The SMB Book thread

I finished Wonderland Avenue by Danny Sugarman yesterday. It was a great read. It’s about him growing up and being part of The Doors management team when he was 13 and his subsequent addictio n
Starting Broken Greek by Peter Paphides next. It’s been getting great reviews.
Ugh. Imagine marrying Caitlin Moran :neutral:
read the Danny Sugarman book years ago - great stuff!
 


Ugh. Imagine marrying Caitlin Moran :neutral:
read the Danny Sugarman book years ago - great stuff!
Really enjoyed it. My lass actually found it and bought me it for Xmas, I hadn’t been aware of it before that.

The Broken Greek one is very good. I’ve laughed out loud quite a few times and it brings back plenty of memories of watching TOTP and taping songs off the radio. I remember once filling a tape (both sides) with Candle in the Wind 😂 I was only about 8.
 
Rings of Saturn has been on my to read list for ages, right up my street that sort of thing.

This is a great companion to it:


I love Sebald. Very difficult to single out any one book - they're all part of the greater whole.
 
Really enjoyed it. My lass actually found it and bought me it for Xmas, I hadn’t been aware of it before that.

The Broken Greek one is very good. I’ve laughed out loud quite a few times and it brings back plenty of memories of watching TOTP and taping songs off the radio. I remember once filling a tape (both sides) with Candle in the Wind 😂 I was only about 8.

Broken Greek is on my to read list...
 
This is a great companion to it:


I love Sebald. Very difficult to single out any one book - they're all part of the greater whole.

I know he’s a big inspiration to Robert M so I must read his stuff.
 
Ape and Essence by Aldous Huxley. 8/10
Fascinating short novel set in 2108 after a Third World War. Funny and disturbing and bizarrely relevant in the current situation we're living in.
 
Gonna plough through a shelfload of crim fiction just to get em read and out of the house for good.

Blood Game by Ed Gorman. 1989. 5/10.
It’s 1892 in midwest US and a bounty hunter takes a job body guarding a boxing promoter. Ok at what it does but I’ll not be bothering with any more.

The Devil All The Time by Donald Ray Pollock. 2011 8/10.
Cover blurbs make comparisons with Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Carver, David Lynch and Denis Johnson and it’s not out of place in that company. Author worked as a labourer in a paper mill for over 30 years before taking up writing apparently. Hope there’s a fillum in the offing.
Three plus seemingly unconnected tales of small town US life from the end of war into the early 70s come together towards the end. Excellent stuff.


Just bought The Devil All the time, reading it first then posting it on to someone self isolating
 
Read two in the last two weeks:

Viv Albertine - To Throw Away Unopened - A good read, not as good as Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys. I love her style of writing and as a man in my fifties it made me think about relationships and the complications. 8/10

Just read Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys - literally started Friday finished Sunday and I was out on the bike a bit is throw away unopened worth a look.
War of the Wolf by Bernard Cornwell 8/10
The eleventh in Cornwell's Saxon Stories series (basis for The Last Kingdom on TV). Uhtred is getting old but, as ever, there are rumblings throughout the land - rebellions in Mercia, a battle for succession to the throne of Wessex (and thus East Anglia and Mercia) and Norsemen sitting things up in Cumbria (Cumbraland as it's known in the books). The series is getting a touch formulaic but is still a good read.

Just finished The Flame Bearer which is no 11 - think there's 13 in total. Although the battle s are samey the lead character is better than Sharpe
 
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The Doomsday Machine - confessions of a nuclear war planner by Daniel Ellsberg.

About decision making in conditions where all the information isn't known, to begin with. Just started it.
 

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