Books

[Blackout]

That's hilarious because lot of the feminists you see around have a fair amount of blubber.

Excellent contribution. You should think about writing a book yourself.

There he is. Like a moth to flame the resident SJW of metal warfare defends the rights of self-identifying victim groups everywhere.

[Born of Fire]

Bram Stoker's Dracula is both brilliant and irritating. It is written as a sequence of letters going back and forth between Jonathan and Mina and often gets bogged down in sentimental waffle. That said, the horror sequences are second to none. Nosferatu strips away much of the padding and goes for the throat (ah yeah), and is beautifully written and highly evocative. But the Dracula character in Dracula is so inhuman he makes your blood curdle. Read both,  that's my advice. The stories are similar but far from identical with very different outcomes.

Ps. Carmilla is worth a look too. Not as good as Dracula, but historically interesting in that it pre- dates it and is still good in its own right as well.

Nice one, they're all going on the future purchases list then!

[Carnage]

Bought Dracula (and Moby Dick, for that matter) 10 or 15 years ago, still haven't gotten around to either.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

I have never read nor, to my knowledge, heard of Carmilla (just looked it up). Must rectify that. I remember thinking Dracula was amazing when I read it as a teen, evoked some imagery which has stayed with me ever since and despite various cinematic versions I've seen after. It was only ever the very, very ending which I always found a bit sudden personally, but small complaint.

More generally, do people have other recommended epistolary novels? Beyond Dracula, I can only really think of Frankenstein and Les liaisons dangereuses that I've read in the form.

[Eoin McLove]

Haha yeah, the ending of Dracula is so sudden it's as if Bram was given ten minutes to wrap the whole thing up. I read a Patricia Cornwall novel twenty years ago and it was intriguing and atmospheric all the way through until

*SPOILER*

the final chapter when the detective somehow, jarringly, ends up in a helicopter chase with the baddie and shoots him out of the sky! Suffice to say it was the first and last novel of hers I bothered reading.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Please feel free to spoil as many Patricia Cornwell books for me as you like.

[StoutAndAle]

Pat Nevin's "The Accidental Footballer" - solid so far, he gets lost a bit in himself sometimes (clearly not ghost-written) but it's definitely not the usual sport biography and he's an interesting character in the world of professional football.

While most of his Chelsea team-mates went to Malaga on a 2 week piss up, Nevin flew to Paris to follow the Cocteau Twins on tour and came back to training wearing a beret.   

[Don Gately]

Read Sea State by Tabitha Lasley over the hols. A bit of a mad book about a woman who heads to Aberdeen and writes a book about offshore workers on the oil rigs. Basically she goes on the lash for a few months, ends up with a married lad and comes home.

[Caomhaoin]

Pat Nevin's "The Accidental Footballer" - solid so far, he gets lost a bit in himself sometimes (clearly not ghost-written) but it's definitely not the usual sport biography and he's an interesting character in the world of professional football.

While most of his Chelsea team-mates went to Malaga on a 2 week piss up, Nevin flew to Paris to follow the Cocteau Twins on tour and came back to training wearing a beret.   

Some of the best laughs you'll get out of a book come from sporting autobiographies. Paul Mersons one was hilarious, such a mess of a man.

I have no love for Cork GAA but Dónal Óg wrote a cracking book. The story about (former treasurer) Frank Murphy, a photo from a trip to Thailand and the Rock Sullivan...ah here😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

[Don Gately]

I'm reading a book about Shackleton's disastrous trip to the south Pole in 1914 called Endurance. Despite its coffee book layout and bulk it's fantastic, written in the 1960s so some of the prose is a bit mental. Great read though.

[open face surgery]

More Steinbeck for me. 100 odd pages into Grapes of Wrath.  Love it so far.

[Eoin McLove]

I read it years ago and really enjoyed it. I read Of Mice and Men a few years ago too and it was deadly.

At the minute I'm juggling between Moby Dick, Hitch-22 by Christopher Hitchins and 7 (and a half.  I don't know where to find a half symbol on my phone) by Christos Tsiolkas. All three are holding my interest so far.

[Carnage]

Hold down the 1 button. 😉

[Born of Fire]

I'm reading a book about Shackleton's disastrous trip to the south Pole in 1914 called Endurance. Despite its coffee book layout and bulk it's fantastic, written in the 1960s so some of the prose is a bit mental. Great read though.

Bought that last year myself and still haven't gotten round to reading it yet.

[Eoin McLove]

Hold down the 1 button. 😉

½



Nice one!