There was a biography of De Valera came out a year or so ago and was well-reviewed. I guess he's the single most important Irish leader in the last couple of centuries (except maybe Parnell).
Paul Bew is one of the leading Irish historians and he covers a very long period, including up to the present day (he was involved in the peace process and the Good Friday Agreement). His books are said to be very good, although I haven't read any myself.
The Thing Around your Neck - Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche. Series of short stores from the author of half of a yellow sun and Blue Hibiscus. Mainly set is the US and Nigeria, but very good and well written.
The Thing Around your Neck - Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche. Series of short stores from the author of half of a yellow sun and Blue Hibiscus. Mainly set is the US and Nigeria, but very good and well written.
Purple Hibiscus, I think. I like her novels, may look out for this.
The Thing Around your Neck - Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche. Series of short stores from the author of half of a yellow sun and Blue Hibiscus. Mainly set is the US and Nigeria, but very good and well written.
Purple Hibiscus, I think. I like her novels, may look out for this.
Yes you're right. Not actually read her novels but I've got half of a yellow sun at home, so will add it to my creaking to read pile
A NATURAL by Ross Raisin. About a young gay player in a fictional League Two football club. Many insights into life for players at that level and Charlton get a couple of mentions as Paint Trophy opponents. Also shows just how damaging negative stuff about players on chat sites like this can be. Fascinating and well written.
A highly original dystopian novel, set in the totalitarian state of North Korea. In the first half, the protagonist, the orphan of the title, works hard and loyally in order to to survive, serving the state as a kidnapper of Japanese citizens and an interpreter of coded transmissions. He also somehow gets to travel to Texas as part of a bizarre diplomatic delegation. The second half of the novel is non-linear, has three different narrators and strays into the realms of magic realism as the subject matter moves into the top echelons of power, featuring Kim Jong II (‘the Dear Leader’, himself).
The novel is about 500 pages long but I must say it didn’t feel that long. It’s entertaining and well written, often lurching from the horrific to the comedic and back again in short order. It’s quite unlike anything I’ve read before and it is certainly topical and prescient, given the fake news phenomenon and it’s latest incarnation, the concept of ‘alternative facts’. Winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize.
‘All The Light We Cannot See’ by Anthony Doerr
Set in World War II, the two main characters are a young blind French girl and a sensitive and brilliant young radio expert in the German army who had been forced to attend a brutal Hitler military academy. The novel jumps back and forth in time, until eventually the two young people both find themselves in the French city of Saint-Malo, just as the Allies begin shelling it in order to drive out the remaining Nazi troops.
The novel is well written and the short chapters, written from the perspective of different protagonists as the story progresses, keep the pace of the narrative moving along nicely. It won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize although, personally, I would put it in the ‘good’, rather than ‘outstanding’ category.
Picked up a couple in waterstones today, books, Nicholas Pileggi wise guy more mafia stuff and Chris Hadfield an astronauts guide to life on earth, space stuff.
Death Comes to Pemberley by PD James. Ole Phyllis' stab at writing a mystery thriller in Jane Austen's style, and she does a good job of it. Well thought out plot and Austenesque humour done well.
Thoroughly enjoying this book. It reads like a novel but is a window on the final years of Stalin's life - surely in the running for biggest despot of all time killing millions of his own countrymen including friends and relatives - and the years following his death in the 1950s.
Her flight to the US in 1967 reads like a thriller.
The Guardian called it "an extraordinary book"
And the Mail on Sunday - "tremendously exciting and stimulating"
The immortal life if Henrietta Lacks. About a lady who died in the 50s with an aggressive form of cervical cancer. Her cells were harvested and appear as HeLa cells in probably every biology research lab in the world. Because she was poor and black, her family weren't told about this until much later. I can't put this book down.
A NATURAL by Ross Raisin. About a young gay player in a fictional League Two football club. Many insights into life for players at that level and Charlton get a couple of mentions as Paint Trophy opponents. Also shows just how damaging negative stuff about players on chat sites like this can be. Fascinating and well written.
Opened this thread for the first time specifically to mention this book, I am about half way through, and it really does make you think about the realities of life in football, and what preoccupies the minds of the people we invest so much emotion in. And oh yes, the effect of the chat sites...
A NATURAL by Ross Raisin. About a young gay player in a fictional League Two football club. Many insights into life for players at that level and Charlton get a couple of mentions as Paint Trophy opponents. Also shows just how damaging negative stuff about players on chat sites like this can be. Fascinating and well written.
Opened this thread for the first time specifically to mention this book, I am about half way through, and it really does make you think about the realities of life in football, and what preoccupies the minds of the people we invest so much emotion in. And oh yes, the effect of the chat sites...
Although I didn't think it was a great read, it's definitely a book that is brave enough to ask the right questions.
4-3-2-1- .. by Paul Auster .. NOT an analysis of Robo's new brainwave tactic but an interesting concept of one person's four potential life journeys from birth depending on what happens during his formative years .. family relationships, illnesses, parental intervention, education, etc. etc. ... so, four potential lives lived in America from the late 40s to the 1980s ... not a new concept perhaps and the book is very long (I am about 1/2 way through the 800+ pages) and it's tempting to skip here and there .. but Auster is such a superb perceptive and erudite writer that so far I have not succumbed to temptation .. ANY Auster book is well worth a look
This is the story of what happens when an over-zealous, completely myopic evangelical Baptist preacher takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. It is told by his wife and four daughters, aged 5 to 15 years old, with each of the girls narrating a chapter in turn as events unfold. This is a powerful book - with an insight into colonial and postcolonial attitudes and the political chaos which followed ‘independence’ in the Congo - but it is also a very humorous one in parts. It’s a chunky novel at over 600 pages, although as the author originally wrote the entire story from the perspective of each narrator, that represents less than 10% of her original draft - no wonder it took her ten years to complete. I thought it was very good.
‘Faceless Killers’ by Henning Mankell
This is the first novel in the Wallander series, in which he has to try and solve the vicious murder of an elderly couple. A leak to the press that the dying woman’s last word was “foreign” unleashes a wave of anti-immigration sentiment and racially motivated attacks. In the meantime, Wallander’s private life is disintegrating - his wife has left him, he’s massively overworked, living off junk food and is drinking far too much. An intriguing and engaging mystery, which generates a lot of empathy for our obsessive detective.
‘A Confederacy of Dunces’ by John Kennedy Toole
A comedic tale about the fortunes of Ignatius J. Reilly, a highly educated but absurd, arrogant and slothful 30-year old man who lives with his mother in early-1960s New Orleans. Extremely funny in parts, particularly in the early stages, but I thought it wore a bit thin as the story went on. The novel was written in 1963 and eventually published in 1980, 11 years after the author’s suicide at the age of 31. He was awarded a posthumous Pullitzer Prize for Fiction in 1981 and the novel is now recognised as a bit of a classic. Overall, however, I found it a bit disappointing.
Currently reading the entire Adrian McKinty catalogue. Two seperare characters, a thug for hire and a copper. Mostly Belfast related. Really gritty with some humour.
While on this thread I really must thank @newyorkaddick for recommending me The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia, by Michael Booth. NYA described it as a "light read", which i think was his diplomatic way of saying "it's not too academic so can be understood even by an idiot like you" :-) and he is absolutely right. It is a level up from those books every country has, written by a whimsical foreign resident, because although he falls into that category, life wise, he bothers to seek out academics and others who can provide insights. But more than once he describes people "getting absolutely shit-faced", which after all is the only way to describe a favourite Scandi preoccupation. If you like that part of Europe and especially if you have Scandi/Nordic friends, you will love it.
The Fourth Protocol - Frederick Forsythe. First novel of his I have read, good plot and well written, enjoyed it a lot. Full of fantastical anti-Labour Party stuff, but then he can afford to be a Tory. Still a good read though.
re-reading Sweet Soul Music by Peter Guralnick, about southern soul: Stax, Fame Studios, Jerry Wexler, Otis Redding, James Brown, Chips Moman, Rick Hall, Dan Penn, Spooner Oldham, Eddie Hinton. There's some enjoyable anecdotes about Solomon Burke, including helping the owner of a funeral parlor to embalm a body on the way to a gig, and something to do with him over-ordering popcorn and struggling to offload lorry loads of it at various shows for weeks and weeks.
Just finished "Shoe Dog" autobiography by Phil Knight co-founder of Nike. A fascinating and enjoyable read. Also read Leading by Alex Ferguson (not just football related) and Not Dead Yet, Phil Collins autobiography while on holiday both worth the time IMO.
'Skinner' .. by Charlie Huston .. if you like William Gibson you might like this although the 'denouement' is a bit tame
also lately been reading some Don Winslow superior US cops & robbers/thrillers/whodunits .. but I still prefer (say) John Stanford, Michael Connelly or John Lescroart .. James Lee Burke has a new one out (thought he'd gone to meet his maker in the Big Easy) and I'll be reading that OR the Nigel Benn (ghosted lol) autobiography
Just finished rereading Libra by Dan DeLillo. It's a beautiful work of historical fiction about the Kennedy assassination. I do have a lot of interest in the JFK assassination, but not usually huge on historical fiction, but the book stands up on all fronts. It focuses on Lee Oswald and the events in his life, as well as some members of the CIA plotting to shoot the president. Highly recommend.
Just started rereading "Absalom Absalom!" by Faulkner. I wrote my thesis at uni on it, probably my favorite book. I'd started the first of the kingchronicle series but after the events in Charlottesville it felt time to read Absalom again as it deals so much with the "defeated South."
Just finished rereading Libra by Dan DeLillo. It's a beautiful work of historical fiction about the Kennedy assassination. I do have a lot of interest in the JFK assassination, but not usually huge on historical fiction, but the book stands up on all fronts. It focuses on Lee Oswald and the events in his life, as well as some members of the CIA plotting to shoot the president. Highly recommend.
I liked Libra a lot - been a while since I read any DeLillo, must give him another try soon.
Highlights from the last 3 or 4 months:
Children of Time - Adrian Tchaikovsky: Best sci-fi I've read for years. Up there with the best of Iain M Banks. Have recommended it to a number of friends, all of whom have also been blown away by it.
Blood and Beauty - Sarah Dunant. Superbly written historical fiction set amongst the Borgias. Anyone who likes Wolf Hall etc will be in to this.
Charles Dickens - Claire Tomlin. Excellent modern biog. A bit shaky in some of the literary criticism but really gets over the extraordinary energy and compassion of the man as well as the paradoxical darkness of his treatment of his wife.
Notes from and Exhibition - Patrick Gale. Can't believer it's taken me so long to discover Gale. The second of his I've read and they've both been brilliant. Great plot, brilliant writing, subtle characterisation.
Oliver Cromwell - C.H. Firth. The classic "warts and all" biog of Ollie. Written over 100 years ago but still in print despite dozens of more recent studies. Very readable narrative biog. and rightly regarded as a classic.
Tuf Voyaging - George RR Martin - cracking sci-fi from the fat bloke himself. Interesting and very funny
The Golem and the Djinni - unusual but engrossing fantasy novel set in early 20th century New York. Literary historical fantasy - is that a genre?
White Boy Shuffle - Paul Beatty - very funny novel by the last Booker prize winner. The humour disguises some pretty sharp jabs at white American perspectives of black people.
Superforecasting - Tetlock & Gardner - eye opening account of how some people are able to predict economic and political events much, much better than others and how they do it. Derives from a CIA funded study of forecasting where they tried to understand how the intelligence on Iraq WMDs was so spectacularly wrong. Has made me re-evaluate how I think about things in my work and in my politics.
Honourable mentions: Ice Cream War (Boyd); Instance of the Fingerpost (Pears), great book but a bit long. ; book with long title on Brexit campaigns (Shipman); couple of Le Carre novels, always quality; Peckerwood (Ayres); Galveston (Pizzalotto); Amy & Isabelle (Strout).
Comments
A highly original dystopian novel, set in the totalitarian state of North Korea. In the first half, the protagonist, the orphan of the title, works hard and loyally in order to to survive, serving the state as a kidnapper of Japanese citizens and an interpreter of coded transmissions. He also somehow gets to travel to Texas as part of a bizarre diplomatic delegation. The second half of the novel is non-linear, has three different narrators and strays into the realms of magic realism as the subject matter moves into the top echelons of power, featuring Kim Jong II (‘the Dear Leader’, himself).
The novel is about 500 pages long but I must say it didn’t feel that long. It’s entertaining and well written, often lurching from the horrific to the comedic and back again in short order. It’s quite unlike anything I’ve read before and it is certainly topical and prescient, given the fake news phenomenon and it’s latest incarnation, the concept of ‘alternative facts’. Winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize.
‘All The Light We Cannot See’ by Anthony Doerr
Set in World War II, the two main characters are a young blind French girl and a sensitive and brilliant young radio expert in the German army who had been forced to attend a brutal Hitler military academy. The novel jumps back and forth in time, until eventually the two young people both find themselves in the French city of Saint-Malo, just as the Allies begin shelling it in order to drive out the remaining Nazi troops.
The novel is well written and the short chapters, written from the perspective of different protagonists as the story progresses, keep the pace of the narrative moving along nicely. It won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize although, personally, I would put it in the ‘good’, rather than ‘outstanding’ category.
Thoroughly enjoying this book. It reads like a novel but is a window on the final years of Stalin's life - surely in the running for
biggest despot of all time killing millions of his own countrymen including friends and relatives - and the years following his death in the 1950s.
Her flight to the US in 1967 reads like a thriller.
The Guardian called it "an extraordinary book"
And the Mail on Sunday - "tremendously exciting and stimulating"
It's not a warts and all memoir but more a book of anecdotes and good times he had.
He came across as a really nice guy.
so, four potential lives lived in America from the late 40s to the 1980s ... not a new concept perhaps and the book is very long (I am about 1/2 way through the 800+ pages) and it's tempting to skip here and there .. but Auster is such a superb perceptive and erudite writer that so far I have not succumbed to temptation .. ANY Auster book is well worth a look
This is the story of what happens when an over-zealous, completely myopic evangelical Baptist preacher takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. It is told by his wife and four daughters, aged 5 to 15 years old, with each of the girls narrating a chapter in turn as events unfold. This is a powerful book - with an insight into colonial and postcolonial attitudes and the political chaos which followed ‘independence’ in the Congo - but it is also a very humorous one in parts. It’s a chunky novel at over 600 pages, although as the author originally wrote the entire story from the perspective of each narrator, that represents less than 10% of her original draft - no wonder it took her ten years to complete. I thought it was very good.
‘Faceless Killers’ by Henning Mankell
This is the first novel in the Wallander series, in which he has to try and solve the vicious murder of an elderly couple. A leak to the press that the dying woman’s last word was “foreign” unleashes a wave of anti-immigration sentiment and racially motivated attacks. In the meantime, Wallander’s private life is disintegrating - his wife has left him, he’s massively overworked, living off junk food and is drinking far too much. An intriguing and engaging mystery, which generates a lot of empathy for our obsessive detective.
‘A Confederacy of Dunces’ by John Kennedy Toole
A comedic tale about the fortunes of Ignatius J. Reilly, a highly educated but absurd, arrogant and slothful 30-year old man who lives with his mother in early-1960s New Orleans. Extremely funny in parts, particularly in the early stages, but I thought it wore a bit thin as the story went on. The novel was written in 1963 and eventually published in 1980, 11 years after the author’s suicide at the age of 31. He was awarded a posthumous Pullitzer Prize for Fiction in 1981 and the novel is now recognised as a bit of a classic. Overall, however, I found it a bit disappointing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Mercedes
also lately been reading some Don Winslow superior US cops & robbers/thrillers/whodunits .. but I still prefer (say) John Stanford, Michael Connelly or John Lescroart .. James Lee Burke has a new one out (thought he'd gone to meet his maker in the Big Easy) and I'll be reading that OR the Nigel Benn (ghosted lol) autobiography
Just started rereading "Absalom Absalom!" by Faulkner. I wrote my thesis at uni on it, probably my favorite book. I'd started the first of the kingchronicle series but after the events in Charlottesville it felt time to read Absalom again as it deals so much with the "defeated South."
Highlights from the last 3 or 4 months:
Children of Time - Adrian Tchaikovsky: Best sci-fi I've read for years. Up there with the best of Iain M Banks. Have recommended it to a number of friends, all of whom have also been blown away by it.
Blood and Beauty - Sarah Dunant. Superbly written historical fiction set amongst the Borgias. Anyone who likes Wolf Hall etc will be in to this.
Charles Dickens - Claire Tomlin. Excellent modern biog. A bit shaky in some of the literary criticism but really gets over the extraordinary energy and compassion of the man as well as the paradoxical darkness of his treatment of his wife.
Notes from and Exhibition - Patrick Gale. Can't believer it's taken me so long to discover Gale. The second of his I've read and they've both been brilliant. Great plot, brilliant writing, subtle characterisation.
Oliver Cromwell - C.H. Firth. The classic "warts and all" biog of Ollie. Written over 100 years ago but still in print despite dozens of more recent studies. Very readable narrative biog. and rightly regarded as a classic.
Tuf Voyaging - George RR Martin - cracking sci-fi from the fat bloke himself. Interesting and very funny
The Golem and the Djinni - unusual but engrossing fantasy novel set in early 20th century New York. Literary historical fantasy - is that a genre?
White Boy Shuffle - Paul Beatty - very funny novel by the last Booker prize winner. The humour disguises some pretty sharp jabs at white American perspectives of black people.
Superforecasting - Tetlock & Gardner - eye opening account of how some people are able to predict economic and political events much, much better than others and how they do it. Derives from a CIA funded study of forecasting where they tried to understand how the intelligence on Iraq WMDs was so spectacularly wrong. Has made me re-evaluate how I think about things in my work and in my politics.
Honourable mentions: Ice Cream War (Boyd); Instance of the Fingerpost (Pears), great book but a bit long. ; book with long title on Brexit campaigns (Shipman); couple of Le Carre novels, always quality; Peckerwood (Ayres); Galveston (Pizzalotto); Amy & Isabelle (Strout).
Only just started so can't comment, other than being a fan of the man and his music.
Claim to fame, bumped into him in Cafe Nero, Highgate. We nodded at each other, me in awe, him in..............