[Falling Down]

Shame I couldn't spell his name correctly  I would blame autocorrect but I think it was me 

[Johnny Brown]

I found Sebald a bit confusing. In places I enjoyed the writing in Rings of Saturn but I had to skip some of the tangent sections, and I very rarely skip read. Then I found out it was all fiction, which made it more impressive but less interesting.

Read One Green Bottle last week, a short climbing novel written in the fifties about a working class girl from Birkenhead discovering Snowdonia. Very of its time, or older; the author did her climbing interwar. The first half is great, Cathy escapes the slum, starts climbing and leaps into the same Ogwen scene that Gwen Moffat describes. I found it very funny, although not always with the author. Second half less good as the need to marry herself (at 20!) puts the landscape and climbing into the background. Tricky to get hold of by itself but included in a big Games Climbers Play-style anthology One Step in the Clouds, published in the early nineties and on Amazon for pence. Plus lots of bonus content (all fiction) from the likes of M John H and John Long.

[fried]

1. Cursed Kings - Jonathan Sumption. The fourth volume in an anticipated five part history of the Hundred Years War that started to appear some 25 years ago and which will apparently be concluded somewhere around 2018. Deeply researched and beautifully written, this volume also has the best material to work with, book-ended by two political assassinations, you have the madness of the king of France and one of the great characters of English history, Henry V, and some momentous battles, most notably Agincourt. I love reading history when it has been done properly and this is a masterpiece, definitely my favourite book of the year.

Thanks again Dave, I just finished rading the 4 volumes back-to-back which has taken me the last 6 months. Just another 10 years to wait for the last volume. Fantastic, I would write a review but I'm now bi-craplingual.

[Falling Down]

I found Sebald a bit confusing. In places I enjoyed the writing in Rings of Saturn but I had to skip some of the tangent sections, and I very rarely skip read. Then I found out it was all fiction, which made it more impressive but less interesting.

Read One Green Bottle last week, a short climbing novel written in the fifties about a working class girl from Birkenhead discovering Snowdonia. Very of its time, or older; the author did her climbing interwar. The first half is great, Cathy escapes the slum, starts climbing and leaps into the same Ogwen scene that Gwen Moffat describes. I found it very funny, although not always with the author. Second half less good as the need to marry herself (at 20!) puts the landscape and climbing into the background. Tricky to get hold of by itself but included in a big Games Climbers Play-style anthology One Step in the Clouds, published in the early nineties and on Amazon for pence. Plus lots of bonus content (all fiction) from the likes of M John H and John Long.

I quite like the wander-around-a-lot of Sebald and the digressions have me reaching for a notepad or my phone to take notes about what to go and read or look at.  Those two climbing books sound good so will seek them out on Amazon.

[andy popp]

JB, read Austerlitz, if you haven't.

I have that big collection of climbing fiction and remember quite enjoying One Green Bottle, although it is a real period piece now. The anthology was published by Diadem, who used to do some great collected editions; the complete Tilman mountain writing for example, and one of my favourites, a Kurt Diemberger trilogy - this is some of the best climbing writing I've ever read I think. The scene where he has to leave a dying Al Rouse on a tent on K2 is just heartbreaking.

[Johnny Brown]

Thanks Andy, I will check them out.

Although VG seem to have got climbing publishing back on track it seems there was a big fallow period in the nineties and noughties. I wonder why?

[El Mocho]

...one of my favourites, a Kurt Diemberger trilogy - this is some of the best climbing writing I've ever read I think. The scene where he has to leave a dying Al Rouse on a tent on K2 is just heartbreaking.

The Endless Knot is the K2 book, I read it about 10 years ago and found it really good although pretty harrowing. Starts off a little slow and overly detailed but then by the time things get really shit you almost feel like you were there. Very insightful into how things can go so wrong. Did Diemberger get a little grief at the time about it all? He comes across as a wad in the book although it is written by him.

You can borrow it if you want JB

[Oldmanmatt]

I would not have looked to E M Forster for a riveting read, however "The Machine Stops" is an excellent afternoons diversion. A few thousand words of dystopian horror that seems distressingly familiar and Redhead may have read as prophesy.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Falling Down]

I'm reading Paul Mason's Postcapitalism book.  Much better than I'd anticipated... I'm impressed.

[andy popp]

So, last night I finished Lawrence Durrell's The Alexandria Quarter, all 900 closely printed pages of it. The first couple of hundred were a struggle over too long, because life kept getting in the way. Thereafter I was addicted to this maddening, beautiful thing - despite the appalling racism and sexism. Next up? probably Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. Though, in despair at the level of debate over the referendum, I've also just ordered Tony Judt's Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945. Has anyone read this?

[DaveC]

Hi Andy, Postwar is possibly the best history of post-WWII Europe yet written. It's a big book but it is a big subject and Judt was a good enough writer tocarry it off. Good choice.

[cjsheps]

Finally got round to reading Asimov's Foundation, and it lived up to all the hype. There are a lot of sci-fi books that richly construct their universe, but few that use it in the plot as inventively as in Foundation. Essentially, it's imperial politics and the fall of the Roman Empire, but with space and shit.

Highly recommended!

[Rocksteady]

Great to see the thread quite lively. Big up CJSheps for Foundation series, I enjoyed it a lot.

I have read a few things worth mentioning recently:

Nostromo by Joseph Conrad. I liked this but found it odd. It's a swashbuckling adventure story with extremely little swashbuckling adventure. It seems to adhere to the classical formula of all actual action happening 'off stage', so pretty much everything is told in retrospect. Somehow it maintains dramatic tension though you are aware by the narrative that certain things have come about before they have happened in the story.  Is 'Nostromo' a play on 'nostra uomo' - 'our man' in Italian? I assume so. Very clever, well written.

Fall of Light - the second book in Steven Erikson's Kharkanas trilogy. I was very disappointed in this. I am a big fan of Erikson's Malazan series, a densely woven, densely written dark and richly imaginative fantasy epic. I liked the concept (and execution) of the Forge of Darkness, the first Kharkanas prequel set an incredibly distant time before the Malazan books but with many of the same (effectively immortal) characters. Fall of Light was bad. I nearly put it down. For me, the flaw in much of Erikson's writing is that he does not let his characters speak for themselves. He is an unimpeachable world-builder and storyteller, but his writing is often competent at best and in this book he does not afford his characters the respect they deserve. They are mouthpieces for his ideology, which he bludgeons the reader with over and over from various characters' mouths. There are some impressive set pieces, but I would not recommend this book to anybody.

In contrast, an absolute delight of a book that I would recommend to anyone who likes war fiction, was Winged Victory by V.M. Yeates. I had never heard of this book, but it should be required reading. It is a novel written by a WW1 English fighter pilot about a thinly fictional WW1 fighter pilot and his experiences flying in the Great War. It deals heavily with his relationships with other pilots, his friends, his fears of cowardice, his feelings towards the war. I thought it was spectacularly good, approaching the best fiction I have read, ever. There is a beautiful and poignant contrast between the pilot's love of flight, the breathtaking glory of the sky, the soaring exhilaration of flying an aircraft, and the mind and body numbing experience of war, flying low to strafe the trenches, exposed to ground fire and killing day after day after day. God it brings the reality of war home to the reader. It was a deeply moving, philosophical and extremely well-written book. The tragedy is that the writer died of TB shortly after finishing it. He had a rich gift and used it well in the time he had.Apparently it was selling for £5 during the Second World War as the WW2 airmen thought it was the only book about war flying that wasn't a load of crap. I wholeheartedly commend it.

[moose]

In contrast, an absolute delight of a book that I would recommend to anyone who likes war fiction, was Winged Victory by V.M. Yeates....There is a beautiful and poignant contrast between the pilot's love of flight, the breathtaking glory of the sky, the soaring exhilaration of flying an aircraft, and the mind and body numbing experience of war...

I have not read that, but it your description reminds me of "Chickenhawk" by Robert Mason.  He was a Huey pilot during the Vietnam war.  It describes the contrast between the delight of flying (with lots of detail on the mechanics of helicopters that delighted my nerdy heart) and the boredom / fear / trauma / shame of participating in a war that seems increasingly unjustifiable.  Highly recommended; one of the those books you loan straight out to friends... who then loan it out to their friends... and you never see it again....

[Muenchener]

If you liked Winged Victory then Sagittarius Rising by Cecil Lewis is also essential reading.

I’m currently working my way through TR Fehrenbach’s This Kind of War on the Korean war. Not a relaxing or pleasant read, but has to be a contender for best book of military history ever written.

[SA Chris]

Finally finished One Day as a Tiger by John Porter, the book about Alex MacIntryre (and the whole Himalayan climbing scene as a whole).

I have no great interest in climbing in the Greater Ranges, but thought it was excellently written; informative, gripping and amusing. A great read.

[DaveC]

I've been neglecting this thread this year so here goes....
Liminov by Emmanuel Carriere
An extraordinary biography of one of Russia's more enigmatic figures of recent years, poet, rebel, rogue, mercenary, manservant, writer and now politician, Edward Liminov, written by one of Frances finest writers. Would have been a great novel if the guy didn't really exist! 8/10
Empire of Liberty, A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 by Gordon S. Wood
Volume 2 of the Oxford History of the United States, Gordon Wood's monumental look at the first 25 years of the nations existence, is a long and detailed work, massively researched, very well written, probably too dry for most tastes, it is no work of literature. Particularly good at explaining the evolution of the political system towards the mess that U.S. democracy has become. 7.5/10
Sweet Land Stories by E.L.Doctorow
An intriguing little collection of stories by one of America's finest writers of modern times. Tales from the American heartland but with some very odd twists in the tails... 8.5/10.
Kafka on the Shore, Norwegian Wood and the 1Q84 Trilogy by Haruki Murakami
Read all the above at various times over the last 6 months or so and I can honestly say the Murakami's writing agrees with me. I have a soft spot for the "outsiders" who always seem to lie at the heart of his stories. Kafka on the Shore is probably my favourite of his, both of the other two here didn't quite match it, I found the endings rather soft, but all were highly readable once you got used to the author's distinctive and slightly surreal take on the world. 9,7 and 7.5/10.
The March by E.L.Doctorow
Sherman's march across Georgia and the Carolinas in the closing months of the American Civil War seen from the point of view of various characters within and around the Union Army as it cut a swathe of devastation through the south. Freed slaves, white refugees, deserting soldiers all contribute to this fabulous book giving a very different perspective on one of America's defining events.
The Crimean War by Orlando Figes
Possibly the outstanding historian writing about Russia in recent years, Figes turns to the Crimean War and delivers another fine book, maybe not quite up with his history of the revolution (A People's Tragedy) or his cultural history of Russia (Natasha's Dance) but nonetheless, this is an excellent book giving plenty of information not only on the war itself but on the period leading up to it, outlining the contributing factors that led to the war. 8/10.
The Baltic, A History by Michael North
Translated from the original German, this is quite an academic work but is still a very readable account, if a little Germano-centric at times, of the history of this crucial waterway at the heart of Northern Europe. A solid attempt to show the Baltic as holding a similar place in the culture of the North as the Mediterranean does in the South. 7/10
Seiobo There Below by Laszlo Krasznahorkai
I don't know where to start on describing this book. The prose is rich and dense and at times astonishingly beautiful, the sentences can seem to go on forever - try reading it out loud! There is no real plot, each chapter describes some event, or events, or a place, or someone's work, or something else entirely, concentrating on the beauty of even the simplest task, or object...but some of the chapters hold a dark undertone, a sense of something evil or that something very bad is about to happen...nope, I cannot begin to do this book justice. The most amazing thing I've read so far, leave all your preconceptions of what a novel should be at the door please. 10/10?...
There is Simply Too Much to Think About, Collected Non-Fiction by Saul Bellow
A fascinating collection of reviews, essays and lectures by another of America's leading modern writers. Definitely worth reading, an excellent one to dip into. 8.5/10
Labyrinths,Selected Stories by Jorge Luis Borges
I love Borges writing and this is a wonderful collection of his short stories and writing that I originally read back in the 90s and I'm glad I found it again. 9.5/10

That's enough I think, there's at least another dozen I've finished this year but I'll stop at ten for now...before I bore you all to death! 

[Muenchener]

Liminov by Emmanuel Carriere
An extraordinary biography of one of Russia's more enigmatic figures of recent years, poet, rebel, rogue, mercenary, manservant, writer and now politician, Edward Liminov, written by one of Frances finest writers. Would have been a great novel if the guy didn't really exist! 8/10

I remember thinking much the same about White Mughals by William Dalrymple. The story reads like the plot of a a lost Shakespeare tragedy.

[Muenchener]

Finally finished One Day as a Tiger by John Porter, the book about Alex MacIntryre (and the whole Himalayan climbing scene as a whole).

I have no great interest in climbing in the Greater Ranges, but thought it was excellently written; informative, gripping and amusing. A great read.

Alex MacIntyre was no mean writer himself either. There's a piece called iirc Mama's Boys, about alpine style attempts on the Harlin Route on the Eiger, that very much impressed me. It was in Mountain I believe, and I've never seen it reprinted anywhere.

[jwi]

I've been neglecting this thread this year so here goes....

I agree with pretty much every judgement on this list (among those I've read). So I'm off to read Carrère. “Je suis vivant et vous êtes morts” looks interesting, anyone read this?

[SA Chris]

Alex MacIntyre was no mean writer himself either. There's a piece called iirc Mama's Boys, about alpine style attempts on the Harlin Route on the Eiger, that very much impressed me. It was in Mountain I believe, and I've never seen it reprinted anywhere.

His writing gets mentioned in the book, and that article specifically I think. Shame they aren't collected somewhere.

[moose]

Liminov by Emmanuel Carriere
An extraordinary biography of one of Russia's more enigmatic figures of recent years, poet, rebel, rogue, mercenary, manservant, writer and now politician, Edward Liminov, written by one of Frances finest writers. Would have been a great novel if the guy didn't really exist! 8/10

I remember thinking much the same about White Mughals by William Dalrymple. The story reads like the plot of a a lost Shakespeare tragedy.

Reminds me of The Pike by Lucy Hughes-Hallett, about Gabriele D’Annunzio: poet, aviation pioneer, conqueror of a city, Lothario, and fascist (Mussolini was an acolyte).  One of those books you read whilst muttering "how come I've never heard of this chap" to yourself.

[Brannock]

The Crimean War by Orlando Figes
Possibly the outstanding historian writing about Russia in recent years, Figes turns to the Crimean War and delivers another fine book, maybe not quite up with his history of the revolution (A People's Tragedy) or his cultural history of Russia (Natasha's Dance) but nonetheless, this is an excellent book giving plenty of information not only on the war itself but on the period leading up to it, outlining the contributing factors that led to the war. 8/10.

Thought this was quite a good book, bit of history I did not know anything about. Doesn't have the scope of A People's Tragedy though, which is brilliant.

If that's not quite enough depressing reading, Id recommend Mao: The Unknown Story by Jon Halliday and Jung Chang, blends the personal history of Mao with the wider history of China, unlike Simon Sebag Montefiore books on Stalin which gets bogged down in the man and the drinking sessions of his inner circle. The Mao book covers his whole life, of interest was how he ruthlessly destroyed dissent and opposition, first in the party, then the whole country. Ultimately ending with the cultural revolution to purge those who had made him back down during the great leap forward.

[andy popp]

I've been neglecting this thread this year so here goes....
Liminov by Emmanuel Carriere
An extraordinary biography of one of Russia's more enigmatic figures of recent years, poet, rebel, rogue, mercenary, manservant, writer and now politician, Edward Liminov, written by one of Frances finest writers. Would have been a great novel if the guy didn't really exist! 8/10
Empire of Liberty, A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 by Gordon S. Wood
Volume 2 of the Oxford History of the United States, Gordon Wood's monumental look at the first 25 years of the nations existence, is a long and detailed work, massively researched, very well written, probably too dry for most tastes, it is no work of literature. Particularly good at explaining the evolution of the political system towards the mess that U.S. democracy has become. 7.5/10
Sweet Land Stories by E.L.Doctorow
An intriguing little collection of stories by one of America's finest writers of modern times. Tales from the American heartland but with some very odd twists in the tails... 8.5/10.
Kafka on the Shore, Norwegian Wood and the 1Q84 Trilogy by Haruki Murakami
Read all the above at various times over the last 6 months or so and I can honestly say the Murakami's writing agrees with me. I have a soft spot for the "outsiders" who always seem to lie at the heart of his stories. Kafka on the Shore is probably my favourite of his, both of the other two here didn't quite match it, I found the endings rather soft, but all were highly readable once you got used to the author's distinctive and slightly surreal take on the world. 9,7 and 7.5/10.
The March by E.L.Doctorow
Sherman's march across Georgia and the Carolinas in the closing months of the American Civil War seen from the point of view of various characters within and around the Union Army as it cut a swathe of devastation through the south. Freed slaves, white refugees, deserting soldiers all contribute to this fabulous book giving a very different perspective on one of America's defining events.
The Crimean War by Orlando Figes
Possibly the outstanding historian writing about Russia in recent years, Figes turns to the Crimean War and delivers another fine book, maybe not quite up with his history of the revolution (A People's Tragedy) or his cultural history of Russia (Natasha's Dance) but nonetheless, this is an excellent book giving plenty of information not only on the war itself but on the period leading up to it, outlining the contributing factors that led to the war. 8/10.
The Baltic, A History by Michael North
Translated from the original German, this is quite an academic work but is still a very readable account, if a little Germano-centric at times, of the history of this crucial waterway at the heart of Northern Europe. A solid attempt to show the Baltic as holding a similar place in the culture of the North as the Mediterranean does in the South. 7/10
Seiobo There Below by Laszlo Krasznahorkai
I don't know where to start on describing this book. The prose is rich and dense and at times astonishingly beautiful, the sentences can seem to go on forever - try reading it out loud! There is no real plot, each chapter describes some event, or events, or a place, or someone's work, or something else entirely, concentrating on the beauty of even the simplest task, or object...but some of the chapters hold a dark undertone, a sense of something evil or that something very bad is about to happen...nope, I cannot begin to do this book justice. The most amazing thing I've read so far, leave all your preconceptions of what a novel should be at the door please. 10/10?...
There is Simply Too Much to Think About, Collected Non-Fiction by Saul Bellow
A fascinating collection of reviews, essays and lectures by another of America's leading modern writers. Definitely worth reading, an excellent one to dip into. 8.5/10
Labyrinths,Selected Stories by Jorge Luis Borges
I love Borges writing and this is a wonderful collection of his short stories and writing that I originally read back in the 90s and I'm glad I found it again. 9.5/10

That's enough I think, there's at least another dozen I've finished this year but I'll stop at ten for now...before I bore you all to death! 

Somehow completely missed this epic post from DaveC but I'll just pick up on two things for now.

Delighted to see, E.L. Doctorow. I enjoyed Holmer and Langley and, especially, Ragtime. I actually nearly bought The March yesterday so its going on the definite list. Ragtime should be seen as a classic of C20th US fiction.

Then Orlando Figes, who deserves to survive the controversy that engulfed him a couple of years ago (which was entirely of his own making). I've not read any of those mentioned here: Crimea, A People's Tragedy or Natasha's Dance but was blown away by both The Whisperers and Send me Word both, on totally different scales, exploring intimate, private lives in Soviet Russia. Can't recommend either highly enough.

[cowboyhat]

Since the only Taklamakan reference I can find is a Houdini post from 2007 I'll give this a try:



Taklamakan by Bruce Stirling, available here http://lib.ru/STERLINGB/taklamakan.txt

for you to copy/paste/refonticise/print/complain about etc.

Its a short story, has climbers and possibly sci-fi. So lots to complain about.