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[Bluesnik]

Daniel Woodrell - Winter's Bone

[Leeway]

DOG SOLDIERS - Robert Stone - 1974

John Converse, a marginal writer hanging loose in Nam, scores 3 kilos of pure, high-grade Vietnamese heroin. The idea is to bring it to the United States and move it. Things go seriously, very wrong, as the double-crosses come in fast succession. It's fear and loathing in the underbelly of America. I found the novel gripping.

[jlhoots]

DOG SOLDIERS - Robert Stone - 1974

John Converse, a marginal writer hanging loose in Nam, scores 3 kilos of pure, high-grade Vietnamese heroin. The idea is to bring it to the United States and move it. Things go seriously, very wrong, as the double-crosses come in fast succession. It's fear and loathing in the underbelly of America. I found the novel gripping.

So did I.

[kinuta]

[Matthew]

American Pastimes: The Very Best of Red Smith. Best taken in small doses, so the writing doesn't go by too fast, as most of what's contained are 800 word columns. Great writer though.

[BillF]

Good!

[Jazzmoose]

American Pastimes: The Very Best of Red Smith. Best taken in small doses, so the writing doesn't go by too fast, as most of what's contained are 800 word columns. Great writer though.

I have to get that.

[Matthew]

American Pastimes: The Very Best of Red Smith. Best taken in small doses, so the writing doesn't go by too fast, as most of what's contained are 800 word columns. Great writer though.

I have to get that.

It's a perfect Kindle book, as it's a collection Smith's columns over the decades. Kindle price: $10.99.

[A Lark Ascending]

Read that last summer. Excellent account. I was completely unaware of the magnitude of the fighting on the Franco-German border. Most British accounts focus on the Marne and then the race to the sea and first Ypres. The descriptions of the Austro-Serbian conflict and Austro-Russian clashes were also new ground.

I'm a bit disappointed that there hasn't yet been a volume by someone devoted to 1915, given how many 1914 books came out last year.

[kinuta]

I think there's a fair chance we might hear more from him on WW1. He's covered WW2 extensively so The Great War offers a wealth of writing opportunity.

The tangled prelude is clearly explained with background sketches of the mood and mind set, the ulterior motives and naive assumptions laid out convincingly without being long winded. The parts covering the clashes between Austria and Serbia are very interesting and make a change from the usual thread following developments in the west. That's as far as I've got so far.

My grandad was a regimental musician and was involved in the Somme among other campaigns. Like others he was reluctant to talk about his time there but one tale completely chilled me and comes back to haunt me even now. He took a bullet through his helmet, grazing the top of his head. The implications of the shooter aiming half a centimetre lower are very difficult to get my head round.

Just one of the many reasons I'm interested in military history.

[A Lark Ascending]

I have a similar story

My Dad fought in the Malayan Emergency - he was an RAF dog handler attached to the army, working in jungles tracking insurgents (politically loaded term, I know!). On one occasion they were approaching a stream. I think I'm right in remembering my Dad saying that one or two dogs entered the stream and were immediately electrocuted by a device left by the insurgents. If they hadn't....

Strangely, in 2007 one of his dogs, Lucky, was posthumously awarded the Dickin Medal (Animal VC) for work in the general campaign, alongside another dog that had performed similar work more recently in Afghanistan:

Hero dogs Sadie and Lucky honoured for wartime heroism

My Dad is the one in the picture who looks like Van Morrison!

I think my interest in military history comes from growing up on RAF camps.

**************

Hastings' analysis of the origins of the war is pretty conventional, from what I can remember (not a criticism; and I think he's superb in in outlining the conflict itself). For a much more intricate and challenging interpretation read this:

Long and very detailed but utterly compelling. He challenges the way the war is often explained as a result of broad long term factors - German expansionism, colonial rivalry etc - and tries to trace how the interaction of a multitude of smaller events, misunderstandings, perceptions and misconceptions collided to lead to the war. In his view there was nothing inevitable about World War I and its outbreak came as quite a surprise to those involved.

(I also enjoyed that Emmerson book you mentioned earlier)

Edited March 14, 2015 by A Lark Ascending

[kinuta]

Thanks for the recommendation.

Actually I have a PDF copy of The Sleepwalkers already loaded on my tablet and hope to get round to

reading it in the not too distant future.

[jazzbo]

[Leeway]

Looks interesting. What's the author's premise?

[Head Man]

DOG SOLDIERS - Robert Stone - 1974

John Converse, a marginal writer hanging loose in Nam, scores 3 kilos of pure, high-grade Vietnamese heroin. The idea is to bring it to the United States and move it. Things go seriously, very wrong, as the double-crosses come in fast succession. It's fear and loathing in the underbelly of America. I found the novel gripping.

The film's good too.....with Nick Nolte.

[jazzbo]

Looks interesting. What's the author's premise?

I've barely done more than read the first few pages several times, but it seems to me that the author is trying to show that drugs made its way into mainstream culture through the use by artists and celebrities and that drug use was more pervasive than the media and the public really know and that has exacted a high cost on our society and shaped our world negatively.

Publisher's page: http://books.simonandschuster.com/Cant-Find-My-Way-Home/Martin-Torgoff/9780743230117

I got my copy from daedalusbooks.com

Edited March 14, 2015 by jazzbo

[Leeway]

IN A FREE STATE - V.S. Naipul - 1971. Winner of the 1971 Booker Prize

A Prologue, an Epilogue, two short takes, and the long title tale to which the other pieces seem only tenuously related. The long title piece is the thing here, beautifully crafted, keenly observed. tautly presented, often nasty and brutish too, Naipul's revisioning of Conrad in a post-Colonial world.

[ejp626]

IN A FREE STATE - V.S. Naipul - 1971. Winner of the 1971 Booker Prize

A Prologue, an Epilogue, two short takes, and the long title tale to which the other pieces seem only tenuously related. The long title piece is the thing here, beautifully crafted, keenly observed. tautly presented, often nasty and brutish too, Naipul's revisioning of Conrad in a post-Colonial world.

I think this is a book one either really likes or dislikes. I'm slowly coming back around to Naipaul -- only having read A House for Mr. Biswas and A Bend in the River. I have a few other early works to get to, and then I'll see about In a Free State. I have to be in the right frame of mind to appreciate him.

I have just a few more pages to go in my rereading of Nightwood. It's still quite brilliant, though hardly as shocking as it once would have been. I do think I have a better understanding of the doctor this time around. Not much sympathy for Felix on either reading, I'm afraid.

A couple of short things remaining (Joseph Roth's Weights and Measures and Jonathan Lethem's Lucky Alan) and then I am delving into Dos Passos's USA Trilogy. I might see if the library has the individual books, as the hardcover is just not going to be easy to read on the train.

[BillF]

THE MIGHTY AND THEIR FALL - 1955- Ivy Compton-Burnett

Written almost entirely in dialogue (or one might better say, aphorisms posing as dialogue), this is the story of the corruption of a family. The near-complete lack of narrative guideposts can be disturbing or confusing at times, but if one stays with it, ICB demonstrates a surgeon's hand in dissecting the power plays, hatreds, exploitations and general nastiness of family members bound together by self-interest, arrogance, and pride (or the lack of it). If you like that sort of thing, it can even be funny at times, with a mordant humor.

I haven't read any Compton-Burnett, but she's on my list of authors to look into. Wikipedia says that Manservant and Maidservant (published in the US as Bullivant and the Lambs) is often considered to be her best work and the university library has a copy, so we shall see ....

Have just given up on A Family and a Fortune.You very accurately describe Burnett's idiosyncratic style, but I just wasn't prepared to make the effort ....

[Leeway]

Yes, I can understand that. Maybe another time.

[ejp626]

Got through Lethem's Lucky Alan in about a day and a half (it is very short - 150 pages). I have to admit, I didn't think very highly of it. Two stories were sort of interesting but not really well developed (title story and "Pending Vegan"), and "The Porn Critic" had some grubby fascination, and that was about it. Definitely glad I borrowed this from the library.

One more novella, Albert Cossery's The Colors of Infamy, and I launch into Dos Passos.

What I wasn't expecting is that Patrick Modiano's Suspended Sentences would be ready from the library. I'll have to read this after Dos Passos. Modiano won the Nobel Prize in Literature last year, and there is now all this interest in him. It appears that most of his best work is all tied up in memory and history and an obsession with Occupied France. Anyone have a favorite novel? What is particularly intriguing is that this seems to be the same ground that Emmanuel Bove trod, so there is surely a dissertation in that (for somebody else to write...).

[Jazzmoose]

I was moving boxes, opened one, and found my Dashiell Hammett books. Started with The Thin Man. I always save Red Harvest for last; that one always gets me!

Edited March 18, 2015 by Jazzmoose

[Jazzmoose]

I had a lousy day at work today. I pulled out The Thin Man at lunch, dropped it on the floor, and the book exploded into five sections. Admittedly, according to my note, the book was purchased in February of 1981 (at the Yakosuka PX, probably), so it's held up for thirty four years and I have no idea how many reads. Still, I can't help feeling like an old friend has passed on...

[kinuta]

[jlhoots]

Mark Twain: Roughing It