What book are you currently reading?

[A Lutra Continua]

For fun I can recommend the Flashman books by George MacDonald Fraser. Hilarious, and you can also learn some history while you are at it...

As are the McAuslan books by the same author.

[Stoneboat]

Havana Storm by Clive Cussler.

[Ex-Ascot]

An omnibus edition of The Firm and The Pelican Brief by John Grisham. Both books are about rogue firms of lawyers. I suppose they were published together aimed at similar readership. However as a bear of very little brain and limited concentration I became very confused with the second book mistaking the plot with that of the first book and wondering what had happened to some key players

[Rwy in Sight]

Just completed 'The Kind Worth Killing" be Peter Swanson. Interesting plot and original narration as each chapter is described by a character of the plot in first person. I switched off the internet to read it so riveting.

Currently "Prague fatale" by Philip Kerr. A murder is taking place in a locked room in a Prague chateau during WWII.

[603DX]

I'll never learn. While buying "Engineers of Victory" by Paul Kennedy, which proved to be an engrossing and fact-filled account of the problem-solvers and middle-men who helped the Allies win WW2, I decided to take up the bookshop's "Buy one get one half price" offer. To contrast with the worthy paperback I was really interested in, I made a rapid choice from the fiction pile and selected "Look Who's Back" by Timur Vermes, of which the review quotes on the cover said: "Be warned. This book is funny. Very funny" , "An audacious assault on a modern taboo ... An uproarious, disturbing book" , and "Funny and frightening ... A powerful and important book".

Well, I started reading this with an open mind, and found it to be a rather pedantic account of an unlikely premise, summarised as: "Berlin, Summer 2011. Adolf Hitler wakes up on a patch of open ground, alive and well. Things have changed - no Eva Braun, no Nazi party, no war. Hitler barely recognises his beloved Fatherland, filled with immigrants and run by a woman". This was all written originally in German, and published in Germany, before being published in English. Maybe some of the quoted "fun" was lost in translation, but I considered it to be as amusing as a wet weekend in Wigan, and as frightening as Larry the Lamb in Toytown.

I managed to read the dire tale to the end, possibly aided by the mercifully short chapters, waiting expectantly for some flash of brilliance to lighten the tedious task, but it was not to be. Perhaps my "willing suspension of disbelief" in accepting the humorous aspects of Adolf as a bumbling time traveller was spoilt by my clear memory of being told by my mum about his suicide in that Berlin bunker on my 6th birthday in 1945. I remember being pleased at the time that this most unpleasant bogeyman had chosen to top himself as a sort of birthday present to me.

[Lone Ranger]

A free E-BOOK from the Nasa site

Flying Beyond the Stall. Douglas A. Joyce.

There is some good stuff on there

[om15]

Some years ago I read and enjoyed the Captain Jack series by Patrick O' Brian, I have eighteen paperbacks on the shelf and idly discussed with my wife some weeks ago, as she was stuck for something to read before the Christmas pile arrived she read Master and Commander.
She has become hooked, reading the first six books back to back, she is spending her life sailing treacherous reefs, fighting the French at close quarters, spying, living in the orlop, carrying out amputations without anaesthetic, catching the pox and living on hard tack and sea pie.
We tend to read each others books except for our own particular interests, this may mean that I have to try Tudor history.

[Cave Canem]

Jay Rayner's "Star Dust Falling", the story of the BSAA Lancastrian lost and then found decades later in the Andes with the enigmatic morse for GENDEC echoing out over the universe...

Well written and well worth a read.

[dubbleyew eight]

I picked up a $5 special in Coles tonight. Alastair Maclean's 'Force 10 from Navarone'.
a good old war thriller.
I might just get it read in one go tomorrow sitting in a hospital carpark.

[limeygal]

Just finished Riddle of the Sands. Someone on the "Best First Lines of a Book" thread mentioned. it. A very good read, although quite spooky as it was written in 1903 and Childers correctly foretold WWI beginning around 1914.

[om15]

LG, yes books from that era are good, I read the 3 John Buchan books in an omnibus edition last year, 39 steps, Mr Standfast and the other one whose title I have forgotten, rattling good yarns, simply written with clearly defined goodies and badies.

[Tall Bird]

Greenmantle?

[om15]

That's it, thanks

[Tall Bird]

The Half-Hearted (1900) is another good book by Buchan. It's not an easy read in style or content however. Triumph, tragedy, fate, duty are all there. The knowledge that the three dedicatees - brilliant young men of their time - never achieved what their early promise signalled owing to early deaths in WW1 and illness makes it a very poignant book.

[Tom Joad]

The Grapes of Wrath

[Karearea]

limeygal - glad you enjoyed The Riddle of the Sands - it was I who quoted the first line of it earlier. I think it's among the best books I've ever read - beautifully crafted and some vivid descriptive writing.
At present I'm reading Jonah and Co by Dornford Yates: set in Pau, 1922.

[dubbleyew eight]

there is a book written by a chap who is an absolute master of elegant english. he ought to be since he teaches english.
'The Unlikely Voyage of Jack De Crow' by A.J.Mackinnon.

jack de crow is a the name of a ratty old mirror dinghy that he borrowed and eventually sailed from England to the black sea via the Rhine River.
it is a beautifully crafted story of the adventure and the people who helped him along the way.

[A Lutra Continua]

Anything by P.G. Wodehouse is worth a read.

[Mrs Ex-Ascot]

Currently rereading The Day of the Jackal and looking forward to following on with FF's The Odessa file. Both excellent classics

[dubbleyew eight]

I picked up a book this afternoon that is an absolutely brilliant read.
it is called "the martian"
it is about a guy who is left behind by accident when a mars mission has to abort and return to space.
he sets about using what he can find in the equipment to stay alive.
it is quite brilliant.