Book Recommendations

[Walker11]

What have all you read recently that you recommend? My current mood is easy crime reads and I have between reading Lehane, Pelacanos and Leonard but a good book is a good book.

 

[8893]

Educated by Tara Westover. Amazing memoir. Incredibly well written. Very compelling story and read.

 

[nwhoopfan]

Ever read any of the Jack Reacher novels by Lee Child? Ex-military police, now free lance tough guy that gives the bad guys the comeuppance they so badly need. The author is prolific, as far as I know they are all pretty much stand alone, so you could just randomly pick up any of them. What I call brain candy or an airport book.

 

[nwhoopfan]

Spy novels definitely aren't my go to genre but I fairly recently enjoyed a couple books by Dan Fesperman, The Double Game and Safe Houses.

 

[billythekid]

I primarily read fantasy these days, but Michael Connelly is my go to for crime fiction. The Harry Bosch series is my favorite, but his Lincoln Lawyer series is also good. He also has a couple of standalones, like The Poet, that are also good reads.

 

[Walker11]

I primarily read fantasy these days, but Michael Connelly is my go to for crime fiction. The Harry Bosch series is my favorite, but his Lincoln Lawyer series is also good. He also has a couple of standalones, like The Poet, that are also good reads.

I think the Bosch TV show is very underrated. Fantasy recommendations are welcome as well. I am listening to The Name of The Wind right now. I burnt myself out plugging through non fiction and now am trying to binge through page-turners.

 

[Walker11]

Educated by Tara Westover. Amazing memoir. Incredibly well written. Very compelling story and read.

This looks excellent. Thanks

 

[Walker11]

Ever read any of the Jack Reacher novels by Lee Child? Ex-military police, now free lance tough guy that gives the bad guys the comeuppance they so badly need. The author is prolific, as far as I know they are all pretty much stand alone, so you could just randomly pick up any of them. What I call brain candy or an airport book.

Never read them but the movie was better than I expected after bring a dud commercially.

 

[Waquoit]

My friend gave me his copy of City of Thieves. Said it was a page turner. I loved it. The author is now the show runner for Game of Thrones.

 

[8893]

This looks excellent. Thanks

She apparently learned a lot about writing by becoming obsessed with a New Yorker podcast where authors read short stories that they love from other authors and then talk about what makes them great stories. She loved the arc of a short story so much that she set about writing her memoir with every chapter having that same arc. It makes for a compelling read. The level of her self awareness is also remarkable, especially for her age and “education.”

I read Hillbilly Elegy a couple years ago and liked that, but didn’t feel it was as much of a mind blower as advertised—although it did have some great insights. Westover’s upbringing makes Vance’s look privileged and coddled by comparison, and her book hit me on many more levels than his did.

 

[Walker11]

She apparently learned a lot about writing by becoming obsessed with a New Yorker podcast where authors read short stories that they love from other authors and then talk about what makes them great stories. She loved the arc of a short story so much that she set about writing her memoir with every chapter having that same arc. It makes for a compelling read. The level of her self awareness is also remarkable, especially for her age and “education.”

I read Hillbilly Elegy a couple years ago and liked that, but didn’t feel it was as much of a mind blower as advertised—although it did have some great insights. Westover’s upbringing makes Vance’s look privileged and coddled by comparison, and her book hit me on many more levels than his did.

Funny that you mention this because I started a book recommendation thread 2 years ago and you recommended Elegy. I expressed some reservations but I did end up liking it.

 

[nwhoopfan]

Never read them but the movie was better than I expected after bring a dud commercially.

I enjoyed the movie. It was a fairly loose adaptation of the character. In the book Reacher is a big dude, like 6-4 230 or something. And goes even further above/beyond the law to do what needs to get done.

 

[nwhoopfan]

Fantasy recommendations are welcome as well.

Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett was really intriguing I thought. It contained magical elements of sorts that was unique and creative.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

Classics:

Being There - one of the greatest books ever written.

Fiction:

Sacred Games - Vikram Chandra - loved this book.

Anything by Richard Russo or Michael Chabon. Russo is better of the two.

Cryptonomicon - Neal Stepenson - His books come off the rails sometimes, but this one is pretty good.

Non-Fiction:

The Warburgs by Ron Chernow - tracks the rise of one of the most powerful banking families in history against the backdrop of central European anti-Semitism. Really good book.

 

[nwhoopfan]

Michael Chabon

I tried reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, didn't get very far. But I really liked The Yiddish Policeman's Union. Very interesting premise.

That reminds me of something else. I guess I've got a bit of a thing for tough guy, loose cannon detective/P.I./vigilante type of characters. Nelson DeMille has a recurring character that's been in several of his books that I've enjoyed. Plum Island and Night Fall. Apparently he's been in more.

 

[traitor71]

This one is about ten years old now, but I revisit it often. Just a crazy experience for the author, and one I could never imagine undertaking.

 

[storrsroars]

Carl Hiaasen. Former reporter for the Miami Herald, so pretty much all of his books are centered on Florida and based loosely on crimes and characters he's covered. He's a funnier version of Elmore Leonard. Suggest start from the beginning with Tourist Season and move on from there. A few of his books have recurring characters, but each stands on its own.

 

[billythekid]

Fantasy recommendations are welcome as well.

Here is a list of fantasy series that I've given four or five star ratings to on Goodreads, in no particular order. If you're not familiar with Goodreads, it's a review site for books that I've found very useful over the years in picking which books to read. I've found that books that score at least 4/5 are typically pretty good.

Ravens Shadow (Anthony Ryan)
Stormlight Archive (Brandon Sanderson)
Mistborn (Brandon Sanderson)
Realm of the Elderlings (Robin Hobb) start with the Farseer Trilogy
Red Rising (Pierce Brown)
Gentleman Bastards (Scott Lynch)
Demon Cycle (Peter Brett)
Ember in the Ashes (Sabaa Tahir)
Broken Empire (Mark Lawrence)
Red Queen's War (Mark Lawrence)
The First Law (Joe Abercrombie)
Shattered Sea (Joe Abercrombie)
The Riyria Chronicles (Michael J. Sullivan)
The Passage Trilogy (Justin Cronin)
Memory, Sorrow and Thorn (Tad Williams)

Hopefully you'll find something in there worthwhile.

 

[Walker11]

Carl Hiaasen. Former reporter for the Miami Herald, so pretty much all of his books are centered on Florida and based loosely on crimes and characters he's covered. He's a funnier version of Elmore Leonard. Suggest start from the beginning with Tourist Season and move on from there. A few of his books have recurring characters, but each stands on its own.

I picked up a Hiaasen book because I couldn't find any of the other mentioned books at my library. I really liked it (Bad Monkey) and it was a nice departure from the grittier crime novels I had been reading.

I just picked up Dark Matter by Blake Crouch and goshdarn if this isn't a page turner.

I also just finished The Good Father by Noah Hawley (Fargo showrunner and author of Before The Fall) and Bone Clocks by David Mitchell. The Hawley book was forgettable but I do really like David Mitchell's writing style.

I picked up my own copy of Educated because there were 45 people in the library queue and hope to knock off that and Sacred Games next.

 

[8893]

I picked up my own copy of Educated because there were 45 people in the library queue and hope to knock off that

Everyone to whom I have recommended "Educated" has shared my reaction that it was one of the best books they've ever read. I'm having a hard time getting traction with another book now because it was so good that the bar is set pretty high.

 

[nwhoopfan]

I just picked up Dark Matter by Blake Crouch and goshdarn if this isn't a page turner.

It's been a while since I read it, but I really enjoyed it as well.

 

[Waquoit]

Clryptonomicon - Neal Stepenson - His books come off the rails sometimes, but this one is pretty good.

Did you read the Baroque Cycle? If so, worth it?

 

[CL82]

Ever read any of the Jack Reacher novels by Lee Child? Ex-military police, now free lance tough guy that gives the bad guys the comeuppance they so badly need. The author is prolific, as far as I know they are all pretty much stand alone, so you could just randomly pick up any of them. What I call brain candy or an airport book.

Love these. Fair warning they are like potato chips. You won't stop with just one.

What do you like fiction or non fiction?

Fiction: I just finished reading the Game of Thrones series they were surprisingly (at to me) good.
My favorite is probably the Master and Commander series which is excellent.

Non fiction:
Agent Zigzag - true story of a crook who uses the Nazi's to get out prison and is trained as a spy by them only to become a British double agent. Great action, girl in every port very Bond-like. In fact he had some interaction with Ian Flemming who may have based Bond in part of him.

I read a lot so if you tell me what you like, I may have more ideas

 

[Jay-Bone]

Has anyone read I, Claudius? I am admittedly not an avid reader, but find Roman history very intriguing. Wondering if the writing style is engaging enough.

 

[storrsroars]

I feel like I posted this somewhere here already, but not in this thread. "The Last Days of Innocence", a book about US entry into WW1, was fascinating on many levels. Different times, but maybe not so much. This is when the Federal government really took over from the states, forcing things like conscription, commerce limitations, rationing, censorship, union busting, commie hunts and all sorts of unsavory things that created a precedent that some dictatorial type president could unleash again.

Also showed how unprepared the US was for participating in a global conflict from lack of materiel, leadership and a standing army, which led to a ton of perhaps unnecessary US deaths on the battlefield, as well as behind-the-scenes maneuvering between the Brits and French to minimize potential US influence in defeating the enemy.

While other books have covered this territory from a US perspective, apparently this was the first book to include significant information from British and French archives as well as German and Russian data to fill in a lot of blanks, which made the political intrigue portions of the narrative extremely compelling.