Books you've read or are reading

There's one called Irish:The Remarkable Tale of a Nation and a City,about Irish immigration and the effects it has had in Scotland,particularly Glasgow,it's pretty good.Then there's all the gangster ones if you're into that kind of thing,like Reg McKays books.

 

malachy mccourts a monk swimming is a good laugh in parts

 

love brian keene mate , hes such an easy read , the "monster island" trilogy from david wellington was also a good read.

 

Read loads of Pratchet, great stories.

 

I've not really seen too many books recently that seem interesting, so i've been reading the free classic books you get of the Apple bookstore (and Kindle as well).So far i've read two books

Dracula: I wanted to read this for years and was actually plesantly suprised about how much I enjoyed it. The first few chapters (maybe more) set in Transylvania were really enjoyable and well written. I actually cared about the characters and they were all fairly interesting. The only complaints I really had were that sometimes there were lulls where nothing really happened; and the other was that ending was rather rushed/abrupt. Overall though a good book.

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: More of a short story than a full fledged novel. To be honest I was a little dissapointed in this. I think the fact that the twist in the novel is so well known it results in a less impactful story. The only character(s) that I ever felt interested in were the ones mentioned in the title with the rest (even the main protagonist) were fairly uninteresting. It was a decent enough story but when the whole story leads up to a certain plot point to which you already know the outcome the story itself is less exciting.


Overall I preferred Dracula. I already knew roughly how each book ended but not too much of what happened in-between. To be fair to Jekyll/Hyde that book was about 1/8th of the length of Dracula so had less time to create a more interesting story.

 

Not much of a reader but was when I was in hospital I read 2 Irvine Welsh books; Filth &Glue. Read a few of the Alex Cross series buy Dan Patterson.
Last book I read was Life of Pi about 3 years ago. Great book.

 

Just finished re-reading L’Étranger by Albert Camus. One of my favourite books of all time (alongside To Kill A Mockingbird). It explores various philosophies such as existentialism & absurdism, but it's a cracking story as well and amazingly well written. One of those books that will change the way you think about things. I'm not sure if the translation does the original justice as I haven't read it in English, but you should definitely give it a go.

Just about to start Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (from which the phrase 'Catch-22' originated).

 

Quality read, one of my favourite books!

Just finished The Silmarillion by Tolkien. A masterpiece of a book and really helps you appreciate Tolkien's world and the background to the LOTR. However, it is a fairly difficult book to read with an insane amount of names to take in, and it probably is more of a book to really sit and study if you are a big Lord of the Rings fan.

Currently just started 'The hundred year old man who climbed out of the window and disappeared' by Jonas Jonasson. Excellent so far and can't remember actually laughing at a book as much as this, nice relaxing read too. Next book after this will be 'Life of Pi' - glad i will get a chance to read the book before i see the film, which is also meant to be good too.

 

Life of Pi is really good. Only read it because I got it off of iTunes for nothing.

 

My mate gave it ot me on my birthday...(also with a bouquet of flowers.lol).
But aye, really good book. Don't fancy the film though. Going by the previews I had a much better picture in my head

 

That's what I thought as well, mate. People were saying the film was visually stunning but it looked better in my head when I was reading it. :smiley-laughing002: It looks like there's too many visual effects on the go.

 

Just finished reading the Road to Lisbon by Martin Greig and Charles McGarry. It's a fantastic book and definitely exceeded expectations.

 

INLA Deadly Divisions. Quite interesting so far.

 

Just started reading Im Westen Nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western Front) to brush up on my German before exams in June (struggling :smiley-laughing002. Don't really know what to expect. Heard it's a good book but I don't know anything about it other than the fact that it takes place during the Great War. Anyone read it (or seen the film)? If it's worth the effort I might persist.

 

All quiet on the Western front is an excellent book and well worth reading. Not sure it is so easily understood in German though. The film is ok but the book is better.

 

I'm only really reading it to get my German back to a decent level anyway so that's not really a problem. The author was a German veteran of WWI, I think, so the English must be a translation.

Looking forward to reading it in that case - I'll let you know what I think of it.

 

Books are always better than the film versions in my experience. There truly is no comparison to the imagination

As for books I'm reading?

All * Uni related ones, haven't read a book for pleasure for months!

 

a genius!

 

'Love in the time of Cholera' is a cracking read.

 

Just finishing up reading The Girl who Kicked The Hornet's Nest,last of the Millennium trilogy.Amazing set of books,best fiction ive read in a long time.