What are you reading now?

[prinnysquad]

I concur with the Holmes shout. Fantastic character pieces as well as classic literature.

[randombs]

Kindle has the complete(I think) Holmes on it. Been meaning to start it so will do this week.

Currently re-reading the Dune set but very slowly and sporadically. I'm on the third book(Children of Dune) but the pdf I got isn't formatted at all so there are no paragraphs. Makes reading it a bit of a headache

[QualityChimp]

Pick me one Holmes book to read.

Not this one:
[hide][/hide]

Fader, I really enjoyed Dead Man's Footsteps by Peter James. It's the 4th in his Roy Grace series (he's up to nine of them).
Amid the tragic unfolding mayhem of the morning of 9/11, failed Brighton businessman and ne'er-do-well Ronnie Wilson sees the chance of a lifetime, to shed his debts, disappear and reinvent himself in another country. Six years later, the discovery of the skeletal remains of a woman's body in a storm drain in Brighton, leads Detective Superintendent Roy Grace on an enquiry spanning the globe, and into a desperate race against time to save the life of a woman being hunted down like an animal in the streets and alleys of Brighton.

I should probably start reading the other books as I got through this one really quick.

Are you on Goodreads? It's a great site with lots of suggestions of books you might enjoy based on what you thought of ones you've already read.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4932633-dead-man-s-footsteps

[vanpeebles]

Pick me one Holmes book to read.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Sherlock_Holmes

[Garf]

My favourite crime series of all time is The Straw Men trilogy (Straw Men, Upright Man, Blood of Angels) by Michael Marshall - http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Straw-Me...=the+straw+men

It's incredibly gritty and real, no silly stuff just because the main character is the main character.

I'd agree with the Straw Men books, really enjoyed them and have re-read them a number of times..

I'd also recommend the Hank Thompson trilogy (Caught Stealing, Six Bad Things and A Dangerous Man) by Charlie Huston - really like these..

[Fader209]

Thanks for the recommendations guys I started reading the Straw Men and it really has me hooked already! Just the sort of thing I was looking for. I will definitely be checking out all the other suggestions in due time (have written down the authors) so will post my thoughts on them later on.
I'm not currently on Goodreads so will sign up today and see what it throws up as it's worth a try as I'm always looking for something new to read and recommendations are the best way to go about that. I finished reading "The Rats" yesterday which was actually a damn good book for something I had heard nothing about - strangely enough it's about rats...Big, nasty mutant rats with a taste for human flesh! Was written in '74 so it's getting on a bit now but it was well written and there is something about intelligent rats that is horribly sinister.

[Pikate]

And also for crime you can do no better than read through some Sherlock Holmes stories. The short stories are nice for a quick read and there are longer ones too.

This encouraged me to read a copy of The Hound of the Baskervilles I had among a penguin clothbound classics series I collect. Fantastic recommendation.

[vanpeebles]

You have to kick on and read the rest now! I just love the opening of Hound of the Baskervilles with the cane. Enchanting stuff.

[Pikate]

You have to kick on and read the rest now! I just love the opening of Hound of the Baskervilles with the cane. Enchanting stuff.

I started it not long before having to work a nightshift so just read upto Chapter 2 and the

->Open Spoiler<-

"they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!"

line, I've never left a book on such a perfect moment for a pause.

[vanpeebles]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1904633951/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=&seller=

That's the Sherlock book I have, it's got fancy edged pages and a string bookmark in it You really need one with the illustrations in too.

[QualityChimp]

"The Coroner said the prisoner had been anally raped an estimated fifty times and when they did the autopsy, they found a pint of semen in his stomach".

Not the nicest place to have to stop your audiobook on the way into work!

It's not the biography of (insert name of dead celebrity here), it's an excerpt from "Killing Floor", Lee Child's debut novel and the first Jack Reacher novel.
The quote is establishing that prison isn't a very nice place to be and somehow, Reacher has ended up there...

I'm loving the story so far and it's making the journeys fly by. It's not a particularly fair quote to use as it's not like that throughout, it's just where I happened to stop it.

Reacher is a former Major in the US Army Military Police Corps, which is handy when he has to deduce why somebody has been murdered and why he's been accused of doing it. Having to arrest Navy Seals and tough soldiers in his past profession means he's well-trained too, which is just as well when he's sent to prison for the weekend and the locals start demanding a "residency tax".

It's a nice balance of police procedure, murder mystery and military tactics.
I'll update when I've read/heard the whole thing.

[Deuteros]

Re-posted from The Bargains Forum, since this is aimed at people who love both playing and reading about videogames.

StoryBundle will be hosting The Video Game Bundle 2.0, "a specially curated set of nine full-length game culture & history books and magazines", until 11/December, 4:00 AM.

Pay a minimum of $3.00 for:

Dreamcast Worlds by Zoya Street
Kill Screen Issue #1 by Kill Screen Magazine
Blue Wizard Is About To Die by Seth Barkan
Kill Screen Issue #7 by Kill Screen Magazine
The Guide To Classic Graphic Adventures by Kurt Kalata *
Vaporware by Richard Dansky

Pay $10.00 or more for:

Rise Of The Videogame Zinesters by Anna Anthropy
A Slow Year by Ian Bogost
Replay: The History Of Video Games by Tristan Donovan

* To which our very own John Szczepaniak contributed. See this thread.

[k0pp0]

I started Stephen King's Doctor Sleep at around 10pm last night, finally stopped reading at about 2:30am. By god it's great. I love King's work, he has a knack for writing that enables you to have visual image in your head of all the characters in no time at all.

Much easier on the cross story linking than usual as well. I want to finish it today if possible, but I know I'll be gutted when it's over.

[smouty]

I'm on the third book of the Milkweed triptych by Ian Tregillis.
It's an alt-history sci-fi premise based around nazi science project that can enhance a person to superhuman levels and the british agent trying to stop them.
An excellent read and like k0pp0 I'm rushing through it and will be sad when its finished.

[QualityChimp]

I'm glad King's still got his mojo. I really enjoyed some of his recent books too like Cell and Under The Dome.

That sounds interesting, Smouty. I'll check that out.

Is anybody else here on Goodreads?

I finished Killing Floor (Jack Reacher #1) and then ploughed through #2, Die Trying. I've got the third one, but might pace myself as they're a little samey. I really enjoyed them though!

I then got through Gallow's View (Inspector Banks #1) and it was really funny to go from Jack Reacher's "He snuck around the back of the goon and snapped his neck like a twig" to "Banks sat down in the pub with his usual pint of Mild"

I've started All You Need is Kill (Tom Cruise's new film, Edge of Tomorrow, is based on it) and it's good so far, but it feels a little clunky, possibly due to the translation from Japanese.

As ever, I have more books/films/games/shows to get through than time available for them.