Book recommendation 13:34 - Jun 29 with 11593 views | welwynranger | American Dirt Jeanine Cummins. A heartwarming story about a woman who witnesses 16 members of her family shot down at the BBQ of her 15yr old niece birthday party. Because her jounalist husband wrote a story about the leader of a drugs cartel. She then has to travel through 6500miles through the bad lands of Mexico to the safety of America Being trailed by the cartel. I am never without a book and this is the best book i have ever read. I would recommend this book to anyone male or female | | | | |
Book recommendation on 13:18 - Jul 22 with 1727 views | urrrrssss |
Book recommendation on 09:22 - Jul 22 by QPRSteve | I've read them three times now and will probably read them again soon. Which version did you watch? The Swedish version is by far the best. |
1st saw the Hollywood version with Daniel Craig ( that got me ), because of that I had to read the Book, then found out it was a trilogy, have read the books twice now and seen the Swedish versions with subtitles 3 times ( which I prefer ). | | | |
Book recommendation on 13:49 - Jul 22 with 1646 views | MrSheen |
Book recommendation on 13:15 - Jul 22 by hantssi | I’ve looked into doing the war walks in the Dolomites (much like the Flanders trenches) but a lot of it is on via Ferratas which really appeals to me having done the one in the Lake District. |
I was with the family at Lake Bohinj in Slovenia over a decade ago. There was a beautifully kept war cemetery there for soldiers and civilian workers (and Russian POWs) who had carried supplies up to the front lines up in the mountains. I didn’t work it out at the time as the border has moved and the name changed, but Caparetto, the site of Italy’s great catastrophe, was only 10km the other side of the ridge. Hard to imagine a more peaceful place, I was really taken aback by it. [Post edited 23 Jul 12:15]
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Book recommendation on 12:05 - Jul 23 with 1504 views | 81A |
Book recommendation on 13:49 - Jul 22 by MrSheen | I was with the family at Lake Bohinj in Slovenia over a decade ago. There was a beautifully kept war cemetery there for soldiers and civilian workers (and Russian POWs) who had carried supplies up to the front lines up in the mountains. I didn’t work it out at the time as the border has moved and the name changed, but Caparetto, the site of Italy’s great catastrophe, was only 10km the other side of the ridge. Hard to imagine a more peaceful place, I was really taken aback by it. [Post edited 23 Jul 12:15]
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Thank you to whoever recommended 'American Pastoral' by Philip Roth on a previous book thread. Not an easy read as it unpicks the conflicts and guilt of a father knowing that his daughter has committed murder. Now on "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" which is already challenging preconceptions of madness. | | | |
Book recommendation on 12:57 - Jul 23 with 1464 views | ericgen34 | There is a fantastic trilogy by Pierre Lemaitre that is one of the best things I've read these past 10 years. The first book, The great Swindle is about the immediate post WWI, and won the Goncourt, the second All Human Wisdom is about the in-between wars years, and the last one, Mirror of our Sorrows is about the madness that gripped France as the German army advanced in 1940. All have great intertwined plots, great characters and talk about periods in history not often visited in literature | | | |
Book recommendation on 14:04 - Jul 23 with 1414 views | derbyhoop | Just finished "The Bee Sting" by Paul Murray. Was nominated for the Booker, which was won by "The Prophet Song". I'm about to read the latter. The Prophet Song is brilliant. It's very relevant to what's happening in today's world, with a couple of surprising twists towards the end. [Post edited 22 Aug 14:48]
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| "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the Earth all one's lifetime." (Mark Twain)
Find me on twitter @derbyhoop and now on Bluesky |
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Book recommendation on 14:19 - Jul 23 with 1395 views | TheChef |
Book recommendation on 14:04 - Jul 23 by derbyhoop | Just finished "The Bee Sting" by Paul Murray. Was nominated for the Booker, which was won by "The Prophet Song". I'm about to read the latter. The Prophet Song is brilliant. It's very relevant to what's happening in today's world, with a couple of surprising twists towards the end. [Post edited 22 Aug 14:48]
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Nice shift for Muzza from professional footballer to author. | |
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Book recommendation on 14:32 - Jul 23 with 1364 views | MrSheen |
Book recommendation on 14:04 - Jul 23 by derbyhoop | Just finished "The Bee Sting" by Paul Murray. Was nominated for the Booker, which was won by "The Prophet Song". I'm about to read the latter. The Prophet Song is brilliant. It's very relevant to what's happening in today's world, with a couple of surprising twists towards the end. [Post edited 22 Aug 14:48]
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Mrs Sheen loved "The Bee Sting", I must get round to it. | | | | Login to get fewer ads
Book recommendation on 15:37 - Jul 23 with 1318 views | hubble |
Book recommendation on 14:04 - Jul 23 by derbyhoop | Just finished "The Bee Sting" by Paul Murray. Was nominated for the Booker, which was won by "The Prophet Song". I'm about to read the latter. The Prophet Song is brilliant. It's very relevant to what's happening in today's world, with a couple of surprising twists towards the end. [Post edited 22 Aug 14:48]
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Can you let us know what you think of Prophet Song when you've finished it? | |
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Book recommendation on 16:01 - Jul 23 with 1273 views | PlanetHonneywood | Just finished 'Coffeeland' by Augustine Sedgewick. True story of how a bloke from Manchester played an integral role in El Salvador's coffee industry; its effect on the people of that country; resulting revolutions; and the US' obsession with defeating communism by suppression of workers' rights through its foreign and economic policy intrusions. All linked to maximising profits from what we pay for coffee. Some clever analysis on how the work put in to yield a pound of coffee results in additional productivity elsewhere. | |
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Book recommendation on 17:15 - Jul 23 with 1190 views | JamesB1979 |
Book recommendation on 19:17 - Jun 29 by Logman | Love a good book thread and read the first two books in CJ Sansom's Shardlake series thanks to recommendations on here (both very enjoyable). I've recently been going through a non-fiction phase, partly as a result of an unsettled time I have been going through and the desire to understand more about human behaviour. The last novel I read prior to that was Dracula (again on the advice of a friend) which was actually good and has some relevance to the world we live in now; the whole sad story being an allegory to the world of lust and carnal desires. If you are not a great fan of long books Tom Hanks has written a book of short stories called Uncommon Type, some of which are quite good. There is one in there about a teenager coming of age (but not in the usual sense) on a surfing trip with his father. It is wonderful little story (titled 'Welcome to Mars) , only about 10 or 15 pages long but like I say, there is a life story in there. Well worth trying to find. |
On those cj Sansom books, I think Hearstone, which is I think 2 books on from you is probably the best. | | | |
Book recommendation on 17:19 - Jul 23 with 1188 views | JamesB1979 |
Book recommendation on 10:50 - Jul 22 by BexleyHoop | Rory Clements - Martyr; Revenger; Holy Spy; Prince; Traitor; The Heretics and The Queens Man |
Thanks! I’ve been trying to find something similar to the Shardlake series. | | | |
Book recommendation on 21:27 - Jul 23 with 1121 views | fraserc | Just finished Necropolis: London and it's Dead by Catharine Arnold which looks at the history of burials and the way that death has been treated since the Roman times, which was very interesting. My favourite book in recent times was The Bookseller of Florence by Ross King, a non-fiction story about Vespasiano da Bisticci, a bookseller in Renaissance Florence, covering such topics as the history of that time, the manufacturing of scrolls and books, the advent of the printing press and the history of the rediscovered classics of the time, Cicero, Plato, Livy, etc. I love Florence so my view might be biased, but a really interesting book, covering a lot of wide and varied subjects. | | | |
Book recommendation on 22:11 - Jul 23 with 1050 views | dmm |
Book recommendation on 12:05 - Jul 23 by 81A | Thank you to whoever recommended 'American Pastoral' by Philip Roth on a previous book thread. Not an easy read as it unpicks the conflicts and guilt of a father knowing that his daughter has committed murder. Now on "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" which is already challenging preconceptions of madness. |
"One Who Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" - the book and the film, are both absolutely outstanding. I saw a good theatre production of it years ago as well. I'm seeing another theatre production of one of my favourite books in a few weeks - John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath". The book left me weeping my heart out at the end. | | | |
Book recommendation on 22:27 - Jul 23 with 1019 views | Wilkinswatercarrier |
Book recommendation on 09:42 - Jul 22 by MrSheen | I've just finished Nick Lloyd's "Eastern Front", the follow -up to his "Western Front" (no, really) and the second in a planned three-part military history of the First World War. The perpetual cycle of command over-optimism and staggering suffering by the troops gets a bit numbing at time, and the maps can't keep up with the long list of fought-over rivers and villages along thousands of miles of front. However, there is so much in it I had never seen covered in any detail before, such as Romania's catastrophic war and the long stalemate at Salonica, seemingly conceived as a way of giving a popular but incompetent French general something to do. While I am very familiar with the muddy trenches of Flanders, I had no idea that the Italians and Austrians fought eleven battles over a narrow forty mile strip of limestone rubble above the Isonzo valley. It's a brilliant account of an utterly disastrous conflict for everyone who got involved, with the arguable exception of August von Mackensen (played about 14, won 14). [Post edited 23 Jul 21:52]
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If you are interested in the less well known WW1 aspects I recomend a book called 'Ionian Vision' by Michael Llewlynn Smith. It's about the war in Turkey post WW1, with the Greeks (egged on of course by our good selves) attempting to recapture Constantinople and parts of Turkey with majority ethnic Greek populations with aim of resurrecting a modern version of the Byzantine Empire. Pretty amazing story and very sad for the Greeks. It also involves the Dad of a certain Prince Philip, who of course was also known as Phil the Greek over here. | | | |
Book recommendation on 19:27 - Nov 5 with 314 views | derbyhoop | I'm in the process of reading American Dirt, as per OP. Compelling story and given how topical immigration into USA from the south , it wouldn't hurt politicians on both sides, to read it cover to cover. | |
| "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the Earth all one's lifetime." (Mark Twain)
Find me on twitter @derbyhoop and now on Bluesky |
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Book recommendation on 20:34 - Nov 5 with 212 views | Gus_iom |
Book recommendation on 19:27 - Nov 5 by derbyhoop | I'm in the process of reading American Dirt, as per OP. Compelling story and given how topical immigration into USA from the south , it wouldn't hurt politicians on both sides, to read it cover to cover. |
Which makes the furore over it even more ridiculous | | | |
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