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the shizzle => shootin' the shit => music, art and culture => Topic started by: Yossarian on November 17, 2016, 07:47:08 pm
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I've been enjoying some of the suggestions in the Books thread over the past few months. However, with reading time limited by trying to write my own stuff plus the pressures of small children and a falling down house, I thought it would be interesting to force some of you into revealing your absolute favourite books.
If you faced the prospect of getting stuck on a portaledge for a week or two, what 8-10 books would you pack? Feel free to give detailed explanations for your choices...
I'm not totally set on mine yet, but the process of figuring them out is proving quite enjoyable...
So, this is where I've got to...
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
The Magus - John Fowles
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
The Restraint of Beasts - Magnus Mills
The Mezzanine - Nicholson Baker
The Making of the Atomic Bomb - Richard Rhodes
George's Marvellous Medicine - Roald Dahl
My Idea of Fun - Will Self
London Fields - Martin Amis
Explanation and revisions to follow...
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Firstly welcome back - we've missed you.
Secondly - the Richard Rhodes book on the bomb is absolutely brilliant. One of my "You really should read this" books...
I'll give the challenge some thought.
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Do we need stay true to the Big Wall idea? I like The Brothers Karamazov, but if I'd to haul I may select something a bit denser...
* A collection of Jorge Luis Borge's short stories. The more complete the better. As long as it contains “ The Lottery in Babylon”. I can read them again and again.
* The left hand of darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin. Apart from everything else it also have a very nice description of a trek across the ice. The dispossessed would do as well.
* Moominvalley in November by Tove Jansson. Get a lifetime dose of Finnish melancholy in this thin volume.
* The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse. Because sometimes the Ivory Tower is all we have
* The Myth of Wu Tao-Tzu by Sven Lindqvist, a writer mostly known for “Exterminate all the brutes” and “A history of bombing” wrote this taoism gem in the 60s.
* The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The great Russian novel, wholly without compromises.
* Kolyma Tales by Varlam Shalamov. Because “A day in the life of Ivan Denisovich” is not grim enough.
* The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea by Yukiko Mishima. How a fascist ultra-nationalist could write this novel, I'll never know.
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I did something like this on FB a couple of years ago and also had a Moomin book too - I think it was Moomin Summer Madness. I'll come back with a fuller list soon.
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Thank you very much Falling Down - I thought it would be a bit crap if I just started adding to some established threads without first starting something new...
I think the Richard Rhodes book is amazing. As much as I am awed by the Apollo programme, I think that the Manhattan Project (and surrounding work) is even more impressive, and this account is vastly better than any recording of the former.
Just one sliver, like Fermi and Chicago Pile-1, could be a brilliant book on its own.
And it's all so taut - there's a notion of time running out from the first page...
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JWI - the portaledge is metaphorical and adaptable to your preference...
I was going to add the Brothers K, but I still struggle with the fact that, if I'm honest, I would rather take Bravo Two Zero...
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I think the Richard Rhodes book is amazing. As much as I am awed by the Apollo programme, I think that the Manhattan Project (and surrounding work) is even more impressive, and this account is vastly better than any recording of the former.
I hadn't heard of this but am intrigued now. I was very impressed with American Prometheus, Bird and Sherwin's autobiography of Robert Oppenheimer.
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Some people I know in theoretical physics also have spoken well of Rhodes's book
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I did something like this on FB a couple of years ago and also had a Moomin book too - I think it was Moomin Summer Madness. I'll come back with a fuller list soon.
As an aside, I really dislike the English titles for Jansson's Moomin novels. I understand that the marketing department want to put in Moomin there, but the books are not for children anyway and by doing that they loose all the wistfulness of the original
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This is the list I came up when given a similar challenge a couple of years ago:
1. Moominsummer Madness, Tove Jansson.
2. The House at Pooh Corner, A.A. Milne
3. Collected Poems, Theodore Roethke
4. A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, Marcel Proust.
5. Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
6. A Dance to the Music of Time, Anthony Powell
7. Austerlitz, W.G. Sebald
8. Moby Dick, Herman Melville.
9. The Go-Between, L.P. Hartley
10. Let's Go Climbing, C.F. Kirkuk.
I might want to make some changes now though ...
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I did something like this on FB a couple of years ago and also had a Moomin book too - I think it was Moomin Summer Madness. I'll come back with a fuller list soon.
As an aside, I really dislike the English titles for Jansson's Moomin novels. I understand that the marketing department want to put in Moomin there, but the books are not for children anyway and by doing that they loose all the wistfulness of the original
I really like a lot of her "adult" fiction too, The Summer Book especially. When I was in Helsinki in summer 2014 there was a superb retrospective of her artwork.
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I was going to add the Brothers K, but I still struggle with the fact that, if I'm honest, I would rather take Bravo Two Zero...
The rule is that when you re-read it you can skip the 200 pages of Dimitry drinking (which, incidentally, several Russians have told me is the best bit)
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I am going to add The Right Stuff - Tom Wolfe to make 10. Not sure how I missed that. I'm not sure it's particularly controversial that I prefer it to his fiction. (Which I do love too - I would probably have chosen A Man in Full over Vanities.)
But anyway, what a story, what a bunch of characters, and what a turn of phrase...
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Lots of books already chosen that I would plump for myself (either we all have great taste or I am an unimaginitive copycat). Books currently at the forefront of my mind (another day would see another list) are:
- In Search of Lost Time - Proust (bit of a cheat as it's multi-volume)
- Moby Dick - Melville
- The Player of Games - Iain M Banks
- Vurt - Jeff Noon
- The Right Stuff - Tom Wolfe (or possibly In Cold Blood - Capote)
- London Fields - Amis
- Lord of Rings - Tolkien (not because I think it's particularly great but for childhood memories of reading and rereading - it has to be the falling-apart copy I have had since I was 12).
- a random pop-science choice - maybe Godel Escher & Bach by Douglas Hofstadter - being marooned on a ledge might encourage me to finish it!
- random history choice - maybe London, a Biography by Peter Ackroyd or Stalinggrad by Anthony Beevor
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The prodigal son has returned.
Need to think about response though.
Is this assuming they are books you have read already and would re-read on said portaledge, or books you haven't ready yet that you would take with you to read on the ledge?
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London Fields - Martin Amis
This would fit the bill.
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Chris - very much books you've read before.
I'm quite intrigued by the non-fiction choices. Godet, Escher and Bach - that's exactly the sort of thing I was hoping to discover.
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If you faced the prospect of getting stuck on a portaledge for a week or two, what 8-10 books would you pack?
In no order:
The god of small things- Arundahti Roy
Kafka on the shore- Haruki Murakami
Northern lights (trilogy) - Phillip Pullman
Journey to the centre of the earth (possibly ...80 days) - Jules Verne
Collected works of John Keats ( or possibly Yeats depending on mood)
Great Apes- Will Self
Paradise Lost - John Milton
The Lost World - AC Doyle
Complete Works Shakespeare (sorry)
Ulysses- James Joyce (not read in its entirety yet)
Do I get the topo for the route I'm on as well? ;) Otherwise I'd take that instead of Shakespeare!
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Big Wall Climbing: Elite Techniques - Jared Ogden
Essays - George Orwell
Leviathan - Thomas Hobbes
Two Treatises of Government - John Locke
How To Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method - George Polya
Why Do I Do That? - Joseph Burgo
Parois de Légende : les plus belles escalades autour du monde - Arnaud Petit & Stephanie Bodet
Yosemite - Alex Huber & Heinz Zak
The Colossal Book of Short Puzzles and Problems - Martin Gardner
British Swear Words Colouring Book: Stress Relieving Adult Colouring Book - Outrageous Katie
A copy of Penthouse, any issue.
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Yosemite - Alex Huber & Heinz Zak
This is an incredible book! My local library had a copy when I was a kid, inspiring stuff!
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I'm going to replace Kirkus with Sholokhov's And Quiet Flows the Don and use Kirkus as the basis for a non-fiction list. So,
Let's Go Climbing, C.F. Kirkus
Omnibus, Kurt Diemberger
One of John Muir’s books, maybe My First Summer in the Sierra
Walden, or Life in the Woods, Henry David Thoreau
The Confessions, Aleister Crowley
The Making of the English Working Class, E.P. Thompson
Just Send Me Word, Orlando Figes (or Your Death Would be Mine, Martha Hanna)
Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945, Tony Judt (or The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, Christopher Clark)
The Cheese and the Worms, Carlo Ginzburg
Selected Letters, John Keats
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Good thinking - let's separate fiction and non-fiction...
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If it's an infinite portaledge relying on tried and tested multiple re-reads with pleasure and I can count series as one I'll go with the following:
Dune - Frank Herbert
The Wheel of Time sequence - Robert Jordan (potentially would swap with Lord of the Rings)
The Weirdstone of Brisingamen - Alan Garner (might swap with Susanne Cooper's Dark is Rising Sequence)
The Flashman series - George MacDonald Fraser
The Aubrey-Maturin series - Patrick O'Brian
The Warlord Trilogy - Bernard Cornwell
For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway
The Romance of the Three Kingdoms - Luo Guanzhong
War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
The Worst Journey In the World - Apsley Cherry-Garrard
I suspect some other books I've read more recently will repay re-reading, including Proust and Winged Victory by VM Yeates.
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obviously you're all taking A Manual of Modern Rope Techniques by Nigel Shepherd to start with
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Rather like Desert Island Discs, I think that is included with the portaledge. On the basis that it's soft, strong and thoroughly absorbent...
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Non-fiction list. Alas, I don't read much non-fiction outside of work.
* ABC of Reading by Ezra Pound. The greatest non-mexican non-female* north american poet of all time explain how to read. Elitism at its very best. (*Emily Dickinson is of course the greatest non-mexican, as Pound himself explains in the book.)
* Freedom Climbers by Bernadette McDonalds. Socio-economic explanations of the strongest climbing community the world has ever seen.
* The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society by Norbert Wiener. Read this when I was 18 and was blown away by someone who could explain the point of the internet. In 1954, when there was like ten computers. Still am.
* Parois de Légende, by Bodet and Petit. There is always room for the bible in the haulbag. (Could have chosen Güllich/Zak's High Life: Sportklettern weltweit as well)
* The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. I don't understand why it doesn't pop up more often on lists like this. It's really good.
* The histories by Herodotus. Father of History, Father of Lies.
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The Flashman series - George MacDonald Fraser
The Aubrey-Maturin series - Patrick O'Brian
Two of my recurring pleasures. I sometimes have such difficulty ploughing through more "worthy" fare, that I fear my ability to comprehend / enjoy the written word has died and have to seek reassurance. Aubrey / Maturin or Flashman are always a welcome relief - being well written and researched but also pleasurable page turners (my properly guilty pleasures in the same vein are Lee Childs books). Based on your tastes, I might have to give the Warlord Trilogy a go.
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I'm not totally set on non-fiction yet, but an initial stab would be...
The Right Stuff - Tom Wolfe
The Making of the Atomic Bomb - Richard Rhodes. Both for reasons given previously.
The Way of the Gun - David Carr - The most brutal tale of addiction, and approached in a totally unexpected fashion.
Miles - The Autobiography - Miles Davis - What a fucking guy.
Black Holes and Time Warps - Kip Thorne - Class A (popular) science.
The Lagoon - Armand Leroi - Some of the most beautiful science writing I've ever read. And Armand wanted my design for the paperback cover. (But Bloomsbury didn't like it...)
The Last Valley - Martin Windrow - An amazing account of a fierce and prophetic battle.
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No mention of Dr Zhivago? It was a long time ago but I remember it being quite extraordinary. Forget Omar Sharif - the book is is the real deal.
Good as a film and a book - The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
Men of Ideas - A big influence on me at the time. A brilliant transcript of a BBC series interviewing prominent philosophers at the time. Old hat now ? be interesting to revisit
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (or perhaps the more rambling Great Shark Hunt would be more apposite)
Swimming to Cambodia - Spalding Gray
Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp (I think that is what it is called) Brilliant and incisive answers from the founder of Modern Art - the opposite of Warhol. Challenged the boundaries of art and opened the doors for a lot of shit. Chess lover too. :wub:
Dr Seuss - for the words as well as the illustrations. One of a kind
The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings - good call Moose - and for the same reasons
Anything by David Lodge - he makes you feel clever
The Nanga Parbat Pilgrimage - the inventor of the winter girlfriend
This has really turned back the clock - I feel like I'm talking about another me - probably a better one - really should make an effort to read novels again. Currently crunching through The Age of Alchemy by Mervyn King which whilst thought provoking and a useful handbook is not so good for the soul. I have been drinking
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I don't have a Kindle, but am increasingly thinking that, in an age of constant distraction, the trick might be to make reading a more efficient distraction itself...
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anyone else viewing this thread now have an absurdly long amazon wishlist?
Inspired by Yossarian's choices of,
The Making of the Atomic Bomb - Richard Rhodes. Both for reasons given previously.
The Way of the Gun - David Carr - The most brutal tale of addiction, and approached in a totally unexpected fashion.
The Last Valley - Martin Windrow - An amazing account of a fierce and prophetic battle.
on a similar vein, my non fiction choices would be
- Command & Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety by Eric Schlosser - entertaining and terrfying
- Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon - brilliant reportage from Baltimore, spot the true events that were co-opted by The Wire
- Chickenhawk by Robert Mason - my favourite 'nam book - the account of a boy who just wanted to fly so became a Huey pilot - the (usual) futility / atrocity of war stuff, albeit from an unusual perspetive, plus lots of nerdy techy detail on the mechanics of learning how to pilot choppers.
Other non-fiction that has stuck in my mind,
- Guns Germs & Steel by Jared Diamond, 'nuff said - a classic of the "how we got here" genre;
- A Life too Short - Robert Enke - biography, based on an uncompleted autobiography / diaries of the German goalie who committed suicide - absolutely heartbreaking insight into the effects and consequences of depression on a life lived in public, where a small mistake results in horrible abuse from thousands.
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London Fields - Martin Amis
This would fit the bill.
Really? Why on a portaledge would you want to be dragged to the (imagined) underbelly of Landan
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The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings - good call Moose - and for the same reasons
My copies of the Hobbit and LOTR are two of the few Christmas presents that I can truly attribute to my Dad; my Mum generally took care of childhood Christmas stuff, so anything my Dad had gone to the trouble of getting seemed a bit special. I remember in the following days, him tipsily asking me about my progress when he came back from the pub and I had come down from bed to see if he had brought me back the promised packs of "Cheese Snips" or "Planter's Roasted Peanuts"! I can remember stopping reading LOTR for a week entirely before picking it back up, purely because the "Shelob's lair" section was scaring me so much (I really don't like spiders). I must have read it 3-4 times since.... I reckon if I had read it only ever as an adult I would be much more alive to the flaws.... as it is, my near 30 y.o copy would be a definite on the portaledge.
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Shark - It's a hypothetical portaledge with a view obscured by dense but unthreatening cloud. There are no distractions, but rather than blissfully zoning out you are presented with a deep and compelling desire to put your brain to good use...
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with a view obscured by dense
a terrifying thought
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Perhaps you could channel that terror into a selection of meaningful titles...?
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Perhaps you could channel that terror into a selection of meaningful titles...?
and keep on subject?
interesting idea
whatever the year, it would have to be The Year's Best Science Fiction Anthology, edited by Gardner Dozois - maybe the previous year too, if I hadn't read that
something by Roger McGough - The Way Things Are, or some bigger collection that includes the good stuff - this stuff needs re-reading out loud to get the proper benefit
Heart of a Dog, by Mikhail Bulgakov - people, just how they are
Her Smoke Rose Up Forever, by James Tiptree Jr - there's always something new that I missed before
The Boy Who Kicked Pigs, by Tom Baker - different - enjoyed discussing it with lots of people - interesting, simple use of language
The Skinner, by Neal Asher - ACTION, but with lots of back stories to contemplate (or not, if you just want the action)
Books of Blood, Clive Barker - all of them - good variation of horror
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Tricky question:
- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams.
- Three Men in a Boat, Jerome K Jerome.
- The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett.
- The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas.
- The Hundred Year old Man who climbed out of the window and disappeared, Jonas Jonasson.
- The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien.
- The Climbing Essays, Jim Perrin.
- Feeding the Rat, Al Alvarez.
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Answered something similar on facebook a few years ago and choosing only a few books was really difficult. First books that come to my mind:
Lord of the rings - probably the first book I read that really made me love reading
The process - Kafka
Something written by Neil Gaiman. The sandman or American gods
The non-existent Knight - Italo Calvino
The book of disquiet - Fernando Pessoa
The color of magic - Terry Pratchett
Snow crash - Neal Stephenson
Gödel, Escher, Bach - Hofstadter. So I could finally finish it. It's a great book, but it needs some dedication.
Neuromancer - William Gibson
The tartar steppe - Dino Buzzati
And finally the biography of Jon Gill, as a reminder of what the hell am I doing on a portaledge when I could be sleeping on my bed, wake up late and go bouldering :-)
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This is a bit embarrassing to admit, but from the age of 11 or 12 after the first reading when it blew me away I then read LOTR every year starting on September 26 when Frodo and the Hobbits leave Hobbiton. This lasted well into my thirties.... :-[
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At about 11 ish I put talcum powder on my face to make myself look ill so I could spend the day in bed reading LOTR. Don't think my mum ever believed me.
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At about 11 ish I put talcum powder on my face to make myself look ill so I could spend the day in bed reading LOTR. Don't think my mum ever believed me.
That's brilliant!
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Heres my list. Cheating a bit with several trilogies and I'd need an extra haul bag for Jung.
The Stone Book Quartet – Alan Garner. A wonderful little book. All life is in here.
2066 – Roberto Bolano. The best book I've ever read.
Light – M John Harrison. Absolutely love this book.
Collected works of Robinson Jeffers. My copy is well thumbed.
Against the Day - Thomas Pynchon. My favourite of all his massive, dense (there he is again) & playful novels.
The Red Night Trilogy - William Burroughs. Blew my mind in my late teens and still does today.
To the ends of the Earth - William Golding. Gripping and beautiful.
Collected Works - C G Jung. Can't get enough of it.
American Underworld Trilogy - James Ellroy. Stone cold classic.
The Companion to British History - Charles Arnold Baker. A self published masterpiece. Part encyclopaedia, part history book.
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Thanks everyone, that my Christmas wishlist sorted.
Fiction
The tin drum - Gunther Grass - Probably a poignant time to reread
Catch 22 - Joseph Hellier - Didn't read this for years thinking I'd be disappointed...
Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov - Bought this a long time ago, I was expecting Russian literature to be quite dry.
Colony of unrequited dreams - Wayne Johnson - Read in a small guesthouse, didn't look too promising, couldn't put it down.
Periodic table -Primo Levi - My first 'adult' piece of literature.
Non-fiction
The unnatural hisory of the sea - Professeur Calum Roberts - Read this!
Woodlands - Oliver Rackham - Wonderful.
Wildwood - Roger Deakin - Could have chosen Waterlog too.
On and off the rocks - Jim Perrin - My battered old copy.
In Patagonia - Bruce Charwin - One book I try to force anyone I meet to read.
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Ooh, good shout on Waterlog.
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I can remember stopping reading LOTR for a week entirely before picking it back up, purely because the "Shelob's lair" section was scaring me so much (I really don't like spiders).
I had to skip over that bit on my first run through at the age of about 13 or so - too scary.
Now my son is that age, and we've recently finished the unabridged German language audiobook version in the car. Quite a bit of driving that, but worth every mile.
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Totally intrigued by 2666 by Roberto Bolano, people seem to love it or hate it.
*Will have to swap Bulgakov's M and M with Flaubert's Madame Bovary; I've read the first at least 10 times.
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I was indifferent to 2066, if that helps ;)
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Shame I got the date/title wrong.
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I just assumed it was a typo, there are enough in my posts. Did waste a valuable couple of seconds trying to google it ;)
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Rather than over think this, I'm sticking to books I've either read many times, or have actually stuck in my sac when likely to have a good few hours to kill in camp on a trip. I've bought a few slim paperbacks now solely for this reason.
The Songlines, Bruce Chatwin. A flawed masterpiece I never tire of reading, always gets me thinking.
The Peregrine, JA Baker. Peerless, still spawning pale imitations.
45, Bill Drummond. A whole life lived as a piece of art largely designed to take the piss.
This Game of Ghosts, Joe Simpson. My copy is falling to bits now, the best 'why' book on climbing?
Jim Perrin, Travels with the Flea etc. Most of his highpoints in here, he's good isn't he?
Casting at the Sun, Chris Yates. Even Perrin can't match Yates on the landscape.
The Big Six, Arthur Ransome. After seeing a crap play of the Hobbit aged 11 I've never read Tolkien, but at the same age I did beat someone on Mastermind whose specialist subject was Ransome.
The Kingdom, Douglas Chadwick. A big photo book rather impractical for a 'ledge, but I picked it up second hand in Whitehorse, and read in the dirt at Squamish. Knocks the recent british nature writing genre into a cocked hat.
Britain: A World by Itself, Various, photos by Paul Wakefield. Again, transcendent photos transcended by the writing. The first book I'd save if the house was on fire.
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Songlines is an amazing book. Together with “What am I doing here” it's the best Chatwin book imho
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On Black hill is excellent too.
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Yeah, would definitely make my fiction shortlist.
I forgot Cider with Rosie, Laurie Lee. Literary duvet jacket.
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Command & Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety by Eric Schlosser - entertaining and terrfying
Based on your recommendation, I have just started this. Gripping...
There's also Richard Rhodes' Dark Sun, about the hydrogen bomb, Teller, Fuchs, etc which I must get round to. And John Hersey's Hiroshima.
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Command & Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety by Eric Schlosser - entertaining and terrfying
Based on your recommendation, I have just started this. Gripping...
There's also Richard Rhodes' Dark Sun, about the hydrogen bomb, Teller, Fuchs, etc which I must get round to. And John Hersey's Hiroshima.
Superb isn't it? I was dubious when I read the glowing reviews - bloke who wrote Fast Food Nation writing about nuclear weapons...gedorffffit! But it is one of the best non-fiction books I have read for years - I had read more weighty and considered tomes but none that made me look forward so much to restarting it.
Terrifying though - every single aspect of the USA's nucler programme was (possibly still is) a disaster waiting to happen. From the multiply awful failsafes meant to stop bombs accidentally detonating, to the silo ops, to the computing systems (a favourite being a chip at an early warning station in the frozen north that essentially failed in a manner which generated a "base is destroyed, the missiles are coming" signal - took a fair bit of nerve for the powers that be to ignore it until they obtained evidence to the contrary).
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There must have been others but the only book I can remember reading on the one actual expedition I have been on was In Cold Blood. By the end it had been split into four or five parts as pretty much all of us were reading it simultaneously (I remember having to wait for the person ahead of me to finish the part they were on, which I needed next).
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Anna Karenina. Beautifully written dense Tolstoy. A copy disintegrated in the top pocket of my rucksack as a student before I could finish it. Lasted several trips....
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I guess with Kindles these days you don't have to take risks on a short collection of books, just download a whole bunch and hope at least a couple are good.
I killed two kindles that way before I wised up.
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There must have been others but the only book I can remember reading on the one actual expedition I have been on was In Cold Blood. By the end it had been split into four or five parts as pretty much all of us were reading it simultaneously (I remember having to wait for the person ahead of me to finish the part they were on, which I needed next).
The last book I read on an expedition was William Dalrymple's The Age of Kali, a collection of essays on subjects including murder, self-immolation, massacres, etc, all in India. Which I read in various dodgy hovels in India. I with I'd brought something else. It was a little like going on a surfing holiday, and bringing an illustrated history of fatal shark attacks...
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There must have been others but the only book I can remember reading on the one actual expedition I have been on was In Cold Blood. By the end it had been split into four or five parts as pretty much all of us were reading it simultaneously (I remember having to wait for the person ahead of me to finish the part they were on, which I needed next).
The last book I read on an expedition was William Dalrymple's The Age of Kali, a collection of essays on subjects including murder, self-immolation, massacres, etc, all in India. Which I read in various dodgy hovels in India. I with I'd brought something else. It was a little like going on a surfing holiday, and bringing an illustrated history of fatal shark attacks...
Ha! Could have been worse, might have had Touching the Void with you. But I've got a terrible feeling now that I lied. I actually think it was Mailer's The Executioner's Song, not In Cold Blood.
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I guess with Kindles these days you don't have to take risks on a short collection of books, just download a whole bunch and hope at least a couple are good.
I killed two kindles that way before I wised up.
Do Kindles not cope with having large quantities of books downloaded onto them?
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Do Kindles not cope with having large quantities of books downloaded onto them?
That they cope with, its being left in the tent they don't like....
(https://c7.staticflickr.com/4/3723/9501748774_d4c8414010_b.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/ftCWSJ)
Adieu chère caméra (https://flic.kr/p/ftCWSJ) by jwi (https://www.flickr.com/photos/wiklund/), on Flickr
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That just killed my Nikon and 3 lenses. I had already wised up about kindles by that time....
They die in cold climates.
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I came back to this thread to get a book recommendation (think I'm going to go with one of the Moomin books) and realised that although I made my list I didn't post it.
A Sand County Almanac - Leopold
Illumination in the Flatwoods - Hutto
His Dark Materials - Pullman
English Passengers - Kneale
Roughing It - Twain
Down and Out in Paris and London - Orwell
Homage to Catalonia - Orwell
As I Walked Out One Midsummer's Morning - Lee
Cider With Rosie - Lee
Mortal Engines - Reeve
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indeed everything by Tom Wolfe is great.
The Purple Decades is a nice collection of his stuff - be nice to have on a big wall