Books: Last Book You Read and Rate It

[heatnikki]

Thomas and The Prince - Machiavelli, Niccolò. This is required to read in college and I like it. We even wrote an essay about this book but I found where to buy a college essay and save my time. These guys are professionals in writing and helped me hundreds of times.

 

[Chili]

The spy novelist writes about some of his many interesting life experiences. Not an autobiography just alot of stories from his life as a spy and author. Many interesting encounters with well known figures (Margaret Thatcher, Yasser Arafat, Heads of the KGB, Directors incl Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Kubrick, Sydney Pollack, Actors Richard Burton, Alex Guinness (who used a passage written by Le Carré in his autobiography).

There is a chapter on his father Ronnie he referred to as a 'five star con man'. Accounts of schemes and arrests from several countries. Le Carré would receive requests from all over to bail his father out of trouble.

Hadn't read one of his books before, was familiar with films though of his stories (i.e. The Spy Who Came in From The Cold). He tells some stories of real life people who he developed into characters for his novels, including his dad. Well written, enjoyed it.

 

[Pink Mist]

The spy novelist writes about some of his many interesting life experiences. Not an autobiography just alot of stories from his life as a spy and author. Many interesting encounters with well known figures (Margaret Thatcher, Yasser Arafat, Heads of the KGB, Directors incl Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Kubrick, Sydney Pollack, Actors Richard Burton, Alex Guinness (who used a passage written by Le Carré in his autobiography).

There is a chapter on his father Ronnie he referred to as a 'five star con man'. Accouts of schemes and arrests from several countries. Le Carré would receive requests from all over to bail his father out of trouble.

Hadn't read one of his books before, was familiar with films though of his stories (i.e. The Spy Who Came in From The Cold). He tells some stories of real life people who he developed into characters for his novels, including his dad. Well written, enjoyed it.

Would definitely recommend you check out some of his fiction. He's an absolute master of his craft if you have any interest in spy stories or political thrillers, or even if you're not into those genres he's a must read imo since he takes those genres and elevates them with into literature.

 

[Pink Mist]

Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James

Tracker, a man with a super keen sense of smell, is recruited with a band of mercenaries, including a witch, a giant, and shape-shifting man-leopard, to find a missing boy. Taking place in a fantastical African continent based on African folklore, which was highly original and unique, the story travels across jungles, deserts, and cities to track the missing boy and includes a cast of probably a hundred different characters. The book has been compared as an African based Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit, but I think its fits closer to Ovid’s Metamorphoses due to its sprawling mythology and style. While it is a totally unique book, it is extremely challenging. Not because of the complexity in language, which is beautiful and stylistically interesting, but because of its ultraviolent content. Every single page, and I am not exaggerating here, depicts murder, torture, or rape including men and women, but also towards children and animals. It was a slog to read page after page of endless violence. While the book is by no means short, clocking in at 620 pages in my edition, it took me much longer to read than books of similar lengths due to this content. I knew going in that this book would be violent, as I have read and enjoyed James’ previous novel A Brief History of Seven Killings, but this was too much. Too much grotesque violence that served little to the story. The novel is the first in a planned trilogy which is supposed to tell the same story but from the perspective of different characters in the story, but I think I’ll tap out from reading the next two stories. I barely could finish this one because I was just so exhausted and didn’t care anymore. Great concept for a story but completely wasted potential.

 

[Chili]

Would definitely recommend you check out some of his fiction. He's an absolute master of his craft if you have any interest in spy stories or political thrillers, or even if you're not into those genres he's a must read imo since he takes those genres and elevates them with into literature.

Tinker Tailor, Soldier, Spy is on my to read list. Got the impression that a character in 'A Perfect Spy' is based on his father, so at some point may check that one out too.

 

[robertmac43]

I barely could finish this one because I was just so exhausted and didn’t care anymore. Great concept for a story but completely wasted potential.

Every where I look people either have your thoughts on the book or love it. I fall n the category of absolutely loved this book. I found the setting to be really fascinating and the story gripping.

I read it at the same time as 3 other friends; 1 other loved it and 2 thought it was really tough to get through.

 

[Thucydides]

Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James

Tracker, a man with a super keen sense of smell, is recruited with a band of mercenaries, including a witch, a giant, and shape-shifting man-leopard, to find a missing boy. Taking place in a fantastical African continent based on African folklore, which was highly original and unique, the story travels across jungles, deserts, and cities to track the missing boy and includes a cast of probably a hundred different characters. The book has been compared as an African based Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit, but I think its fits closer to Ovid’s Metamorphoses due to its sprawling mythology and style. While it is a totally unique book, it is extremely challenging. Not because of the complexity in language, which is beautiful and stylistically interesting, but because of its ultraviolent content. Every single page, and I am not exaggerating here, depicts murder, torture, or rape including men and women, but also towards children and animals. It was a slog to read page after page of endless violence. While the book is by no means short, clocking in at 620 pages in my edition, it took me much longer to read than books of similar lengths due to this content. I knew going in that this book would be violent, as I have read and enjoyed James’ previous novel A Brief History of Seven Killings, but this was too much. Too much grotesque violence that served little to the story. The novel is the first in a planned trilogy which is supposed to tell the same story but from the perspective of different characters in the story, but I think I’ll tap out from reading the next two stories. I barely could finish this one because I was just so exhausted and didn’t care anymore. Great concept for a story but completely wasted potential.

hey - great review . I started this when it came out because of the hype it was getting in the book world, but I gave up on it about a third of the way through. I’m glad I’m not the only one who wasn’t a fan.

 

[Pink Mist]

Every where I look people either have your thoughts on the book or love it. I fall n the category of absolutely loved this book. I found the setting to be really fascinating and the story gripping.

I read it at the same time as 3 other friends; 1 other loved it and 2 thought it was really tough to get through.

hey - great review . I started this when it came out because of the hype it was getting in the book world, but I gave up on it about a third of the way through. I’m glad I’m not the only one who wasn’t a fan.

Yeah reading reviews on Goodreads it's one of those books you either loved or abandoned. I loved many parts of it, and two thirds of the way in I would say I was enjoying it, but I just got completely turned off due to just more description of rape/murder and what felt like the 20th time that the main character describes the story so far to a reunited character for 3-4 pages.

While I didn't enjoy this book, I do think it is an important book because it's success shows that there is a market and appetite for African, indigenous, or non-Western based fantasy. Much of fantasy just seems incestuous (pun intended) as they rely upon similar medieval or ancient European settings and the same tired tropes, so this book really shows that there is a lot of potential outside of these settings for cool and original stories. So hopefully, it will at least open the door for some other authors to tap into this potential. Maybe one that I'll enjoy a bit more

 

[Thucydides]

Yeah reading reviews on Goodreads it's one of those books you either loved or abandoned. I loved many parts of it, and two thirds of the way in I would say I was enjoying it, but I just got completely turned off due to just more description of rape/murder and what felt like the 20th time that the main character describes the story so far to a reunited character for 3-4 pages.

While I didn't enjoy this book, I do think it is an important book because it's success shows that there is a market and appetite for African, indigenous, or non-Western based fantasy. Much of fantasy just seems incestuous (pun intended) as they rely upon similar medieval or ancient European settings and the same tired tropes, so this book really shows that there is a lot of potential outside of these settings for cool and original stories. So hopefully, it will at least open the door for some other authors to tap into this potential. Maybe one that I'll enjoy a bit more

Good points , which I never really thought of. It could be groundbreaking in the sense that it will open doors and inspire other fantasy writers. I have never been much of a fantasy reader (besides Harry Potter), so maybe that has something to do with me not enjoying it.

what’s a fantasy book/ series you recommend ?

 

[Pink Mist]

Good points , which I never really thought of. It could be groundbreaking in the sense that it will open doors and inspire other fantasy writers. I have never been much of a fantasy reader (besides Harry Potter), so maybe that has something to do with me not enjoying it.

what’s a fantasy book/ series you recommend ?

Like you I'm not a big fantasy reader myself, so I'd be the wrong person to ask!

 

[robertmac43]

Yeah reading reviews on Goodreads it's one of those books you either loved or abandoned. I loved many parts of it, and two thirds of the way in I would say I was enjoying it, but I just got completely turned off due to just more description of rape/murder and what felt like the 20th time that the main character describes the story so far to a reunited character for 3-4 pages.

While I didn't enjoy this book, I do think it is an important book because it's success shows that there is a market and appetite for African, indigenous, or non-Western based fantasy. Much of fantasy just seems incestuous (pun intended) as they rely upon similar medieval or ancient European settings and the same tired tropes, so this book really shows that there is a lot of potential outside of these settings for cool and original stories. So hopefully, it will at least open the door for some other authors to tap into this potential. Maybe one that I'll enjoy a bit more

All fair points.

I think the concept of telling the story from three different perspectives across three different books is also going to be (possibly) really important. It's ambitious idea, hopefully it works out for James and fans of the series. At the end of the day it's refreshing to have authors like James taking risks and progressing the genre as a whole.

 

[robertmac43]

what’s a fantasy book/ series you recommend ?

I have so many I could recommend you! For people just starting out with the genre, I usually recommend the Mistborn trilogy. Other great options are Name of the Wind, Clash of Kings, The Witcher, Lis of Locke Lamora. These are all the first books in series so if you like the than there is more to go off of.

 

[Thucydides]

I have so many I could recommend you! For people just starting out with the genre, I usually recommend the Mistborn trilogy. Other great options are Name of the Wind, Clash of Kings, The Witcher, Lis of Locke Lamora. These are all the first books in series so if you like the than there is more to go off of.

thanks man. I’ve added the first book of the mistborn trilogy to my list for this year .

 

[robertmac43]

thanks man. I’ve added the first book of the mistborn trilogy to my list for this year .

Awesome! I'll be checking in on the review page for your review!

 

[Thucydides]

This book is twelve mini biographies on twelve Roman emperors , from Julius Caesar to Nero to lesser known (but just as crazy) emperors.

one of my favourite books I’ve read the last little while , found it hard to put down.

human history is fascinating, lustful , and at times extremely violent.

some of these guys make trump look like mother Teresa haha . We have definitely come a long way.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

Venus in Furs (1870) by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch - Great, if only it has a bit of a draft quality to it, oddly enough. Still, immensely readable. Riotously funny by moments. Not sure that was intended. Still, it kind of asks for it. Severin, its main character, is the simp to start and end all simps. At the start of the book, he is cured. Terribly so. His unnamed friend who introduces the story, is a dreamer who has dreamt a conversation with Venus, who while wearing furs berates and discusses German mores. Waking up, he heads to Severin's, to who he relates his dream. Severin tells him that 'dreamt the same dream only with open eyes' before threatening his maid with a whip, claiming that she loves it and adores him for it. To prove his point and explain how he came to be this way, he offers his friend a manuscript and cautionary tale that he has written, Memoirs of a Suprasensual Man. Thus begins the bulk of the novella. Without wasting a breath and artistically crafted in a flurry of direct and economical chapters, we get Severin's tale of submission to Wanda von Dunajew, a free-spirited woman who veers between relish in her dominatrix role and moments of doubt where she thinks she may have agreed to more than what she bargained for. Oddly enough, the book's tone and atmosphere doesn't match the great Velvet Underground song. This is not an atmospheric, lingering affair so much as one set in sunny Italy without a lack of comedic moments. Severin eventually takes on the role of Gregor, Wanda's butler. He gets kicked, abused, whipped at a moment's notice. He always seem to get messed with just as he's about to finally have a bite to eat and seems to wonder whether it's all worth it. The moment which cures him is a moment of extreme humiliation. I don't think Sacher-Masoch is a master prosist (although it's hard to say how good he could be, considering I think a bit of revision could have ultimately helped. How many times can one use the word goddess?) and the metamorphs are sometimes a bit trite but it does have his moments of brilliance. The eventual point is delivered straight into the reader's beak too. Still, a highly original piece of work and immensely readable. Though one gets the sense that the era in which it was written prevented the author from making it more explicit than what he would have wished for.

 

[Chili]

Biography of the 'Master of Suspense', the fishmonger's son. The book tells a story that Hitch told about being locked in a prison cell when he was young that left a lasting effect.

Anyone who has seen Hitchcock -2012 (Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren) that film seemed to encapsulate his character, including an obsession with blondes. i.e. the scene where he stays in the lobby to hear the audience's reaction to the climax of Psycho.

Interesting that he and Alma (his wife) were born one day apart (August 13-14 1899). As portrayed in the 2012 film, Alma had a large influence on many of his films, from writing scripts to being a sounding board for ideas. At one point she may have been given the opportunity to direct herself but chose to work with her husband.

Lots of background on his films. There was a point where he expressed doing different types of films but he would be talked into his familiar type of tale by studio execs.

Good book for Hitchcock fans.

 

[Pink Mist]

The Fifth Woman (Kurt Wallander #6) by Henning Mankell

After a brief vacation in Italy with his father, Inspector Wallander is back on the job in his very busy police department in the provincial town of Ysted which seems to be home to the highest serial killer per 1000 people ratio in Sweden. This time, two men have been brutally murdered and tortured, and Wallander and his team of police have few clues pursue. I’m not normally a fan of serial killer detective stories, especially because the book previous in this series was also a serial killer story, but this one is a fairly compelling mystery and exploration on the ethics of vigilantism and has a feminist bend to the story. One of the stronger entries to the series, but I’d like Mankell to move away from serial killers as I feel it’s a tired trope in mystery novels.

 

[ItsFineImFine]

Anyone have a good sci-fi series for me to read? Ideally not too dense or technical but more story focused. I read too much mystery fiction in the past year.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Yeah reading reviews on Goodreads it's one of those books you either loved or abandoned. I loved many parts of it, and two thirds of the way in I would say I was enjoying it, but I just got completely turned off due to just more description of rape/murder and what felt like the 20th time that the main character describes the story so far to a reunited character for 3-4 pages.

While I didn't enjoy this book, I do think it is an important book because it's success shows that there is a market and appetite for African, indigenous, or non-Western based fantasy. Much of fantasy just seems incestuous (pun intended) as they rely upon similar medieval or ancient European settings and the same tired tropes, so this book really shows that there is a lot of potential outside of these settings for cool and original stories. So hopefully, it will at least open the door for some other authors to tap into this potential. Maybe one that I'll enjoy a bit more

I liked it but it definitely was a challenging read or a lot of the reasons you ID'd.. Far more challening than I anticipated.

I absolutely loved his A Brief History of Seven Killings. As much as I enjoyed reading it I always recommend the audiobook to folks too (or as an alternative). It's multiple readers, one for each key character and it really helps with that Jamaican patois. If anyone here likes listening to books, put this high up on your list.

 

[Chili]

Was re-watching Enter the Dragon and marvelling at Bruce's dynamic on screen presence. The movements, focus, guttural sounds and the eyes.

His dad was a prominent actor/singer in Hong Kong who was with a travelling troupe in San Francisco when his mother gave birth to Bruce. He grew up in Hong Kong, was in his first film at two months old and made many films as a teenager. He was not a good student often getting in trouble for fighting. He honed his fighting skills studying kung fu. Eventually his family sent him to the US. He began teaching and developing his technique which would lead to taking on several high profile clients(Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Roman Polanski,...), first referred to him by Jay Sebring. Footnote: Sebring had invited Steve McQueen to join him visiting Sharon Tate the fatal night of August 9, 1969. McQueen was going to join him but cancelled. Not known if Bruce was also invited, he also knew Sharon.

Goes on to discuss Bruce's challenges in breaking into the Hollywood film industry because of typecasting.

Remember being a fan of The Green Hornet tv show where he was clearly the star to me but played the sidekick and chauffeur.

Several chapters on his films. Last few chapters are on his death and the fallout.

The author spent several years researching and writing this very well written book, a real forensic review. Enjoyed it, highly recommend.

 

[Soldier13Fox]

Good points , which I never really thought of. It could be groundbreaking in the sense that it will open doors and inspire other fantasy writers. I have never been much of a fantasy reader (besides Harry Potter), so maybe that has something to do with me not enjoying it.

what’s a fantasy book/ series you recommend ?

Malazan Book of the Fallen is my favorite. There are a ton of books and those books are dense and long, so it's not for the faint of heart. The world, mythos, and character building are exceptional.

 

[Pink Mist]

Inverting the Pyramid: The History of Football Tactics by Jonathan Wilson

Partly read this to improve my game at Football Manager, but also read due to a fascination of tactics, this book tells the history of the evolution of soccer tactics beginning with 2-3-5 used during the 19th century to the tiki tacka, gegenpress, and strikerless formations we see today. Fascinating history, but admittedly a lot of its detailed observations went over my head as I got lost in the many names of managers and players key in the evolution of tactics.

 

[Pink Mist]

One Step Behind (Kurt Wallander #7) by Henning Mankell

It’s been two years since Inspector Wallander’s last big case and a lot has changed. His girlfriend has rightly dumped him, his dad’s dead, his ex-wife is getting remarried, he’s depressed (well that’s not really a change), and he just found out he’s diabetic. One thing that hasn’t changed is that there’s serial killers on the loose again in Ysted (population 28,000). Seriously, there must be something in the water there which drives people to go on murderous rampages. Anyway, the book picks up on midsummer’s eve when a group of young adults go missing and the detective on the case, Wallander’s colleague, is found brutally murdered in his apartment. Soon after the missing adults show up murdered and decomposing a month after midsummer’s eve in a field. The book is fairly engrossing as Wallander and his team try to figure out what their murdered colleague knew before he was murdered and how he may be linked to the murderer. Loses points towards the end when Wallander transforms into Dirty Harry to find and capture the killer. The novel works best, like basically all of the ones in the series, when the book is a police procedural and less when it tries to become a literary action movie.

 

[kihei]

The Once and Future King, by T. H. White

I loved this book when I read it half a century ago, and I love it now. But I was amazed how much I chose not to remember from this most elegant and magical retelling of the Arthurian legend. What I remembered most all these years--I suspect I am not alone in this--is the beautiful opening third of the book, the part that deals with young Arthur, nicknamed Wart, and his education at the hands of Merlyn, the Magician, who lives backwards in time and has the power to turn Wart into various animals so as to further his understanding of the natural world. This section represents truly magical writing, as imaginative and far more witty than anything found in Harry Potter. But what I chose to remember less well is how dark the novel becomes once Arthur takes the throne. Arthur believes that might does not make right and instigates radical new laws and a roundtable filled with like-minded knights whose vow it is to protect the weak from the strong, the innocent from the unscrupulous. His greatest knight Lancelot is Arthur's best friend, a man thoroughly dedicated to Arthur and his ideals. But then, an unexpected but human thing happens: Arthur's Queen Guenevere and Lancelot fall in love, a reality that Arthur tolerates for the good of his Kingdom. But within Lance and Jenny's embrace lie the seeds of destruction that will follow, eventually tearing apart the noble dream. The Once and Future King isn't about a grand ideal realized. Ultimately it is about the impossibility of realizing grand ideals because human weakness of one kind or another will always gum up the works. The novel is first a dazzllingly comic tour de force only to become a depairing tragedy at the end, though White is wise enough to leave is with a note of hope. The Once and Future King is one of the great books of the English language.