What books are we reading at the moment ?

[FifeingEejit]

Well actually he does regularly confuse the GB, UK and England but he's American.

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[andrewc]

I'm reading Dalrymple's 'From the Holy Mountain'... 

By a strange coincidence I ordered a copy yesterday.

Just finished this.  Very good book.  Educational,  I had very little knowledge about the Christian communities in the Middle East.   Rather sad though,  the book was written in the 90's and the author thought the only ones with long term prospects were in Syria, protected by Assad. 

[hatler]

I'm reading Dalrymple's 'From the Holy Mountain'... 

By a strange coincidence I ordered a copy yesterday.

Just finished this.  Very good book.  Educational,  I had very little knowledge about the Christian communities in the Middle East.   Rather sad though,  the book was written in the 90's and the author thought the only ones with long term prospects were in Syria, protected by Assad. 

Yup, a fascinating read. A great little cameo appearance from Robert Fisk IIRC.

[andrewc]

Yeeeesssss........   I think the term "War Junkie" or similar was used.     I've 2 of Fisk's books on my shelves.  Pity The Nation was awesome, sad & horrific. 

[fd3]

They Walked Like Men - I assumed would be about werewolves, but it's about capitalists buying everything and how it sucks for everyone on Earth (but dressed in Sci Fi as the capitalists are aliens).
Horns - by Joe Hill, rather Gaiman-y atm.  Possibly a bit too telegraphed and a bit too slow.

[pcolbeck]

Elana Ferrante's "My Brilliant Friend" - the first book in the Neapolitan Quartet

I'm probably late to the party here but for anyone who hasn't read it then it is as good as all the reviews say it is.
Exceptional invocation of place. I'm minded to buy the other three before I finish this one.

Interesting too that no one knows who she/he is and there are no clues about the authors background other than locals say the author must have been brought up in Naples.

[fd3]

Finished “Horns”, a good idea and some of it was very good, but it needed another round or two of editing to make it a sharper read, a bit too much repetition and too slow at points.

[T42]

Re-read Ian McDonald's Chaga last week then moved onto the sequel, Kirinya, but found it rather boring so downloaded a sample of Stephen Baxter's latest, Galaxias, which is rather engaging so far.  Chaga was fascinating even the second time around, but Kirinya feels very stale.

[Mr Larrington]

After a long pause I have returned to John le Carré's The Naive And Sentimental Lover which isn't sub-titled “The Excruciatingly Dull Life of Aldo Cassidy, Dick” but should have been.  I hope to Dog he does something interesting in the next thirty pages like murder someone, join the French FOREIGN Legion, race in the TT or go over the Niagara Falls in a gas stove otherwise I might be forced to abandon Aldo entirely and read something shallow and containing killin's instead.  Or the latest from TV's Guy Martin.

[T42]

Finished Mr. Baxter's Galaxias last night.  The initial idea was excellent and the purely physical consequences fascinating, but there was a hell of a lot of waffle before the end - or maybe I was just in such a hurry to know how it worked out that all those yammering protagonists got in the way. Will probably re-read in a year or two.

[hatler]

After a long pause I have returned to John le Carré's The Naive And Sentimental Lover which isn't sub-titled “The Excruciatingly Dull Life of Aldo Cassidy, Dick” but should have been.  I hope to Dog he does something interesting in the next thirty pages like murder someone, join the French FOREIGN Legion, race in the TT or go over the Niagara Falls in a gas stove otherwise I might be forced to abandon Aldo entirely and read something shallow and containing killin's instead.  Or the latest from TV's Guy Martin.

I think this is the only book I've started and taken the conscious decision not to finish.

And I'm a massive Le Carré fan.

[Mr Larrington]

After a long pause I have returned to John le Carré's The Naive And Sentimental Lover which isn't sub-titled “The Excruciatingly Dull Life of Aldo Cassidy, Dick” but should have been.  I hope to Dog he does something interesting in the next thirty pages like murder someone, join the French FOREIGN Legion, race in the TT or go over the Niagara Falls in a gas stove otherwise I might be forced to abandon Aldo entirely and read something shallow and containing killin's instead.  Or the latest from TV's Guy Martin.

I think this is the only book I've started and taken the conscious decision not to finish.

That’s encouraging 

[fimm]

"Why does e=mc² (and why should we care?)" by Brian Cox and Jeff Foreshaw which was interesting but made my brain melt (and had a picture of a cat on the cover in spite of not being about Schroedinger's Cat).
"What goes around" by Emily Chappell which was good and not what I was expecting.

[Kim]

For a more refreshing read, try the bobiverse books (although some parts of those really irritate me).

Having run out of Becky Chambers, I've been following this advice.  They're silly, but entertainingly so, and the depiction of space warfare makes a lot more sense than most.  I keep feeling insufficiently fluent in Star Trek references.

[fd3]

"Why does e=mc² (and why should we care?)" by Brian Cox and Jeff Foreshaw which was interesting but made my brain melt (and had a picture of a cat on the cover in spite of not being about Schroedinger's Cat).

I have DNFed that book about three times.  I think Brian low-balled the level too much (you only need to know Pythag, and if you don't I'll teach you) to the point where I lost the plot due to too many words and not enough maffs.  Jeff is a frickin' genius, so I am disappointed with this (though it's about as accessible, though on the other end of the spectrum, as his book on the pommeron).  The bit on the back that says that Brian is a prof in Manchester and lives in that_London always gives me a chuckle.
For easy Physics reading I much prefer Jim.

[Mr Larrington]

After a long pause I have returned to John le Carré's The Naive And Sentimental Lover which isn't sub-titled “The Excruciatingly Dull Life of Aldo Cassidy, Dick” but should have been.  I hope to Dog he does something interesting in the next thirty pages like murder someone, join the French FOREIGN Legion, race in the TT or go over the Niagara Falls in a gas stove otherwise I might be forced to abandon Aldo entirely and read something shallow and containing killin's instead.  Or the latest from TV's Guy Martin.

I think this is the only book I've started and taken the conscious decision not to finish.

And I'm a massive Le Carré fan.

So I struggled through to the end.  Aldo Cassidy is Mr Jones from His Bobness' Ballad Of A Thin Man after he works out what's happening.  Possibly.  And the song lasts six minutes whereas this book felt like six years.

(click to show/hide)

Was it very wrong of me:

• To wish that Shamus had shot Aldo utterly to DETH, and
• To wish he'd done so about three hundred pages earlier than when he actually didn't

Now on the same author's The Little Drummer Girl which at least has killin's right from the off.

[rafletcher]

I feel that Le Carre was of his time, and the style didn’t age well. I couldn’t finish either of his last two offerings. I’ve just started The Stoning a debut novel from the Australian Peter Papathanasiou. It’s started promisingly enough. Time will tell.

ETA: That had to go back to the library, so I've re-reserved it, and will make a start on The Bood Divide by A.A. Dhand. A new (ish) departure for him after his Detective Harry Virdee series, but still set amongst the racial and religious divides of Bradford.  That should last me until I pick up the latest Lee Child / Andrew Child collaboration next week.

[Snakehips]

A copy of Always On: Hope and Fear in the Social Smartphone Era , by BBC legend Rory Cellan-Jones recently appeared in the house, so I have just picked it up and started it.

https://www.waterstones.com/book/always-on/rory-cellan-jones/9781472981196

[fimm]

"Why does e=mc² (and why should we care?)" by Brian Cox and Jeff Foreshaw which was interesting but made my brain melt (and had a picture of a cat on the cover in spite of not being about Schroedinger's Cat).

... I lost the plot due to too many words and not enough maffs.  ...

I think that might have been my problem, too. I always say I'm not very good at maths, but I do have a Maths A level... I would also have liked to know if the derivation they were giving was the way Einstein got to  e=mc². And then there was a big jump to the Standard Model with quarks and so on.

[fd3]

Einstein’s stuff is really hard to follow because he likes to explain and thought experiment instead of use maths.
Ymmv

[rafletcher]

Well, I’m 2/3rds of the way through the latest Jack Reacher Better off Dead. It would seem like the influence of Lee over Andrew Child is waning. What an odd book. It’s ok, but Lee Childs writing managed somehow to lift the books a bit above the run-of-the-mill avenging stranger genre. This, not so much. Change the lead character’s name and it could be anyone writing it. And it’s set in a town seemingly devoid of pedestrians, or of cars driven by anyone not part of the plot. Disappointing.

ETA: And the deathless prose….  “There was just one table. It was round. There were six plastic chairs in a scruffy circle around it. They seemed lost.”  And so it goes on. Do we ever hear mention of the chairs again? We’re they of any significance at all in the plot? No.

[pcolbeck]

Einstein’s stuff is really hard to follow because he likes to explain and thought experiment instead of use maths.

Maybe because he wasn't very good at maths. He had Marcel Grossmann to help him with the difficult bits.

Mind you that's for a definition of "not very good at maths" that's somewhat different to most peoples definition of "not very good at maths".

[rafletcher]

And now on to Michael Connelly’s latest, a Ballard & Bosch, The Dark Hours.

[Socks]

Bought Cavendish's latest -"Tour de Force", delivered this afternoon. Having watched the Tour and cheered him on after his illness and injuries in previous years I'm looking forward to reading his account of the 2021 Tour.

The only time I've seen the Tour live was at Kilnsey crag when it visited Yorkshire.  Then we all sat down to watch the Harrogate sprint finish on a big screen ....

I think it would be fair to say that I'm a Cavendish fan.

[spesh]

Einstein’s stuff is really hard to follow because he likes to explain and thought experiment instead of use maths.

Maybe because he wasn't very good at maths. He had Marcel Grossmann to help him with the difficult bits.

Mind you that's for a definition of "not very good at maths" that's somewhat different to most peoples definition of "not very good at maths".

Einstein being bad at maths is something of an urban myth.

https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2004/06/23/1115185.htm?site=science/greatmomentsinscience