What are you reading Thread

Whiskey is top tier alcohol so I for one wouldn't mind seeing more about it on the forum

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

On topic...all I read is football or whisky books, you'd probably not be interested!

Some of your games tastes suddenly make a lot more sense...

I just finished the Dark Tower series. Phenomenal stuff, I want to read more Stephen King now.

Currently reading a Harry Potter as a nice light palette cleanser, then it's on to a book about the French Revolution.

I just purchased an actual Mills & Boon.

For all of you lucky enough not to know what those are, they're notoriously terrible and formulaic romances/soft erotica aimed primarily at a female market. They follow a pattern of a domineering bad boy male lead and the innocent (often virginal) female who steals his heart/'tames him'. They're the name in crappy romance and I just bought Jordan St. Claire: Dark and Dangerous because it had the best* name of the ones I saw. People in my book club had already taken The Ruthless Billionaire's Virgin and Untouched Until her Ultra-Rich Husband.

If anyone fancies a giggle I'm happy to post some of the best extracts. Otherwise I'll keep this treasure*** all to myself.

Both my Nan and Aunty read those, always thought of them as something aimed at middle-aged housewives.

When I was at school I did work experience at the local library, and having learned the Dewey decimal system I got to the 'romance' section and found that none of the books were filed away properly. I asked the manager about it and he scoffed, saying "it's not worth bothering putting them in order".

Coincidentally, my sister had a paid library assistant job at the time and knew the colour coordination of all the different types of M&B books. I remember brown was "blaze" i.e. particularly saucy stories.

If only I'd known! Could have picked one with some actual excitement in to go with the terrible writing:

Quote :

Jordan St Claire didn’t know it yet, but the immovable object was about to meet the unstoppable force!

Quote :

It took every ounce of Stephanie’s usual calm collectedness to keep her expression coolly mocking as she found herself looking not at Jordan St Claire but at the world-famous actor Jordan Simpson!

How Not To Write: A Guide

masofdas wrote:

Both my Nan and Aunty read those, always thought of them as something aimed at middle-aged housewives.

And people who don't mind writing that makes you want to gouge your eyes out apparently.

I trust we're all reading the latest viral bestseller?

Once you're all done gouging your eyes out over that, she's actually done another one.

These are exactly the kind of shit my ex liked to read. Endless kindle romances about changelings, cyborgs, vampires, aliens and god-knows-what else and the covers always look like that.

Been a while since I've had a stack of books to read through, but I asked for a bunch for my birthday and I have some modest recommendations!

Gideon the Ninth is a gothic horror space fantasy with necromancers.  It's good fun, with one major caveat: the main character Gideon herself.  I'm very much here for gothic horror space fantasy with a line of snark straight through the middle, but Gideon is a very American teen and it just doesn't work.  Everything is 'ass': either she's talking about her own, or somebody else's, or she's using '-ass' for emphasis.  There are other examples of ill-fitting American slang too.  Still, the haunted gothic palace with science bits is a lot of fun, and the other characters are good.

Bullet Train is an easier recommend: I can see somebody like Buska having already read it.  Japanese thriller about five killers on a train.  Yes it did just get made into a mediocre film, but if you do things like aggressively Westernising a Japanese book and diluting the best character, that's what you get.  The book's main villain is a wonderfully unsettling child, but its best tools are a generally madcap cast and a pace that never lets up.  Well worth a look.

I've got The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle (a favourite of the games journalist with a similar name) and House of Leaves (ergodic story about a creepy house) waiting for me too. Happy days!