StinkyPinky said:

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SpreadsheetAg said:

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Started the Fourth Wing cuz my wife is reading it... here goes

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Looking forward to the book report on this.

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Well…. It's okay because it has a cool Concept for magic weilding and it has Dragons. I could skip all the smut (~5-10% of the book); but the rest was alright.

SpreadsheetAg said:

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The Marksman said:

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FL_Ag1998 said:

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I'm 3 books shy of finishing the Saxon Chronicles (i.e. The Last Kingdom series) by Bernard Cornwell. Absolutely love them. So, I'm curious if anyone has read his series centered around Richard Sharpe set in the Napoleonic Wars, and if so are they as good as the Saxon Chronicles.

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Haven't read his Sharpe books, but just wanted to say I loved the Saxon Stories too. Props to you, because I know they're a big undertaking.

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I have read every Bernard Cornell book; don't stop with Saxon.

Richard Sharpe is a badass mofo in the British ranks.

The holy grail / Vagabond Series is awesome

The King Arthur series is one of my favorites.

I even read his one offs; and the only one that wasn't great was the one about Stonehenge - still good, but not awesome IMO

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Awesome to hear, thanks for the info!

SpreadsheetAg said:

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The Marksman said:

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FL_Ag1998 said:

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I'm 3 books shy of finishing the Saxon Chronicles (i.e. The Last Kingdom series) by Bernard Cornwell. Absolutely love them. So, I'm curious if anyone has read his series centered around Richard Sharpe set in the Napoleonic Wars, and if so are they as good as the Saxon Chronicles.

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Haven't read his Sharpe books, but just wanted to say I loved the Saxon Stories too. Props to you, because I know they're a big undertaking.

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I have read every Bernard Cornwell book; don't stop with Saxon.

Richard Sharpe is a badass mofo in the British ranks.

The holy grail / Vagabond Series is awesome

The King Arthur series is one of my favorites.

I even read his one offs; and the only one that wasn't great was the one about Stonehenge - still good, but not awesome IMO

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And then watch the series. Because as we all know, scraping out something decent somehow on a very limited budget, Now That's Soldiering!

Also glad I found someone who has read the Grail series. Feels like that one always goes unnoticed. Loved that one as a teenager and actually just discovered a couple of months ago that a fourth book was written that I still need to read. There was like a decade gap between 3 and 4 and I just never caught wind of it.

FL_Ag1998 said:

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I'm 3 books shy of finishing the Saxon Chronicles (i.e. The Last Kingdom series) by Bernard Cornwell. Absolutely love them. So, I'm curious if anyone has read his series centered around Richard Sharpe set in the Napoleonic Wars, and if so are they as good as the Saxon Chronicles.

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I haven't read any of his books. I loved the TV series. Should give him a try.

Has anyone read Martyr! By Kaveh Akbar? I had it suggested to me as a 5 star must read. Curious it anyone has read it.

Edit: I went ahead and powered through it. As I've said before, my OCD doesn't allow me to DNF something I've started. People have praised it as a top 20 book for 2024. And I suspect all of those readers of a political demographic of our 2 coasts. It was a pile of crap (and I'm not political). Some people may love it reading it through a specific lens. From my viewpoint I could not recommend reading it in good faith. Painful.

SpreadsheetAg said:

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The Marksman said:

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FL_Ag1998 said:

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I'm 3 books shy of finishing the Saxon Chronicles (i.e. The Last Kingdom series) by Bernard Cornwell. Absolutely love them. So, I'm curious if anyone has read his series centered around Richard Sharpe set in the Napoleonic Wars, and if so are they as good as the Saxon Chronicles.

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Haven't read his Sharpe books, but just wanted to say I loved the Saxon Stories too. Props to you, because I know they're a big undertaking.

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I have read every Bernard Cornwell book; don't stop with Saxon.

Richard Sharpe is a badass mofo in the British ranks.

The holy grail / Vagabond Series is awesome

The King Arthur series is one of my favorites.

I even read his one offs; and the only one that wasn't great was the one about Stonehenge - still good, but not awesome IMO

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The Cornwell books sound very interesting to me. My concern is that history (especially British history) has never been a strong suit of mine. How much of British history do I need to know or at least be somewhat familiar with in order to understand and enjoy the Cornwell books?

Thanks for all the great recommendations. I've read many great books based on the recommendations provided here. I didn't even know about Bernard Cornwell and his works before seeing them so talked about here, for example.

Ag12thman said:

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SpreadsheetAg said:

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The Marksman said:

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FL_Ag1998 said:

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I'm 3 books shy of finishing the Saxon Chronicles (i.e. The Last Kingdom series) by Bernard Cornwell. Absolutely love them. So, I'm curious if anyone has read his series centered around Richard Sharpe set in the Napoleonic Wars, and if so are they as good as the Saxon Chronicles.

---

Haven't read his Sharpe books, but just wanted to say I loved the Saxon Stories too. Props to you, because I know they're a big undertaking.

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I have read every Bernard Cornwell book; don't stop with Saxon.

Richard Sharpe is a badass mofo in the British ranks.

The holy grail / Vagabond Series is awesome

The King Arthur series is one of my favorites.

I even read his one offs; and the only one that wasn't great was the one about Stonehenge - still good, but not awesome IMO

---

The Cornwell books sound very interesting to me. My concern is that history (especially British history) has never been a strong suit of mine. How much of British history do I need to know or at least be somewhat familiar with in order to understand and enjoy the Cornwell books?

Thanks for all the great recommendations. I've read many great books based on the recommendations provided here. I didn't even know about Bernard Cornwell and his works before seeing them so talked about here, for example.

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You don't need to know anything really. I don't / didn't know much. I read these to learn about it. Cornwell is a master of taking real life events; being very historically accurate on the events and settings, but putting a great story together with a fictional character on how it could have happened from the characters perspective.

He leaves the events themselves intact, even interjecting known historical characters into the mix while (I feel) accurately representing their personalities from the biographies he uses to do his research. He travels to the locations where the events take place so he can accurately describe them and visualize them into words for the reader as well. He also uses the contemporary words and colloquialisms from that time period for places, armor, and weapons; I had to look up several words to understand what he was referencing - which as a etymology enthusiast was fun for me - and easy on a kindle by holding your finger down on a new word.

All the fb groups and reddit subs talking about the WoT being canceled made we want to do a reread, currently at the beginning of Lord of Chaos

This is a very thorough and helpful response and thanks very much. I am going to put Cornwell on my to-read list. The books look really interesting and like something I'd really enjoy. Do you have a suggested starting place for Cornwell? Does it matter? I know he has the various series you mentioned above: Saxon, Sharpe, Holy Grail / Vagabond, and King Arthur. He has a lot of books! Thanks again! I appreciate it a lot.

I finished "The Stand" by Stephen King. Officially the longest book I've ever read, and unofficially the longest book I will ever read. Yes, it is good, but it is a bit wordy. He added 400 pages back in the 80s. I might have preferred the shorter, original 900 pages.

I thought I'd need a break after "The Stand", but I rolled right into "Odd Thomas" by Dean Koontz. Wow, I'm only a few pages in, but that book is grabbing my attention fast. I think it is a good follow-up to The Stand.

I'm also listening to "Carl's Doomsday Conspiracy" on audible, but I'm less excited about it. Sorry for that opinion. Please don't ban me. I added my thoughts about it in the Dungeon Crawler Carl thread.

Dr. Mephisto said:

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BenFiasco14 said:

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Finished: The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde

Next: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket - Edgar Allan Poe

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Nice choices.

Throw in some HP Lovecraft and we'd have a regular book club on our hands!

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Thanks for planting this in my head

Dunwich Horror and Call of Cthulhu - not really "books" but I've now done both.

Now getting into on the mountains of madness, a full length novel by Lovecraft

Ag12thman said:

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This is a very thorough and helpful response and thanks very much. I am going to put Cornwell on my to-read list. The books look really interesting and like something I'd really enjoy. Do you have a suggested starting place for Cornwell? Does it matter? I know he has the various series you mentioned above: Saxon, Sharpe, Holy Grail / Vagabond, and King Arthur. He has a lot of books! Thanks again! I appreciate it a lot.

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Saxon is where I started and it's pretty amazing, but a lot of books. A+ reading, IMO.

I went to King Arthur next - it's a shorter series (3 books) but they are not quite as good as Saxon - A- rating. How he uses Arthur and Merlin as side characters for the main character Derfel is great. And the story is told from Derfel's POV as he's recalling the tale of "King" Arthur to the current young Queen many years later.

Then I read the Grail / Vagabond series which is about an archer in Burgandy in the 1300s? It's also really really good. I was surprised how much I liked that one, because I love how Cornwell describes the battles and horse maneuvers and hand to hand combats; so I was thinking the archery wouldn't be that good, but it was pretty awesome. A rating

Sharpe is just a badass and also has many women admirers. He starts as a private and works his way up (and gets demoted a couple of times as well); his right hand man SGT Patrick Harper is a good read as well and carries a Nock Gun (7 barrel smoothbore flintlock). Sharpe starts in India for the first few books; then hitches a ride back to England; then has battles against Napoleons armies in Spain, Portugal, and France. Cornwell rips on the haughty Spanish and Portuguese officers and their overinflated sense of privilege in the military when they know nothing of what it means to be a real soldier. A+ rating but like 20 books in the series

Starbuck Chronicles (American Civil War) were really good but seemed like the series ended abruptly after just 4 books; really good and intriguing stories from that one and the battles were described again in great detail; B+/A- rating

Azincourt was also good; another archer story. As a one off it may be a good place to start to get a feel for his writing. It's about the famous battle of Agincourt with Henry V. B+ Rating

Stone Henge was a good story from 5000 BC Britain but just not quite as great as the others B/B+ rating.

So I've got 7 hours left on The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes. The whole audiobook is 36 hours, so I'm in the home stretch.

I can say this book is really awesome. I'm anticipating the conclusion with as least as much intensity as the Oppenheimer Film. Obviously, a book that takes 36 hours to get through is probably a big barrier to entry, but the way Rhodes weaves in personal stories with deep technical detail is awesome. He doesn't linger on any one subject long enough that you get bored.

Highlights so far:
Leo Szilard being awesome
Edward Teller going toe-to-toe with General Groves
The Norwegian commandos sabotaging the German Heavy Water production
The manufacturer of the torpedoes used at Pearl Harbor just happened to be located in Nagasaki
The amount of babies born at Los Alamos
Enrico Fermi and Chicago Pile 1

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is even slightly interested in the subject matter.

Philo B 93 said:

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I finished "The Stand" by Stephen King. Officially the longest book I've ever read, and unofficially the longest book I will ever read. Yes, it is good, but it is a bit wordy. He added 400 pages back in the 80s. I might have preferred the shorter, original 900 pages.

I thought I'd need a break after "The Stand", but I rolled right into "Odd Thomas" by Dean Koontz. Wow, I'm only a few pages in, but that book is grabbing my attention fast. I think it is a good follow-up to The Stand.

I'm also listening to "Carl's Doomsday Conspiracy" on audible, but I'm less excited about it. Sorry for that opinion. Please don't ban me. I added my thoughts about it in the Dungeon Crawler Carl thread.

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That's interesting, because my one criticism of Koontz is 'Odd Thomas' is he sometimes takes too many words to convey a simple thought.

Ag12thman said:

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Thanks so much for sharing all of these great details. You've really helped me with the details and/or short synopses of each of the Cornwell series. They all sound very interesting, but I think I am going to do like you did and start with the Saxon series, especially considering the A+ rating you've given it. (I think the first book of this series is called The Last Kingdom. I just looked it up and saw that it's highly rated.) The Sharpe series also sounds really good, but I can't find that my library has any of that series (well, not in physical books, anyway; they might have the Libby/Hoopla version). I am sort of old school and have been checking out physical books to read most of the time. I don't own a Kindle, but I probably need to look into getting one at this point. Anyway, I think I'll just take the route you did and start with Saxon and then maybe see if I can get a Kindle and circle back to the older Sharpe series.

Thank you very, very much for all of this great detail. I'll be referring to this post as I get into the Cornwell works. I appreciate it a great deal!

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Just so you know, the Saxon series was also developed into a pretty highly regarded TV series/movie on Netflix called The Last Kingdom, which you might enjoy after reading the books

Agreed, thank you for all of the info Spreadsheet. I'm definitely going to check out all of those Cornwell series. I can honestly say he's my favorite writer, which was previously held by Crichton.

And I can back up what you said about not needing to know anything about english history before starting the Saxon Chronicles. I knew absolutely nothing and I love how much I've learned from those books alone, even just learning the origin of common words like sheriff (shire reeve), or the names of cities like london, originated from.

G.I.Bro said:

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All the fb groups and reddit subs talking about the WoT being canceled made we want to do a reread, currently at the beginning of Lord of Chaos

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The last chapter of LOC, "Battle of Dumai's Wells" might be the greatest chapter of the entire series and definitely has the best line of the series. Yeah, that line. Enjoy!

I'm midway through a reread of Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files.

Morbo the Annihilator said:

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G.I.Bro said:

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All the fb groups and reddit subs talking about the WoT being canceled made we want to do a reread, currently at the beginning of Lord of Chaos

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The last chapter of LOC, "Battle of Dumai's Wells" might be the greatest chapter of the entire series and definitely has the best line of the series. Yeah, that line. Enjoy!

I'm midway through a reread of Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files.

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DF reread is on the docket after WoT

SpreadsheetAg said:

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StinkyPinky said:

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SpreadsheetAg said:

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Started the Fourth Wing cuz my wife is reading it... here goes

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Looking forward to the book report on this.

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Well…. It's okay because it has a cool Concept for magic weilding and it has Dragons. I could skip all the smut (~5-10% of the book); but the rest was alright.

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The whole series is like that, one chapter of hardcore porn and then the rest of the book is entertaining. FYI: The war of Lost Hearts by Carissa Broadbent uses the same formula. I'm not a prude or anything but it is just over done and adds zero, for me, to the story.

Someone here posted a series on the same tune as red rising but I couldn't find the title looking back through the thread. What was it?

Backyard Gator said:

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Philo B 93 said:

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I finished "The Stand" by Stephen King. Officially the longest book I've ever read, and unofficially the longest book I will ever read. Yes, it is good, but it is a bit wordy. He added 400 pages back in the 80s. I might have preferred the shorter, original 900 pages.

I thought I'd need a break after "The Stand", but I rolled right into "Odd Thomas" by Dean Koontz. Wow, I'm only a few pages in, but that book is grabbing my attention fast. I think it is a good follow-up to The Stand.

I'm also listening to "Carl's Doomsday Conspiracy" on audible, but I'm less excited about it. Sorry for that opinion. Please don't ban me. I added my thoughts about it in the Dungeon Crawler Carl thread.

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That's interesting, because my one criticism of Koontz is 'Odd Thomas' is he sometimes takes too many words to convey a simple thought.

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Well, I'm only 3 chapters in, so I may find that to be the case later. But comparing anything to 1300 pages is going to make it feel like a short story.

Thunder18 said:

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Just so you know, the Saxon series was also developed into a pretty highly regarded TV series/movie on Netflix called The Last Kingdom, which you might enjoy after reading the books

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This is great to know. Thanks very much for mentioning this. I'll look for it on Netflix.

lurker76 said:

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Ag12thman said:

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I am sort of old school and have been checking out physical books to read most of the time. I don't own a Kindle, but I probably need to look into getting one at this point.

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If you truly love reading hard-bound printed books, be careful about getting a Kindle/e-book reader. I absolutely love the app and have had one in some form or function since the Kindle 2 was developed.

Since second grade, I've been a non-stop voracious reader (except text books and most required reading). Before the Kindle, I read hardcover and softcover books constantly. Over the last three years, I started four or five printed books and haven't finished any of them. Not because they aren't interesting or worth it, I'm just on my iPad or Kindle reading more and eventually just drop them.

With an ebook reader, you can carry an entire library with you, and it takes up very little space. You'll probably love one if you get it, but eventually you may give up your printed books.

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Thanks very much for this. I don't know that I love reading hard-bound, printed books. I think it's probably more that I just don't have a Kindle / e-book reader and always feel like my phone is probably too small to read actual books on. (Maybe this is wrong, though; not sure.)

I think I probably need to look into a Kindle or something similar. I don't have an iPad since I am on an Android phone and really don't have anything Apple currently, so I would probably need to go the Kindle route. If you or anyone else has recommendations for a certain Kindle model or e-reader, please share them. Thanks again! I really appreciate it.

Ag12thman said:

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Thunder18 said:

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Just so you know, the Saxon series was also developed into a pretty highly regarded TV series/movie on Netflix called The Last Kingdom, which you might enjoy after reading the books

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This is great to know. Thanks very much for mentioning this. I'll look for it on Netflix.

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I actually watched the show first and liked it, then started the books. After reading some of the books I tried rewatching the show but just came away disappointed. The show was still good, just soooo much left out or combined from the books (as par for the course, I suppose). But please don't let that stop you from watching the show.

Anyone read "The Body" by King? I didn't even know about it until yesterday. Should be here in a few days.

Quote:

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I actually watched the show first and liked it, then started the books. After reading some of the books I tried rewatching the show but just came away disappointed. The show was still good, just soooo much left out or combined from the books (as par for the course, I suppose). But please don't let that stop you from watching the show.

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I will definitely check out the show and I might even watch it first like you did. This way I save the best (the book) for last. I think it's almost always the case that books are lots better than movies or shows that are based on them. I can't think of a single book that I liked less than it's video counterpart. I really appreciate it and thanks for the information and suggestion!

Ag12thman said:

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Quote:

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I actually watched the show first and liked it, then started the books. After reading some of the books I tried rewatching the show but just came away disappointed. The show was still good, just soooo much left out or combined from the books (as par for the course, I suppose). But please don't let that stop you from watching the show.

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I will definitely check out the show and I might even watch it first like you did. This way I save the best (the book) for last. I think it's almost always the case that books are lots better than movies or shows that are based on them. I can't think of a single book that I liked less than it's video counterpart. I really appreciate it and thanks for the information and suggestion!

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I thought the movie 'The Green Mile' actually improved on some things in the book. Forrest Gump was a much better movie than book. Those are the only exceptions to that rule.

The Godfather is a much better movie than book

Jurassic Park is the exception to the rule for me. I think the movie is better.
This could be because I saw the movie in theatres as a 7 or 8 year old. Whereas I read the book in my late 30s.

arrow said:

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Jurassic Park is the exception to the rule for me. I think the movie is better.
This could be because I saw the movie in theatres as a 7 or 8 year old. Whereas I read the book in my late 30s.

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Ah I disagree on this one. Read the book for the first time a few weeks ago and thought it much better than the movie!

But that's why this thread is fun!! It's all subjective. We can have completely opposite options and both be right

Wolfpac 08 said:

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arrow said:

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Jurassic Park is the exception to the rule for me. I think the movie is better.
This could be because I saw the movie in theatres as a 7 or 8 year old. Whereas I read the book in my late 30s.

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Ah I disagree on this one. Read the book for the first time a few weeks ago and thought it much better than the movie!

But that's why this thread is fun!! It's all subjective. We can have completely opposite options and both be right

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About 90% of the way through my first read of Jurassic Park. Love both!