What Books Are You Reading (2022)

[connda]

What books are you reading this year.  This also includes books you may be listening to like Kindle Audibles.

I'll often watch a movie or TV show and then go back to read the books that those shows were based on.
If you read more than one book at a time, that's Ok too.  I often read fiction and non-fiction at the same time.

[connda]

I've currently reading Book 6 (Lord of Chaos) of Robert Jordan's Wheel Of Time series. 
I switch back and forth between reading the book and listening to the book's recording.

[toofarnorth]

I have several John Grisham novels here and I think I have read each one 3 times. Trouble is my daughter comes out every couple of years and brings books but they are soon read.

I don't think Thais read books much , oh except lucky lottery number booklets.

Yesterday someone mentioned Private Dancer , I wish I still had that , must have lent it to somebody .

[Bohemianfish]

Hearts of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.

Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser.

Beneath the Whispering Pines by Ruskin Bond.

Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell.

The Wayward Bus by John Steinbeck.

 

It's that or gaming on my PC/XBox. 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 9, 2022 by Bohemianfish
added info

[biervoormij]

I recently read The Brass Verdict by Michael Connelly before watching the new TV series based on the book. I really enjoyed the book but the TV series is a bit of a late down. 

 

I did this also with Dan Brown's book The Lost Symbol and gave up on the TV series after 3 episodes.

 

I am currently reading a Craig Johnson book in the Longmire series but watched the TV series prior to reading any of his books.

[sanuk711]

1 hour ago, toofarnorth said:

Trouble is my daughter comes out every couple of years and brings books but they are soon read.

Books --I dont think I have picked up a book since they invented the Kindle, everything is free............  Private Dancer , sure I will PM it to you now--if you tell me what format you want it in.

[spidermike007]

Does anyone have any authors they would recommend, who write as well as Barry Eisler, Tom Clancy, or Vince Flynn? Even Tom Wood is good enough, with his Victor series, though he is a bit short on background, character development and atmosphere.

 

Espionage, assassins, spy stuff, etc? Prefer contemporary, as opposed to historic, like Silva, Ludlum, Forsyth, le Carre, etc. Granted those are great writers, but more historic. 

 

Have tried so many, and most are real hacks. Lee Child, Joseph Finder, Scot Harvath, Brad Taylor, Ben Coes, Brad Thor, Mark Greaney, Deon Meyer, L.T. Ryan, and others. Most bore me to tears. 

[connda]

4 hours ago, spidermike007 said:

Does anyone have any authors they would recommend, who write as well as Barry Eisler, Tom Clancy, or Vince Flynn? Even Tom Wood is good enough, with his Victor series, though he is a bit short on background, character development and atmosphere.

 

Espionage, assassins, spy stuff, etc? Prefer contemporary, as opposed to historic, like Silva, Ludlum, Forsyth, le Carre, etc. Granted those are great writers, but more historic. 

 

Have tried so many, and most are real hacks. Lee Child, Joseph Finder, Scot Harvath, Brad Taylor, Ben Coes, Brad Thor, Mark Greaney, Deon Meyer, L.T. Ryan, and others. Most bore me to tears. 

I got turned on to Dan Simmons after watching The Terror mini-series.  I enjoyed that for the benefit of the mixed genre approach (quasi-history, terror, sci-fi, thriller).  I've watched and read The Terror twice each and it got me digging into geography of the Arctic as well as the history of those looking for the Northern Passage.
Simmons has some Sci-Fi fiction that I've never been able to wrap my head around.  But he's done some horror that I've found entertaining (Summer of Night trilogy).  And one of my favorite "quasi-historical" novels was Black Hills. 

One other book a like a lot is a history book, The Great Game by Peter Hopkirk.  It gives you a good feel for Geo-politics in Eurasia around 19th Century and the beauty about the book is that it reads like a fiction novel - but it is not. 

[FolkGuitar]

I'm in the middle of  'Pillars of the Earth' by Ken Follett.

Recently finished John Grisham's  'A Time to Kill,'  'Last of the Mohicans,' and David Baldacci 's 'Split Second.'

I'll recommend Nelson DeMille's 'John Corey' series. Each one was a 'can't put it down' read!

1. Plum Island (1997)
2. The Lion's Game (2000)
3. Night Fall (2004)
4. Wild Fire (2006)
5. The Lion (2010), direct sequel to The Lion's Game
6. The Panther (2012), John Corey teams up with Paul Brenner on a case.
7. Radiant Angel (2015)
8. The Maze (2022)

I no longer read paper books, in favor of e-books.

Edited June 9, 2022 by FolkGuitar

[connda]

4 hours ago, sanuk711 said:

Books --I dont think I have picked up a book since they invented the Kindle, everything is free............  Private Dancer , sure I will PM it to you now--if you tell me what format you want it in.

I actually have books.  Not many.  The Game of Thrones series up until George R. R. Martin dropped it in the trash heap of history and allowed HBO to finish it off.  Martin is off my list of authors. 
I also have all the Tolkien novels.  I must read the books every 10 to 15 years and watch the Lord of the Rings about every 10 years too.  Unfortunately I wasn't much of a fan of the Hobbit movies.

I've got a few books on Buddhism, my favorite being A Gradual Awakening by Steven Levin.  That was my "on-ramp" to Buddhism and Insight Meditation back in the early 1980s.

And I've got a hard-bound Thesaurus and a Merriam-Wesbster dictionary. Given the Internet it doesn't get much use anymore.  But sometimes as I've noticed something I consider to be concerning over the last decade -  The English vocabulary is being rewritten. Not in a good way.  Politics are dictating a change in definitions. So It's good to have a hardbound Dictionary and Thesaurus around both printed back in the early 2000s as a 'reality check.'

[connda]

Once I finish Wheel Of Time book 6 I'm going to take a break and read the last book in The Expanse series.

I like the TV series as well as the book, however the TV series, imho, is getting a little stale unlike the books.
I think The Expanse season 6 was the final show, and actually I'm fine with that.  I hope the final book Leviathan Falls wraps up that book series which I've thoroughly enjoyed reading - the protomolecule and the ancient civilizations underlying it's mysteries.

[Eff1n2ret]

I recently re-read '1984'. It was quite spooky reading about a guy in the Ministry of Truth whose job was to produce a new dictionary shorn of all words that were deemed "unnecessary" - on the same day that I'd read a news article about Google vastly increasing the number of  "inappropriate" or "potentially offensive" words that would trigger a warning.

 

Devotees of Le Carre might like "Slow Horses" by Mick Herron, the first of a series about MI 5 and the downmarket end of national security.

[xylophone]

I really don't read much at all, best if I rephrase that by saying I don't read anything these days, apart from the online newspaper from NZ.

 

The last book I started to read was, "Sapiens" by Uval Noah Harari, and only got about a quarter of the way through that before I stopped, and it's on my sideboard now waiting to be restarted.

 

I have a couple of books by Dee Brown in my collection, dealing with the American West and I found those very interesting. Bill Bryson is another one I have somewhere around, as is the Richard Dawkins book, "The God Delusion".

 

I have a few books on wine, and in particular Jancis Robinson's "Encyclopaedia of Wine".

 

I keep saying to myself that I must get back to the "Sapiens" book, but never seem to get round to it.

[The Hammer2021]

The collected  stories of Kingley Amis

"Complete Stories"

 

[RichardColeman]

Currently James Herbert, The Dark. old 1986 copy form a charity shop that I also just found some esso tokens in that really brought back memories of the 80's 

[moogradod]

Last Belletristik I read must have been some 40 years ago. It was "Musashi". By that time I was as well fond of Science Fiction Short Stories - like the ones from Ray Bradbury.

 

From then on I read Buddhist literature, Chandrakirti, Shantaraka, Nagarjuna and all the usual suspects of Mahayana texts and even Ajahn Brahm which is an Australian Theravada exponent who has been educated in Thailand and learnt with Ajahn Chah. But I find him always easy, refreshing and funny in between the more heavy stuff. For heavy staff try the Mulamadhyamakakarika then you know what I mean. I wish you all much contentment and fun regardless of what you read.

Edited June 9, 2022 by moogradod

[Thailand]

Was reading books by Wilbur Smith years ago.

 

Have started reading from the beginning again, just as good as I first remember.

https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/wilbur-smith/

[Oblomov]

1 hour ago, connda said:

I got turned on to Dan Simmons after watching The Terror mini-series.  I enjoyed that for the benefit of the mixed genre approach (quasi-history, terror, sci-fi, thriller).  I've watched and read The Terror twice each and it got me digging into geography of the Arctic as well as the history of those looking for the Northern Passage.
Simmons has some Sci-Fi fiction that I've never been able to wrap my head around.  But he's done some horror that I've found entertaining (Summer of Night trilogy).  And one of my favorite "quasi-historical" novels was Black Hills. 

One other book a like a lot is a history book, The Great Game by Peter Hopkirk.  It gives you a good feel for Geo-politics in Eurasia around 19th Century and the beauty about the book is that it reads like a fiction novel - but it is not. 

Agree - The Great Game is superb -  the 'great game' was a tremendously exciting episode of history and as you say, such incredible characters, it reads like fiction. Burns, Nicholson, Mackeson amongst others. Thanks for reminding me as I must read that again.

[billd766]

8 hours ago, toofarnorth said:

I have several John Grisham novels here and I think I have read each one 3 times. Trouble is my daughter comes out every couple of years and brings books but they are soon read.

I don't think Thais read books much , oh except lucky lottery number booklets.

Yesterday someone mentioned Private Dancer , I wish I still had that , must have lent it to somebody .

I have over 600 hard back and paperback books

 

For the last few years though I have been using my Lenovo tablet as an Ebook reader. A few years ago also I was lucky and  friend shared his Ebook library with me and that had 1,6Gb of books. 

 

With my tablet I can store perhaps 100 books at a time in the space of the tablet and top the tablet up every 3 months or so.

 

The books however were in a few different formats and I am trying to re-organise them as Author, first name, last name and only 1 format which is Mobi.

 

So far I have sorted thousands of authors, some with only 1 book and others with 20 or more books and at 78, it will last my lifetime out.

[billd766]

7 hours ago, spidermike007 said:

Does anyone have any authors they would recommend, who write as well as Barry Eisler, Tom Clancy, or Vince Flynn? Even Tom Wood is good enough, with his Victor series, though he is a bit short on background, character development and atmosphere.

 

Espionage, assassins, spy stuff, etc? Prefer contemporary, as opposed to historic, like Silva, Ludlum, Forsyth, le Carre, etc. Granted those are great writers, but more historic. 

 

Have tried so many, and most are real hacks. Lee Child, Joseph Finder, Scot Harvath, Brad Taylor, Ben Coes, Brad Thor, Mark Greaney, Deon Meyer, L.T. Ryan, and others. Most bore me to tears. 

It depends on your reading taste. Mostly I read fiction, fantasy books and novels and also autobiography and biographies.  I also read war novels and anything that takes my fancy.

[toofarnorth]

7 hours ago, sanuk711 said:

Books --I dont think I have picked up a book since they invented the Kindle, everything is free............  Private Dancer , sure I will PM it to you now--if you tell me what format you want it in.

Thanks for the thought . I like to read at siesta time around 3 pm when I lie on the bed and read , usualy dropping the book as I nod off.  On here I get bored with a page of reading be it an answer or a thought. Not everone wants to read   Industrial Railways of The South-East.

Old Git Wit is a good read  , my brother sent it to me years ago on my 65th birthday.

Thanks sanuk711.

[connda]

3 hours ago, Oblomov said:

Agree - The Great Game is superb -  the 'great game' was a tremendously exciting episode of history and as you say, such incredible characters, it reads like fiction. Burns, Nicholson, Mackeson amongst others. Thanks for reminding me as I must read that again.

[moogradod]

On 6/9/2022 at 6:26 PM, moogradod said:

...... literature, Chandrakirti, Shantaraka, Nagarjuna and all the usual suspects of Mahayana texts and ...........

"Just for not leading astray: The name of the Indian commentator of Nagarjuna is of course not "Shantaraka". Somehow a fiilter on asean prevents to write it correctly - it appears a "delete" then, maybe because a substring of the name is considered "inappropriate": His name is of course "Shantarak -s-h-i-t-a". Have a nice evening.

[FolkGuitar]

One of the nicest things about getting old is that I can re-read books that I know I really enjoyed reading years ago, but have no real memory of just what happened in them!  I re-read the entire 'Lucas Davenport - Prey' series by John Sandford, enjoyed the dialog and characters just as much the second time around, and even found them still full of suspense, although I know everyone survived, I had no idea just HOW they managed it!  Same with Robert Parker's 'Spenser' series, and Dana Stabenow's 'Kate Shugak' series in the Alaskan bush country.

 

I enjoy reading authors who produce 'series' books, with characters that develop over time from book to book.

[The Hammer2021]

Christopher  C Moore

Writes about the Thai  underworld. Since his early  books- The Killing Smile trilogy he has improved enormously and are very informative about Thai  language  and culture, crime and politics

[The Hammer2021]

Woke A Guide to Social Justice

By Titania McGrath

An excellent  read to introduce you some contemporary social ideas. Laugh out funny.

Titania also does  comedy lectures and essays.

[cdemundo]

Mysteries by Abir Mukherjee, Brit cop and Indian cop in Calcutta during period of Indian independence movement.

First in series is called "A Rising Man".

Very entertaining to the point I don't really care whodunit by the end I just want the story to continue.

First books in the series are available on "Audible" recorded books.

[Mark Nothing]

I am reading a nonfiction book called Murder by Injection by Eustace Mullins.  The premise is a group of monopolists have hijacked the medical industry and are intentionally poisoning citizens with tablets and serums to juice sales under the disguise of care.

[robblok]

Reading all kinds of Isekai novels (yea im crazy) fantasy setting life in an other world stuff. 

 

Got a great ereader a boox note air 2 (IMHO better then a kindle as its A4). Kindle is like apple too locked in their ecosystem. Plus I havent seen an a4 ereader with paperwhite.

 

This is a chinese company but i think its good i can even access Thaivisa with a browser on Eink and read in the sun. Its not so good for typing and stuff.

 

Combine this ereader with ScribD subscription and you can read countless books cheap, you can still read kindle stuff too. I owned a kindle before and this eread has a kindle app so i got all the books i bought for kindle too.

 

Its also easy to import books you find online to this ereader. 

 

Not saying you cant get EPUB on Kindle but you need to convert first and then import all a lot harder. Kinda like Apple making it hard on users to get stuff from other sources

[connda]

21 hours ago, robblok said:

Reading all kinds of Isekai novels (yea im crazy) fantasy setting life in an other world stuff. 

 

Got a great ereader a boox note air 2 (IMHO better then a kindle as its A4). Kindle is like apple too locked in their ecosystem. Plus I havent seen an a4 ereader with paperwhite.

 

This is a chinese company but i think its good i can even access Thaivisa with a browser on Eink and read in the sun. Its not so good for typing and stuff.

 

Combine this ereader with ScribD subscription and you can read countless books cheap, you can still read kindle stuff too. I owned a kindle before and this eread has a kindle app so i got all the books i bought for kindle too.

 

Its also easy to import books you find online to this ereader. 

 

Not saying you cant get EPUB on Kindle but you need to convert first and then import all a lot harder. Kinda like Apple making it hard on users to get stuff from other sources

The world has just become nuts imho, but on the flip side it sparked a renewed interest for me to read more sci-fi and fantasy.  There are a lot of authors I have yet to read.  So it's great to hear what others are delving into reading wise.
I know many people like to watch these CGI movies, and so do I in many cases, but my own mind's creativity can fill in holes that cinematographers simply can not capture.