Last Book You Read....

[Detournement]

13 minutes ago, ThatBoyRonaldo said:

 The guy who is his rival

There's definitely a good book/movie to be people who are work enemies. Make it about two birds where one is evil and one is totally justified in everything she does and it'd be one of the highest grossing movies of all time. 

[Ya Bezzer!]

Penguin put out a 'Penguin European Writers' series earlier this year, I think 6 titles, and they all look interesting but the one I picked to read was...

THE TRAIN WAS ON TIME by Heinrich Boll

For some reason I'm a big fan of books where nothing really happens.  You have one of my all time favourites 'Against Nature' by Huysmans, probably the best book I've read this year 'Stoner' by John Williams and now this 'The Train Was On Time' by Heinrich Boll.   A German soldier returning to the Eastern front becomes convinced he will never complete his journey and is destined to die on a certain day, at a certain place and a certain hour. Most of the novel therefore involves him sitting around eating sandwiches on the train as the minutes and hours tick by or him falling asleep and then reprimanding himself for doing so when he believes he has so little time left.  Yes, it's about death, or rather, an awareness of imminent death and how that informs our meaning and purpose of life.  There are various allegories you can draw from the book but I won't say much on those as I don't want to give the ending away.  Not as good as the other books I mentioned but I'd still give it 4/5

[Detournement]

The Lost Honour of Katarina Blum by Boll is a great read. It skewers scummy tabloid newspapers and middle class hypocrisy.

[Ya Bezzer!]

3 minutes ago, Detournement said:

The Lost Honour of Katarina Blum by Boll is a great read. It skewers scummy tabloid newspapers and middle class hypocrisy.

I try to read a many different authors as possible but I'll bare it in mind.  Would definitely consider reading another Boll novel, perhaps next year.

[Duszek]

17 hours ago, Ya Bezzer! said:

Penguin put out a 'Penguin European Writers' series earlier this year, I think 6 titles, and they all look interesting but the one I picked to read was...

THE TRAIN WAS ON TIME by Heinrich Boll

For some reason I'm a big fan of books where nothing really happens.  You have one of my all time favourites 'Against Nature' by Huysmans, probably the best book I've read this year 'Stoner' by John Williams and now this 'The Train Was On Time' by Heinrich Boll.   A German soldier returning to the Eastern front becomes convinced he will never complete his journey and is destined to die on a certain day, at a certain place and a certain hour. Most of the novel therefore involves him sitting around eating sandwiches on the train as the minutes and hours tick by or him falling asleep and then reprimanding himself for doing so when he believes he has so little time left.  Yes, it's about death, or rather, an awareness of imminent death and how that informs our meaning and purpose of life.  There are various allegories you can draw from the book but I won't say much on those as I don't want to give the ending away.  Not as good as the other books I mentioned but I'd still give it 4/5

I cracked open Huysmans yesterday, been meaning to read it for ages. It’s tough going because his vocabulary is so extensive (reading it in French) and I had to either keep stopping to look words up or just blunder on. As a result, I’ve (temporarily) binned it in favour of A Prayer for Owen Meany. Which is magnificent.

[Ya Bezzer!]

7 minutes ago, Duszek said:

I cracked open Huysmans yesterday, been meaning to read it for ages. It’s tough going because his vocabulary is so extensive (reading it in French) and I had to either keep stopping to look words up or just blunder on. As a result, I’ve (temporarily) binned it in favour of A Prayer for Owen Meany. Which is magnificent.

I can imagine!  It's tough to read in translation.

[Monkey Tennis]

Just finished The Gallows Pole by Benjamin Myers.

I'm not generally a fan of historical fiction, but I thought this was excellent. It's about coiners in West Yorkshire in the 18th Century.  There's a real brutality about the book - it's decidedly masculine, but it's also pretty captivating.  I can't think of anything I've read which makes a better job of evoking time and place. 

It also feels (probably inadvertently) timely.  A northern English sense of threat from outsiders, is buttressed by wild inequality and poverty.  Then as now, there's more moral ambiguity about it all than either side might concede.  

I loved this book and would readily recommend it.

 

[coprolite]

14 hours ago, MixuFruit said:

Scottish Prehistory by Richard Oram.

Cracking read, teaching me all kinds of interesting things that will inform where I go for jaunts for years to come. I know my crannogs from my duns from my brochs from my cists now. Loads of stuff you wouldn't expect as well, prehistoric tribes in the northwest practiced child sacrifice and they reckon they chopped their heads off and put them on sticks till they rotted and their jaws fell off based on where they found bones in a cave . I never knew we were descended from such savagery. We can probably trace our sense of Scottishness from Romans knocking the shit out of us as individual tribes. It has a brilliant gazeteer of notable sites all over Scotland, can't wait to go and visit new ones and revisit old ones armed with a bit more knowledge.

Does he have a view on whether/ how brochs were roofed? 

[coprolite]

5 minutes ago, MixuFruit said:

He lays out both roof and no-roof theories without saying which he thinks is more likely.

I like that approach in a prehistorian. Will read. 

[coprolite]

16 minutes ago, MixuFruit said:

It's great, about 20% of the book is just him moaning he can't excavate anything.

It's an oldish book, isn't it? He can probably see through the ground with radioactive lasers and stuff now. 

[tongue_tied_danny]

On 21/10/2020 at 22:36, NotThePars said:

The Bloody White Baron - James Palmer

A relatively short biography of Baron Ungern von Sternberg, a minor German aristocrat in Russian Estonia, in the early twentieth century who went on to lead a cavalry division in Mongolia against the Bolsheviks who he saw as ushering in an apocalyptic social order which was informed by his massive racism, monarchism and weird blend of Lutheranism, Russian Orthdoxy and Buddhism which fused into a millennialism where he viewed himself self-consciously as a Genghis Khan-esque figure. A pretty good biography that shines a light on a relatively unknown peripheral figure of the Russian Civil War but one who was especially ruthless in what was a ruthless conflict. Would recommend especially as it manages to do what a lot of history writing doesn't do which is make itself an easy read. Read like a novel rather than a mere recounting of historical events.

Okay, so I got my mitts on this via the Google play store. I'm about half way through and I'm really into it. 

I'm quite enjoying the insight into the various orthodox Christian and far eastern religions, as that's something that I've never really paid much attention to before. The Baron himself is an interesting character, albeit a complete arsehole.

I'm quite fascinated by eastern European history, particularly the bitter conflicts between the various ethnic and religious groups. It's all barely mentioned here in the UK even though it has influenced major world events. 

Like you said, the book is well written and entertaining rather than just being a dry and heavy going history textbook. 

[NotThePars]

Okay, so I got my mitts on this via the Google play store. I'm about half way through and I'm really into it.  I'm quite enjoying the insight into the various orthodox Christian and far eastern religions, as that's something that I've never really paid much attention to before. The Baron himself is an interesting character, albeit a complete arsehole.

I'm quite fascinated by eastern European history, particularly the bitter conflicts between the various ethnic and religious groups. It's all barely mentioned here in the UK even though it has influenced major world events. 

Like you said, the book is well written and entertaining rather than just being a dry and heavy going history textbook. 

 

 

Aye I thought he did a terrific job of evoking how alien the sense of time and place are to readers.

 

I know more serious academics might have beef with it but I prefer when authors like Palmer, the author of Ekaterinberg, and China Mieville in his narrative history of October (both of which I highly recommend) do their own editorialising and speculate on how specific actors must have felt and acted in moments that aren’t necessarily well-documented. It makes for better reading, imo.

 

[Duszek]

Just finished A Prayer for Owen Meany.

Enjoyable yarn. The character of Owen is brilliant, there are some funny moments and great set-piece scenes, but not sure it required 600+ pages.

Would recommend World According to Garp over this.

[Saigon Raider]

Its a fantastic read. The level of sheer incompetence and arrogance surrounding it is outrageous

Just finished Chernobyl - it's really excellent. The scale of the disaster and the attempted clean up was mind-blowing. The idea with radiation poisoning that you feel alright after a couple of weeks but you are basically cooking from the inside.

Having just read Stalingrad as well it shows how the Russians would simply just throw people at any disaster - everybody doing it for the homeland.

Onto Before They Are Hanged by Joe Abercrombie now - absolutely loved the first one.

[Homer Thompson]

Just finished Chernobyl - it's really excellent. The scale of the disaster and the attempted clean up was mind-blowing. The idea with radiation poisoning that you feel alright after a couple of weeks but you are basically cooking from the inside.

Having just read Stalingrad as well it shows how the Russians would simply just throw people at any disaster - everybody doing it for the homeland.

Onto Before They Are Hanged by Joe Abercrombie now - absolutely loved the first one.

Hope you have watched the hbo TV series, its excellent. The guy that wrote it also did a really good podcast that goes into more detail

[Le Tout P'ti FC]

Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart has won the Booker Prize. A book which I have bought, but which has never quite made it to the top of my reading pile. Have a week off work soon, will try to read it then.

Any love for Shuggie Bain here?

Ps. My favourite recent book was Motherwell by Deborah Orr.

[stanton]

9 minutes ago, Le Tout P'ti FC said:

Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart has won the Booker Prize. A book which I have bought, but which has never quite made it to the top of my reading pile. Have a week off work soon, will try to read it then.

Any love for Shuggie Bain here?

Ps. My favourite recent book was Motherwell by Deborah Orr.

It's on my one to read list  too , plenty good reviews on the Good Reads site and its been nominated for a few awards 

[RH33]

The Star Outside My Window by Onjali Rauf

Its a kids book dealing with domestic violence, foster care. Read it before my kids do but it’s a lovely read despite topics covered.

[John MacLean]

Not long finished Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel. 

It's set in a world ravaged by a flu like pandemic so it has a certain resonance with current events. A little too much resonance if truth be told although we fortunately aren't dealing with a 99% mortality rate. 

I enjoyed it. Touched on a lot of interesting themes. 

[expatowner]

Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson

heavy going