📚 Bookshelf

I'm a dyslexic software engineer and reading has always been a bit of a chore, with the exception of a few books.

2024

red team blues - Cory Doctorow

Can't remember what made me want to try reading Corys books, probably because I started reading his RSS feed, and well you have to start somewhere with a new author. It was a good first book and I'm probably going to read the other two books in the series.

In the past

The Rats Trilogy - James Herbert

A book I started for no other reason than the cover looked cool, mine was the October 1980 reprint with the massive Rat on the cover. I finished it, knew there was a second book, knew I wanted to read it and did so immediately. If I remember correctly I didn't know about Domain when I finished Lair but when I found out I went straight out to my local WHSmith and got a copy.

As a side note "The Rats" was published the year before I was born.

Watchers - Dean R. Koontz

I started reading this because I liked a girl in school, she was reading it and during a free period I was told to read a book (I had a tendency to disrupt when bored). She offered me her copy to keep me occupied, and I was hooked and it gave me a reason to speak to her. First by asking if I could borrow her copy to read during free periods, and after I got my own copy to talk to her about the story. Luckily I also enjoyed the book.

Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett

This was a recommendation from my dad, after the success of getting me to read a Diskworld book, he opted to get me to read Good Omens. It did not disappoint.

Halo series

The Halo series was an odd one. When I met my wife, she was driving lorries around the country and I was unemployed so I used to go on trips with her and to while away the hours I'd read to her. Not exactly the most romantic books to read to your future life partner but she knew I had trouble reading aloud so a simple Y.A. fiction book that I could at least be interested in would do the job.

Halo: Ghosts of Onyx (out of print)

The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead - Max Brooks

A book that fed into my interest in self-sufficiency and my love of zombie apocalypses.

World War Z - Max Brooks

Well after you've read the survival guide you just have to read this.

The Millennium Trilogy - Stieg Larsson

Well everyone was reading them at the time and I just liked them.

The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien

When I was little this was the book my dad chose to read to me as a bed time story. It was also this book that I found out that different reprints of books may not be edited the same way. It got confusing when my dad was reading to me from one copy and I was supposed to be following a long in another.

The Diskworld Series - Terry Pratchett

There are a lot of Diskworld books just pick one and enjoy it, just don't start with "The Colour Of Magic" or "The Light Fantastic".

The earliest book in the series that I'd recommend is Mort, even Pratchett said that is where he went from a string of jokes held together by a story to a properly funny story.

To be fair if it was written by Terry Pratchett It's a safe bet it'll be a good read, or I'm a librarians uncle.

The Harry Potter series - J.K. Rowling

Again everyone was reading them and they are fun books to read, but..

In recent years Rowling has made comments that for me are a good argument for La mort de l'auteur.

I like the books, oh no they were written by a TERF/Racist or something else that lands them on a "Problematic Authors" list. What I'm saying is you can enjoy a book for the story. But if the person that wrote it isn't the sort of person you want to support, make sure you get the book in a way that does not benefit them. Second hand book stores are your friend here or even a library.