I don't know what the heck to call this thread!

[Slam_Bradley]

The Book of Ultimate Truths by Robert Rankin.

This book is the stuff of Epics. OK...so that joke is meaningless if you haven't read the book. So what.

Rankin starts his third series in fine fashion. Cornelius Murphy is the stuff of epics and his sojourn to find the Book of Ultimate Truths is a fun Rankinian romp. Interspersed with quotes from The Book itself, it helps us delve in to the mind of the great Hugo Rune.

The cameo by Jim Pooley and the Black Swan were also greatly appreciated.

[CaptainCanada]

Saki or Munro as that was his real was the best book buy i did this year. I bought The Septimus of Brope and other stories collection because i thought Saki was a japanese or asian author as the name sounds looking more world lit authors. But i got subtle, great short story humor writer. That did remind me of the humorous Chesteron stories.

I have not read PG Woodhouse yet but the humor of Saki remind to read him. As he said to have hugely influenced the writing of Woodhouse.

No, Alice Munro.

[Slam_Bradley]

Beware the Curves by A. A. Fair (Earle Stanley Gardner).

Say what you will about the Cool and Lam novels. They tend to be formulaic. There's never any doubt as to how they'll end. This one dipped deeeep in to the arena of Perry Mason.

But there's one positive thing they'll always do. Keep you turning the pages. I literally lost sleep over this book which is a really rare event. I just had to find out what Donald Lam was going to pull next. To be fair, I figured most of this one out about the same time he did. But it was still a page-turner...which about all you can ask for in this type of book.

[CaptainCanada]

Rites of Passage by Sir William Golding

Golding is most famous for Lord of the Flies, of course, but this novel won him the Booker and got the ball rolling on the Nobel. It eventually became a trilogy, but it's self-contained, and touches on a lot of the same themes from Golding's most famous novel: man's inhumanity to man when placed in isolated locations far from "civilization". In this case, it's set onboard a ship making passage to Australia in the 18th (?) century, narrated by a pompous young aristocrat. The first 100+ pages would make you think this was a comedy of manners, but it ends up being a tragedy that coopts the audience onto the side of the bullies and the indifferent.

[Expletive Deleted]

Redshirts by John Scalzi.

There's a spaceship, the Intrepid. It has officers: a dashing risk-taker of a captain, a brilliant alien science officer, a crusty medical officer, a horny Russian navigator, and so on. It also has a lot of other crew members, with an incredibly high casualty rate on away missions that nobody, especially not the officers, seems to notice. Redshirts follows a group of new crew members as they try to figure out why every mission ends in disaster for the grunts (and only the grunts) and how to avoid it themselves.

It's clever. Very clever. Almost insufferably clever, at some points. It starts out incredibly meta with its Star Trek parody and genre-awareness, and it only gets moreso. I enjoyed the hell out of this book, but there's a certain detachment to it. I found myself appreciating what Scalzi was doing, but not really getting invested in the characters or the action.

You can read the first five chapters here, if you're interested.

[Libaax]

No, Alice Munro.

Hehe you tricked me there with the name. Have you heard of Saki?'

By the way are you still reading books of Booker,Nobel winners ? Or just reading your own choices of mainstream authors ?

[Gothos]

Just finished rereading Collins' great mystery novel THE MOONSTONE. It's a good mystery with a fair amount of wit, and not nearly as "heavily" written as other Victorians like (obviously) Collins' buddy Dickens.

[CaptainCanada]

By the way are you still reading books of Booker,Nobel winners ? Or just reading your own choices of mainstream authors ?

Still doing that. I take breaks from it, but right now I'm definitely in an active phase. I've got a couple on the go.

[Surtur]

Recently I read the first 7 books of the "Nightside" series by Simon R. Green. Have to say I enjoyed them a lot, though I did think some were a bit too short. Don't like it as much as Dresden Files, but still a good series.

I'd be curious if someone ever made a tv series based on the Nightside.

[Rory426]

John Dies at the End by David Wong

Absolutely incredible. The best work of fiction in any media I've enjoyed in a long while.

[Gothos]

'm rereading PHANTOM OF THE OPERA for the first time in many years. I'm surprised how often the Phantom appears, sans mask or any other disguise, in the early chapters. I think the idea in Leroux's mind was to make the reader wonder whether or not the "Angel of Music" was really the ghost of Christine's father returned to life somehow. I don't think any of the film versions have Erik show himself off so much, given that this would spoil the big unmasking scene with Christine.

[Roquefort Raider]

John Dies at the End

Hey! SPOILERS, dammit!!!

[Rory426]

Hey! SPOILERS, dammit!!!

Haha don't shoot the messenger!!

[Ilash]

Wow, how have I missed this thread! It's definitely a great way to get recommendations.

Anyway, here are the last few books I've read with some thoughts.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera: An intriguing novel in that I thought its philosophical musings were fairly interesting but I prefer more characterization and old fashioned narrative in my novels.

Ubik by Philip K Dick: One of Dick's best regarded novels but it's not quite up to his best as far as I'm concerned. I found the first half quite difficult to get into but as it goes on and it starts to really embrace Dick's fascination with paranoia and the nature of reality, it really became a brilliantly demented scifi thriller.

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold: Really liked this one. A premise so great that you can't believe that it hasn't been used endlessly over the years but, unless I'm missing something it hasn't. Like The Time Traveller's Wife though, the best thing about it is that it uses a science/speculative fiction plot to create a truly emotionally gripping narrative with very well drawn characters.

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen: Well, the first 200 pages anyway. I got to that point and just decided that there was no way in hell that I wanted to spendanother 400 pages with these massively annoying, unlikable characters.

The Woman In Black by Susan Hill: Not as scary as I hoped but a really well crafted and moody ghost story nonetheless. I'm very interested to see how it has been translated to screen when the film version finally comes out here next month.

Currently reading Never Let Me Go and loving it but then I loved the film and have really enjoyed the other two Ishiguro books I've read (Nocturnes and The Remains of the Day) so that's hardly surprising.

[Ilash]

The Book of Ultimate Truths by Robert Rankin.

This book is the stuff of Epics. OK...so that joke is meaningless if you haven't read the book. So what.

Rankin starts his third series in fine fashion. Cornelius Murphy is the stuff of epics and his sojourn to find the Book of Ultimate Truths is a fun Rankinian romp. Interspersed with quotes from The Book itself, it helps us delve in to the mind of the great Hugo Rune.

The cameo by Jim Pooley and the Black Swan were also greatly appreciated.

Yeah, that's a great one. Is it just me though,or have his more recent novels not quite been up to snuff?