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I’m sure some of these will already have been mentioned but still.
I’m trying to read more books this year, and the 3 so far have been:
Killing Thatcher by Roy Carroll. Really, really good read on the build up to the bombing if the Brighton Grand.
Bliss to be Alive by Gavin Hills. Lots of short pieces on everything from global politics to football to acid house. Very enjoyable.
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. Not sure it’s as good as The Martian, but another I really liked.
Next up will be Place of Tides by James Rebanks I think.
Just finished The Will of the Many by James Islington. I thought it was okay, but kind of like a mashup of the Hunger Games meets Harry Potter. The Ipcress File by Len Deighton was brilliantly written but I was absolutely clueless about the plot right up till the hero explains everything in the last few pages and I'm now just about to start Jerome K Jerome's Three Men on a Bummel. The follow-up to his lovely Three Men in a Boat. Looking forward to this.
Just finished The Bad Popes last night; doesn't sound like a promising topic, but genuinely fascinating how, between about 900AD and the sack of Rome in 1527, being Pope was basically just a licence to print money, so the Papacy was fought over, bought, sold, and generally about the most corrupt position in the known world. Tbh, from there I went to listening to a review of the new Melania film, and it's pretty obvious that Trump sees the US Presidency as the cardinals, Medicis, Borgias and all the other big families in Europe saw the Papacy at that time.
Vulture Capitalism by Grace Blakeley. A good read, but a bloody depressing one. 😢
84K by Claire North. It's set in a dystopian near future UK and it's actually depressing me a bit how plausible it is. Other than that it's OK-ish.
Won't bother mentioning a dodgy cli-fi book the Guardian loved.
@montgomery I'm hoping this isn't Juice by Tim Winton, because I've just ordered that!
No, it was Thirsty Animals, swapped out in a local book exchange phone booth thing. I'm a bit jaundiced about cli-fi literature. I think it occupies the same territory as 'speculative fiction,' penned by authors who think they're too important for SF but who's output actually wouldn't stand up to the standards and expectations of real SF enthusiasts.
Read this years ago but didnt want to dig out my tatty copy to give for mates kids birthday, given the current state of the U.S/Europe/Russia/China relations I guess Huxley foresaw what was the obvious outcome
In February 2108, the New Zealand Rediscovery Expedition reaches California at last. It is over a century since the world was devastated by nuclear war, but the blight of radioactivity and disease still gnaws away at the survivors. The expedition expects to find physical destruction but they are quite unprepared for the moral degradation they meet. Ape and Essence is Huxley's vision of the ruin of humanity, told with all his knowledge and imaginative genius.
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You (all) need to read John Wyndham's 'The Chrysalids'....
Blood Red Snow by Korchorreck.
Memoir of a young WW2 German fighting on the eastern front. Brutal account of the constant slaughter of those around him - can only imagine how much worse it has to be on the Ukraine/Russian front lines with modern weaponry to survive against. Brutal.
Never heard of this^. Is it real, or something like Guy Sajer's 'Forgotten Soldier,' a great read and probably accurate synthesis of events that happened, but arguably discredited as actual autobiography?
I have two on the go at the minute (which is rare for me):
These two are following a couple of others of a similar vein. Hoping some external perspectives on Op Herrick and Afghanistan might help me put some things to bed. I've not found that resolution yet.
These two are following a couple of others of a similar vein. Hoping some external perspectives on Op Herrick and Afghanistan might help me put some things to bed. I've not found that resolution yet.
Have you ever read 'Quartered Safe Out Here' by George MacDonald Fraser?
He mentions the fact that almost nobody on the ground and certainly not the average squaddie ever has the slightest idea what the big picture is.
Edit: should have said that he illustrates this very neatly by writing about how his experience of a battle related to the official accounts.
Sounds like there's a lot of people on this thread reading WWII stuff.
Have any of you read 'The People's War' by Angus Calder?
He popped up on my radar as a poet, particularly his excellent poems about Edinburgh but apparently he was a historian first and TPW is supposedly a seminal work.
I'd be curious to hear what anyone who's read it thought about it.
Just about to start Sailing Close To The Wind - Reminiscences by Dennis Skinner. Last fiction book was Pandaemonium by Christopher Brookmyre which was brilliant, sci fi, horror, alt future mash up.
Have you ever read 'Quartered Safe Out Here' by George MacDonald Fraser?
Cracking book, up there with First Light, although he's very much a product of his time. One wonders whether the Flashman books would get greenlit now...?
Hole in the Sky by Peter F Hamilton was rubbish, btw, don't bother.
Next up will be Place of Tides by James Rebanks I think.
I have that on a recommendation from a friend, not read it yet but it sounds ace. 🙂
Currently not that excited by Expected Goals - what is there to get excited about in a book on stats, I guess? - looking forward to Chasing Shadows by Dr Greg Skomdl, about the return of the great white shark to the eastern seaboard of America (didn't even know it had left! 🙂 ).
Shroud
Adrian Tchaikovsky
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/210384823-shroud
Currently reading Labyrinth by Kate Mosse, set 1200, and 2005 Carcassonne. As historical fiction it's quite interesting, how accurate it is I'm not sure.
Also reading Tom Moorey "How to crack cryptic crosswords ", still a bloody mystery to me. 🤨
Never heard of this^. Is it real, or something like Guy Sajer's 'Forgotten Soldier,' a great read and probably accurate synthesis of events that happened, but arguably discredited as actual autobiography?
Apparently he wrote a diary on scraps of paper he kept inside his coat, and when returning home on leave would leave them at his parents home. After the war his wife married an American and some how they were taken there when some 40yrs later his daughter found them. She traced her father who deciphered them into a book.
As any autobiography/memoir, the hero is always the person writing it. But it does give a very different perspective on what the German grunts holding the line faced ..
The Ipcress File by Len Deighton was brilliantly written but I was absolutely clueless about the plot right up till the hero explains everything in the last few pages
I had the same experience with "A Funeral In Berlin ".
RIP my great uncle Corporal Isaac Blakeley - George Macdonald Fraser dedicated his book Quartered Safe out here too him - buried in Yangon (Rangoon) Military Cemetery - the attack when he was killed along with at least 3 others from the border regiment is described in the book - hoping for a settled time in Myanmar politics - so I can go pay my respects. Born in Whitehaven - KIA somewhere south of Mandalay March 1945.
On a lighter note - currently reading
Companion Guide to the Punic wars - a collection of different academics on the 1st (a bit of sparing) , 2nd (Hannibal turns up) and third (Grim for Carthage) Punic wars.
And
Panzers of Prokhorovka - er three German tanks lost on the days of the big tank battle.......hmmmm.....tank chasis numbers prove it apparently.
These two are following a couple of others of a similar vein. Hoping some external perspectives on Op Herrick and Afghanistan might help me put some things to bed. I've not found that resolution yet.
Have you ever read 'Quartered Safe Out Here' by George MacDonald Fraser?
He mentions the fact that almost nobody on the ground and certainly not the average squaddie ever has the slightest idea what the big picture is.
Edit: should have said that he illustrates this very neatly by writing about how his experience of a battle related to the official accounts.
I haven't. I'm keeping it my era for now, the search for meaning of the time I spent there is small and limited, learning why it was doomed to fail before it began is enlightening and disheartening all at the same time.
84K by Claire North
There's an author I need to go and find more from. I loved The First Fifteen Lives of thingy; Touch was great too - she has some fantastic ideas.
Ape and Essence
Would you recommend it/ say it's engaging? Brave New World's the only Huxley I've read, and it's obviously important but not instantly memorable.
I've just started The Doors of Eden by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Only about 50 pages in but love it so far - the initial threads are all pretty gripping and keep me reading to find out where it goes!
In a change from space opera and slowhorses I'm reading the ADHDadults book 'ADHD unpacked' (after getting into their podcasts).
A thread of this parish put me onto them, really interesting and accessible (both the book and the podcasts)
Interesting and terrifying reading especially when you think of who has the nuclear football
I haven't. I'm keeping it my era for now, the search for meaning of the time I spent there is small and limited, learning why it was doomed to fail before it began is enlightening and disheartening all at the same time.
I was listening to a podcast about OODA loops and they were interviewing a military strategist who talked about the difference between complicated and complex problems. He described the first Gulf War as a complicated problem. There were lots of variables but they could crunch the numbers and come up with a solution. He contrasted this with Afghanistan as a complex problem where no amount of number crunching or strategizing would yield a viable solution.
With the complicated scenario you're saying things like 'the enemy has X many tanks here so we're going to send X many anti-tank helicopters'. With the complex scenario you're dealing with things you can't predict like the guy who plants an IED because an American soldier ran over his dog.
I haven't. I'm keeping it my era for now, the search for meaning of the time I spent there is small and limited, learning why it was doomed to fail before it began is enlightening and disheartening all at the same time.
Quartered Safe Out Here is a brilliant memoir about the British soldier's experience of fighting the Japanese and well worth a read. The average infantryman seemed focussed mainly on his section and probably knew very little of what was going on beyond battalion level. The ending of the war due to the dropping of the two atomic bombs was a (welcome) shock to them as they expected to have to fight the Japanese on their home islands.
As the world seems to be going to shit, a friend recommended the "Dungeon Crawler Carl" series as a little light relief. I suspect I will end up getting the first of the series this weekend.
I'm currently switching between two books. Trying to read Catch 22 but finding it hard going. Finding it much easier to read One Man And His Bike by Mike Carter which was a gift from my parents and i wasn't expecting much of but it's very easy to read and makes me want to pack up and go explore.
I tried starting Catch 22 just after I had Covid years ago, brain struggled with it. Might have a look later in the year.
Currently got Tim Marshall's Prisoners of Geography on the go, fascinating look at geopolitics and how the geography of the world controls certain ideas world leaders might have. Nearly finished this, previous to that I read Liam Byrne's Inequality of Wealth, interesting read.
Next up will be Bob Mortimers latest as I need a bit of light relief after those last 2.
Stuff I've read recently or have on the go
- Christian Wolmar - The subterranean railway. A history of the London underground that's much more interesting and readable than you'd expect. His book 'British Rail' is the same.
- Simon Jenkins - a short history of London. Dipping in and out of this but a flying overview of London's history.
- Bob Mortimer - Satuma complex. Really don't think this is very good, but anything in Bob's voice is massively entertaining.
We've got kindles and signed up to the BookBub email that tells gives you a list of e books for 99p each week so buying lots of stuff at low risk these days.
Bob Mortimer - Satuma complex. Really don't think this is very good, but anything in Bob's voice is massively entertaining.
I love Bob Mortimer but not in print.
https://james1940.substack.com/p/first-light-remembering-a-few-of
That is a superb account of how "First Light" came to be published.
There is a bit of randomness about how some WW2 memoirs end up getting published. One of the best biographies of the Pacific war from a front line marine's point of view - "With The Old Breed : At Peleliu and Okinawa" - was originally just written just for the author's family. Some real gritty passages. American marine prisoners mutilated by the Japs but also things like the author seeing a marine extracting gold teeth from the mouth of a severly injured but still living japanese. Eventually another marine put him out his misery. Another marine collecting hands rather than the more common gold teeth.
I guess brutal close quarter combat where no quarter was given brutalises many people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/With_the_Old_Breed
@StuE thanks for posting that link to the QSOH dramatisation. I listened to it today and thought it was very well done.
Chasing Shadows by Greg Skomal was outstanding - if you have any interest in sharks, I highly recommend it. Followed that with Younghusband by Patrick French, a biography of "the last great imperial adventurer",which was really good, much of what he thought and did was pretty despicable by modern standards, but he proved himself to be a man with an unusually open mind for the time. I mean - did he actually diddle his sister? Who knows....
I bought Quartered Safe Out Here and First Light based on the love for them on here - next, I'm finishing off The Sleepwalkers by Christopher Clark, a lengthy but fascinating and in-depth look at the causes of the first world war.
I bought a Kobo Clara BW last week, fired it up today for the first time - very pleased so far, seems quicker than my Kindle Paperwhite and the controls are more intuitive and streamlined. Bought a couple of 99p books plus the wonderful-sounding Antarctica by Gabrielle Walker, it also allows me to borrow e-books from the library (once I've paid my outstanding fines...) and best of all it takes me out of that hateful Amazon shitosphere, super-pleased with that - keep you posted... 🙂
The Name Of The Rose, having been meaning to read it for years.
'Heresy in many cases is wed to the revolt against overlords, and this is why the heretic begins by preaching Madonna Poverty [cf MAGA?] and then falls prey to all the temptations of power, war, violence'
Working my way through a cheesy Clive Cussler adventure novel. Quite nice to be reading a book where the evil villain attempting to destroy the planet actually gets a deserved, painful, and ironic death at the hands of Dirk Pitt. Unlike the real world where they get promoted to the top of the US government.
Just finished Panzers of Prokhorovka by Ben Wheatley - proves by engineering workshop tank returns that the Germans didn't lose that many tanks on the day of the big fight 12th July - they did still lose though (even though the soviets lost lots of AFVs). Most of the German tanks were lost in the Soviet offensives after Kursk during August and September 1943.
The Howdens trade book at the minute...
Empireland: How Imperialism has shaped Modern Britain, Sathnam Sanghera - Very readable and nuanced reflection on stuff that gets social media warriors yelling into the void.
Rum Punch, Elmore Leonard - the book behind Tarrantino's Jackie Brown.
Read this years ago but didnt want to dig out my tatty copy to give for mates kids birthday, given the current state of the U.S/Europe/Russia/China relations I guess Huxley foresaw what was the obvious outcome
In February 2108, the New Zealand Rediscovery Expedition reaches California at last. It is over a century since the world was devastated by nuclear war, but the blight of radioactivity and disease still gnaws away at the survivors. The expedition expects to find physical destruction but they are quite unprepared for the moral degradation they meet. Ape and Essence is Huxley's vision of the ruin of humanity, told with all his knowledge and imaginative genius.
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Sounds like a sequel to Neville Shute's 'On the Beach', if that were possible (trying to remember the end of that one....)