What Are You Currently Reading

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Re: What Are You Currently Reading

Postby The Creeping Spleen » Sat Oct 02, 2021 8:35 am

Henrysix wrote:Spleen, tempting me no me to dip back into my box set with Sean Bean in the starring role!

Watch "Sharpe's Eagle" and you'll be treated to the sight of Sean Bean beating the shit out of Daniel Craig. :)
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And if it's all we only pass this way but once, what a perfect waste of time.
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Re: What Are You Currently Reading

Postby The Creeping Spleen » Sat Oct 09, 2021 11:33 am

"Checkpoint Charlie: The Cold War, the Berlin Wall, and the Most Dangerous Place On Earth" by Iain MacGregor.
Another sunrise with my sad captains, with who I choose to lose my mind,
And if it's all we only pass this way but once, what a perfect waste of time.
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Re: What Are You Currently Reading

Postby The Creeping Spleen » Sat Oct 16, 2021 5:02 pm

"Gestapo Mars" by Victor Gischler.

Carter Sloan is a trained assassin the best there is, pulled out of cryogenic sleep whenever an assignment demands his skills. So when he s kept in the deep freeze for 258 years, he's seriously pissed off. Yet his government needs him, to hunt down the enemy known as the Daughter of the Brass Dragon. The future of the galaxy-spanning Reich depends on it, so Sloan is off screwing, swearing, and shooting his way across interstellar space.

A gloriously silly mashup of James Bond, Flash Gordon, and Buck Rogers with just a dash of Star Wars and Starship Troopers thrown in for good measure.
Another sunrise with my sad captains, with who I choose to lose my mind,
And if it's all we only pass this way but once, what a perfect waste of time.
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Re: What Are You Currently Reading

Postby The Creeping Spleen » Thu Oct 21, 2021 9:00 am

"Anti-Social: The Secret Diary of an Anti-Social Behaviour Officer" by Nick Pettigrew.

Anti-Social is the diary of a local authority worker whose job it is to keep people happy, or at least away from each other's throats. That's hard enough at the best of times, but when your day features secret hoarders, violent disputes over dance music and litigious arms dealers, the total breakdown of local society is never far away. The only thing keeping it together are the chronically underfunded officers charged with patching the fraying threads of civilisation, and they have a hard enough time keeping themselves together.

This is an urgent, timely but, most of all, hysterically funny memoir of a life spent working with the people society wants to forget and the problems that nobody else can resolve. This book will make you laugh, cry and boil with rage, all within a single sentence.
Another sunrise with my sad captains, with who I choose to lose my mind,
And if it's all we only pass this way but once, what a perfect waste of time.
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Re: What Are You Currently Reading

Postby Henrysix » Thu Oct 21, 2021 9:24 am

H BBC Caramba Spleen you are an avid reader, more recently I am on audible and just listened to The Complete Works of Uncle Mort by Peter Tinniswood which was laugh out loud funny , now on to Miriam Margolyes “ This Much is True”

Early doors but quite amusing- don’t know where you find the time but always impressed with your analysis, clearly “you had a better educashun that wot I did has was”
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Re: What Are You Currently Reading

Postby The Creeping Spleen » Sat Oct 23, 2021 9:46 am

"Journey of the Pharaohs" by Clive Cussler and Graham Brown.

Book 17 in the "NUMA Files" series of archaeological action adventure novels featuring Kurt Austin and the NUMA Special Projects Team.


When Kurt Austin rescues the crew of a Scottish trawler, he finds himself trying to save them not once but twice. First, from the violent storm that dashes their vessel into jagged rocks and, second, from the deadly gunmen desperate to get their hands on its lost cargo of stolen Egyptian artefacts.

Soon Kurt - with the assistance of resourceful MI5 agent Morgan Manning - is on the hunt for the source of these artefacts. It's a journey that takes them around the world and draws the fury of the mysterious Bloodstone group - an international network of murderous individuals who'll kill anyone in their way.

But what do gunmen want with ancient loot?

One thing is for sure, if Kurt is to find out he's going to be in the cross hairs of some ruthless and well-armed foes.
Another sunrise with my sad captains, with who I choose to lose my mind,
And if it's all we only pass this way but once, what a perfect waste of time.
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Re: What Are You Currently Reading

Postby The Creeping Spleen » Sat Nov 20, 2021 2:53 pm

"Brothers in Arms: One Legendary Tank Regiment's Bloody War from D-Day to VE Day" by James Holland.

It took a certain type of courage to serve in a tank in the Second World War. Encased in steel, surrounded by highly explosive shells, a big and slow-moving target, every crew member was utterly vulnerable to enemy attack from all sides. Living - and dying - in a tank was a brutal way to fight a war.

The Sherwood Rangers were one of the great tank regiments. They had learned their trade the hard way, in the burning deserts of North Africa. From D-Day onwards, they were in the thick of the action til the war's end. They and their Sherman tanks covered thousands of miles and endured some of the fiercest fighting in Western Europe. Their engagements stretch from the Normandy beaches to the bridges at Eindhoven. They were the first British unit into Germany, grinding across the Siegfried Line and on into the Nazi heartland.

Through compelling eye-witness testimony and James Holland's expert analysis, Brothers In Arms brings to vivid life the final bloody scramble across Europe and gives the most powerful account to date of what it was really like to fight in the dying days of World War Two.
Another sunrise with my sad captains, with who I choose to lose my mind,
And if it's all we only pass this way but once, what a perfect waste of time.
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Re: What Are You Currently Reading

Postby The Creeping Spleen » Sun Nov 28, 2021 9:23 am

Henrysix wrote:Caramba Spleen you are an avid reader

Oh yeah, always been a big reader, ever since I was a kid. I'm mildly dyslexic, and initially had a bit of trouble learning to read and write at school (my handwriting's still bloody awful) so I practically taught myself to read via the old Doctor Who novelisations by Terrance Dicks and the like. :)


Currently reading - "Troubled Blood" by Robert Galbraith (AKA J.K. Rowling).
Fifth in the "Cormoran Strike" series of detective mysteries.

Private Detective Cormoran Strike is visiting his family in Cornwall when he is approached by a woman asking for help finding her mother, Margot Bamborough - who went missing in mysterious circumstances in 1974.

Strike has never tackled a cold case before, let alone one forty years old. But despite the slim chance of success, he is intrigued and takes it on; adding to the long list of cases that he and his partner in the agency, Robin Ellacott, are currently working on. Plus the pair are still battling their feelings for one another, while Robin is also juggling a messy divorce and unwanted male attention.

As Strike and Robin investigate Margot's disappearance, they come up against a fiendishly complex case with leads that include tarot cards, a psychopathic serial killer and witnesses who cannot all be trusted. And they learn that even cases decades old can prove to be deadly...
Another sunrise with my sad captains, with who I choose to lose my mind,
And if it's all we only pass this way but once, what a perfect waste of time.
The Creeping Spleen
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Re: What Are You Currently Reading

Postby The Creeping Spleen » Sun Jan 02, 2022 1:39 pm

Reading the "Blake and Mortimer Adventures" by Edgar P. Jacobs.

They're a series of graphic novels, translated from the French, first published in 1946 in Tintin Magazine.

Captain Francis Blake of MI5 and his friend the noted scientist Professor Philip Mortimer solve mysteries, uncover spy rings, and foil the dastardly plots of their arch nemesis Colonel Olrik.

It's more of a Holmes and Watson relationship, rather than Tintin and Captain Haddock.

The artwork, in the famous ligne claire style, is gorgeous, and the period detail is spot on.

My only criticism is that these English language editions don't adhere to the original publication order, so the stories jump around in the series own internal timeline.
Another sunrise with my sad captains, with who I choose to lose my mind,
And if it's all we only pass this way but once, what a perfect waste of time.
The Creeping Spleen
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Re: What Are You Currently Reading

Postby banjo » Mon Jan 03, 2022 8:05 am

windswept and interesting.billy connolly autobiography.not much in it that i did not already know to be honest.i usally pass on my books once i have read them but i will keep this one as the big yin himself has autographed it. :)
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Re: What Are You Currently Reading

Postby Henrysix » Tue Jan 04, 2022 11:08 am

Banjo, went off him a long long time ago, he is a bit of a sell out with his Royal connections too, when he first started he was told good - sorry BC!
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Re: What Are You Currently Reading

Postby The Creeping Spleen » Sat Jan 15, 2022 10:10 am

"Iron and Rust" by Harry Sidebottom.
Book one in the "Throne of the Caesars" trilogy.


In a single year six Emperors will lay claim to the Throne of the Caesars…

SPRING AD235

Dawn on the Rhine. A surprise attack and the brutal murder of the Emperor Alexander and his mother ends the Severan dynasty and shatters four decades of Roman certainty.

Military hero Maximinus Thrax is the first Caesar risen from the barracks. A simple man of steel and violence, he will fight for Rome.

The Senators praise the new Emperor with elaborate oratory, but will any of them accept a Caesar who was once a shepherd boy? And in the streets of the eternal city, others merely pray to escape imperial notice.

In the north, as the merciless war against the barbarians consumes men and treasure, rebellion and personal tragedy drive Maximinus to desperate extremes, bloody revenge and the borders of sanity.
Another sunrise with my sad captains, with who I choose to lose my mind,
And if it's all we only pass this way but once, what a perfect waste of time.
The Creeping Spleen
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Re: What Are You Currently Reading

Postby The Creeping Spleen » Mon Jan 30, 2023 7:45 pm

"Terry Pratchett: A Life with Footnotes" by Rob Wilkins.

An authorised and official biography of the late author, written by his former PA.
Another sunrise with my sad captains, with who I choose to lose my mind,
And if it's all we only pass this way but once, what a perfect waste of time.
The Creeping Spleen
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Re: What Are You Currently Reading

Postby The Creeping Spleen » Mon Feb 06, 2023 7:00 pm

Comics - "The Bogie Man" written by Alan Grant and John Wagner, art by Robin Smith.

One of my favourite comics of all time.

Escaped mental patient Francis Forbes Clunie has a problem. He thinks he's Humphrey Bogart.

Or rather he thinks he's an amalgam of Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, Rick Blaine, and just about every character Bogart ever played.

He's on the loose in Glasgow, and making his "case" up as he goes along.
Another sunrise with my sad captains, with who I choose to lose my mind,
And if it's all we only pass this way but once, what a perfect waste of time.
The Creeping Spleen
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Re: What Are You Currently Reading

Postby The Creeping Spleen » Sun Apr 23, 2023 11:07 am

"The Maleficent Seven" by Cameron Johnston.


When you are all out of heroes, all that’s left are the villains.

Black Herran was a dread demonologist, and the most ruthless general in all Essoran. She assembled the six most fearsome warriors to captain her armies: a necromancer, a vampire lord, a demigod, an orcish warleader, a pirate queen, and a twisted alchemist. Together they brought the whole continent to its knees… Until the day she abandoned her army, on the eve of total victory.

40 years later, she must bring her former captains back together for one final stand, in the small town of Tarnbrooke – the last bastion against a fanatical new enemy tearing through the land, intent on finishing the job Black Herran started years before.

Seven bloodthirsty monsters. One town. Their last hope.
Another sunrise with my sad captains, with who I choose to lose my mind,
And if it's all we only pass this way but once, what a perfect waste of time.
The Creeping Spleen
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