Who is going to try this 1,000 page, one sentence book?

https://www.theguardian.com/books/20...ellmann-review

It sounds truly awful but has amazing reviews and a bunch of avid and seemingly well informed readers think it's the best book of the past twenty years or something similar.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...ks-newburyport

Crushed the new Daniel Silva. The New Girl.

Having just watched The Last Czars on Netflix I picked up Simon Sebag Montefiore's "The Romanovs"

The show wasnt anything special but untapped the interest inside me for Eastern European history, in this case Russia and told it in a not dry, if a bit embellished/exaggerated manor that made it easy and engaging to follow and supposedly the book does the same. It is a monster of a book though and I cant see myself finishing it anytime soon as there are others I want to read this summer and I read slow.

The Vory: Russia's Super Mafia by Mark Galeotti- True crime history on the Russian Mafia and its origins in the gulags and the evolution of the varying organizations. I thought this was a good read and worth looking into if you are into true crime/ organized crime stories at all. This book is more of a macro perspective and doesn't delve too deeply into specific stories or characters. Russia's underworld seems much more low key/underground than what we have seen in the U.S.A, so there are a lot less known guys. with the Italian mob. I enjoyed the author's perspective on the different national groups like the chechen mobsters.

I breezed thru Scott Adams' self-help/memoir, he's the Dilbert guy ofc: How to Fail At Almost Everything and Still Win Big. He's pretty cool and seems to have carved out an effective approach to many of life's challenges. Also has an original style. Systems not Goals, he says! And to think of ourselves as moist robots instead of skin bags full of mystery and magic, I love that one. Very true imo!

Ill just leave this here.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Scott_Adams

I'd like to give this a shot. There used to be a woman on amazon who would write one-sentence reviews that went on for pages. I loved her. I tried imitating her style, but it was a lot harder than I anticipated. I kept completing thoughts and typing periods. So it goes.

I am mostly an escapist reader who enjoys a lot of lowbrow mass-market fiction, like John Grisham - his latest effort, however, The Reckoning, is an absolutely awful piece of ****ing garbage that should never have been published.

How does it compare (in style or tone or whatever) to The Underground Railroad? I really liked that one when I read it last year.

It is less experimental than his earlier books - straightforward narrative. Excellent pacing.

I picked up a book by Mick Herron, who has been highly recommended by a few places I figured to be reliable as a really good spy thriller writer. I wasn't impressed, currently reading a second.

Number two was worse. Onto number three.

Holy **** how fast do you read? And why are you continuing to read ****ty books? Lol

I read 80 pages of that Romanov book this weekend and feel like it's the most I've read ever

Not fast, but I'm off work and the kids aren't sleeping, so I'm finding lots of time to read atm. And they're not living up to the hype but they are sort of moreish. Like thriller fast food.

Just finished the Ken Follett Kingsbridge Series. I normally read non-fiction but I could not put those books down. Fantastic read.

I also recommend 'Barons of the Sea' by Steven Ujifusa. The book explores the development of the clipper ship and the race to build the fastest, most efficient crafts to maximize the legal and illicit trade in China. Highlights how much of early American family wealth was built through these ships.

Lastly, I am about to start the 'Asian Series' by James Clavell. Would you recommend reading them in the order they were published, or by the storyline chronology?

Thanks!

I loved the Clavell books. Chronologically, not publication order. Although it won’t really matter.

I’ve been thinking about re-reading Pillars of the Earth - it’s one of my favorites.

I restarted it right after finishing reading aloud chapter on/chapter off with my wife. She hadn't seen me so engaged in a book since Paris 1919 and wanted to know what the fuss was about. Picking up on so much that I missed the first read or did not have context for that it's really like reading a new book.

Thx for the tip on Clavell.

Finished this two months ago and thought it was amazing. I apparently forgot to mention it itt, but was reminded today when I saw this: https://bookriot.com/2019/07/31/circ...n-via-hbo-max/

The Fifth Season - N. K. Jemisin

Really good fantasy/sci-fi, and the first book in the Broken Earth Trilogy. The trilogy has won every award going for stuff like that, including being the only author to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel three years on the trot.
Highly recommend it if you're into that kind of book.

Started Raised in Captivity by Chuck Klosterman, a collection of odd short stories / thought experiments. Book is borderline awful about 20% in, just total self-indulgence. I've been a fan of Chuck for well over a decade now and really enjoyed But What if We're Wrong? a few years ago, but lately he's seemed pretty lazy and uninspired in anything I've read by or him or even when appearing on podcasts.

Great book! I've read it twice. I'm not a big fan of a lot of the stuff by him I've read outside of the book, but the book is great.

I have mixed feelings about Scott Adams but thought that book was quite good.

I have made an effort in the past year to read more books. I am feel I am bad at writing synopsis of books so I'll just list the ones that I thought were particularly bad or good and hopefully that will help someone find something they will enjoy or find informative or avoid so they do not waste time or money.


Good:

Conspiracy by Ryan Holiday
Shadow and Claw by Gene Wolfe
Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon
Antifragile by Nassim Taleb
Skin in the Game by Nassim Taleb
Ostkrieg by Stephen Fritz
Kasserine Pass by Martin Blumenson
Meditations on Violence by Sgt Rory Miller

Bad:

The World of the Crusades by Christoper Tyerman
Stalin by Stephen Kotkin
Marooned in Realtime by Vernor Vinge


There were many books I read that do not appear on this list because they were neither particularly bad nor good.


Next up: Ubik by Philip K Dick and Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman

I have this book sitting on my shelf but have yet to start it. I think I'll want to finish the series once I do and it's tough to start into something like this knowing you'll probably be reading 4ish books in the same series. Will have to wait until I have a lot of free time before starting. Seems like a pretty interesting concept and it's highly praised.

I believe they are standalone stories, just set in same world, if you were worried about losing track on what was going on.

I'm reading a good biography of Aldous Huxley, the 2002 book by Nicholas Murray. What a ****ing weirdo this dude was, pretty sure he was a goddamn Martian or something. A true visionary, a lot like me in that way.

You know what they say, if it ain't Broken Earth, don't fix it.