A book which combines dark crime novel with thoughtful social commentary.

I love it and I can't wait to read the second volume, 9/10

My novel reading is at a rather slow pace these days.  I only read during part of my lunch break at work, so even relatively short novels have taken time (especially when I'm fatigued and doze off ).

I bought this when I bought For Us, The Living.  I might squeeze in Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles before I reach for this.

And I've just started the sequel.

I've read this book like 100 times, it's amazing. I'm a great fan of Lem.

Final part of the trilogy. Just about to start it. 

I'm now a couple of chapters into this:

Sorry, I missed your post before.

I haven't picked up the Greg Mandel series yet but yes these ones are indeed space opera. I find Hamilton's books draw from multiple genres though so there are other elements to be found here, but space opera at its heart for sure. I haven't read an Iain M. Banks yet I'm afraid to know if they're comparable. I'm can't recommend Hamilton enough though if you like sci-fi, both Nights Dawn and his Commonwealth novels are fantastic. I haven't actually touched the work of another author since I first started reading Hamilton some time before Xmas. 

I'm now reading Stranger In A Strange Land as my lunch break novel.  I did end up reading The Martian Chronicles first, and really enjoyed it.

I also went to the library today and grabbed some non-fiction, Mustaine.

First non-Hamilton book I've read since before last Xmas. But back on his work now:

Good transhuman sf, not as good as the hard sf classics by Stanisław Lem, but still very good.

Good Paul Auster book. The story is mostly set in 20s/30s in the US and it's something between magic realism, naturalism and bildungsroman. Unusual stuff, that's for sure.

A bit less of a detective fiction and more of a thriller this time. Still friggin awesome, though.

My first Murakami. Apparently it's the most abstract of his books. I wouldn't call that magic realism though. Very symbolic and eclectic literature, I'm looking forward to read more of him.

I have not read that one, but just finished this a few days ago:

That's the new one, Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki and his years of pilgrimage, or something like that in English. I liked it, it was very realistic and direct, which wasn't really the case with 1Q84 and Kafka on the shore which I read a while back. I recommend those two very strongly, and this new one as well.

If we had a books section in the database this would actually be in it. The guy is a Finnish prog rock semi-legend/author/comic book artist, and this is basically an autobiographical novel about small town elementary school boys finding and getting hooked on Kiss and the whole 80s heavy metal scene. And about childhood in Finland, so it's easy for me to relate to lots of the stuff even though I did those things ten years later.

I'm an Agatha Christie fanatic, and while it's borderline criminal and definitely blasphemous to dig Hercule Poirot out of his grave where Dame Agatha so carefully laid him, this book was just too good to be angry at.

It's pretty interesting so far. 

Neat history lesson for any jazz fans out there.

Next on my list is:

No matter how many times I read this, I can't get enough of it. I have to prepare a 5 minute presentation on it, but I don't even know where to start because there's so much I want to say. 

Nice, I've always preferred cognitive linguistics to the generative mumbo-jumbo (). French sociolinguistics (Paris school) occupy a big chunk of my masters thesis, too. I haven't read any of those, though. 

Trying to read Silmarillion reminded me why I couldn't get through the Bible... just kidding, although I really couldn't get through the Bible.

Well, it's been some time since my last try, maybe I should give Silmarillion another go some time soon 

Most books I've read recently are on translation studies, like this one

Also, I've finished the Milleniun Trilogy by Stieg Larsson - AWESOME genre-bending crime saga. 

Thanks for reminding me this exists. When we covered stylistics and corpus linguistics in class, I remember thinking it might be interesting to use more of this in my future essays and whatnot.

On-topic:

I am currently reading this:

 

I also read the first novel in Scott Westerfeld's "Uglies" series, and felt any interesting social criticism was drowned by the moronic main character and the terrible, clichéd plot (with, once again, an effing love triangle, my favourite!).

Well, yes, I know all these gentlemen although I'm not that well versed in Newmarks input, it just felt very basic and applicable only to pragmatic translation, so I skipped it. My attitude towards linguistics as the basis for translation studies is ambivalent, if I'm to be honest. But I'm not an expert, by any means, even though linguistics classes were forced upon us regardless of specialization. I'm specialized in french litterature and my masters is on literary translation (Quebec/litt. postmoderne etc) so... Btw, I need some native-french professor to take a look at my thesis cause my supervisor doesn't answer my emails 

Amazing book, wholeheartedly recommended. English title: The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

Not a bad short story collection but I really wish they'd translated the next main novel before this seeing as they skipped this for some reason in the first place. I can see why they did this because I recognise most of these stories from references made in The Witcher 3, but I still think it was a poor decision to translate the first short story collection The Last Wish, skip this, then do the first three novels, then go back to this and leave the novel storyline hanging (we have to wait a whole year now to get the next novel in the UK and another whole year after that to get the last novel). 

Started reading this since I enjoyed the last book.

Absolutely loved this one, quite the unexpected ending. 

Before moving on to the next book in the series, I'm reading this:

Really interesting so far, it's a non-fiction book about the finding of a lost Caravaggio painting but it's written like a fiction novel. I haven't finished it yet, but already I recommend this to anyone who likes art history and even just a good mystery.

Just finished reading the two A. L. Berridge books from the 30-years War period, 'Honour And The Sword' and 'In The Name Of The King'. Pretty good adventure series so far. I will be reading her one other book, set during the Crimean War, 'Into The Valley Of Death'

Other authors I've read recently: Christian Cameron, excellent writer that reminds me very much of Bernard Cornwell (the Sharp's Rifles series) but without the cynicism. He mainly writes of the Greek classical period and the Macedonian period (Alexander the Great).

Martin McDowell, has only written two books so far, both follow a fictional British regiment during the opening of the Peninsula War in Portugal/Spain in 1808-1809. Again, an excellent series so far. I hope more are to come.

I'm currently reading an omnibus edition of the first three books in Elizabeth Moon's Heris Serrano trilogy. I'm on the second one and so far it's been enjoyable. 

Finally finished this, it was a bit confusing at first but it certainly picked up the pace and explained things better. It got really suspenseful as it progressed, and I really loved it in the end despite the kind of slow start. Apparently it's the first book in a series, so until I get the next one I'm reading another I.J. Parker novel:

Damn, this is such a great series so far. I highly recommend it to fans of mystery/psychological horror.

Continuing with reading this:

I've since read the next three books in this series since this post and have just started #5:

Not as good as number 5 but I'm eagerly awaiting the continuation of the series. and still want to see the TV show. 

Not sure what I'll read now. 

Right now I'm finishing this: