Tried to read Tales of the Peculiar (Ransom Riggs) earlier in the week, as my niece recommended it. Some nice ideas but most of it fell flat for me so I only made it through half of the stories. Nipped into a charity shop near work and grabbed a few things, including Blood on the Snow by Jo Nesbo. I recognised the name (I've probably seen TV or film adaptations of his work) but Jesus fucking Christ it was awful. Genuinely one of the worst things I've ever read, and I'm not particularly fussy with pageturners. On par with a Steve Bruce novel.

4. Flowers for Algernon - 8/9
Daniel Keyes
Written as a series of progress reports / diary entries, a pleasant, interesting and somewhat philosophical read. Didn’t expect it to strike emotional chords either, but it did - a rollercoaster of emotions in fact, making me feel sympathy and guilt to hatred to anger and back to sympathy. I suspect most here have read it, but if not, this is highly recommended. It’s classed as sci-fi, which it is, but it’s so much more than that.

The Timewaster Letters - Robin Cooper

Worth it for the best exchanges but the novelty wore off fairly quickly. Very funny on occasion.

Ban for what?! Fucking crazy. Because of some religious philosophising? Because scientists were ‘playing God’?! Americans, pfft.

Lol thats even mor stupiderer

I'm reading A Storm of Swords at the moment and really enjoying it.  Better than first two books.  So far.

tin_robot wrote:

hylian_elf wrote:

4. Flowers for Algernon - 8/9 Daniel Keyes Written as a series of progress reports / diary entries, a pleasant, interesting and somewhat philosophical read. Didn’t expect it to strike emotional chords either, but it did - a rollercoaster of emotions in fact, making me feel sympathy and guilt to hatred to anger and back to sympathy. I suspect most here have read it, but if not, this is highly recommended. It’s classed as sci-fi, which it is, but it’s so much more than that.

Yep, as Raiz says, it's a great book. Yet another classic that some Americans were weirdly keen to try and ban from schools.

Well the library here has 40 copies (spread over the whole county) with 26 available, so people are borrowing it. Hopefully not to burn it.

Anyway, I should be able to pick up a copy next week. I don't really know anything about it so we'll see how I get on with it.

I just finished Child in Time and tbh I'm not sure about that one. There were times where the writing and part of the story clicked and I couldn't put the book down, and there were times where I even struggled with a paragraph. Guess I liked individual story beats but the overall story didn't do much, or more likely I might have missed the meaning / idea. It's all very carefully written and I just admit there were just some parts where I didn't know the exact meaning of a word, and the does seem important in the way this is written. When I enjoyed it I did think it was really good though, I'm glad I read it. Might consider another one of his with a different theme. Suspect I've been slightly misguided by the promise of a haunting and macabre themes and I didn't really feel that. Plus the back of the book promising a great conclusion is also something I had to disagree with.

I did just come from The discomfort of the Evening though, while not written as well, it was an uncomfortable read and that might have influenced how I thought Child in Time was gonna be.

12-18 months after he dies would be my guess.

He says the next book will be next year “(I devoutly hope)”.

It was released 6 years later.

22. Tau Zero (Poul Anderson)
Picked this up on Raz's recommendation and really enjoyed it - its a bit of a head fuck of a concept but it's really well executed and it's amazing to think it was written in 1970 - it hasn't really dated at all.

23. Cthulu Reloaded (David Conyers)
A collection of Lovecraft inspired tales set in the modern world of espionage where a shadowy black-ops unit called Code-89 desperately try to defend Earth from invading horrors from other dimensions. It's absolutely as daft as that sounds and although the writing is (even by the authors admission) not that great (it started as a self published mini series) it's chock full of bonkers ideas, wacky multi-dimensional physics, Shoggoths and shoot outs. I bought the next volume so it can't be that bad.

24. The Space Between Worlds (Micaiah Johnson)
On an Earth where an unspecified environmental catastrophe has left much of the planet toxic and uninhabitable, the multiverse and the means to travel to different versions of reality has been invented. You can only safely travel there if the 'you' at your destination is already dead though, giving rise to the use of individuals whose high risk lifestyles mean that they are likely to have died in other worlds - in short, poor people of colour living outside of the secure walls of the majority white, rich cities. Fantastically written and full of great characters, will definitely be keeping an eye on this author.

Ramble Book is a joy, listened to it over one of the lockdowns and it just made me so happy

26. Cthulu Resurgent (David Conyer)
More Lovecraftian monster nonsense. Unfortunately, despite continuing with some great ideas the writing seems to have actually gotten worse. One of the worst books I've ever read.

Mr. Nobody - Catherine Steadman

Man with no memory turns up on a beach, neuropsychiatrist is called in to investigate. A rec from the wife while I waited for my stuff to turn up. Was pretty good for a while, but once the main character put the pieces together it turned out everything it had been leading up to was ridiculous. Pet peeve: when a book ends with a sample of something else the author has written. I thought this had enough chapters left to dig itself out of the mire, then it just ended. Poor.