*What book are you reading? (part 2)

[pseudonarcissus]

I'm on The dream of the Celt, Mario Vargas Llosa and I'm disappointed....it just seems to me badly edited with stylistic annoyances and a bad translation, I checked the name of the translator, she is an (American) English native speaker but she seems to have misplaced her dictionary. I've loved all Vargas Llosa's other books.

Anyway, interesting in a way: the life or Roger Casement, probably like most English people, I have no idea about Irish history and the Easter Rising

 

[Captain Hurrah]

Where Have All The Fascists Gone? - Tamir Bar-On

 

[Orang Utan]

Finally! He's a wordier dicks and I really want his sci fi history tome but its nigh on fifty quid

try Land of The Headless next, its a very subtle piece with an unreliable narrator as the 1st person voice

I'm being geeky like I am with Dick and am reading his works chronologically, so it's Stone after On

 

[DotCommunist]

If stone was ever filmed it would be done by Cronenburg or Lynch. So much body horror

 

[Reno]

Seems like the good people of Urban still spell Cronenberg as Cronenburg.

http://www.urban75.net/forums/threads/david-cronenburgs-best-film.189043/

 

[frogwoman]

a series of books about the most unethical psychiatrist in the world and the stupidest policeman in the world.

 

[Orang Utan]

What are they called and who wrote them?

 

[frogwoman]

My grandma.

 

[starfish]

Christopher Brookmyres A Snowball in Hell. Its the second of his ive read & am enjoying it so far. I think ill read more of him.

 

[Orang Utan]

My grandma.

That's helpful!

 

[frogwoman]

That's helpful!

My grandma wrote them. I'm going to have to promote them on urban in a few months' time.

 

[frogwoman]

I shouldn't have actually told you that btw because I'm not supposed to be revealing "trade secrets".

 

[DotCommunist]

Seems like the good people of Urban still spell Cronenberg as Cronenburg.

http://www.urban75.net/forums/threads/david-cronenburgs-best-film.189043/

I think its cos of the lager

 

[articul8]

Just finishing Andy Kershaw's auto-biog "No off switch". What a top bloke (if a self-destructively wondering eye for the ladies - as I'm sure he'd admit).

Thoroughly recommended.

 

[DotCommunist]

I'm being geeky like I am with Dick and am reading his works chronologically, so it's Stone after On

he has stated an intention to do a science fiction book in every genre- a laudable aim. Sometimes it falls down though. His take on Gullivers Travels is especially weird as he overplays Swifts disgust for bodily functions by including an entirely unnecessary shit-fetish

 

[Bakunin]

'Firepower' by Chris Dempster and Dave Tomkins. I'm writing an article on mercenaries and these two signed up to fight in the Angolan Civil War during the 1970's under the command of Costas Georgiou (AKA 'Colonel Callan'). 'Callan' was a homicidal maniac who went in for torturing prisoners, summary executions of both local civilians and his own men (he bumped off a dozen of his own mercs at the notorious 'Maquela Massacre') and once tested a shotgun by calling an Angolan private out of the ranks, sticking the shotgun in his mouth and firing it.

It's informative and interesting, but also so violent and gruesome that it's the kind of book I'd read for work and not for pleasure. It's essentially a litany of Callan's brutalities (and those of his equally psychopathic inner circle) linked together with a solid, accurate account of the mercs' recruitment and service with the FNLA faction led by Holden Roberto and funded by both the CIA and the SDECE (French Secret Service). One benefit is that it's given me an idea for another article on the first Private Military Company (in the sense that we know them today), the not-at-all-opportunistically-named Security Advisory Services (SAS) run by the nefarious John Banks.

 

[Thraex]

"Selected Political Speeches" Cicero. Translated and introduced by Michael Grant. The man was a brilliant orator and wrote very well. These speeches were written up after the event, sometimes by a few years, so how accurate they are is debatable. Enjoying it so far, and it's filling in lots of missing pieces for me.

 

[catinthehat]

The map and the territory - Michel Hollenbeque. Best fiction I have read in ages.

 

[Thraex]

Giving myself a break from those pesky Romans with "The Wreckers" by Bella Bathurst. Well written, and fascinating stuff.

 

[andy2002]

Just started The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross after seeing it discussed on another recent thread.

 

[N_igma]

Finally decided to tackle War and Peace. Not only is there over a thousand pages but each page is about 2 times as long as a normal book so I'm in this for the long haul! I'll come back in a few months when I'm finished and let you know how I got on!

 

[TruXta]

Nightside the long sun by Gene Wolfe. Wasn't as immediately thrilled as with the previous tetralogy, but it feels like a proper grower a 150 pages in.

 

[Frances Lengel]

Genus by Jonathan Trigell, he's the guy who wrote that Boy A that got made into a film. Genus is shaping up to be a pretty good book in which the world is run by genetically improved fuckers and anyone who is in a natural, unimproved state is despised as part of a barely human underclass - It's all very believable, the only minor quibble I've got is that it features a dance craze known as "salsco" - Fictional bands, music etc always sound corny, though. Mind you, nothing could be as bad as the fictional band name "Pus Casserole", as seen in Tom Wolfe's brick thick pile of steaming brown stuff "A man In Full".

 

[revol68]

One of Europe's leading intellectual historians deconstructs liberalism's dark side.
In this definitive historical investigation, Italian author and philosopher Domenico Losurdo argues that from the outset liberalism, as a philosophical position and ideology, has been bound up with the most illiberal of policies: slavery, colonialism, genocide, racism and snobbery.

Narrating an intellectual history running from the eighteenth through to the twentieth centuries, Losurdo examines the thought of preeminent liberal writers such as Locke, Burke, Tocqueville, Constant, Bentham, and Sieyès, revealing the inner contradictions of an intellectual position that has exercised a formative influence on today’s politics. Among the dominant strains of liberalism, he discerns the counter-currents of more radical positions, lost in the constitution of the modern world order.

Pretty good but the author doesn't half labour his points over and over again, and though I understand it's a history of an intellectual tradition I think it would be better with more empirical data and a bit fewer quotes from Burke etc

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

 

[Orang Utan]

How are you finding it?

 

[BoatieBird]

I've got that in my pile of book to read.
Isn't it the 3rd in a trilogy? Does it stand up on its own?

 

[Orang Utan]

It stands on its own, but best start off with American Tabloid and ease yourself into that style. You'll know more about some of the characters too

 

[BoatieBird]

Cheers OU, I'll add American Tabloid to the wish list

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

I've got that in my pile of book to read.
Isn't it the 3rd in a trilogy? Does it stand up on its own?

I didn't realize it was part of a trilogy. I've just started it - maybe I'll put it aside and pick up the others to read first.