[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.

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

I just sucked up the £14, it had been on my reading list for quite a while. I did look for an e-reader compatible copy but didn't turn up anything.

[remus]

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.

I also read this a couple of months ago, having watched the trailer for the film and thinking it seemed interesting. I'd agree with your conclusions, an interesting and fairly plausible concept let down by rubbish characters and a lack of a story.

[remus]

His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet. Sort-of-maybe-non-fiction about a murder in a tiny scottish village. Completely engrossing, read it as fast as I could and would have read another 1000 pages of it at the same pace if the book had been longer.

[remus]

Finished off Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada the other day (possibly a big wall book club recommendation? Can't find the thread any more!) I found the start a little slow, but once it gets going it was really good. It paints a very vivid picture of the incipient madness descending over the country at the time.

[andy popp]

Here is a fascinating article about the author of the cult classic The Dice Man: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/mar/04/three-days-dice-man-never-wrote-money-fame-tanya-gold

I was never a huge fan of the book, read it and quite enjoyed but never got obsessed and certainly never tried to live by the dice. But it was in my rucksack during probably the "diciest" moment I ever got into climbing, something that always seemed appropriate and has stayed in my mind. So it is, as I said, fascinating to get this insight into the bizarre life and mind of the book's creator.

[cjsheps]

Dune

Finally got round to reading Frank Herbert's sprawling story of galactic politics. I found it hard to get into at first, and spent a lot of the first part getting confused. But I'm glad I stuck with it, as Herbert builds one of the richest worlds I've ever encountered in SF.

You Must be Joking, Mr Feynman!

Richard Feynman's autobiographical tales of his escapades as a bongo-playing, lock-picking, skirt-chasing theoretical physicist. Absolute joy to read.

[Yossarian]

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.

I finished this the other day. I thought it was fascinating. I appreciate that it wasn't universally acclaimed, and that various other historians have issues with some parts of it. But even if those sections are perhaps overstated, the accounts of the tank crews early in the war and the Seehund crews at the end of it were very powerful.

On a lighter note, Will Wiles' The Way Inn was excellent fun - if you're into stuff like Nicholson Baker or Magnus Mills it will probably be right up your street. I've not yet read his earlier The Care of Wooden Floors.

[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.

I finished this the other day. I thought it was fascinating. I appreciate that it wasn't universally acclaimed, and that various other historians have issues with some parts of it. But even if those sections are perhaps overstated, the accounts of the tank crews early in the war and the Seehund crews at the end of it were very powerful.

Thanks, another one for the list then.

[SA Chris]

The rate at which you guys consume books astounds me. I usually manage a few pages on the 10 min train ride to work and back and 5 mins at night before I fall asleep on the book.

[Fultonius]

The rate at which you guys consume books astounds me. I usually manage a few pages on the 10 min train ride to work and back and 5 mins at night before I fall asleep on the book.

I'm the same unless I feel the need to sit down and read for an hour. We don't have TV, so when I'm not arsing about on forums... it does happen once and again.

Page turners I can fly through just on the bog and before bed. Just finished Iain Banks, The Steep Approach to Gardbadale. I like his stuff because it's so well rooted in Scottish culture that it brings back loads of youthful memories - people, places, occurrences. Nothing mind blowing, but easy to read and follow.

Not as good as his earlier books though...

[SA Chris]

Probably my least favourite of his books. It's OK, but a bit...meh.

[Yossarian]

The rate at which you guys consume books astounds me. I usually manage a few pages on the 10 min train ride to work and back and 5 mins at night before I fall asleep on the book.

I'm the same unless I feel the need to sit down and read for an hour. We don't have TV, so when I'm not arsing about on forums... it does happen once and again.

My reading had really suffered and I was very anti Kindle. Until I bought one. Totally transformed my reading. I pick it up with my phone and keys now. I'm all for lingering over large format picture books in an armchair, but for ploughing through a list I'm a total convert.

[andy popp]

I feel like I should be reading much more! But I would probably be feeling like that no matter what. Life and what is going on in it determines how much time I get to read. Now I'm living with someone evenings are much more sociable and there is less reading time compared with a year or so ago. I still read everything except academic journal articles and newspapers on paper.

Since I last posted I've read Canada and The Lay of the Land, both by Richard Ford. The latter is the last of the true Frank Bascombe books and I thought by far the best, perhaps because we know Frank so well by now, but it also had a beautiful, melancholic, mordant wit. However, I know this series really divides people. I also read Colson Whitehead's award winning novel The Underground Railroad about the secret network that smuggled escaped slaves to free states in the north. In a kind magical realist touch the underground railroad is real, not a metaphor. I thought the book worthwhile but this device didn't work for me. The vast majority of the book is perfectly plausible and realistic so bits that weren't felt out of place. If he was going to do this he needed to do it much more wholeheartedly. Finally, I'm nearing the end of Lucy Hughes-Hallet's biography of Gabriele D'Annunzio The Pike. This is, as others here have said before, magnificent.

[moose]

The Underground Railroad about the secret network that smuggled escaped slaves to free states in the north. In a kind magical realist touch the underground railroad is real, not a metaphor. I thought the book worthwhile but this device didn't work for me. The vast majority of the book is perfectly plausible and realistic so bits that weren't felt out of place. If he was going to do this he needed to do it much more wholeheartedly. Finally, I'm nearing the end of Lucy Hughes-Hallet's biography of Gabriele D'Annunzio The Pike. This is, as others here have said before, magnificent.

Glad you like the Pike - I was one of the many who recommended it previously.  I've read Colson Whitehead's previous book - Zone 1 - that rare thing a "literary" zombie apocalypse book!  Rather enjoyed it - did not resonate as much as the other recent post-apocalytic novel of note, Station 11 (let alone The Road), but still pretty good. 

[SA Chris]

Anyway, I finally finished Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie. A novel set mostly in Kashmir at the time of the tragic conflicts, but spreads wider across the world. Some great characters and writing, possibly dragged out slightly longer than I would have liked, but enjoyable nonetheless.

[moose]

The rate at which you guys consume books astounds me. I usually manage a few pages on the 10 min train ride to work and back and 5 mins at night before I fall asleep on the book.

I occassionally make such heavy weather of reading a book - usually dense "literary" novels and non-fiction - that I genuinely fear that I have lost the ability to read properly (being too tired after work for anything other than TV and web browsing is generally the root cause).  I then find I have to mentally "decompress" by reading a few easy-to-read, addictive page turners until I regain confidence in my own powers of concentration - the sort of books that you devour in a few nights, and can read for hours without mental fatigue, 100+ pages at a time.  I have a stock of Lee Childs'  Jack Reacher books purchased from charity shops for the direst emergencies of self-doubt!

[remus]

I have a stock of Lee Childs'  Jack Reacher books purchased from charity shops for the direst emergencies of self-doubt!

Guilty little pleasures!

Finished off Hystopia by David Means the other day. Set in an alternative past, where Kennedy survived the first assassination attempt and kept pushing the Vietnam war. The meat of it is based around a process called 'enfolding' (involving a little re-creation and some powerful psychotics) that's used to treat PTSD.

I kind of like the setting but found it hard to care about the characters. It felt like I never really 'got it', maybe there was some underlying theme I was missing? I don't know. It just seemed to drift along with the characters floating in and out of the plot.

[Fultonius]

Probably my least favourite of his books. It's OK, but a bit...meh.

A the reviews I have read since posting this kind of agree with you. I guess if you're read a lot of his it's maybe a disappointment. It's been a while for me, so I wasn't too bothered, and it was my second book - Life and Fate doesn't lend itself to tired offshore readng.

[Brannock]

Had a bit of a first world war theme recently.

The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, Christopher Clark, sure this has been reviewed on here before, very good history of the tensions leading up to the first world war.

The Guns of August,  Barbara W. Tuchman, the classic account of the first month of the war, written in a novelistic tone with some great pen portraits of the key figures. By concentrating on the first month of the war it does feel slightly disjointed, covering the build up to the Battle of the Marne but not the actual battle, also completely ignores what was going on in the Balkans and the Austrian Russian front.

The Price of Glory, Verdun 1916, Alistair Horne, as a Franco German affair Verdun doesn't have quite the same resonances as the Somme to a British audience, the German offensive to "bleed the French Army white" maybe casts a longer shadow over Europe. From the leaders of France in the second war, Petain and De Gaulle (wounded and captured), to Mitterrand and Kohl holding hands in the pouring rain at a memorial service there. Literature disguised as military history.

The Guns of August and Price of Glory where both written in 1962, The Guns of August seems the more contemporary in tone and style, the Price of Glory more traditional, though I thought it was the best of the three.

[andy popp]

The Price of Glory, Verdun 1916, Alistair Horne Literature disguised as military history.

The Guns of August and Price of Glory where both written in 1962, The Guns of August seems the more contemporary in tone and style, the Price of Glory more traditional, though I thought it was the best of the three.

For a novel about Verdun read Henri Barbusse's gruelling Under Fire. I thought it was better than the much better known All Quiet on the Western Front. One of my favourite history books has a Verdun theme. Your Death Would be Mine by Martha Hanna is based on hundreds of surviving letters between a French peasant couple, Paul and Maries Pireaud, who were newly married in 1914. Paul survived Verdun and the whole war and their letters, and Hanna's use of them, gives a moving, intimate portrayal of war. Amazingly, for an academic book, the paperback has a pretty reasonable price tag.

[Falling Down]

Most of my reading time now is taken up with the very enjoyable and absorbing reading list for the Psychotherapy training but there's been space for a few novels in recent months.

I hate the Internet: Jarrett Kobe.  A blistering satire on modern life set in San Francisco and the madness that is Silicon Valley.   Really enjoyed this one.. funny and sharp. 

Jerusalem: Alan Moore.  This is an amazing book.  I read it on the kindle as the physical print has very small type and that put me off.  It's really quite remarkable.  I loved it all (apart from the chapter about Joyce's daughter which was really hard going).  Plenty of decent reviews online, one at The Quietus and the other last week in the LA Times do it more justice than I can here. 

Currently reading Michael Ayrton's The Maze Maker thanks to one of Dave C's recommendations on here.  It's a first person account by Daedalus, father of Icarus and maker of the Labyrinth.  It's really good..

[Yossarian]

I finished Peter Frankopan's The Silk Roads on Audible the other day. All 20something hours of it.  I'm always a bit suspicious of non-fiction bestsellers, and was also quite surprised that this had become one. But as an alternative angle on a big subject - the effect of the silk road and that region on world history - it's a really brilliant piece of work. Some excellent torture techniques too. For example, sewing someone up inside a camel...

[Sidehaas]

I finished Peter Frankopan's The Silk Roads on Audible the other day. All 20something hours of it.  I'm always a bit suspicious of non-fiction bestsellers, and was also quite surprised that this had become one. But as an alternative angle on a big subject - the effect of the silk road and that region on world history - it's a really brilliant piece of work. Some excellent torture techniques too. For example, sewing someone up inside a camel...

My wife has just finished reading this on paper and really enjoyed it too. Definitely added to my long to-read list.

[Muenchener]

Bet the camel doesn't like it much either.

[Muenchener]

Just arrived on my reading pile: Jim Perrin's Shipton & Tilman: The Great Decade of Himalayan Exploration (2013)

I wasn't aware that this existed until I recently stumbled across it somewhere. I was aware that Perrin edited the editions of Shipton & Tilman's mountain books, which have been favourites of mine for a long time, but I'm less fond of some of the overly flowery and self consciously "literary" aspects of his writing. Skimmed bits of The Villain one evening in a hut a while ago and didn't find it sufficiently compelling to bother picking a copy up.

Shipton & Tilman otoh at three chapters in is looking very promising so far.