Carter Beats The Devil by Glen David Gold
If you have even a passing interest in magic and/or the culture and lifestyle of the 1920's then I don't think you'll be anything other than thoroughly entertained by this book.

It's the first novel I properly fell in love with, so much so that I've never been able to let it go, leaving it on the shelf until enough time has passed for me to enjoy it all over again.

Gold's follow-up "Sunnyside" is also good if not quite in the same league, but worth a read if you have an interest in the silent film era and a certain Charlie Chaplin.
(BinDipper, Fri 6 Jan 2012, 9:55, 4 replies)

Have a nice day
I love reading, iv devoured them all: Dan Brown, Harry Potter, LOTR, War & Peace etc. But the best book without a doubt iv ever had the pleasue of losing myself in was....Mick Foley - Have a nice day.

This book was realeased in early 2000's and i loved it. It is a wrestlers autobiography but dont let this put you off. It isnt ghost written like most AB's, he wrote it all by himself on severel books off note paper and it is filled with wit and humour and a couple of the stories made me laugh out loud and did so every time i re-read the book.

He followed this up with Foley is Good a couple of years later which was...a bit rubbish.
Oh and i also can recommend the Reacher books by Lee Child.
Cheers
(Clunge, Fri 6 Jan 2012, 9:52, 4 replies)

The Girl...
Mrs RWN pressured me into reading Stieg Larsson's Millennium series -- The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo etc. I'm really not one for thrillers, they bore me rigid but she was insistent and several friends had recommended them so I finally gave in a few weeks ago.

I read ...Dragon Tattoo in a week or so over the Christmas hols. Yep it ticked along OK, but by the end I'd still not worked out how it was in any way different from any other example of the genre. What, the lead character is a skinny 'hacker' chick and the author likes to name-drop famous brands? That's it?

Anyway I pushed on with the second -- ...Played With Fire -- but last night I reached my limit. In two chapters the author managed to cram in so many 'coincidences' that I couldn't put up with it any more. First he tells us that neither the lead male character nor the lead female character ever goes to a bar -- but then they do, on the same night...and the same bar. Along with the guy who's plotting to kill the girl, to have a meeting with the guy he's going to ask to kill her.

Not long after that, the male lead, who never goes to parties...er...goes to a party -- and then on the way home walks past the female lead's front door at just the right time to witness the attempted murder.

So either Stockholm only has one street, one bar and a population of about two dozen people, or the author has (sorry, had) a pitifully limited stock of plot devices upon which to draw.

Anyway, I give up. It's not often I'll ditch a book before finishing it but life is too short to waste on this drivel -- there are plenty of genuinely good books out there I could be getting into.
( reallywittyname veraciously conspues lexiphanicism on, Fri 6 Jan 2012, 9:46, 2 replies)

For great pulp sci-fi
check out Rudy Rucker.
Very much enjoyed master of space and time. Bit of a silly read but highly enjoyable.
(WOGAN'S WIG FIXER, Fri 6 Jan 2012, 9:24, Reply)

Cormac McCarthy
Is not particularly amusing, but having read four of his books, I do think he's the greatest living author in the world. Why? Because ..

- He writes novels of great intellectual depth which can nevertheless be appreciated for the quality of their storytelling and characters alone. There's no need to go delving any deeper if you don't want to. But if you do, there's an astonishing amount under there.

- His prose is uniquely exquisite. At it's best, it's almost like poetry. Sometimes I get the sense that he's planned his books not at a plot or chapter level but right down to paragraph and sentence. I certainly don't believe anyone can write like that straight from the head: it must require an astonishing amount of concentration and re-working to get right.

- He never graduated, wrote most of his books on a 1963 typewriter and reportedly avoids other writers and prefers the company of scientists.
(MattDP (Squiggle), Fri 6 Jan 2012, 9:23, 5 replies)

OK - to get into the spirit of things, and to offer an olive branch to the gazzes saying I'm an illiterate, horrid bully
Here are some of the better books I've recently read, or am currently reading:

A Time Of Gifts - Patrick Leigh Fermor

Astonishing The Gods - Ben Okri

Three Men In A Boat - Jerome K Jerome

A couple of The Flashman Packets - George Macdonald Fraser

Several of the Transmetropolitan series - Warren Ellis

Viz magazine

Private Eye magazine

Now - can we all stop masturbating about how clever we all are, and continue lying about our sexual exploits and the baddies we've felled?
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Fri 6 Jan 2012, 9:16, 10 replies)

I don't read as much as I used to
But some I still love and hate are:
'The Jewel in the Skull' one of Michael Moorcock's Hawkmoon series Will always have a special place for me. Aged 10, I was bored and driving my father mad. He threw the Jewel in the Skull at me to keep me quiet and began my long standing affair with sci fi.

William Gibsons 'Neruomancer.' trilogy. Its a question of personal taste but I prefer WG's cyberpunk sci fi to his 'Bigend' and 'Bridge' works. And a honorable mention to 'Snow Crash' Because for a breif while Neal Stevenson makes Pizza delivery look like the coolest most exciting job in the world.

'Head On/Repossessed' by Julian Cope, the meteoric rise and fall of the Teardrop Explodes, a How not to screw up being a pop star by doing massive drugs, and then spend the rest of the 1980's playing with toy cars and annoying his neighbors while releasing such gems as 'Fried.' Though each time I read it, it becomes more and more of a nostaliga trip for the 1980's.

'The Electric Kool Aid Acid Tests.' Shows how the hippy movment tore itself apart due to massive drugs. And how counterculture heroes were in actual fact a bit of a arse.

'American Gods' as a novel its ok, but read it like a series of short stories held together by a central theme and its brilliant.


'Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maitenance.' I couldn't finish it, I got bored of the characters.
'Moby Dick.' Makes Steven King look like someone who skips over the details.
And possibly the most ovverated book of all 'The Dice Man.' I was pressured into reading this book by friends in the early 90's (friends who lived in the same provicial shithole I grew up in and were doing large amounts of Pot). I read about half of it. And came to the conclusion it was about someone who used a die to avoid any responsibility for his actions. 20 years later I still think its crap and those people are still living in bedsits smoking huge amouts of Pot and raving on about how great 'The Dice Man.' is...Says it all really.
(Gru being trolled since 1998, Fri 6 Jan 2012, 9:01, 4 replies)

I briefly worked in a bookshop in the 80’s
As you can imagine, it was really quite stupendously dreary, so I used to fuck about to help pass the time. Tearing the last page out of books etc..you get the idea.

The most fun I used to have though was when people phoned the shop asking if we stocked certain books…I mean, our crappy little shop was not exactly in the computer age yet, and I couldn’t be arsed to check through reams of inventory to see if we had anything in stock. So whenever somebody would call I would just toss a coin and answer accordingly. Heads = ‘Yes’, tails = ’No, fuck off!’.

I remember at the end of my last day there, I was bored as shit and this doddery old spacker phoned up asking if we had some dull, bollocks book I’d never heard of. Of course, in accordance with my ritual, I tossed the coin, and it landed on ‘heads’. So I told him. ‘Erm, yeah mate, we got it’. Well, the old cuntstick sounded as if he had had his first geezer-gasm!

In between panting breathlessly and probably jizzing his wrinkled old kex, he practically begged me to put it aside for him (like anyone else would give a monkeys’ toss), so I said ‘Okey Dokey, whatever’. For added authenticity I even asked his name and pretended to write it down! (pffffft!).

I then fucked off from the shop forever…laughing to myself to think that some old twat was going to hop on the bus with his zimmer frame and totter all the way across to our shop just to be massively disappointed. LOLz all round!

To this day I still remember the book he asked for. It was called ‘Fly Fishing’, by J. R. Hartley.
(King Nightmare, Fri 6 Jan 2012, 8:57, 3 replies)

You can say what you like about Archer, but he writes a cockbounding sex scene.

( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Fri 6 Jan 2012, 8:46, Reply)

Aaagh! Almost forgot.....
Alexandr Solshenitsyn's "August 1914" IMHO is a masterpiece.
I would love to see this brought to the screen; a massive treatise on the futility and vulgarity of war, and the stupidity of those commanding it.
800 pages, and I read it in 2 days.
Read it if you get the chance!!

Sadly, the sequel "November 1916" left me cold, and I put it down after 200 pages. It had little of the humanity and verve of its predecessor.

Sorry, Solzhenitsyn....
(Sebulba continues to fight evil with evil....., Fri 6 Jan 2012, 8:33, 4 replies)

A few faves....
Whenever I travel overseas, I always take something by PJ O'Rourke. Because if I am ever stuck anywhere for a good length of time, I have a humorous and thought-provoking companion to keep me company.

Gaiman and Pratchett's "Good Omens" is a book I read at least once a year. Absolutely love it.

Kinky Friedman's detective novels are wonderfully off-beat, and great summer reading.

Spike Milligan is a true genius and I am happy to re-read his 6-part war memoirs, or novels "Puckoon" and "The Looney" over and over.

Geoffrey Regan's series of historical "Blunders" books are quite cynical and sad, and somehow you can just tell that he doesn't like Churchill....

Finally, I'm fascinated by counterfactual history and have collected Robert Cowley's excellent "What If?" series; essays by leading historians, asked to choose a significant event in their area of study and describe the possible outcomes as if the result had been different to what had historically transpired.
A brutal example of cause and effect, and at times, mindblowing.
(Sebulba continues to fight evil with evil....., Fri 6 Jan 2012, 8:23, 1 reply)

the kindly ones - johnathan littel
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kindly_Ones_(Littell_novel)

jesus-H-tittyfuck! this is the grimmest book you'd ever read. i kept expecting a happy bit?, a lighthearted whimsy? nope, just murder,fascism and evil badness. for a real eye opener of the atrocities commited by the SS in world war 2, read this book.

i mean it... go and buy a copy now.
(Captain Benzo Panda fighting, live on tuesdays., Fri 6 Jan 2012, 8:22, Reply)

Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham
Unsure of how to explain this book, but the themes of never quite getting over that girl, trying to find joy whilst poor and living in London, and attempting to become a great artist (but not quite having the balls - and too much brains - to be 100% dedicated to one's art) were all themes that I once strongly identified with. The end of the book I identify with now.

I once bought an Ayn Rand book without knowing about who she was. I threw it away after the first chapter.
(theremin put the lotion in the basket on, Fri 6 Jan 2012, 7:59, Reply)

Not a recommendation of any book or author but from 1999 – 2001 I worked for Amazon.
Each week we would have a meeting to review transcripts of customer complaints so we could identify ways to make the site and the customer service better.

This is a rough recollection of one complaint:

Customer: “I ordered a set of books on opera for my elderly father”

Call centre op’: “may I take your order number please”

Customer: “It’s a disgrace”

Call centre op’: “I would like to help you, but first I need your order number”

Customer: “It’s filth I tell you. Absolute filth”

Call centre op’: “What is madam?”

Customer: “the smut you’ve sent my father. He has a heart condition you know”

Call centre op’: “I am sorry but you need to tell me more so I can help you”

Customer: “I ordered books on opera you stupid man and your company has sent him pornography. Absolutely disgusting. I am going to contact the press. It’s a disgrace. Why do you sell such degrading filth? He has a heart condition you know”

The call centre op’ realising there has been a miss pick in the warehouse and now thoroughly hacked off with the tirade he is getting from the customer replied: “Imagine how the bloke who got the books on opera felt”
( Fucking hell Jeff I am not a robot, Fri 6 Jan 2012, 7:39, 2 replies)

Ulrich Haarburste's Novel of Roy Orbison in Clingfilm
is the single most ridiculous, stupidest, most hilariously brilliant book I have ever read. In the words of the author, "it is perhaps the only book you will ever need to own on the subject of wrapping Roy Orbison in clingfilm."

You can buy it here:

www.amazon.co.uk/Ulrich-Haarburstes-Novel-Orbison-Clingfilm/dp/0955460204/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1325834001&sr=8-1
(Haywood Manley, Fri 6 Jan 2012, 7:17, Reply)

I thought this 1 deserved a place of its own.
The Australian Pocket Oxford Dictionary- had since 1987, I've got bigger, more impressive ref. books in the house (including a fucking huge MacQuarie Dictionary) but whenever anyone in the house doesn't know a word this is where we go 1st (including online).
(Misery McUglywife an attention seeking sociopathic fuckstain., Fri 6 Jan 2012, 7:15, Reply)

Time to unlurk..
Michel H. as below is well worth reading - even his novellas.

Martin Amis - Money - is always guaranteed to get people's backs up. The wife couldn't take it and gave up after 50 pages. Note that this was in direct contradiction to my oft-stated rule of giving any book 100 pages to prove itself before you turf it.

Richard K. Morgan for sci fi esp Altered Carbon. a very good debut indeed.
Keen on Iain M. Banks as well in terms of modern SF bit find the Culture series get a little samey.

I second Bill Bryson for travel books and general thoroughness. Esp Short History.

American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis - is another great modern read and another likely to piss others off esp if they take the misogyny seriously. One book where the film did it justice.

Non-fiction? try Natural Navigator (can't remember the author right now). very well written and brilliant to really clarify stuff like how the hell did navigating by the stars work for the early civilizations.

Righto, will have to go through the library lending list to see what other gems I've had over the years.
(wino.NZ The Ayatollah of rock n' rolla..., Fri 6 Jan 2012, 6:15, 1 reply)

In the best traditions of French literature ...
the works of Michel Houellebecque give me a hard-on. Literally. The man has an utterly filthy imagination.
(mudskipper, Fri 6 Jan 2012, 5:03, 1 reply)

As a Hard SF fan
I've become quite infatuated with the works of Alastair Reynolds.

He's one of few writers who can mostly obey physical laws yet still create a story spanning deep time and space that is fascinating and thoroughly entertaining.

He also maintains his own site and blog, responds to questions posted therein, has good musical tastes and seems like a truly nice fellow.

/man crush
(The Bloody Awful Warsaw Concerto, Fri 6 Jan 2012, 4:29, 5 replies)

i'm a huge fan of Ian Banks, in both sci fi "M" mode and the more general fiction ones. The Crow Road, Wasp Factory and Whit, in particular float my boat for the general. And Consider Phelebus, Player of Games and Look To Windward for the culture books.
even his one non fiction book about scotch, Raw SPirit, is well cool.

I'm also a fan of the Ian Rankin Rebus Books. Gritty fun and rebus is a badass good guy.

and Bill Bryson, that guy has cost me more nasally extruded coffee than most other writers combined, AND is fucking interesting as well. Bonus. A History of Nearly Everything might just be the finest laypersons science book out there.

Now in terms of science, Dawkins is hard to beat, but one guy that can do so IMSHO, is Carl Sagan. Cosmos is awesome if dated, The Varieties of scientific expereince is simply beautiful, and Demon Haunted World is in my sincere opinion, a book that everyone with a brain should read.

Worst book i ever read was probably The Bible, fucking rubbish. i mean worse than Dan Brown/Stephanie Myers type bad If i want a guide to life book book with a morally questionable main protagonist but which trys to teach you a novel way to live your life whilst absolving yourself of all responsibility for your actions, i'd much rather go with Lucas Reihardts The Dice Man. It was far more fun, consistent, and coherently written.

scuse length. i read a lot.
(Matty73, Fri 6 Jan 2012, 4:19, 8 replies)

Tom Sharp.
He got banned from South Africa for 'Riotous Assembly'. Well worth reading just for that.
(Woodlouse say it with flowers. Send her a Triffid, Fri 6 Jan 2012, 3:49, 3 replies)

No-one has ever said it was their favourite, nor did anyone say it was their worst...
I wrote a non-fiction book once and made sure that each sub-section was only a page or so long because I had in mind that busy people read on the crapper. How chuffed I was when a friend did the whole dithering thing of "don't be offended.." and then said it eased the bowels and made them regular.

The book was up for an award, so I went to this big and posh room and sat with big and posh people. It didn't win, but I did take the rather lush flower centrepiece off the table as my prize and drank my fill of free booze.
(boozehound is drinking your bar dry, Fri 6 Jan 2012, 2:34, Reply)

Fuck it, I'm starting a list. It will be added to.
In no particular order or preference -
Robert G. Barrett and Matthew Reilly - good, light, funny wind down from uni text books reading.
The Bone People - Keri Hulme
Another Country - James Baldwin - gave me a benchmark of how life might be in my early teens & shat on all the Kerouac and William S. Burroughs that I'd previously read.
Brian Lumley
Clive Barker (particularly the Books of Blood)
Ray Bradbury
Phillip K. Dick

But wait there's more...
Victor Kellerher
The Last 3 Minutes - Paul Davies - interesting read. Nice enough fella, I got to meet him after a talk he gave (in my old school chapel of all places!).
Peter Hamilton/ Iain M Banks - like a bit of space opera do I.
My Obunsha's Senior J2E & E2J as well, most Japanese people laugh at you if you pull it out tho.
(Misery McUglywife an attention seeking sociopathic fuckstain., Fri 6 Jan 2012, 2:28, Reply)

Piece of cake, by Derek Robinson
A novel about a fictional RAF Squadron in WW2. The antidote to the rose tinted, blitz spirit hun-bashing crap we get about the war now, this book is intended to be as realistic as possible. It is a year in the life of Hornet squadron, from the start of the war to september 1940, which covers the "phoney war", the fall of France and the start of the Battle of Britain. It tells the tale of a wide variety of young men put in various farcical, horrific and hilarious scenes, often all those at once. It tells of the sort of dicking around that young lads thrown together will do, military red tape and idiocy, and some heart breaking, horrifying scenes that remind you it wasn't all brylcreem, tea and medals. All done with a very dark, dry humour that keeps you reading.
In doing so, I think it makes you realise a little of what bravery and heroism is about. How brave and heroic people are often terrified, mentally in shreds or losing their humanity. By being so honest, I think it is one of the best tributes to servicemen I have read.
( Greenbat, Fri 6 Jan 2012, 1:16, 4 replies)

absolute rubbish
www.amazon.co.uk/Little-Stranger-Sarah-Waters/dp/1844086011

avoid like a double dose of gonorrhea.
( sutit only the crumbliest, flakiest posts, Fri 6 Jan 2012, 1:01, 2 replies)

worth a wank or three
Fanny by Erica Jong
Fanny Hill by John Cleland
Little Birds by Anais Nin

and

Story of O by Pauline Reage although this is a touch on the twisted side for my delicate prudish nature.
( sutit only the crumbliest, flakiest posts, Fri 6 Jan 2012, 0:54, Reply)

Two for me...
Although I read A LOT, only two books really stand out for me among modern literature that I've read:

- Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

- The Road by Cormac McCarthy

These are the only two books I have ever read in one sitting.

Sorry for lack of funnies.
(repooc, Fri 6 Jan 2012, 0:42, 5 replies)

Stuck in Kabul for 5 days with NOTHING to do but sit around waiting for a plane
The only distraction I could find was a suspiciously pristine, but trashy sci-fi book about a young lady who pleasured herself with the chrome barrel of her very phallic pistol before going out to shoot people with it.
It was without doubt the worst thing I have ever witnessed in print.

However, with 5 days to kill, I read it three times.

If anyone could enlighten me as to the title of this long forgotten abomination, I can inflict the pain on others.
(Bad Monkey hasn't had an abusive gaz since, Fri 6 Jan 2012, 0:18, Reply)

Oh Jesus....
I've just remembered the most awful pile of drivel I ever had the misfortune of reading. I was going through a James Herbert/Stephen King phase and decided to pick up a book in Waterstones called Grin of the Dark (my brain seems to have blocked out the author's name) as the premise sounded genuinely interesting.

It wasn't. The 'twist' at the end that the author spent 400 pages building up to was evident from about page 15. It leaps from one cliched situation to another with little regard for plot, characters, atmosphere or the slightest form of cohesion.

Seriously, the Da Vinci Code is a masterpiece compared with this utter waste of trees.
( Sculpture of Man Putting a banging donk on it since, Thu 5 Jan 2012, 23:54, 3 replies)

Appropriate
I suppose.

(FootOfTim, Thu 5 Jan 2012, 23:54, Reply)