The talented Mr Ripley - Series of books.

Jeltz

Jeltz

Messages
3,188
Location
Wiltshire
I'm not much of a reader due to the fact that I'm dyslexic, so my reading is slow but thorough, however I caught a bit of a radio play based on one of Patricia Highsmith's Ripley books and it seemed like the king of stuff I like. Based on the period its set in etc. and I've not seen the film.

Has anyone read the books and if so what did they think of them. In order to get properly into a book I like it to be an easy read as half an hour may be as much time in one go which I can allow and still not get much read in that time.

Authors I like are Iain Banks, Ian Flemming, Jack Higgins, Alistair McClain, Douglas Adams, Robert Ludlum i.e. nothing too heavy!
 
Jeltz said:
I'm not much of a reader due to the fact that I'm dyslexic, so my reading is slow but thorough
Click to expand...
I wonder how you'd get on with the book Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban. It's set in England in the far future after a nuclear war, and is written in "a distinct form of English whose spelling often resembles a phonetic transliteration of a Kentish accent."

A friend of mine recommended it to me, and when I started reading it I thought he was insane. Here's the opening paragraph:

"On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben
the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadn’t ben none for a long time befor
him nor I aint looking to see none agen. He dint make the ground shake nor nothing like
that when he come on to my spear he wernt all that big plus he lookit poorly. He done the
reqwyrt he ternt and stood and clattert his teef and made his rush and there we wer then.
Him on 1 end of the spear kicking his life out and me on the other end watching him dy. I
said, ‘Your tern now my tern later.’ The other spears gone in then and he wer dead and
the steam coming up off him in the rain and we all yelt, ‘Offert!’"

I'm not sure whether being dyslexic would actually help or hinder you in reading the book, but it's cracking tale.
 
I like that....although could have been written somewhere hundred's of years ago as well. Might have to get the library to order it in. Although will so for my spellin som thin shokin......it's already a mess.
 
It's a great book. It looks hideous at first, but then you see it's basically phonetic, and you kind of get into it. And then - the important thing - the story kicks in and you're lost... after a while of reading it though, you start thinking like he writes!

The state of the country where he lives is kinda Iron Age after the nuclear war, which is why it looks like it could have been written hundreds of years ago.
 
Jeltz, Here's a book I read more years ago than I care to remember, but which has a big message and easy to read <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.amazon.com/Jonathan-Livingston-Seagull-Richard-Bach/dp/0743278909/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1277332386&sr=1-1-spell" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.amazon.com/Jonathan-Livingst ... =1-1-spell</a><!-- m -->
Don't bother with the follow up, IMHO

CD, I had to study Chaucer at 'A' level as a mature, not to mention 'foreign' student.....found that when read aloud in a Gloucestershire accent it all suddenly made sense......same old, same old.
 
LOL thanks Dave can't see why that's a nightmare paragraph, seems perfectly normal to me :lol: :lol: :lol:

Thanks for the recommendations I'll check them out, but has anyone read the Ripley books and want to give me an opinion?
 
Yeah, I've read the series by Pat Highsmith m8. They are fairly easy reads, written entirely from the viewpoint of a sociopath. There aren't really any sub plots or detection involved. The series basically covers the guy substituting himself for a rich young man whom he first befriends at the request of the young man's father. He subsequently murders the young man and assumes his identity for a while before resorting back to being Ripley. Later books have him married and living in France whilst also being involved with a group of friends who run an art gallery in London where they sell counterfeit paintings by a now dead artist. Basically if you like the character and style of any one of them which you've read you'll probably like all of them. The "hook" in the books is really the anti hero himself and how he relates (or fails to) people he encounters in his amoral passage through life.

Hope this is of some help.

JohnnyO. :geek:
 
Enjoy them Jeltz, P. Highsmith is a fairly dark writer. If you like Ian Fleming you'd probably also enjoy some of the work of the American writer James Munro, who also writes a James Mitchell. He wrote the TV series from thye 60s, "Callan" and there are 2 or 3 Callan Books. I preferred his series with the intelligence officer James Craig, which commenced with "The Man Who Sold Death". They are much more downmarket and realistic versions compared to the J. Bond books. Craig starts off as a Dan grade judoka before moving on through the series to grade as a high Dan Karateka. He's a former SBS officer in the war and the books have a gritty realism to them. At the time when they were being written in the early 60s few people knew much about the martial disciplines which probably added a touch of exotica to the hero. You should be able to pick them up ridiculously cheaply on Amazon books should you be ineterested. Titles include "The Man Who Sold Death", "The Money That Money Can't Buy" , "Innocent Bystanders" & "Die Rich, Die Happy".

Bring back a suntan.

JohnnyO. :cool:
 
Thanks for that, I'm camping (no pigcat that's not a euphemism) which is I believe the British equivalent of a rain dance, so I'll most likely come back brown from mud.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom