What book(s) are you reading currently?

[loplop]

One-Eleven Down: F-111 Crashes and Combat Losses by Steven Hyre and Lou Benoit

I wrote my undergraduate thesis on the F-111 program, so anything that pops up about the airplane interests me. Just ran across the book in an estate sale.

[Brecht]

Noam Chomsky - Requiem for the American Dream (2017)



In his first major book on the subject of income inequality, Noam Chomsky skewers the fundamental tenets of neoliberalism and casts a clear, cold, patient eye on the economic facts of life. What are the ten principles of concentration of wealth and power at work in America today? They're simple enough: reduce democracy, shape ideology, redesign the economy, shift the burden onto the poor and middle classes, attack the solidarity of the people, let special interests run the regulators, engineer election results, use fear and the power of the state to keep the rabble in line, manufacture consent, marginalize the population. In Requiem for the American Dream, Chomsky devotes a chapter to each of these ten principles, and adds readings from some of the core texts that have influenced his thinking to bolster his argument.

[scoundrel]

This is the last of Nevil Shute's published novels. It was published in 1960, not long after he died, but is a rather detailed and interesting portrait of the late 1950s world: from the relatively drab and humble working class / lower middle class streets of Ealing, West London (this was before British house prices boomed) to the community of commercial air freight carriers based at Blackbushe Aerodrome in Hampshire; to the sailing and commercial mariners of Honolulu and to the polished world of surfaces in which 1950s corporate America lives.

Keith Stewart is a middle aged and physically unimpressive specimin whom to most British people seems like a classic nobody; an obscure engineer who doesn't earn very much and hasn't ever amounted to anything and never will. He is actually a very talented designer, engineer and craftsman (and feature writer for a highly regarded model engineering magazine) who in some countries (e.g. Germany) would have been held in great respect; but in Britain he is a working class oik with dirty hands. It took his own brother in law, a professional naval officer from an aristocratic background [Keith's younger sister is a former actress who "married well"] many years to start appreciating both Keith's talent and his steadiness of character and to stop merely tolerating the connection and start to appreciate the worth of it and to be glad he has Keith as a brother in law.

In fact, he is so glad that, when setting off with Keith's sister on a yacht voyage round the world, he gets Keith and Katie, Keith's wife, to look after their niece, Janice, and firmly avoids billeting her with the aristocratic family. Keith and his wife are very quiet people who drink little, smoke little and live pretty blameless lives. The aristocratic Dungannon family are pissheads, bed-hoppers and third-generation wastrels living idly on inherited wealth; Commander Dermott (RN retired) drinks much too much himself except when sailing, but has lived a useful life and tries to continue to live a useful life and is grimly aware that this actress-trollop [in the imagination of his unpleasant blood relatives] is much more mature, well grounded and moral than his own kin and has never doubted his good fortune in her. It was when he started fitting out his own sailing boat with limited resources and having been too much an officer to be really skilled in hands-on stuff that he learns how useful it is to have a brother in law who can do all sorts of practical stuff; and he also learns that Keith Stewart is very steady and dependable man. He would far rather his daughter is cared for in a humble little house in a London back street with Keith and his wife than living in luxury with ponies to ride on a landed estate and in the "care" of the flighty and unreliable Dungannon family, his own blood. He himself is an embarrassment to his Dungannon relatives because he went to sea, fought for his country in the war and didn't profiteer; he has learned to feel relieved that Janice has an uncle and aunt who will set much better standards.

Not that Commander Dermott is Peter Perfect; in particular, he despises government and authority and has decided to emigrate to Canada to get away from 1950s Britain and find a new path. To do so, he has converted all his assets into diamonds and cemented them (with Keith's unknowing help) into the keel of his boat. This is to avoid currency rules. But when he and his wife are killed and the remains of their yacht stuck on a coral reef north east of Papeete in French Polynesia and Keith learns through John Dermott's solicitor that he is the trustee of Janice's trust fund, which consists of some diamonds, whereabouts unknown; but having installed a safe place in the concrete keel for Joanne's jewels, Keith is grimly aware that he knows where the jewels will be and equally that, no matter how difficult and inconvenient (or dangerous) it will be, he has to work out how to get to Tahiti, visit the remains of his sister and brother-in-law's yacht, retrieve the diamonds, get home again; and all for less than £100.

Along the way Keith meets a wild variety of people who are way outside his normal experience, including the aircrew of a freight plane who give him a free ride to Honolulu [he will write a feature article about the airline and the trip]; the ships officers of the tanker Cathay Princess, one of whom puts him in touch with the highly unconventional mariner Jack Donnelly; and also Captain Petersen, skipper of the millionaire's pleasure yacht Flying Cloud, who turns out to be a very valuable man to know. Jack, who's mother came from French Polynesia, turns out to be a bit of a "character". His boat, Mary Belle, is his own creation, costing him five years of his free time and a finger to build it. He is a superb woodworker and despite the scornful scepticism of the British officers on the Cathay Pacific, Jack can navigate. He relies in knowing seabirds, plotting the drift and direction of seaweed; knowledge handed down from his mother and generations of Polynesian sailors. Keith has been crash-taught how to assess latitude with a sextant, but Jack only needs Keith and his charts to confirm his own assessments. He tends to get to leeward too much but is basically on course throughout the voyage.

Once in Tahiti, Keith finds that Jack having built but never registered a boat and having no passport, and Keith having a British passport but no visa (you don't need a visa for France, surely...) is a serious issue to the French official mind; and here is where Captain Petersen, who gave them the course to steer for Tahiti in the first place, proves to be a real friend in need. He brings the bill of health to release Mary Belle from quarantine, and explains to the French officials that Jack is from French Polynesia on his mother's side and has a legal right to come there without a passport. It helps that Captain Petersen is well known to these officials and always pays their unusual bribe when he visits their harbour, a donation to the orphanage run by the nuns. Captain Petersen was pleasantly bemused when he found out that the orphanage is real and the nuns are really getting and using his money; but he has goodwill in this harbour and uses it to get Keith Stewart and Jack Donnelly out of a jam.

Of course, there are always wheels within wheels. Keith Stewart's magazine editor, who was not forthcoming when Keith needed to borrow money to go to Tahiti, changes his mind at once when he hears that Keith has gone off into the Pacific with an illiterate fool who can't navigate. If Keith dies, the magazine will suffer a lot, and besides, the editor would have acted differently if he had known getting to Tahiti mattered to Keith that much. Reaching out through Keith's correspondence with subscribers who have difficulty making Keith's model engines and machinery, the editor manages to contact someone who knows someone, the second someone being a timber magnate in Oregon and Washington State who is under doctors orders to only work part time and who uses his enforced leisure to build mechanical models, and who is certainly one of Keiths most persistent "pen-pals". Mr Solomon P Hirzhorn knows the owner of Flying Cloud, a man who wants to place a major contract with Sol Hirzhorn, and who is not slow to order Captain Petersen to find Keith Stewart and bring Keith to meet Solly Hirzhorn.

I like the book for various reasons, one of which is the way in which it shows the human interest and genuine tension and drama in the lives of small people, the types who are generally at best taken for granted, and who are frequently patronised, looked down upon by their "betters" if not downright discriminated against and victimised. Jack Donnelly seems to educated people to be a simpleton, and is also "half-caste"; but Keith quickly gains big respect for him. Jack is an impressive human figure, which becomes sort of his undoing when the spoiled and much divorced daughter of the yacht owner absconds with him; he is next heard of building a house with a dock for his boat and plenty of space for the two children they already have to sleep and play in. Keith himself is low on the British social ladder, looked down upon by professionals such as doctors, teachers and civil servants, but is actually more resourceful, more talented and a more valuable citizen than most of these are; but he doesn't care what others make or think of him, not even his own brother in law. Sol Hirzhorn is rich solely by his own talent and hard work, but is still looked down on many merely for being Jewish; he too has a very independent mind and is quick to recognise Keith as a kindred spirit, a man who does what he does and lets everyone else be, and doesn't give a damn what anyone else thinks.

Very good book.

[73north]

This is my latest acquisition - from the USA - which arrived today -
Sandra's Lusting Needs by Paula Bluebrick
( Lesbos Library - by Publishers Consultants California 1979 )

now that I have read it , its okay , good story , but where is the sex ?
it is written about in the book , but in a flowery and ' artistic ' way -
and it is not ' sexy ' or erotic to read , really ...

[The Unknown Libertarian]

It basically demolishes every conspiracy theory about the Kennedy assassination out there. It's quite long and it's the most foot-noted and end-noted book in history. One footnote alone goes on for several pages.

I can't put it down.

[BlueArsedFly]

"Horrible Words", Rebecca Gowers' companion piece to her great-grandfather's "Plain Words". "Operationalisational" is my new favourite word!

[rodak]

[Silicone Carne]

A great recollection of souvenirs and memories from those who made SNL and those who love it.

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by scoundrel

This is the last of Nevil Shute's published novels. It was published in 1960, not long after he died, but is a rather detailed and interesting portrait of the late 1950s world: from the relatively drab and humble working class / lower middle class streets of Ealing, West London (this was before British house prices boomed) to the community of commercial air freight carriers based at Blackbushe Aerodrome in Hampshire; to the sailing and commercial mariners of Honolulu and to the polished world of surfaces in which 1950s corporate America lives.

I am a big fan of Nevile Shute, who writes easily and with an interesting perspective-- we don't have many engineers who turn their hands to fiction. He's known now almost exclusively for "A Town Like Alice" and "On the Beach", but many of his lesser read works are very good reads.

One interesting thing that comes across is a distinctly 1950s Brit view of Americans, who he views as coldly efficient . . . its a world of American cars, steel, airliners and innovation; and being an immigrant to Australia he's often eager to contrast Australians favorably to the hard hearted Americans.

As you say, he's good social history, has a real knack for how people from various places and stations felt . . . if there's a weak point its that he's got no real feeling for women characters.


I'm a big fan of "Beyond the Black Stump", a very unusual contrast of Outback Australia and the Pacific Northwest, both places he'd been . . . not a great book, but a travelogue that gives you a feeling of what the world felt like just after the war.

[73north]

This is my weekend Thrill Power that arrived today , my weekly subscription to 2000ad ( British sci-Fi Comic that celebrated its 40th anniversary this year ) and the brand new ( and should be great to read )
I have the companion paperback YEAR ONE book and that was simply wonderful to read in prose form .........
Judge Dredd Year Two
432 pages in Paperback – published - 5 Oct 2017

As the Judges cart Rico Dredd away for questioning and exile on Titan, his clone-brother Joe comes under scrutiny. They’re cut from the same cloth; can Joe Dredd be trusted? An investigation begins, and Dredd is shipped off to an iridium-mining town in the Cursed Earth, which has come under pressure from mutant raiders.
But everything is not as it seems. When the reason for the raids becomes clear, Dredd will have some tough decisions to make.