The B&B Book Review - The Bear and Badger

Lord_Griff

Sounds compelling. These leather bound tomes?

davyK

Nope....a paperback set I picked up in a charity shop!! Tellingly, only vol 1 is thumbed. No doubt the previous owner had problems getting through it - I've had several abortive attempts over the years.

Spines are faded quite a bit but it's in excellent nick otherwise. Hardback editions are pricey as far as I can make out. This is a classy edition though - printed on that really thin high quality paper. Plenty of maps and tables to look at as well.

Lord_Griff

Nice find.

Lord_Griff

Reminds me when I found 1 million mint condition Folio society books in Oxfam.

Gremill

Reading The Ten Thousand Doors of January now, giving myself a break from Daniel Polansky. It's superb, poetic and brilliantly written. Reminds me a lot of Pullman at his best.

acemuzzy

Oryx & Crake 99p on Kindle...

Gremill

acemuzzy wrote:

Oryx & Crake 99p on Kindle...

That's a cracking book.

tigersgogrrr

Gremill wrote:

Reading The Ten Thousand Doors of January now, giving myself a break from Daniel Polansky. It's superb, poetic and brilliantly written. Reminds me a lot of Pullman at his best.

Loved it!

Really pleased to hear Polansky's other work is similar to The Builders too. I'll get around to the Low Town series... eventually.

Gremill

10000 doors continues to amaze. What a great story.

Raiziel

I finished Assassin’s Quest this morning. After reading that and Assassin’s Apprentice in a row I’m full to bursting with medieval low fantasy, and couldn’t possibly manage the third book just yet. But hurrah! just in time for the latest book club book. Started The Narrow Road to the Deep North this afternoon.

Gremill

Gremill wrote:

10000 doors continues to amaze. What a great story.

Finished it. What a book. Up there with my all time favourites.

Vela

Last 1.5 weeks:

The Name of the Rose
An Artist of the Floating World

The Builders
The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

(Probably should have switched the order of 2 and 4, in hindsight).

acemuzzy

That's a lot of book for 1.5 weeks!

poprock

I’m rereading Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential. Picked up a cheap paperback of the annotated edition, which I hadn’t read before. Bourdain revisited the book as an older, wiser man and scribbled notes alongside the text.

It was already a bona fide classic but the notes take it to another level. Glad I double dipped on this after so many years.

Coincidentally, Netflix UK have just put the entire collection of Parts Unknown back on air so I think I’ll dive back into that again once I reach the end of the book.

acemuzzy

£3 voucher off you spend £10 at the Kindle store, fyi. (By 11 June, having accepted the offer.)

Gremill

Read 'Recursion' by Blake Crouch, which was bought for me for Christmas. The author is a writer I'd never heard of who has written a shit ton of books that feature the same hero again and again (kind of like Lee Child I suppose?). This one is a one of though.

It starts off as the kind of airport page turner in which the hero, a beaten down NY cop, investigates an unusual incident and his life is never the same again.

But then it goes increasingly mental in a majorly high concept sci-fi way and ends up being unusual, fun, interesting, philosophical and bleak.

Recommended

Vela

Stolen title from Tony Ballantyne.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/556180.Recursion

Gremill

Started reading the new Mark Lawrence book 'The Girl and the Stars' which is set in the same world as the Red Sister series. So far it's pretty good although very similar to that trilogy, which is not a bad thing as it's an interesting and compelling world.

Kernowgaz

Gremill wrote:

Started reading the new Mark Lawrence book 'The Girl and the Stars' which is set in the same world as the Red Sister series. So far it's pretty good although very similar to that trilogy, which is not a bad thing as it's an interesting and compelling world.

I’m loving it.

davyK

Reading "Tales from the Colony Room - Soho's Lost Bohemia" between tilts at Churchill's Second World War Vol. 2 for light relief. This consists of interviews with regulars of a now defunct private Soho drinking club that was the place for Francis Bacon and a collection of various artists and ne'er do wells to drink while the pubs closed in the afternoon as they did in England until '89-90.

Is amusing reading but the hedonism and desolation can be harrowing. Several suicides and drink/drug related deaths and I'm not half-way yet.

Gremill

Kernowgaz wrote:

Gremill wrote:

Started reading the new Mark Lawrence book 'The Girl and the Stars' which is set in the same world as the Red Sister series. So far it's pretty good although very similar to that trilogy, which is not a bad thing as it's an interesting and compelling world.

I’m loving it.

Yeah, me too. It's so similar to RS though, in its cast of characters and new girl against the odds in a strange place theme rusty I've been half worrying it's going to end up a lazy retread - but it's still great fun. He's one of only a few authors that both I and my other half will read everything of.

Raiziel

Just finished I’m Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid. Starts off normal enough, with a couple driving down a desolate road through the night and the snow to have dinner with the boyfriend’s parents. Then things start getting weird. To say any more would be to ruin the story. I thought it was brilliant. Charlie Kaufman is making a movie out of it. I’ll be looking forward to that.

yourfavouriteuncle

Raiziel wrote:

Just finished I’m Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid. Starts off normal enough, with a couple driving down a desolate road through the night and the snow to have dinner with the boyfriend’s parents. Then things start getting weird. To say any more would be to ruin the story. I thought it was brilliant. Charlie Kaufman is making a movie out of it. I’ll be looking forward to that.

Bought. Sounds just my thing.

Raiziel

Hope you enjoy it!

davyK

Completed Tales of the Colony Room.

It's quite bleak this - I was expecting lots of amusing anecdotes related to drunken revelry. They are there but the desolate life these people led is the main feature. The large cast of characters is made further confusing by the use of nicknames - some of which are revealed later on but it's managable -doesn't really get in the way.

What it has done has got me into looking at the work of Francis Bacon - someone whom I knew "about" while not being really aware of his work and style.

His work is quite something. And it's a rabbit hole that leads to Lucian Freud - some work of his has intrigued me in the past. Think I remember some posts here actually showing some of his paintings.

Still ploughing on with Churchill's WW2 (The Fall of France - post Dunkirk now).

Going to tackle Wanderer next by Sterling Hayden - looks to be a interesting one - was put onto this after sampling Mubi and watching a doc about him.

Lord_Griff

Colony room , check

davyK

Just read Ibsen's Ghosts. Was loitering on my Kindle for years. It's a play so it doesn't take long to read.

My oh my what a laugh a minute that is!!!

Kept me reading though - it must be quite a thing to see performed by actors at the top of the tree.

Also made a start on Wanderer by Sterling Hayden. He's no slouch with words. Real punchy stuff - echoes of Hunter S Thompson. It really hits you up the face right from the get go. One can see him bashing this out on a typewriter with gusto. Looking forward to this now.

EvilRedEye

New Tolkien book out next year, The Nature of Middle Earth, edited by Carl F Hostetter. Will include late and previously unpublished writings by JRR Tolkien on the nature of Middle Earth, both metaphysical and natural.

How many people have to die before they stop publishing new Tolkien books???

Gremill

Reading 'Gideon the Ninth' and it's great fun.

cockbeard

Always one more ERE

I recall reading something a couple of years ago where some woman wrote about Kullervo, and it was terrible. No improvement on the either folk poem original, nor anything actually written by Tolkein

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