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    Originally posted by Anton Gramscescu View Post
    By George, I think he's got it!

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      Just finished The Triumph of Empire by Michael Kulikowski. It is subtitled "The Roman World from Hadrian to Constantine", but that's kind of misleading. 90% of this is a history of Emperors and the other 10% is foreign policy (mostly the Parthians and the Sassanians who occupied modern Iran and essentially played Russia to Rome's America). That's not a knock - this is not a part of the Empire's history that is often well told, or even told at all (Mary Beard's SPQR, for instance, ends with Marcus Aurelius, which is about where this book really gets moving). The later Severan dynasty, with its weird Syrian priest-kings, and the Empire's subsequent descent into a near-constant series of coups, counter-coups and other related disasters from 238 to 284, probably wouldn't make for a super-coherent narrative even if we had better source data (which we don't).

      If for some reason, you're dying for a short(ish) history that gets you the basic chronology of Roman political history from Vespasian to Constantine, then yeah, sure, pick up this book. (though to be honest if you've got the time, I'd say listen to Mike Duncan's History of Rome*podcasts on the same periods - roughly, episodes 100 through 140). But if what interests you is social history, or every day in Rome, or military history, you are not going to find a lot of joy in this book. The most interesting bits for me were actually the stuff about the Parthians and Sassanids, which was mostly new to me,
      Last edited by Anton Gramscescu; 12-12-2017, 09:44.

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        Why I'm No Longer Speaking To White People About Race (by Reni Eddo-Lodge) will probably be my next non-football book, I’ve read and heard plenty of good things about it. “A Good Read” on R4 reviewed it two weeks ago (from 10’20 to 19’24): http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09gg8tp

        Nish Kumar gets the ball rolling by making a crucial point about Eddo-Lodge’s book (about 12 minutes into the conversation), the fact that we, in Britain, had lulled ourselves into a false sense of “anti-racist” security since the 1990s and that, as he explains (I’m quoting him verbatim here), “the only positive thing that I can take from the sort of upswing in hate crimes in the aftermath of the referendum is that we don’t have to pretend that there isn’t an issue anymore because we have sort of hard proof and this book couldn’t be more timely.” ([…] She [Eddo-Lodge] is saying that there are systemic issues with race that we have failed to confront over the last 25-30 years and this book is an attempt to jar us out of complacency because growing up as a non-White person in the 1990s, you were constantly being told “Oh it’s fine, Goodness Gracious Me is on TV, Lenny Henry is very famous, it’s fine, we’ve gone beyond this kind of arguments” and then strangely enough really after Obama was elected President, we were told we’d all moved into a post-racial utopia, the only positive thing etc.”)

        Of course, we had “hard proof” of this way before Brexit (49,419 race hate crime & 4,400 religious hate crimes recorded by the police in England & Wales in 2015/2016, between 1 April 2015 and 31 March 2016, and that’s only the tip of the iceberg of course) but it was somehow marginalised in terms of media coverage and therefore downplayed. At least, Brexit has brought out racism and xenophobia in the open, it’s shown that overt racism doesn’t just “happen abroad” and that we’re not the tolerant society we thought we were (or that people liked to think we were).
        Last edited by Pérou Flaquettes; 14-12-2017, 22:43.

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          Just stared Heart of Darkness by Conrad. Heard it's great, but a challenge. Will report back as to whether this Conrad fellow has a future in writing.

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            Michael Palin's 'Hemingway Adventure' is very good, despite the crap title and the uneven nature of his other travel writing. Palin's prose rises to his subject.

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              I'm halfway through Frogkisser by Garth Nix and am fairly certain it's not going to be the standalone novel I thought it was but the first instalment in a series.

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                I finished Indigo Donut shortly before Christmas, and re-read some of it this past week. It's by Patrice Lawrence, who's been a friend of mine since the early 90s, and it's a Young Adult Fiction prizewinner, as was her previous book, Orangeboy.

                I can't praise it highly enough, I cried for several pages (because I'm soppy) and laughed a lot (because it's witty). It's just a marvellous book. If you have teenagers, I'd recommend seeking it out. I read it without having to try to transition to my inner teenager at all, and forgot it was my mate writing early on. I was just gripped by the story and in love with the characters. I've gone on thinking about the characters since and wondered how they're doing. It's that good.

                One review here:
                https://www.theguardian.com/books/20...fiction-bailey
                Last edited by MsD; 30-12-2017, 13:46.

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                  @MsD That looks really good. I sometimes wonder what distinguishes teen from adult fiction, and whether in many cases there's a dividing line at all. I suppose 'The Catcher in the Rye', for example, should be classified as teen fiction. Radiguet's 'The Devil in the Flesh'. I don't remember reading teen fiction, as such, as a teen - I just read what looked interesting to me.

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                    I don't know, either. Maybe it's a "marketing" thing - it can be sold to schools and people will buy it to encourage teenagers to read. That's happening, Patrice gets invited to speak at schools and some of the teenagers say it's the first book that's engaged them for years. With teenage characters, it might be harder to sell to an older audience unless they're persuaded by personal recommendation. After a certain age, we (generally) tend to stick with the genre we like, unless something wins the Booker Prize, or is a word-of-mouth sensation.

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                      The difference as far as I can tell is to do with the age of the protagonists. If the protagonists are young adults, it's YA; if they're adults, it's not.

                      That's literally the only divide I can see which makes, say, John Green's The Fault in Our Stars YA while Myriam Toew's All My Puny Sorrows is an adult novel. I wouldn't say they're the same book but they deal with a lot of similar issues and questions.

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                        I tried to buy a copy of Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd yesterday, as it's the first book on the Bowie Book Club.

                        https://www.rollingstone.com/music/n...novels-w514831

                        It's sold out in most places and isn't available on Kindle. Luckily my colleague happened to have a spare hardback (first edition, but not worth anything) which he's brought in for me today. I will start it at the weekend.

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                          I accidentally learned about The Raft by Robert Trumbull and just motored through it in a couple of days (train reading). It's the true story of three US Navvies on a sub-hunting mission in the South Pacific. They ditch their plane in the sea and spend 34 days starving, scorching and nearly drowning in a 4x8 rubber dingy. They finally wash up on an inhabited atoll in the Cook Islands and live to tell the tale.

                          What's fascinating is that it's actually written during the war, so they need to be circumspect about certain details because the damn war's still on. Apparently it was made into a movie in 2015 called Against The Sun, which didn't do much business in the shadow of the superior Unbroken by Laura Hillendbrand. (which I also read and loved).

                          Also cool is that I bought it used on Abe for $1, and it's a hardcover early edition inscribed with the original owner's name, hand-dated December 13, 1946, Bombay. LOVE shit like that.

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                            That is indeed very cool.

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                              Currently reading... 'Fire and Fury'. The first time in the 23 years I've known her that frau imp and I have been simultaneously reading the same book. Nishlord described it on Facebook as like staring at an unwiped hairy arse. I find it much more voyeuristically fascinating than that. A bit like staring at a horrific car crash or an unusually grotesque skin condition - shouldn't be looking at all, but just can't stop. It's in equal measure hilarious and 'fuck me!' alarming.

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                                I really wish that gorilla channel bit had really been in it

                                https://www.snopes.com/donald-trump-...rilla-channel/

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                                  It wouldn't have been at all out of place.

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                                    'The Rise of Political Lying' by Peter Oborne (2005) on the Major and Blair years. Perhaps too recent to be interesting history but a good refresher on Blair's mendacity.

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                                      Oborne is often good, but there's too much "they didn't tell lies in the good old days". As witnessed every year for donkeys years when government papers get released under the 30 year rule.

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                                        I've just finished Caliban's War by James SA Corey. It's the second in the Expanse series. I enjoyed it. Couple of good new characters. But the epilogue cliffhanger made me go 'no way!'

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                                          I’ve been reading those, too, following an OTFer recommendation in a science/space thread. Very good stuff.
                                          Tho trumped by a stand-alone Kim Stanley Robinson “Aurora “ in terms of settling other planets narratives. Also recently read.

                                          TimMoore’s “The Cyclist who went out in the Cold” about cycling the Iron Curtain is currently cheering my winter blues (ironically, as he starts in the snow way up north). I love his cycling books.

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                                            Finished reading Priest Daddy by Patricia Lockwood - kooky, but enjoyed. And The Wrestling by Simon Garfield, which I really loved. It was written in the 1990s and catches up with the famous UK wrestlers from the 70s and 80s. Took a punt on those from the library after they were featured on the Backlisted podcast.
                                            Last edited by Mark Sanderson; 15-01-2018, 15:44.

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                                              Patricia Highsmith's The Tremor of Forgery is exceedingly clever. Long skilled at slowly building suspense, Highsmith creates a masterpiece of low-level anxiety. Set in Tunisia in 1967 (the book was published in 1969) its protagonist is a writer named Howard. The choice of name is already off-kilter — handsome heroes are never named Howard. He's an American killing time while waiting to meet the director of a film he's been hired to write. While doing so he begins work on a planned novel, bearing the same name as the book we're reading. Howard stays at a resort a short distance from Tunis. He meets an affable, but irritatingly insistent, fellow countryman, and a gay Danish artist with a large dog. Back home he's left a GF he intends to marry, probably. While there the Six-Day-War between Israel and Egypt takes place. American tourists have cars overturned in Tunis. The interaction of these people and events, mostly in Howard's head, (and others which would be too spoiler-ish to mention) form the basis of the story. Highly recommended, as the conclusion isn't remotely what I expected from a Highsmith novel.

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                                                Originally posted by Mark Sanderson View Post
                                                Finished reading Priest Daddy by Patricia Lockwood - kooky, but enjoyed. And The Wrestling by Simon Garfield, which I really loved. It was written in the 1990s and catches up with the famous UK wrestlers from the 70s and 80s. Took a punt on those from the library after they were featured on the Backlisted podcast.
                                                Whoa, that's a quiet way to introduce yourself to the board - via the backdoor to the library. Welcome to OTF, Mark.

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                                                  I'm currently reading Danubia: A personal history of Habsburg Europe by Simon Winder. I'm not sure if I like it. It has some very funny bits, and I am learning a lot, but effectively it is a travel book in which the travel is "through the ages" rather than geographical, and frequently he drops in something that sounds interesting but then proceeds to not mention it again. . I think on balance I'd give it a recommendation.

                                                  He has another one (before this one) called Germania, on the history of Germany (or probably better said, the German speaking parts of Europe, I think)

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                                                    ad hoc, have you read Danube by Claudio Magris? I keep looking at it and then putting it back.

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