Current Reading - Books best thread

[Anton Gramscescu]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Anyone made it through the "Three Body Problem" trilogy (very odd Chinese science fiction) yet? I enjoyed the first book, but not enough that I want to rush out to buy the second and third. But open to changing my view if others think its the bomb.

[WOM]

Current Reading - Books best thread

No. But I loved The Map of Time by Felix J Palma and asked for the second of the trilogy, The Map of The Sky, for Christmas.

But that won't help you.

[WOM]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Incandenza wrote: Finished The Skies Belong To Us, by Brendan Korner. It's about the numerous plane hijackings (or, at the time, "skyjackings") in 1960s and 70s America, and he focuses for most of the book on the story of a couple from San Diego, Roger Holder and Catherine Kerkow.

Just finished it. Great reco. Utterly compelling and absurd at the same time. Basically any putz could walk/drive/bicycle onto a runway and go where he wanted with relative ease. Astounding that there weren't horrible disasters before it all ended.

[Trevor Red]

Current Reading - Books best thread

george clarts wrote: Am reading John "Drumbo" French's book about Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band.

I'd been looking to have a read of it for a while, during which time I not once realized I would end up contending with around 900 pages of small type, going into who first introduced Pachuco style to Lancaster, CA, and who was the first person in Antelope Valley to buy a saxophone etc.

I'm having quite a bit of fun reading it, but by Christ if any object anywhere ever needed a big "COMMITTED FANS ONLY" sticker on it it's this.

I would concur with this. Ye gods, he doesn't even join the Magic Band until 150 pages in. Also, too many stories are repeated three or four times. Some of it is interesting but he was in serious need of an editor. I'm about 600 pages in and it's very heavy going.

[Land Waster]

Current Reading - Books best thread

The Good Doctor by Damon Galgut. A novel which tries to grapple with the cultural and political complexities of the 'new' South Africa.

And a great story to boot. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

[Anton Gramscescu]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Spillover, by David Quammen. 500 pages of gory deails about zoonotic diseases, the origin of AIDS, why bats are going to kill us all. Basically the source material for the movie Contagion. I enjoyed it,though it's overlong and you can usually skim the bits where he puts himself in the story, out collecting bats with various biologist types.

Economics Rules by Dani Rodrik. This is quite excellent - a readable explanation of why economists use mathemetical models to describe reality, and what their uses and limitations are. A good way to cut through BS about economics both from within and without the discipline. And reasonably short.

Hun Sen's Cambodia by Sebastian Strangio. This is a pretty good history of post-79 Cambodia and how it came to be ruled by timber oligarchs. Some intetresting stuff on the failings of various ooposition movements, but als details on a hell of a lot of political murders - all of which was new to me, anyway.

[Felicity, I guess so]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Recently read Martin Cruz Smith Rose.

It's from the 90s, but I had a hardback copy stuck in a cupboard and always assumed it was one of his early, 'gypsy-detective' novels.

It was quite an enthralling experience, and raised my admiration for the California-based man who seems to effortlessly evoke Russia in his novels...now evoking 19thC Wigan (!)

It also parodies 19thC genres (explorers, big house/suitable marriages/Dickensian squalor) if you like that sort of thing, but it does it really well.

[Sam]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Last week I finished All The Light We Cannot See, which is a wonderful novel you should all read now. I'm now reading an ancient book about pirates which I got from Project Gutenberg.

[Incandenza]

Current Reading - Books best thread

WOM wrote:

Finished The Skies Belong To Us, by Brendan Korner. It's about the numerous plane hijackings (or, at the time, "skyjackings") in 1960s and 70s America, and he focuses for most of the book on the story of a couple from San Diego, Roger Holder and Catherine Kerkow.

Just finished it. Great reco. Utterly compelling and absurd at the same time. Basically any putz could walk/drive/bicycle onto a runway and go where he wanted with relative ease. Astounding that there weren't horrible disasters before it all ended.

Nice! Yeah, it's almost unbelievable from today's perspective.

[Sam]

Current Reading - Books best thread

My ancient book about pirates appears to be the General History, under a different title and credited to a different authorial pseudonym than the other copy I've already read. It's easy to skim over so I might save it for toilet visits etc., but might have to start something else as a proper read tomorrow.

[Crusoe]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Tried reading A Brief History of Seven Killings but gave up about a third of the way through. It's not difficult or dull, just unremittingly grim.

[Anton Gramscescu]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Interested in Latin American politics? In the history of computing? How about economic planning? If you answered yes to all three, then I give you Cybernetic Revolutionaries by Eden Medina.

So here's the idea: in early 1971, the new Chilean govt. of Salvador Allende wants to experments abou how to control this new economy what they have got hold of. So they turn to this quite eccentric English management consultant by the name of Beer, who starts working with them on a whole Cybernetic control system for the economy. Teamed with a group of Chilean design experts, they start creating a futuristic (for 1971) "war room" for the economy, where information would come in from factories around the country via telex and they could make "real-time" decisions about the economy.

You can get the basics of the story from the project's wikipedia entry (also: cool photo). It gives you a flavour of the weirdness of cybernetics as a discipline, as well as a somewhat odd-angled view on the history of the Allende govt, while at the same time being a really long meditation on technology and politics.

It's quite excellent. Probably not to everyone's taste, but excellent anyway.

[Sam]

Current Reading - Books best thread

I've started on La Doce by Gustavo Grabia which is, as the title rather gives away if you know anything about Argentine football, a history of Boca Juniors' barra brava. It is by some considerable distance the Spanish-language book I've found easiest to read so far.

[Joparo]

Current Reading - Books best thread

I got these three novels for the holidays.

'Seveneves' by Neal Stephenson which despite being nearly 1000 pages I read in 4 days and unsurprisingly was excellent....

'City on Fire' by Garth Risk Hallberg which I'm half way though and the jury is still out....

'A Brief History of Seven Killings' by Marlon James - which I'm hoping to start later this week and well, I know it's a cliche, but I nearly always read the Man Booker Prize winner at Xmas/New Year time!!

[Sam]

Current Reading - Books best thread

I bought myself a few books (for my Kindle) last night. I have previously not tended to read much fiction within twelve months or so of publication, so using this Graun list to decide what looked most interesting, and erring towards the ones that were most (in some cases surprisingly) affordable, bought the following:

The Fault In Our Stars by John Green
A Brief History Of Seven Killings by Marlon James
All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews
The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide
The Humans by Matt Haig
All For Nothing by Walter Kempowski
Outline by Rachel Cusk

There are others - lots of others - that sound excellent as well, of course, but I think that's enough to be going on with for the moment. Hoping to get the Boca barra book polished off quickly so I can get onto them all (though I've got one on River's barra to read as well which I might have to prioritise as both of them together were meant to be professional research).

[Joparo]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Ha, you're pretty brave doing a list of kindle buys there Sam.....I would have thought anyone admitting to using big bully Amazon to purchase their reading material would instantly become persona non-grata on this board with the forum's literary bon ton becoming pejorative to such malfeasance in the extreme.....

FWIW I use both Kindle too and the book depository but that because nearly all the book shops here in Brisbane are gone!!

[Sam]

Current Reading - Books best thread

I've been called out for it once*, but when I live a few thousand miles from the nearest reasonably-priced English language bookshop, what am I supposed to do? Even second hand books here cost a fortune.

*Although if I remember rightly, it had less to do with Amazon's business practices and more to do with the person's opinions on ebooks versus physical ones - opinions I happen to agree with, actually.

[Anton Gramscescu]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Presumably there is less sweatshop labour involved in e-books than there is regular books as far as Amazon's fulfilment practices are concerned, so kindles are on the side of the angels, I think.

I travel (and read) a lot so a kindle is a lifesaver. I think I brought four physical books with me on this trip - everything else is on the kindle. can;t imagine being able to close my suitcase without one.

(Currently reading John Lynch's biography of Simon Bolivar which is interesting becuase I didn't know a tenth of this stuff about the Latin American wars of independence but as a literary effort its pretty meh).

[ian.64]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Current tomes include my finishing Steve Coogan's autobiography (light stuff that meanders amiably, yet feels bitty and underfed. A bit unfair to leave out mentioning Felicity Montagu's turn as Lynn in the Partridge series and movie when nearly everyone involved in Coogan's rise to prominence gets a namecheck). I've yet to start Brian Blessed's - yes, that's the level of brow I aim to fulfil. Low.

Nearly halfway through Iain Martin's Making It Happen, the story of the the Royal Bank Of Scotland under Fred Goodwin, and already the rumbling clouds of Goodwin's sociopathic reign gather pace the more I read it. As Martin puts it, Goodwin has a mind that encompasses the brilliant capacity to instigate ideas, systems and strategies to startling effect. It is, however, contained within the body of a cold, heartless cunt who verbally lacerates his underlings, blames them for when things go wrong and, when sacking them, chooses someone else to do the dirty instead of himself. I feel that I've only just gone through the starter course of cringeworthy disbelief. The main course is yet to come.

[Mr Beast]

Current Reading - Books best thread

WOM wrote:

Finished The Skies Belong To Us, by Brendan Korner. It's about the numerous plane hijackings (or, at the time, "skyjackings") in 1960s and 70s America, and he focuses for most of the book on the story of a couple from San Diego, Roger Holder and Catherine Kerkow.

Just finished it. Great reco. Utterly compelling and absurd at the same time. Basically any putz could walk/drive/bicycle onto a runway and go where he wanted with relative ease. Astounding that there weren't horrible disasters before it all ended.

I enjoyed this and was amazed at the frequency of hijacking in the US. The best bit was where a hijacker with a couple of toddlers on board (naturally) turns her gun on a stewardess and demands that she crochet her baby a hat.

[Renart]

Current Reading - Books best thread

I buy books at local bookshops, but I also use Amazon and have a Kindle. Have to get books however you can. I read e-books for pulp/quick/fun reads, real books for quality lit and history, etc., or books I want to take notes in and mark up, refer to later, etc.

Currently reading Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett, which you'll like if you like that sort of thing (I do, occasionally), on Kindle, and about to begin Karen Bender's short story collection Refund, in non-electronic paperback form.

[Anton Gramscescu]

Current Reading - Books best thread

OK, so I read a ludicrous amount of books this year. 148, and I might sneak one more in before tomorrow. Here are my best ten books of the year.

10) No Good Men Among the Living by Anand Gopal. A post-Taliban history of Afghanistan. If you want to understand what an appalling mess the country is, and how NATO countries have in many ways made it worse, this is the book to read. Warning: you will get angry.

9) The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell. I don;t read a lot of fiction, but this was the best of the lot this year. I'm a bit late to this one (came out in 2010), but its a quite brilliant examination of how the Dutch-Japanese relationship in Kagoshima at the time of the collapse of the Dutch East India company. Love, action, adventure - it's all there, plus some interesting thoughts on what the Japanese really knew about the outside world at the time.

8) Tokyo Vice by Jake Adelstein. Again, not a new book, but new to me. Yes, trashy in some ways, and the hero/author can be a bit of a dick. But I was pretty entranced by his views of a Japan no one can see and personally kind of fascinated by the idea that a North American could ever be this culturally immersed in Japan. The Yakuza stuff is mostly fun, ocasionally horrifying.

7) The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World Avi Shlaim. For those wanting to understand how Israel has never missed a chance to miss a chance to make peace with its neighbours, this is as good a single-volume history as you are likely to find.

6) The Teeth May Smile But The Heart Does Not Forgive by Amdrew Rice. Intertwines a story about a man's search for his executed father's killers with a general history of Uganda and the Amin years in particular. Sometimes in these kinds of books with two stories, one is strong you get one strong and one weak. not in this one.

5) Moscow 1937 by Karl Shlogel. Again, I'm a bit late with this one (out in 2012), but holy hell is this a good/terrifying book. Each chapter is a different tale of events or places in Moscow which were heralded as massive triumphs of soviet culture, and concludes by recording which of the dramatis personae in that chapter were executed over the following 36 months.

4) Mr Putin: Operative in the Kremlin by Clifford Gaddy and Fiona Hill. There are quite a few books out there trying to "explain" Putin or Putinism (Nothing is True and Everything is Permitted is anther good recent effort) but they all pale in comparison to this one. Meticulous, multi-dimensional and even though they clearly find their subject worrisome, they make a reasonable case (I think) for why the 2000-2008 Putin was about as good a leader as Russia was likely to get.

3) Learning by Doing: The Real Connection between Innovation, Wages, and Wealth by James Bessen. I read a lot of pop econ, especially around innovation and growth. This was the best book of the year hands down. It didn't get the kind of attention that some pop econ books do because it was selling a relatively unfashionable view that in the present economy, on-the-job training is probably more important than formal tertiary education. Not sure I buy it all (some of it is over-analogizing from his well-researched work on the industrial revolution), but it was interesting and refreshing.

2. Athene Palace by RG Waldeck. Purves Grundy turned me on to this book during our very weird but quite excellent Cape Town 'thon with G-man. Written by a female german/american correspondent with AP who arrives in Bucharest (and stays at the ponymous hotel, which is still now a Hilton property) the day Paris falls to the Germans, she recounts the intrigues of being in continental Europe's largest non-fascist capital for the last six months before the Nazis came. Fascinating. Brilliant. Have been giving it to some Romanian friends who find it quite a different perspective on their own history.

1) Congo by David van Reybrouck. If you have any interest in Africa at all, read this book. One of the very few books that does a decent job of writing a history of an African country from a more-or-less African perspective.

Honourable mentions: Kevin Carey's The End of College (I disagree with large parts of it, but am glad he wrote it nonetheless), Neil McGregor's Germany: Memories of a Nation, Lauren Rivera's Pedigree: How Elite Students get Elite jobs (horrifying. the ivies should be nuked), Murakami's 1Q84, Michael Booth's The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of Scandinavian Utopia, Daniel Tudor and James Pearson's North Korea Confidential (maybe not that great a book but I;m a sucker for juche), Neil Stephenson's Seveneves (the rare Stephenson book where the unnecessary 200 pages comes in the middle, not the end), Josiah Ober's The Rise and fall of Classical Greece, and Dan Breznitz's Innovation and the State (nerdy, but good if you're up for that kind of tihng).

What were your faves this year?

[Sam]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Anton Gramscescu wrote: (Currently reading John Lynch's biography of Simon Bolivar which is interesting becuase I didn't know a tenth of this stuff about the Latin American wars of independence but as a literary effort its pretty meh).

Did it go into much detail regarding his time in Spain shagging (or trying to shag) pretty much any woman with a pulse?

[Anton Gramscescu]

Current Reading - Books best thread

In ludicrous detail. And not just in Spain. I think it named every chica in every 2-bit pueblo from La Paz to Caracas who managed to be horizontally liberated.

(Was thinking about you yesterday, actually - could see the towers in BA from our perch in Colonia).

[Mumpo]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Mr Beast wrote:

Finished The Skies Belong To Us, by Brendan Korner. It's about the numerous plane hijackings (or, at the time, "skyjackings") in 1960s and 70s America, and he focuses for most of the book on the story of a couple from San Diego, Roger Holder and Catherine Kerkow.

Just finished it. Great reco. Utterly compelling and absurd at the same time. Basically any putz could walk/drive/bicycle onto a runway and go where he wanted with relative ease. Astounding that there weren't horrible disasters before it all ended.

I enjoyed this and was amazed at the frequency of hijacking in the US. The best bit was where a hijacker with a couple of toddlers on board (naturally) turns her gun on a stewardess and demands that she crochet her baby a hat.

Just finished it too, brilliant stuff. Crying out to be made into a film.