What book (s) are you reading now ?

Just finished East of the Mountains by David Guterson. Read it decades ago, but I could relate more to it now I’m older. If you enjoy Cormac McCarthy/Hemingway etc, it’s a good shout (along with Snow Falling on Cedars)

Just read the sci fi “Red rising” series by Pierce Brown. Nothing new but fast paced and I enjoyed it.

Reading “Girl A” now which I’m enjoying.

Still reading the behemoth that is The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. At 1,200 pages and managing around 80 pages a week (almost blind point text and some heavy going needing re-reads) it’s going to take me most of the year to complete. It is very, very good though – some historical books can be hard going at times but this is so well written.

Just finished Joe Parkins, A Dog In A Hat, his account of racing as an American in Belgium in the late 80’s / early 90’s. Not as glam as you’d imagine, a harsh profession. Drugs and race winners decided before the finish line. I found it insightful.

Just finished Adrian Tchaikovsky’s City of Last Chances, I’m a big fan of the author, but his latest book is the one I’ve gelled with least, found it a bit of a grind to get through.

I’ve just started Stephen Baxter’s The thousand Earths and, enjoying it so far.

In Patagonia.

Not long finished Beside the Ocean of Time by George Mackay Brown
In Patagonia is a superb book @ratherbeintobago

@Johndoh I know how you feel that’s about my reading pace these days.I also read poetry which has the tremendous advantage of being shorter than a novel, 😂

Yes, I’m really enjoying it.

@ratherbeintobago Aw nice one,just had a wee flashback there to when I was reading all Chatwin’s stuff.
Might have to go and dig out The Songlines. 👍 😃

Honour by Elif Shafik.
She’s a great writer, her and William Boyd have been my go to recently.

Just finished Slade House by David Mitchell (not the funny one)  Total rubbish but would make a good ‘by the pool read’  as can be done in a few days

Literally just had a delivery by the dreaded A (Sunday night?????)  William Gibson The Sprawl Trilogy plus a book of short stories……..time to dive headfirst into the Matrix!

I’m on a bit of a roll over the last few months; just finished Bobby Womack’s autobiography which is excellent. Lots I didn’t know about particular musical artists, including his close friendship with Ronnie Wood; but ultimately it’s quite a sad life story in many ways.
The one before that was Devolution by Max Brooks (author of World War Z). It’s nothing like as good as WWZ, and quite unsurprising in its strokes, but still not a bad read.

Next is… I’m not sure, I’ve got a couple of Robert Jackson Bennett’s, The Fifth Season, a Cormac McCarthy and various others to look at

Currently reading The Unwomanly Face of War by Svetlana Alexievich.

It’s a compendium of first hand accounts by Russian women who fought on the Eastern front in WW2. Huge range of roles: partisan fighters, pilots, nurses, medics, sappers and snipers. Many of them little more than half-starved kids when the war started. Imagine getting your period for the first time (with absolutely no understanding of what’s happening to you) in the middle of a forced 20 mile march, in a man’s uniform with boots 6 sizes too big. Forget about sanitary products, they didn’t even get women’s underwear until ’43/’44.

It’s fantastic and should be read by everyone, but obviously it’s almost unbearably sad. I feel like I’m pausing every 5 pages to say “That’s the worst thing I’ve ever read”, only to have it topped 5 pages later.

Dostoyevsky: The Brothers Karamazov
It’s meant to be about how 3 dysfunctional brothers deal with the murder of their father. But I’m over 400 pages in, and he’s not dead yet while the characters are being built. “Unnecessarily verbose” doesn’t even begin to describe it. I’m doing lots of skip-reading… The philosophical discourses are genuinely engrossing (and at times hugely funny), but there’s so much waffle between those episodes. Despite that, it’s still encouraging me to pick it up and continue reading.

Recently,
Flann O’Brien: The Third Policeman
A murder and its consequences; very Irish, very hilarious, very surreal, and by the end it’s properly harrowing. Amazing book, possibly in my top 10.

Still dipping into The Republic of Pirates from time to time. Love a bit of pirate action, and this focuses on the roots of piracy from the early 18th century, looking at the likes of Blackbeard, Hornigold, Vane and the chap who set out to hunt them down, Woodes Rogers.

Tried a bit of Relics by Tim Lebdon. A good idea but I didn’t care for any of the characters.

On a side note, I’ve been listening to some podcasts on Lord Nelson and it appears he was not a particularly nice chap. Comes across as someone who does what he wants, when he wants, and how he wants, regardless of the consequences.

Brain Energy by Dr Christopher M. Palmer. I’m probably about halfway through and finding it to be a fascinating read.

J’irai tuer pour vous.

True story about an ex soldier who becomes an assassin for the DGSE (French MI6) and gets sent to kill terrorists in Lebanon in the 80s. Not very well written, but fascinating story….

The art of trampig.

Very good.4 star.

Rereading Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. An interesting reread since it’s over a decade since I last read it, and also, last time i read it I was in hospital with a broken hip and high as balls on morphone. So, I remember it quite different to how it is! Doubly interesting looking at all the speculative “in the future nobody will go to a bank, we’ll all use imaginary internet currency. Also we’ll store our information online, in a big internet vault in a cave”

Picked this up on a whim from the library

Ben Short – Burn

Gotta love your local library

Just wrapped up Robert Jackson Bennett – Vigilance. I really like a lot of his books (City of Stairs, American Elsewhere etc); and this is slim but a really thought-provoking premise. Unfortunately it completely lacks a third act; there’s the setup, it hits its stride and… ends. Still, good.
Next up I think perhaps the Fifth Season (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19161852-the-fifth-season), or possibly Other Minds (about octopuses https://www.amazon.co.uk/Other-Minds-Octopus-Evolution-Intelligent/dp/0008226296/ref=asc_df_0008226296/)

I recently finished the audiobook of Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (author of The Martian).

I struggle with books if they don’t grip me, and this was one of the rare ones I didn’t want to end. It slowed down a bit towards the end, and it’s pretty far fetched, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Another French period murder mystery ticked off. This one was quite interesting as it turns out we visited the scene of the crime last year – Chateau Amboise, so I was quite familiar with the setting and we had both stood where the murder took place….

The authour supposes that Charles 8th was murdered rather than died from an accident – for which there is a plausible case based on historical records.

Still on The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich – at about page 380 of 1,200 now and I’m up to September 1938 and Case Green.

Just finished “Alex” by Pierre LeMaitre and I will probably need several weeks of counseling. Some fantastic plot twists, a bit boring in places, but utterly terrifying in others and very graphic descriptions of people being mutilated. Not for the feint hearted. Must be good though, as won awards in the original French and the English translation…

However, I now know how to describe, in French, pouring half a litre of concentrated sulphuric acid into places you really don’t ever want to do that with….

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/mar/10/alex-pierre-lemaitre-review

Post Office Charles Bukowski

Reading Judas 62 by Charles Cumming.
I finished Box 88 also by Charles Cumming earlier this year.
Easy to read, great story telling but I feel I need to read something a little lighter next, too many spy stories with graphic details of murder and mayhem can be a bit depressing in a world of mainly bad news.

Just finished Beloved by Toni Morrison (For blokey beer n book club)

Took a while to tune into what was going on due to the writing style, but well worth the effort. Slavery, trauma and a ghost!

Just finished The Gallows Pole by Ben Myers, a well written piece of historical fiction. Could be of particular interest to those in or around the Calder valley. Listened to seven chapters of RTE’s Ulysses on flights recently, will do the rest in July. Have Henry Marsh’s book lined up on brain surgery, Do No Harm.

I’m currently reading The Books of Babel series by by Josiah Bancroft (Sci-fi Fantasy?). It took me a while to get into the first book (Senlin Ascends) but by the end was enjoying it and was eager to read the second. I think Bancroft does a good job of transporting you to his world of Babel. I would describe it as a ‘nothing too heavy’ switch off read, but there is also definitely a bit of a social commentary subtext going on. I’m now on the third book and hope the fourth and final book is a fitting end.

Still on The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich – at about page 380 of 1,200 now and I’m up to September 1938 and Case Green.

Posted 1 month ago

Update – now on page 750. France have just capitulated, Hitler wrongly assumes Great Britain will ask for peace but Churchill has just made his ‘Finest Hour’ speech. Anyone that is remotely interested in the World Wars should really read this absolutely fascinating book.

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir(d)
It’s a bit strange (sci-fi) and, by a long chalk, not my usual genre (historical non-fiction).
Recommended by Neil de Grasse Tyson in his Star Talk podcast.

Johnson at Number 10 – Anthony Seldon. First of probably many to look at Johnsons time as PM. Overall it’s somewhat sympathetic to him, but at the same time does not hide the authors obvious criticism and exposes his pretty fundamental flaws. The book aimes a pretty critical bullet  at the ministers and advisors with whom Johnson surrounded himself

On Tyranny and On Ukraine – Timothy Synder, bought these as a two for one. On Tyranny is a guide to not being a dick really, it’s just a manifesto of how to behave if you’re worried that you live in a country that seems to sliding towards despotism. Can be read in an afternoon. Buy it and give it to your children. On Ukraine is his exploration of the history of it, why Putin is wrong, and why you may have the wrong idea about the war. Is designed for the sorts of Americans who probably won’t read it because: Tucker Carlson and Trump exist.

A Stranger In Your Own City – Ghailth Abdul-Ahad:  Personal account of the 2nd Iraq War from an Iraqi architecture student turned interpreter, cameraman, and reporter.

Ultra Processed People – Chris Van Tulleken: Why your ultra low carb/ultra low fat diet isn’t having the long term health effects that you think it should do. Or why it’s OK to eat properly made bread, but not cornflakes.

Anyone that is remotely interested in the World Wars should really read this absolutely fascinating book.

Absolutely, it’s without doubt the best in an overcrowded field about the Nazis.

Absolutely, it’s without doubt the best in an overcrowded field about the Nazis.

Yeah, I really don’t know where to go to next after I’ve finished it – I think it might have to be Churchill’s memoirs.

Just read ‘Command’ by Al Murray. Some interesting insights into various WW2 Allied leaders and how that leadership developed from the cluster***ks of early in the war, to later successes. It’s got the famous ones like Paton and Montgomery – with all their flaws, but it looks much further down the rank structure too, at company commanders who were successful and what made them so.  It doesn’t hold any punches either – Orde Wingate of Chindit fame, comes out of it looking like an arrogant, inflexible nutter whose tactics were costly and mostly ineffective. His ‘fame’ it seems, was largely due to good PR when the allies needed some good news at a stage in the war when the Japanese seemed invincible.

Currently reading Islands of Abandonment by Cal Flyn, about nature reclaiming spaces abandoned by man. First seen in a recommendation earlier in this thread I think. Early days, but really enjoying it.

Just starting Homegrown, Timothy McVeigh and the rise of right-wing extremism.

Hopefully something the Americans have that doesn’t cross the Atlantic to the same degeee, but with Nat Cons stoking fires who knows.

@johndoh Have a look at Daniel Todman’s 2 parter;  Britains War. Book One (Into Battle) covers 1937-1941 and book two (A New World) covers 1942 -1947.

Both are blend of politics, both domestic and obviously the war, the military and civilian life both at home and abroad. the first obviously the run up and appeasement, and the seconds runs out at the eve of Partition. It’s a really impressive bit of reserach of individual accounts while at the same time these massive complex sweeping technological and social changes.

Just started this one
The Denial: A satirical novel of climate change

@blokeuptheroad, in my Tsundoku (look it up all you bibliophiles) is “With the Jocks” which is the personal account of Peter White who I think is one of the leaders Al Murray examines in Command. Looking forward to it.