Latest book you've read

Now because I don’t have time to read, I listen to audiobooks. The last one that impressed me was John Kehoe Mind Power. The book turned my perspective on life upside down. Now I really see that everything I think about has a place. So by controlling our thoughts we can control our lives and achieve what we want to achieve.
The book is about how to become the master of your life through your own efforts, that is subconscious. The book reads surprisingly easily, the exercises are described clearly, the book is full of examples from the lives of celebrities, which makes reading even more fascinating.

I just finished “The Wizard’s Butler” by Nathan Lowell. Not one of my favorite ones by him but I typically like his work (he’s one of those people that his books are easy reads I can do over and over again) and it was in my Amazon Prime free reads for the month, so…

I’m currently working my way through the Hamilton Affair by Elizabeth Cobbs, a novelization of the story that inspired the musical Hamilton. It’s an interesting read, but one I find myself putting down after a while. I can’t just can’t seem to lose myself in it for some reason…

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I just finished reading “the power of now” by Eckhart Tolle. It was fantastic. I was expecting it to be cheesy going into the book, but it turned out to be a page turner. Highly recommended, especially If you feel stressed out.

I just finished Miss Cayley’s Adventures by Grant Allen. It’s a bit too slow for my liking, but the story itself was pretty well done.

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I’ve just finished “Then she was gone” by Luca Veste. A group of young men form an exclusive club at university, and some of the things they do in that club come back to bite them a few years later.

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I’ve just finished “The Murder Exchange” by Simon Kernick, which I enjoyed a lot. A deal goes wrong and things spiral out of control. I always enjoy stuff by this author, they’re often very quick-paced but this one was a little different.

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I’ve just finished “Recursion” by Blake Crouch. I enjoyed it, don’t get me wrong, but it’s complicated. A researcher invents a machine to record memories from the brain, and to play them back later, to help her mother who is losing her memory due to illness. Someone else then adapts it to act basically as a time machine, on the basis that there are multiple realities all going on at the same time and it’s just a case of tuning into the correct one. Or something like that. They then spend a lot of time trying to chase around time trying to fix a problem they unwittingly caused.

Enjoyable, but not a book to read bits of when you’ve got back from the pub.

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Recently i have finished “I Too Had a Love Story” and “Half Girlfriend”. After reading these two books i am become a fan of Ravinder Singh and Chetan Bhagat. Please suggest me books like this.

I’ve just finished “Toys”, by James Patterson and Neil McMahon. Set in a future ruled by enhanced humanoid beings known as "Elites, with humans relegated to the level of undesirables, the story centres around a plan to eradicate humans once and for all, and their reaction when they find out.

I read a lot of disparaging comments about the work of JP, and I rarely agree with it but then I’m normally reading his stuff that isn’t set in the future - the Alex Cross series, the Michael Bennett series, and so on - which I generally enjoy. Unfortunately with this one I found it quite poorly written - in a way it was a bit “young”, in that some of the description of how the “Elites” have better cars, better entertainment systems, all sounded as if it had been written in the style of a young teenager boasting to his friends about how much better his Dad’s new car is. And I ran into my pet hate - poor research - unless the end of the World Cup final really is signalled by firing a gun. Someone struggling to write their first novel gets away with that, someone with Mr Patterson’s resources doesn’t.

It didn’t read as if it’s a book that could spawn a sequel of any kind, but if it did, I’ll try to remember to avoid them.

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I’ve just finished part 3 of The Dresden Files. It’s about a wizard that is drawn into all sorts of supernatural things. I won’t say too much because it’s easy to give away spoilers.

It has a nice pace and I do love the, at times pretty dark, humour.

I liked it overall, but it got a bit much at the end.
I’ve just started part 4 and things are starting to calm down, so that’s good :slight_smile:

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I’ve just read “One Eye Open” by Paul Finch. A dog walker comes across a crashed car, calls the police, and it turns out that the car is cloned, the two occupants seem impossible to identify but there’s a lot of money in the car. A decent enough story.

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I’ve just finished part 4 of the Dresden files. It is indeed a lot milder than the 3rd part, and I liked the story.

In a nutshell, winter and summer are not only seasons, they are really Sidhe (fairy like creatures) that control the weather. The balance between them got off and it’s up to Harry Dresden to fix it.

It’s witty enough to make me laugh out loud at some spots.

The entire series already consists of 17 books, so I have some ways to go. In the stories, Harry, being a wizard, can’t be around electronics or they’ll get fried. Which was workable in the early 2000s when the first books came out, but I wonder how they’ll work around that in the later books :slight_smile:

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I’ve just finished “Lockdown” by Peter May. Written in 2005 but not published until last year, it’s set in London during a bird flu pandemic. Some bones are found in the foundations of a new hospital being built, the main character has a limited time to solve the case before he leaves the police force the next day, while dealing with personal issues. A good story.

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Well it is not a book but a documentary on a movie and a real event that occurred on Jan 15 2009 and it is named as Sully, miracle of the Hudson. It is mesmerizing.

Interesting, I’ve seen the film that you refer to and enjoyed it. I suspect I might have enjoyed it more if it went in sequence rather than flashbacks, but it was good. But then, most Tom Hanks films are.

There have been so many books written by “James Patterson and Another Author” in the last few years that I think he is just whoring out his name and the books were written by just “Another Author”.

I read that for one of the big-name authors that does the same thing, the big-name is responsible for coming up with the story outline, and the other guy converts it into the full thing. I guess it varies from author to author, and I can’t remember who I read that about. It’s OK as long as the other guy makes a decent job of it - I’ve read a few standalone books from people who have partnered with James Patterson which I’ve enjoyed, and I might not have done so had I not heard of them as a co-author to someone more famous.

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I wonder how many modern authors actually write their books.

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I’ve recently finished “Hollow City” by Ransome Riggs, which is the follow-up to “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children”.

Unfortunately, I read the first book a couple of years or more ago, and found it very hard at first to pick up the threads. This book continues the story immediately where the previous book finished, and I had some difficulty recalling what was happening and who was who. (None of this is a criticism of the books, just an observation.)

It’s hard to know how to describe this series: time-travelling fantasy horror, or something similar. Much of this book is set in Britain in 1940, and although it’s a children’s book, I found the descriptions of air raids and their aftermath in London quite harrowing. I suspect if I had read this at the age of eleven or twelve, I would have had nightmares - not from the monsters or the fantasy element, but from the reality.

I did enjoy the story - especially once I’d remembered/relearned who the monsters were, what they could do and what their ultimate goal was. Like the previous book, it’s more of a chapter than a complete story; the adventure continues immediately in the next book. I’ll try to read that while I can still remember what’s happening!

I’ve read several books like that and have always struggled with them. I’ve always felt that a book should be able to be read standalone, otherwise it’s not a book, it’s a TV show (and even those I prefer the ones where you can watch it standalone and can figure out what the story is) :lol:

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