Along with many of us I am missing the occasional dip into a chazza, particularly on the books side. Recent purchaser of a kindle, the monthly release of the new book deals is about as close to a rummage through the Oxfam shelves as you are going to get at the moment. There’s history, lots of military history, autobiography, self-help, romance, thrillers, detective and well you get the idea. Literary fiction , classics and sci-fi are the sections of the shop I go for so here are my entirely partial recommendations for the 99p monthly deals:
Classics – strong showing from Penguin Classics and Modern Classics. Really important to get a reputable publisher with translated work. So I’m going for War and Peace, Les Grandes Moulnes and a volume of Katherine Mansfield short stories. Already got, thorughly recommended, is Heart of a Dog by Bulgakov.
Sci-fi – if you’ve not read Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie you are in luck. One of the best sci-fi novels of teh last decade. Peter F Hamilton has gone off the boil a bit recently IMHO, so glad the first heavy slab of his new trilogy, Salvation, is on here. Decently reviewed. There’s a Neal Asher (just a bit too military for me) too, and a free Adrian Tchiakovsky novella.
Modern lit fic – Freedom by Jonathan Frantzen, Muriel Spark’s A Far Cry from Kensington and Cormac McCarthy’s No Country For Old Men are both great novels I can recommend.
Finally music: the Pete Paphides as mentioned elsewhere, Bill Brewster’s compendious Last Night A DJ Saved My Life… on dance music and club culture; and Louise Wener’s britpop memoirs.
Also in the deals humour/unclassifiable Brian Bilston’s Diary of a Somebody – anyone read this?
I’ve got it because I like the poems he tweets. Haven’t read it yet though.
Some excellent recommendations there. Cheers!
This month has also got The Godfather, Puzo’s original novel. Love the film but is the book any good?
A charity shop book equivalent to No Parlez? Also see any ‘comedy’ odyssey book by Tony Hawkes
The Guardian mentioned that the removal of VAT on electronic books has been brought forward to 1st May. Apparently Amazon are reducing all their kindle book prices, but not sure if it has happened yet.
I am tempted by Craig Brown’s book about the Beatles is £8 on kindle, which seems a good price for a £20 new hardback.
I’ve got a virtual pile of books by my virtual bed from where I’ve bought stuff in Kindle sales. I use the app on my phone though. I don’t have a physical one though Twang Jr does and periodically uses it. He seems to prefer real books though.
There’s a few more that might interest the AW.
‘GBH’ by Ted Lewis is up there. He wrote ‘Jack’s Return Home’ subsequently filmed as Get Carter. GBH, his last novel, is meant to be his masterpiece.
Also Tove Janson’s Winter and Summer novels.
All for pennies.
GBH looks to be right up my street.
Bought it.
Mine too. Also bought it. Ta!
Only added to my wish list a month or so back, so happy to see it drop to 99p.
I got Guy Pratt’s book for 2 dollars thinking it might be an entertaining read. How wrong I was. Nothing but a collection of tedious tales of chemical and alcohol-related overindulgence, all couched in “what jolly larks!” language. A colossal bore.
According to the recent Bowie podcast he contributed to, he has given up the drink since a year or so ago. I get the impression he doesn’t find it all as funny as he used to either.
I enjoyed it personally. But I agree the booze stuff was tiresome and as Diddley says, he recognised he was close being a raging alcoholic and knocked it on the head.
There was some interesting stuff in there, to be fair – for example, I had no idea that he was all set to replace Andy Rourke in The Smiths for a tour of America.
There’s a great spotify list to be made of all the records he has played on as well.
for the SF heads, Emma Newman’s Planetfall is a good read and 99p well spent, as is Becky Chambers’ To Be Taught If Fortunate (a standalone novella that takes place in a different universe to her excellent novels)
I wondered about the Emma Newman so thanks for the recommendation.
Don Winslow’s ‘Power of the dog’ is selling for 99p and ‘The Border’ for 1.99 in the monthly deal.
These are parts 1 and 3 of the Cartel trilogy. ‘The Cartel’ itself can be picked up for 3.99.
The entire trilogy for less than a tenner – there’s you”re lock down reading sorted for a few weeks.