[Falling Down]

Finished Byzantium Endures, Michael Moorcock's first part of the Colonel Pyatt quartet.  I think Moose mentioned it further up the thread.  Really good, entertaining and a but disturbing. It also filled a massive gap in my knowledge of the Bolshevik revolution.

John, I started House of Rumour last night.

[andy popp]

I mentioned Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time a little way back; 12 volumes and 3000 pp later I finished it about a week ago. Suffice to say its up there in the top 5 for me. Buts its hard to capture why. A central character who, despite narrating every single word remains an almost complete blank/absence, wanders through six decades of a life in which nothing very much happens beyond the stuff that just happens in life. For me this is actually the point. And the writing is often breathtaking and, what I didn't expect, extremely funny. I wish a new volume could appear every year in parallel with my own life.

Now reading Anna Karenina (first time) which, surprise, surprise, brilliant.

[TobyD]

Recently read Andy Kirkpatrick's most recent offering, Cold Wars. It is an excellent account of a man in many ways falling out of love with climbing, and coming to terms with being a father. That said, it has some good accounts of several epics, and made me laugh out loud a few times. I really liked it - especially the chapter on the Chocolate factory film set.

[SA Chris]

I didn't enjoy it quite as much as Psychovertical but still thought it was very very good

[SpanishJuan]

I've just finished Pavel and I by Dan Vyleta and its a really enjoyable read. if you like that kind of book

[Stubbs]

Just finished Tyler Hamilton's The Secret Race, http://www.thesecretrace.us/ cannot recommend it enough. Incredibly readable, less mea culpa and soul searching than Riding Through the Dark, just the gritty detail of day to day doping, and an excellent insight into what in was like to work with Lance Armstrong.

[psychomansam]

have enjoyed Neal Stephenson "Snow Crash", quite visionary really but we'll researched & detailed about religion, linguistics and a quite frightening possibility with regards to consumerism/corporations.

Just finished it. Much prefered the 'primer'.
Some part of Snow Crash are great, like you say it has a middle section with some great stuff on language and religion and a wonderful humorously displayed dystopian corporate/political future. I just found the comic-book style action sequences rather disinteresting and gratuitous in places. In the 'primer' they were linked in far more naturally. This felt like a book of two halves. And as for semi-consensual sex with a 15 year old, I suppose it's ok if you're French, but as a teacher I found it a little uncomfortable.

[Falling Down]

John, I enjoyed House of Rumour, a bit of a romp as you said earlier and very entertaining.  You might enjoy Sex and Rockets, the biography of Jack Parsons.

Finished Nicholas Royle's Reigicide.  Quite grim and disturbing.

Just started Man with a Blue Scarf, Martin Gayford's (art critic) account of sitting for Lucien Freud.

[cofe]

I'm sure it's been mentioned elsewhere previously, but I just finished reading and really enjoyed Troll Wall. Brilliantly written and a great climbing story. Unbelievable it went unpublished for 50 years, and well done to VP for seeing the value in publishing it.

Thanks Chris.

[andy popp]

John, I enjoyed House of Rumour, a bit of a romp as you said earlier and very entertaining.  You might enjoy Sex and Rockets, the biography of Jack Parsons.

Finished Nicholas Royle's Reigicide.  Quite grim and disturbing.

Just started Man with a Blue Scarf, Martin Gayford's (art critic) account of sitting for Lucien Freud.

As ever an impressively large and wide-ranging selection!

[Fultonius]

Alex Roddie (Only a Hill from the other channel) has just released his first novel. I bought it a few weeks ago and have been reading it while in Azerbaijan. It's only £1.99 at Amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Only-Genuine-Jones-ebook/dp/B009R2BBN2

I thought it was fairly good - the imagery of the mountain scenes and the climbing were good. Main characters good. Some historical inconsistencies but definitely worth a read.

Let me know what you think of it if you read it.

[Bubba]

What I want to know is wtf happend to Fingers of a Martyr 

[Mike Tyson]

What I want to know is wtf happend to Fingers of a Martyr 

Bubba, I have pondered this many times. Wonder what the deal was?

[GCW]

The fate of FOAM has worried me for some years.

Did I mention that Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier is great?  Read it, it's fab!!!

[Falling Down]

I just put down the Martin Grayford book on Lucien Freud having devoured it in one sitting.  Wonderful stuff.  I'm sated.

Andy, I'm embarrassed to take a wad point for simply reading books and writing one line reviews.

(I too, wonder what happened to FOAM.... )

[Falling Down]

Falling Down if you liked Cryptonomicon you will like probably like Reamde, which I think is Stephenson's latest. I couldn't read Anathem either, I found it painful for some reason.

Anathem - too much unnecessary worldbuilding and tedious exposition.  I'll give Reamde a try.

[Falling Down]

Read The Finish: The Killing of Osama bin Laden last week. 

The clue is in the title, a really interesting insight into the hunt of and eventual slaying of the spiritual head and CEO of al-Qaida.  Insider interviews with Obama, intelligence analysts and the navy seals who carried out the raid at Abottabad give a really good picture of what happened, the motivations and politics of those involved told at a racy pace.  Worthwhile if you're interested in the hunt itself but also the politics of torture and drones.

[Falling Down]

Also Sick City a history of medical London. A beautifully produced package of essays, maps and gazetteer to the history of medicine in the City. 

It would be of real interest to the Doctors and surgeons amongst UKB with essays charting the rise of the medical profession from the church and the establishment of the BMA alongside the history of madness and Bedlam with sordid tales of sex and the pox from Soho.

My mate Mark Pilkington is the publisher for Strange Attractor press and struggles to keep the business going despite producing beautiful collectors items worthy of any serious readers bookshelf.

[andy popp]

Just finished Never Mind, the first of Edward St Aubyn's so-called Patrick Melrose novels. They don't come blacker than this - but bleakly funny, sometimes laugher is the only defense! Anyone else read these?

[tomtom]

Jagged Red Line by Nick Williams.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jagged-Red-Line-ebook/dp/B009T8XBD2

This is quite a book.

I knew Nick as we were at Leeds University Mountaineering Club together in the early 90's - and in 93 he went off to Ukraine as part of his course and spent a considerable part of it climbing (esp the final summer there..). When he returned there were grim tales of a horrible climbing accident, people he was climbing with fell and perished - and what followed were even grimmer sounding hints of a epic overland journey - with a body - back from the 'stans' to Kiev. Only with a beer (of several) in hand and with a look that switched from intense/manic to distant he sometimes let on what happened over there. With good reason, as it was clearly a horrendous experience...

Nearly 20 years later on, I found (via Facebook) that Nick has penned his account of his experiences and its up on Amazon as a self published book.  It starts as an autobiographical travel tale - relating the quirks, oddities and ways of post communist Ukraine - then as Nick forges links and friendships with climbers it moves into a climbing travel book - until the tragedy and its ramifications unfolds. I found it one of the most moving mountaineering books I have read - it is funny, incredibly sad, touching in highs and lows. Superbly written with a very clever and moving shift in tense from first to third person. I'm probably biased - knowing Nick many years ago - but the incredible tale, the comeradeship forged and the hardships encountered and overcame made this a truly compelling read. I can't reccomend it enough.

[Wood FT]

anyway for the kindle-less among us to read it?

[psychomansam]

For recreation I tend to read sci-fi with a political aspect, preferably leftist.

In this respect, China Mieville is gold.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Mi%C3%A9ville
China Tom Miéville (pron.: /ˈtʃaɪnə miˈeɪvəl/; born 6 September 1972) is an English fantasy fiction author, comic writer and academic. He is fond of describing his fiction as "weird fiction" (after early twentieth century pulp and horror writers such as H. P. Lovecraft), and belongs to a loose group of writers sometimes called New Weird. He is also active in left-wing politics as a member of the International Socialist Organization (US) and the Socialist Workers Party (UK). He has stood for Regent's Park and Kensington North for the Socialist Alliance in the 2001 General election, and published his PhD thesis as a book on Marxism and international law. He teaches creative writing at Warwick University.

I've read The City and The City, which was very interesting and rather good.
Am now reading Perdido Street Station(first in a trilogy) which is excellent so far!

It's making me want to write. If only I didn't have to work, dammit.

[tomtom]

anyway for the kindle-less among us to read it?

Dont know - Nick has Blog - might be stuff there on it?

http://www.nickwilliams.org/books/jaggedredline/

ah.. now I look..  "Jagged Red Line is now published. It is available initially on electronic platforms, priced £2.99. Thanks to feedback from readers to date, there will also be a paperback version. If you would like to order your copy of a printed first edition of the book at £6.99, please use the contact form."....

[psychomansam]

anyway for the kindle-less among us to read it?

Almost all my reading these days is done on the laptop.

Plenty of e-book readers out there (i.e. adobe digital editions), and I also use a screen dimming program to lower the brightness beyond my laptops minimum, which makes for nicer reading in the dark.

Reading from a laptop has disadvantages, i.e. the lack of paper-nostalgia-pleasure, but it also has advantages. I can read in the dark without a light. I can google words I don't know. I can pay a lot less for books while still giving about the same amount to the author (although I don't necessarily pay for stuff).

I have a file named "sci-fi epub". In this file are a list of files named "A"-"Z". In each file there are a load of sci-fi authors listed, each with their own file. Inside their file are many of the books they've published. It would probably take me more than a lifetime to read every book I have on my laptop. Which can be an advantage when I'm not sure which book I want to read on holiday.

I tend to only buy textbooks and books from charity shops.

[Falling Down]

PsychomanSam.  Mieville has a pretty good blog http://chinamieville.net/