What book(s) are you reading currently?

[dohupa]

None atm, but read Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach last year and I highly recommend it to all.

It's an awesome book - definitely in my 5 faves of all times.

http://www.ianmcewan.com/bib/books/chesil.html

[lightbearerfallen]

Scoundrel I can relate to that squeamishness...I'm probably the biggest oxymoron I know, a squeamish embalmer! I don't get it.

I adore Anno Dracula, by the way. Need to read the rest!

[treyo]

Originally Posted by Bovon

This is one of those that GG considered to be his 'entertainments' rather than his heavier work, Power and The Glory etc. I read it years ago and found it a bit thin - the film version I found even more confused.

Hello mates:

A personal favorite author is Alan Furst, who has authored some of the best spy novels (in the genre of Greene and John LeCarre) in the last 20 years. Try his first novel "Night Soldiers"; others I can recommend are "Dark Voyage" and "The Polish Officer". All are set in 1930s-early 40s europe as the Nazis ascend to power; some characters overlap across books but each stands alone as a complete and satisfying novel. All are great reads.

wikipedia entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Furst
authors website at: http://alanfurst.net/main.htm

Cheers & happy reading.

[Forbin001]

Ive been going back and forth between Daniel Silva and James Patterson novels. I recently finished A Death in Vienna by Silva, and also finished Double Cross by Patterson, it was so gnarly ehahee.

[diablo mad]

I've got 2 book's on the go at the moment.

The Way Of The Shadows part 1 of the Night Angel Trilogy
by Brent Weeks

The Complete Chronicles Of Conan
by Robert E Howard

Both are damn fine reading if you love your sword and sorcery.

[tabler]

I have just started a wonderful little oddity I picked up in a second hand bookshop in Durham a couple of weeks ago, 'USA For Begginers' by Alex Atkinson, first published 1959.Subtitled 'By Rocking Chair Across America.'
It comes with illustrations by Ronald Searle and the opening paragraph reads 'Too many books about the United States are written by men who have only spent a few weeks in the country. This is different: it is by a man who has never been there in his life.'
It is very, very funny

[scoundrel]

One of the best autobiographies I have ever read is that of the truly remarkable Benjamin Franklin. IMHO Franklin did even more than George Washington to secure American independence. Washington defeated Lord Cornwallis decisively at Yorktown due to naval support from the French Atlantic fleet, which drove off the Royal Navy just when Cornwallis desperately needed to evacuate his army from the Yorktown peninsula. It was Franklin, diplomat and courtier at Verseilles, who secured both French financial support (how would Washington have held it all together at Valley Forge if he had not been able to pay the troops?) and the vital intervention of the French fleet. Perhaps Franklin rather than Washington should be honoured on the Dollar Bill.

In his book, Franklin deals with these events but does not blow his own trumpet at all. He was in fact pro-British and even after the event saw the separation as an unavoidable tragedy for which, as he convincingly explains, the British were wholly to blame. The self-destructive arrogance of the Hanovarian redcoats is only too clear, even though Franklin did all he could to smoothe over the offences they were forever giving to Americans on American soil, and indeed was careful in his book to emphasise the good points of the difficult and irascible General Braddock: the man was brave, honest, loyal, cared deeply about his own men and was not at all the fool that he often seemed to be. In fact, Braddock in the end was a friend of the Americans: if only other British soldiers and politician had been like him, Franklin's desperate work to hold the two sides together could have succeeded

NB: Winston Churchill (not Franklin) tells how Franklin made one last bid at the strangers bar of the House of Lords to persuade Parliament to repeal the Navigation Act and change its stupid, arrogant and thoughtless policy towards America. Churchill relates how the peers loudly shouted Franklin down and demanded he be arrested and hanged as a traitor. Per Churchill, Franklin was silent until they stopped shouting, then said clearly:

Gentlemen. I shall make your King into a little man for this!

He kept his word.

As well as dealing with key events in US history, Franklin describes his impressive scientific researches: particularly how he conducted electricity by attaching a key to a kite during a lightning storm. His book is at times quite witty and this is one of those times. The experiment was brilliantly conceived except for the fact that Franklin was very nearly killed and didn't even realise it until years later. Not quite so clever after all!

The book also gives a wealth of detail about Franklin's personal life and he does not spare himself: in fact I give him slightly more credit than he gives himself. At one stage he tried to take advantage of a penniless woman in distress, but when she turned him down (even though he was her last chance and she had an illegitimate daughter to think of as well), he relented and helped her to rebuild her life in spite of her refusal to sleep with him. He wrote of this years later and still condemned himself as a rotter: I think he is harder on himself than he needs to be. By his own actions he gave convincing proof that he was sorry.

His on-off relationship with the woman who eventually became Mrs Franklin is also very illuminating. Philadelphia in Franklin's time was still almost frontier territory. The lady loved Franklin but was compelled by her social-climbing family to marry another man who later abandoned her. After seven years, Franklin had his rival declared legally dead and married the love of his life. he doesn't quite say so, but his book hints that the other guy never showed his face again and would be extremely well advised to stay dead! Franklin was very much a man of action and could be relied upon to stand up for his wife and family in no uncertain terms.

Franklin's book is a damn good read and a really important historical document.

[Leprechaun]

Yeah!

[slowdiver]

Ian MacDonald's Revolution in the Head: The Beatles records and the 60's.
It details, song by song, every track that the Beatles recorded and released, giving details of who played what on each song.

The thing that keeps me coming back to this book (I've read it cover to cover a few times now, yet can still come back to it and just dip in if I have a few moments free) is that it puts the songs into a context with regards to what was happening in the group's personal lives, as well as what was happening in the world at large.

For anyone who is a Beatles fan, a fan of the technical side of recording or who has an interest in the 1960's in general it makes for a fascinating read and is highly recommended.

[scoundrel]

Fifth and final novel in the Richard Hannay series: it partakes of all the vices displayed in the first four, (see my earlier review of The Four Adventures of Richard Hannay): casual racism, hidebound social prejudices, British superiority complex. But as before, Buchan does tell quite a good yarn.

In this one, Buchan's great strength as an observer and describer of the natural world is also much in evidence, as is his intuitive insight into the psychology of children: Hannay's 12 year old son is a key character, along with the daughter of the crime victim Hannay is supporting. Buchan's impressive knowledge of birds is integral to the story: at one stage the children are being hunted by the villains and evade capture because the boy draws the attention of fledgling pink footed geese, who walk towards the children when any other birds would edge away. This fools the hunters into thinking the children are behind the geese when they are in front of the geese. Ingenious.

Some of the characterisations are very thin: D'Ingraville, the senior villain has virtually no personality, Barralty (the intellectual villain) precious little. The actress/gangsters' moll Lydia is better, though still barely a presence: her best moment is at the very end when the victorious good guys let her and her boyfriend off the hook they made for themselves and she is the one who is decently grateful.

IMO the book is interesting on several levels, though hardly a classic. I particularly liked the emergence of a sedentary bank executive (Lombard) as an unlikely hero who whisks the girl (Anna) out from under the very noses of her would-be kidnappers in an improvised coup of deceit and low cunning, fast footwork and cheerful unashamed cowardice (at least he happily presents it in this light, though Buchan makes his cold blooded courage very clear). This is a book full of unlikely heroes, in which the orthodox hero figures like Hannay would have been sunk without auxilliary help. Buchan is not famous for his sense of irony or his wit but both are evident in The Island of Sheep.

Incidently the cover image on my cheapo Wordsworth edition (above) depicts the main street (hell, the only street) of Tobermory, Isle of Mull, painted in 1906. Some members may know it as Balamory from the children's TV series. Except for the fact that some of the buildings are now painted in bright colours, the town still looks almost exactly like this over a 100 years later.