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The Green and Gold Rugby Book Club

ChargerWA

Mark Loane (55)
Determinedly ploughing through "The Wheel of Time" series. But reading a 14 book series has left me with 4 other "to reads"in the pile as well.
 

RugbyReg

Rocky Elsom (76)
Staff member
am mid-way through the West Wing tv series and am keen to read up more about the political system in the US, and indeed how the White House runs. Any suggestions book-wise?
 

rugbyskier

Ted Thorn (20)
RugbyReg, if you want a bit of humour with your explanation of the US political system try "Parliament of Whores: A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire US Government" by P.J. O'Rourke. It's written from the perspective of a 60s radical who became a Republican during the Reagan era.
 

rugbysmartarse

Alan Cameron (40)
Just finished the hornby book Fever Pitch about his love affair with Arsenal from his time as a small boy through his teen years and his young adulthood. There were many correlations between his and other fans view of Arsenal and the current day waratahs....
 

Jethro Tah

Bob Loudon (25)
I have a couple of long haul flights coming up - any recommendations? Preferably literary fiction and set in current times or modern history.

Just finished The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga. Quote from Wiki "a darkly humorous perspective of India’s class struggle in a globalized world". It was a good read but I don't see how it won the '08 Booker.
 

bryce

Darby Loudon (17)
I think I recommended Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes, and also The Suicide Run by William Styron a while back. Ever get round to it?

Also, the pick of the books I've read over the past few months:

Jonathan Franzen - The Corrections. - knocked it off in 3 days. Freedom is also good, but I thought The Corrections was the pick. I got the feeling that Franzen had become so big and famous that his editor was scared to tell him to cut bits out of Freedom. It could have been 100 pages shorter.

Bao Ninh - The Sorrow of War - maybe the best book on war I've ever read. Heart breaking.

Solar - Ian McEwan

David Niven - The Second Coming. - Comedy gold if you're after something lighter.
 

Scarfman

Knitter of the Scarf
It's pretty simple. For a long haul flight you get all 3 series of the Ricky Gervais Show on mp3. It adds up to about 18 hours of laughing out loud.
 

Jethro Tah

Bob Loudon (25)
I think I recommended Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes, and also The Suicide Run by William Styron a while back. Ever get round to it?

Also, the pick of the books I've read over the past few months:

Jonathan Franzen - The Corrections. - knocked it off in 3 days. Freedom is also good, but I thought The Corrections was the pick. I got the feeling that Franzen had become so big and famous that his editor was scared to tell him to cut bits out of Freedom. It could have been 100 pages shorter.

Bao Ninh - The Sorrow of War - maybe the best book on war I've ever read. Heart breaking.

Solar - Ian McEwan

David Niven - The Second Coming. - Comedy gold if you're after something lighter.

Thanks Bryce. I found Matterhorn in the local library but only in a 10kg hardback version so will keep looking for a paperback. Re Vietnam, I read Dispatches instead which was excellent. I will try to find Sorrow of War. I recommend Regeneration Trilogy by Pat Barker. I will bump Solar up my list, I recommend his novella - Chesil Beach. Corrections looks good and will seek it out.
 

suckerforred

Chilla Wilson (44)
Just thought I would give this a bump, since we might have got books for christmas.....

I got given "The First Lions of Rugby" by Sean Fagan for Christmas. Am already over half way though and finding it very interesting and a good read. Anybody who follows me on twitter have probably seen some quotes and triva I have been putting up.
 

Dismal Pillock

Simon Poidevin (60)
David Brin “Existence” (2012)

0/10.

Unbelievably, I gave up on a book after 550 of the 650 pages. WFT. It was sort of chundering along, plundering its way thru tech talk raffles and sci-fi paper symposiums shoehorned in and tarted up as fictional prose, nerdy jarringly-inept conversations jammed in there until I belatedly realized, you know what, this is going nowhere, I don’t give a shit about a single character in this stupid doorstop of a book. And neither do you Mr Author. How shit of an author do you need to be to impart that feeling upon Dear Reader, at the 550 page juncture, precisely when all the narratives should be starting to weave together into a thrilling page-turning finale? This shit. Idiotically, after 550 pages I finally read the authors blurb. NASA guy, phD in Science etc. Of course. All makes sense now. That explains the clumsy conversations where all the characters have the same voice amidst the deluge of story-rappeling futurey scifi tech talk. Admittedly, the futurey sci-fi techtalk is really well done, probably prescient with all the Virtual Bollox etc. No fucks given. Maybe I’m just not a sci-fi guy? In summary, Updike, Roth and Vidal didn’t try and build a space shuttle BOOMFAH.

I tend to think of books as delineable into 3 levels

Conscious: Just reading the words. No elaboration, no synapses firing, little impact, soon given up on.

Unconsciousness: Into it, even lost in it for phases.

Pure consciousness: Completely lost in it and unaware of anything else around you, an extrapolation laser, beaming into your brain. 100%. “The Kiss” by Chekhov the only entry into this category for me as of yet.
 

Dismal Pillock

Simon Poidevin (60)
am mid-way through the West Wing tv series and am keen to read up more about the political system in the US, and indeed how the White House runs. Any suggestions book-wise?
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RugbyReg

Rocky Elsom (76)
Staff member
I recently finished "Born to Run - A Hidden Tribe, Super Athletes and the Greatest Race the World has never seen" by Christopher McDougall and it was brilliant.

In a similar style to Krakaur's Into Thin Air it was one of those non-fiction books so well written that it reads like a novel.

It's basically about a hidden tribe in Mexico (Tarahumara) whom are natural long distance runners. It tells a little on them but goes on about ultra running and the evolution of the sport (and humans) and culminates in this race in the Mexican mountains between the top endurance runners of the time and these Taramara Indians.

I'm no runner, but found it fascinating.
 

ChargerWA

Mark Loane (55)
I used to read everything and anything, but as I get older and weary of the sick shit that does actually go on in this world I find myself increasingly drawn to Fantasy. It's the escapism that I enjoy most. To the point where I try to convert family and friends to the genre with little success.

If you are however interested to sample something from this Genre I'd recommend the below books.

Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. This is the hottest fantasy series to be released in the last 10 years. The series is starting to be adapted for Tv by Lin Manuel Miranda. But be warned, he's 2 books into a 3 parter and we've been waiting 5 years for book 3. He frustratingly busy fucking around with too many other things I suspect to distract himself from the fact he is struggling to tie it all together at a sufficiently high standard to match the hype. It doesn't average a 4.55 rating on Good Reads for nothing with 27,000 ratings.

The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. This guy is the poster child for new High Fantasy. This is book 1 of 2 that have been released in a planned 10 parter. There really is no one doing it better. 4.64 on Good Reads with 10,000 ratings. His first series Mistborn is well worth a read as well.

The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie. This is the Fantasy series that kicked off the GrimDark sub-genre. I don't care what fiction genre you are reading, no one can match Abercrombie in shear talent for character creation and development.

Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence. A personal favourite. The protagonist is a young boy who leads a pack of viscious murderers by his shear propensity to violence. The sort of character who can murder a nun (or the pope) and make you feel empathy for him.If Abercrombie created GrimDark, Lawrence took it to the edge.

I realise I'm most likely posting largely for my own amusement, but if you are looking for something different I don't think you would be disappointed with any of the above. Of course the danger is that no one writes stand alone fantasy novels anymore. Once you're in for one, you're in for 3 at least.
 

Dismal Pillock

Simon Poidevin (60)
dont think I've ever read a fantasy book, even as a kid I never liked that CS Lewis Narnia stuff. But Charger, youve made them sound very appealing, might have to give one a burl. I just dont understand how Aus/NZ can maintain such stratospherically high prices for books (and records) when you can go online and get the same copy at a 10th of the price?
 

ChargerWA

Mark Loane (55)
dont think I've ever read a fantasy book, even as a kid I never liked that CS Lewis Narnia stuff. But Charger, youve made them sound very appealing, might have to give one a burl. I just dont understand how Aus/NZ can maintain such stratospherically high prices for books (and records) when you can go online and get the same copy at a 10th of the price?
I'm pretty lazy. Anything I want to read I just go to amazon and purchase the kindle edition. I love being able to jump from reading at home on the iPad, to sometimes finding 10 mins into the day to have a read and being able to open it on my iPhone and having it open straight to the right page. If I know I'm going to be driving a bit I'll grab the Audible version as well because when you buy the book it's cheap to add it at purchase time. I consider $15 for 10 hours entertainment pretty good value. But yeah, when I see the US amazon same item for half the price it pisses me off.

I've never read CS Lewis either, but it's amazing how many books in popular culture fall under the fantasy banner.

Lord of the Rings
Game of thrones
Harry Potter
Lots of Stephen King
Anything by Neil Gaiman
Some of Oscar Wilde's stuff
Hunger Games
 

Braveheart81

Will Genia (78)
Staff member
Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. This is the hottest fantasy series to be released in the last 10 years. The series is starting to be adapted for Tv by Lin Manuel Miranda. But be warned, he's 2 books into a 3 parter and we've been waiting 5 years for book 3. He frustratingly busy fucking around with too many other things I suspect to distract himself from the fact he is struggling to tie it all together at a sufficiently high standard to match the hype. It doesn't average a 4.55 rating on Good Reads for nothing with 27,000 ratings.


My wife likes fantasy novels a lot and read these before passing them on to me.

They're certainly really good, particularly the first book.

The second book was also good but I thought *mild spoiler* a lot of the middle section read like the sexual fantasies of a 14 year old MRA. The whole section where he was learning the ketan with the Adem and he was free to have sex with whomever he pleased and then the Fae bit which dragged on for ages. ItIt came across as self indulgent rubbish to me and detracted from the rest of the story which was pretty compelling.

Regardless, I'll read the third book when it is finally released.
 

mst

Peter Johnson (47)
I used to read everything and anything, but as I get older and weary of the sick shit that does actually go on in this world I find myself increasingly drawn to Fantasy. It's the escapism that I enjoy most.

The Rook by Daniel O'Malley. The squeal is Stiletto.

Think you know a bloke then he Facebooks the social group with - oh, I wrote a book and its been published!

http://www.rookfiles.com/
 
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