A little later than usual due to a family holiday, here’s my personal selection from this month’s kindle offers, with the emphasis on Fiction, Scifi, Classics and a bit of nonfiction. All 99p or thereabouts.
FICTION
Decent month for lit fic.
My Secret History – Paul Theroux I may have read this 20 years ago, have forgotten everything about it
Oreo – Fran Ross – I loved The Sellout by Paul Beatty and this is referenced in several reviews, though written in 1974.
Brazzaville Beach – William Boyd
Girl – Edna O’Brien May be too dark for me as it’s O’Brien’s take on the Boko Harum schoolgirl abductions.
SCIFI
Again, strong lineup
Dark Eden – Chrs Beckett – first of a trilogy, very well reviewed.
Autonomous – Annalee Newitz Read this a few weeks ago. Excellent on AI and genetic engineering.
Aurora – Kim Stanley Robinson – KSR’s take on the generation starship novel. Always worth reading him.
The Dark Forest – Cixin Liu OK you should but#y this but not read it. It’s part two of a trilogy and I have just read part one – The Three Body Problem and it is fantastic. The Cultural Revolution, Chinese society and a first contact scenario. A genuinely new voice in SF (albeit new in translation rather than in the original). So read 3BP first.
Finch – John Vandermeer. I love the Southern Reach trilogy. A standalone that looks a bit more fantasy.
NONFICTON
Strong month.
This is Your Brain On Music – Daniel Levitin One for us all. How does music affect our brains? Well, that depends on whether its MES or Mozart of course.
Eating Animals – Jonathan Safar Foer – interesting writer takes on eating meat.
Band of Brothers – Stephen Ambrose. Never read. Not sure I will personally but clearly a good book.
Into The Wild – John Krakauer
CLASSICS
Poor month
Jane Eyre – has anyone not read this? If not a nice Penguin classics edition for you.
DETECTIVE/THRILLER
The Complete Sherlock Holmes – again in a Penguin edition so should be properly edited, rather than the endless free copies also available
The Maltese Falcon -Hammett
As ever it’s my personal selection of things I can recommend or am excited to read. So not much rom-com, computer programming manuals or ‘gripping psychological thrillers with a twist you’ll never see’
Thanks for some great recommendations moseley, particularly for The Dark Forest at a steal – I have The Three Body Problem on my to read list, so this is perfect.
What editing is appropriate to a Sherlock Holmes story?
The Kindle store is awash with shoddy reprints of classics that have typos, sections missing and so on. Getting a Penguin edition prevents all that – not suggesting Conan Doyle needs editing!
No I wondered! Anyway I’ve bought it! Ta!
Other titles up on Kindle’s current and – atypically poor – 99p deals list is
John Lawton’s Blackout (First book in his excellent if not terribly widely known Frederick Troy series)
Robert Harris Munich (Fronkly not one of his best. I got about 20pps in and surrendered to the advancing Panzer divisions)
Pretty sure Val McDermid’s Place of Execution is up there, too
A couple of other good titles
Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman. If you squint a bit, this might be the best thing either one of them put their name to.
Sixteen Ways To Defend A Walled City by K.J. Parker. A witty and sardonic tale of the practicalities of defending against a quasi-medieval sieges when the man in charge is a (very likeable) liar and cheat, promoted way beyond his abilities
On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers. As mentioned over in the Blogger Takeover thread. Pirates and voodoo in the Caribbean, a mixture of swashbuckling action and supernatural events that could have been the template for the Pirates of the Caribbean movies (hey, the first one was good). It was eventually adapted as the fourth one of those films, but was heavily Depp-ified on the way from page to screen. This is the source, and great fun.
I’ll chuck another three novels that are worthy of consideration onto the pile.
Slow Horses by Mick Herron.
English Passengers by Matthew Kneale.
The Muse by Jesse Burton.
Three very different books, all eminently readable.
@pencilsqueezer
The Slow Horses series is very good indeed.
I’ve only read the first two so far but I have the rest awaiting my attention. Thoroughly enjoyed the ones I have read and I’m looking forward to the rest. When I read book series I tend to string the pleasure out rather than binge on them so it could be a couple of years before I fall into lock step with Mr. Herron.
Currently reading the latest MH myself and very good it is, too.
If you can get Slow Horses for 99p – the literary equivalent of a heroin dealer giving you a couple of shots for free – go for it.
If you love good writing you’d have to be criminally insane to miss out.
I got lucky a while ago when virtually all of the series was reduced to 99p each. I filled my boots.
I concur totally on the whole Slough House series.
Jackson Lamb is one of the great creations of recent times – offensive but likeable, utterly foul but chock full of integrity.
I’ve read a couple of the ‘spin offs‘ from the same ‘world’ as well, & I’m happy to report that they are up to snuff.
I use the Kindle app but I’m thinking about a device – which is the one to get?
I use a Paperwhite – a significant step up from the original Kindle. The screen goes on for ever and the white screen makes reading fine on the eyes even in bright sunlight. A second hand version is cheap as chips – or £70 from Music Magpie.
What Mr. Moles says. Way better on your eyes than a tablet due to the screen refreshing far slower. You’ll find the touchscreen on a Kindle reacts much more slowly because of that so don’t expect to find the smooth scrolling that is typical of a tablet or smartphone. It is altogether a much more pleasant reading experience though.
@twang have a look at Kobo – the perfect choice for them as are iffy about the dodgers. I’ve got one of these:
https://uk.kobobooks.com/products/kobo-clara-hd?utm_source=Kobo&utm_medium=TopNav&utm_campaign=Clara
Small enough to fit in my back pocket and really bright screen. ePub format, so you’re not locked into one store like Kindle. They do 99p deals too.