DID WE ALL FORGET TO CARRY ON READING BOOKS?

Agreed.

Read Alan Johnson's first autobiographical book and have now started the second one. Always liked him but, until now, had no idea how incredibly difficult his childhood had been for a number of reasons.

Having discovered how tough his early years were, I'm interested to understand his journey into politics.

Well shit, I am buying the Rob Halford Biography instead...

I am quite interested to see how his childhood was? Not sure it was as quite fucked up as Geddy Lee's but hey ho...

Chicago: Owner of 5850 books.

Finally accepted I don't have enough time / make enough time to read very much anymore. So have downloaded the audiobook of The Trading Game and just started listening to it.

Recently finished the Maigret books by Georges Simonsen. Enjoyed all 75 of them; not too long and pretty satisfying as who dunnits. It also makes a nice change to read about detectives in different systems. I wonder if anyone has written a detective novel about Saudi Arabia (and survived).

Anyway, continuing the crime theme, I'm now on book four of the Philip Marlowe books by Raymond Chandler. A bit of LA Noir; quite a gritty read and full of wise guys. It's also interesting to read about how LA was in the 1940s and think about how much it has changed since then. Some good plot twists and the relationships between the police, private detectives and the underworld makes for a good read.

Finished The Bee Sting which, despite what Jim7 says, is a wonderful book. You get used to the lack of full stops, which in any case only applies to a smallish section of the book. Honest. Give it another go. It's worth it.

Sounds a bit like Cormac McCarthy's style. I know it's supposed to be a part of the art, but it doesn't make it a good read in my eyes. No quotation marks for speech, no capitals and barely any punctuation. I guess McCarthy is trying to give the sense of how the narrative is actually spoken, but if I want that I'll get a audio book. Many books are written in dialect, Irving Welsh for example, and although challenging at times due to colloquialisms, they are generally readable without having to re-read the same section multiple times (whether they are any good is a subjective question of course).

I know prepositions are used less frequently in American English, but that is easy to get used to and is commonplace throughout North America and increasingly in English around the World due to US cultural influence.

To clarify the issue with punctuation in The Bee Sting... there are caps, so you can work out where sentences start and finish pretty easily. And it by no means involves the entire book.

Got it. Not like McCarthy where it's the whole book, and as I recall, few caps or full stops and no speech marks(although it has been over fifteen years since I tried reading him).

I went on a Chandler kick a few years back. I really enjoyed them. More than Hammett who was okay but I didn’t feel the desire to go back to.
I read a fair bit of James Ellroy around the same time and also enjoyed it. That era of L.A. is fascinating.

The Bill Browder book - "Red Notice", is incredibly moving. It almost starts off like a comedy and ends up a Greek Tragedy. If anybody doubts how awful Russia can be just read this book. I also have his follow up; "Freezing Order", and look forward to getting into it.

Fabulous.

Chicago: HIstory Buff.

On your recommendation I’ve now purchased this from Amazon for the princely sum of 99p

Jeff goes out and buys a second rocket.

Excellent book, thanks for recommending. As someone who has (had) Russian business partners and visited Russia a few times in the noughties it’s reinforced even more what a close shave I might’ve had at least a couple of times (!)

Currently reading through the John Le Carre novels.
Finished the Smiley series; Tinker, Tailor, Soldier , Spy and The Spy who Came in from the Cold being the two best IMHO. I can see why it would be tough to make a TV series or movie from them as there is a lot of descriptive text and waiting going on. Le Carre does have a certain way of writing which I find enjoyable: "A week later she gave her maidenhead to a labourer in a potting shed". I don't recall seeing maidenhead used in a book before.

Anyway, they are lengthy books, which I enjoy, and they are good reads. Just don't expect lots of James Bond style spy action as it is much closer to the reality than fiction.

Oh boy. Is this because you eschew books that only have pictures?