[cowboyhat]

While we're in the Middle East I'm going to take the opportunity to recommend anything by Egyptian Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz - I've read the so-called Cairo trilogy (a masterpiece) and more recently two slim novellas, Adrfit on the Nile and The Beggar, which were both also excellent.

Seconded!

[cowboyhat]

"Things We Lost in the Fire" - Mariana Enríquez.  A collection of short stories set in modern day Argentina.  Really unsettling, dark and macabre.  The author is exploring how Argentina's past flows down into the present - a kind of national inherited trauma.   Gothic horror and magical realism.  A really good read that's stuck with me for several days.  She's a great writer.

Have you read Pedro Paramo? by Juan Rulfo. Your description reminds me a bit of that though it is a while now since I read it.

[Falling Down]

Oh thanks - no I haven’t.  That sounds good and I’m on hols this week so will check it out.

I read Benjamin Myer’s “The Offing” in a single sitting on Saturday.  It’s a delight and very absorbing.  I was away with the characters on the North York Moors for hours. Absolutely loved it.  It’s R4’s book at bedtime this week being read by a perfectly cast Kevin Whateley. 

[moose]

A Memory.  Many, many years ago, I spend the scrapings of a student grant on copies of Iain M Banks' Consider Phlebas, and Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash.  I loved them both but I've since read everything else of Ian (M) Banks but only Crytonomicon by Stephenson... NS' other works, like the Baroque Cycle, just always felt so... committing - base investment seemed to be 2000+ pages... I may as well read War and Peace or Middlemarch!  Perhaps I should reconsider, retreating into 000's pages of pulp sci-fi fantasy seems quite an attractive prospect right now.

[Alex-the-Alex]

I had the same with Neal S. Loved snow crash then tried the confusion and had to put it down a few weeks later. A friend recommended another of his - Anathem - as a tonic. It was absolutely brilliant. Fairly long but enjoyable the whole way through. Some sci-fi, lots of entertainng philosophical dialogues and tangents, but nothing heavy.

[sherlock]

Just finished 'Whiskey when we're Dry' by john Loriston.
Fabulous classic Western that brought Cormac Macarthy's 'The Border Trilogy' to mind.
Someone up the thread recommended 'Things we Lost in the Fire'. Thought that this was an excellent collection of short stories. I like modern Gothic.

[Falling Down]

Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country by Edward Parnell.  Really enjoyed this.  A sort of Sebaldian wander around the UK in the company of MR James, Arthur Machen, Susan Cooper, Alan Garner and the Wicker Man set against a family tragedy. 

Speaking of Sebald, the recent Backlisted podcast on Rings of Saturn with Philip Hoare was ace.

Sherlock - I'm relieved you liked 'Things we lost in the fire'.

[andy popp]

A few recent reads.

Purity, by Jonathan Franzen. First time I've read Franzen. I really enjoyed it, I thought he was just a great storyteller, weaving some interesting threads around.

Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro. I was convinced I'd read this but very quickly realised I hadn't. Must be that the all my memories are from the film. I normally love Ishiguo's amazing economy, his ability to do so much with so little, but I thought this was a little mannered. Still a great novel though.

Women on the Margin: Three Seventeenth Century Lives, Natalie Zemon Davis. A great book from one of the masters of micro-history.

[Steve R]

Purity, by Jonathan Franzen. First time I've read Franzen. I really enjoyed it, I thought he was just a great storyteller, weaving some interesting threads around.

same here, on all counts.
Thought it was pretty ambitious with so many (often current) moving parts.  A fine weaving effort - lots of themes and timelines but managed to keep it all hanging together really well.

[jwi]

Jacques Attali, Histoires de l'alimentation : De quoi manger est-il le nom ? Jacques Attali is one of those hopelessly busy French insiders, having served as economist under both Mitterand and Sarkozy, served as President for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and running a micro-finance business, he has also diligently/dilettantely written fifty books on basically all subjects. The most well-known is probably his cultural history of music (Noise: The Political Economy of Music).

Anyhow, this book is on the cultural history of food. The book traces not only the history of what humans, and humanoids, have eaten, but also how they eat, what they talk about when eating and who are allowed to talk. The author argues that "It's not the meal itself that's important, it's the time you spend there and the conversation it sparks" and laments the reduction in the amount of time spent at the table (chiefly in uncivilised countries like Notfrance, but also somewhat, Alas!, in France). The first half of the book is brilliant, and contains so many hilarious broadsides against the modern agro-food industries that I basically underlined a paragraph per page.

The second part is about the future of food safety and health globally and contained nothing that most people do not know (we need to eat less, next to no meat, and maybe insects in some parts) and was also written in a much more dry and less passionate style.


David Byrne, How Music Works In parts a very good book on music and the music industry. The parts where he actually tries to explain how music works are brilliant: how the space we are listening to music influences how it is composed is particularly interesting (I think it made me understand why US and European pop-music have started to diverge: we do not listen to music in big idiot-trucks, and US produced commercial hip-hop sounds stupid in headphones). The part on how many commercially produced CDs have lower dynamic range than LPs was also really eye-opening to me (even though it is possible to have way higher dynamic range on a CD). I was less interested in the large part in the middle on the CBGBs scene and the stuff about Talking Heads as I'm a few years to young to care.

Alas, the book also contains an unusually stupid rehash of the conflict that I like to call "Rimbaud vs Rambo" (Byrne's take Rambo's side, but with a twist: people who like Rimbaud do that because they are mafiosos who need to stand in Rimbaud's totally undeserved shine of respectability – and furthermore Rambo need more government support). The less that is said about this part, the better.

Fortunately the book ends on discussion on how music should be played by everyone. That it what ties it together with Attali's book on food. Music, like food, should be made and consumed at home to tie us together.


Martha Wells, The Murderbot Diaries 1-4. (All system red, Artificial condition, Rouge protocol, Exit strategy). Light-weight, but partly very clever, science-fiction written in first person by a security droid who have managed to hack its governing module and reached self awareness. Calls itself Murderbot. Doesn't like people, but if they did not exist, who would produce media? Recommended by Ann Leckie, no less.

[SA Chris]

The Byrne book sounds great, guess I'm a bit older..

[DaveC]

Just browsing and remembered this favourite thread! I've been doing rather a lot of reading this year and not really saying anything about it but I just realised that I finished my 100th book of the year on Boxing Day...I thought I was doing well with 80+ in 2018! I'm trying to put together a nice concise best fiction & non-fiction list which I'll post up once its done. In fact, I might make it a best of the last two years since I don;t think I posted a lot in 2018 either!

[Muenchener]

The David Byrne book is currently 2.49€ on German Kindle, so that's my holiday reading for next week sorted.

[andy popp]

Just browsing and remembered this favourite thread! I've been doing rather a lot of reading this year and not really saying anything about it but I just realised that I finished my 100th book of the year on Boxing Day...I thought I was doing well with 80+ in 2018! I'm trying to put together a nice concise best fiction & non-fiction list which I'll post up once its done. In fact, I might make it a best of the last two years since I don;t think I posted a lot in 2018 either!

Please do!

[Falling Down]

The Lark Ascending by Richard King (The Music of the British Landscape) - Read this over Christmas and loved every page.  It's a history of the British countryside loosely framed through its music.  A fascinating read that explores our relationship to the land which wanders all over the place. From Vaughan Williams and the first world war, through the fascist Blood and Soil volkish movements, post war environmentalism and hippy idealism of the 60's, the traveller convoys and the battle of the Beanfield to the rave at Castlemorton and the Criminal Justice Bill into the present day.  Beautifully written, thoughtful and introspective.  I've gone down loads of Wikipedia ratholes and added loads of interesting music to my playlists.  A really great and absorbing read.  Recommended.

[andy popp]

Thanks FD, that's encouraging. I read several reviews of this that left me feeling both intrigued and worried that I might end up frustrated by it - the reviews were often frustrated by it. I've always been a complete sucker for Vaughan Williams (my mum, fresh up to London as a young woman, once saw him taking tea in a café) as well as for some of the more minor figures, such as Peter Warlock. Check out "The Vagabond," an album of songs by Williams, Finzi, Butterworth, and Ireland, with lyrics by poets such as Stevenson, Masefield, and Houseman, sung by Bryn Terfel. I might have to cadge a copy off you for a bit.

[Falling Down]

A lovely anecdote Andy - your Mum with Vaughan Williams - that’s so great !!

I can see why some reviewers might have expressed some frustration in that the book itself could have been much bigger I suppose, with each chapter probably enough for a work of similar length.  There are good companion reads in Rob Young’s amazing “Electric Albion” and Shirley Collins’ books alongside others but we’re getting into almost scholarly territory here.

I loved it and thought it stands well enough by itself.

I’ll have a listen to that album, it sounds really interesting, thanks!.  PM me your new address and I’ll sling the book over to Denmark in the post.

Dave C - looking forward to your suggestions, they’re always ace!

Oh and that David Byrne book is brill - I loved it.

Happy New Year bookies - here’s to another good year of reading and recommendations from the UKB book club.

[andy popp]

Thanks Ben, that would be great, if you're sure? Funnily enough you're the second person to offer to post me a book yesterday - the first is sending his own book on the fight to establish open shop (e.g. non-union) workplaces in the Philadelphia metal trades in the C19th. I'm actually genuinely looking forward to reading it. Will PM you my address now. Also heard great things about "Electric Albion" and the Shirley Collins. And I'm going to listen to some of the songs from The Vagabond today.

I'd post up my best of 2019 but IT buggered backing up my old machine to the cloud and lost half my documents, including my reading list. I could recreate it from postings elsewhere but in any case think it ended being somewhere between 40 and 50 books. Moving totally buggered up reading for the last two or three months.

Currently reading Julian Barnes' A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters (because its the only thing in the house I haven't read) and its leaving me cold and bored.

[Ged]

Canada is by Franzen also I think? I really enjoyed that. Argues a strong argument doesn't he.

I'm on with the reluctant fundamentalist. Quite a quick read, and quite captivating so far

[andy popp]

Canada is by Franzen also I think? I really enjoyed that. Argues a strong argument doesn't he.

No, Richard Ford. I loved the his Frank Bascombe trilogy/quartet but was a bit less taken with Canada.

[Ged]

Freedom I was thinking of. Not sure where Canada came from. Freedom was the one about not having babies I think. Very good.

[Falling Down]

I've never got on with Julian Barnes. Cold and bored sums it up nicely.

[duncan]

The Lark Ascending by Richard King (The Music of the British Landscape) - Read this over Christmas and loved every page.  It's a history of the British countryside loosely framed through its music.  A fascinating read that explores our relationship to the land which wanders all over the place. From Vaughan Williams and the first world war, through the fascist Blood and Soil volkish movements, post war environmentalism and hippy idealism of the 60's, the traveller convoys and the battle of the Beanfield to the rave at Castlemorton and the Criminal Justice Bill into the present day.  Beautifully written, thoughtful and introspective.  I've gone down loads of Wikipedia ratholes and added loads of interesting music to my playlists.  A really great and absorbing read.  Recommended.

This sounds just my cup of tea.

[andy popp]

The Lark Ascending by Richard King (The Music of the British Landscape) - Read this over Christmas and loved every page.  It's a history of the British countryside loosely framed through its music.  A fascinating read that explores our relationship to the land which wanders all over the place. From Vaughan Williams and the first world war, through the fascist Blood and Soil volkish movements, post war environmentalism and hippy idealism of the 60's, the traveller convoys and the battle of the Beanfield to the rave at Castlemorton and the Criminal Justice Bill into the present day.  Beautifully written, thoughtful and introspective.  I've gone down loads of Wikipedia ratholes and added loads of interesting music to my playlists.  A really great and absorbing read.  Recommended.

This sounds just my cup of tea.

I can post it to you when I'm done and then it will be nearly all the way back to Ben.

[Falling Down]

Or to someone else after Duncan 😊