What are you reading?

[Algernon]

UrbanSG went book crazy in another thread, which is a good thing, so I decided to start a separate thread.

Tell us what you're reading. If you don't read you're a bum


I'm currently on Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon.

[AtD]

I'm a bum who doesn't read much. I did get a few books for Xmas, including a cool one called Vintage Adelaide. http://www.eaststreet.com.au/images/boo ... elaide.pdf

[Howie]

I too am a member of the Bummy species. I do all my reading online or in newspaper... not much for fiction. And i watch lots of documentaries.. which is a lazy man's equivalent of having information hand fed to him.

BTW, how's vintage adelaide?? Think i've seen that book around.

[UrbanSG]

Hehehe Algernon, yes I did go book crazy As I said at the moment I'm reading Dostoevsky's 'Crime and Punishment' which is a very intense read of 462 pages of very small writing so I'll be at it for a while in and out of everything else. I have a few others lined up. Another of his called 'The House of The Dead'.

To be honest I think it is very important that people read. There is so much c*ap out there with mindless TV shows and News Services that are actually permitted to lie and provide false news stories. Read a book, it is a far cry from all the c*ap and a good escape from it all.

[UrbanSG]

I also believe that George Orwell's '1984' is a must read book. Everyone should be made to read it Then you will know the true meaning of Big Brother not the bloody show that got its name and theme from this book.

Algernon I have not read those books that you have recommended but I have heard of them so I'll put them on my future read list

[Howie]

Okay you talked me into it... i'll have a look at 1984 next time i'm at the library

[AG]

I've read Orwell's 1984 and seen the movie version of it as well. One of the few novels that I have successfully read from start to finish without getting bored with it.

[UrbanSG]

Howie that's great. Glad I and others have managed to persuade you to take a look at it. Hopefully you find it to be a good read. If ya don't well at least you took a look at it

[AtD]

BTW, how's vintage adelaide?? Think i've seen that book around.

It's good, informative, and some fantastic photos. I'd like to see a sequal with places like Barr Smith in it.

[Waz]

Me = lazy bum also... I never read any fiction at all... I have read 1984 however, but that was way back in high school because we had to for English

[bobdown]

At the moment I'm reading a Peter Temple Omnibus...The Broken Shore...In The Evil Day...An Iron Rose


The Broken Shore

Before Rai Sarris, Cashin was different. He moved more quickly then, he was less thoughtful, less easily spooked. But there are consequences when you've come that close to dying. For Cashin, they include a posting away from the world of murderers, of Homicide, to the quiet place on the coast where he grew up. Here all he has to do is play the country cop and walk the dogs. And sometimes think about how he was before Sarris. Then rich Charles Bourgoyne, the local benefactor, is bashed and everything seems to point to three boys from the nearby Aboriginal community. Cashin is unconvinced and as tragedy unfolds relentlessly into tragedy, he finds himself holding onto something that might be better let go. The Broken Shore is Temple's finest book yet; a work as moving as it is gripping, and one that defies the boundaries of genre. You will not read a more spellbinding book this year.


In The Evil Day

John Anselm is a former Beirut hostage, a foreign correspondent who went to one war too many. A burnt-out-case, he lives in his family's ancestral house in Germany, working for a semi-legal and near-broke surveillance firm and wrestling with his own fractured identity and family history. His intelligence work collides with the lives of Con Niemand, an ex-mercenary and professional survivor, and ambitious London journalist Caroline Wishart. They are caught in a nightmare of violence and intrigue that can only end with the uncovering of long-buried secrets.


An Iron Rose

Set in the cold, wet countryside near Melbourne. Mac Faraday is an ex-policeman with a broken marriage, still mourning his father after some years. He's a part-time blacksmith and part-time landscape garden-labourer, when he isn't playing for the local football team. The book opens with the apparent suicide of Mac's neighbour and friend Ned Lowey, and continues with Mac's and the police's parallel, but not mutually friendly, investigation of the death.

[Will409]

Got around 2000-2500 (including around 300 in my room) books at my place including some dating back to the late 19th century. Some of the good ones in our collection include:

- 1984
- 20,000 leagues under the sea
- Moby Dick
- War of the Worlds
- First Men on the Moon
- Starship Troopers (original printing)
- Robbery Under Arms

...and many many more. I have got a huge collection of railway books and magazines in my collection including locomotive operating manuals from the 1960s. Until recently when I sold it on eBay, I had an original SAR rule book for Islington Workshops from 1928 signed off personally by W.A.Webb, the big man himself of SA railways.

[Norman]

Where did you get all that railway stuff from?

[Will409]

A combination of sources over the past 10 years or so. Some were bought new, some from second hand book shops, some from flee markets, some from second hand archival sales from the National Railway Museum and some were given to be me by family friends.

[JamesXander]

I am reading Potato Factory by Bryce

but on the side when I can I am reading this book called 'Not Forgotten' Its about all the war memorials in the UK and heaps of different stories of men who died during WW1. He basically randomly selects a name on a memorial and tells their story. The Great War was pretty insane over there.