Post any recommendations you like. For those wondering about money, the economy and what not... Debt: The First 5000 Years - David Graeber Adam Smith - Wealth of Nations Karl Marx - Communist Manifesto. All inherently relevant.
My favourite book is One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Quite short too.
As we're in this for the long haul, my recommendation is the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett. 47 books in all, set in a comedy-fantasy world. The books start out as you might expect, a rotating cast of wizards, witches, guards, dwarves, trolls, assassins, Death... all coming together in various humorous situations. As the series progresses, however, there is an increasing level of satire and social commentary. Later books include topics like war, racism, religion, sexism, social division, the industrial revolution, and pretty much everything else that we come across in our modern day world - but still set in the same fantasy setting. There's even one about football (Unseen Academicals). You can start anywhere, but to get the best out of them I recommend reading them in order. I'm currently re-reading the whole series and there isn't a day goes by that I cant be found tucked away in a quiet corner, chuckling happily away to myself.
http://torays-news-en.tales-ch.jp/w...rong-knickers-a-decade-of-chaos-wXpq3DsLy.pdf The Wrong Knickers by Byrony Gordon.
I never read these while I was a professional nerd but now I'm retired I've decided to allow myself the luxury, albeit tempered by tackling them in French. It's painfully slow going at times, partly because the vocabulary is hardly day-to-day, but I've really enjoyed what I've read so far. I'm on book 2.
I can't imagine what that must be like, reading them in French. The humour, especially the dialogue, seems to be very English, if you know what I mean. But I guess it must still work if you're enjoying them - laughter is universal, after all. And as good as the early books are, Pratchett's writing gets better and better as the series progresses. You're in for a lot of laughs.
Kyriakos ; Don Turner, true story of a Wombwell lad in occupied Greece during WW2 who escapes the Nazis and joins up with Greek. Partizans.
John Updike's Rabbit novels are a great read, following a man's adult life through 4 books and a novella, written and published roughly 10 years apart from 1960 until 2001. It's fascinating to see not just how the characters change as they age but also how society changes around them, not in retrospect but through books that were each actually written at the time they describe. I re-read them periodically, as I myself age, and I find it interesting how my own take on them changes each time. My favourite ever literary sentence (yes, I've got one of those) comes from Rabbit Redux: Spoiler alert: that's going in my funeral Order of Service. Hopefully not for a little while, though.
Agreed, great set of books, I started with Dark side of the sun, then got the Colour of Magic and went from there, always eagerly awaited his next book. I like the satire and social commentary too, what an imagination he had. I am more Sam Vimes than Rincewind the wizard!
Just finished a book by Helen Forrester called Twopence to Cross the Mersey which was fantastic. I'm going to buy her other books in this series now. Now reading a book called The retreat of reason which is also interesting in a different way but only if you like political books.
Probably read by most. But any Dan Brown . ( Better than the film's, glad I got to read em first) The Ragged trousered philanthropist is a must. Read a lot of biographies. Ricky Tomlinson's tops the list.
Insomnia by Stephen King, really hard work to start with, but once you get past first couple of hundred pages couldn’t put it down.