[jwi]

A comparable book that went pretty much completely over my head was Robert Musil's "A Man Without Qualities." I finished it, but got just about nothing from it.

The first volume (and first part of the second) is good. The novel then proceeds to slowly collapse, much like the Austrian-Hungarian empire, I suppose. A bit too clever to my taste.

[andy popp]

Maybe I should have just stopped at the end of the first book.

On the other hand, I just read an excellent book set during the waning years of the Austrian-Hungarian empire, Joseph Roth's "The Radetzky March." A very different kind of book to Musil.

[seankenny]

If you're not completely put off Mann, "Buddenbrooks" is a much more approachable book - and very good.

I really enjoyed Mann’s “Confession of Felix Krull” which is dry and funny.  Buddenbrooks is definitely on the list.

The book that went over my head - and I totally knew it - was The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass. What the heck was all that about?!

[dunnyg]

The tin drum also boggled me. I read it as a story about a kid with a tin drum, but I think I missed something...
I did enjoy it though!

[TobyD]

Incidentally,  anyone who is interested in Michael Pollan's book I mentioned above,  if you can pick it up in Sheffield,  you're welcome to it.

[Will Hunt]

The Spy Who Came In From The Cold - thoroughly enjoyed. Thanks for the recommendation.

The Manningtree Witches - fictionalised account of a trial during the witch craze of the 1600s. Just about all the people in the book are real people and much of the accusation and confession is lifted from original accounts. The Afterword may be useful to read first if you're not familiar with the social and political context of the time.
It took some to get going but by the end was zipping along.

[jwi]

I have been bedridden with high fever for a week with the BA.5 variant. (Minor NNFN, as we were planning to do long routes in the alps this week, and the weather over there has been unbelievably good... oh well, there are more years to come...)

Anyway, I tried to read Popp's recommendation Mémoires d'Hadrien, also recommended by my better half. However, my cognitive skills have not been sufficient and I had a hard time following plot and keeping track of Latin toponyms. (We never learned Latin placenames in school. Antioche will always be Antiokia or possibly Antakya to me). I had similar issues with other novels I started reading; I was simply to exhausted to grasp intrigue.

Instead I re-read and somewhat re-evaluated the books of Becky Chambers. Chamber's Sci-fi series of four Wayfarers books have gotten a nomination each for the Hugo, but no award. When I first read them I found the first book — the magnificently titled The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet — to be quite average and too derivative and would probably not have persisted with the author if Ann Leckie hadn't blurbed the second bok in the series. On re-reading the first, I found it better than I remember, or maybe I was just more responsive to feel-good literature conforming to genre conventions.

The second book, A Closed and Common Orbit, is also derivative but since I liked it quite a lot I rather found that it just borrow heavily from very good material, including surprisingly enough “A day in the life of Ivan Denisovich”. On second re-read I still liked it. The novel makes the classic mind–body problem concrete by putting a ship's AI system in a humanoid body-kit.

The third Record of a Spaceborn Few is some form of Christiania in space. I could not see the point, neither when reading it the first time nor upon re reading (most of) it.

The fourth, The Galaxy, and the Ground Within is likely the second best and takes place in a truck stop in space where a disparate groups of aliens are forced together by circumstances for a few days. Some sort of The Breakfast club in space, but less icky.

To sum up, if you find yourself in need of feel-good reading material the series is well worth pursuing. Read the second volume and then perhaps the forth. The books can be read in any order.

Beckers's two novellas about the Monk and the Robot (A Psalm for the Wild-Built and
A Prayer for the Crown-Shy) are short and sweet and can easily be read in a single session, even if you have covid. The second is pretty OK. The robot is trying to find out what humans need, with medium success. The tea monk is helping it.

[andy popp]

I recently finished a book that some here might find interesting, Thorkild Hansen's Arabia Felix: The Danish Expedition of 1761-1767. First published in 1962, the book recounts the story of an ill-fated scientific expedition to Yemen, organized and funded by Danish crown. Thorkild was a novelist and I had questions in my mind about its relation to the archival sources and colleagues confirmed that historians were pretty skeptical about it as a genuine piece of historical writing. Certainly he gets away with things no historian would even dare try. More importantly, however, it's a pretty incredible story very well told by Hansen. I enjoyed it thoroughly and it will appeal to those interested in travel writing etc. I read a NYRB copy with an intro by Colin Thubron.

[jwi]

His trilogy on Hamsun (Prosessen mod Hamsun) certainly made for an intense debate in Norway.

[jwi]

Money men by Dan McCrum was a riveting read. McCrum is the investigative journalist at Financial Times who's exposé of the DAX 30 company Wirecard's accounting fraud took their market capitalisation from €24 billion (more than Deutche Bank) to € 0.0012 billion. I knew superficially about the financial scandal of course, as it is surely the biggest in Europe since the Kreuger crash of 1932.

I read some of McCrum's articles before the house of cards collapsed and was surprised at the time that sophisticated investors thought that the company was correctly valued. (Much like I have been surprised for a year now that Swedish fintech company Klarna with an obviously impossible business model led by people who have been conmen since their teens.)

What I did not know was just how much of a pure criminal enterprise Wirecard was. I picked up the book because I am interested in how cycles of hype and big promises get driven both by investors who wants entrepreneurs to dream big and entrepreneurs who need hype for cash to create new tech, and went in to it assuming that it there would be some grey-zones of unjustified tech hype which would eventually turn in to fraud to cover expenses, but was surprised to learn that it was one hundred percent pure gangsterism from day one. Despite the story being different than I though I was hooked, and read it in one sitting.

Apart from Wirecard's management lots of people and institutions comes out bad from this scandal, in particular the German financial authorities, Handelsblatt (Germany's financial journal of records) and the auditing firm Ernst & Young who all abetted this criminal enterprise.

It is fascinating and a bit scary to read about the legal and mental pressure Wirecard put on the journalists at FT, how they used the legal system against them. In all likelihood the surveillance of McCrum and his boss by hacking groups and private investigators is the largest private surveillance operation ever.

I also really liked to learn more about the colourful characters who are living their lives as professional short sellers. That they are willing to take enormous risk, and bend every available rule comes with the territory I assume. The understandably tense relationship between financial authorities, analysts and this ragtag bunch of semi-scoundrels was well described and one of the highlights for me.

I think the book is well worth reading for any investor of individual stock, and a reminder to do your own research even before investing into listed companies partly owned by respectable institutions.

[jwi]

There is also a nice podcast episode on the scandal here https://www.ft.com/content/eebabfef-8a34-4b25-bb72-55fce734e72c

[Wellsy]

The Quantum Thief, by Hannu Rajaniemi

Cracking transhuman science fiction, extremely inventive and very much pushing some conceptual boundaries of society, but also very human and touching.

[moose]

There is also a nice podcast episode on the scandal here https://www.ft.com/content/eebabfef-8a34-4b25-bb72-55fce734e72c

I really enjoyed that podcast - thanks - tempted to buy the book too.

[Falling Down]

A great review of it by John Lanchester in the LRB here: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n15/john-lanchester/fraudpocalypse

Hopefully you can read with the free article allowance.

[Falling Down]

Wasn’t sure whether to post in the film or books thread but, Heat 2, a novel sequel/prequel by Michael Mann and Meg Gardner is published next week.

https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/heat-two-sequel-michael-mann-interview-1385744/

[TobyD]

Read Empireland recently. https://www.waterstones.com/book/empireland/sathnam-sanghera/9780241445310

Excellent analysis of how the British empire affects what British people are like today, rather than a history of the empire (which is obviously a vast subject extensively covered in a number of historical tomes). In Empireland the author has a particular political slant, as would any British person writing on this subject, but he's open and honest about this, and writes with enough nuance to depict the empire as neither good nor bad. I especially liked the premise which runs through much of it that most people in the UK know almost nothing about the empire, despite its existence affecting what we're like as a country as much as the world wars which are done to death in secondary school history, whereas the empire is barely mentioned.

[duncan]

Read Empireland recently. https://www.waterstones.com/book/empireland/sathnam-sanghera/9780241445310

Excellent analysis of how the British empire affects what British people are like today, rather than a history of the empire (which is obviously a vast subject extensively covered in a number of historical tomes). In Empireland the author has a particular political slant, as would any British person writing on this subject, but he's open and honest about this, and writes with enough nuance to depict the empire as neither good nor bad. I especially liked the premise which runs through much of it that most people in the UK know almost nothing about the empire, despite its existence affecting what we're like as a country as much as the world wars which are done to death in secondary school history, whereas the empire is barely mentioned.

Featured in The Rest is History podcast a while back.  Sounded very interesting.

[Wellsy]

Just finished rereading Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars

If anyone is looking for hard scifi that's cerebral, thoughtful, well researched, lefty and yet not a polemic, I recommend it.

[TobyD]

Since you mentioned sci-fi, I'm currently reading Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. I'd been recommended it by two people so thought I'd try it, although I don't read much sci-fi.
I have to say I don't think much of it at the moment but I'd be interested to hear if anyone else who has read it has a different opinion

[JamieG]

Read Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams. Fantastic coming of age story set in the American west at the  end of the ‘wild west’ era. One of a number of more grounded and realistic western books/films etc that came out as a response to the over romanticised earlier westerns. Apparently paved the way for books like blood meridian by Cormack McCarthy which I can see but it’s much less brutal than that and much more poignant. Very easy reading and well written. Highly recommend.

[owensum]

Read Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams. Fantastic coming of age story set in the American west at the  end of the ‘wild west’ era. One of a number of more grounded and realistic western books/films etc that came out as a response to the over romanticised earlier westerns. Apparently paved the way for books like blood meridian by Cormack McCarthy which I can see but it’s much less brutal than that and much more poignant. Very easy reading and well written. Highly recommend.

Completely different, but Stoner by Williams is also brilliant.

[JamieG]

Read Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams. Fantastic coming of age story set in the American west at the  end of the ‘wild west’ era. One of a number of more grounded and realistic western books/films etc that came out as a response to the over romanticised earlier westerns. Apparently paved the way for books like blood meridian by Cormack McCarthy which I can see but it’s much less brutal than that and much more poignant. Very easy reading and well written. Highly recommend.

Completely different, but Stoner by Williams is also brilliant.

I’ve read Stoner too. Also a fantastic novel, but I think Butcher’s crossing worked more for me. I sympathised better with main character and what they were experiencing. I really like the way John Williams writes, it’s evocative but not overly complicated. It’s a very clean style. I don’t feel like I’m missing much compared to other authors.

[Wellsy]

Since you mentioned sci-fi, I'm currently reading Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. I'd been recommended it by two people so thought I'd try it, although I don't read much sci-fi.
I have to say I don't think much of it at the moment but I'd be interested to hear if anyone else who has read it has a different opinion

I read it and I thought it was Okay. It's very much doing a lot of by the numbers space opera stuff and I felt like it apes but was nowhere near as good as some other works.

[TobyD]

Since you mentioned sci-fi, I'm currently reading Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. I'd been recommended it by two people so thought I'd try it, although I don't read much sci-fi.
I have to say I don't think much of it at the moment but I'd be interested to hear if anyone else who has read it has a different opinion

I read it and I thought it was Okay. It's very much doing a lot of by the numbers space opera stuff and I felt like it apes but was nowhere near as good as some other works.

So far I'd completely agree with that. It really wants to be a Culture novel, but isn't as good.

[Will Hunt]

Of what I've read recently these are what I'd recommend:

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Easily the best thing I've read in ages. Fantasy. Piranesi lives in the House, a seemingly infinite labyrinth of vast stone halls lined from floor to ceiling with thousands of unique statues. As he explores, we discover what the House is and who its inhabitants are. A short book, it packs in a lot of beauty and a good story. For those of us who have ever felt the urge to know a place, to get under its skin and understand every inch of it (that's you, crag developers and scrittle scrubbers), I think you'll love this.

Flames by Robbie Arnott
Another short volume. There is a story here, but really this is a book about landscapes. It's a nature book that dispenses with the stolid cataloguing of the Macfarlanes of this world and jumps in with a plot and a well-measured dose of magical realism. I normally cringe when I hear that genre after some bad experiences with García Márquez and Murakami, but this is done really well. If I was being really critical I would say that this is a debut novel and it shows - we jump from scene to scene (which is good) but some of them are so good that it seems a waste not to let them develop more, and there are some clichés that are really on the nose (that gin-swilling hard-boiled detective), but these things are more than made up for by the quality of imagination. Favourite bits: the tuna hunting, the coffin maker's correspondence, and the Esk god.

The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley
How to describe this without making it sound like daft tosh? Historical fictiony time-hopping. Good characters, really well paced (i.e. fast), nice dollop of mystery. My only advice would be to keep an eye on the year that each chapter takes place in, especially towards the end, to avoid getting lost.