What books are we reading at the moment ?

[RJ]

I have re-read Buchan’s John Macnab which is a great autumn read, especially after a commute via Richmond Park when the deer rut is on.

Now following it up with the bittersweet The Return of John Macnab by Andrew Greig.

One of the very very few books (along with Touching the Void) I literally couldn't put down on my first reading.  I like Andrew Greig's novels and the memoirs/meditations on golf and fishing.

On a similarly mountaineering theme, I've started Wade Davis's Into The Silence:  the Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest.  Interesting, but I'm finding the National Geographic prose style and lack of hard editing slightly distracting at times.  It has the feel of a good book that's been produced too quickly - the plates are thrown together in what appears to be a completely random order, and some of the writing is sloppy and clichéd, in ways that could easily have been tidied.  But so far it's an interesting take on the 1920s Everest expeditions.

Well, well.  The Everest book won a prize.  I find that slightly depressing, because in the end I thought it was a pretty average book, which could have been a lot better had more attention been paid to detail and had Davis not pulled one or two of his punches.  There is an interesting book possibly still to be written that joins the dots between pre- and post-WWI heroic failures like the British Everest and Antarctic expeditions, and the apparent willingness of much of the British public to put up with the proxy slaughter of the war itself.  Roland Huntford points the way with his Scott & Amundsen book - but there's a longer story-arc here that resonates today slightly more than it really should.

 

[Feline]

I've just bought Bradley's new book for my Kindle 

[madcow]

Scorched Earth, Black Snow by AndrewSalmon.
Drawing on acounts given by those who were there, this book covers the first year of the Korean War. It is all about the British regiments (Middlesex, Argylls and RM 41 Commando ) and 3 Royal Australian regiment , who were thrown into the UN force  led by the Americans.
It takes place in the most hostile environment , with temperatures down to minus 28C and against brutal Korean and Chinese opposition. I found it an unputdownable book which was easy to read and follow.
Korea is a forgotten war , and anyone studying it would wonder why the USA continued to make the same mistakes of overeach and overambition  again in Vietnam and Iraq .
Clearly Harold Wilson learned the lesson and declined to involve Britain in Vietnam.
More British troops died in Korea (1087) than in all the minor wars since (approx 783) . This book gives an insight into how they showed the Americans that a smaller army isnt always an inferior army.
Recommended if you are a bit tired of WW2 biographies.

[tiermat]

The last line of MadCow's previous post reminds me I haven't updated this in a bit (as I have nearly finished the WW2 book).

I have 2 books on the go at the moment
Double Cross by Ben McIntyre, about the double agents that managed to convince the Germans during the second world war that the invasion of France would be at Pas De Calais, not in Normandy.  A fantastic read, not at all dry, with some nice funny stories in it (including how they tried pigeon double agents, but the Germans didn't even notice they were there!).
Azincourt by Bernard Cornwell.  Another book about an Archer, this time Nicholas Hook, some 100 years after his previous series (Heretic, 1356 etc), but once again in France, with the French army still fearing the English archer.  Good so far.

[citoyen]

Snowdrops by AD Miller.

The best thing I can say about it is that it's short. Which means it won't be too painful to see it through to the finish. But even so, I don't know if I can be bothered...

Supposedly a tense psychological thriller but it lacks any element of suspense, mainly because the outcome is so very predictable - this is largely because of its structure: the main character is telling the story in hindsight, in the form a letter to his fiancee (and I'm rather hoping she ditches him after reading it). Plus it's a hackneyed old potboiler of a story anyway. And the main character is a loathsome creep and a dullard, entirely unsympathetic.

Piss poor.

d.


d.

[Quisling]

Just finishing The Transition Companion by Rob Hoskins.  Very insightful, fact packed, reasonably up to date and packed full of useful guides to building community resilience against the shocks of peak oil and climate change.  Tonnes of accompanying resources and free support through the Transition Network too.

[clarion]

Sounds interesting.

[citoyen]

Daniel Friebe's Eddy Merckx biog. Very good. Very good indeed.

d.

[John Henry]

I gave up on Kate Morton's 'The Forgotten Garden', which I was hating, in order to start Andy Allsopp's 'Barring Mechanicals'. So far I regard this as one of my better decisions.

[Auntie Helen]

Barring Mechanicals is a great read.

And I get my name in the front too!

[tiermat]

Have finished Double Cross, so now am moving on to "Two Wheels Over Catalonia", for the second time.

FWIW I tend to keep two books on the go, one on my ebook, for commuting purposes and one in dead tree format for bedtime/loo time reading, hence why I am usually reading two different books at the same time (and I need to make sure they are completely different subjects or I get them mixed up )

[Quisling]

Uncivilisation - The Dark Mountain Manifesto.

Hardly a book I accept. Not sure what to make of it really. A bunch of arty environmental types trying a bit hard to create some new artistic response to the failures of civilisation. I think.

[Wascally Weasel]

To continue the outdoor theme from Buchan (after a quiet, shameful interlude re-reading the Belgariad. Don't judge me) I'm now on Brendon Chase by B.B. (aka Denys Watkins-Pitchford).  It was a recent birthday present from Ms Weasel - been trying to find a copy for years, she managed to find out it had had a recent reissue by Jane Nissen Books.

For anyone who hasn't read it, it's a story of three biys who go and hide out in the woods for months rather than going back to school, living the life of outlaws, hunting, shooting and fishing.

Haven't read it since I was about 15, it's still great to read (but interestingly different about 28 years later).

[citoyen]

Daniel Friebe's Eddy Merckx biog. Very good. Very good indeed.

This is a brilliant book for those like me who were too young to have experienced Merckx first time round. Does a really good job of evoking the excitement of the races (currently being enthralled by the account of the 71 Merckx vs Ocaña TdF), even if you already know how they're going to turn out. An interesting psychological study of Merckx the man too.

d.

[RJ]

Robert MacFarlane's Mountains of the Mind, which I'm thoroughly enjoying - a thoughtful, thought-provoking and well-written book.

[citoyen]

May be of interest to Kindle owners: I was notified yesterday by eareaderiq.co.uk that the price of Emma Donoghue's The Sealed Letter has dropped to 89p, so because I liked Room so much, I thought I'd get it. (I understand it's very different to Room though, both in subject matter and writing style.)

That will probably be the next book I read.

d.

[Tail End Charlie]

Just finished "Catching the Eagle" by Karen Charlton (a cheapo Kindle purchase, although it has gone up now I notice).
Good story, and reading on Amazon about it, she got the idea whilst researching her family tree and finding an ancestor who was accused of theft. It's set around 1809 in the England/ Scotland border country - the Charltons were well known Reivers (as were my own namesakes).
Apparently it's one in a series, so that's my reading sorted for a little while.

[andrewc]

After reading a couple of volumes of his diaries I'm now on the last chapters of Tony Peake's biography of Derek Jarman. Interesting stuff.  Once I've finished that I'll return to Hobsbawm's "Age of Revolution" on the Kindle.

[pcolbeck]

Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe  - Norman Davies

A book about countries that no longer exist. I'm only part way in and it's a gem. The author studied under the great A. J. P. Taylor and taught Polish History at the University of London. The prose is lovely and I wish I had bought this as a real book instead of on Kindle as it has maps,
Very thought provoking on the mutability of national identity. In some cases people remain stationary and their national identity changes (the old northern British kingdoms for example) in others their identity remains the same but the geographic location shifts (the five, ten or fifteen depending on how you count them Burgundies).

[RJ]

Ah.  That sounds like an interesting read 

[Peter]

Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe  - Norman Davies

A book about countries that no longer exist. I'm only part way in and it's a gem. The author studied under the great A. J. P. Taylor and taught Polish History at the University of London. The prose is lovely and I wish I had bought this as a real book instead of on Kindle as it has maps,
Very thought provoking on the mutability of national identity. In some cases people remain stationary and their national identity changes (the old northern British kingdoms for example) in others their identity remains the same but the geographic location shifts (the five, ten or fifteen depending on how you count them Burgundies).

It happens on a lower level, too:  I was born in St. Ockton-on-Tees, then in County Durham, since when it has mutated through Teesside to Cleveland.  I think the last change was at the behest of the Guardian who could never spell Teesside but imagined it to be the banks of the Tee (hee).

That does look like an interesting book, pc.

[mark]

Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy, by Christopher Hayes. US-centered, but the description of how a supposedly democratic society where people advance by their own merits morphs into an oligarchy ruled by a self-perpetuating class of the ultra-wealthy applies just about anywhere.

[Juan Martín]

I have just finished reading La Fiesta del Chivo by Mario Vargas Lllosa. Set in the Dominican Republic at the end of the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo in the early ‘60s. The story is told through a number of separate strands and depicts the corruption and paranoia associated with absolute power as the regime spirals into collapse when Trujillo is assassinated by a disaffected group of army and air force officers.

At 560 odd pages this is a sizeable book but at times it reads like a thriller, however some of the scenes where those involved in the assassination plot are tortured make quite grim reading. But that aside this is a terrific book. I have read a few of his novels and I enjoyed this one the most. Vargas Lllosa won the Nobel prize for literature in 2010 and as an introduction to his work or to Latin American literature generally I would highly recommend this. Available in translation as The Feast of the Goat.

[tiermat]

Having finished both "Two Wheels Over Catalonia" and "Azincourt" I moved onto "Stay Close" by Harlon somebodyorother, standard detective lit.  I then read Private: London by James Patterson, ditto, followed by Home Front by Kristin Hannah.  This last one really hit me, it's the story of a woman who had a less than perfect childhood, her parents died a couple of months before her 18th birthday (father drunk crashed the car and killed both himself and his wife).  She went to college, joined the army, got married and joined the National Guard.  Just after her 41st birthday she gets sent to Afghanistan.  The main story is around her relationship with her spouse and her children.  There were many times I was in tears reading it, maybe realising that in some small way it mirrored things I had gone through (apart from the going to a war zone and coming home injured, of course).

After that I needed a light read so I am now reading "The Lost Cyclist" by David Herlihy, about a guy from the US who, in the late 1800's set off to tour the world on a safety bicycle.  He is last heard of in Turkey, and the story picks up with 2 cyclists setting off to find out what happened.

[Jakob]

I've been on a bit of a aviation biography streak and ended up with "A  Lonely Kind of War, Forward Air Controller" by Marshall Harrison and it's easily the most engaging military/aviation book I've ever read.

This then lead to reading "Chickenhawk" by Robert Mason, which is almost as good and almost made me want to learn to fly helicopters. (almost)

If you have any interest in aviation/military aviation, these two are a must read.