I just finished re-reading A People's History of the Inited States, by Howard Zinn. Definitely worth re-reading, if only to be reminded that the US never was a democracy, although we have made some progress toward becoming one. We've also regressed a fair bit from time to time, especially since November 2016.
I'm now reading Inferno, by Max Hastings, being his history of World War II. His description of the Finnish-Russian war shed some light on that corner of the conflict, and his description of Vichy French behavior and the whole collaboration thing was quite the eye-opener for me.
The
Penguin History of the USA is an interesting read, though disappointingly not told from the penguin's perspective. Once you get over that notable deficit, it's brain-achingly informative.
After diving the depths of the Amazon Kindle bargain bin, what I like to think of literary bog snorkelling, I just read
Dark Matter so you don't have to. Another of those books the reviewers like but ian doesn't. Honestly, I'm at a variance with the reading world. Oh, it's another one of those books written as a movie pitch (oh, I know that's where the money is but it doesn't have to be so shittingly obvious).
The good stuff? It's written with words.
After that it's downhill.
Dark Matter, oh you intriguing little minx of a title, beckoning me through the door and extracting my 99p. It's not about fucking DARK MATTER. It's about the multiverse, you know, every decision branches a universe, so what if. What if? Fortunately, no one has ever, ever contemplating writing on this subject before. But there's no dark matter to be found in the book which I suppose is suitably and empirically ironic. I'll give the author a point for that. I'll take it off for not understanding less about physics than my cat.
The plot is a straight road. There are no deviations, no turn offs, not even a piss break or mug of crappy diner coffee to put a stitch in the journey. There are no hitchhikers, no idiot overtakes. No evil bouncing tires. There's just the road. Straight to a destination that's obvious from the first page. Reviewers report they're thrilled by the twist. These are people who would probably shit themselves in surprise in discovering they have a belly button.
Characters that frankly are a poor use for the cardboard boxes that cats would have enjoyed sitting in far more. The lead is a theoretical physicist yet seems bafflingly dim. The dialogue is corny enough that Fray Bentos would put it in a can. Everyone is a bit stupid and a lot dull. No one has motivation, there's no ambiguity to any of the characters, and it's a book about multiverses, so you'd think it would be ripe for that. But no. The bad guys are bad. We're not told why. They're just there to be the bad guys. One character (I use the term advisedly) appears for a chapter or two, takes centre stage, and then simply disappears. Like she somehow found an escape route. I hate her for this because I felt duty-bound to stick it out to the end.
Pacyness seems achieved through the use of short sentences that lends a rather surreal Peter-and-Jane-ness to proceedings.