[Ithaca]

Originally Posted by Eddy

Had never heard of Brad Thor. Thanks for this guys. Looks like an interesting author.

Starting Book 1 - The Lions of Lucerne

Eddy Sir, If you love Brad Thor, you will love Vince Flynn.

In fact, I would rate Vince Flynn higher than Brad Thor.
Vince Flynn is no more and that is a personal disappointment for me because I have all his books and I wish he was churning books out at regular intervals.
Brad Thor will take you on a wonderful journey and he introduced me to a breed of dogs - Belgian Manilos - that I had never heard of.
Scott Harvath is great but Mitch Rapp is a monster.

Off Topic, Brad Thor will always respond to your twitter questions always. He does not have an ego that most fiction or non-fiction authors have.

[ampere]

Originally Posted by deathwalkr

Yes. As usual, it was a decent page turner.

Originally Posted by Eddy

Had never heard of Brad Thor. Thanks for this guys. Looks like an interesting author.

I finished all of them on Audible. Including all Vince Flynns as well. Many hours of Bangalore traffic make you feel good with such novels playing in the car!

Originally Posted by Ithaca

Eddy Sir, If you love Brad Thor, you will love Vince Flynn.

Both the authors have their own ways of portraying the characters.

Vince Flynn also got a raw deal, because the movies "Olympus Has Fallen" and "White House Down" were a lift of his single novel. And it was great to see Brad Thor fight for him. But alas, Vince is no more.

[Eddy]

Ok, I finished the Brad Thors first book in the Scot Havarth series. Liked it, but did not fall in love per se. But hooked enough to continue with the series.

But before that I will read Vince Flynn's Term Limits for comparison (read back to back test drives )

[ampere]

Originally Posted by Eddy

But before that I will read Vince Flynn's Term Limits for comparison (read back to back test drives

Like you said these books are not Ludlum or Forsyth class. But none the less for me they make a good company for the road esp the city traffic/office commute. Once I had to drive solo Chennai/Bangalore. 6 hours of pure audio bliss for the drives!

You can also look for Michael Connelly.

[Eddy]

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides is a good one for whodunnit lovers. I think it was among the top-rated fiction novels last year.

[murillo]

Recently completed reads.

Gitanjali - Rabindranath Tagore
Are You Crazy for Life? - Jagdish Joshi
Little Owl's Book of Thinking - Ian Gilbert
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
The Prophet - Kahlil Gibran
Happy Dreams - Jia Pingwa
The Story of My Life - Helen Keller
Man-Eaters of Kumaon - Jim Corbett
An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India - Shashi Tharoor
The Citadel - A.J. Cronin
Hinduism and Its Culture Wars - Vamsee Juluri
Vedanta - Karan Singh
Three Thousand Stitches - Sudha Murty
Amazing India Facts - Terry O'Brien

[Eddy]

Originally Posted by murillo

Recently completed reads.

Thanks, but it does not help much without at least a short review.

PS: There is a separate thread (The Books Thread (non-fiction)) for non-fiction books.

[ValarMorghulis]

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
There is fiction and then there is fiction. By Jove such a moving book! A warm, affable yet a sad book on human emotions, ethics and love. If there was a list of books which had the titled labelled "must read", this book would definitely feature in that list.
Keyes creates such a fantastic tale evoking a plethora of emotions. The story is narrated by a mentally challenged adult Charlie Gordon, who is the subject of a medical experiment to increase his intelligence. Algernon is a mouse, the animal subject of the same experiment. The story charts the life of Charlie from the beginning of the experiment to the end.

[murillo]

Originally Posted by Eddy

Thanks, but it does not help much without at least a short review.

You are right.

Here is a short overview of the fiction:

The Citadel - A.J. Cronin
Cronin a doctor from Scotland published in 1937 this novel dealing with ethics and morality in the medical profession. Despite the passage of 82 years since publication, it is still relevant today if not more relevant

Happy Dreams - Jia Pingwa
First published in 2017, written by a Chinese author, Happy Dreams tells the story of an immigrant worker who comes from the countryside to the big city of Xi'an. There is no story as such and the novel depicts the life of immigrant workers in a rapidly industrializing China - a life of dreams, aspirations, hard work, and exploitation

Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
The story revolves around the happenings in the Geisha district of Gion in Kyoto in the first half of last century. The story is told from the point of view of a girl who is sold into a Geisha house. The novel is less about the fictional story and more about the life of a Geisha. The book induces a feeling of cultural appropriation by the west

[whitewing]

Originally Posted by AdityaLN

Oh yeah!! I love lee carre, I know about Thinker Tailor Soldier Spy. The Karla series is next. Just waiting for the movie, but I am not sure if I want to watch the movie first or read the book. I have been trying to get my hands on the BBC mini series which is also very good but haven't found it yet. I have read a few already,.The Tailor of Panama (liked the movie, but the book was better), The Night Manager and The Constant Gardener.

Started off on the Smiley series in the chronological order (found after reading that the order was not important).

• Call for the Dead
• A Murder of Quality
• The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
• The Looking Glass War
• Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

All of them are set in a gloomy Britain, that has lost its pre-eminence in the world order. The time and setting is a different world - no internet and mobiles. Human nature, though still seems to be the same.
These novels are slow moving, but masterfully describes human nature. Timeless novels solely from that view point.

Tinker Tailor outdoes the others in terms of the complexity of the plot and nuances. That one is going in for my holiday re-read list.


On a different note, the Chief Inspector Gamache by Louise Penny books are interesting books to kill time. The books are murder mysteries with most of them set in a village in Canada, which the Gamache investigates and unmasks the killer a-la Pirot, although there are some guns involved occasionally.

[AnandB]

Got back to reading books after some-time and bought about 40 Kindle edition books from Amazon last month, mostly Sci-Fi and Thriller. Had to wait since then as the base Kindle Oasis just came back in stock and received mine yesterday.

Had started with the Stand by Stephen King using the Kindle app on mobile. Avoid reading any synopsis or summary of books so was surprised how relevant this was be to our current situation.

[procrj]

Finished a few books over the last 3 weeks:

• Saladin Trilogy by Jack Hight - Good book if you are interested in historical fiction. Focuses on Crusades, Jerusalem and the rise of Saladin, who fought Richard the Lionheart in the Third Crusade. While the first 2 books are well written and fast paced, the third one is a bit of a drag and could have been condensed.
  Rating - 3.5/5
  
  
• The Night Fire by Michael Connelly - Book 22 of the Harry Bosch series. A typical HB yarn with Mickey Haller and Renee Ballard. A decent read if you are yearning for some crime fiction.
  Rating - 3.5/5
  
  
• The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides - an amazing work of fiction. Keeps you riveted with small nuggets that build into the finale. A must read if you like psychological thrillers.
  Rating - 4.5/5
  
  
• The Whisper man by Alex North - a decent read with lots of time taken to build out the characters and focus on realistic grief. A dark representation of reality today.
  Rating - 3.75/5
  
  
• The Outsider by Stephen King - a typical king novel that focuses on the impossible with painstakingly built characters. A good read if you are a King fan but on the whole, I would give it a skip as there are better books to read.
  Rating - 3.5/5
  

[promit]

I want to recommend a nice light-hearted read. It's called A Man called Ove by Fredrik Backman. Would rate it a 4.5/5 Originally in Swedish. It's about a grumpy but good at heart 59 year old man, and the world through his point of view after experiencing some difficulties in his personal and professional life. Extremely rigid in his ways and routines. All of which changes when he has some new neighbours move in next door who turn his life upside down. Oh, and the best - he judges people based on what cars they drove. "Saab and Volvo are driven by sensible people."

[poised2drive]

After a long time, I have begun reading fiction and yet again I understood why I stopped reading fiction for a long time- Because they are so addicting and you risk sleep rather than putting down the book.

GAME OF THRONES

So I made a folly to start the legendary series of ' A Song of Ice and Fire' aka Game of Thrones.

I bought the first book- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Game_of_Thrones from the Kindle Store when the Covid-19 virus was knocking at the door of our country and finished it when the lockdown started. Being a fan of the TV series, I couldn't just stop reading the book and finished it off sooner than I expected.

Then, I decided I shall buy all the remaining parts and bought the whole set for around 2k , including the first part again.

As I began reading the series, I could not help but to be awed with the writing and saying it was absolutely magnificent was an understatement.

GRRM mesmerises the audience starting with his intrinsic details of the geography of the lands to the dresses of the characters to the food they eat to the sigils of the houses , which all have an aggregate affect of teleporting you to the mystic lands of Westeros/Essos .

I am a fan of the show and if you are one too and if you love reading books ( which is a most probable case since you are reading this) , then this is an absolute read.

As many would have observed, the GoT series was quite fantastic for the first 4 to 5 seasons- especially, the dialogues, the storyline, themes and it started its downward spiral from the 6th season. The overwhelming awesomeness of the show should, at least 50%, should go to the creator of the Series, GRR Martin.
And the Showrunners were wise enough to hire him for script and other stuff.

And to our dismay, the story line completely deviates from the later stage of 5th season as the last book- A dance with dragons was only till 5th season. And it was not a coincidence that the show lost its sheen after it- because the showrunners were fed up with the delay of GRRM , though they themselves did a disastrous work in finishing off the series.

Many characters that are dead in the TV series are still well alive in the book and playing the game ( my favourite being Stannis , whose character was completely defiled by the showrunners.)

Actually, if someone has watched the series and are disappointed with the end, then they should unquestionably read the books. It is absurdly enthralling , especially the narration and the description of the details are excruciatingly deep , that makes it insanely engrossing.

The TV series , though, does not aid much in taking forward the story, yet it helps the reader to visualize the Wall, the Lands of Always Winter, the Winterfell, KL , Harrenhall,.. Braavos and other free cities of Essos... which makes the reading more pleasureful.

The best part of the TV Series was its Music ,thanks to Ramin Djawadi - he made us listen and take delight in the tunes of GOT. So I suggest turn on the music of GOT in night and open the books and dive in the world of Game of Thrones , especially the Night King Theme for reading the wall episodes , light of the seven for kings landing episodes , Dothraki theme for Dothraki episodes, Winds of Winter theme and Mysa Theme for Daneyrys episodes , Winterfell ambience for the North Episodes ... The reading coupled with music teleports you to another world.

And as of now, I am in the final chapters of the last part of the book and I am terrified to finish it . I started reducing my reading speed just because I hate completing it and the next part - Winds of Winter , does not seem to release in near future .

Rating - *****

[Eddy]

Mythological Fiction by Amish - Ram & Shiva series. An uncle of mine loved these books and is looking for something similar on Lord Krishna. Any recommendations?