[cjsheps]

Over the past week and a half I've reread the His Dark Materials trilogy. I read them when I was young and, reading them as an adult, they are completely different books. Amazing. I've now got that inconsolable bittersweet feeling of loss and satisfaction that comes with having to leave the story that you were immersed in when you turn the last page.

That's interesting. I tried to re-read them recently, having loved them when I was younger. I enjoyed the first two, but found the Amber Spyglass was horribly heavy-handed and preachy. It seemed like Paulmann bit off more than he could chew.

Read "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" for the first time recently, and re-read "To Kill a Mockingbird". Both wonderful books, in very different ways.

[Muenchener]

Had a similar experience with Lord of the Rings. Read them as an adolescent, and in young adulthood wrote them off as ok for adolescents. Went to see the films but didn't rate them that highly.

Now my son is approaching adolescence, and faced with a long drive from Norwich to München last summer we downloaded an audiobook of the German translation of Fellowship of the Ring. We've sat through all three now. 'kin ell! Masterpieces. Sheer genius from beginning to end.

[andy popp]

Have at last, after a long interruption, just finished Tony Judt's Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945. This huge panoramic analysis of modern European history is one of the finest works of historical scholarship I've read. If you want to understand modern Europe you should probably read this.

[jwi]

Over the past week and a half I've reread the His Dark Materials trilogy. I read them when I was young and, reading them as an adult, they are completely different books. Amazing. I've now got that inconsolable bittersweet feeling of loss and satisfaction that comes with having to leave the story that you were immersed in when you turn the last page.

That's interesting. I tried to re-read them recently, having loved them when I was younger. I enjoyed the first two, but found the Amber Spyglass was horribly heavy-handed and preachy. It seemed like Paulmann bit off more than he could chew.

I read them as an adult. Same here. Liked the first, thought the second was ok-ish. Did not finish the last one as it was really awful

[Falling Down]

Alan Moore's Jerusalem - anyone bought this yet?

Got it this afternoon on the Kindle as I hear the physical version has a tiny font which I really struggle with as I get older.  Looking forward to getting stuck in as I enjoyed Voice of the Fire and Unearthing (and the comics of course).

Finished this last night and I'd been reading it pretty much every night before sleeping since this post in October.  It's fantastic... (and very big) I'll stick a short review up once it's soaked in a bit.

[jwi]

Ruth Ozeki's A Tale for the Time Being.

Sounds great! Made me interested to read it

[duncan]

Have at last, after a long interruption, just finished Tony Judt's Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945. This huge panoramic analysis of modern European history is one of the finest works of historical scholarship I've read. If you want to understand modern Europe you should probably read this.

I read this over the winter break, mainly after this recommendation. Very big, 800 pages of very small print, mostly magnificent. It's a history of all Europe, not just the western bit familiar to Brits. There are numerous examples of hideously complex and hard to understand topics like The Troubles and the 1990s Balkan conflicts explained with utter clarity and brevity without seeming simplistic. His specialism in French politics, Jewish background, and a youth spent in the class-war trenches inform the book throughout, usually to it's benefit. 

Picking nits? An overemphasis on French political philosophers and he's hopeless on culture that isn't French New Wave film. Albert Camus gets numerous mentions, The Beatles none. 

[fried]

Have at last, after a long interruption, just finished Tony Judt's Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945. This huge panoramic analysis of modern European history is one of the finest works of historical scholarship I've read. If you want to understand modern Europe you should probably read this.

I read this over the winter break, mainly after this recommendation. Very big, 800 pages of very small print, mostly magnificent. It's a history of all Europe, not just the western bit familiar to Brits. There are numerous examples of hideously complex and hard to understand topics like The Troubles and the 1990s Balkan conflicts explained with utter clarity and brevity without seeming simplistic. His specialism in French politics, Jewish background, and a youth spent in the class-war trenches inform the book throughout, usually to it's benefit. 

Picking nits? An overemphasis on French political philosophers and he's hopeless on culture that isn't French New Wave film. Albert Camus gets numerous mentions, The Beatles none.

And I picked up 'The Sleepwalkers, how Europe went to war in 1914' by Christopher Clerk, excellent recommendation. Thanks. This will be next on my list.

[andy popp]

Have at last, after a long interruption, just finished Tony Judt's Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945. This huge panoramic analysis of modern European history is one of the finest works of historical scholarship I've read. If you want to understand modern Europe you should probably read this.

I read this over the winter break, mainly after this recommendation. Very big, 800 pages of very small print, mostly magnificent. It's a history of all Europe, not just the western bit familiar to Brits. There are numerous examples of hideously complex and hard to understand topics like The Troubles and the 1990s Balkan conflicts explained with utter clarity and brevity without seeming simplistic. His specialism in French politics, Jewish background, and a youth spent in the class-war trenches inform the book throughout, usually to it's benefit. 

Picking nits? An overemphasis on French political philosophers and he's hopeless on culture that isn't French New Wave film. Albert Camus gets numerous mentions, The Beatles none.

Excellent summary Duncan. I agree, the one area of weakness is popular culture. which he fundamentally seems not to get (see terrible section on punk). But this is a very minor weakness against the many great strengths.

[andy popp]

Round up of the slightly random list of things recently read:

Karl Ive Knausgaard, Some Rain Must Fall. Volume 5 of the monumental series, appropriately read in situ in Sweden. Remarkably, the quality isn't, in my view, dropping off. Endlessly enthralling mundanity. I shall be sorry when I get to the end of the series (presumably some time this year).

Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Smith's classic tale of early C20th immigrant life in Brooklyn, seen through the eyes of adolescent Francie Nolan, first published in the 1940s, deserves its status. Francie, a little like Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird, is one of those narrators that you feel you come to know and love. Initially bought as part of a drive to understand key elements of the American experience, I enjoyed this sweet book very much.

I then got half way through Richard Ford's Canada before managing to leave it at a bar in Heathrow. When I realised at the gate the only thing vaguely appealing at the nearby Smiths was Philip Roth's American Pastoral (which at least fits with the theme about understanding America). This is the first Roth I've read and will likely be the last for some time. The writing can be superb but by about two thirds the way through I was thinking "OK, I get it." A sledgehammer to crack a nut.

Jean Rhys is best know for the superb Wide Sargasso Sea but at Christmas I was given Voyage in the Dark, a sad and in some ways dispiriting tale of a young woman lost in 1930s London. Recommended for lovers of authors such Patrick Hamilton or Julian Maclaren-Ross (among which I count myself).

Next, Sebastian Barry's very recent, much lauded Days Without End, another Christmas present (I almost never buy or read new fiction). As noted, this has been praised to the skies by critics. A tale of two young - and gay - US cavalry soldiers and their adventures across the American west in the mid C19th this is written in a distinctive, idiomatic first person voice. The writing can be luminous and the tale gripping but I must admit it hasn't particularly stayed with me now that I've finished reading it.

Richard Russo's Straight Man is the best and funniest campus novel ever. I've just read Elsewhere: A Memoir, a remarkably clear eyed and honest account of life with his mentally ill mother. Luckily, Russo has the skills to handle this difficult topic without getting either sentimental or maudlin. Strangely, like American Pastoral this also contains some fascinating material on the American glove manufacturing industry and its decline - handy as deindustrialization is something else I'm trying to get to grips with.

Have just launched into  The Lay of the Land, the third of Ford's Frank Bascombe novels - in other words, yet another book about a middle-aged white American male living in either New Jersey or New York.

Finally, also half way through George McKay's Senseless Acts of Beauty: Cultures of Resistance Since the Sixties, which I would describe as OK, but no more.

[Brannock]

Read two books from the big wall book club thread over Christmas, both excellent.

Richard Rhodes, Making of the Atomic Bomb, first half is history of nuclear physics up to 1941, then the race to build the bomb, the descriptions of Hiroshima are rightly memorably horrible. Could have done with more of the industrial science behind producing enriched uranium and plutonium and less Szilard but maybe I'm a geek about these things.

Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Tales, bleak bleak tales form the Gulag, some beautiful writing though. In particular found last story Graphite very powerful.

Big thanks for the recommendations.

[Johnny Brown]

Just read The Outrun, by Amy Liptrot. Writer moves back to her childhood home of Orkney to escape her alcoholism in London. Enjoyed it but don't understand all the accolades it has received. Maybe they're all from alcoholic Londoners dreaming of escape to the country...

[Yossarian]

Read two books from the big wall book club thread over Christmas, both excellent.

Richard Rhodes, Making of the Atomic Bomb, first half is history of nuclear physics up to 1941, then the race to build the bomb, the descriptions of Hiroshima are rightly memorably horrible. Could have done with more of the industrial science behind producing enriched uranium and plutonium and less Szilard but maybe I'm a geek about these things.

Glad you enjoyed it. Agree about Szilard - Rhodes does seem particularly obsessed by him.

I've got The Outrun on my list - it was R4 Book of the Week a while back, but I didn't hear much of it.

Moose's recommendation of Command and Control - Eric Schlosser was really good. Read like a thriller, interspersed with meticulously researched history. It was a bit daunting on Kindle as it seemed to go on and on, until it abruptly ended and I figured out the remaining 40% was all the references and notes.

Currently enjoying Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany by Norman Ohler, Peter Frankopan's The Silk Roads (on Audible), and Will Wiles's The Way Inn...

[andy popp]

Currently enjoying Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany by Norman Ohler

I'll be interested in your verdict on this - it caused some controversy amongst historians.

[jwi]

Read two books from the big wall book club thread over Christmas, both excellent.

...

Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Tales, bleak bleak tales form the Gulag, some beautiful writing though. In particular found last story Graphite very powerful.

Big thanks for the recommendations.

Glad you liked it. A friend of mine published the Swedish translation

[remus]

Just finished off Law unto himself, Mike Law's autobiography.

Really good, reminded me a little of Andy Pollit's book but a little more coherent. A really succinct history of some good bits of australian climbing history if nothing else.

[duncan]

Just finished off Law unto himself, Mike Law's autobiography.

Really good, reminded me a little of Andy Pollit's book but a little more coherent. ...

Thanks for this, I'd wondered what it was like. That era of Australian climbing is fascinating, sufficiently isolated to evolve in distinct ways like a colony of Galapagos finches. (C)law was a fascinating character, the first climber to wear Lycra? I was gutted to loose the Jackson Pollock inspired chalk bag he made me; it's spirit lives on in my current one, a recycled wine-box. Mike was enviously effective at anything he could be bothered to set his mind to - climbing, riding Ducatis, seducing women, nuclear engineering - so I'm not surprised it's a good read.

I recently finished Hans Florine's On The Nose; this may be the first climbing biography to contain the phrase "A process time drain".

[moose]

Moose's recommendation of Command and Control - Eric Schlosser was really good. Read like a thriller, interspersed with meticulously researched history. It was a bit daunting on Kindle as it seemed to go on and on, until it abruptly ended and I figured out the remaining 40% was all the references and notes.

A heads-up - there's a documentary of Command and Control on PBS, tonight (Friday 17/2/17) - not seen it so can't comment on quality though the 2h45 length suggests at least a degree of thoroughness!

[SA Chris]

Just finished off Law unto himself, Mike Law's autobiography.

Really good, reminded me a little of Andy Pollit's book but a little more coherent. A really succinct history of some good bits of australian climbing history if nothing else.

Is this available at a reasonable price anywhere; kindle etc. £14 is a bit of a hard hit.

[fried]

Any interest in having a kindle lending service on here?

I don't have the above book but plenty of others

[Rocksteady]

Have at last, after a long interruption, just finished Tony Judt's Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945. This huge panoramic analysis of modern European history is one of the finest works of historical scholarship I've read. If you want to understand modern Europe you should probably read this.

I read this over the winter break, mainly after this recommendation. Very big, 800 pages of very small print, mostly magnificent. It's a history of all Europe, not just the western bit familiar to Brits. There are numerous examples of hideously complex and hard to understand topics like The Troubles and the 1990s Balkan conflicts explained with utter clarity and brevity without seeming simplistic. His specialism in French politics, Jewish background, and a youth spent in the class-war trenches inform the book throughout, usually to it's benefit. 

Picking nits? An overemphasis on French political philosophers and he's hopeless on culture that isn't French New Wave film. Albert Camus gets numerous mentions, The Beatles none.

Excellent summary Duncan. I agree, the one area of weakness is popular culture. which he fundamentally seems not to get (see terrible section on punk). But this is a very minor weakness against the many great strengths.

I'm now reading this book, excellent so far (about a 3rd of the way in). Fascinating, lots of things I didn't know about at all. At the moment loving the part on the Scandinavian model of social democracy and why it embedded so well there. I'm also finding it interesting in terms of Britain's mainly ambivalent relationship with Europe and how that has played out recently with Brexit.

Long time since I posted on this thread, have been putting together content for a book review website that I'll share here if the overlords allow. But summary of books what I've read recently that are worth talking about:

The Circle by Dave Eggers. Sort of a satire of the dystopian present more than future. A fairly interesting idea on the premise of a girl starting work at a kind of Google/Facebook-esque enterprise. The storyline after this is much like The Firm (the John Grisham novel/film with Keanu Reeves). Ultimately I found the novel irritating and predictable. I didn't warm to the protagonist so I didn't really care what happened to her. Lots of characters used as mouthpieces for the author's ideology (which I have some sympathy with). Apparently it's being made into a film which I think would be a better medium for the idea. At novel length it became trite and tedious. Though I did persevere reading it so it must have something about it.

The Abhorsen Trilogy by Garth Nix. I recommended these on another thread and reminded myself of them and wanted to read them again. Brilliant, very creative, epic story, well-written. Wonderful fantasy/children's novels. Also in the Kindle edition I read the author lists an A-Z of his favourite children's authors, some of whom I haven't read.

The Histories, Herodutus. Absolutely loved this, from the 'father of history' as a discipline. I love all the descriptions of peoples and countries, but his attempt at describing a balanced account of the Greek-Persian conflicts is the centrepiece of this. It's the sort of book everyone should read if they're at all interested in the history of Western culture. Some absolutely shocking stories of brutality in there, makes Game of Thrones look fairly tame.

The Flame Bearer, Bernard Cornwell. The latest in his Last Kingdom series. After a lull in the middle I am very much enjoying this series again. Once I got it into my head that his plan was more of a long series of campaigns like Sharpe, rather than a magnificent tight trilogy like The Warlord Chronicle, I have enjoyed these novels more. Not special, but a good adventurous romp.

The Miniaturist, Jessie Burton. There was a lot of hype about this a few years ago and the missus recommended it to me. I thought the world of the book was beautifully constructed and the characters were realistic and well-written. Where this lacked for me was in the story, the narrative arc. For my part it just failed really to ignite and go somewhere. It fizzled out.

The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, Kate Summerscale. Interesting true crime history, not a patch on In Cold Blood but in the same genre. A good, somewhat depressing read.

Joseph Banks, Patrick O'Brian. I read this because I re-read the Aubrey-Maturin novels and then felt bereft of Patrick O'Brian's lucent writing and wonderful humour. An engaging biography of a very interesting man. The best part for me was the feeling that the biographer was vaguely disappointed in his subject - that he could have been more interesting if he hadn't settled down so early and become embroiled in politics and administration.

I cannot remember if I recommended A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge? A strange science fiction epic that I assumed I would hate from the opening paragraphs but then was swept away in. This doesn't often happen to me as I usually find that if I find the writing style offputting then it's rarely worth persevering with a book. But this proved an exception to my rule. Imaginative and clever and with some extremely engaging characters. Worth a read if you like that sort of thing eg. what technology a society of intelligent arachnids might create and how they might live. Clearly the basis for lesser copies like Adrian Tchaicovsky's Children of Time.

Angry White Pyjamas by Robert Twigger. An Oxford poet and apparent dropout living in Japan in the 90s decides to undertake the elite police training in Yoshinkan aikido. I found this quite amusing and insightful though since the advent of MMA and the old UFCs, Pride and Vale Tudo organisations testing martial arts vs martial arts I found it difficult to buy into the claim of Yoshinkan as this super hardcore and effective style. But I might be biased as a former jujitsu and MMA man. Frankly, training in Yoshinkan sounds brutally tough and a  horrible experience. Interesting to read. 

[Fultonius]

Just finished "The Circle" this morning. Not the best book, but certainly made me think a bit about giving up privacy for convenience. As you say, not a great "study" on human character - the polar opposite of the other book I'm steadily getting through right now - Love and Hate!

[SA Chris]

Any interest in having a kindle lending service on here?

I've got loads i would happily pass on / loan out both hard copy and electronic.

[Will Hunt]

Any interest in having a kindle lending service on here?

I've got loads i would happily pass on / loan out both hard copy and electronic.

How would this happen? I thought Kindle users could only lend each other books in the States?

[fried]

I always assumed it was possible in all countries, but apparently not, never tried it before. Oh well.