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On 4/25/2016 at 10:19 AM, Lemonade said:

Taking a break at the 50% mark. Tough read. Shit book. Reading "Billy" by Pamela Stephenson to cleanse my pallet. It's a biography of Billy Connolly written by his wife who's also a psychologist. It's surprisingly dark.

Finished "Lisey's Story" by Stephen King. Shit. Also Finished "Billy" by Pamela Stephenson, which was good and "The Irish Scissor Sisters" by Mick McCaffrey, which is a true crime book about a famous murder case that happened in Dublin a few years ago.

Now reading "Revolutionary Road" by Richard Yates. I'm only just starting it but its beautifully written so far.

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21 minutes ago, Lemonade said:

Finished "Lisey's Story" by Stephen King. Shit. Also Finished "Billy" by Pamela Stephenson, which was good and "The Irish Scissor Sisters" by Mick McCaffrey, which is a true crime book about a famous murder case that happened in Dublin a few years ago.

Now reading "Revolutionary Road" by Richard Yates. I'm only just starting it but its beautifully written so far.

 

Quote from that Wikipedia article:

"The killing only came to light ten days later when Noor's leg, with a sock on the end, was seen floating in the canal, a few hundred yards from Croke Park. Garda sub-aqua divers retrieved most of the rest of his body in seven parts. Noor's head and penis were never found."

I live just up the canal from where he was murdered and his body parts dumped, though it was before I moved here. Though somewhere around the area his head and dick remain.

Edited by Lemonade
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  • 2 weeks later...

Been reading a lot more this year than I have for a while, I started by re-reading most of the Shannara series after the TV series, some of them are excellent, some seem like Tolkein rip offs, I can see why they didn;t film Sword, they'd probably get sued, but it's enjoyable fluffy fantasy with some interesting characters.

I then went on to finally reading the Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch, I am a fan of Ben's Dr Who stuff and had heard good things about these, and in fact have had them all in hardback for ages, and been to see him talk twice at the Edinburgh Book Festival but still never read them. I really liked them and really looking forward tot the next one. I am also now reading Ben's Remembrance of the Daleks Target Adaptation as well which i'm really enjoying for the extra details he has put in.

I have been buying a few of the new Sherlock Holmes books from Titan as they're written mostly by authors I really like from the Big Finish Dr Who and Torchwood audios, I've really enjoyed the George Mann ones so that lead me onto his Newbury and Hobbes books so I am also halfway through the first one of those.

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  • 2 weeks later...

"Porno" by Irvine Welsh.

Recently put away "Michael Schumacher: The Edge Of Greatness" by James Allen; "Harry Potter & The Philosopher's Stone" by JK Rowling; and "Past St Combs" by Scott G. Buchan. Got a bit stuck on "Revolutionary Road" and put it down for a while. I might return to it but I wasn't really feeling it. I found it a bit dry and slow. Pages and pages of descriptive text, not much dialogue, and nothing really happening. I've seen the film so I know the ending anyway :laughing:

Edited by Lemonade
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20 hours ago, James Broonbreed said:

How was Past St Combs? I think I only read about half of Liquid Kids due to it being a PDF.

Very good, worth a read, although the stuff about his own life in it is more interesting than the actual story. All his stuff is on Lulu.com for £2 for epub, you can convert them to .mobi files for Kindle online for free. 

http://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?contributorId=420185

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm slowly trying to work through all of Stephen King's extensive back catalogue, which does meander across into fantasy a few times. I'm really not a fan of fantasy, I've tried and given up with the Dark Tower series so many times. Currently I'm working through "The Eyes Of The Dragon" which is a tale of a young prince who is being groomed to take over the throne, however the King is murdered by his right-hand man who frames the Prince for it, allowing his much-more easily manipulated younger brother to take over the Kingdom instead. Not something I would usually read, but to my surprise I'm racing through this.

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Because of my weird obsession with keeping records of everything, here's my current Stephen King reading stats:

Novels: 27 / 36    
Novels as Richard Bachman: 6 / 7
Novels with Peter Straub: 0 / 2    
Dark Tower novels: 1 / 9
Short story collections: 6 / 11
Non-Fiction: 0 / 4
Novellas: 0 / 7

Total: 40 / 76

Edited by Lemonade
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I've lagged way behind in my reading due to moving the length of the country and job hunting. Finally cracked back on with the NOFX book and I'm about 2/3 of the way through. Blimey, it is dark as fuck, and that puts it very lightly. They were all involved in some pretty heavy antics back in the 80s. It seems miraculous that they weren't killed, several times over, all of them, especially Erik Sandin. 

Each member writes a chapter at a time, and the next chapter sort of follows on. On a few occasions, what one of them thought happened actually didn't happen, or not how they thought it did. Example, (huge spoiler incoming if you're planning on reading it) Erik Melvin thought that an acquaintance of his, Raymond, a huge, gnarly, dangerous guy who killed people for fun, tried to rape his girlfriend Iris, but Iris told Melvin that she managed to escape. Fat Mike clarifies in the following chapter that she actually was raped, but she didn't want to tell Melvin, because he would try to confront Raymond and then most definitely be killed. The book then states that Melvin didn't find this out until it was put in print in this book.

LA in the 80s sounds like a warzone.

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Readings Dostoyevsky's The Idiot.

Bit of a slog as a transition from night shift to day shift has had me reading it in stots and bangs. About a quarter of the way through, seems like typical Fyodor fare, lots of characters and pompous dialogue. Not quite sure what I'm expecting to happen. Hopefully I can be nearly finished by the time I'm back onshore as this will provide yet another restriction to my reading regimen.

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On ‎14‎/‎07‎/‎2016 at 4:25 PM, Lemonade said:

Because of my weird obsession with keeping records of everything, here's my current Stephen King reading stats:

Novels: 27 / 36    
Novels as Richard Bachman: 6 / 7
Novels with Peter Straub: 0 / 2    
Dark Tower novels: 1 / 9
Short story collections: 6 / 11
Non-Fiction: 0 / 4
Novellas: 0 / 7

Total: 40 / 76

A man after my own heart. He's my favourite author, think I have every book he ever wrote. A couple of years ago I mistakenly thought I had read all of the Dark Tower series, then spotted Son Of Susannah in WH Smith's. So it gave me an excuse to read the whole series again so I could work that one into the sequence.

Right now I'm reading Now and Then by Joseph Heller, more or less about his life as a kid.

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13 hours ago, Trikelops said:

A man after my own heart. He's my favourite author, think I have every book he ever wrote. A couple of years ago I mistakenly thought I had read all of the Dark Tower series, then spotted Son Of Susannah in WH Smith's. So it gave me an excuse to read the whole series again so I could work that one into the sequence.

Right now I'm reading Now and Then by Joseph Heller, more or less about his life as a kid.

I've always struggled with The Dark Tower, I'm not really in to fantasy and it took me a few attempts to get through the first book. I'll finish the series though. One day....

Edited by Lemonade
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I'm not really into fantasy much either, but there is something about the Dark Tower series that got to me. There are hints about some older civilisation, remains of cities etc that made me think of The Stand. Then the characters that appear in one book are the ones who disappeared in Black House. The priest and the street kids Eddie and his brother. it made me realise just what a clever writer Stephen King is, how he had all that going on in his head perhaps years before it actually came about in print.

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2 hours ago, Trikelops said:

I'm not really into fantasy much either, but there is something about the Dark Tower series that got to me. There are hints about some older civilisation, remains of cities etc that made me think of The Stand. Then the characters that appear in one book are the ones who disappeared in Black House. The priest and the street kids Eddie and his brother. it made me realise just what a clever writer Stephen King is, how he had all that going on in his head perhaps years before it actually came about in print.

What are your favourites and least favourites? Of the classics I love Pet Semetary and IT but I also think he's done some of his best stuff in the last ten years. Joyland, 11/22/63, Full Dark, No Stars and Duma Key are all incredible books, I really, really loved Duma Key. I liked Cell as well although I believe it good a pretty lukewarm reception at the time. I've always thought of him as a master storyteller but an average writer, but he's a much, much better writer these days, really layered characters and he can really get you in the feels, as the kids say. There's less horror and more drama in his recent books, especially family stuff I've noticed, which make his characters a lot more sympathetic. A lot of the protagonists in his earlier work are pretty 2-dimensional. That said I was unimpressed with Doctor Sleep which was pretty poor, especially after such a run of amazing books. I wasn't keen on Lisey's Story either, but I think everyone hates that one.

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Have to say I loved Duma key as well and I found Cell particularly gripping. My favourites would have to be It and The Stand I suppose. The Last three have been pretty god as well, although End of Watch was the weakest of the trilogy IMO. From a Buick 8 was pretty good as was Lisey's Story. The Tommyknockers was enjoyable as was The Shining and it's amazing sequel which I can't for the life of me remember the name of! In all honesty I think he is the best author I have ever read. It is great to pick up one of his books from time to time that I haven't read in years and give it another go.

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