The GOT Book Club

[Charles Hawtrey]

Been reading Gore Vidal's 'Burr'. How do writers imagine things in that much detail? Great book if you like history

 

[LostLegend]

Finished 11.22.63 by Stephen King today.

I really enjoyed it (American date format title aside! )

"WHAT IF you could go back in time and change the course of history? WHAT IF the watershed moment you could change was the JFK assassination? 11/22/63, the date that Kennedy was shot – unless . . .

King takes his protagonist Jake Epping, a high school English teacher from Lisbon Falls, Maine, 2011, on a fascinating journey back to 1958 – from a world of mobile phones and iPods to a new world of Elvis and JFK, of Plymouth Fury cars and Lindy Hopping, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who becomes the love of Jake’s life – a life that transgresses all the normal rules of time.

With extraordinary imaginative power, King weaves the social, political and popular culture of his baby-boom American generation into a devastating exercise in escalating suspense."

It's hard to categorise this book into one specific genre, on the surface it's a sci-fi, time travel novel, but it reads more like a 50's period romance for large parts.
The storyline is great, the idea that time is, as King calls it, "Obdurate", doesn't want to be changed and even actively resists those who seek to change it is a good mechanic for the story.

The characters were really great, Jake/George is a really good everyman main character. I also really enjoyed the 'IT' easter eggs when he gets to Derry, Maine (Of course he had to go to Maine in a story based in Texas )

I did, however, think the book was a little bit on the bloated side (a common complaint I have with a lot of SK's work)
It's 7-800 pages depending on the edition you get and I cant help but feel he could have chopped about 150-200 pages out of that and lost nothing from the story.

Great read overall despite that though!

 

[Bilko]

Box 88 , 1st in a series of thrillers, decent read, will definitely get the 2nd one and see where it goes.

 

[BigMick]

Been reading Gore Vidal's 'Burr'. How do writers imagine things in that much detail? Great book if you like history

He wrote a series of historical novels, Lincoln was especially good. His essay collections are always entertaining.

 

[Bluesaint]

Finished 11.22.63 by Stephen King today.

I really enjoyed it (American date format title aside! )



It's hard to categorise this book into one specific genre, on the surface it's a sci-fi, time travel novel, but it reads more like a 50's period romance for large parts.
The storyline is great, the idea that time is, as King calls it, "Obdurate", doesn't want to be changed and even actively resists those who seek to change it is a good mechanic for the story.

The characters were really great, Jake/George is a really good everyman main character. I also really enjoyed the 'IT' easter eggs when he gets to Derry, Maine (Of course he had to go to Maine in a story based in Texas )

I did, however, think the book was a little bit on the bloated side (a common complaint I have with a lot of SK's work)
It's 7-800 pages depending on the edition you get and I cant help but feel he could have chopped about 150-200 pages out of that and lost nothing from the story.

Great read overall despite that though!

I thought that’s was a good book and totally agree with you about it being a hundred or two pages too long. King tends to do that, one of his latest, Fairly Tale, could do with about a hundred pages taken out of the middle.

 

[LostLegend]

You’ve got some stunning books to read there mate, but the one that really jumped out at me, is All The Pretty Horses - McCarthy.

It’s hard to put into words how good it is.

It’s McCarthy at the absolute peak of his writing and although there are flashes of his usual darkness and brutality, the majority of the book is almost “ light “ for a McCarthy book.

The whole trilogy is outstanding, but All The Pretty Horses wins by a mile.

Just finished this

Yeah, just superb. The characters were amazing. Cole & Rawlins friendship, Alfonsa, the old hacienda matriarch, all of them.

The part where they are heading to the jail on the flatbed truck completely blindsided me

Need to pick the other 2 in the series up now!

 

[atrottel]

I thought that’s was a good book and totally agree with you about it being a hundred or two pages too long. King tends to do that, one of his latest, Fairly Tale, could do with about a hundred pages taken out of the middle.

11.22.63 is one of my favourite later Kings. But I read Fairy Tale and thought it was poor enough to be an AI experiment. He seems to be coasting a lot at the moment (which at his age and given his past and his success is fair enough).

Just running through the Slough House series from Mick Herron now and enjoying them. Looking forward to picking up Karla's Choice when I finish them.

 

[BigMick]

Two weeks ago the Algerian authorities detained the prize-winning French-Algerian novelist Boualem Sansal on national security charges and he hasn't been seen since. Literary figures in France have protested but their British counterparts have been silent, with one notable exception, Salman Rushdie. For me it was a reminder to reread his 2009 book, The German Mujahid, which I think has since been republished as An Unfinished Business. The book is based on a true story but was banned in Algeria due to the truths it revealed about aspects of the country's past and modern Islamism (not Islam).

At the end of WW2, many German war criminals fled to Arab countries such as such as Egypt, Syria, Algeria and even Palestine where they fought on the Arab side against the Jews in the wars of 1947/48. Why? Because Arab populations had been subjected to Nazi propaganda since the mid-1930s, the Nazi's hoping to use them to undermine the colonial powers, Britain and France.

The book tells the story of two brothers born in rural Algeria but raised by an uncle in an increasingly dangerous (and, lately, Islamic-fundamentalist) ghetto in Paris. When their Algerian mother and German father are killed in a massacre in their rural village they discover they are listed under false names in the list of those killed. One brother investigates and discovers that his father was an SS officer who worked in Auschwitz and Buchenwald before fleeing to first Egypt and then Algeria.

As well as laying bare past collusion between German fascists and Arab governments, Sansal draws explicit parallels between Nazism and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, but the book is also about guilt and the fight against collective amnesia and revisionism.

Worth a read for those interested in a bit of hidden history with a relevance for today.

 

[Efcjake]

Any other Brandon Sanderson fans reading Wind & Truth?

 

[wm02]

Just finished this classic about the 1960 U.S. Presidential election.

Really enjoyable even if the author was biased towards JFK

 

[wm02]

View attachment 285119
Two weeks ago the Algerian authorities detained the prize-winning French-Algerian novelist Boualem Sansal on national security charges and he hasn't been seen since. Literary figures in France have protested but their British counterparts have been silent, with one notable exception, Salman Rushdie. For me it was a reminder to reread his 2009 book, The German Mujahid, which I think has since been republished as An Unfinished Business. The book is based on a true story but was banned in Algeria due to the truths it revealed about aspects of the country's past and modern Islamism (not Islam).

At the end of WW2, many German war criminals fled to Arab countries such as such as Egypt, Syria, Algeria and even Palestine where they fought on the Arab side against the Jews in the wars of 1947/48. Why? Because Arab populations had been subjected to Nazi propaganda since the mid-1930s, the Nazi's hoping to use them to undermine the colonial powers, Britain and France.

The book tells the story of two brothers born in rural Algeria but raised by an uncle in an increasingly dangerous (and, lately, Islamic-fundamentalist) ghetto in Paris. When their Algerian mother and German father are killed in a massacre in their rural village they discover they are listed under false names in the list of those killed. One brother investigates and discovers that his father was an SS officer who worked in Auschwitz and Buchenwald before fleeing to first Egypt and then Algeria.

As well as laying bare past collusion between German fascists and Arab governments, Sansal draws explicit parallels between Nazism and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, but the book is also about guilt and the fight against collective amnesia and revisionism.

Worth a read for those interested in a bit of hidden history with a relevance for today.

Right up my alley.

Going to check this out

 

[LEONARD]

Box 88 , 1st in a series of thrillers, decent read, will definitely get the 2nd one and see where it goes.

Just on the last few chapters of his latest. Not your usual all action espionage thriller, but probably more true to what modern spying actually entails.

 

[BigMick]

Just finished this classic about the 1960 U.S. Presidential election.

Really enjoyable even if the author was biased towards JFKView attachment 285121

Agree - I think it was the first in a series he wrote about US elections, and he was definitely a Kennedy man!