Books

I'm quite a bookworm myself.

I have a big stash of books that i have read over and over. When i find an author i like i tend to demolish all the books they have written before i move onto something else!!

My favourite author at the minute has got to be Jodi Picoult. I really can say if i were to pick up ANY of her books i would enjoy them all without being hooked in by 'my sister's keeper'

I also enjoy Tess Gerritsen books too.

I have yet to find a historical book that has gripped me like Fictional books do though..

Amazon is amazing for getting books

An opportune moment to add to this thread as I’m now rereading Gary Jennings’ novel The Journeyer. I’ve forgotten how many times I’ve read this book but it turned me into a devoted reader of Gary Jennings. I first picked up the book in the staff room of a nearby school where the staff would leave their old books for anybody else to read. I liked the cover, picked up the book and was hooked within a couple of pages. I also went further and read his other books – Aztec, Aztec Autumn, Spangle and Raptor. Raptor, by the way, is the only book I’ve ever heard of where the principal protagonist is a hermaphrodite.
The Journeyer tells the tale of Marco Polo, using the conceit that Polo was dissatisfied with the original version of his travels as it was transcribed by a priest called Rustichello of Pisa, who was extremely circumspect when it came to the more bawdy side of his adventures. This version describes the journeys but with the naughty bits included.
The reader is introduced to Marco Polo while he is still a young lad in Venice, the son of Nicolo Polo who runs a mercantile company with his brother Maffio. Descriptions of life in Venice are vivid and well researched and cover some of the madcap scrapes the young Polo got himself into, and takes us into the lives of the homeless street urchins he befriends.
Soon Marco is off on his travels in the company of his father and his Uncle Maffio who are keen to return to the court of Kublai Khan (grandson of the fearsome Genghis), mainly for business reasons.
Their journey along the Silk Road, the adventures that befell them, the often strange characters they meet along the way, the deserts and mountain ranges they cross are all recounted with nail-biting suspense.
Arrival at the court leads to more intrigue and more travels as an emissary of the great Khan. Marco’s encounters with techniques and artefacts that are totally new to him are sometimes hilarious and sometimes tragic, as in his experiments with gunpowder, or his use of it to fight a battle in the mountains.
Eventually Marco makes his way home via a long sea voyage via India and Ceylon.
Sadly Gary Jennings died in 1999 at a comparatively young age. His first book, Aztec and its sequel, Aztec Autumn were his first published novels and were a runaway success. Unfortunately, his publisher has had two further sequels produced by a ghost writer who shows none of the verve or the intellectual curiosity that stamps Jennings’ own work. These ghost-written faragoes are shoddily and ungrammatically written with climaxes that the reader can see coming after the first few pages. Avoid like the plague, but try Spangle (the story of an American sharpshooter in a travelling circus) and Raptor (the fall of the Roman Empire).
But be warned – The Journeyer is a big book and once you pick it up you will find it next to impossible to put down.

I've just finished reading all 6 books written by Sophie Hannah which I greatly enjoyed. They're crime novels featuring the same set of characters. I'm normally not much of a crime novel person but these were really good with some brilliant twists at the end. The firs tone in the series is called Little Face should anyone be interested, but I really recommend them!

I was interested in reading about the books that you have been reading. As an avid reader myself, i pretty much read anything that sounds interesting, from " The art of war " by sun tzu to Peter Kaye's biographies.

So far this year i have read around 30 books, several by favorite authors such as Eric Lustbader, Jeffery Deaver and James Pattersen, but i have also been introduced to a few new authors ( to me at least )

One of these authors is M.S.Scott , who's book " Rome, The emperors spy " was bought for me by one of my daughters, it is the first in a series. As the title suggests it is set in Rome, during the reign of Nero. I can highly recommend this book, and i look forward to buying the next in the series.
This author also wrote a series of books about Boudica, and also, writing as Manda Scott " 2012, The crystal skull " is another good read.

I'm reading 2 Bill Bryson books at the moment, " A short history of nearly everything" and " At home ". These are the first Bryson books i've read, but they won't be the last.

My favourite book is Tolkien's 'The Silmarillion'.

I'm currently reading 'Brothers' by David Talbot about the relationship between Jack and Bobby Kennedy.

Other books I've recently read are 'The House on the Strand' and 'The King's General' by Daphne du Maurier.

Anyone else here have a Kindle?

Yes, I do have a Kindle and I love it. It goes everywhere with me. I use a programme called Calibre which converts lots of different formats such as PDF and word documents to a format suitable for the Kindle which is great.

If I read a book which I really love, then I'll buy a print copy to keep.

My only vague gripe about it is that Amazon have the purchase of Kindle books set to one click buying and sometimes it is just a little too easy to buy a book (especially if like me you have little willpower when it comes to buying books).

I took mine to Australia with me and didn't bother to watch any films on any of the numerous flights. I read my Kindle instead.

Are we allowed to put links in?

Here it is. Brilliant little programme.

http://calibre-ebook.com/about

If you want to convert a word document, you need to save it as rich text so it will convert.

Interesting to read that so many of you have started to use a Kindle, i'll have to put one on my christmas wish list, using one might stop the missus moaning about the space my books take up, i've not long got rid of 300 books to a second hand book shop but still have a few hundred knocking around.

If you like biographies, i can recommend Stephen Fry's, he is very frank and honest in it, also, " The Palin Diaries" by Michael Palin, he reveals what went on behind the scenes during his time with Monty Python.

Like the other Kindle owners here, I love my Kindle. And as I was formerly a printer I suppose I shouldn’t be saying that. My wife bought mine for my birthday last year and was so taken with it that I had to buy her one as an advance Christmas gift.
The advantages I find are the same as the other people on this forum – ease of buying books (can be a disadvantage if you’re on a strict budget), its capacity (up to 3000 books at a time), being able to take it when travelling thus, saving yourself the bother of filling up a suitcase with books. Don’t forget, either, that the typeface can be set smaller or larger, for anyone who doesn’t have 20/20 vision.
There are lots of free books at Amazon or other web sites, and I have gleefully downloaded a fair number, in keeping with my pastime of catching up on the classics I missed out on during my working life. I’ve downloaded the entire Sherlock Holmes canon, all the short stories of Guy de Maupassant, works by H.G. Wells, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, H. de Vere Stacpoole’s The Blue Lagoon, 27 novels by Jules Verne, Gibbons’ Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (all 6 volumes) and Conrad’s Lord Jim. That’s not to say that I’ve ignored modern writers – I also have the latest books by Wilbur Smith, Tom Clancy, Jonathan Kellerman and Frederick Forsyth.
Of course, anything so handy and convenient must have its drawbacks, and Kindle does have a few. My biggest gripe is in the non-fiction field, where it’s not easy to move about inside a book to check on references or footnotes – a very fiddly business involving inserting bookmarks all over the place. Maps or illustrations are also frequently difficult to read.
I don’t think Kindle or any other type of electronic reader will totally replace books, especially not large format atlases or works covering fine art subjects, but for the average reader who loves to get lost in a novel or thriller it’s an absolute Godsend.