Fiction, wanted, for chaps

lindsay

lindsay

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Lindsay
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I read quite a lot, mainly on the train to and from work (though that may end next week!). I have read just about all the historical military fiction there is, at least till I'm almost sick of the same plot delivered in different geographies/wars/ etc. I've read quite a lot of travel non-fiction, and quite a lot of comedy novels. I'm running out of things that interest me.

The thing is, when I wander round Waterstones, or look through Amazon online, fiction now seems to be utterly dominated by chick-lit. There seems to be very much less fiction coming out from male writers, especially if you leave out crime thrillers (not my thing) and macho stuff from supposed ex-SAS/SEAL soldiers. Am I missing a trick? I'd love to know of a genre or some authors that might hit the spot - a spot which is not really historical military, not crime/detective, not thrillers generally really, but is lightweight but well-written, perhaps comedy, perhaps travel-related, perhaps biographical... don't care about the author's gender really, just please not Jemima from Surrey having a crisis after the kids have left home

Any ideas?
 
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Instead of particular recommendations, how about choosing a decade of Booker prize winners and reading those?

Dave
 
Have been a fan of Terry Pratchett since 1986. Extremely clever individual with fantastic imagination and wit. Don't be put off by the "Sci-fi" label, he writes about the human condition with such piercing insight. The first couple of Discworld novels were slow to start with, but he soon got into his stride.
 
Have a look at C J Sansom's books. In particular the Shardlake series.

I was hooked on them.

The downside for you, they are technically crime novels, but set in Henry V111's time. Not a normal crime novel and gives a good slant on history. See link here.
 
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Not fiction but Bill Bryson writes well and is very engaging, witty and amusing I think.

Bernard Cornwell for seemingly accurate historical novels that bring the past to life - the Sharpe novels are quite light hearted too.

Less well known are the series of books by a Russian novelist called Boris Akunin. He has written a series of books featuring a detective named Erast Fandorin, a kind of cross between Sherlock Holmes and James Bond set in the early 1900’s. Very enjoyable and entertaining.

Carl Hiaasen is an American crime author whose books veer towards comedy, a bit like Elmore Leonard with added humour.

Robert Harris is a very good writer I think. Anything of his is good, but his trilogy of books about the Roman emperor Cicero (Imperium/Lustrum/Dictator) are superb.
 
Have you read Patrick O'Brian. Like Bernard Cornwell in the fact that it has historical facts in a novel.
 
Devon Chilli said:
Have you read Patrick O'Brian. Like Bernard Cornwell in the fact that it has historical facts in a novel.
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Have you read 'The Warlord Chronicles' (Bernard Cornwell)? It's a trilogy based on the legend of King Arthur, set just after the legions left Britain, and I think it's far and away his best work. Conn Iggulden is good for historical fiction too.
 
For something a bit different you could try Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London series.

A nice blend of police procedural, humour and a touch of magic / vampires etc.

He can get a bit PC for some tastes (BBC) but I've enjoyed all seven books.
 
I'm not much of a climber/mountaineer but I read quite a lot of mountaineering books, the better ones are pretty good action/adventure with some biography so they might be worth a try, Touching the Void by Joe Simpson and Psychovertical by Andy Kirkpatrick might be places to start. There are also quite a lot of other, non mountaineering adventure/expedition books.

If you want something really off-the-wall and factual Deep Sea and Foreign Going by Rose Grange is surprisingly readable given that it is a book about shipping.

Ian (M) Banks was for me always worth reading and you don't get much more male oriented than Hemmingway.
 
Thanks for the suggestions above.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against female authors, just fed up with seeing so much chick-lit all over the bookshops. Whereas I love the writing of E Annie Proulx.
I've done loads of Cornwell/O'Brian/Fullerton/Reemer etc, really liked them but I think I've done that genre to death; lately I've been reading the "Earl's Other Son" series by Andrew Wareham, set in the late Victorian period on the China coast. I've also read most of Bryson's work, and had a spell of the mountaineering genre many years ago when at college and working in a backpacking/climbing gear shop (including Touching the Void, classic).
I will follow up on some of those ideas though thanks.
 
Couple of my favourite authors ,
Clive cussler .
Scott mariani

There’s enough books by either of them to keep you going for a year or three
 
Thanks again folks
 
I've read all of Tom Sharpe's novels. Likewise some of Conn Iggulden and the non-naval Cornwell. I've just started the Rose George suggestion about shipping - liking that.
I'll check out the others, although the need is less urgent now as I've just had my contract ended (cost cutting, and it doesn't help that I'm knocking on a bit in an IT world), so no more commuting for the foreseeable, maybe ever unless I can get a new job. Still, reading in the garden this summer sounds like an appealing occupation...
 
Michael Connerlly for crime writing, Bosch series is good and plentiful.
 
Jackson Lamb series by Mick Herron is the best thing i have read in years. I have read quite a bit of Le Carré and have come to prefer reading Herron, plots are not so dense and Herron has an equally good year for a turn of phrase and his novels contain more humour - this not being difficult as the Le Carré novels i have read have been rather humourless! There are 5 novels and a novella with a sixth being published next month. Heres the blurb from Waterstones for the first novel (Slow Horses).

Waterstones Thriller of the Month for August 2017

Shortlisted for the 2010 Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award

The first novel in the acclaimed Jackson Lamb series, described by The Telegraph as one of ‘the twenty greatest spy novels of all time’.

“Let us be clear about this much at least: Slough House is not in Slough, nor is it a house…”
​
You don't stop being a spook just because you're no longer in the game.

Welcome to Slough House, Regent’s Park, a graveyard for members of the intelligence service no longer in the game – the slow horses. A motley crew of criminals, abusers and troubled souls, banished for various crimes of drugs and drunkenness, lechery and failure, politics and betrayal – they all belong to Jackson Lamb.

Jackson Lamb's misfits may be highly trained but they don't run ops, they push paper. When a boy is kidnapped and held hostage and his attackers promise to behead him, live on the net, a chance opens up for the slow horses to redeem themselves and whatever the instructions of the Service, the slow horses aren't going to just sit quiet and watch.

Yet, as they begin to investigate, a more complex web of deceit and double agency begins to opens up. Is the victim who they claim to be? What is the connection with a disgraced journalist? Who else has something to hide?

As the clock ticks, everyone, it seems, is in the game, with dangerous pieces at play.

Born in Newcastle, Mick Herron is an award-winning novelist and short-story writer whose works include the bestselling Jackson Lamb series, the Sarah Tucker/Zoë Boehm series and the standalone novel Reconstruction.

The Jackson Lamb novels in order: Slow Horses, Dead Lions, Real Tigers, Spook Street
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How about early WIlbur Smith? When the Lion feeds, Sound of thunder, Birds of Prey, Eye of the Tiger, Shout at the Devil, Gold Mine sort of era? Not crime or ex SAS type, but adventure/thriller.
 
The best series of historic fiction books that I have ever read has to be the Flashman Papers by George Macdonald Fraser. They are such a hoot and outrageously un-PC to boot. They really do hit the spot from a historical perspective. In fact, I think I owe more of my knowledge on Britain's imperial history to GMF than to any of the schooling I received. The way he weaves Flashman into the narative of the times is absolutely masterful and the dialogue is hugely funny. Flashman is the original anti-hero: cowardly, bullying, sneering, snobish racist, misogynistic... he really does have the full repertoire. His only weaknesses are his unflinching honesty and the luck of the devil.

If you haven't read them then give them a try. You can thank me later.
 
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DorsetDude said:
How about early WIlbur Smith? When the Lion feeds, Sound of thunder, Birds of Prey, Eye of the Tiger, Shout at the Devil, Gold Mine sort of era? Not crime or ex SAS type, but adventure/thriller.
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I went through a stage a few decades back of reading almost the whole of Wilbur Smiths back catalogue and I loved his stuff. His early books (which you mention) are superb but I think in later years he seems to have been doing the writer's equivalent of painting by numbers. I suspect that quite a few writers do this, by where they have a team of several writers and they have a sit round and the "name" writer directs the team with various instructions as to how their respective sections should progress. It's how they manage to turn out such a volume of work. The result, however, at least from Amazon reviews and such like, leave the long standing fans of such people scratching their heads and wondering if they are even reading a book by the same person. WS's reviews for some of his latest work are quite disparaging.
 
The only Wilbur Smith books that really appealed to me were 'When the Lion Feeds' and 'The Sound of Thunder'. They were, sort of, plausible...

I like some John Gordon Davis too. 'Hold My Hand I'm Dying' is searing, 'The Years Of The Hungry Tiger' resonates because I lived in Hong Kong shortly after the period when it was set, and 'Roots Of Outrage' covers the period leading up to the end of apartheid, which I remember very well.

James Clavell is worth reading too. Tai Pan, Shogun and Noble House are the pick of the litter for me.
 
HJC1972 said:
I went through a stage a few decades back of reading almost the whole of Wilbur Smiths back catalogue and I loved his stuff. His early books (which you mention) are superb but I think in later years he seems to have been doing the writer's equivalent of painting by numbers. I suspect that quite a few writers do this, by where they have a team of several writers and they have a sit round and the "name" writer directs the team with various instructions as to how their respective sections should progress. It's how they manage to turn out such a volume of work. The result, however, at least from Amazon reviews and such like, leave the long standing fans of such people scratching their heads and wondering if they are even reading a book by the same person. WS's reviews for some of his latest work are quite disparaging.
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Agree entirely which is why I said earlier stuff.
Clive Cussler and James Patterson are two other "culprits" bringing in other writers to do their work for them and trading off their own "name".
 
Lee Childs - Jack Reacher books. I'm currently reading The Midnight Line which is good.
 
i started reading lee childs a few years ago but after the first 12 or so gave up!!
same with GOT read first one and lost interest
 
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