Top 5 books you have read

[Tony Moanero]

14 minutes ago, Bob Spunkmouse said:

I am dreadful at reading books, but have actually gone through a few during lockdown, but still I’m able to better point to books I’d recommend you read with your kids.

 

basically anything by Roald Dahl, but Witches without a shadow of a doubt and probably after that the BFG because the creative use of words is wonderful.

 

But without doubt the one I would recommend and could read with my girl a million times and not get bored is Winnie the Pooh. It’s just fabulous.

 

if you’ve got a kid aged anywhere around 5-8 and haven’t read Winnie the Pooh, get it and get started.

Paddington Bear is great, too.

[Tarwater]

3 hours ago, SasaS said:

Did they correspond, or does he mention her? I remember from the Habit of Being she thought he was an example of the sorry state of contemporary American literature. Jones has some interesting paragraphs on stereotyping of Southerners in the US, in Some Came Running.  

 

Is Whistle the one where he goes on and on how they discovered oral sex in the hospital?

Are you sure that’s James Jones? I can’t find any mention of him in a particularly bad light there, although her pen and tongue were plenty sharp enough for others? She does mention that she has never read him... As for Jones’ letters, he doesn’t mention O’ Connor once, so I doubt they ran in the same circles...

[easytoslip]

3 hours ago, Evelyn Tentions said:

 Covenant with Death - John Harris. The story of a Kitcheners Pals unit from forming to July 1st 1916.

Catch 22 - Joseph Heller. Unforgettable.

Just about any of P G Wodehouses Jeeves books

A Tale Etched in Blood and Hard Black Pencil - Chris Brookmyre (or just about any of his earlier works. The last few have been dire)

The Broken Shore - Peter Temple. One of the best books ever to come out of Australia. He also wrote the Jack Irish series which are worth a read as well.

 

I found a book called Covenant with Death, not the same one, in an old house in Litherland Park as kids and it had some horrific photos of WW1 in it, sold it for 30 bob to second hand shop, recently I looked it up and its worth £80/£100 now. 

PG Wodehouse is one that made me laugh as I read some of them, he comes out with some gems. 

[SasaS]

1 hour ago, Tarwater said:

Are you sure that’s James Jones? I can’t find any mention of him in a particularly bad light there, although her pen and tongue were plenty sharp enough for others? She does mention that she has never read him... As for Jones’ letters, he doesn’t mention O’ Connor once, so I doubt they ran in the same circles...

I seem to recall a disparaging remark, it may be this from an essay, although she quotes another writer's opinion. But she must have agreed, to go as far as to use it.

Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher. The idea of being a writer attracts a good many shiftless people, those who are merely burdened with poetic feelings or afflicted with sensibility. Granville Hicks, in a recent review of James Jones' novel, quoted Jones as saying, "I was stationed at Hickham Field in Hawaii when I stumbled upon the works of Thomas Wolfe, and his home life seemed so similar to my own, his feelings about himself so similar to mine about my- self, that I realized I had been a writer all my life without knowing it or having written." Mr.Hicks goes on to say that Wolfe did a great deal of damage of this sort but that Jones is a particularly appalling example.

 

 

From "The Nature and Aim of Fiction" in Mystery and Manners collection of essays
http://w3.salemstate.edu/~pglasser/the-nature-and-aim-of-fiction.pdf

[Juniper]

Lord of the Rings (counting them all as one) 

Dune

IT

Neverwhere

War of The Worlds