Never too late to start :P

That goes for the rest of you brain aches !!!! :shock:

I was hoping the winner would set another puzzler - but i dk if V55 could mange that without an algorithm to help ..... :wink: :) :D :roll:

I refer reality based stuff.
I just finished The Forgotten Soldier by Guy Sajer. A true story of war on the Russian front.
Fiction leaves me cold, some dude/dudette making sh!t up...

well, the Lonseome Dove books are incredibly well researched , he has a great gift for dialogue and i love his portrayals of the Comanche, Apache, Kikapoo etc - really fantastic. Why dont you give it a go...i think people think its gonna be corny and sentimental but its as hard as nails.... :wink:

I have said it before, and I will say it again. "A day in the life of Ivan Denisovich", by Alexander Solzhenitsyn is an outstanding book.
I am not sure why it is so good, Solzhenitsyn's style is very agreeable to me. No bollox, no hyperbole or "flowery pretty language", very very simple sentences. Which manage to be gems. All of them...

Also, although its pretty hideous, "The Painted Bird", by Kosinski is good. Apparently he wrte the book, and continued to re-write it until he had distilled every chapter more or less to a single page.
Maybe its the programmer in me. I love succinct elegant language.

Personal preference and I'll be the judge of what I find hard as nails thanks very much. There's a lot of naivety in fiction, some of us just see it easier than others.

That's a bit harsh. :P

I prefer fiction to non-fiction. Reality is harsh but the imagination can take us anywhere.