew Taylor on my kindle.

[buksida]

Excellent review, plenty to go through there - although I still have quite a backlog of sci-fi forming on the Kindle!

[dtaai-maai]

Here's one for all you old codgers: The Thursday Murder Club.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that it's available from z-library: https://b-ok.cc/book/5744830/fc2443

In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet up once a week to investigate unsolved killings. But when a local property developer shows up dead, 'The Thursday Murder Club' find themselves in the middle of their first live case.

The four friends, Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron, might be pushing eighty but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves. Can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer, before it's too late?

Richard Osman has been crowned author of the year at the British Book Awards after the runaway success of his debut novel The Thursday Murder Club. Pointless star Osman said his win for his story of elderly amateur sleuths was an "absolute dream come true".

The Thursday Murder Club follows a group of residents in a retirement village, whose hobby is trying to solve cold-case crimes, until suddenly they find themselves caught up in a murder mystery of their own.

The novel went straight to number one in the charts when it was released in September and has been in the top 10 fiction hardbacks ever since. It is now only the second adult hardback fiction novel, after The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown, to sell more than one million copies in the UK this century.

Two more instalments have been commissioned and Steven Spielberg has bought the film rights, with Osman acting as an executive producer.

[dtaai-maai]

Also available on z-library is the fifth Strike (and Robin <sigh>) novel, Troubled Blood.

A breathtaking, labyrinthine epic, Troubled Blood is the fifth Strike and Robin novel and the most gripping and satisfying yet. Private Detective Cormoran Strike is visiting his family in Cornwall when he is approached by a woman asking for help finding her mother, Margot Bamborough – who went missing in mysterious circumstances in 1974. Strike has never tackled a cold case before, let alone one forty years old. But despite the slim chance of success, he is intrigued and takes it on; adding to the long list of cases that he and his partner in the agency, Robin Ellacott, are currently working on. And Robin herself is also juggling a messy divorce and unwanted male attention, as well as battling her own feelings about Strike. As Strike and Robin investigate Margot’s disappearance, they come up against a fiendishly complex case with leads that include tarot cards, a psychopathic serial killer and witnesses who cannot all be trusted. And they learn that even cases decades old can prove to be deadly.