King Silkbeard
Full Member
Reading a history of Serbia, really interesting all about the Balkans & early Chritianity the wars with the Ottomans. Prior to that read a nice short book about the Mali Empire also good.
So in essence you like fiction to read and to propagate?Just got World War Z book by Max Brooks in the post, I am chuffed, read it before and it is good about a global pandemic that hits turning people into zombies. An end of the world dystopian book going across the world seeing how people survive the plague. So like what actually happened with Covid 19, glad I got it.
So in essence you like fiction to read and to propagate?
I'm right back in the maritime blood, guts, and obsession with Ahab, Ishmael, Starbuck, Stubb, Flask and Queequeg in Moby Dick. It must be the ninth or tenth time I've read it and like Tolstoy or Joyce, it gives up a new experience each time. £7.99 for the Penguin Classics Edition in 1988 and I still have it - some value for money.
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For a long read heavily influenced by the styles of Homer, Shakespeare, Milton and the old testament, it's a real tribute to Melville that he keeps the reader gripped throughout the 135 chapters. A true epic.
Meanwhile, I was on a job last month up near Gardiner's Hill and called into the local institution that is McSweeny's shop for a cup of tea. Sat outside, they had a few old books on the table where you sup your beverage. I pulled this one out of the heap, read a few pages and bought it off of Mrs McSweeny for €1. A grand old read - a page-turner with a lot more sophistication than your usual "Cowboy" books. Meyer is no Cormac McCarthy, but this one has me now definitely looking out for his other one - "American Rust"
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That's the book that put Banville on the map. He has a similar middle-aged, tweed and cords-wearing, vaguely ascendancy-associated, somewhat self-loathing male character as a main player in many of his subsequent classics. It's interesting how many of them can be traced back to his depiction of MacArthur in this book.![]()
"The Book Of Evidence" by John Banville. I was interested in reading this after finishing "A Thread Of Violence" a while back.
Just happened across what looks to be a hardback first edition of it for less than a fiver in a second hand bookshop yesterday.
Cast aside my John Grisham holiday read ("The Last Juror" only two chapters in) for now.