What are we all reading right now?

Most recently finished Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky (OK but could have lost a few chapters) before that, the excellent A Memory called Empire by Arkady Martine (winner of the Hugo Award for novel 2020)

next up is The Thursday Murder club by Richard Osman
 
The Gates of Athens by Conn Iggulden. Love a bit of historical fiction, not as dry as a non-fiction history book and you still learn stuff. Igguldon is great at it, his Genghis Khan series is brilliant.
Try the Aubrey-Maturin books starting with master and commander, my favourite historical novels bay far! They read as one long book as its a continuous timeline.
 
Try the Aubrey-Maturin books starting with master and commander, my favourite historical novels bay far! They read as one long book as its a continuous timeline.

Will give them a go. Assume it's the book the Russel Crowe film was based on?
 
The Gates of Athens by Conn Iggulden. Love a bit of historical fiction, not as dry as a non-fiction history book and you still learn stuff. Igguldon is great at it, his Genghis Khan series is brilliant.

(y)

Iggulden, Bernard Cornwell and Simon Scarrow are proper good boys own holiday reads for me.

I'm currently reading Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need To Know About Global Politics by Tim Marshall.
 
(y)

Iggulden, Bernard Cornwell and Simon Scarrow are proper good boys own holiday reads for me.

I'm currently reading Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need To Know About Global Politics by Tim Marshall.

Loved the Sharpe books, even if they did all tend to follow a fairly similar formula each time.
 
The Gates of Athens by Conn Iggulden. Love a bit of historical fiction, not as dry as a non-fiction history book and you still learn stuff. Igguldon is great at it, his Genghis Khan series is brilliant.
The julius Caesar and War of the Roses are good too.
 
Seven Pillars of Wisdom, TE Lawrence.

He's fascinated me since I saw the TV Play of the Month "Ross", with Ian McKellen as Lawrence, Edward Fox and Charles Gray. Not a bad cast for a one-off telly slot. Anyway, finally getting round to reading it. It is, shall we say, of its time.
 
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Try the Aubrey-Maturin books starting with master and commander, my favourite historical novels bay far! They read as one long book as its a continuous timeline.

Will give them a go. Assume it's the book the Russel Crowe film was based on?

The Crowe film was an amalgam of a few books, then tweaked a bit. Master and Commander is the first book in the series, Far Side Of The World is the 10th, which the plot is mainly derived from, but then changed from the War of 1812 between Britain and America to a few years earlier against the French in case US audiences didn't like being the enemy. It is a fine film based on a truly magnificent series of books.

While the likes of Bernard Cornwell and Simon Scarrow produce rollicking good yarns yet pay attention to historic detail as much as they can, Patrick O'Brian is in a different class all together. The quality of his writing is outstanding, far superior even to most of the writers of classic all time novels. Dickens wrote pulp fiction compared to this.

The novels are not just tales of Napoleonic era naval conflicts, which are superbly brought to life and are realistic since are often taken from real incidents of the time, but they are deep dives into espionage, politics, discovery, wildlife, medical techniques, belief's and advances, philosophical meditations on love, power, relationships, religion, class, gender and, er philosophy even. Frankly it touches on just about everything. That could be tedious, were they not so well written. O'Brian is able to fill a chapter where nothing but the monotony of naval routine takes place for weeks and no event of any real note occurs and yet you are devoured by it. The action, when it comes, is outstanding, but these are not books where it is one buccaneering exploit after another. Rather, they usually build slowly. These are masterpieces like The Godfather I and II, not episodes of Miami Vice. It is the difference between a necking spiced Rum and Coke and sipping a Diplomatico Ambassador over ice.

One of the first Aubrey-Maturin novels I read was Desolation Island. In it there is a gripping chase through heavy South Atlantic seas against a Dutch Man O War. It was so gripping and powerful I had it fixed in my memory that it took up half the book. When I got back round to re-reading it - if you like the series, you will finish it then go back - I was amazed to find the chase itself was actually only a handful of pages.

Each book is also very different, in different parts of the world, against different enemies. Some are even predominantly on land. Maturin is an incredible character, not only what he brings to each situation as a protagonist, being Irish/Catalan assisting the British Navy, Physician rather than simple naval surgeon, Natural Philosopher and member of The Royal Society and Secret Agent, but also as a vessel to see the society of that age of the world through.
 
The Crowe film was an amalgam of a few books, then tweaked a bit. Master and Commander is the first book in the series, Far Side Of The World is the 10th, which the plot is mainly derived from, but then changed from the War of 1812 between Britain and America to a few years earlier against the French in case US audiences didn't like being the enemy. It is a fine film based on a truly magnificent series of books.

While the likes of Bernard Cornwell and Simon Scarrow produce rollicking good yarns yet pay attention to historic detail as much as they can, Patrick O'Brian is in a different class all together. The quality of his writing is outstanding, far superior even to most of the writers of classic all time novels. Dickens wrote pulp fiction compared to this.

The novels are not just tales of Napoleonic era naval conflicts, which are superbly brought to life and are realistic since are often taken from real incidents of the time, but they are deep dives into espionage, politics, discovery, wildlife, medical techniques, belief's and advances, philosophical meditations on love, power, relationships, religion, class, gender and, er philosophy even. Frankly it touches on just about everything. That could be tedious, were they not so well written. O'Brian is able to fill a chapter where nothing but the monotony of naval routine takes place for weeks and no event of any real note occurs and yet you are devoured by it. The action, when it comes, is outstanding, but these are not books where it is one buccaneering exploit after another. Rather, they usually build slowly. These are masterpieces like The Godfather I and II, not episodes of Miami Vice. It is the difference between a necking spiced Rum and Coke and sipping a Diplomatico Ambassador over ice.

One of the first Aubrey-Maturin novels I read was Desolation Island. In it there is a gripping chase through heavy South Atlantic seas against a Dutch Man O War. It was so gripping and powerful I had it fixed in my memory that it took up half the book. When I got back round to re-reading it - if you like the series, you will finish it then go back - I was amazed to find the chase itself was actually only a handful of pages.

Each book is also very different, in different parts of the world, against different enemies. Some are even predominantly on land. Maturin is an incredible character, not only what he brings to each situation as a protagonist, being Irish/Catalan assisting the British Navy, Physician rather than simple naval surgeon, Natural Philosopher and member of The Royal Society and Secret Agent, but also as a vessel to see the society of that age of the world through.

Definitely will check these out cheers. Ive been reading a lot of fantasy recently but feel like I've probably read the best of that genre now (and I've given up waiting for Martin and Rothfuss to stop faffing about) so need a good new series to get stuck into.
 
Mortimer & Whitehouse - Gone Fishing.
Nowhere near as enjoyable as the TV genius.
The programme is totally absorbing; the book has a little too much detail about the actual fishing for my liking from Paul.
I love both Bob and Paul and think they are outstanding together. Just not that into fishing.
On a Gone Fishing note Ive just finished My Secret History by Paul Theroux, which is apparently Bob's favourite book. Having read it I now know why!
 
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