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Read a good novel lately?

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Good idea Sam!

The Aubrey/Maturin series of novels by Patrick O'Brian. I am reading the second-last in the series (in small snatches between the rest of life) and enjoy them immensely. There is a lot of sly humour in them.
 
Sam, there is an existing thread along these lines. Can't quite remember the thread title but I think something like "What are ASF members reading"?
Probably started about two years ago.
I've just read the latest Lee Child (Jack Reacher) novel, "Nothing to Lose".
The usual great style of Lee Child, maximum characterisation wih minimum words. Any other fans of this writer?
 
oh.

I did a search before posting this one, but couldn't find one - perhaps I didn't look deep enough

Mods, could you merge please (sorry )
 
The Financier by Theodore Dreiser.
Dreiser is virtually unknown in Australia but is well-known in the US and elsewhere overseas.
The novel might strike a chord with a trader/investor.
Dreiser's works are out of copyright and freely available online.
 
Try "Child 44" by Tom Rob Smith. Gripping thriller set in Stalin's Russia. Couldn't put it down.
Anything by John Lescroart or Micheal Connolly.

Happy reading.
 
Yeah, I thought it looked familiar. : This is the thread you're looking for:
https://www.aussiestockforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4763&highlight=favourite+fiction
 
I read a few Biggles and Enid Blighton many years ago when I was at school. Kept most of them actually, for the grand kids. But lost interest in novels after that. Read more history and educational type stuff since.

The nearest to a novel was a few years ago... a series by James Redfield, The Celestine Prophecy. Once I started on that I pretty much read each book in a few days and was looking for the next. Which reminds me, I must check to see if he did another. It was quite a unique series.
 
A couple of my favourites, "The Phantom of Manhatton" (though I am bias, I love the Phantom of the Opera play).

Caesars Legion.

Liked White Fang when I was younger (probably better for those animal lovers like me).

On the road, piece of junk.
 
Life of Pi - Yann Martel

won the 2002 Booker prize

beautifully crafted prose built around a quirky and poignant premise
 
imajica said:
beautifully crafted prose built around a quirky and poignant premise
Click to expand...
imajica
....which in itself is "beautifully crafted prose built around a quirky and poignant premise"

whereas Flashman is full of pregnant promise maybe?
 
Whiskers said:
But lost interest in novels after that ... The nearest to a novel was a few years ago ... It was quite a unique series.
Click to expand...
Well it would be, if it was the only one you'd read since you were a kid.

GP
 
As a whipper snapper i was always interested in reading about Greek Mythology.
I am 3/4 of the way through reading The Gates of Troy by Glen Ilife, and have subsequently ordered The Iliad and The Odeyssey, by Homer, i am trying to chase down detailed books on Jason and the Argonauts, and also the hero Heracles (sometimes Hercules).
UKbook Depository, which i order most of my books due to free delivery, seem scarce in these areas.
Can anyone help on titles they have read, or know of in these 2 areas?
Would be much appreciated!
Regards,
SH
 
John Connolly's latest Charlie Parker novel The Whisperers.

And before that, Not Without My Daughter by Betty Mahmoody.
 
Was "The Whisperers" up to John Connelly's usual standard, Boognish?

Best I've read recently was Lee Child's latest Jack Reacher novel, "61 Hours".
Terrific.

And two that were short listed for the Miles Franklin Award:

"The Book of Emmett" by Deborah Forster, one of the most affecting novels I've ever read.

"Butterfly" by Sonya Hartnett. Hartnett's target audience is young adults, but I've read all her books and found them quite wonderful.


Another from a little while back now which was - as always - excellent was "The Spare Room" by Helen Garner.

Hope there will be something more from Tim Winton soon. His last "Breath" was great.
 
'The Wolf of Wall Street'

Stocks, drugs, money, women etc. I liked it, will be reading the sequel soon.
 
Hi Springhill, How about Theseus, conqueror of the Minotaur and King of Athens? If he'll do, you might enjoy "The King Must Die" and "The Bull from the Sea", by Mary Renault. She's also written a couple of novels set in classical Greece, both centred on Athens, a trilogy around Alexander the Great, and an utterly brilliant fictional life of the poet Simonides, who lived on the edge of the transition from oral to written poetry.

If you're more interested in original sources, have a go at the plays, especially by Sophocles and Euripedes. Classical, hellenistic, and Roman culture was all infused with Homer, and our versions of the myths - or histories - come from all of them.

One thing I find very important is to read more than one translation of everything. Mary Renault comments in an afterword to one of the Alexander books that "the moral reflexes of the world have changed". I think she's right about that, and it makes translation tricky. Then we have the additional complication that some of the translations from the 19th century are still widely used, and our own language has changed on us.

Have fun.

Ghoti
 
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