What are you reading?

[maltloaf]

Just started Mark Kermode's second book, The Good, The Bad and The Multiplex after I really enjoyed his auto biography type one last year, "It's only a Movie"

[casio]

I finished the James Patterson book last night in bed and it was poor, very poor the story didn't match up to his earlier books in truth it didnt match up to his book he released earlier this year. It a shame I didnt look at the cover more because it was only when I saw the book with sun light highlighting the cover that I could tell it was co-wrote, I get that he wants to make as much as he can but its getting stupid, whats the point of releasing 3-4 books a year if 1, you hardly write them and 2, they're crap and would stop someone picking up the next piece of crap with 2 authors names on it?

on the other hand I started the house of silk earlier and it's brilliant, both the style and the cadence seemed to fit well with the originals and if I'm honest the 'voice' that Anthony Horowitz has wrote it with seems to be a perfect match for how the Conan Doyle books felt, in fact an hour or so ago when I put it down I'd forgot it wasn't an original Sherlock Holmes book. I cant wait to pick it up and carry on but it wont last long enough lol

I haven't finished this one but my fingers are crossed for another one lol

[wijit]

I'm not a big reader, but I like sports and I'm now on Usain Bolt's autobiography "9.58" which is an extremely good read. He covers a lot of things outside of athletics but re oddly connected. It's a good read of determination, but without coming cross as being self obsessed. Not worth the £20 cover price, but if it's out on p/b or if you can find a deal (as I did) then I'd suggest it for good reading.

[Goldberg]

Just reading the Steve Jobs book now. Pretty much what I expected until I realised I know John Lasseter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lasseter
At my last company I had many Video Conferences with the guy as Pixar were one of our customers as well as having many one on one meetings and meet ups at NAB in Las Vegas over the years!

Now I knew he was high up in Pixar but did not realise how far ! I still have my Christmas Cards he used to send every year. Ignorance is bliss..

[willp2003]

I'm not much of a reader, and certainly not a quick reader, but I read Peter James "Dead Simple" at thought it was great, with some real twists and turns. On the 2nd in the series now "Looking Good Dead". Anyone read the whole series?

[casio]

I've not read them all but I've read the first 4 of the Roy Grace series (Dead simple, Looking good dead, Dead mans footsteps and Dead Tomorrow) and quite enjoyed them, to me I think they kind of felt like an english version of Columbo mixed with prime suspect, but I've not read any of the others though, to be honest i've never even seen any of them on sale anywhere other than on amazon

[tombott]

Just started Starfish by Peter Watts.
Good so far, and not my usual style of book.

Star Fish has been released under Creative Commons License so you can download it guilt free for a variety of devices from here

[casio]

I finished The house of silk last night and thought it was brilliant, I hope Anthony Horowitz has another in him

I picked up 11.22.63 earlier (the new Stephen King) after a workmate told me he's half way through and he thought it was as good as The Green Mile, so fingers crossed he could be returning to form, the bumpf on the cover says -if you had the chance to change history, would you?

weirdly I don't think I've used my kindle for about a 3 weeks to a month

[casio]

I finished 11.22.63 a few days ago and I have to say it is one of the better modern Stephen King books, I wont spoil the story but I have to say its well thought out and has been the subject of a few conversations in work that have been surprising.

since I finished this I've gone back to the kindle and read The Affair which is the last of the Jack Reacher series. I've also read The Serial by David Gordon and I started Covenant by Brandon Massey last night and I'm about half way through and I'm really enjoying it. That said I did start it thinking it was Covenant by Dean Crawford lol

[showbiz-legend]

I'm not much of a reader, and certainly not a quick reader, but I read Peter James "Dead Simple" at thought it was great, with some real twists and turns. On the 2nd in the series now "Looking Good Dead". Anyone read the whole series?

Read the whole series mate and found them all a very good read. I've also enjoyed some of his other books, i'm slowly getting through them all. Currently i'm reading An idiot Abroad.

[casio]

having finished Covenant by Brandon Massey about an hour ago (incredibly slow day in work thanks to a power cut) I would say its not the most compelling read and has a bit of a lack luster lead but it has a satisfying finish which cant be said about all books. If I'm being honest I'm not sure I'd have read it if I hadn't been confused about which book was which lol but I'm glad I did,

I need to have a poke around the kindle for the new one now although Already gone by John Rector is looking like the front runner

[WalterPill]

Fair play, Casio, you are fucking prolific.

I recently finished Moneyball. Had little or no interest in baseball but had heard this was a good read and wanted to take a look before the film comes out (is available to download). It's about how the sport is to all intents and purposes based on wrong-headed subjectivity and outdated approaches based on nothing but ideas of how to play the game, what makes a good prospect, and how to measure a player's effectiveness. The book details how an ex-player turned GM of a very small Major League club with the help of a Harvard graduate for the first time use analytics to build a team on a tiny budget to compete with the big spenders.

John Henry is mentioned a few times as a real student of the application of statistics to the sport, and perhaps he is the first owner to have tasted success through 'Sabermetrics' management as opposed to through the more traditional avenue of chucking cash about when he employed an Ivy Leaguer to be GM after being turned down by Billy Bean the GM of the Oakland A's, of whom the book is primarily about. I wonder how much of this statistically led approach to a sport he's instilling in Liverpool now? Though, by the sound of it, the nature of baseball seems to make it ripe for exploitation through statistics in a way that football could never be.

Fascinating anyway and definitely worth a read.

Now almost finished Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. I love great sci-fi and this is up there. With catching up with Dan Simmons Hyperion books in the past 12 months, this has been a great year for sci-fi for me.

[casio]

cheers m8, the reason I read so much is that in truth I don't really watch a lot of tv, and the shows I do watch I download so I can watch them whenever, plus my job gives me a fair amount of time that I don't really do anything, -I work as a stock and resource controller for company that builds, installs, maintains cellular infrastructure. But since the company had to downsize we all do two jobs, so I also work as the first point of contact for faults/issues etc. so really I only have to do something if there's either a problem with the network/tower etc or if we don't have enough hardware to build, maintain or repair towers or other network dependent hardware etc

as a side note I'm around a third of the way into Already Gone by John Rector and I'm really unimpressed its a bit obvious and you can see the story coming a mile off, i wouldn't recommend it

[casio]

well having finished Already gone by John Rector (cant say I'm sad that its done with) I've been reading The Echo Man by Richard Montanari on and off through the day and I have to say its a decent read, very much with the same pace and tone as his other books -I've found it to be better than the modern James Patterson books which make me feel let down, Patterson was my favourite author for years but I think he's gone off the boil recently and it shows

It looks like I'm going to be the only one in work tomorrow so I can't see The Echo Man lasting the day lol

[casio]

quick update since The Echo Man by Richard Montanari I've read The accident by Linwood Barclay, Virals by Kathy Reichs and The Inner Circle by Brad Meltzer which means i'm trying to decide which to read first, Rogue by Mark Sullivan or The third Antichrist by Mario Reading but if I could... "find" the Jack Kerley, Carson Ryder series of books that im missing (books 2,3,4) I'd read them first, I have got them in hardback but it makes it a pain lugging them to work and back

[Brydo666]

I've just finished reading 'The Commandant' by Iain Baxter - it's a good insight to the life of Rudolf Hoss and the creation of Auschwitz. I'm now reading a book called 'Black Watch' by Tom Renouf - a WW2 veteran.

I'm a slow reader and find myself getting easily distracted at times - any tips? I read a Peter James quick read (One about a man and wife whom want to kill each other) and enjoyed ... I then got Dead Tomorrow but it's still in my book shelf.

When travelling with work I take a 'Harry The Polis' book. It's short stories about a retired policeman's career in the PF.

Casio - do you use anything to track the books you have read? I signed up for Goodreads ... sometimes networking can make me more engaged.

[casio]

I do m8 sort of, it took a while but I scanned all of my book's barcodes using an iphone app called home library that auto creates a database that you publish and can access online at http://www.myhomelibrary.net there are options within each entry that you can change like the price, author read unread etc

for the ebooks I read on my kindle I don't add to the library at all, for those I have a text file saved on my dropbox account that updates automatically when I add the title, author and date.

If I were you m8 I wouldn't try force myself to read, I tend to read way more in winter where as in summer I only read 1 maybe 2 books a week, if I get distracted I get distracted its not like the books are going anywhere

[casio]

I went for The Third Antichrist by Mario Reading and to be honest I wasn't impressed, there was nothing 'new' that made it stand out from the crowd if anything I think the cover is way too good for the story inside. since that though I've read The Hundredth man by Jack Kerley, The midnight club by James Patterson and I've just finished The moon over Soho by Ben Aaronovich which picks up straight on from his first book, -the end of The Rivers of London and I really enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone, I know the thought of wizards and magic will put people off but its not that kind of wizards and magic if it were I would have avoided it because I struggle to suspend belief long enough to enjoy the story, I'd say think of it as Buffy crossed with the 1st series of torchwood (where they said fcuk and bollocks all the time) but set in London

[casio]

I'm about to start Blood Vines by Erica Spindler but since my last update I've read Cursed by Stephen Leather (short story so I don't think it counts) Blood Guilt by Ben Cheetham its set in and around Sheffield and was surprisingly a little cracker, there's also been Die Twice by Andrew Grant, Feedback by Nick Spalding (another short so I don't think really counts) Blood Ties by Lori G Armstrong and a book that's a spinoff from the TV show supernatural called Bobby Singers guide to hunting and embarrassingly I though it was brilliant lol

[JonEp]

I hadn't noticed the second book by Andrew Grant until you mentioned it. Enjoyed the first one so I've grabbed it hoping it will fill the Jack Reacher void I'm suffering this new year !

I have just finished Vince Flynn's American Assassin which was rather enjoyable and have now downloaded the whole Mitch Rapp series.