book reading thread

[dalealan]

Jan 4, 2015 17:34:56 GMT sydsut said:

Jan 4, 2015 13:22:31 GMT dalealan said:

Yeah it's a brilliant opus. I've got his full collection and reread them whenever I get the chance. Doctor Sleep is worth a read if you were a fan of his Shining as it's a follow on for Danny Torrance. Just finished reading his Mister Mercedes and Revival. Still prefer his older stuff and Pennywise rocked.

My favourite so far has to be Misery. No supernatural stuff, no SF just the extremes of human insanity. It could happen.

Try Gerald's Game. Cell is also good and The Stand will always be a favourite.

[Deleted]

I was given the collected works of Arthur Conan Doyle for Christmas. Usually not my cup of tea but once I started reading, one thing struck me as . The guy was an utter racist. His description of non-whites is appalling (yes, I know he lived a good while back, but still).

[sydsut]

Read all most any author from 19th and early to mid 20th centuryand you'll find that casual racism and anti Semitism are endemic. One of the most racist I've read is Agatha Christie.

[Deleted]

Yes, the *Jew man* features highly in his books too.

[lobeydosser]

Just finished 3 books about Clyde Puffers and the Para Handy stories.

Although the Para Handy stories were written 100 years ago, there is still a great interest in the Puffers themselves and the places that the Vital Spark, Para Handy's Puffer was supposed to have called at.

Amusing and full of high jinx as the stories are, the real lives of Puffermen was hard.
These little coasting vessels were often delivering coal and the like to places that had no piers or jetties and had to beach the boat and unload the cargo by hand onto carts on the beach.
12 hour voyages followed by 6 hours shovelling coal was not unusual.

A Clyde Puffer. Crewed by 4 men. 66 feet long so that it could travel through the canals.