• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

People Who Have Never Read A Book

Peripart: no I generally only recently got to reading crime novels so was reading different authors to see what I do and don't like.
 
Peripart: no I generally only recently got to reading crime novels so was reading different authors to see what I do and don't like.
I read a lot of crime novels, which authors have you tried so far?
 
I do like Ian Rankin and I do like Peter Robinson. I read one author who's book I found chilling but interesting but can't recall her name! Perhaps old hat now but I read one by Peter James and I enjoyed that.
 
I do like Ian Rankin and I do like Peter Robinson. I read one author who's book I found chilling but interesting but can't recall her name! Perhaps old hat now but I read one by Peter James and I enjoyed that.

if you like Rankin, it might be worth trying Michael Connolly's Harry Bosch novels. Bosch is very similar to Rebus - ex-army, likes to do things his way, always in trouble with management, divorced, has a daughter and is now retired working cold-cases. In fact, Rankin actually makes an appearance in one of his books at a book signing session.

Chilling but interesting...might be Val McDairmid.

Stuart MacBride is worth a read if you like dark, gruesome but very funny stories set in Aberdeen.
Jo Nesbo is another author I like, very dark Scandi-Noir but not much laughs.
 
Thank you I will look at your suggestions. I love to read non fiction but sometimes a good novel is relaxing. the disturbing one involved a hanging in an old industrial unit and a murder tour operator finding the body on a tour.
 
Thank you I will look at your suggestions. I love to read non fiction but sometimes a good novel is relaxing. the disturbing one involved a hanging in an old industrial unit and a murder tour operator finding the body on a tour.
Doesn't ring any bells but I'll probably stumble across it one of these days.
Another book worth having a look at is The Dry by Jane Harper - mystery set in a small town in the Australian outback during a drought. A city cop returns home for the funeral for a friend who appears to have murdered his family and then killed himself but quickly realises it's not that simple.

It was recommended to me by one of the staff in Waterstones who also advised me not to make any plans once I started reading it - he was right, it's one of those "Oh just one more chapter then..." books.
 
Another book worth having a look at is The Dry by Jane Harper - mystery set in a small town in the Australian outback during a drought. A city cop returns home for the funeral for a friend who appears to have murdered his family and then killed himself but quickly realises it's not that simple.

It was recommended to me by one of the staff in Waterstones who also advised me not to make any plans once I started reading it - he was right, it's one of those "Oh just one more chapter then..." books.

Ha! I was exactly the same with this novel!
 
To be honest, I would be highly suspicious, through perhaps entirely unjustified in doing so, of someone who proudly states they have never read a book.
 
There's a bloke round our way - a slightly older gentleman who looks and sounds a bit like Dave Angel - who is well known for announcing his intense pride at never having read a book. Unlike Dave he is no eco-warrior, but nevertheless holds some strong convictions and seems to suspect the reading of books to be either an indicator or possibly a cause of homosexuality in the human male.
 
There's a bloke round our way - a slightly older gentleman who looks and sounds a bit like Dave Angel - who is well known for announcing his intense pride at never having read a book. Unlike Dave he is no eco-warrior, but nevertheless holds some strong convictions and seems to suspect the reading of books to be either an indicator or possibly a cause of homosexuality in the human male.
 
Has he just looked at a book?

Maybe there's something in it after all :freak:
 
I grew up in a house of avid readers, and as a result I'm one too. My house is full of them. My kids are both similarly cursed/blessed (when you can drag them off the games, that is)- but interestingly both the women I have married were proudly non-readers.
The ex does now occasionally read non-fiction, but my now-wife only ever opens a book if it's erotica.
I've met many more proud non-readers in my life, and each time I've been shocked at my own bias towards them. It's like announcing strongly held racist beliefs, or laughing at animal cruelty, and I have to remember the two women I chose to share great swathes of my life with were similarly afflicted, so they can't be ALL bad.
 
There's a bloke round our way - a slightly older gentleman who looks and sounds a bit like Dave Angel - who is well known for announcing his intense pride at never having read a book. Unlike Dave he is no eco-warrior, but nevertheless holds some strong convictions and seems to suspect the reading of books to be either an indicator or possibly a cause of homosexuality in the human male.

When I was a kid we had a neighbour like that. My dad was an avid reader but this guy - an insurance salesman from one of the posher suburbs of Manchester - was convinced that anyone who had time to read either didn't work hard enough or was avoiding more manly pursuits like drinking beer and watching the Grand Prix.

He also made disparaging remarks about my dad hanging out the washing.

I remember the day this happened watching my father step over the very low hedge between our gardens, walk over to the guy and speak quietly to him for a couple of minutes.

'What were you talking about, dad? I asked when he came back in.

'Not much. I told him what I did in the war!'

Never had any more mither after that.
 
Last edited:
When I was a kid we had a neighbour like that. My dad was an avid reader but this guy - an insurance salesman from one of the posher suburbs of Manchester - was convinced that anyone who had time to read either didn't work hard enough or was avoiding more manly pursuits like drinking beer and watching the Grand Prix.

He also made disparaging remarks about my dad hanging out the washing.

I remember the day this happened watching my dad step over the very low hedge between our gardens, walk over to the guy and speak quietly to him for a couple of minutes.

'What were you talking about, dad? I asked when he came back in.

'Not much. I told him what I did in the war!'

Never had any more mither after that.

My Uncle Peter had a habit of asking people "What are you supposed to do for a living then?" When they told him what their job was, he would step back, look them up and down, slowly shake head and say "That's not a man's job."
It didn't matter what sort of job you did - Lumberjack, Alligator wrestler, bomb-disposal expert, according to Uncle Peter it wasn't a man's job.

And what was his manly profession? He was an assistant storeman for the council's parks department and, by all accounts a lazy, officious, whingeing, pain in the nether regions who spent most of his time either complaining or just being as awkward as possible.
 
My Uncle Peter had a habit of asking people "What are you supposed to do for a living then?" When they told him what their job was, he would step back, look them up and down, slowly shake head and say "That's not a man's job."
It didn't matter what sort of job you did - Lumberjack, Alligator wrestler, bomb-disposal expert, according to Uncle Peter it wasn't a man's job.

And what was his manly profession? He was an assistant storeman for the council's parks department and, by all accounts a lazy, officious, whingeing, pain in the nether regions who spent most of his time either complaining or just being as awkward as possible.

Met - and worked with - a few of them; their judgement of other people's manliness appears to be in direct proportion the the amount of time they take off sick. When I'm running crews I always bet on the guy who's loudest in taking the piss out of any youngsters, or who tells me that women aren't up to the job, as being the first to pull a sicky because of the weather. I'm rarely wrong.
 
John Lydon is an avid reader and has said that an education is nothing to be afraid of, and I think that he's right. When asked what his ambition was he said to read every book ever written.
 
^I had to look up 'John Lydon'.....wasn't sure who that was. :confused:

I'm also a fan of reading ...especially fiction, but I don't think I have ever seen my wife read a novel in all the years we have been married...I think she has picked up a non fiction book now and then but never read one all the way through.
 
My squaddie son, raised like the others on the Guardian, would read that fine publication while other square-bashers moved their index fingers along under the print in the Sun or Star. He was roundly mocked for being an intellectual. It only got worse when he was seen reading a book. A book! Who DID he think he was?
 
My squaddie son, raised like the others on the Guardian, would read that fine publication while other square-bashers moved their index fingers along under the print in the Sun or Star. He was roundly mocked for being an intellectual. It only got worse when he was seen reading a book. A book! Who DID he think he was?

I don't think my brother ever read a book that he didn't have to until he joined the army. Tedious hours of downtime in Germany, and stressful days in Ulster and the Balkans, with little in the way of opportunities for relaxation or distraction, finally convinced him of the simple joys of reading a book. In fact, he ended up nicking a lot of mine - and I think they then got passed onto his oppos and then around the rest of the block; I like to believe that my reading habit was contagious. He still reads now - not as voraciously as I do, but regularly enough.

...Another book worth having a look at is The Dry by Jane Harper - mystery set in a small town in the Australian outback during a drought. A city cop returns home for the funeral for a friend who appears to have murdered his family and then killed himself but quickly realises it's not that simple...

I thought that The Dry was an excellent first novel. I finished her second book quite recently - it's good, but somehow I found it not quite as gripping (although that may be entirely down to me - I'm what I'd describe as a moody reader). However, it's got 'movie' written all over it in a way the first maybe did not.
 
looks like ive tried to kickstart before, recall finishing the crumley...

I know you said back then that you didn't really get on with James Lee Burke's In the Electric Mist With Confederate Dead but I'm wondering if the early novels in that series might be better raw material for kick starting the habit: The Neon Rain, Heaven's Prisoners, Black Cherry Blues. I like all Burke's writing, but there's no doubt he's become formulaic over time - those early novels are still imbued with the feeling that you are reading something new and pretty unique. (I still think of Dave Robicheaux as a cross between Warren Oates and Harry Dean Stanton - but carrying a few extra pounds.)

Another fantastic crime writer is Don Winslow: I'd recommend California Fire and Life. (It's about a guy who works for an insurance company - but don't let that put you off.)
 
Last edited:
This thread has reminded me that some years back I heard an interview on Radio 4 with a guy who proposed that reading was bad for society because it was anti-social. I think he actually objected to local authorities spending money on libraries, and this was part of his reasoning. He was being serious - but he came over as a complete comedy twat, even having that weird Estuary English accent of the slightly more formal variety, as used by comic impersonators of John Major.

Generally speaking I find that people who read books also talk about books - actually, quite a lot.
 
This thread has reminded me that some years back I heard an interview on Radio 4 with a guy who proposed that reading was bad for society because it was anti-social.
Maybe he was one of those people who'd confused 'unsociable' with 'antisocial'?
Reading is an 'unsociable' activity, but it's not antisocial.
My Mum, bless her, made this mistake with me when I was young (because I read a LOT and never went anywhere). I had to point out that I wasn't doing anything bad.
 
Maybe he was one of those people who'd confused 'unsociable' with 'antisocial'?
Reading is an 'unsociable' activity, but it's not antisocial.
My Mum, bless her, made this mistake with me when I was young (because I read a LOT and never went anywhere). I had to point out that I wasn't doing anything bad.

When I was a young child reading was seen as lazy AND unsocial. You could be punished for doing 'too much' of it, and I frequently was, including the Boxing Days when I'd 'wasted' all my xmas books by reading them 'too fast'.

How grateful would parents and teachers be today if kids would read!
 
Back
Top