Not huge on Wilbur smith, I've read a couple and they were good enough. Jack Higgins has some great ones, and I enjoyed the couple of Matthew Reilly ones I read also. Ice station was a good read.

Zen and the art of motorcycle maintanence.....changed my life.

 

Early Phillip k. Dick. Do androids dream of electric sheep? (Blade runner)

 

Oscar Wilde "The picture of dorian gray". Tricky read, but very rewarding.

 

Bamboo

I'd forgotten about this topic.

 

Zen I found a hard read. Don't mind Phillip K Dick either.

 

Currently in a Steampunk phase. Have just finished an urban fantasy/ undead stage.

I've been reading Shantaram - by Gregory David Roberts.

 

I don't read books much, but this one has got me hooked at the moment.

Just finished Great North Road by Peter F Hamilton. Love that guys space operas, I'm a scifi junkie.

Rob if you're having a steampunk phase try Perdio Street Station by China Miéville. Amazing.

Rob if you're having a steampunk phase try Perdio Street Station by China Miéville. Amazing.

 

Ta. I'll add it to the list. :)

I forgot this too. David Copperfield is easily the best Dicken's. A number of his others are a little predictable, preaching and melodramatic. Considering the time they were written, and how they were originally published (in instalments) this isn't necessarily surprising. David Copperfield has a degree of autobiographical content which is fascinating in itself.

 

In the midst of "A very long engagement" by Sebastien Japrisot at the moment. Story essentially is five first world war french soldiers court martialled for self inflicted wounds in order to get away from the front. They are then marched to the front and bundled out of the trench toward the german lines with hands bound behind their backs.

 

Fiancee of one learns of this after the war and seeks to find out what happened. Loving it.

 

Picked up a couple of Tom Clancy books the other week for a rainy week at the beach. Films are good, so they can't be too bad?

 

And re read the Odessa file in one day over the school holidays. Awesome.

Picked up a couple of Tom Clancy books the other week for a rainy week at the beach. Films are good, so they can't be too bad?

 

The books tend to be a lot more technical than the movies, plus some have some pretty big plot changes (Sum of All Fears is a good example) which makes them harder to compare. I'm re-reading Without Remorse at the moment which is by far my favourite (I'm a Kelly/Clark person, not Ryan), really wish it was made into a good movie but it never got off the ground. The later Ryan books get more and more political and his right-wing-conservatism-with-more-than-a-bit-of-paranoid-conspiracy-theory starts to shine through, which is why I tend to prefer the earlier works like HFRO and Cardinal of the Kremlin.

 

His non-fiction books are quite good though, I go back and re-read Armoured Cav every now and then and learn something new every time. That way you get the tecnical stuff without the political.