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    Yes, that's what I'm finding. He does digress, but I wouldn't say the book is at all the worse for it.

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      Recent/current reading:

      Dawkins - The Blind Watchmaker (not far into it, but very good so far, nice illustrative examples and only moderately laboured points)

      D R Thorpe - Supermac (a biography of Harold Macmillan, absolutely cracking read, I'm up to the 1959 election so far)

      Jane Austen - S+S (no point commenting, you'll all have your own opinions on it I'm sure, but I enjoyed it)

      N N Taleb - Skin in the Game - OK, shoot me, I bought a book (in a 3 for 2 deal) by the obviously egomaniacal arrogant twat who repeats all his points ad nauseam, especially his most frequent points which are "I am unbelievably wonderful" and "[huge categories of professionals in public life] are charlatans". But if you can get through the grossly inflated sense of his own infallible correctness and his arrogant dismissal of almost everyone else (a tough ask for the more discerning reader than I am, perhaps) there are quite a few interestingly illustrated thought-provoking points. And occasionally even the bitchiness is quite amusingly OTT, as in one particularly aggressive swipe at Steven Pinker.

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        Pinker deserves all the swipes he gets.

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          You'd be welcome at our gaff. The wife's a Pinker groupie and the lad's a Peterson fanboy.

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            Ooft!

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              His room must be spotless in fairness but.

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                Ha! I'm exaggerating just a teenie bit. The Peterson fooforah over the past year or so served as a catalyst for him to question some of the assumptions he'd been making over the years. So genuinely important for that reason. As for La Signora, she just gets the hots for intelligent, handsome men (she married me after all.) And Pinker pushes all the right buttons in that regard.

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                  Finished The New Silk Roads earlier this week. It's a fascinating update on The Silk Roads.... Eerily prescient and everso slightly frightening...
                  For example this:
                  "... There seems little or no recognition of the fact that while 'the will of the people' to leave the European Union was expressed in 2016, the world has changed dramatically since then. Challenges have appeared that were not just not known about at the time of the referendum, and in some cases did not even exist. As such, perhaps the biggest problem about Brexit is not the question of whether leaving the European Union is right for the UK; it is whether it is right to do so at a time of such profound geopolitical fragility. There are real dangers in concentrating on matters that are of parochial importance when so many other more significant and challenging problems require and demand attention"

                  This in the context of the UK banks' exposure to a Chinese credit bubble bursting being more than US, Euro area, Japan and Korea combined....

                  I'd urge everyone to read it.

                  One small gripe with it is that the rush to bring it out shows in the number of proof-reading errors. Someone at Bloomsbury is probably packing their desk as we speak...

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                    I've read 'Children of Ruin' by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It's the sequel to 'Children of Time', but while that did a great job of imagining what a spider civilisation could look like, the octopus civilisation in this wasn't as compelling. That's probably because he was trying to interweave a third story into it and because he's already done the 'another species becomes the intelligent apex species' theme. I quite liked the octopuses and the idea of an emotionally-led race where that wasn't seen as a weakness deserved a bit more page time. Also the one character to (sort of) carry over from 'Children of Time' was deeply unsympathetic and the book might have been better without them in it.

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                      Last week on holiday I read Stone Mattress, a collection of shorts stories by Margaret Atwood. All really good. I like her writing a lot.

                      Before that I finally finished The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs by Steve Brusatte, which was half fascinating (when it was about dinosaurs) and half irritating (when it was about his paleontology frat and all his amazing fossil hunting mates who get pissed and are just hilarious, man).

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                        Cary Elwes: "As You Wish - Stories from the Making of The Princess Bride". A very charming book which does exactly what it says on the tin, giving background to the filming of one of the great movies of all time. It does get a little "gosh, gee, these actors are so talented and so wonderful" at times but there is genuine sense of love for the film from the participants and camaraderie between the cast and crew. I didn't know that The Greatest Swordfight of All Time was genuinely - acrobatic swing aside - done in full by Elwes and Patinkin. Andre The Giant comes across as the nicest human being in the world. Like the film, it just gives you a warm glow inside.

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                          A couple of recent-ish uncanny companion pieces:

                          Long Road From Jarrow by Stuart Maconie &
                          All Together Now by Mike Carter

                          I’d avoided Maconie’s scribbling until now, being put off by pun-tastic titles like Pies and Prejudice, and wary it might all be a bit too much matey-DJ bantz for me.

                          Both followed the route of historical protest marches (the ‘36 Jarrow Crusade & the ‘81 Peoples March For Jobs), both were written in 2016, so Brexit loomed large, both did a then & now comparison of places and folk along the way, both had done a decent amount of historical investigative legwork, and both featured some personal reflections and opinions of the authors. And both were very readable and informative.

                          The Maconie one has set me off on reading the J B Priestly 30s travelogue (English Journey) which is currently a free read on Kindle Unlimited if you have that. I know something of his social commentary, and how large he loomed as a character mid-20th Century, but have never read anything by him other than a couple of plays.

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                            Good Companions is a decent Priestly read from the same period. I had it as GCE 'O' level book and it still lingers in the memory.

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                              Oh, AdeC, I just read Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea on your recommendation - brilliant. Will pass it on to my daughter who's a massive Jane Eyre fan.

                              Also just finished Eric Newby's Love and War in the Apennines, prompting me to put Everything He's Ever Written on my to-read list, bar Big Red Train Journey, which I read decades ago.

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                                I'm very nearly finished reading Max Hasting's book on the Vietnam War. It is exhausting, but thorough.

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                                  Originally posted by imp View Post

                                  Also just finished Eric Newby's Love and War in the Apennines, prompting me to put Everything He's Ever Written on my to-read list, bar Big Red Train Journey, which I read decades ago.
                                  I absolutely loved "A Short Walk In The Hindu Kush" when I read it. I should probably read more of his books.

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                                    I have been meaning to do the same (which means I might get to it in the next decade or so)

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                                      Stewart Lee's Brexit collection, 'March of the Lemmings', is very good. Although the Guardian articles are online, he also includes his stand-up script and copious footnotes; moreover, books are just warmer to read than online pieces. The only flaw is that the timeline ends in March 2019, but you can read his Grauniad articles since March online to get up to date.

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                                        I was going to add Mick Herron's Slow Horses to the espionage thread, but besides being an excellent spy story it's also remarkably prescient. Published in 2010 it not only predicts, pretty exactly, how and when the extreme right would take over the Conservative party. It also has a diaphanous and devastatingly accurate portrayal of Boris Johnson, as their leader in waiting.

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                                          Ha! I read that just a few weeks ago and was wondering about mentioning those points. I really enjoyed reading it, but couldn't tell if I was being a bit biased because the author's an acquaintance of my mum.

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                                            Well I'm certainly not biased for that reason! I haven't finished it yet but can't wait to read the rest of the Slough House series.

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                                              Sounds like my cup of tea. I have ordered Slow Horses on your recommendation and will post a review eventually after I've reached it on my reading pile.

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                                                I've started reading The Ballad of Peckham Rye. It's eye openingly good. Everyone feels like real people, in real situations even in unlikely combinations.

                                                And it's got more sex in it than I expected, but the surprise is a fault with me. Of course a book about young, bored people is going to be about sex.

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                                                  I've been short of work this month, which conversely means I tend to get less reading done because I feel guilty about consciously taking time off (so I just waste time sitting in front of the computer instead). But on Thursday I sat down and ploughed through the last 17% (no real page numbers in the ebook) of Black Sea, at long last. Kept myself busy on Friday (bedroom curtains needed a bit of sewing done to them, I did some laundry, and I started varnishing the top of the desk my girlfriend's making me), so haven't started the next book yet. The candidates are Rebecca Ingalls's Mrs Caliban and Other Stories and Marlon James's Black Leopard Red Wolf. The latter is an actual hardback copy a friend brought back for me a couple of months ago because I liked A Brief History of Seven Killings so much I thought I'd treat myself. I think what I'll probably do is read Mrs Caliban (which sounds brilliant) first, but save the Other Stories until later. As a single ebook it's really long, but the novella itself is about 125 pages, so shouldn't take long to get through.

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                                                    Oh, and I should second/third/fourth/whateverth everyone else's recommendations of Black Sea. I read it very slowly, but it is a gorgeous book. And the epilogue of the newer edition I read ends with a quote from Borges. Couldn't have asked for anything more.

                                                    Neal Ascherson seems very much like Someone I Could Put Up With Being Stuck In A Lift With.

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