Good books?

Mr Clean

AKA Teddy Wong
Anyone else an avid reader? Recommend any good books? I read a lot of the time when I not doing anything musically. I mainly ready auto/biographies, true stories but I don't mind a bit of fiction if it's the right kind of the story.

For anyone interested in true crime, I can't recommend enough, Wicked Beyond Belief. This is one of the very best books I've ever read. The hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper was the most amazing cock up in British police history and the book is just a fantastic read.

Devil's Knot is another fantastic book. The story of the West Memphis 3 is one that I've followed since my teenage years and even though you know that they were found guilty and sentenced, reading the book you can't believe that they would be found anything but not guilty. Awesome book.

The Damage Done: Twelve Years Of Hell In A Bangkok Prison. I've read a lot of prison books over the years, all true stories but none of them really compare to this one. Austalian Warren Fellows story behind bars for drug trafficking. Brutal story, great read!

I won't rant on but I'll list a few of my favourite books.

Crime
McVicar By Himself
A Sense Of Freedom : Jimmy Boyle
Stolen Years : Paul Hill
Proved innocent : Gerry Conlon
Fifty Dead Men Walking : Martin McGartland
To Kill The Irishman : The true story of Danny Greene
Papillon
Fred & Rose
Redemption : Stan 'Tookie' Williams
Cass : Cass Pennant
Killing Pablo
Donnie Brasco
Chopper : This should probably go under fiction. :laughings:

Biographies
Dear Boy : Keith Moon
All The Rage : Ian Maclagan
Shakey : Neil young
The Guv'nor : Lenny Mclean

Fiction
Trainspotting : Just fucking awesome! Pisses on the film.
No Mean City : Glasgow cut throat razor gangs of the 50's/60's.
Stig Of The Dump : THE GREATEST BOOK EVER WRITTEN!

.....and way too many more to mention. What you got? I need something new/good/interesting to read.

:thumbs up:
 
I'm currently going through the "A Song of Ice and Fire" series by George R. R. Martin. It's the one being adapted into the Game of Thrones show on HBO. It's some pretty awesome historical(ish) fantasy, if you're into that. The books are freaking huge so they'll take up a lot of time haha
 
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I tend to read a lot of history. A lot of US history, then general.
Some books I have read that may be of interest to others:

"All Under Heaven" A over view of Chinese history.

"Guns, Germs and Steel" talks about how societies around the world evolved.

"Delivered From Evil" A epic about World War II, including brief bio's on all of the major leaders during that time, politics, etc. Pretty good 3D view of that war.

"The Works of Josephus" - Roman and Middle Easy history around 100 CE (still slagging through this book, there is a lot there)

"The Bible" - read it several times, front to back (not skipping around). Let's just say, it is a lot different than I was told :)

"Battle Cry for Freedom" About US Civil War, written in the same style as Delivered

"George Washington's War" Revolutionary war, same style as Delivered and Battle Cry

"History of Christianity" - pretty interesting, goes through the beginnings of the church, to the Catholic church, split with the Greek Orthodox, on to the Protestant and Calvinist movements.

"Intelligent Investor" - Benjamin Graham (book was last updated by Graham in 77 and is still relevant)

As you can see, I am a fun to be around at parties with a few drinks. Oh boy :D
 
I've read a few interesting political histories too. Read a really good biography; Mao: The Untold Story. Long winded but very detailed. Another good one was Berlin Wall - Its kind of a biography of The Wall.

I've also read the bible cover to cover - when you actually read it all in context like that you realise that its total bollocks!

I read the Song Of Ice And Fire series too - really enjoyed it; gets a bit boring in places but its interesting to have all the backstory to all the characters and there's loads of good sub plots - its pretty well written too!

My favourite "popular" book was Tokyo by Mo Hayder.
There's a few Stephen King books that I really couldn't put down too. I'm quite a big fan of really dark horror to and have always liked Clive Barker - I was really disappointed with his latest one though.
 
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Ice and Fire is great.
I've read quite a few musician autobiographies. "The Dirt" by Mötley Crüe is great. It really highlights the difference between the old era of rock stars and the new one. Old rock stars were generally insane individuals, not actors. They were crazy and fucked up long before they even touched an instrument.
 
I read all of A Song of Ice and Fire so far, much better than the TV show.

I've been reading some Asimov lately, but it's too rubbish and I had to stop halfway through the third original Foundation series book.


Really great books I've read include:

The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood. This is a remarkable book.
Oryx & Crake - Margaret Atwood
American Gods - Neil Gaiman
Vernon God Little - DBC Pierre
Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
The Satanic Verses - Salman Rushdie
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
The Outsider (or L'Etranger) - Albert Camus


I quite like Terry Pratchett and Robin Hobb for some lighter reading (both write fantasy).

One of my favourites is To Kill a Mockingbird, but I guess most of you read that in school?! Most people I know read it at school, but my class didn't, for some reason.

Unlike most people, I really didn't like The Catcher in the Rye, I have no idea what's so classic about it.

I read For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Hemingway, and I loved and hated it. The imagery was marvellous, but I found the dialogue so irritating.
 
Outside of college textbooks (really hating summer classes), I rarely have the desire to read anything else. I'm about halfway through the last of Stephen King's Dark Tower series and have had to let it sit due to my course workload. (Don't ever take four 16 week classes during an 8 week summer semester. :facepalm:)

I have read almost the entire collection of Stephen King, "Bag of Bones," "The Stand" and "IT" being my favorites but there are many others that I couldn't put down.

Not much on biographies but I got a bio on Buddy Holly as a gift last year and it was pretty good. My dad got me George W. Bush's autobiography and I couldn't make it past the first 4 pages just because the writing was so bad.

Stieg Larsson's "Girl with the dragon tattoo" trilogy was pretty amazing, IMO. The first chapter or two in each were tough to get past but then it was just hard to put down afterwards.

Zora Neil Hurston's "Their eyes were watching God" has always been one on my recommendation list, as well.

Anyone ever get into classic Russian literature? "A day in the life of Ivan Denisovich" and "Crime and Punishment" are two good ones.
 
don't read 'go it alone' by geoff burch it's absolutley terrible :facepalm: can't believe I fell for the 5 star reviews on amazon, it certainly isn't for me.
 
I've seen references to some books I've really enjoyed in previous posts (The Martian, A Song of Ice and Fire series, American Gods, Girl Wth the Dragon Tattoo, Oryx & Crake)

Ever since I read George RR Martin, I've been going back to the medieval fantasy stuff again and again. I like all of Joe Abercrombie's stuff from the First Law series. They're violent, pulpy fantasy stories, and the initial trilogy was a pretty fun read. The books that followed the trilogy were much better though.

I've been reading a lot of Brandon Sanderson lately, just finished the Mistborn trilogy, and I'm caught up on the Stormlight series. He's a cool author to follow, a very prolific fellow. That dude must write in his sleep, in order to push out as much material as he does.

Other than fantasy, I've had a few other recent favorites:
Kiss Me Judas by Will Christopher Baer. A weird, drugged-out story about a guy that wakes up and realizes that a hooker stole his kidney.
Anything by Hugh Howey, but especially the Silo/Wool series. Fantastic collection of post-apocalyptic novellas. Probably my favorite reading of the past several years.
Hyperion/Rise of Hyperion and Endymion/Fall of Endymion by Dan Simmons. Epic sci-fi fantasy stuff.
Yesterday's Gone by Sean Platt and David Wright. Fun, light, serialized post-apocalyptic fiction written in the fashion of current cable TV dramas.
 
That whole Dorne plot line was kind of a disaster in the books. When it was trimmed to almost nothing in the series, it was even worse.

That's true. I didn't care for the Dorne chapters so they made Jaime and his funny sidekick Bronn go on an ass-whooping adventure together!
I find it interesting that nobody ever mentions that they clearly murdered a few Dornish riders. Where else would they have gotten the warrior's clothes when they were caught?
Lol. The show's quality has gone down since they started doing hte plot lines themselves. The whole part of making Trent a pedophile to justify murdering him was so dumb. He was already a total dickhead, why did they have to put in the "TOO OLD!" scenes?

It all felt rushed.
 
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