Good reads

[OptimisticJock]

Cheers mate. That'll do to get me started

[SerjeantWildgoose]

Julian Barnes' A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters. This is a hugely readable collection of 10 very closely interwoven short stories (With the half chapter being a short essay on love) and one that I rattled through pretty quickly. It is moving in parts, funny in others and thought-provoking throughout.

[OptimisticJock]

Another brutally honest account of combat and Afghan by Doug Beattie in Task Force Helmand. The guy seems like the sort you'd want in your direct CoC and gladly follow. I still find it surreal reading about places I've been and fought over too and its only recently that I've started to read accounts of Herrick.

His tour was 2 before mine and the worst summer for British troops it's noticeably a precursor to the next fighting season, some hard fought contacts. Have to take admire the balls of Doug's OMLT and in particular when they were calling in all sorts of ordnance danger close in their last couple of contacts.

[SerjeantWildgoose]

Peter Taylor's Provos: The IRA and Sinn Fein. I was wandering round Waterstones in Belfast looking for something inspiring to read or failing that something trashy to relieve the burden of reading for my Masters. Taylor's book, which was written in the immediate aftermath of the IRA ceasefire in 1997, isn't really either of these things, but it is a fecking good read. I remember watching the 4-part TV programme back in 1997 and wishing that he had been able to produce it a few years earlier; I can't help feeling that it might have nudged the peace process on and saved goodness knows how many lives.

While Provos might appear to shade its sympathies towards the republicans, it needs to be viewed in the context of the access he was able to gain to some desperately dangerous people (And allowing them to have access to him, by return). The value you get in return is unprecedented insight into the (Often quite brilliant) minds of men who were portrayed by the government and media as mindless thugs and criminals.

It was quite interesting, having re-watched the TV programme, to hear his side of the interviews which are largely absent from the book and add the degree of censure that the book lacks. I would add that Provos is one of a three-part body of work that also includes 'Brits' and 'Loyalists.'

This was my 'war' and one that I daily give thanks to have seen the back of.

[SerjeantWildgoose]

Thomas Pakenham's The Year of Liberty: The History of the Great Irish Rebellion of 1798. I missed this one; finished it a week or so ago. An indulgence on my part. Cracking history of one of Ireland's early civil wars.

[SerjeantWildgoose]

J.M. Coetzee Diary of a Bad Year. This is a complex 'novel' and one that took me a little time to work out how to read. It was worth the effort. It interweaves three connected narratives running parallel.

The work is broken down into short chapters determined by the length of opinion pieces crafted by the principal narrator, C. The lower sections of each page then carry the parallel narratives of C, Anya (His typist) and/or Alan (Anya's boyfriend). Once you have figured out how to read it (I found after trial and error that it was better for me to break it down by chapter (rather than page or section) and read each narrative in sequence), it flows superbly. The narratives give it momentum but there is plenty of stuff in the opinion pieces that give pause for thought.

This is a really different spin on the novel, but Coetzee is nothing if not a master of his craft. I enjoy stuff that makes me think and this really ticked that box.

[SerjeantWildgoose]

Martin Middlebrooke's The Kaiser's Battle. A continuation of my centenary literary pilgrimage, Middlebrooke's The Kaiser's Battle applies the same format of his magnificent The First Day of the Somme to the 21st of March 1918 and the opening of the German Spring Offensive that signalled the breaking of the stalemate on the Western Front and ultimately led to the allied victory in November.

Published in 1978, Middlebrooke had the benefit of being able to interview a large number of veterans of the battle and these interviews provide the flesh and sinew of a very readable account whose skeleton is the author's superb grasp of the strategic, operational and tactical nuances. Others have followed a similar template, most notably Lyn MacDonald, Cornelius Ryan and, more recently, Peter Hart; none achieves quite the same level of interpretive rigour and human understanding of these extraordinarily brutal days as Middlebrooke.

Excellent and highly recommended.

[Donny osmond]

Just read Chris Brookmyre's Black Widow. I liked his earlier books as they were full of acerbic wit but he seems to have dropped that in favour of out and out whodunnits. Which is both a good and bad thing. Bad as theres less (almost none) of the wit but good as he is excellent at stringing plot lines together, and its the plot that is the strength of this book. I still dont like the characters in his books tho, which puts me off reading more of them.

Anyway Black Widow has brilliantly a conceived plot, very well executed and if the twist at the end is a little bit of a reach its well hidden enough to forgive him. An excellent read if you're after some fast flowing keep you guessing pulp to see you thru a wet week in March.

Sent from my HUAWEI VNS-L31 using Tapatalk

[OptimisticJock]

Black Watch by Tom Renouf. An anecdotal history of the 51st Highland Division in WW2, filled with quotes from thkse there, and his personal account of the war from joining up from '44 onwards. It's a very partisan history (I'd expect nothing less from a Black Watch Jock) and never really goes too in depth to either the 51st campaign or his own exploits despite fighting through Normandy, Holland and the Rhine and being present when Himmler surrendered, not to mention being wounded or commissioned. It was still an interesting account.

[paddy no 11]

Goran kropp - cycled from stockholm to kathmandu and then climbed up everest unaided so to speak, his story gained traction for being in the midst of the 1996 everest disaster. No great writing put just adds a little more detail to Krakauer's brilliant into thin air

[paddy no 11]

300 pages into gone with the wind, need to find some quick reads to read while going thru it

[SerjeantWildgoose]

Andreï Makine Brief Loves that Live Forever. The third novel I have read by this superb author, beautifully translated by the equally superb Geoffrey Strachan. As with Makine's A Life's Music, Brief Loves begins with an encounter with a man destroyed by a life in the Soviet labour camps. It then goes on to tell of episodes in the life of one who is raised in a Soviet-era orphanage, but who lives through the last years of the Soviet Union, serves and is wounded in Afghanistan and sees the rise of Gorbachev, perestroika and glasnost.

It is wonderfully insightful and, as with the other works of his I have read, a sublimely crafted story that turns full circle and returns to the broken man from the first chapter.

Brilliant.

[SerjeantWildgoose]

Barrie Pitt 1918: The Last Act. First published in 1962, Pitt's 1918 is very much a book of its time, but is written in a literary style that makes it eminently readable even today. Pitt was born in Galway in 1918, raised and schooled in England and was one of the researchers on the BBC's pioneering documentary series 'The Great War.' I enjoyed 1918, but there are more objective accounts of the last year of the Great War out there.

[SerjeantWildgoose]

Ron Rash Above the Waterfall. Rash's work is based on a simple formula: start off on the fringes of some Appalachian community, throw in a couple of handfuls of tortured souls with agonised pasts and then give it the CSI/Law and Order treatment. It doesn't sound much, but Rash writes with such beauty that it works and works and works. Above the Waterfall centres around a soon to retire small-town sheriff and a traumatised park ranger; there's a good dose of seasoning with chrystal meth and old ways versus new and it all comes together well.

I'd recommend Rash if you haven't read him yet and Above the Waterfall if you have and are looking for more.

[OptimisticJock]

Five Days From Defeat: How Britain Nearly Lost The First World War.

Less about the actual 5 critical days in the Kaiserschlacht and more about the interactions and disdain the main players on the British and French sides had for each other throughout the war. Interesting enough I suppose but too many bit played were name dropped, I might have found it more interesting if I knew more of the names to begin with.

[SerjeantWildgoose]

Just catching up on a few books since my last post.

Peter Hart 1918: A Very British Victory. Typical Peter Hart stuff. Lots of first-hand accounts woven into an accomplished strategic, operational and tactical narrative. Not quite as good as Middlebrooke, but it covers the whole of 1918, from the German Spring Offensive all the way through and just beyond the Armistice.

Patrick Modiano La Place de l'Étoile. I found this to be so far up itself that I am surprised I finished it. I've had it with Modiano.

Richard English Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA. Superb and with the 2012 afterword, about as up to date as you will get for what is the definitive work.

John Hersey Hiroshima. This one has been sitting on my shelves for some time and following some nonsensical yabbering on the Polishits thread I decided to read it. It tells the very human and heart-aching stories of six hibakusha - the explosion affected people. It does not change my view on the rights or wrongs of the decisions made in 1945, but it does make you absolutely determined to support whatever it takes to prevent it ever happening again.

[paddy no 11]

Gone with the wind

Mixed feelings on this but mostly I wouldn't really recommend it. It's a good read for about 2/3rds and then meh.

It's pretty racist in parts and there is a line between fairly representing the south (which doesn't happen a lot and no one would object to) and being racist

I like my death of romance do be delivered with better prose than on offer here

Back to McCarthy/Steinbeck (though of read all of McCarthy bar two plays)

[SerjeantWildgoose]

Gone with the wind



It's pretty racist in parts and there is a line between fairly representing the south (which doesn't happen a lot and no one would object to) and being racist

One of my favourite books as a child was Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories. If you haven't read these, they are the whimsical tales of how the elephant got its long nose, the rhino its loosely folded skin and the leopard his spots, etc. They were written at the arse-end of the 19th Century by a white man born, raised and living in India and not surprisingly the language sometimes reflects the social mores of their time. They are such entertaining and adventurous tales that, along with Barrack Room Ballads, they were some of the early books that I read to my sons at bedtime.

My sons' earliest years were spent in New Brunswick where I was posted to the Canadian Infantry School. Unknown to me, Mrs WG loaned The Just So Stories to one of her Canadian friends to read to their child. The book was returned the very next day by a somewhat bashful Canadian who said she had been appalled at the racism of the narrative. I was quite shocked.

In the first instance it appalled me that there might be racism in words that had so enthralled me as a child and that I had apparently imbued these racist messages without notice only to then read to my own children in their earliest formative years. Then I started to dig - and came across Orwell's acclaimed essay on Kipling and his work (worth a read - http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/kipling/english/e_rkip).

I have not read Gone With the Wind, but have seen enough chunks of the film to recognise that it portrays a highly romanticised and false view of the southern confederacy and its institution of slavery. It could just as easily be argued that it reflects the perceptions of its time, but unlike Kipling who was a man of his time and whose language is of its time, Mitchell wrote GWTW in 1936.

I have a huge interest in the antebellum United States and in its Civil War; I have no sympathy with the causes, lost or otherwise, of the south and Mitchell's saccharine portrayal of southern slavery is worthy of the deepest contempt. I also have a huge interest in the British Empire of the 19th Century, and particularly the Irish soldier's place in the Army that won, built and held it; I continue to hold that Kipling is an accurate, contemporary and sympathetic voice of the time and I will read him to my grand-children without a qualm.

[SerjeantWildgoose]

Per Petterson's In The Wake. Like several on here, I read and was completely absorbed by Petterson's Out Stealing Horses; I have since read a couple more of his novels and both have been excellent if not reaching quite the pinnacle of OSH. In The Wake is dark yet sensitive and drops such a hearty chunk of the Scandinavian atlas into the narrative that I decided to ignore it so that it would not interrupt the flow of the story. It is not quite the 5-star read of OSH, but it is still pretty good.

[OptimisticJock]

Tribe by Sebastian Junger.

Not a long book, almost like a journal paper, about why humans band together and the benefits of doing so. Explains about lower mental ill health rates during times of adversity for people all suffering the crisis, the blitz and aftermath of Sep 11 for example.

Some of it was obvious (to me at least) like why soldiers miss the military and combat but if never really thought that there was a kind of victimhood surrounding modern soldiers before.

It's his personal thoughts more than an academic paper so doesn't really provide any counter arguments and I haven't looked into correlation/causation of many of the stats and points but it's thought provoking at the very least.

[SerjeantWildgoose]

It is over 6 weeks since I posted on here and while I have been slowed in my reading by the combined demands of work and MA, the principle impediment to crashing through the literature has been my immersion in David Stevenson's 1914-1918: The History of the First World War. This is a magisterial work, detailed and highly academic, worth savouring and I am taking my time with it. But I have taken time off while on holiday to get ripped into an eclectic chunk of fiction.

Samuel Beckett's First Love and Other Novellas. Brilliantly translated from the French, largely by Beckett himself this is a short collection of four novellas each dealing with one of life's derelicts. The prose is brilliant, and brilliantly crude.

Raymond Radiguet's The Devil is in the Flesh. A little known classic of Great War literature, though not one that won many fans among the former Poilus as it tells the allegedly autobiographical story of a boy who had an affair with the wife of a soldier who was away at the Front. Radiguet died very young - somewhat inevitable given that his book had pissed off a slack handful of millions of veterans - and is regarded as a lost genius. I read the book as his publishers' offices were on the same street as the hotel in which we were staying, but it was a pretty good read.

[SerjeantWildgoose]

Now we’re cooking on gas!

Simon Mawer’s The Glass Room. Booker short-listed in 2009, this is an historical novel that is centred on a single room in a single house but manages to take in the formation of Czechoslovakia, the rise of Nazi Germany, the Anschluss, and war time occupation, Post-War Soviet occupation, Soviet occupation in the wake of the Prague rising and the eventual ‘fall of the Wall.’

I found that at times the book appeared to be little more than a canvas upon which Mawer seemed to have daubed his own sapphic sexual fantasies, but just as often it was beautifully decorated with the most evocative of writing.

There is nothing much of the story that will stay with me, I suspect, but there are poetic passages that are as delicious as anything I have read.

[SerjeantWildgoose]

Iain Banks' The Wasp Factory. I've not read any of Banks' stuff but thought I'd dip a toe in. The Wasp Factory is brutal, weird and fecking funny. Frank is a complete nut-job (Actually, perhaps not!), his brother Eric certifiably so and banged up for burning the locals' pet dogs. There are horrors heaped upon horrors in this book as Frank commits a catalogue of atrocities upon the wildlife and family that have the misfortune to share his isolated coastal home in Scotland, but it is peppered with dialogue and narrative that is viciously funny. I ripped through it in a day.

[Puja]

Just read Chris Brookmyre's Black Widow. I liked his earlier books as they were full of acerbic wit but he seems to have dropped that in favour of out and out whodunnits. Which is both a good and bad thing. Bad as theres less (almost none) of the wit but good as he is excellent at stringing plot lines together, and its the plot that is the strength of this book. I still dont like the characters in his books tho, which puts me off reading more of them.

Anyway Black Widow has brilliantly a conceived plot, very well executed and if the twist at the end is a little bit of a reach its well hidden enough to forgive him. An excellent read if you're after some fast flowing keep you guessing pulp to see you thru a wet week in March.

It's in my pile of to-be-read books at the moment. Like you, I came into Brookmyre's books when he was doing things like "Not The End of The World" and "A Big Boy Did It And Ran Away" (his best, IMO) and he's branched out quite a bit into various areas, going more serious to more zany to outright different genres. I'd recommend "Places In The Darkness" which is full-on sci-fi, although still crime sci-fi.

Iain Banks' The Wasp Factory. I've not read any of Banks' stuff but thought I'd dip a toe in. The Wasp Factory is brutal, weird and fecking funny. Frank is a complete nut-job (Actually, perhaps not!), his brother Eric certifiably so and banged up for burning the locals' pet dogs. There are horrors heaped upon horrors in this book as Frank commits a catalogue of atrocities upon the wildlife and family that have the misfortune to share his isolated coastal home in Scotland, but it is peppered with dialogue and narrative that is viciously funny. I ripped through it in a day.

Haven't read that one in years! Must have a look for my copy of it. I remember loving the twist to it. If you were taken by the writing, I'd recommend going for "Whit" next, or "The Business".

He also did a lot of sci-fi under the name Iain M Banks, which are mostly excellent - the best jumping off point is "The Player Of Games" IMO.

Puja

[switchskier]

Just read Chris Brookmyre's Black Widow. I liked his earlier books as they were full of acerbic wit but he seems to have dropped that in favour of out and out whodunnits. Which is both a good and bad thing. Bad as theres less (almost none) of the wit but good as he is excellent at stringing plot lines together, and its the plot that is the strength of this book. I still dont like the characters in his books tho, which puts me off reading more of them.

Anyway Black Widow has brilliantly a conceived plot, very well executed and if the twist at the end is a little bit of a reach its well hidden enough to forgive him. An excellent read if you're after some fast flowing keep you guessing pulp to see you thru a wet week in March.

It's in my pile of to-be-read books at the moment. Like you, I came into Brookmyre's books when he was doing things like "Not The End of The World" and "A Big Boy Did It And Ran Away" (his best, IMO) and he's branched out quite a bit into various areas, going more serious to more zany to outright different genres. I'd recommend "Places In The Darkness" which is full-on sci-fi, although still crime sci-fi.

Iain Banks' The Wasp Factory. I've not read any of Banks' stuff but thought I'd dip a toe in. The Wasp Factory is brutal, weird and fecking funny. Frank is a complete nut-job (Actually, perhaps not!), his brother Eric certifiably so and banged up for burning the locals' pet dogs. There are horrors heaped upon horrors in this book as Frank commits a catalogue of atrocities upon the wildlife and family that have the misfortune to share his isolated coastal home in Scotland, but it is peppered with dialogue and narrative that is viciously funny. I ripped through it in a day.

Haven't read that one in years! Must have a look for my copy of it. I remember loving the twist to it. If you were taken by the writing, I'd recommend going for "Whit" next, or "The Business".

He also did a lot of sci-fi under the name Iain M Banks, which are mostly excellent - the best jumping off point is "The Player Of Games" IMO.

Puja

Banks is my all time favourite author, though the books vary in style a lot. If you liked the wasp factory I agree that Whit should he next, or possibly the Crow Road. The buisiness is great but a bit more of a conventional story.