Bred Any Good Rooks Lately?

Kurben

FlakeNoir said:

Kurben said:

FlakeNoir said:

Kurben said:

Read while i was away Moriarty by Anthony Horowitz. Quite good. It is one of his Holmes books (the other was The House Of Silk) and he does it well. This deals with what really happened at the Reichenbach falls and why. It starts directly after both Holmes and Moriarty supposedly died there in Doyles short story The Final Solution. This is not really a pastiche, it stays true to the characters but Horowitz London is a darker and grimmer London than the one Doyle painted in his stories. Usually i don't really like authors who pick up a classic character or setting but this is well done and enjoyable.

Anthony Horowitz writes a lot of great YA stories. My kids loved him. 

This is definitely not YA. I have only read his more grown up crime stories. The House Of Silk, Moriarty and the freestanding and very good The Magpie Murders

Sorry Kurben... I didn't mean to suggest these ones were YA, was meaning he also writes great stories for younger people too. 

Nothing to apologize for Flakes.... I just wanted it to be clear that these were in an other cathegory. YA well done is often very readable in a wide age spectre.

GNTLGNT

.....seriously?????......

FlakeNoir

GNTLGNT said:

.....seriously?????......

Good god... 

GNTLGNT

....sooooo, back in the day....would we have looked that up under, "Thunder, Nuts" in the card catalog???.....

not_nadine

I was re-reading 'The Long Walk' and at one point Garraty was over-tired and says:
"Read any good books lately?"

Didn't know how this thread came about!

Kurben

Reading George Washingtons Secret Six by Brian Kilmeade about the so called Culper spy ring that he sat in motion and that fed him information about the british. It was also they who alerted him to Benedict Arnolds treason plans in surrendering West Point to the British. We now know the names of most of them (one, a woman is still unknown though theories abound). This is story of them, their fails their successes and the huge impact they had on the revolutions success. Interesting. A bit of american history i dont know much about. I have read several books about the revolution from different perspectives, military, political, biographies over some of the main players and so on but this is mostly new stuff. To me at least.

Kurben

I gotta admit I picked up the above book and nine others at a special summer sale at the second hand bookstore..... OK, i confess, i fell of the wagon but it was 10 books for 2 US dollars which was really too good to miss.

GNTLGNT

....."Hi, I'm Kurben...and I'm a bookaholic"........"Hi Kurben!!"......

Grant87

GNTLGNT said:

....."Hi, I'm Kurben...and I'm a bookaholic"........"Hi Kurben!!"......

I'd be at that meeting too. I'll make the coffee.

GNTLGNT

Grant87 said:

GNTLGNT said:

....."Hi, I'm Kurben...and I'm a bookaholic"........"Hi Kurben!!"......

I'd be at that meeting too. I'll make the coffee.

....I'll be guarding the cookies.....yeah, that's it...."guarding" them......

Grant87

Finished The Lost World by Crichton. Definitely not as good as Jurassic Park, but Crichton set the bar pretty high with that one. 

Starting Upgrade by Blake Crouch, which was just released today. I loved his last two books, Dark Matter and Recursion, so Upgrade is one of my most anticipated new releases for this year. Crouch has become the new Crichton, in my opinion. He's writing some great thrillers based around science and technology. If you haven't checked his books out yet, I highly recommend that you do.

Notaro

Just finished Disillusioned Dreams,  book 3 in the Arizona series. A book about trust, betrayal, loss,  self discovery and the meaning of true friendship.  I really enjoyed it, great job Marsha.

Marsha

Notaro said:

Just finished Disillusioned Dreams,  book 3 in the Arizona series. A book about trust, betrayal, loss,  self discovery and the meaning of true friendship.  I really enjoyed it, great job Marsha.

Thank you so much!

Kurben

Reading the True Crime book "A Rose For Her Grave" by Ann Rule. About a not very nice man, Randy Roth, who married young women, took out a life insurance on them and killed them after a year or so. Always in some kind of accident, a fall, a drowning and so on. He was always very convincingly devastated to local authorities. It is also about the killed women and their life, friends and police involved. Quite good i thought.

Kurben

On the recommendation of Grant i started Dark Matter by Blake Crouch. I earlier read his Wayward Pines trilogy (Pines, Wayward and The Last Town) and Abandon by him and liked them so dont quite know why it was awhile since i read a Crouch book. He was not so very sciency then that i would compare him with Crichton but they were real good thrillers. Made me think more of Harlan Coben if a comparison must be made. So this will be interesting.

GNTLGNT

Kurben

Finished Dark Matter. Good thriller that was in the usual quick pace of crouchs books plus it was obvious that he had read some of Stephen Hawking, Neil Degrasse Tyson or Carl Sagans attempts to explain quantum physics to the ordinary man. Started Recursion by Crouch to see if it is as good.

Grant87

Kurben said:

Finished Dark Matter. Good thriller that was in the usual quick pace of crouchs books plus it was obvious that he had read some of Stephen Hawking, Neil Degrasse Tyson or Carl Sagans attempts to explain quantum physics to the ordinary man. Started Recursion by Crouch to see if it is as good.

I loved Dark Matter, but I thought Recursion was even better.

Kurben

Finished Recursion. Thought Dark Matter was better. A good read though.
Also halfway through The Living Dead by George Romero. The director of the night of the living dead decided to write a book too!! Unrelated to the movie. After his dead author and devoted fan Daniel Kraus finished what he had begun. Its an epic depiction of a zombie apocalypse centered on the fates of several different people trying to survive. A crew trapped on a US Navy Air carrier, Two Morgue doctors that had to flee from their corpse that was just undergoing autopsy, A teenage girl fleeing from her trailer park home on a bicycle, a news crew that locked themselfes in the airing continuing to send news with the zombies knocking on the door and an mildly autistic statician that continues to collect data of the event in her workplace which is a secure bunkerlike place. These are the main players and we switch between them in their tries to survive in a world gone mad. Its almost 800 pages so i have 400 pages left. As a zombie novel i wouldn't rank it on the same level as The Girl With All The Gifts or World War Z which, according to me, is the only two really great zombie novels i've read but not very far from it and better than most. Just to make it clear, i talk about the book World War Z, the movie was a BIG disappointment. 

Kurben

Started The Sentinel by Arthur C. Clarke. A short story collection. Started very strong. It is easy to see why Clarke, Asimov and Heinlein were known as the big 3 in Sf early days. They all debuted in late 30,s to early 40,s together with that times other big names like Frederic Pohl and Theodore Spurgeon. A common thing is that the big 3 all were very good storytellers (Asimov lost a little of his flow i think later on when he tried to bind his Foundation world and his Robot world together in a couple of novels that were rather strained). Early on Sf was very man focused with men having adventures on other planets (Burroughs John Carter books on Mars a good example). One of the men that gave SF vision and a new frame was without a doubt Olaf Stapledon. He thought in a perspective of millions of years back and forwards and he visioned a lot species having great civilizations during that time. He debuted in 1930 and i'm fairly positive was an influence on our big 3 who should have been in their upper teens then. Stapledon was never as good a storyteller as the big 3 but he was a great visionary. Last And First Men (1930) and Starmaker (1937) are my favs among his work. 

GNTLGNT

....never read much Cussler-but needed a cheap and easy read for beach time and this one is surprisingly good....

not_nadine

Just downloaded this one.
I've never read it...

GNTLGNT

....you will be "sucked" in so to speak.....enjoy the read.....

Hedda Gabler

Reread The Illustrated Man. Couldn’t believe how prescient these stories are to today’s world. Crazy mirrored. 

Dog of the South — Charles Portis ( author of True grit. Recommended by Dave Barry). 

Hedda Gabler

@bev vincent — Have you reviewed Fairy Tale yet? I don’t see it on Onyx Reviews but maybe you dropped it somewhere else?