Last Book You Read....

[Detournement]

1 hour ago, Highland Capital said:

What is it with TV presenters becoming budding novelists all of a sudden?  I see Graham Norton and Richard Osman both have a novel in the top 10 this week. 

I think you answered your own question.

They are writing books because people will buy them on name recognition. My theory on celebrity best sellers is that the vast majority of them are bought as gifts and never read.

[tongue_tied_danny]

I've just started on Serotonin by Michel Houllebecq. 

I've read most of his books and TBH, this just feels like more of the same. The angry, sexually frustrated middle aged man schtick is getting pretty old... and slightly too close to home for comfort.

It's readable and I will stick with it, but it's nothing that he hasn't written before.

[Jack Burton]

I've been reading a lot of military history recently and I'm currently working my way through Armageddon by Max Hastings.
This details the final months of the European theatre in WW2. The western and eastern fronts are given more or less the same coverage. There's also a lot of detail regarding the day to day lives of individual soldiers. 
A very well written book. One of the better history books that I've read.

I read two of the books that the TV shows Band of Brothers and Pacific were based on yearly this year.

The Band of Brothers book by Stephen Ambrose, I thought wasn't a great read. It's a rather by the numbers account of what went on and doesn't really give a great insight into the characters of the various soldiers and officers.

With the Old Breed by Eugene Sledge is a pretty brutal description of the war in the Pacific. It does an excellent job of describing the bleakness and futility of the fighting. It also doesn't pull any punches in going over some of the horrendous things done by both sides.

[tongue_tied_danny]

4 minutes ago, Jack Burton said:

I read two of the books that the TV shows Band of Brothers and Pacific were based on yearly this year.

The Band of Brothers book by Stephen Ambrose, I thought wasn't a great read. It's a rather by the numbers account of what went on and doesn't really give a great insight into the characters of the various soldiers and officers.

With the Old Breed by Eugene Sledge is a pretty brutal description of the war in the Pacific. It does an excellent job of describing the bleakness and futility of the fighting. It also doesn't pull any punches in going over some of the horrendous things done by both sides.

Speaking of The Pacific, I recently read one of its other sources... Helmet for my Pillow by Robert Leckie.  It was a decent enough read, although there was something about his writing style that I found vaguely irritating. I couldn't quite place my finger on what it was though...

[Detournement]

2 hours ago, tongue_tied_danny said:

I've just started on Serotonin by Michel Houllebecq. 

I've read most of his books and TBH, this just feels like more of the same. The angry, sexually frustrated middle aged man schtick is getting pretty old... and slightly too close to home for comfort.

It's readable and I will stick with it, but it's nothing that he hasn't written before.

I haven't read it yet but The Map and Territory and Submission were both works of genius imo. There's a lot more depth to his work than the surface level of the stereotype narrators.

[Detournement]

I finished reading City of Quartz by Mike Davis which is a social history of Los Angeles published in the1990s. Despite being three decades old it's still extremely relevant especially the sections on policing and the environment. 

It's Marxist analysis but the prose is extremely straightforward which is what you would expect from a guy who worked as a truck driver for decades before getting into writing. I've heard him on a few podcasts recently and he's a great guy, I'm definitely going to read more of his books, probably World of Slums next. 

[tongue_tied_danny]

4 minutes ago, Detournement said:

I haven't read it yet but The Map and Territory and Submission were both works of genius imo. There's a lot more depth to his work than the surface level of the stereotype narrators.

They're both really good, but Atomised is by far his best IMO. 

I could not put that down and when I finished it I just stared, open mouthed, at the wall for about half an hour thinking "What the f**k?" 

[Melanius Mullarkey]

Just finished Nagasaki - Life After Nuclear War by Susan Southard. 

Grim but uplifting.  I hope that I never survive a nuclear blast tbh  (not that many would nowadays compared to the relatively small pop that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were).

[mathematics]

Just now, Sutton Anderson said:

I recently finished reading Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.

Sorry to hear that. Are you ok?

[mathematics]

3 minutes ago, Sutton Anderson said:

I'm fine, in general I liked the book. Although Ayn Rand's philosophy is unacceptable to me. Her rational selfishness seems to me too ineffective.

It’s the only book I’ve given up on.

[stanton]

Just finished The Long Drop , by Denise Mina  . A story based on true events involving Peter Manuel and William Watt as they around  the streets of Glasgow . Excellent stuff 

[Ya Bezzer!]

In terms of reading I usually start off the year on fire, slow down over the summer and then pick up the pace again towards the end of the year and this year has been no different.

Only managed to read 4 books since the end of June when I read Thesiger's excellent 'Arabian Sands'

Niels Lyhne by Jens Peter Jacobsen

1880 novel concerning a chap by the name of....you guessed it....Niels Lyhne.  Lyhne becomes atheist at a young age and subsequently falls into a bit of a funk, not really seeing much point to life except through art and the love of women.  Doesn't sound so bad right?  Except his art never really goes anywhere and all the loves of his life are either unrequited, die, mad or leave him.  Yeah, this isn't for folks looking for a book to cheer them up.  I however liked it being rather Niels Lyhne-esque in mode and temperament. One of those books that has passages you'd swear were written about yourself. 4/5

The Sleeper Awakes by H. G. Wells

I've always found H. G. Wells to be a dependable author and the premise is interesting - Victorian man falls into a coma, his money is invested by a relative and he wakes up hundreds of years later as, not only the richest man on the planet, but also a sort of demi god in the eyes of the future oppressed.  Sadly though the book is a lot of rubbish.  Apparently Wells smashed it out to pay some bill and it reads like it.  The future world just never seems convincing or realistic (it's slightly steam punk-ish), the story is rather generic and the fulcrum of the plot involves some terrible and indefensible Enoch Powell style racism.  2/5

Candide, or Optimism by Voltaire

I chose this as I've been meaning to read some Voltaire for ages and it was a fairly slim volume.  However I ended up reading so many supplementary materials it took me quite a while to read.  In retrospect I'd probably recommend that you just read the text and if you want to understand it more fully go back.  Ostensibly it's about a parochial young man who is made homeless when he's kicked out of the castle were he lives and who then goes around with an ever changing retinue of people having various ill ending adventures. As he roams the world coming across horror after horror he tries to reconcile his actual real world experiences with the philosophy he's been taught by his tutor Pangloss, ie, that we 'live in the best of all possible worlds'.  It can be read as a fun romp or as a deeper philosophical exercise, it certainly has a lot crammed into a short text and is quite witty and funny in places.  However I think I would actually enjoyed it more without all the additional reading as it affected the flow. 3/5  

Tales Of Hoffmann by E. T. A. Hoffmann

I'd read 'The Sandman' before but hadn't read the 6 other stories in the volume so this time I read the whole thing front to back.  As with any collection of short stories some are better than others and while some are perhaps a little long I thought they were all worth reading.  The best is 'The Sandman' one of the great psychological horrors, in which a man struggles with mental illness after, as a child, watching his father die in mysterious circumstances.  The story is crazy and full of weird symbolism (eyes, telescopes, glasses) and David Lynch needs to make a movie based on it.   My other favourites were 'The Mines Of Falun' the story of an unhappy young man who is drawn to an unfortunate fate by a hallucination/ghost of a dead miner, and 'The Choosing Of The Bride' in which a mysterious goldsmith (Is it the devil? There is something of Mephistopheles about him) intervenes in the proposed engagement of a local merchants daughter.  Stories range from 3/5 to 5/5 so I'll give it an overall score of 4/5.

Edited October 21, 2020 by Ya Bezzer!

[NotThePars]

The Bloody White Baron - James Palmer

A relatively short biography of Baron Ungern von Sternberg, a minor German aristocrat in Russian Estonia, in the early twentieth century who went on to lead a cavalry division in Mongolia against the Bolsheviks who he saw as ushering in an apocalyptic social order which was informed by his massive racism, monarchism and weird blend of Lutheranism, Russian Orthdoxy and Buddhism which fused into a millennialism where he viewed himself self-consciously as a Genghis Khan-esque figure. A pretty good biography that shines a light on a relatively unknown peripheral figure of the Russian Civil War but one who was especially ruthless in what was a ruthless conflict. Would recommend especially as it manages to do what a lot of history writing doesn't do which is make itself an easy read. Read like a novel rather than a mere recounting of historical events.

[Arabdownunder]

Just rattled through the new Rebus. Getting more and more difficult for Rankin to construct a narrative in which a retired detective can  get involved in solving murders.  

[Stellaboz]

The f**k It List by John Niven

3/10

Doesn't live up to the hilarity and page turning quality of his previous stuff. It does give a scary picture of what the US would be like after a second Trump term though, and probably an accurate description of the type of idiots out there.

[Blootoon87]

The f**k It List by John Niven

3/10

Doesn't live up to the hilarity and page turning quality of his previous stuff. It does give a scary picture of what the US would be like after a second Trump term though, and probably an accurate description of the type of idiots out there.

Aye he really phoned that one in. Disappointing stuff.

[Academically Deficient]

56 minutes ago, MixuFruit said:

The Innocence of Father Brown - GK Chesterton.

The only other book of his that I've read is The Man Who Was Thursday which is a thrilling read, this is more like a collection of short stories. The writing and images conjured up are great but the formula is very obvious and I wasn't very interested in whoever committed the crime by the end of each chapter as a result. I suppose he originally serialised these to pay the bills which is fair enough but I wouldn't be bothering to read another in the series. The wee bits of social commentary that bleed through in the incedental moments are more entertaining than whatever Father Brown has to say, he is the least interesting element of the book by far. 

The Man Who Was Thursday was great. Recommend and it's a short, entertaining read.

Unfortunately, the next thing I read by him was an impenetrable essay on the sanctity of marriage based on his religious beliefs. Terrible, put me right off him.

[Academically Deficient]

41 minutes ago, MixuFruit said:

That's what I can't get about him. The Man Who Was Thursday is an almost mystical expression of his beliefs, written I believe as he was becoming more in love with christianity. I'm an atheist but it was both exciting and at the end quite beautiful. But when he moves to write about religion in this, it's so turgid and boring compared to other things. Considering how important it was to him I find this really surprising.

You're right. I get the feeling he would be like one of your pals who was a real laugh, quick and engaging- as long as you avoid that one subject because it would ruin your night out. Like all the Rangers fans I'm friends with

He seems to be the kind of guy who likes to take a contrarian position out of intellectual curiosity, then ends up entrenched.

He wrote something else explaining the Scots and Irish to English readers. In summary: you've got it back-to-front. The Irish are the clear-eyed, business-minded lads and the Scots are wistful, romantic dreamers. 

Edited October 22, 2020 by Academically Deficient
Spelling

[tongue_tied_danny]

22 hours ago, NotThePars said:

The Bloody White Baron - James Palmer

A relatively short biography of Baron Ungern von Sternberg, a minor German aristocrat in Russian Estonia, in the early twentieth century who went on to lead a cavalry division in Mongolia against the Bolsheviks who he saw as ushering in an apocalyptic social order which was informed by his massive racism, monarchism and weird blend of Lutheranism, Russian Orthdoxy and Buddhism which fused into a millennialism where he viewed himself self-consciously as a Genghis Khan-esque figure. A pretty good biography that shines a light on a relatively unknown peripheral figure of the Russian Civil War but one who was especially ruthless in what was a ruthless conflict. Would recommend especially as it manages to do what a lot of history writing doesn't do which is make itself an easy read. Read like a novel rather than a mere recounting of historical events.

I'm going to get my mitts on a copy of this. I'm quite interested in old school eastern European brutality so this should be up my street.

I'd never heard of this chap before but he seems like an interesting character. According to The Wikipedia he later appeared as an antagonist in the PS2 game World War Zero.

Now that's what I call being immortalised.

Edited October 22, 2020 by tongue_tied_danny

[Jeff Venom]

Bonus Time by Brian Pennie.

Irish guy who got into heroin in his teens but had a decent job and functioned for a long time, denying he was a junky. The reason was his anxiety - heroin helped him deal with it and covered it up.
He hit rock bottom, had an epiphany, got himself clean and became a researcher of neuro science.

He made heroin sound fucking magic tbh.