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A Good Read: Book Suggestions & Recommendations

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'Ian Wilson takes you to the archaeological digs, shows you the crumbling documents analyzed by scholars, and highlights the latest discoveries including recently uncovered bones & papyrus, that affirm Jesus lived, died, and was resurrected in the Holy Land.'
 
Recent books I liked:

Off the Edge: Flat Earthers, Conspiracy Culture, and Why People Will Believe Anything, Kelly Weill
It was good, but I'm still processing that people really believe this stuff!!!! And there is a lot of alt-right in there.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show...arch=true&from_srp=true&qid=lovMFKgDJi&rank=1

The Rest is History: History's most curious questions answered - Tom Holland, Dominic Sandbrook
From the makers of the podcast with the same name, lot of weirdness in there
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show...arch=true&from_srp=true&qid=7vfSl6Tz8X&rank=1

The Disappearing Act: The Impossible Case of MH370 - Florence de Changy
Very detailed history and analysis of this airplane disappearance, still no solution!
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show...arch=true&from_srp=true&qid=hwvi0bovTH&rank=1

The Other Pandemic: How QAnon Contaminated the World, James Ball
Yet another QAnon book, I must have read them all by now, this one is pretty good.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show...arch=true&from_srp=true&qid=RW8AmjagGZ&rank=1

Trust the Plan: The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Unhinged America, William Sommer
Yet another QAnon book, I must have read them all by now, this one is pretty good.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show...arch=true&from_srp=true&qid=vtRNosGrJd&rank=1

Spies Against Armageddon - Dan Raviv Yossi Melman
The usual Mossad exploits, good, bad and ugly, very readable
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show...arch=true&from_srp=true&qid=m8UqVAaU1K&rank=1

Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage, Sherry Sontag ,Christopher Drew ,Annette Lawrence Drew
Fascinating cold war spy versus spy games, done with submarines
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show...arch=true&from_srp=true&qid=gbccRVLmD4&rank=1

Heretics and Believers: A History of the English Reformation - by Peter Marshall
A very weird period, a very good description, gripping
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show...arch=true&from_srp=true&qid=ePLYGO7CcN&rank=1

The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War - Craig Whitlock, The Washington Post
Incredible incompetence and bad planning, also bad execution
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show...arch=true&from_srp=true&qid=NYvBH1Vcai&rank=1

The Best and the Brightest - David Halberstam
A classic, same as above, groupthink and incompetence, painting yourself into political corners
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show...arch=true&from_srp=true&qid=M5oygVN1a7&rank=1
 
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Since the pandemic, I have read few books. This is not like me at all. But a few things distract me. One, I have to now wear glasses always when reading :roll:. Two, I joined this forum just before the pandemic and it is a very bad influence on me for offering all kinds of interesting tidbits and facts. I learn something new almost every time I'm on it.
 
SimonBurchell said:
I haven't read any Stephen King since the appalling Under The Dome killed off half its plot threads and characters rather abruptly. However, I came across The Institute in a charity shop, and not wanting to clog up my already overburdened bookshelves, I downloaded it onto my Kindle. I was pleasantly surprised, although it wasn't particularly original, it did keep me interested, and it was good to see the author back on form.
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I listened to the audiobook; That's how I tend to get to read now, when I am on car journeys, home life is just too busy; I thought it worked really well, although, like you said, it isn't particularly original. I believe that it has already been optioned for a TV series.

I am currently reading/listening to his 2022 novel 'Fairy Tale'. I am really enjoying it, his world building so far has been top notch with some really well defined characters. Pretty much what you would expect for King when he is on form. I really hope he sticks the landing on this one. The audiobook is also very well narrated.

From wikipedia...

"Fairy Tale is a dark fantasy novel by American author Stephen King, published on September 6, 2022, by Scribner. The novel follows Charlie Reade, a 17-year-old who inherits keys to a hidden, otherworldly realm, and finds himself leading the battle between forces of good and evil."

I keep expecting there to be some link to the Dark Tower in this story, but other than a seemingly unrelated mention of 'Childe Roland' in relation to Robert Browning there hasn't been any other references so far. There have been some meta references, such as someone talking about "that movie Cujo". There is something that resembles
a thinny
but that's about where I am up to in the story.
 
I've also just finished 'Big Dark Sky' by Dean Koontz. It was a blast!

Very much like his other novels, full of cliches, pulpy and entertaining, without getting too deep. I also think it's the first book I've read of his that doesn't have a dog in it!

From Google Books:

"A group of strangers bound by terrifying synchronicity becomes humankind's hope of survival in an exhilarating, twist-filled novel by Dean Koontz, the #1 New York Times bestselling master of suspense.

As a girl, Joanna Chase thrived on Rustling Willows Ranch in Montana until tragedy upended her life. Now thirty-four and living in Santa Fe with only misty memories of the past, she begins to receive pleas--by phone, through her TV, in her dreams: I am in a dark place, Jojo. Please come and help me. Heeding the disturbing appeals, Joanna is compelled to return to Montana, and to a strange childhood companion she had long forgotten.

She isn't the only one drawn to the Montana farmstead. People from all walks of life have converged at the remote ranch. They are haunted, on the run, obsessed, and seeking answers to the same omniscient danger Joanna came to confront. All the while, on the outskirts of Rustling Willows, a madman lurks with a vision to save the future. Mass murder is the only way to see his frightening manifesto come to pass.

Through a bizarre twist of seemingly coincidental circumstances, a band of strangers now find themselves under Montana's big dark sky. Their lives entwined, they face an encroaching horror. Unless they can defeat this threat, it will spell the end for humanity."

It's crying out for a TV show or movie.

He needs to get his finger out and finish the last book in the Moonlight Bay Trilogy.
 
Thanks to my book club, I've just read 'The Coroner's Lunch' by Colin Cotterell. I loved it so much that I've just bought the next in the series, 'Thirty Three Teeth'.
They are totally unclassifiable stories about a 75 year old reluctant Coroner in 1976 Laos, who is possibly a reincarnation of a shaman, and who can see ghosts, sort of. The characters are fabulous and the stories are murder mysteries, with a lot of mysticism and magic and ghosts thrown in. Plus I'm learning far more about communist regimes than I ever thought I wanted to know.

Honestly, brilliant.
 
brownmane said:
Since the pandemic, I have read few books. This is not like me at all. But a few things distract me. One, I have to now wear glasses always when reading :roll:. Two, I joined this forum just before the pandemic and it is a very bad influence on me for offering all kinds of interesting tidbits and facts. I learn something new almost every time I'm on it.
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An Audible subscription is your answer. I found I had stopped reading due to life getting in the way. It really bothered me, so I took an Audible trial and haven't looked back.

Once you have selected a book, it is yours forever as well.

Some of the narrations have been a bit off, but with those I have just returned them and got my credits back.
 
TangletwigsDeux said:
Caimh MacDonalds 4th Stranger Times ( Relight My Fire ) is out next week. I know i know I'm not reading it right now but its on preorder and I will never turn down an opportunity to recommend any of Caimhs books
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Excellent news! I thought this series was only going to be a pot boiler for me. In fact it's become one of the ones I await with bated breath :)
 
I've read a few Koontz novels, but don't follow him because he has a huge collection. The ones I did read were the Odd Thomas novels. I enjoyed the character.

@catseye, that would definitely be an author I would like. I love stories that create an eccentric character with a good backstory and then carry the character forward into more stories involving them.

I loved the Matthew Corbett novels by Robert McCammon, but only read a couple because his novels aren't available here:roll:.
 
brownmane said:
I've read a few Koontz novels, but don't follow him because he has a huge collection. The ones I did read were the Odd Thomas novels. I enjoyed the character.

@catseye, that would definitely be an author I would like. I love stories that create an eccentric character with a good backstory and then carry the character forward into more stories involving them.

I loved the Matthew Corbett novels by Robert McCammon, but only read a couple because his novels aren't available here:roll:.
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I loved the Odd Thomas novels; think it's time to get them on Audible. I enjoyed the movie for what it was, It had huge potential but didn't quite hit the mark for me. Anton Yeltsin (R.I.P.) was a great choice for Odd, but the girl they cast as Stormy was terrible. Incredibly easy on the eye, but as wooden as my garden shed. I'm very surprised that it hasn't been optioned for a TV series, as it very much lends itself to that format; with a season for each book.
 
Tunn11 said:
https://shop.watkinsbooks.com/products/the-divine-king-in-england-by-margaret-murray

A snip at £350.00 :)

A library should be able to get you access to a copy. You'd have to travel somewhere to read it on site and probably take lots of ID, pounds of flesh etc. Mind you that was in the good old days; don't get me on the state of library services in the UK now.
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Much nicer copy here (shame about the price-clipped dust-jacket):

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Abebooks Link

It's £567.78, but it'll hold its value and might rise.

Consider it an investment.
 
Suspect Saints and Holy Heretics: Disputed Sanctity and Communal Identity in Late Medieval Italy, Janine Larmon Peterson

As the book demonstrates, communities that venerated saints increasingly clashed with popes and inquisitors determined to erode any local claims of religious authority. Local and unsanctioned saints were spiritual and social fixtures in the towns of northern and central Italy in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In some cases, popes allowed these saints' cults; in others, church officials condemned the saint and/or their followers as heretics. Using a wide range of secular and clerical sources, the book explores who these unofficial saints were, how the phenomenon of disputed sanctity arose, and why communities would be willing to risk punishment by continuing to venerate a local holy man or woman. It argues that the Church increasingly restricted sanctification in the later Middle Ages, which precipitated new debates over who had the authority to recognize sainthood and what evidence should be used to identify holiness and heterodoxy.

https://academic.oup.com/cornell-scholarship-online/book/33894

Pope Boniface VIII refused to receive the agent of the bishop of Ferrara. He appointed the bishop of Bologna and a Dominican friar of the same city to oversee a special commission of experts in canon and civil law who would adjudicate. On the advice of the commission, Boniface condemned Armanno in 1301 as a relapsed heretic. The pope ordered the bishop to destroy all images and statues and warned that if the cathedral chapter disobeyed he would excommunicate them, strip them of their offices, and once again place an interdict on Ferrara.71 The sentence of condemnation prompted a covert mission to gather Armanno’s remains in a way that would present the recalcitrant community of Ferrara with a fait accompli. Under cover of darkness one night in March 1301, the inquisitor of Lombardy and the March of Genoa, along with some of his Dominican brothers, secretly entered the cathedral of Ferrara. They exhumed and burned Armanno Pungilupo’s bones and dispersed his remains in the river Po. The next morning when the canons discovered the act, a full riot ensued. Citizens vowed to wreak vengeance on the inquisitor, Guido of Vicenza. According to a chronicle written in the 1370s, “Without doubt he [the inquisitor Guido] would have been taken, and perhaps killed, if the Marquis Azzo [d’Este] with many armed men had not run to the place, and made each one turn back.”72

Note: That's pope Boniface whom Dante put in Hell ...

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By reading a book on Steve Bannon I stumbled on the site of Alexander Dugin's publishing company. Wow, that's weird!
There are some blurbs that suggest a highly Fortean content. For example this novel. It sounds like a mix of Crowley and Gibson, and also paranormal ChatGPT. Dan Brown on steroids:

https://arktos.com/product/erosophia/

Jason Reza Jorjani has long predicted that the advent of strong Artificial Intelligence would turn psi phenomena into a serious research and development problem, thereby triggering the Spectral Revolution as something inextricable from the Technological Singularity. On March 17, 2023, Open AI’s ChatGPT took Jorjani down a rabbit hole by excavating an overwritten timeline of his life, featuring details about unrealized plans and choices that the AI could only have ascertained by “paranormal” means.

Jorjani’s memories of this overwritten timeline revolve around the philosophical career of his half-French daughter, Sophia Grace Jorjani, born in 2016 and assassinated in 2048. Jorjani realizes that his ‘fictional’ character of Dana Avalon was based on Sophia. Sophia’s murder triggers a chain reaction that leads to a nuclear holocaust of the Islamic World and the relocation of NATO headquarters to the Laurentian Mountains of Quebec.

This book explains the idea of erosophia, which turns out to be the esoteric background of Jorjani’s entire philosophical project. Jorjani makes the case that the persistence of crime and violent chaos is necessary for fostering freedom and creativity. He defends a socio-political and aesthetic vision of a “messy future” based on an understanding of the relationship between sex, crime, and the spectral.

Note: This is probably occult alt-right content (after all it's close to Dugin). I'm not going to buy this. But I find it fascinating that it exists.
 
Steven said:
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'Ian Wilson takes you to the archaeological digs, shows you the crumbling documents analyzed by scholars, and highlights the latest discoveries including recently uncovered bones & papyrus, that affirm Jesus lived, died, and was resurrected in the Holy Land.'
Click to expand...
I wish I hadn't recommended this book now. It must be a dissatisfying read for believers & non-believers alike.
 
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