What book did you just read and how was it?

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#620841 7-May-2012 10:17

"In The Beginning" by Ben Gardner.

Paste text copied from the google...

"When a retired Seal, Mike Angel, discovers an inexpensive new space drive and begins launching satellites from his suburban back yard, the local law takes notice. When he refuses to turn his invention over to the military, the government takes notice. When he blackmails the American and Russian governments into helping him with the first manned expedition to Mars, the world takes notice."

I've read it a couple of times, pretty light but very entertaining.

Cheers,
Joseph

networkn

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#628078 20-May-2012 21:38

So I read the HG Trilogy. I must say I enjoyed the 2nd one way more than the other two and the third I didn't really like much at all.

Now I need something else good to read. I have read all the Robert Crais and Jack Reacher Available. Need something gripping, interesting and exciting.

Lizard1977

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#628185 21-May-2012 08:58

My wife, who is a librarian and a book review blogger, reads a lot of youth fiction, particularly of the dystopian type (which is how she came to read and recommend the Hunger Games trilogy, which I thoroughly enjoyed). If dystopian fiction is your kind of thing, and you aren't averse to the "youth fiction" label, then I can highly recommend Patrick Ness' The Knife of Never Letting Go. It's the first in the Chaos Walking trilogy which is set on another planet which has been recently colonised by humans. The protagonist is a teenager called Todd Hewitt, living in a village with only men - there are no women at all. The novel opens with one of the best opening lines ever, IMO - "The first thing you find out when your dog learns to talk is that dogs don’t got nothing much to say." The novel(s) are pitched as "young adult" fiction, primarily because the protaganist is a teen, but I think that categorisation is slightly derisory in some circles, and The Knife of Never Letting Go is as good as any adult book, and much better than many. The second and third novels are "The Ask and the Answer", and "Monsters of Men." I read the first two back to back, and struggled to put them down. Then I had an agonising wait of several months for the third book to be published, and devoured it just as quickly.

Finally, there are plans afoot to adapt the Chaos Walking trilogy for film, following in the footsteps of the Hunger Games trilogy. So I would recommend that you get hold of these books before they become "fashionable and popular", and it gets hard to get a copy.

vexxxboy

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#628201 21-May-2012 09:32

networkn: So I read the HG Trilogy. I must say I enjoyed the 2nd one way more than the other two and the third I didn't really like much at all.

Now I need something else good to read. I have read all the Robert Crais and Jack Reacher Available. Need something gripping, interesting and exciting.

Denis Lehane's Kenzie/ Gennaro series are really good and Harlan Coben's Myron Bolitar series is also very good.

Common sense is not as common as you think.

kyhwana2

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#628253 21-May-2012 11:17

Reading G Howells Light on Shattered Water/Lies in Red leaves series.
http://crash.ihug.co.nz/~howellg/stories/stories.html

His The Human Memoirs series is good too.
(Free on his website)

Disrespective

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#628266 21-May-2012 11:31

Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card

A nicely entertaining story actually. It' being adapted for film now so it'll be interesting to see how that goes. There are some nice twists and turns which I can see being adapted either very poorly or very well depending on if they market the story to children, or adults. It's a story about children but the themes are very adult at times.

crackrdbycracku

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#631592 28-May-2012 18:25

The Afrika Reich by Guy Saville

I wish I could say it was a great read but I can't.

The set up is this:

World War Two goes as we know it until the Dunkirk evacuation which fails horribly. Following the loss of the core of the British Army the British Government are forced to sue for peace, with the promise that the empire will be retained. America stays neutral and the Soviet Union is eventually defeated by Germany.

Germany regain their colonies lost at Versailles and play The Great Game with a fading British Empire in Africa.

So far so good, eh? Actually, as alternative WW2 set ups go this is actually one of the best I have read (and I've read a few, yes including SS-GB and Fatherland). It has a ring of truth and as the action takes place in Africa it is very original.

However, the main character is really not likable. I guess he is supposed to be 'all too human' but he's just ... not likable. The villain might as well be a cardboard cut out and the action pushes even the suspension of belief required for action movies.

It's really sad to see such a good idea executed so badly.

If your still keen a word of warning: This book is very graphic in it's descriptions of people getting hurt and killed, the word 'skull' features a lot.

If you really have to read all the alternative history there is it isn't too bad, I'm going to finish it to see what happens in the end. But it really should have come back from the editor with "Must Try Harder".

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josephhinvest

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#631598 28-May-2012 18:41

Half way through "Old Man's War" by John Scalzi.
"John Perry did two things on this seventy-fifth birthday. First he visited his wife's grave. Then he joined the army."
Science fiction, galactic colonization etc. I have laughed my a$$ off several times so far!

Cheers,
Joseph

Edit. Have learned I can't write the word A S S on gz.

pgs2050

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#631617 28-May-2012 19:33

Plodding through Jeffrey Deaver's first James Bond novel - Carte Blanche. It's a reboot of the series. I think the author has tried a bit too hard to overcome (perceived) criticism of an American taking on a British classic. Many descriptions of people, events, gadgets, places are augmented with examples which serve to indicate that the author is familiar with all the Britain and everything British. It soon gets to be distracting.

Another criticism I have is that this books seems more like a screenplay adapted into a novel. Maybe Deaver's hoping to get this book made into the next movie.

Anyway there's lots of good stuff out there and I should probably move on to them. For example Olen Steinhauer (sp?) has released the third book in 'The Tourist' trilogy and it's bound to be better than this.

Behodar

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#631653 28-May-2012 20:26

Nety: Getting towards the end of A Song of Ice and Fire which I am really enjoying. I started the Game of Thrones series long before the TV series but had quite a big break. I restarted reading once I got my Kindle. Fantastic series 9/10 for me.

I started reading A Game of Thrones a few weeks ago, after seeing all the episodes of the TV series up until that point. I've nearly finished the first book and I'm enjoying it enough to have bought the other five so they're sitting in my bookshelf ready to go :)

BlueShift

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#632033 29-May-2012 15:54

Just finished Dance of Dragons, the most recent Ice & Fire novel. It was a good read, but the series is starting to suffer from Long Fantasy Syndrome - the more books there are in the series, the less actual time is covered in each progressive book. The book is very thick, but the action within only covers a couple of months.

Also read Stonemouth, by Iain Banks (not Iain M Banks) not a bad read, characteristic of his "Scottish novels" If you haven't read The Crow Road, read Stonemouth first, because Crow Road is better, but if you're a fan of Banks, its worth waiting for the paperback - or downloading from Kindle - its not worth the hardback premium.

Asrafrate

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#645303 23-Jun-2012 23:33

Currently have three books on the go, reading depending on my mood:

Game of Thrones by George RR Martin
Essential SharePoint 2010 Overview, Governance and Planning by Jamison, Hanley & Cardarelli
Outliers The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

Zeb A.
Twitter: @asgard

networkn

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#649491 2-Jul-2012 12:28

I am really struggling to find exceptional reading right now. I LOVE Jack Reacher Novels, Robert Crais and similar not too heavy or light thrillers, but recently even using goodreads.com for recommendations has left me cold. I did enjoy the first two hunger games.

KevinGeek

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#651597 5-Jul-2012 23:29

I read 'Good to Great' by Jim Collins, it's the best business book I ever read.

dontpanic42

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#651608 5-Jul-2012 23:59

Asrafrate:
Outliers The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

I "read" that one via audiobook. ;)
Malcolm Gladwell has an awesome voice.

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