lunababymoonchild

I agree wholeheartedly. I look at these lists with interest because I'm always interested in what other people are reading and what they find interesting and then I carry on reading what I enjoy and want to read.

Always I heard as a suggestion that you use the time that you would normally be commuting to read. Easier said than done I think but just a suggestion.

From Amazon because they can do it better than me : Young, attractive and very ambitious, George Duroy, known to his admirers as Bel-Ami, is offered a job as a journalist on La Vie francaise and soon makes a great success of his new career. But he also comes face to face with the realities of the corrupt society in which he lives - the sleazy colleagues, the manipulative mistresses and wily financiers - and swiftly learns to become an arch-seducer, blackmailer and social climber in a world where love is only a means to an end. Written when Maupassant was at the height of his powers, Bel-Ami is a novel of great frankness and cynicism, but it is also infused with the sheer joy of life - depicting the scenes and characters of Paris in the belle epoque with wit, sensitivity and humanity. I didn't like this as much as his other work but it was well written, well plotted and had believable characters.

A writer of SciFi once tried To eat eggs that hadn't been fried

There once was a goose with a cold Whose libarary book was on hold

A BCF member said "Look!" Whilst looking up from their book A penguin walked by While sucking a fly

I did that Meg, it's just that the first line isn't in bold.

A BCF member said "Look!" Whilst looking up from their book

I just finished two books by Katherine Arden and keenly await this year's third to make the trio. All three were aimed at 10 - 12 year olds. I read them anyway and they are great. Good writing is good writing and I don't see why the children/YA should have all the fun.

Me too and if I don't get it I start twitching.

I'm glad that you are both alright

Well, I read more than I anticipated over the w/e. I like - need! - to read 50 pages a day and got up to that over the weekend. If I don't read 50 pages a day I start twitching! Does anybody else do that or is it just me?

I'm new here and thought I'd resurrect this thread because it's interesting. I'm an extrovert. I also like quiet me time and I don't like going to parties. I don't mind having a chat with a stranger and I don't mind a room full of people. I can be loud - depending on your bench-mark - and I seem to terrify shy people for some reason (I don't do that deliberately). People say that I talk too much, which is probably true. Obviously this thread took place before lockdown. I'm coping well, how are all you introverts?

bought

It's great!

I'm in! Started my new book today, Bel Ami by Guy de Maupassant so here I am.

Congratulations Brian

Mine too. I've read all of her books and this is by far the best.

This is an extremely good book. It's Victorian Gothic fiction and a murder mystery. It has plenty of plot twists with one at the very end that had me guessing, incorrectly, right until the very end. A victorian silhouette artist struggles with her health and numerous deaths that happen and seem to be connected to her. She consults a spirit medium in the hope of finding out who the murderer is and what happened to her lost love. The story isn't as simple as that but I don't want to put in any spoilers. This is a convuluted and complicated page turning story set in Bath during the 1800's. The plot is amazing and highly original, the characters believable and the prose is well written. Recommended.

For 2020 I read 61. More than ever before. For 2021 so far 5, I'm on my sixth

I'm finding the same thing, not all of Emile Zola's Rougon Macquart series is printed, for example, but it is available on Kindle and you're right on Kindle they all weigh the same. I'm slowly coming around, I read mine on an Amazon Fire tablet which suits me better than the actual Kindle reader and I do have some nearly 90 Kindle e-books. I too still read more physical books and, as it turns out, The Children's War, J N Stroyar isn't available on Kindle.

Currently reading Laura Purcell The Shape of Darkness

True enough. Dickens I find worthwhile enough to make the effort but that's just me. I do understand the physicality of reading a long book. I read the autobiography of Emma Goldman and it was so large that I got a sore arm lifting and laying it. That was 618 pages long but it was very tall. This year I bought The Children's War by J N Stroyar, which is 1,168 odd pages long but not as tall. I'll need to find a way of handling it that doesn't cause pain. I see it as the same amount of reading (I read constantly) one way or another so longer books don't bother me but I can see the commitment in a long book

This is the autobiography of the serial killer Dennis Nilsen. No other such criminal has sought to write their autobiography so in this sense this book is unique. What Nilsen wanted to achieve with his autobiography was to show the general public that he was not a monster but a human being, albeit an aberrant one (which he admits). I should point out that apart from the grisly details of his crimes, which have been heavily redacted, every word was written by him. It took him 18 years. Nilsen comes across as articulate and clever. He is also aberrant and highly inadequate - both of which he acknowledges. He has never questioned his homosexuality and he never once questioned his crimes. He has never denied his crimes and claimed to understand the devastating effect these crimes had on the victims' family and friends. Oddly he did not seem to consider the effect that they had on his own family and was highly critical of them when they did not inform him of his grandmother's death or his brother's death. He was informed that the reason for not being informed of his brother's death was that the family didn't want him turning up at the funeral as they thought that would be upsetting. This was easy to read as it was well written and I chose to read it because Nilsen and his crimes have always interested me. I read Brian Masters' Killing For Company - the only book to give me nightmares - and watched the three part docudrama starring David Tennant as Nilsen (he was outstanding). There are no answers in this biography, Nilsen doesn't know why he committed the crimes he only describes them and how he was feeling at the time. There was large amounts of alcohol involved and he indulged his aberrant fantasy. In jail he thought that the system was inhuman and the book has more in it regarding his time in jail than it does his crimes, but then he was longer in jail. Nilsen does not glamourise his crimes nor does he seek to justify them. I'd recommend this if you are interested. It's not as horrific or blood thirsty as you'd imagine and I'm glad that I read it. In my opinion Nilsen succeeds in bringing his personality into the public consciousness and, as expected, it's not the nicest personality in the world and there are those that would still consider him a monster. He was frustrated that the Home Office would not allow him to publish when he was alive but put the manuscript in the care of his friend to be published after Nilsen's death.