Book Recommendation's

[Guest X-QUORK]

Tell me why you loved Catcher in the Rye? I am prepared to be convinved that is a literary wonder and not a pointless story about a kid going for a silly wander. I have read it twice and it left me bored both times.

Looking very dapper today TBF.

[Sibley's Love Child]

Ooh, great thread.

I must admit I have a penchance for trawling through local libraries as they often sell off old stock for 10p per paperback and 20p per hardback. Fook Waterstones.

Anyway, time and again I will uncover some little gems, normally contemporary US fiction, some may say schlock. Douglas Kennedy's 'The Big Picture' is a proper page-turner and will appeal to anyone approaching middle-age and thinking, I wish I could start again. Very dark.

[Guest theboltonfury]

Looking very dapper today TBF.

You wouldn't have thought that turquoise would work with burnt ochre, but it does, wonderfully.

[Fishman]

Scarily (or maybe not) a lot of my favourite books on there. Vaguely surprised that Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand hasn't been mentioned. Scarily prescient - only problem being that the book is about 800 pages too long (took me a lot of train journeys in europe).

Did Ayn Rand ever laugh during her lifetime ?

Like most 'intellectuals', far too serious.

And that broadcast by Galt towards the end of the book - 90% of the US population would have

been asleep after 20 minutes........

[Sibley's Love Child]

You wouldn't have thought that turquoise would work with burnt ochre, but it does, wonderfully.

I would err towards burnt umber but yes, a delightful medley.

[Cogs]

I read Live and Let die. I must have seen the film 20 times, but the book is almost unrecognisable. Bond is not the lothario at all.

My favourite one like that is "The Spy Who Loved Me".

Bond doesn't turn up until about 20 pages from the end, has mild difficulty dealing with two (2) gangsters and then pisses off.

The prospective purchaser, expecting gun fights, secret bases, cars that go under water etc. is instead stuck with a first person account of a young woman's unsuccessful love affairs and the story of why she doesn't get on with her parents

.

[Milton]

Haven't read the whole thread so apologies if the point was raised earlier but is there such a thing as a non fiction "novel"?

If it's any consolation, I feel really guilty.

I sincerely apologise for my laziness. Well spotted and congratulations on your persnicketiness

[The Ayatollah Buggeri]

Neville Shute is one of my standbyes: read Sliderule a pithy analysis of the post 1930s economic reality and his struggles to found what was then a tech company: an airplane manufacturer. Part biography: part socio-economic analysis and critique.

And his critique of the Imperial Airship Programme is a classic case study in what happens when an interventionist Labour government runs amok - something Gordo and his chums would do well to read.

Privately built airship - performs to spec and crosses the Atlantic without problems.

Government-built airship - crashes and blows up on its first major flight, roasting alive all but six of the passengers and crew (including, in a rare example of poetic justice, the minister who was largely responsible for the fiasco).

[juvenal]

Haven't read the whole thread so apologies if the point was raised earlier but is there such a thing as a non fiction "novel"?

Truman Capote claimed he'd invented the non-fiction novel, or 'faction' when he published In Cold Blood. He played a lot of games when talking of his work, such as the red herrings he created when questioned whether his novella Handcarved Coffins* was based on a true crime, or was pure invention. He died without that question being resolved.

For my money, any prose work containing thoughts or dialogue which the writer cannot directly reference, or claim to have actually heard, is a novel, however much of the work is based on an historical event. Inventing or imagining material, or detailing thoughts makes it a fiction.

'A novel, based on real life events' is good enough for me. Incidentally, linking fiction to real life or 'true' events invariably increases sales/box office.

Yet another book recommendation. The king of all travel writers is Colin Thubron. In Siberia, Behind the Wall (China); The Lost Heart of Asia (central Asia).

There are a lot of cracking travel writers out there: Norman Lewis; Eric Newby; Jonathan Raban; Paul Theroux, even Bill Bryson - all are a delight to read.

But Thubron is in a class of his own.

* This highly disturbing tale, wherein a motorist is trapped in his car with rattlesnakes which have been injected with 'speed', is found in the paperback collection by Capote called Music for Chameleons

[mitchbux]

It's like music though isn't it. What one loves, another dislikes. Personally I loved Catcher in the Rye. Also loved The Sea/John Banville. My OH read it after me, and thought it was terrible. Lots have been mentioned on this thread, but would give a big +1 for The old man and the Sea.

+2

Read that just before we toured Cuba. We were introduced to an old guy (102 iirc), who we were told had been Hemingway's fishing guide, and his inspiration for the 'Old Man'. They might have been having us on, but he certainly looked like an older version of what I had pictured. Would post his photo, but 'twas in the olden days before digital and the scanner is bust!

[indirectapproach]

"I sincerely apologise for my laziness. Well spotted and congratulations on your persnicketiness."

Please don't apologise.

Please forgive my persnicketiness.

I was just hoping that non fiction novels were still called "faction" and that something hadn't passed me by.

[indirectapproach]

"* This highly disturbing tale, wherein a motorist is trapped in his car with rattlesnakes which have been injected with 'speed', is found in the paperback collection by Capote called Music for Chameleons "

A rattlesnake was once trapped in a car crash with a good friend of mine who had taken far more speed than he should have done, in Tabasco, Mexico.

Not pretty but very funny.

[Scunnered]

Truman Capote claimed he'd invented the non-fiction novel, or 'faction' when he published In Cold Blood. He played a lot of games when talking of his work, such as the red herrings he created when questioned whether his novella Handcarved Coffins* was based on a true crime, or was pure invention. He died without that question being resolved.

...

* This highly disturbing tale, wherein a motorist is trapped in his car with rattlesnakes which have been injected with 'speed', is found in the paperback collection by Capote called Music for Chameleons

He should've called it Snakes in a Car.

[Guest absolutezero]

Bump.

Good thread relegated to page 8.

[General Melchett]

Actually only a handful above that I have read, so, for a change:

Yann Martel, Life of Pi. Funny, wonderfully written shaggy dog story

King Rat, James Clavell Life in a Japanese-run POW camp. Not an easy read

Frederick Pohl: Gateway, Space Merchants and Merchants War. Pure sci fi and satire genius, half a century before his time

Gates of Fire, Steven Pressfield - rest of his stuff is pretty awful, but this fictionalisation of Therrmopylae I've read over and over.

[Grime- skint wouldbe ftb]

Try Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban. A dark but plausible and brilliantly creative vision of the future.

[kudukid]

Bill Bryson - A small history of nearly everything. Fascinating facts.

Anything by 'Valerio Massimo Manfredi' - Awsome history, romance treachory.

Bobby Fischer goes to war - History, espionage, politics all centered around chess.

The swarm - Very good fiction.

[D.C.]

Wild Swans.

A new edition of one of the best-selling and best-loved books of recent years, with a new introduction by the author. The publication of Wild Swans in 1991 was a worldwide phenomenon. Not only did it become the best-selling non-fiction book in British publishing history, with sales of well over two million, it was received with unanimous critical acclaim, and was named the winner of the 1992 NCR Book Award and the 1993 British Book of the Year Award. Few books have ever had such an impact on their readers. Through the story of three generations of women -- grandmother, mother and daughter -- Wild Swans tells nothing less than the whole tumultuous history of China's tragic twentieth century, from sword-bearing warlords to Chairman Mao, from the Manchu Empire to the Cultural Revolution. At times terrifying, at times astonishing, always deeply moving, Wild Swans is a book in a million, a true story with all the passion and grandeur of a great novel. For this new edition, Jung Chang has written a new introduction, bringing her own story up to date, and describing the effect Wild Swans' success has had on her life.

Read it and see how many comparisons you can make to NuLabour

[Mrs Bear]

One for the ladies.

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith.

+1. A wonderful one-off classic.

For laughs, 'Three Men In A Boat' and 'Cold Comfort Farm'.

One of my Desert Island picks would be 'The Way We Live Now' (Trollope). Almost like a spooky foretelling of the Maxwell scandal.

[Limpet]

Another gem for true crime fans, if you can find a copy. Earth to Earth: John Cornwell. Won Gold Dagger Award for Non-Fiction.

The back cover reads:

In September 1975 the death of three people brought to an end six hundred years of rural solitude for the Luxton family of mid-Devon.. that stretch of ancient farmland between Exmoor and Dartmoor* - a secretive countryside which few strangers penetrate, a landscape of Coombes and Saxon earthworks, of patterns shaped by prehistoric paths and cattleways.

In their remote farmhouse, the three remaining members of the once extensive Luxton family lived childless under the encroaching shadow of old age. Reclusive, eccentric and miserly, the two brothers and a sister shared secrets that almost never came to light. Three bodies with their brains blown away. No one else was involved.

A great, haunting read.

* The family lived in West Chappell, Winkleigh, nr. Hatherleigh, Devon

I`m not a true crime fan but I thought this sounded interesting so I had a look for it on Amazon. While I was there I had a glance at some of his other books and found he`d written one that argued for creationism and against evolution ( Dawkins in particular ).

Unfortunately now I would probably not be able to read Earth to Earth knowing that it had been written by an idiot.

[I_Claudius]

Wild Swans.

A new edition of one of the best-selling and best-loved books of recent years, with a new introduction by the author. The publication of Wild Swans in 1991 was a worldwide phenomenon. Not only did it become the best-selling non-fiction book in British publishing history, with sales of well over two million, it was received with unanimous critical acclaim, and was named the winner of the 1992 NCR Book Award and the 1993 British Book of the Year Award. Few books have ever had such an impact on their readers. Through the story of three generations of women -- grandmother, mother and daughter -- Wild Swans tells nothing less than the whole tumultuous history of China's tragic twentieth century, from sword-bearing warlords to Chairman Mao, from the Manchu Empire to the Cultural Revolution. At times terrifying, at times astonishing, always deeply moving, Wild Swans is a book in a million, a true story with all the passion and grandeur of a great novel. For this new edition, Jung Chang has written a new introduction, bringing her own story up to date, and describing the effect Wild Swans' success has had on her life.

Read it and see how many comparisons you can make to NuLabour

Mao - The unknown story by the same author is very good too; it's a pretty devastating attack on someone who you would have thought couldn't have their reputation tarnished further. Really brings home what a truly iredeemable genocidal pig he was........

[juvenal]

I`m not a true crime fan but I thought this sounded interesting so I had a look for it on Amazon. While I was there I had a glance at some of his other books and found he`d written one that argued for creationism and against evolution ( Dawkins in particular ).

Unfortunately now I would probably not be able to read Earth to Earth knowing that it had been written by an idiot.

Not the slightest hint of creationism in Earth to Earth. It's an objective account. Give it a go. You won't regret it.

[leveller]

Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, by Robert M Pirsig, a quality read

[jay67]

Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, by Robert M Pirsig, a quality read

Blimey! That's a blast from the past. Used to love Tom Wolfe's "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" and Jack Kerouac's "Dharma Bums" too.

[General Melchett]

Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, by Robert M Pirsig, a quality read

When I was a teenager, I had a copy that was misprinted/misbound in the middle, so bits were out of order and/or repeated. A bit like Catch 22, this book is so peculiar that you wouldnt immediately notice without comparing to another copy.

Great book though.

Richard Bach's One is another similarly peculiar book.