Topic: Books You're Currently Reading?

@HallowMoonshadow I hope you enjoy!! I've read the first couple of discworld books and then a lot of the guards series and a couple of miscellaneous ones (including one about a discworld post office that was pretty good) . RIP your spare time if you read them all, pratchett might be one of the most prodigious popular writers out there! As a proud Scotsman, his line about "you can take our lives, but you will never take our freedom", being one of the worst conceived battle cries of all time when you really think about it, still makes me chuckle to this day.

@R1spam Have you read the Tiffany Aching books with the Nac Mac Feegles? As a Norwegian I'm curious as to whether a Scotsman would find them hilarious or just trite (or something in between). I love them, personally, but they lean heavily into stereotypes.

@HallowMoonshadow Should you decide to forego reading the entire series, I would recommend you check out the Death books. I remember them being among my favourites way back when, Reaper Man and Soul Music in particular. https://www.goodreads.com/series/109516-death

Regarding Terry Pratchett and Discworld, I've been introducing my kids to it recently. We started by reading The Amazing Maurice and then watched the film adaptation. We've now also watched Going Postal and the first part of The Colour of Magic and it's reminded me just how good TP's sense of humour was. Can't wait to get into the rest of the books with them at some point. They do seem really fascinated with the idea of turtle flying through space

@render Ah, that's right, I forgot about the Maurice adaptation. Is it any good?

And big kudos for passing great literary works on to the next generation, you're doing Offler's work

@FuriousMachine I haven't but might have to give them a look! You have to give people some latitude with the odd stereotype, especially with comedy but it depends how one note it gets. I confess to being completely fed up with the stereotypes that often surround Scotland in media, which typically degenerate into it being a hard bitten grim place (see some of my earlier comments around Shuggie Bain in this thread) or voicing dwarves in fantasy (I'm looking at you Witcher). Any Norwegian stereotypes get on your nerves?

@FuriousMachine I thought they did a good job with Maurice, although having watched it directly off the back of reading the book you can definitely see where they changed things. One of the main characters from the book wasn't even featured in the film and some of the other changes look like they were made for time reasons, which I can appreicate.

The kids said they enjoyed them both but probably enjoyed the film more because it bought the characters to life. That is probably more down to my ineptitude at giving them a voice when I've read them the book though.

It's actually quite enjoyable passing things on to them. They are actually amazingly receptive to a lot of stuff that I sometimes think will be above them in terms of ability to understand. I think it will be a while before I'll be able to read them some Ian Banks though 😂

@R1spam Yeah, and Pratchett was typically very good at leveraging stereotypes for good satire/comedy, which is why I'd be interested in hearing your take if/when you've checked them out.

As for Norwegian stereotypes, we're not really that heavily represented in media, so there's not much out there to tire of. Of course, the blonde/blue-eyed, naïve and linguistically challenged Scandinavian is somewhat annoying, but whenever such a type shows up (especially in Hollywood) it is more often than not our mortal enemies the Swedes that are portrayed rather than Norwegians.
I did enjoy Kristofer Hivju's nature-loving doofus in Cocaine Bear; probably one of the most accurate portrayals of a Norwegian I have ever seen

@render Kids today... give them one professionally acted animated adaptation and all of a sudden mom or dad's reading voice isn't good enough anymore

Will definitely check out Maurice, then. I'm not familiar with Banks, but having looked him up on Goodreads I think you're right in wanting to hold off a bit on that type of prose for the kids, yeah

I've now finished The Witcher - Time of Contempt. I liked the previous novel in the series, Blood of Elves, but I liked this one better. The first one had a couple of sections that really dragged on, but this one had better pace, I think. I gave it four stars (of five) in my Goodreads review.

Now I'm continuing my "World of Bosch" project with the Harry Bosch novel "Nine Dragons" by Michael Connelly. I'm about halfway through and I'm enjoying the change of scenery for this one. The Bosch novels are typically good, solid reads and this one seems no different

Finished "Nine Dragons", the Bosch novel by Michael Connelly and I really, really enjoyed it. A very fast read and one that shakes Harry's world to the core. I gave it five stars in my Goodreads review.

Now I've started "The Ferryman" by Justin Cronin. Cronin's "The Passage" series is one of my all-time favourites, a post-apocalyptic dystopian tale where vampires rule the world. Imagine my surprise, then, when "The Ferryman" opens in a utopia. A change of pace for Cronin? Well, maybe not, as the first part of the book is titled "The Last Beautiful Day"

Just finished "The Ferryman" and it didn't manage to live up to my somewhat high expectations. As I mentioned previously, the author's "The Passage" series is one of my absolute favourite sci-fi series, so this one had a lot to live up to.

While it's still a good sci-fi story quite well told, my main problem has to do with the use of a storytelling device I dislike quite a lot (massive spoilers: There's a variation of "it was all a dream" at play here) and also that it turns into a more interesting story just as the novel comes to an end. These issues are highly subjective, naturally, so your mileage may vary. I gave it 3.5 stars in my Goodreads review.

Now I'm continuing my decades long Discworld project, as I'm starting the penultimate entry in the series, "Raising Steam". It's a Moist von Lipwig novel and I've enjoyed the previous two books with him quite a lot (primarily due to Vetinari's large role in the events) so excited for this one

@FuriousMachine that's a shame that the book didn't quite hit the mark for you. Discworld is something I need to get back into. I read Colour of magic back in my early years at secondary school and have fond memories of the Truckers animation on CITV.

Just finished reading The Scottish Enlightenment by Arthur Herman which has got me thinking about my own family origins, (I feel a new hobby coming on 😂).

Next up I have The Canary Keeper and then The Secret Chapter, (library books) even though I have a backlog of stuff I actually own to get through!

@MightyDemon82 You should definitely consider jumping back in to Discworld series, at least to see if you'll still enjoy them. Tons of great stuff in there You might want to consider revisiting Colour of Magic and the jumping straight into The Light Fantastic (which I think is better), considering that the latter can be seen as almost a direct continuation of the former (the rest of the books in the series are standalone and can be read in almost any order). To be fair, it's been maybe 25 years since I read those two, so I may be misremembering, though.

"The Canary Keeper", is it the one by Clare Carson you're referencing? (I sort of assumed, due to the Scotland connection there). Regardless, looks interesting, so my reading list grew again

I could only find one titled "The Secret Chapter", so I assume it's the one in the "Invisible Library" series you're talking about? I'm getting YA vibes from that, would that be correct? That's not a negative in my opinion, by the way (I know some look down their noses at YA literature).

@FuriousMachine You are right about both. They were just random picks, as I was in a rush at the library. The Canary Keeper seemed like a good one and the other I've found out is a part of a YA series. I'll read it anyway since I have it!

@MightyDemon82 Cool, a good way to stumble over great books, that

Looking forward to hearing what you think

Currently trying to motivate myself to read more, after slacking off for the last year or so. I started on 'The Jagged Orbit' by John Brunner.
An early chapter ended with: "It isn't that he's crazy. Maybe he never had been crazy. We just don't understand the peculiar way in which he is sane."
And that line made me remember why I love books.

@sorteddan Love that! Book is added to my reading list on the strength of that quote alone

Saddened to hear of the passing of Cormac McCarthy. I’ve been slowly working through his books so thankfully i have plenty of Cormac left. I often struggle to connect with a lot of books but his writing and characters hit the spot. R.I.P.

Though I've never read any McCarthy myself, it's always sad when a true luminary passes. Thought I'd add a couple of his books to my reading list. Any recommendations on good books to start with?