T.D. Posted August 7, 2015 Report Share Posted August 7, 2015 Don't read so much fiction any more, but just finished Malcolm Mackay's "Glasgow Trilogy" (3 novels about a Glasgow hit man)Recently finished Just in time for US pre-election circus, started Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matthew Posted August 7, 2015 Report Share Posted August 7, 2015 War Against The Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race. A very interesting, and very scary book. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jlhoots Posted August 8, 2015 Report Share Posted August 8, 2015 Jonathan Tropper: Everything Changes Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
medjuck Posted August 10, 2015 Report Share Posted August 10, 2015 (edited) Anyone else read this? I thought it was great. Edited August 10, 2015 by medjuck Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leeway Posted August 12, 2015 Report Share Posted August 12, 2015 TONO-BUNGAY - H.G. WellsI rarely give up on a book, but I had to do so with Tono-Bungay. I made it to page 200, but could not face finishing the remaining 172 pages. I found the book surprsingly badly written and prolix. On page 190, Wells has the following sentence: "In the end of this particular crisis of which I tell so badly, I idealised Science." A previous library reader pencilled in after "badly, "and at such length," which I think sums up the defects of the book. Wells tells it badly (just look at that specimen sentence!) and at excruciating length. I surrender! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jlhoots Posted August 12, 2015 Report Share Posted August 12, 2015 Bruce DeSilva: Providence Rag Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnblitweiler Posted August 12, 2015 Report Share Posted August 12, 2015 Long ago I began to read Wells novels and even read "Tono-Bungay." Got so disgusted with "The Research Magnificent" - the pompous soul of Wells revealed - that I avoided his writings ever since.Just finished "The African Equation" by Yasmina Khadra and highly recommend it, along with the 3 previous Khadra books that came out in English. He may be best appreciated by reading those 4 in chronological order, beginning with :The Swallows of Kabul." Big heart and intelligence, wide sympathies. A European is captured by pirates in waters off east Africa, sees the pirate gang from the inside. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillF Posted August 13, 2015 Report Share Posted August 13, 2015 The first Bainbridge I've read, and a good start! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Head Man Posted August 13, 2015 Report Share Posted August 13, 2015 Anyone else read this? I thought it was great. Yes, I've just finished it and found most of it very enjoyable. A couple of the interviews went over my head but the others provided a pretty good picture of what it must have been like to be a jazz musician in 1960s New York. Not sure it was worth the price I paid for it mind you. A very well written biography of the Labour Prime Miinister that never was. Shades of the current ructions surrounding the election of the next Labour leader...what a shambles! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillF Posted August 13, 2015 Report Share Posted August 13, 2015 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matthew Posted August 13, 2015 Report Share Posted August 13, 2015 What's a Trot? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillF Posted August 13, 2015 Report Share Posted August 13, 2015 (edited) What's a Trot?Follower of the teachings of Leon Trotsky. Edited August 13, 2015 by BillF Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Head Man Posted August 14, 2015 Report Share Posted August 14, 2015 What's a Trot?Shorthand for someone with very left-wing views..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leeway Posted August 17, 2015 Report Share Posted August 17, 2015 Well-crafted, erudite, often enigmatic, enjoyable stories. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jlhoots Posted August 17, 2015 Report Share Posted August 17, 2015 (edited) Cotterill: Six And A Half Deadly Sins Edited August 17, 2015 by jlhoots Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A Lark Ascending Posted August 18, 2015 Report Share Posted August 18, 2015 Finally finished:Not an easy read. Very dense and quite hard to keep your brain on the overview - Bickers gets caught into all manner of minutiae on the way (especially memorials built to commemorate fallen comrades and their propaganda intent). But gives a very clear impression of how the West (Britain as the focus here) bullied and manipulated its way into China using the cloak of free trade as a way of pursuing avarice.Now onto a easier to read book with a much better sense of ongoing narrative: Back in '72 when I was studying the English Civil War for my 'A' Levels I was completely taken by a quote from a Colonel Rainborough at the Putney Debates (1647). "For really I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live as the greatest he; and therefore truly, sir, I think it’s clear that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government; and I do think that the poorest man in England is not bound in a strict sense to that government that he hath not had a voice to put himself under…”.This book tells the story of the family in the mid-17thC - merchants, fighters against Barbary pirates, settlers around Boston in the New World, soldiers and political and religious radicals. Fascinating stuff.As it happens I stayed in a hotel on Putney Bridge over the weekend - just over the bridge was the church where the Putney Debates took place (with the quote above inscribed on the wall). Well worth a trip if you are in and around London - you now enter the church through an excellent coffee shop.Superb! In the previous novel of the series (no 13) pregnant Inspector Lynley's wife is gunned down and killed at her front door. You end the book utterly devastated and hating the perpetrators. What George does in this sequel is turn the whole situation on its head by tracing how one of the people involved in the murder, a 12 year old, came to that point. A harrowing tale of a life of chaos in poverty stricken North Kensington. The way the young boy is trapped into a sequence of events in his efforts to protect his younger brother is brilliantly traced. One of those books that haunts you long after you have finished. The main characters of the series only have the slightest of walk on parts. Interesting to read the reviews on Amazon where some readers really struggled with the absence of those characters. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matthew Posted August 18, 2015 Report Share Posted August 18, 2015 The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War by Stephen Kinzer. Interesting read, and a despicable history of crimes committed in the name of freedom. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A Lark Ascending Posted August 20, 2015 Report Share Posted August 20, 2015 The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War by Stephen Kinzer. Interesting read, and a despicable history of crimes committed in the name of freedom.Like the look of that. Always like reading books about the Cold War from particular angles. Came across some of this in Tim Werner's book on the CIA. I've read a fair few books on the Napoleonic era navy in recent years - this give a much broader context. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leeway Posted August 23, 2015 Report Share Posted August 23, 2015 Keen depictions of working in a used bookshop (I have several years of such experience) and most scarifying accounts of being hard-up for money since Gissing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillF Posted August 23, 2015 Report Share Posted August 23, 2015 Keen depictions of working in a used bookshop (I have several years of such experience) and most scarifying accounts of being hard-up for money since Gissing. Fine book! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A Lark Ascending Posted August 23, 2015 Report Share Posted August 23, 2015 Keen depictions of working in a used bookshop (I have several years of such experience) and most scarifying accounts of being hard-up for money since Gissing. Fine book!I read that as a 15 year old...had a big impact on me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillF Posted August 24, 2015 Report Share Posted August 24, 2015 Impressive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leeway Posted August 26, 2015 Report Share Posted August 26, 2015 ORWELL: THE AUTHORIZED BIOGRAPHY - Michael Shelden.Overall, this seemed to me a "fair and balanced" approach to telling Orwell's life. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillF Posted August 26, 2015 Report Share Posted August 26, 2015 ORWELL: THE AUTHORIZED BIOGRAPHY - Michael Shelden.Overall, this seemed to me a "fair and balanced" approach to telling Orwell's life. Years ago I read Bernard Crick's biography of Orwell, which seemed OK. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Leeway Posted August 26, 2015 Report Share Posted August 26, 2015 ORWELL: THE AUTHORIZED BIOGRAPHY - Michael Shelden.Overall, this seemed to me a "fair and balanced" approach to telling Orwell's life. Years ago I read Bernard Crick's biography of Orwell, which seemed OK.I believe the Crick is pretty good. It was the previous "authorized" bio, until Sonia Orwell decided to take legal action against it (and failed). Shelden was able to interview a few more people, and find a few more documents, than Crick, and most of all, didn't have to deal with Sonia Orwell. Mostly, I went with Shelden because I had a copy of the book handy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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