Be Excellent To Each Other

I'm running out of books, aside from a shelf full of Pratchett stuff I've never been particularly arsed with, yet find myself adding to every Christmas despite my best efforts.

I've never been too bothered with fiction, so I'm really looking for non-fiction stuff here, but that's where the restriction ends. Whether it's a book on evolution, or someone's tale of a grand hike across a country, I don't mind. As long as you've read it (or heard good things about it), I'm willing to give it a shot.

Recommend away!

(and also use this thread to ask for recommendations for yourself, natch)

I very rarely read non-fiction, but "Between Silk & Cyanide" by (I think) Leo Marks was an entertaining read about codebreaking in WWII.

Blimey the only non fiction stuff I've read lately have been about cameras and or Illustrators, reference rather than narrative, sorry.

Apart from... Art of War by Sun Tzu.

Freakonomics is great
Superfreakonomics is great but less great
45 by Bill Drummond is great
The Motley Crue biography is great
There is also an autobiog of the US ambassador to the UK which is great, but I can't remember what it is called at the moment.

'The Kid Stays in the Picture' by Robert Evans - autobiography of an actor/film producer. Interesting guy...

Have you read the Charlie Brooker books? The collections of his Observer rants? Dawn of the Dumb is pretty good.

Actually, without wishing to be a thread hijacking cunt, I'm gonna be a thread hijacking cunt and ask if anyone has any decent suggestions for fiction novels? I'm trying to get back in to reading novels, so recently started out with 'And Another Thing' by Eoin Colfer, but despite being a massive HHGTTG fan, it's boring me to tears. I've got Orwell's 1984 and Iain Bank's The Wasp Factory lined up on my iPad and a paperback of Dune to read soon too.

Last really good book I read was World War Z by Max Brooks whilst I was on holiday.

Also, does anyone here like William Gibson? I always figured his stuff would be right up my street but I've twice given up trying to read Neuromancer as it just seems like incomprehensible nonsense to me.

Psst Mods should we split out a fiction recommend thread? Feel free to delete this when you've tidied up Zios splurge.

Edit: Forget it, Malabar doesn't care anyway.

Fiction wise, 'kill your friends' by John Niven is good, sort of a British American Psycho in the Britpop years.

I'd wear some pretty thick rubber gloves though.

Right, I'll make myself a list. Good suggestions so far, especially Curiosity's, which sounds right up my street.



Nope. They're pretty good, are they?



Feel free.

That one is. Only £3 in HMV too.

Still not read a better Zombie book myself.

Fiction: Anything by Richard Morgan, especially Altered Carbon.
Non-Fiction: Belching Out The Devil by Mark Thomas was rather good (it was about how Coca Cola are cunts) and Mick Foley's autobiography 'Have A Nice Day'.

I've got a signed copy of that at home following a gig I went to of his. He's a really nice guy in real life, I've met him twice and he's always very approachable and happy to hang around after gigs chatting about stuff. I should probably read it at some point.

That sounds quite good. So I had a look at the iPhone Kindle app to see if I could get it as an eBook (turns out I can). Shame it looks like this:



So I'm deleting it.

Non Fiction? Hmmm, I'd certainly recommend A Brief History Of Time; an amazing book, if a tad heavy going at times (speaking for myself obv.).

As for Fiction, how about Iain Banks' Excession, or Asimov's Foundation Trilogy? (Yes, I am an SF geek).

Jackie Chan's autobiography is a good read.

I've already read that one, quite recently. It's a bit heavy at times, for sure, but certainly fascinating throughout.

I love physics, but I don't think my understand will ever rise beyond ‘almost absolutely fuck all’, but I can always read about it and stay in awe and wonder as it quickly passes out of my short-term memory.

Ner ner.

Eat shit

Altered Carbon (mentioned in my post above) is some good Cyberpunk SF stuff. Like good.

If it makes you feel better, my webcam is clearly shit

Ah, nice one mate, heard it mentioned by others before now, too. I shall have to check it out, cheers.

Non fiction...

Bill Bryson's A Brief History of Nearly Everything is a fun read.
Raging Bulls and Easy Riders (about the new wave of directors in 70s Hollywood) is very good if you like the films from the period
Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman and it's sequel Which Lie Did I Tell
A Guide For The Perplexed by E F Schumacher
The Outsider by Colin Wilson

'Have a Nice Day' by Mick Foley seconded, and I'll add 'Foley is Good' too.

Even if you really, really hate pro-wrestling, they're still worth a read. His writing is that good.

As for fiction, Richard Morgan is seconded, but I prefer Black Man to the Kovacs novels (though they are good). Market Forces is also quite a good read, but the end is a little underwhelming.

I've only just got into Iain Banks' sci-fi stuff, after 'Feersum Endjinn' put me off him for years. (I found it to be practically unreadable, though maybe thats the point) 'Use of Weapons' is quite good, though the twist at the end makes very little sense. 'Consider Phlebas' is better, but is quite flabby in places. Thoroughly enjoyed 'Player of Games' though (even though I saw the little twist at the end ages before the end).

I've read that one. A good read, but I struggled a bit in the middle sections.

Bryson is a strange one for me. I can get utterly absorbed in some of the things he writes, but he has a tendency to drone on about things I can't imagine anybody caring about. In A Walk in the Woods, his frequent pauses to talk history were usually most unwelcome after a few paragraphs.



Cheers. I'll have a look into those.

Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose - Much more detail than in the series although having seen the series helps as there's a lot of people to keep track of. Dick Winters is truly awesome.
Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden - pew pew but with a lot more background to why it happened and the political aftermath that the film body swerved.
The Goldilocks Enigma by Paul Davies - fairly hard going (for me anyway) armchair physics book but fascinating throughout.
Bad Science by Ben Goldacre - bit smug at times and he labours a few points but never less than interesting for the whole book.
Crack House by Harry Keeble - insight into a world you never really think about. About a unit that raided 100 crack houses in a year.

Off the top of my head;
Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson. Mostly non-fiction, but blurs the lines a bit.
The Cloudspotters Guide, sounds boring. Isn't.
Maus by Art Spiegelman. Graphic novel about the holocaust.

Melvyn Bragg's The Adventure of English. Great book. Don't get the Bill Bryson book about language because it is beyond awful. It's not that it is badly written (it is entertaining) but it is utter, utter nonsense. People were clearly telling him all sorts of fibs about various languages (There is no Spanish words for 'cat') etc and he was nodding, writing it all down and publishing it without the least bit of research or even stopping to ask another Spaniard.

(example is my own fiction - googling will bring you up some excellent actual examples, though, absolutely comparable with the stupidity of my own).

Just remembered 'Blink' by Malcolm Gladwell. That's a good non-fiction type thing. He also wrote (and coined the phrase) 'The Tipping Point', which is supposed to be very good as well. I have not read that one.

For fiction, anything by Michael Marshall Smith is good. Also some books by Jeff Noon, China Mieville and Douglas Coupland, to name a few.

I've got Blink and Tipping Point signed by him. I'd be absolutely gobsmacked if he coined the phrase "tipping point". I don't think I could recommend either of these books though, TBH as the points get laboured too much for my liking. It feels like an interesting but lengthy magazine article that's been stretched too far, but it's probably harsh to single out Gladwell for that — it seems to be a problem that infects that whole subsection of "message" books, be it Richard Dawkins, Michael Moore, George Monbiot et al — they descend into repetitive examples ad nauseum long after anybody with an IQ higher than room temperature would have got the point.

Black Man dragged a little for me, but I can see why he wanted to write it (what with Kovacs' universe making people immortal, and the slight lack of danger you feel with that). Market Forces was great, but it took me quite a while to suspend belief as much as I needed to - it's a very silly premise

Didn't know there was one, I think I'll have that.

If you have even the slightest interest in Rock n Roll or hedonistic behaviour, this is a must read. I'd love to read it again but I loaned it to Pete about 5 years ago and he still hasn't read it.

And I let him borrow this a couple of years ago and I haven't seen it since. Damn you, Pete, you utter swine.

This is a perennial problem with good books — I've lost count of the number of must read books I've loaned out never to see again. Hammer of the Gods is a pretty good read as well, which is the "unofficial" biography of Led Zeppelin

I insist that everyone shouts at Pete until he reads it. Any book that opens with the immortal couplet "We called her Bullwinkle. We called her that because she looked like a moose." demands to be read.

I was going to suggest "Freakonomics" but Trooper beat me to it. Instead I'd recommend "Game of Shadows", an expose of the Balco lab in California where athletes such as Marion Jones got juiced up; the chief focus of the book is Barry Bonds, the juicer* who recently broke the all-time baseball home run record and thus tarnished the record books forever in the eyes of most.

* never failed a drugs test because baseball was so lax they didn't really bother with them so this is merely very strong hearsay, I should add in case his lawyers read this.

Also found Al Franken's "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them" to be a very entertaining read if you're into reading a funny Democrat talk about how rancid and cess-covered the Republican party and its media attack dogs are, allegedly.

I'll make a proper recommendation now: I find that hardly anyone around my age (30) has read Ian Fleming's James Bond books which are utterly terrific. The early ones are the best, although the later ones are very readable and fun.

You should start with Casino Royale even though it's the least accessible. Live and Let Die, the second in the series, is completely bonkers and rather amusing in it's old fashioned views on race relations. Moonraker, the third, is my favourite of the series and contains a terrific card game set-piece, probably my favourite sequence of any book evah. Read them

I read most of the James Bond books a few months ago, read them in order and got to the short stories before I stopped.

I actually read the book, watched the film, read the book, watched the film etc... Moonraker was the most ludicrous film adaption, yet one of the best books. From Russia With Love was a great book, and the film was almost scene by scene (or was that The Spy Who Loved Me, I always get those two titles mixed up )

I can heartily recommend:

-'The Good Soldier Švejk ' by Jaroslav Hašek
He's either an idiot or the most cunning man in the Austro-Hungarian army of WW1. He causes mayhem by doing exactly what he is told. You'll love it. I crack up laughing every time I read it.

- 'The Napoleon of Notting Hill' by GK Chesterton
For a joke, the King divides London into competing territories. The integrity of Notting Hill is threatened.

- 'The Diary of a Nobody' by George & Weedon Grossmith
A year or so in the empty life of Mr Charles Pooter, a typical lower-middle class Victorian clerk. Very, very funny, but I've grown rather fond of him over the years.

-'Brideshead Revisited' by Eveyln Waugh
Because everyone coming up to Oxford wants to re-enact this one.

- 'The Eyre Affair' by Jasper Fforde
The barriers between reality and fiction are breaking down, and an evil villian is holding Jane Eyre hostage (he's already killed a minor character in Dickens as proof of his intentions). Contains 140% of your recommended daily intake of puns.

- 'Dracula' by Bram Stoker
The classic vampire novel. When I first read it, the sexual undertones passed me by completely.

- 'Rubicon' by Tom Holland
Gripping account of the fall of the Roman Republic. Made me wish I'd done the classics

- A big collection of Ambrose Bierce's stories.
Because they're ace

- 'On Killing' by Dave Grossman
A merry little book all about the psychology of killing people. Equal parts disturbing and fascinating.

- 'Bad thoughts' by Jamie Whyte
Or, how to think. And why people ought to. Likely to lead to increased frustration at politicians. Worth it for the chapter about why you do not have a right to your own opinion.

- 'Sentimental Education' by Flaubert
“Frédéric was thinking of the room he'd be living in in Paris, of an idea for a play, of subjects for a painting, of future passionate affairs of the heart. He felt that the happiness owed to such a pre-eminently sensitive soul as himself was slow in coming.”
Possibly the most important book in my life. I have read it over eight times over the last five years. The more I read it the more I get out of it. It's basically about the hopes and dreams of young men and the crushing reality of adulthood.

Just in case anyone here hasn't read it (if not, why not?), I can't recommend HG Wells War Of The Worlds enough. One of my all time favourite books ever, that is.

Everyone has already got, read and now holds it in the highest regard already though, right? RIGHT?!

Finally finished 'And Another Thing' last night and have started on 'The Wasp Factory'. I'm quite a way through the second chapter and I'm already wondering if I'm going to make it through to the end... I think I'm a bit too much of a big girl for reading about even fictional animal cruelty.

I'm currently reading "The game" by Neil Strauss, its ok, funny at times. And was only 3 quid online.

What, by Clarkson?

No, Peter Falk.

No, the 6th Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy novel, written by Eoin Colfer. Didn't think much of it to be honest, I wouldn't recommend it.

Winner