Recommend me some books to read please

[CaptainCarCrash]

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Make-Your-Own- ... 215&sr=1-4

This post has gained me some unwanted attention in the office because I can't stop laughing.

[Kirkdale Boy]

well i think he should be thrown off the forun as he is suggesting that someone on here as many persona

[CaptainCarCrash]

well i think he should be thrown off the forun as he is suggesting that someone on here as many persona

No he wasn't,

You have to realise KDB that some subjects that raise their ugly heads have mileage in terms of humour and having a laugh, remember hehe? It goes a long way.

I can see the sockpuppet one lasting a while yet actually

Take a chill pill.

[Kirkdale Boy]

So Michael wants to play wind up games, let battle commence

[michael]

It was very immature of me to interrupt a perfectly reasonable thread. But I'm glad that some people found it funny.

[Tim Lund]

Mike

You might like Ivan Illich's ' Deschooling Society'

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[CaptainCarCrash]

Mike

You might like Ivan Illich's ' Deschooling Society'

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That's an excellent recommendation Tim thanks.

That book has had quite a few good reviews so I will try and get a copy.

[Robin Orton]

You might like Ivan Illich's ' Deschooling Society'

That's an excellent recommendation Tim thanks.

Honestly, all you aging hippies.

[Tim Lund]

More παρρησία, in your language, Robin

I guess there's a first time for everything, including being called a hippie. If I have to wait to the right side of 50, then I guess the epithet 'ageing' is unsurprising.

[Robin Orton]

Apologies for spelling 'ageing' in the American way, and thank you for your tact, Tim, in correcting me so unobtrusively.

What's παρρησία got to do with anything? No, on reflection, I don't want to know, let's stick to recommending books for Mike.

[Tim Lund]

The reason for thinking of Illich was what Mike wrote in this thread from earlier this year. When Illich was fashionable, in the 1970s, I remember a Catholic friend telling me about him, and it seems I bought a couple of his books - not sure how else copies would be in my bookcases. But it was only last week that I tried reading 'Deschooling Society', and while it does suffer a bit from the inflated language of left-wing sociologists, and various asides which make sense only against the Viet-nam war, it's still the real deal when it comes to a radical social critique which tallies very well with what Mike described. An instance, I'd say of the sort of courageous free speech described by Nick Cohen in this article from yesterday's Observer - warning - Robin may need to avert his eyes from one of the words in it.

I might also say Illich's idea of unschooled learning corresponds very well with my own acquisition of IT skills, which in exactly the same way as Mike describes, allows me to earn a useful living. In fact, the whole explosion of creativity which the world has witnessed in the last forty years, with the development of software - especially Open Source - and the languages we use to do this, may be precisely because we've not been schooled in how to think when using computers. Instead, if there's a problem we don't know how to solve, we just google a few key terms, and instantly you can find out how to do it. Obviously experience and imagination is involved in thinking up those key terms to google, but the real education needed to develop this imagination is what you get from combining doing with thinking about what you're doing.

There is also an amazing bit of futurology in the first essay in which he imagines people connecting via computers and being able to discuss whatever subject they are interested in with anyone else who is similarly interested. Remind you of anything?

[Eagle]

Any Swedish , Danish or Norwegian Crime Fiction

Steig Larson's 3 books amazimg

Reading Jo Nesbo now also very good and Henning Mankel excellent.

[Robin Orton]

Stieg Larsson's 3 books amazing

I quite enjoyed the first, but got rather bored with the second, and gave up. My brother (a university English lecturer) explained to me what was wrong with them - Larsson writes like a journalist (which he was of course) rather than a novelist. My brother thinks Henning Mankell (who I haven't read) is far superior.

[Rachael]

Robin - I agree absolutely with your brother. Dull, dull, dull. I read the first, didn't bother with the rest.

Mike - my recommendation would be The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien.

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[fishcox]

Pretty much anything by Hemingway should hit the mark - Death in the Afternoon is superb, as is A Farewell to Arms. To Kill a Mockingbird, Animal Farm.

Catcher in the Rye, anything by Iain Banks (for something more current) or Tom Robbins.

Jake Arnott is cracking too, Dickens takes some beating.

Favourite all time 'modern' though, is probably Irvine Welsh - Trainspotting is untouchable

[mrtimelover]

Have you ever read Animal Farm by George Orwell? If not I suggest you have a read as it is very interesting and very good at getting it's point across.

[Robin Orton]

I'd like to add to Fishcox's list the only Hemingway I've yet read, For Whom the Bell Tolls, set in the Spanish civil war. It's where 'Did the earth move for you too?' originally came from, but, in context, that doesn't sound nearly as cornily macho as you might think, and the writing generally is superb - elegant and sensitive. And it's a good story too.

I agree about Iain Banks and Dickens and Animal Farm (and there's also 1984, of course). Is The Catcher in the Rye as good now as when it first came out? I must read Trainspotting. I've avoided To Catch a Mockingbird , because my daughter seemed to spend ages in it at secondary school, where it was a set book, and I've always assumed it was basically for teenagers - am I wrong?

Of the novels I've read over the last year or so, I'd recommend Disobedience by Naomi Alderman (orthodox Jewish lesbians in north London), We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver (Mom has problems with psychopathic mass-murdering teenage son - powerful but harrowing) and A Week in December by Sebastian Faulks (funny but serious satire about modern London life).

[fishcox]

Apparently Hemingway would write something, then pare it down, and pare it down again, until he took all the excess out of it. Brilliant writing.

I include Catcher in the Rye, as it seriously affected my outlook on life, when I first read it as a teenager. Having re-read it, I still think it is brilliant - there are so many 'phoney' people about.

To Kill a Mockingbird was also something from my schooldays, but, again, its a cracking piece of writing, predominantly about prejudice.

Thanks for the tips on Disobedience and A Week in December. I'd like to read the Lionel Shriver book, but she is such a miserable cow (she writes in the Guardian all the time) I cant be arsed.

I'm on holiday at the moment, and have read One Day (which made me cry, and is a truly great book - with the added bonus of it being dead easy to read) a book about a Victorian railway detective, which was entertaining, and Jake Arnott's last one, (which was shite, to be honest; his first three were superb).

I now have The Northern Conspiracy to have a go at, which I started last year, but am going to have to re-read from the beginning.

I forgot to mention Stephen King, from my original list. He is a brilliant writer, and The Stand, also ranks amongst the best I've read.

[CaptainCarCrash]

I read Catcher On The Rye at school and I read To Kill a Mokingbird about 20 years ago. Both were pretty good.

[amob]

Not in anyway factual but I recommend The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald, a remarkable forewarning of the affect of 20th century capitalism on individuals.