I’m trying to find some historical series to read, I’ve done Sharpe, a whole load on Ancient Rome, including the Vespasian series and a few others. I’m finding it hard as I really don’t like books written in the first person and I also hate it when you have a series of 10-20 books, I’ve found they just end up dragging on or just get repetitive.
I have started to get back into the Star Wars Legends book as a guilty pleasure
I thought Asimov’s Foundation series was very underwhelming. Some of his short stories however are the best things I’ve ever read, especially The Last Question.
I love Murderbot although it is hardly historical series being set in the future. If you start you will read the full set. Excellent.
The best historical series I have recently read is the Thrice Named Man series by Hector Miller. Set in the western reaches (and beyond) of the Roman Empire in the third century AD. Many characters are historically real some are not. You do not discover who until you read the author’s notes as you progress in the series. Highly recommended.
I’m currently reading The Master and the Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov.
I’m surprised it’s taken me this long to read, as I’ve read a lot of so-called classic novels in my time, and one of my favourite bands (The Lawrence Arms) has long cited it as an influence.
It’s darkly satirical, as was to be expected, but it’s laugh-out-loud funny in parts. Three-quarters of the way through and I’m glad I finally got around to it.
I haven’t read a tonne of Russian literature but I have generally tended to like what I’ve read. I loved this book, it’s one of my all-time favourites.
Another one I’ve liked recently is We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin. Especially if you’ve read 1984, whether you liked it or not.
That fat old fuck will die before its done., and he has a whinge about how people online have gotten ‘nasty’ with him about his decade of broken promises and side projects.
Had someone crept up to the cottage with the sunken thatched roof that night, had they peered through the slits in the shutters, they would have seen in the dimly lit interior a grey-bearded old man and an ashen-haired girl sitting by the fireplace. They would have noticed that the two of them were staring silently into the glowing, ruby coals. But no one could have seen it. For the cottage with the sunken, moss-grown thatched roof was well hidden among the fog and the mist, in a boundless swamp in the Pereplut Marshes where no one dared to venture.
Just finished Our Man In Havana by Graham Greene. It was enjoyable enough.
If anyone is after some inspiration, there are a couple of Inspired Traveller’s Guides called Literary Places and Artistic Places which talk about the inspiration behind famous books/works of art. It was mentioned in one of those (although the Graham Greene entry is actually on The Quiet American, which is set in Vietnam).