Shandon Par Posted May 7, 2019 Share Posted May 7, 2019 James Ellroy is in Glasgow on 29th May as part of his book tour. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ross. Posted May 7, 2019 Share Posted May 7, 2019 Twisted by Steve Cavanagh. OK but felt like he was trying a bit too hard with the plot twists. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
welshbairn Posted May 7, 2019 Share Posted May 7, 2019 1 hour ago, Shandon Par said: James Ellroy is in Glasgow on 29th May as part of his book tour. I see his new book comes out the next day, been a long time coming, 600 pages though. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shandon Par Posted May 7, 2019 Share Posted May 7, 2019 1 hour ago, welshbairn said: I see his new book comes out the next day, been a long time coming, 600 pages though. Only about 3 years behind schedule with it. I know books are perfectly valid in their own right but I'd love to see a really decent TV or film adaptation of his more recent stuff. The LA Confidential film was good but still didn't really do some of the characters justice. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mathematics Posted May 7, 2019 Share Posted May 7, 2019 8 hours ago, Gnash said: I was 3/4 of the way through A Clockwork Orange when my wife put my ereader in the washing machine. Ex-wife, shirley? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
welshbairn Posted May 7, 2019 Share Posted May 7, 2019 4 hours ago, Shandon Par said: Only about 3 years behind schedule with it. I know books are perfectly valid in their own right but I'd love to see a really decent TV or film adaptation of his more recent stuff. The LA Confidential film was good but still didn't really do some of the characters justice. Wasn't keen on the first book of his new series, hopefully the time he spent on it paid off. He got a lot of stick for the experimental stuff on The Cold 6 Thousand which I thought was his best book, so he thought he had to go more conventional. If I was in Glasgow on the 29th I'd call him a Jessie. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coprolite Posted May 7, 2019 Share Posted May 7, 2019 On 01/05/2019 at 17:02, mathematics said: Finished “Minority Report” by Philip K Dick today. It’s a book of short stories, two of which were adapted into the movies “minority report” and “total recall”. I think that PKD has some good ideas for stories, but isn’t necessarily that good a writer, or maybe I just don’t like short stories. Completely agree with the ideas being better than the writing in general. He couldn't do characters. That can work in some stories where the character is incidental. A Scanner Darkly for example works because the environment removes any individuality. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coprolite Posted May 7, 2019 Share Posted May 7, 2019 (edited) Just finished Brookmyres latest. Felt almost like an Ian Banks book because of the set up, but clearly Brookmyres style. Some good ranty asides and some genuinely unsettling and emotional serious bits. Very grown up and probably his best written book yet. Plotwise though, it would be nice to have some more self decapitating henchmen and OTT megalomaniacs like in the olden days. Edited May 7, 2019 by coprolite 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ross. Posted May 10, 2019 Share Posted May 10, 2019 William Boyd’s “Love is Blind”. First of his I have read. Will definitely look for more. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paul-r-cfc Posted May 17, 2019 Share Posted May 17, 2019 Been trying to rattle through the embarrassingly large (and ever growing) collection of unread books on my shelves. Had a good start to the year so far.Flew through my last one as I got roped into supervising a half way ghee history candidate and had four hours of dead time.White Crocodile by K.T MedinaDebut novel by a former TA engineer about a minesweeper in Cambodia who investigates a serial killer operating around one of the country's largest minefields. Having been to Cambodia, it sets the scene very well and it's clear the author knows the country well. Good plot, good pacing, well written and a very gripping conclusion.Solid first novel and look forward to seeing whether she picks up the central character Tess for a second book. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coprolite Posted May 17, 2019 Share Posted May 17, 2019 Darkening age by Catherine Nixey. Narrative history of the early years of Christianity, focusing on them burning books, persecuting philosophers, flaying heretics and generally behaving like ISIS to usher in the dark ages. Pretty decent, although it laboured a couple of points too much. Really good anecdotes told with a lot of vivid detail. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shandon Par Posted May 31, 2019 Share Posted May 31, 2019 Just got the new James Ellroy book. Some size. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
welshbairn Posted June 2, 2019 Share Posted June 2, 2019 On 31/05/2019 at 09:57, Shandon Par said: Just got the new James Ellroy book. Some size. He also does literary criticism. Quote Ellroy writes about lowlife Los Angeles and admits that as a young man he read a lot of Raymond Chandler, the patron saint of hard-boiled crime fiction. But woe betide anyone who suggests he is beholden to him. “Raymond Chandler is the most overrated writer in the American canon,” he told Hay. “Raymond Chandler sucks chihuahua dicks.” His preference is for Dashiell Hammett, the creator of Sam Spade. “Hammett wrote the kind of man that he was afraid that he was. Chandler wrote the kind of guy that he wished he were.” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jun/02/james-ellroy-says-film-adaptation-of-la-confidential-was-as-deep-as-a-tortilla 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BallochSonsFan Posted June 4, 2019 Share Posted June 4, 2019 The Heavenly Table by Donald Ray Pollock. Style is somewhere between O Brother Where Art Thou and True Grit - Typical Coen Brothers dark humour and caricature characters. It's set in rural America during the first world war. When an old sharecropper dies and makes his 3 children orphans, the Jewett brothers decide that they'd rather reap their rewards on earth than wait to dine at God's heavenly table. Inspired by the anti-hero of an old pulp novel that the oldest brother read to his younger siblings for years, the Jewetts decide to pursue the outlaw life in a southern America on the edges between cowboys and the modern era. I enjoyed it. It would be easy for the author to sneer at his characters as backward hicks and southern rednecks but there's a genuine warmth in some of the characters in the novel and even the 3 Jewetts are given rounded and developed personalities. Pollock weaves several threads together over the course of about 360 pages. The ending still feels a touch rushed - things come together a little too quickly over the final 30 or so pages of the novel and it would have been a little better if the author had kept the pace of the preceding chapters when reaching the ultimate ending for the Jewetts and the other main protagonists he did well to flesh out. It doesnt detract from the story nor take too much away from the overall enjoyment. Definitely recommended. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deanburn Dave Posted June 4, 2019 Share Posted June 4, 2019 Dark Sacred Night by Michael Connelly. Detectives Ballard and Bosch doing what they do best. A great read. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shandon Par Posted June 7, 2019 Share Posted June 7, 2019 On 02/06/2019 at 20:51, welshbairn said: He also does literary criticism. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jun/02/james-ellroy-says-film-adaptation-of-la-confidential-was-as-deep-as-a-tortilla Cheers - think I’ve agreed with his summation already on here that no adaptation has really done his work justice. Just finishing an Elmore Leonard before getting stuck into the new Ellroy. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
welshbairn Posted June 7, 2019 Share Posted June 7, 2019 1 minute ago, Shandon Par said: Cheers - think I’ve agreed with his summation already on here that no adaptation has really done his work justice. Just finishing an Elmore Leonard before getting stuck into the new Ellroy. I thought LA Confidential was pretty good. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shandon Par Posted June 7, 2019 Share Posted June 7, 2019 2 minutes ago, welshbairn said: I thought LA Confidential was pretty good. Me too but always thought it was a shame they didn’t do more with the Dudley Smith character. He’s almost supernaturally evil and powerful in the books but was a bit of a nasty wee nyaff in the film. Still one of the very best film noirs though. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Taxman Posted June 17, 2019 Share Posted June 17, 2019 Just finished reading Brookmyre's latest, Fallen Angel. Not one of his longer reads but good nonetheless with a nice twist near the end. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Saigon Raider Posted June 17, 2019 Share Posted June 17, 2019 Having not watched one episode of Game of Thrones, I decided to start the books. Holy shit, just finished the first one and it is incredible - got the next two lined up for my summer reading. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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