What are you reading now

[pete]

I just started the 'A Secret History of the IRA' & potential is good so far.

[Docboy]

Good book, enjoyed all the more cos one of the participants lives on my road. Myself I'm currently reading the Cosa Nostra, a history on the sicilian mafia, excellent background to the whole thing.

[Mad Moose]

I just started the 'A Secret History of the IRA' & potential is good so far.

Richard English I think. Read it a long time back but things got bad for me so I put it away. Never got to finish it.

I only ever read history, travel and autobiography. Just finished John B Keane's Bodhran Maker. Relatively light reading was required and now I'm reading Kaplin's Balkan Ghosts.

Brendan

[paul_oshea]

this thread.

[beautifulrock]

Reading "The Westies" a history about the Hells Kitchen American Irish gang. Brutal stuff carried out by all, interesting though

[pete]

Have just finished 1st Grisham novel (only book lying around at home) i ever read & fairly easy going. Can see why popular but not very challenging.

[hamish]

Just finishing Michael Moore's "Will they ever trust us again?".About to start Bill Maher's "Does anybody have a problem with that?"

[liam88]

'The Killing Anniversary'-Ian St. James. Good read-especially if you like Geffery Archer 'Kane and Able'/'Prodical daughter' sage style. Follows 4 men in Ireland from their childhood right through. All linked in desire for revenge. Starts in 1922 so covers an especially interesting part of our history with Free state, the North, involvment in the war etc.
Not particularly challenging but very well researched and historically accurate-good to read on the bus and before bed. The odd slower part but most keeps you wanting to pick it up again whenever you can.

For those of you who liked 'A Secret History of the IRA' -I havn;t red it myself but recently read 'Black Operations: the Scret War Against the Real IRA'- documentarty style written by a man who lost his son in Omagh and a journalist. Not much groundbreaking stuff but covers it all in great depth. You need a head for names and a strong interest in the subject.

[pineapple stu]

Just finished The Miracle of Castel di Sangro. Remarkable story told by a very annoying person. It speaks volumes about the story that it manages to win out over all the Americanisations in the book!

[hamish]

Yeh, P.Stu. - see it featured in last Sunday's Observer Sport Monthly as one of the top sports books. McGinnis is hard to take but what I liked about him was his almost childlike love of the game, a new convert as it were. His style was irrating though, agreed.

[Jim Smith]

Just finished Anne Applebaum's GULAG - a history. A frightening read on the ability of humans to be cruel, careless and plain stupid. Imagine being charged, tried, convicted and sentenced to 20 years hard labour for blowing up a bridge that never actually existed....madness.

[Macy]

I just started the 'A Secret History of the IRA' & potential is good so far.
Excellent book.

Don't tend to read novels, more non-fiction, but Grisham's are okay for easy reading about lawyers...

Not really reading anything at the moment, except DIY reference books :eek:

[Corky]

Just finished 'Hells Angels' by Hunter S. Thompson. Great insight into biker culture in 60's America. Hunter S. is a bit of a lunatic himself but comes across as very likeable. Ive just started 'Shadows of the Wind' by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. So far its been excellent, unusual story based around books and set in Barcelona after WW2. Ordered 'The Miracle of Castel di Sangro' and 'Theres only One Red Army' after they were recommended in a previous thread - looking forward to both. :)

[Dublin12]

Goldfinger-Ian Fleming,easy reading,good story,better than the film.

[tiktok]

Reading 'Hegemony or Survival' by Noam Chomsky.
Basically it's a critique of American foreign policy from the late 1950s to the present, for anyone not familiar with Chomsky.

Just finished 'Star of the Sea' by Joseph O'Connor.
Highly recommended.

[the 12 th man]

just finished back to back harlen cobens and now reading "blowfly" by patricia cornwell.

[Dublin12]

I'm going on holidays soon,can anyone recommend a good read that I can take with me,something easy on the head like.

[fosterdollar]

I'm going on holidays soon,can anyone recommend a good read that I can take with me,something easy on the head like.

Last summer i read The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night and one of Ross O'Carroll Kelly's while on holidays. Perfect for light, humourous reading.

[Paulie]

I'm reading "On Another Man's Wound" by Ernie O'Malley. It's the story of his part in the Irish conflict from 1916-1921. While it paints a clear picture of the country at the time, of the mindset of the people and of what it would have been like to be around then, he tends to contradict himself sometimes when giving factual information which is a bit irritating. Also, the punctuation at times is quite poor which can mean having to reread a sentence 2 or 3 times to make sure you are interpreting it correctly. I'll stick with it for the time being though.

[Neish]

Reading "The Stone Rosses" by John Robb at the moment good book which give a detailed history of the band. Would recomend it to any Rosses fan.

Before that I was reading "A Million little peices" by James Frey. One of the best books I read in a long time. It describes the writters struggle to get clean from several types of drug in his own way not adopting the so called 12 steps. When he was admitted to rehab at the age of 23 he was the youngest ever to enter the program with one of the longest addiction lists. The scene where he describes having to get dental work with out any anesthesia make you cringe

Would recomend it to anyone

[drummerboy]

Just read a novel by Sebastian Barry’s Far Far Away . Its about young Irish teenager who signs up in 1914 in the British Army to free Belgium in the Great War. Its not a bad read, if a little cliched. Paints the picture of a very confusing time for Irishmen in the British army as they go away heroes and come back to a completely different Ireland, like forgotten men.

[GavinZac]

i'm reading "the resteraunt at the end of the universe" by douglas adams, sirhamish sent it to me :D

i should really be reading my college textbooks, ive a SAD exa m tommorrow morning :(

[holidaysong]

I just started the 'A Secret History of the IRA' & potential is good so far.

Read that last month, thought it was excellent.

I'm reading "Gigantic - Frank Black & Pixies Biography".. Legend of a musician..

[Dotsy]

Just finished Anne Applebaum's GULAG - a history. A frightening read on the ability of humans to be cruel, careless and plain stupid. Imagine being charged, tried, convicted and sentenced to 20 years hard labour for blowing up a bridge that never actually existed....madness.

Read it a couple of years ago. Good book but I found it hard going to stick with it.

Reading Ghost Wars - A secret History of the CIA. It deals with the CIA's involvement in Afganistan from the start of the Soviet invasion until 2001. IT amazed me to find out just how long the CIA were tracking and trying to kill Osama before 9/11 and how many pointers they had that AL Queda were interested in using commercial aircraft as missiles.

[Mad Moose]

I'm going on holidays soon,can anyone recommend a good read that I can take with me,something easy on the head like.

Depend's where your going. I went to the Balkan's last year and so while their which a natural interest in history and particularly that of the Balkan's I read a book before I went just to get a feel for the place.Its always important you don't get led to the places most frequented by creating your own journey. Scary as that seemed in my instance.

I'll be heading to Nottingham for a game in the new season so naturally since I haven't got a round to it i'll take the Lonely Planet's Travel Guide Europe and likely 'Cloughie'. Not that Forest will be in Europe anytime soon. I guess I just like to have an insight into the place I may travel to.

I would really like to go to Peru and Chile I reckon i will do so in the future.I've read quite a bit on the places I'd like to go.Just haven't got away just yet.

B

[hamish]

i'm reading "the resteraunt at the end of the universe" by douglas adams, sirhamish sent it to me :D

i should really be reading my college textbooks, ive a SAD exa m tommorrow morning :(
Hey GavinZac = glad it arrived. Had an unbelievable job getting someone to bring it to post office.
Now, Corky Boy, put that book down RIGHT NOW and get back to yer study or I'll be round with a large stick and beat the hole off ya!!!
:D :D :D

[hamish]

Reading 'Hegemony or Survival' by Noam Chomsky.
Basically it's a critique of American foreign policy from the late 1950s to the present, for anyone not familiar with Chomsky.

Just finished 'Star of the Sea' by Joseph O'Connor.
Highly recommended.
You just reminded me tiktok, I've three Chomsky books - must get round to reading them. :o

[Bluebeard]

Juggling a couple of books at the mo, might get back to reading them soon.

The Middle Mind - how consumer culture turned us into the living dead is one, can't remember the author - it's a take on how there is a dearth of imagination in politics, entertainment and academia in US life owing to the rush to mass produce - somewhat applicable here in Ireland. Enjoying it, his style is delightfully bitter.

Blinded by the Light a play by Dermot Bolger - I'm meant to be doing the lights for it, so I'm meant to be reading it. Currently just read page one - very promising so far ;) I like a few of his plays, so I'm looking forward to sitting down and reading it properly.

Hedda Gabler a play by Henrik Ibsen - ditto, but I have read it before and done the lights for it not 10 months back, so that one is a real skim job. Cracker of a play though - really cuts through you in a good translation.

Ulysses by some dead white Dub - coming around to bloomsday, so I generally start reading and re-reading chunks at this time of year. SOme of it I love, other parts I find tedious and tiresome.

Don Quixote by Cervantes. Currently re-reading the first and greatest novel, in the new American translation, seeing as it turned 400 this year, hence the earlier trip to La Mancha. My favorite novel. An, by the way, the whole windmills thing lasts a grand total of one page!

[tiktok]

My favorite novel. An, by the way, the whole windmills thing lasts a grand total of one page!

I share your pain. :(
'Gulliver's travels' is one of my favourites.

them - "is that the one where the tiny people tie down the giant?" :rolleyes:
& me - "yes, but other stuff happens too"

[Cosmo]

Not a great book reader but read the odd one - prefer factual stuff myself or true stories.

Would be interested in reading about someones struggle to beat the booze? Any recommendations :confused: ?

Btw also read a secret history of the ira - would recommend it big time

[Fair_play_boy]

Two nights into the da Vinci Code. Great read. Real page turner. Short snappy chapters, perfect for bed time reading.

[ken foree]

have to say the fantastic four anthology was great recently!

[Drumcondra Red]

Two nights into the da Vinci Code. Great read. Real page turner. Short snappy chapters, perfect for bed time reading.

Read all 4 of Dan Drown's books, a lot of people don't like him but I really enjoyed them, I think Angels and Demons is slightly better then The Da Vinci code though!

[Sheridan]

Hedda Gabler a play by Henrik Ibsen - ditto, but I have read it before and done the lights for it not 10 months back, so that one is a real skim job. Cracker of a play though - really cuts through you in a good translation.
Not read that, enjoyed A Doll's House (is that still running at the Abbey? Dr. Rank and I are kindred spirits) and The Lady from the Sea.

One book I'd recommend to anyone without hesitation is John Berger's and our faces, my heart, brief as photos. A slim volume of around 100 pages, but containing breathtaking insights into art, exile and nature (amongst other topics), interspersed with snatches of, frankly, less than inspiring verse.

I'm no aficionado of visual art, but it's impossible not to be moved by Berger's passionate advocacy of Caravaggio and Van Gogh (for whom, Berger claims, the act of painting was directly analogous to the labour of the peasantry he depicted.) Unfortunately, the entire work is let down somewhat by a woefully bathetic final sentence ("With you I can imagine a place where to be phosphate of calcium is enough" :eek: :confused: )

[jofyisgod]

I just finished Servants of The People by Andrew Rawnsley, a really good book about the workings of New Labour, and the relationship between Brown and Blair.

Currently reading the new Artemis Fowl book :D , i just find them to be really imaginative and fun. Makes a change from Machiavelli for Politics at school :( .

[hamish]

[QUOTE=jofyisgod]I just finished Servants of The People by Andrew Rawnsley, a really good book about the workings of New Labour, and the relationship between Brown and Blair.



Must check that book out - he writes a great article in each Sunday's Observer.

[sylvo]

Nearly finished '' Robert Emmet the making of a legend'', and have got ''The ''Emmet rising in Kildare'' waiting to read next.

[exile]

just read shantaram by by gregory david roberts true story about an ussie on the run in india in the 80's and just fininshed bird song by sebastian faulks real melencholy stuff about ww1

[Ruairi]

i read fight club a few weeks back, excellent stuff.. and for some reason i'm reading the scripts from Red Dwarf series 8....

highbrow stuff indeed

[tonycuna]

Reading "Three musketeers" by Dumas.. Really a great book, wonderful pace during the story..

Just finished "Idle thoughts of an idle fellow" an "Three men in a boat", both by Jerome Klapka Jerome. Extraordinary books in my opinion! :) :rolleyes:

[TheOneWhoKnocks]

The Beast in the Red Forest by Sam Eastland.

Girlfriend got it me for me yonks ago. Only got around to reading it now and I have got to say, I am enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would. Very well written and expertly paced.

[SkStu]

I'm surprised you have a girlfriend. Heh.











;)

[nigel-harps1954]

You guys are making logging in here everyday even more worthwhile. Quality stuff!

[Eminence Grise]

Why did it take me nearly five years to see that SkStu logging in is a perfect Canuck pun???

I wonder if TOWK ever got round to colouring in that book he mentioned... Strange fellow...

FWIW, I finished Robert Harris' The Second Sleep a couple of weeks ago - odd concept; he more or less pulls it off. Elizabeth Strout's Olive Again is just a perfect piece of writing, as was Yuko Tsushima's Territory of Light. Next up... can't decide between Limmy's Daft Wee Stories or getting back to work and reading a load of mildly interesting journal articles for a paper I have to write...

And a few I read over the last five years of this thread's inactivity


Haruki Murakami – Men Without Women. Just brililant - witty, fantastical, acutely observed.
JM Coetzee – Age of Iron. Meh. Underwhelming, but to be fair I've always struggled with post-colonial or post-apartheid writing and Africa. My loss, I suppose.
Peter Hoeg – The Susan Effect. I felt his last couple were obscure just for the sake of it, but this (while it has its moments obscurity and Hoeg showing off) is a pretty fast-paced thriller. Nowhere near Miss Smila's Feeling for Snow, but miles better than The Quiet Girl.
Markus Zusak - The Book Thief. I finally got round to it, and really enjoyed it. Good pacing, the idea of Death speaking directly to the reader builds a sense of impending threat.
Mike McCormack - Solar Bones. If McCormack wrote the phone book I'd hang on every word of it. I met him on a writer's course a couple of years back and had a severe case of groupie fandom!
Donal Ryan - The Spinning Heart. Worth every word of praise it got. One story developing with a different narrator in each chapter. Clever without being overwhelming or confusing, or clever for its own sake.


And several cheap Piccadilly westerns, pulp crime fiction, more than a handful of Biggles books and a lot of short stories!

[passinginterest]

A timely reminder that I need to get back to reading on the bus rather than staring at my phone. I think the last book I read was Jo Nesbo's McBeth, it was grand if nothing overly exciting. Have a good few thing lined up including one of Donal Ryan's that I must have bout nearly a year ago and still haven't started. I got a copy of Paddy Hoolihan's Hooligan for Christmas too (before the podcast controversies), should be an interesting read, despite the stupid things he said on the podcast, he's dedicated a lot of his life since the forced retirement from MMA to working for his community in Tallaght. He's MMA career in itself was fascinating particularly given he was hiding a potentially lethal medical condition for a few years.

[pineapple stu]

A collection of Edgar Allen Poe stories (so no The Raven, which is a poem)

He's very - waffly. Lots of foreign phrases - Latin, Greek, French, German - which surprised me. And most of the stories so far have been about a dead person coming back to life. On to The Murders in the Rue Morgue now though - the first ever detective story - and it's a bit more accessible.

Next in the pile is my own book! Haven't read it since the last proof read in July. Not entirely sure if I'll be able to separate business and pleasure though - I'll probably still be thinking in terms of finding weaknesses with turns of phrase or a word order... Still, something different!

[Eminence Grise]

Good luck reading your own work! I've two that I have to use regularly, and picking them up is equal part pleasure and grimace! Not to mention Gaiman's first law... All I want to do is leave them on the shelf and dust them off once in a while!

Poe is very good. The Cask of Amontillado is a favourite but you're right that he has a tendency to go on. Nice and gothic, though. Have you ever read Saki's stories? A bit later and lighter, but still occasionally dark behind an Edwardian facade.

[John83]

I'll do a bit of a dump of my best of what I read in 2019:


Africa: A Biography of the Continent, John Reader. It takes a while to get a sense of where this is going, because it's so crazily ambitious that it keeps changing genre. From geology to palaeontology to prehistory to history, this tells the story of the whole continent. Eventually, it settles down to the story of European colonialism (including slavery) and its devastating cultural and socio-political impact on Africa. It's an odd book, but I feel it's filled a big hole in my knowledge of the world in general.
One Night in Dudelange, Kevin Burke. This has been discussed elsewhere, so I'll just say this zips along and is a fun and essential read for anyone on this site.
1453: The Holy War for Constantinople & the Clash of Islam & the West, Roger Crowley. I've read one of Crowley's each year for the past few years. He writes wonderful narrative history which seems to have reassuring scholarly underpinnings to make it feel like some of the most enjoyable education I've ever taken. He seems to particularly love sieges, and this is no different. You'll have learned in school that the Roman empire fell in the 400s, but the Eastern half, centred on Constantinople, remained a power for another thousand years until the Ottomans took it and made it Istanbul. This is the story of a pale shadow of the old city defending mighty old walls with too few men from a huge army. It takes in the historical context, the regional politics, the characters of the leading characters, the mood of the city, and weaves them into a thrilling story full of twists and turns.
The Rape of Nanking, Iris Chang. This is the story of the Japanese occupation of Nanjing (the spelling has changed) during what we call WWII. The story is vile, almost unreadable at times, but full of good people too - one of the heroes of the piece is a German nazi party member - a sort of Schindler figure who did what he could locally before smuggling film to Germany and being told by the Gestapo to stop public lectures and shut the **** up about what the Japanese were up to. The author, an American daughter of Chinese immigrants, strikes a good balance of statistics for scale and more narrative elements.
Caesar: Life of a Colossus, Adrian Goldsworthy. I mostly knew Caesar as a figure from the Shakespeare play. (It was on the Junior Cert back in the day.) Goldsworthy really brings him to life, and paints a picture of the political structure and machinations that lead him to breaking tradition, and crossing the Rubicon to march his legions on Rome. Several key battles in his career are also described in a lively and easy to follow fashion.

[pineapple stu]

Poe is very good. The Cask of Amontillado is a favourite but you're right that he has a tendency to go on. Nice and gothic, though. Have you ever read Saki's stories? A bit later and lighter, but still occasionally dark behind an Edwardian facade.
No, never read Saki. My reading pile is about 3 feet tall - should keep me going for this year and a bit of next - but I'll him to a list on Amazon and might have a goo when I'm next buying.

Managed to solve the Rue Morgue story before the big reveal; always nice when that happens. :) You can tell it's the start of a genre; the story isn't as fleshed out as a Holmes or a Poirot story, but enjoyable nonetheless.

[ForzaForth]

A book that I've just finished and enjoyed greatly is Paul Rouse's, The Hurlers, which describes the early history of the GAA and particularly the first hurling final of 1888. Not too many references to the games of the "shoneen," but the text flows very well and I thought his writing was impressive. From a Wexford perspective, there are many references to Patrick Prendergast (PP) Sutton of Oulart, who was an important sports journalist with the "Sport" newspaper and more or less documented the early history of the GAA. He also became essentially the national handicapper and judge at sports events across the country. Unfortunately, he died in his mid-thirties in 1901 from pneumonia and is buried in Oulart. There was a national collection to place a memorial over his grave which was erected in 1904.

Planning to read "One Night in Dudelange" next!