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A Good Read: Book Suggestions & Recommendations

Thanks Rynner. Never read Rankin, but saw this ages ago and enjoyed it.
If he had written so many, i'd be tempted to start reading the Rebus books...
 
theyithian said:
Thanks Rynner. Never read Rankin, but saw this ages ago and enjoyed it.
If he had written so many, i'd be tempted to start reading the Rebus books...
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Ah, go on (assuming there should have been a 'nt in there). Rankin is, to my mind, at the top end of British Crime writing. Good plots, occasionally complex, but without getting ridiculous (which some authors appear to believe you have to be in order to appear 'complex') and great characterisation - with an ability to write from both a male and female viewpoint convincingly, which is surprisingly rare. Great atmosphere and a superb sense of place - the city of Edinburgh is a character, rather than simply a setting.

There are quite a few novels in the Rebus stable, but I don't think there's any reason you have to read them in order. In fact there are a couple of early ones which, to my mind, were pretty bad, and I'd advise avoiding (if only I could remember which ones they were).
 
...and talking of British Crime Fiction - Phillip Kerr's, If The Dead Rise Not. This is the latest in the Bernie Gunther series, which began with the superb Berlin Noir Trilogy, (March Violets, The Pale Criminal and A German Requiem), and follows the struggles of a good but flawed man trying to enforce some vestige of the law in a brutalised society and the aftermath of its collapse. Cannot recommend these enough.
 
Could someone please suggest an (available) selection of ETA Hoffmann for someone who has read nothing of him.

Is Tales of Hoffmann the place to start, or is there a better collection out there?
 
theyithian said:
Could someone please suggest an (available) selection of ETA Hoffmann for someone who has read nothing of him.

Is Tales of Hoffmann the place to start, or is there a better collection out there?
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I enjoyed Tales of Hoffman but preferred The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr. I think either is worth a punt.
 
Blood's A Rover by James Ellroy. The third volume in his Underworld USA trilogy. 270 pages in to a 640 page ride. Its as good as American Tabloid and The Cold Six THousand.

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Ellroy concludes the scorching trilogy begun with 1995's American Tabloid with a crushing bravura performance. As ever, his sentences are gems of concision, and his characters—many of whom readers will remember from The Cold Six Thousand and from American history classes—are a motley crew of grotesques often marked by an off-kilter sense of honor: stone bad-asses, in other words, though the women are stronger than the men who push the plot. The violence begins with an unsolved 1964 L.A. armored car heist that will come to have major repercussions later in the novel, as its effects ripple outward from a daring robbery into national and international affairs. There's Howard Hughes's takeover of Las Vegas, helped along by Wayne Tedrow Jr., who's working for the mob. The mob, meanwhile, is scouting casino locations in Central America and the Caribbean, and working to ensure Nixon defeats Humphrey in the 1968 election. Helping out is French-Corsican mercenary Mesplede, who first appeared in Tabloid as the shooter on the grassy knoll and who now takes under his wing Donald Crutchfield, an L.A. peeping Tom/wheelman (based, curiously, on a real-life private eye). Mesplede and Crutchfield eventually set up shop in the Dominican Republic, where the mob begins casino construction and Mesplede and Crutchfield run heroin from Haiti to raise money for their rogue nocturnal assaults on Cuba. In the middle and playing all sides against one another is FBI agent Dwight Holly, who has a direct line to a rapidly deteriorating J. Edgar Hoover (the old girl) and a tormented relationship with left-wing radical Karen Sitakis, and, later, Joan Klein, whose machinations bring the massive plot together and lead to more than one death. Though the book isn't without its faults (Crutchfield discovers a significant plot element because something told him to get out and look; Wayne's late-book transformation is too rushed), it's impossible not to read it with a sense of awe. The violence is as frequent as it is extreme, the treachery is tremendous, and the blending of cold ambition and colder political maneuvering is brazen, all of it filtered through diamond-cut prose. It's a stunning and crazy book that could only have been written by the premier lunatic of American letters.
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I've just finished "Drowning Man", a crime novel by Michael Robotham, and it's one of the best of the genre I've ever read. (And I've read hundreds...!)

A London detective gets shot while unofficially investigating a child's kidnap which took place three years earlier. The trauma gives him amnesia, so he can't remember what he was doing or why, so his task involves not only tracking potential villains and battling against unco-operative superiors, but struggling to regain his memory...

The plot is very complex, twisting and turning until the very end - a very satisfying read.
 
Started and finished The Spy Who Came In From The Cold in two sessions; it's marvellous. To use that awful phrase beloved of publishers: unputdownable.
 
I wouldn't normally post other people's opinions, or on books I haven't read; but School Library Journal's Halloween picks are focused on ghosts and some of the titles are going routes that might be of interest to people here: a Ghosthunters type program featured in one book, EVP and orbs in another, and so on.

For the opinions of Saundra Mitchell of SLJ (she skips my Ghost Sitter, sigh; ok, it's 8 years old, but you'll notice one recommendation that's much older):
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/art ... 99102.html

The Haunting of Derek Stone: City of the Dead and Bayou Dogs
Abbott, Tony. Scholastic, 2009.

Don’t be fooled by the brevity of these novels. Derek Stone’s story is dark and surprisingly intense. Abandoned by his mother, Derek somehow survives a freak train accident that kills his remaining family. After the crash, he’s haunted by the voices of the dead, and when his late brother reappears, it’s clear that something supernatural is afoot. City of the Dead (book one of “The Haunting of Derek Stone” series) concerns itself with world building. The real action starts in book two, Bayou Dogs, when Derek is on the run from angry ghosts that have been set loose among the living. Abbott has put some serious thought into understanding the divide between life and death, mixing physics and metaphysics with ease. It’s a scientific-minded approach that still subscribes to a horror point of view, a novelty that I savored.
Give Up the Ghost
Crewe, Megan. Holt, 2009.

It’s not uncommon for ghosts to have needs, but this time around it’s the humans who need to be put to rest. Cass McKenna has been able to see ghosts ever since her older sister died. An outcast, Cass spends her time collecting gossip from ghosts—a potential weapon in her war against the popular kids. When her class VP comes undone after his mother’s death, Cass has to decide whether to help him—and whether it’s time to give up the companionship she finds with her sister’s lingering spirit. I love that twist, and this book is wonderfully readable. I started the first chapter at bedtime, and suddenly it was midnight as I turned the last page.

Haunted: The Ghost on the Stairs
Eboch, Chris. S & S/Aladdin, 2009.

Like Ghost Huntress (see below), this is a thoroughly modern take on tweens in spectral jep. Thirteen-year-old Jon and 11-year-old Tania don’t just stumble into the presence of ghosts. They’re taken there by their mother and stepfather, who produce and star in a paranormal reality show reminiscent of the popular television series Ghost Hunters. There’s a lot of gadgeteering in this story, but it’s really about siblings from a broken home who are thrust into a strange situation—and what happens when one of them starts seeing the other side. Touches of humor (like a real ghost’s annoyance with the TV show’s fake medium) save the story from becoming maudlin. And Jon narrates with an authentic, skeptical voice, which makes the resolution to their haunting problem unexpectedly creepy.

Ghost Huntress: The Awakening
Gibson, Marley. Houghton/Graphia, 2009.

With a contemporary setting and a conversational voice, the “Ghost Huntress” series will shatter any old-fashioned expectations you have about ghost stories. Sixteen-year-old Kendall may be a standard-issue new girl, but her school, Radisson High, has a Gossip Girl flavor, right down to its bulimic cheerleaders. The school geek trades in electromagnetic field readers, spectral voices come through white-noise machines, and these teen investigators record EVP (electronic voice phenomena). Kendall’s inability to summon not just a phantasm but also proof of its existence plays a major part in the story. Nimbly escapist, this series captures the 21st-century approach to paranormal phenomena: out with the mediums, and in with the orbs and miniDV. I love how now this is!

All the Lovely Bad Ones
Hahn, Mary Downing. Clarion, 2008.

Hahn has made a career out of creating terrific ghost stories, but I picked this one because it’s not often that the protagonists are the naughty ones. Travis and Corey are so badly behaved that their mother sends them to spend the summer at their grandmother’s spooky Vermont inn. Left with limited entertainment options, these troublemakers decide to act out ghost stories and pull some pranks on the inn’s guests. When the devious duo unexpectedly attracts the attention of some real ghosts, chaos ensues. Hahn balances the chills nicely with playful humor. This is a great ghost story if you like to be scared… but not too scared.

ghostgirl
Hurley, Tonya. Little, Brown, 2008.

From the glass coffin on the cover to the silver-edged pages and ornate Victorian lettering and illustrations, ghostgirl sets a mood. But it’s not sepulchral—this book is a 100 percent, black-clad fairy tale. Although Charlotte User choked to death on a gummy bear, she refuses to abandon her quest to become one of Hawthorne High’s most popular girls. What follows is a whimsical, Tim Burton–esque recounting of Charlotte’s struggles to cling to her past life, when she should probably just learn to accept her new supernatural one. Everything about this book is clever—it’s a delight to look at, a pleasure to hold, and a treat to read. I look forward to future installments.

Ruined
Morris, Paula. Point, 2009.

Ruined touches on all the classic ghost story staples: curses, an unmarked grave, a seemingly friendly spirit leading the heroine into dangerous territory. What’s special about this story are its glimpses into real-life New Orleans: the city’s complicated, multicultural past and present, the unique flavor of some of its neighborhoods (which are among our nation’s oldest), and the realities of this delta harbor after Hurricane Katrina. Morris doesn’t stint on the ugliness in the Big Easy’s past, but she also celebrates its remarkable beauties—in a story that runs through carnival season like a perfect string of beads.

Pemba’s Song: A Ghost Story
Nelson, Marilyn and Tonya C. Hegamin. Scholastic, 2008.

When her overprotective mother moves from Brooklyn to Connecticut, 14-year-old Pemba is bummed: she misses her city, her friends, and her boyfriend, Malik. The only things left in her life are her music and the lyrics she writes in a notebook. But not long after Pemba arrives in her new home, she finds herself lost in strange daydreams—and discovers that Phyllys, the ghost of an 18th-century slave, is peering out at her from the mirror. Caught up in a centuries-old mystery, Pemba can’t stop reaching back to the eerie voice, even though it unsettles everyone around her. The dreaminess of this novel is palpable, and the voices so clarion that I often found myself flipping pages back to read another snippet of Pemba’s lyrics or get one more glimpse of Phyllys’s life as a New England slave.


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I Heart You, You Haunt Me
Schroeder, Lisa. Simon Pulse, 2008.

When Ava’s boyfriend, Jackson, dies during a foolish dare, she’s devastated. Ava has lost her first true love... and then he comes back. Another haunting tale written to help make sense of death’s senselessness, I Heart You, You Haunt Me casts a quiet circle around the reader. Schroeder’s verse is silken, and it runs deep. When the late Jackson reappears, you can almost taste the frost on the mirror. And later, when Ava realizes that it’s time to move on with her life, her aching grief slips off the pages and into the reader’s bones. This is a great companion to Pemba’s Song, which also uses verse in a dynamic way, revealing the very human heart in these unearthly stories.


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The Afterlife
Soto, Gary. Houghton, 2003.

When the main character is murdered on page four, everything that follows could have been relentlessly bleak. Instead, 17-year-old Chuy Chavez slips into his afterlife with gentle humor and grace. He observes everything—from the pennies he stole from his grandfather to a fire he accidentally set with one of his friends to the girls he never kissed and the ghosts he’s newly met. Though Chuy is recently deceased, this is very much a coming-of-age story, and with sentences like “She floated up the steps and, by my side, entered the den of nickel-and-dime thieves,” I find myself savoring this tale’s language again and again.


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A Certain Slant of Light
Whitcomb, Laura. Houghton/Graphia, 2005.

When I think of ghosts in literature, the first title that comes to mind is A Certain Slant of Light. Whitcomb’s story of a young woman who’s technically alive but dead inside and Helen, a ghost who slips into her host’s skin after 130 years of formless grief, has a quiet fierceness to it. Plus, the story isn’t afraid to tackle some of life’s big questions: What’s the value of a life unlived? How can we forgive ourselves for seemingly unforgivable acts? These questions are threaded into the fabric of an unlikely romance between Helen and a living boy, which gives this novel a contemporary, yet timeless, air.


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The Dollhouse Murders
Wright, Betty Ren. Holiday House, 1983.

Still as thrilling today as when it debuted more than 25 years ago, The Dollhouse Murders is the quintessential ghost story. It has a tween protagonist, Amy, who visits an unfamiliar home, with an unfamiliar older relative. It has an attic that’s full of secrets and haunted artifacts that long to reveal those secrets. The story is so vivid that, even now, years later, I can close my eyes and see the dolls moving in the dollhouse at night, restaging the murder of Amy’s grandparents. Although this book may be aimed at middle-school readers, its sneaky, creepy power is sure to appeal to teens, too.

Sometimes I’m in the mood for a taste of ghost, just a little something spooky to linger when I turn out the lights. That’s when I turn to anthologies. Dead Man’s Gold and Other Stories (Groundwood, 2002) by Paul Yee mingles the history of Chinese immigrants in North America with the ghost stories they brought with them. Betsy Hearne’s Hauntings: And Other Tales of Danger, Love, and Sometimes Loss (HarperCollins/Greenwillow, 2007) is another well-rounded collection of stories with a tale to suit any whim. And no list of haunted fiction would be complete without Vivian Vande Velde, whose two-decade career is rich with spirits. Her anthology Being Dead and Other Stories (Harcourt, 2001) is wonderfully representative of her work.


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Author Information
Saundra Mitchell ([email protected]) is the author of Shadowed Summer (Delacorte, 2009), a ghostly YA novel.
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One problem with finding a good read is that subsequent reads can prove disappointing.

The book I read after "Drowning Man" is a case in point.
(Details omitted, to protect the guilty! :twisted: )

Set in California, the plot revolves about GM crops, but the author lost my confidence when discussing human DNA, and talking about Sub-Saharan Africans living on Cape Horn...

..apparently unaware that Cape Horn is off South America, thousands of miles from South Africa. Doh! :roll:
 
CarlosTheDJ said:
I'm half way through it now and I think it's great, I'm not really into that whole vampire thang that's seems to be huge at the moment, but this is really well done, very believable (or maybe I'm just easily convinced!).
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Hope you enjoyed the rest of it! You inspired me to pick up the sequel, The Bloody Red Baron, which takes a vampiric look at World War One. Mr Newman still overdoes with the references, but I did enjoy the vampire versions of Churchill, Mata Hari and Edgar Allan Poe (a great character). Clever twist at the end re: Dracula, too (one for the movie buffs).
 
Almost incredible in it's stupidity. A Fortean / Greek drama.
I must have shaken my head a hundred times in disgusted disbelief.
My wife looked at me and said: "Hey, you're shaking your head all the time!"

Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron
http://www.amazon.com/Smartest-Guys-Roo ... candalous/

And this one I'reading at the moment. Highly recommended. I'm almost tempted to read a serious book about derivatives.

Fool's Gold: How the Bold Dream of a Small Tribe at J.P. Morgan Was Corrupted by Wall Street Greed and Unleashed a Catastrophe

http://www.amazon.com/Fools-Gold-Corrup ... tastrophe/

I'm keeping up with the downfall :D
 
I've often thought it would be great if there were online versions of those old magazines: Blackwoods, Notes and Queries, The Gentleman's Magazine (which is not coyly titled porn, by the way) - that sort of thing.

Anyway I saw Ringing Church bells to Ward off Thunderstorms - and other Curiosities from the Original notes and Queries in my local bookshop and couldn't resist it.

Questions the like of, Custard: Why did the Puritans abominate it?, Basilisk: in Oxford in 1679 and Marat the Revolutionary: Did he rob the Ashmolean? might be of interest to any Fortean and there are further entries on everything from headless ghosts and mummified monks to paying MP's with herring.

I suspect the book is kind of aimed at the Christmas market and was a little concerned that it might be just another book of bloody lists and trivia - but it's better than that. Well worth a look-see - and possibly, if you're scratching your head, a decent present for someone with eclectic tastes.

(Incidentally, there is an online source for those magazines I mentioned, and more. Hours and hours of digging here).
 
I'm obsessed with Le Carre, having read The Spy Who Came In From The Cold and devoured Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy in a day and a half with the unwelcome interruption of sleep.
 
theyithian said:
I'm obsessed with Le Carre, having read The Spy Who Came In From The Cold and devoured Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy in a day and a half with the unwelcome interruption of sleep.
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Moscow rules comrade?

I recently bought and watched the BBC's adaptations of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley's People. Superb, dark, atmospheric stuff - utterly absorbing, and from a time when film-makers weren't scared of showing more than 30 seconds of dialogue at a time, and intelligence work involved an awful lot less technology. In fact the closest dear old George ever gets to technology is a good quality umbrella (probably a Swaine Adeney Brigg) and the occasional swivel-chair.
 
Spookdaddy said:
theyithian said:
I'm obsessed with Le Carre, having read The Spy Who Came In From The Cold and devoured Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy in a day and a half with the unwelcome interruption of sleep.
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Moscow rules comrade?

I recently bought and watched the BBC's adaptations of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley's People. Superb, dark, atmospheric stuff - utterly absorbing, and from a time when film-makers weren't scared of showing more than 30 seconds of dialogue at a time, and intelligence work involved an awful lot less technology. In fact the closest dear old George ever gets to technology is a good quality umbrella (probably a Swaine Adeney Brigg) and the occasional swivel-chair.
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You know, for ages, I had Le Carre mentally filed as dated and predictable on precisely no good evidence at all. Perhaps his fame was part of it, or perhaps I'd be burned by buying Day of the Jackal at an airport and hating nearly everything about the first 100 pages that I managed before donating it to charity. In hindsight, thankfully, Le Carre is nothing like Forsyth, with whom I had him in a travesty of mis-categorisation.

The discovery of his characters is a wonderful experience: like the plots, and indeed the agents themselves, you slowly appreciate the bigger picture with the gradual build-up of evidence and differing perspectives.

I've got the first of the series you mention sitting on my hard-drive, and my father has sent the 'Karla' trilogy of which Tinker Tailor... is the first part, so, I'll be filling my boots for a week or two.
 
In similar vein, although a different theatre of conflict, I'd recommend having a look at some of Alan Furst's novels.

Also, Robert Wilson's A Small Death in Lisbon. You'll find Wilson in the Crime section but this novel, which I think is superb, has an espionage aspect to it as well. He also does the dual narrative thing (early 40's/late 90's), which many authors trip up on, very well. The Blind Man of Seville is fantastic too.
 
Spookdaddy said:
theyithian said:
I'm obsessed with Le Carre, having read The Spy Who Came In From The Cold and devoured Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy in a day and a half with the unwelcome interruption of sleep.
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Moscow rules comrade?

I recently bought and watched the BBC's adaptations of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley's People. Superb, dark, atmospheric stuff - utterly absorbing, and from a time when film-makers weren't scared of showing more than 30 seconds of dialogue at a time, and intelligence work involved an awful lot less technology. In fact the closest dear old George ever gets to technology is a good quality umbrella (probably a Swaine Adeney Brigg) and the occasional swivel-chair.
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Not only good adaptations, but brilliant TV in their own right. And Sir Alec Guinness is just so good as Smiley, you forget he's completely wrong for the role. As a result of which, Le Carre stopped writing Smiley as a character, because he couldn't help but picture Alec Guinness in the role.

Sadly, Denholm Elliot, who was physically more like Smiley, died after only playing him the one time in a TV adaptation of A Murder of Quality. I would have liked to see more of the early stories adapted.
 
Le Carre's terrific. Apart from anything else, you know it's entirely authentic - kind of the anti-Bond. Actual espionage, especially of the Smiley-era Cold War variety, involved (and probably still does involve) a lot of hanging around in the drizzle, waiting for something very mundane to happen, if indeed it happened at all*. And that, to me, is Le Carre's skill - he can not only make the humdrum and very small things compelling but also reflect their cumulative impact.

I must read him again :).

*as did Callan, in its way - RIP Edward :(.
 
Am in the opening stages of The Honourable Schoolboy. I think having visited Hong Kong is helping me get the picture (literally speaking).
 
I'm off to Egypt on Saturday for a couple of weeks, I've packed the following, I've been saving them up for my pool lazing:

The last three FTs
The last two BBC History mags
The second and third part of the "Anno Dracula" series (Kim Newman)
"The System Of The World" and "Cryptonomicon" by Neal Stephenson
A book of ancient Egyptian myths
"Tutankhamen" by Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt

Should keep me going in between the tomb-raiding.
 
I brought 2 books with me to Berlin but didn't get any reading done. Almost finished a great SF book by Paul McAuley, Gardens of the Sun sequel to The Quiet War. Mostly set in the outer solar system. Politics, gengineering & space battles.
 
stuneville said:
Le Carre's terrific. Apart from anything else, you know it's entirely authentic - kind of the anti-Bond. Actual espionage, especially of the Smiley-era Cold War variety, involved (and probably still does involve) a lot of hanging around in the drizzle, waiting for something very mundane to happen, if indeed it happened at all*. And that, to me, is Le Carre's skill - he can not only make the humdrum and very small things compelling but also reflect their cumulative impact.

I must read him again :).
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Have finished The Honourable Schoolboy - and it took a few days owing to the annoyance of having to earn a living and the fact that it's nearly 600pages long. It was good, although not a beautifully layered as the Spy Who Came In From The Cold or Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. In both of those the excitement comes from when what you think you know turns out to be the opposite to the truth: there are several tales within tales. Here, the mystery is still to be unravelled, but there's not so much subterfuge from the characters or the writer. That's to say, once you learn something, it's usually true. If it isn't, it's often made clear that the source is dubious. The novel is far more concerned with the ethical that Tinker Tailor - and in that sense it is similar to The Spy Who.... The scheming of the cousins and Smiley's political masters make the ending really unpalatable (i.e. it's hardly happy) and in many ways George's theological resignation to submit to the betrayal of his peers is as noble as it is frustrating to his allies and us as readers.

In places it felt quite Anti-American. Strangely not due to the extensive detours into Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand, but the way that they are portrayed almost the personification of money = power and accountability are morals be damned. Tellingly, when the head of the CIA is in London, he is urbane, friendly, relaxed; taken into the 'field' trying to abduct a Russian/Chinese spy, he's impatient, rude, coarse even, in a way that jars against Smiley who becomes even more polite as the stress piles-on.

Looking forward to Smiley's People, although the misses is beginning to forget what my voice sounds like!

Also, an 'honourable' mention to Eric Newby's A Short Walk In The Hindu Kush which I managed to cram in on two long journeys over the weekend. Utterly English. Very Funny.

edit: Smiley is Conrad's Marlow, I claim by £5.
 
For those Le Carre fans out there, just to let you know that BBC Radio4 is doing 'The Complete Smiley', as the Classic Serial, starting this Sunday.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00p1fj2

The Complete Smiley - The Karla Trilogy
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Part 1

Next on:

Sunday, 15:00 on BBC Radio 4 (FM only)

Dramatisation by Shaun McKenna of John le Carre's classic novel featuring intelligence officer George Smiley.

Ever since the capture and torture of their agent in Czechoslovakia, the British Secret Intelligence Service has been in trouble. Now, the government has been forced to call George Smiley back from retirement to investigate the whole incident and to seek out the mole they believe to be at the heart of the service.

...

Broadcasts

Sun 29 Nov 2009
15:00
BBC Radio 4 (FM only)

Sat 5 Dec 2009
21:00
BBC Radio 4
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Thank you. I'd better get reading before they get to the third book!
 
This is advanced notice that Jacques Tardi's graphic novel, C'Était La Guerre Des Tranchées, is finally being published in English in April of next year, under the title, It Was the War of the Trenches.

If you are interested in the history of WWI but you're not a fan of graphic novels, don't let that latter fact put you off. Based on his Corsican grandfather's experiences during WWI this is an absolute classic. And if it helps overcome any doubts I should point out that I'd never heard of it (or for that matter Tardi, who, although legendary in his native France and much of Europe, is nowhere near as well-known in the English speaking world) until I was searching various European and American WW1 history websites for a project and kept tripping over recommendations for the book.

My own copy is in the French but given that my knowledge of that language is a little rusty I'll be buying the English translation too.

Fantagraphics have already released West Coast Blues and You Are There in a simple but beautifully packaged format in an ongoing project aimed at introducing Tardi to a wider English speaking readership.

There's a little introduction to Tardi, and some examples of his artwork, here.
 
Has anyone here read The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature, by CS Lewis? I read a very positive review and I'm tempted by the prospect of exploring two new territories (both Lewis and Medievalism) at once.
 
I'm two thirds of the way through Closet Reading: 500 Years of Humour on the Loo by Phil Norman, yes someone has actually written a book on that subject. I never read on the toilet, but you know exactly what kind of book he's on about within a couple of pages, and I've learned that the original toilet books were just that, something to read and then use the pages as loo roll.

It also takes in Monty Python's classic entries into the genre, and The Goodies and Not the Nine O'clock News as well, plus the Spitting Image ones which I remember reading. It might not sound very promising, but it's really interesting as a history lesson in ephemera if nothing else. You can tell a lot about society from this kind of thing.
 
Pietro_Mercurios said:
For those Le Carre fans out there, just to let you know that BBC Radio4 is doing 'The Complete Smiley', as the Classic Serial, starting this Sunday.
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Just finished listening to episode two. Catches the atmosphere just right, I think.

When it's done right radio drama is hard to beat.

Great stuff.
 
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