Where has it gone...?! I've been reading my little socks off and have nowhere to talk about it.

Start a new one.

I certainly shall if needs be, but I wanted to refer to things on it...

I cant find it Jim. It looks like it has been pruned.:(

Gareth

Its not in deleted Jim, it looks like it has gone

Start a new one would be best from now on

Definitely gone Jim. Just trawled through my posts and it only shows 187, at this time my post count is 497 so a fair few of my posts have disappeared it seems!

Gareth.

Bloody censorship I call it...

So, anyway, I've recently been interspersing my usual frothy reading with a few works concerning rather more serious issues, since my girlfriend works in conflict resolution and counter-extremism; it's all laughs round here! These two were written by two of her former colleagues:

The first was A Million Bullets, by James Fergusson. A rather depressing account of the British Army's recent operations in Afghanistan, the book nonetheless highlights the fact that the failings are more (as one might expect) political rather than the fault of the overstretched and remarkably resilient British Forces. Worth a read if only to get a better idea of why we are there and who the people actually are that are getting shot at.

I also had a crack at "Revolt on the Tigris: The Sadr Uprising and Governing Iraq", which is written by Mark Etherington, who was appointed as one of the provincial governers for the coalition. It details the bewildering task facing him and his team (initially one person) in trying to restore some form of democratic self rule for the people of Iraq - outside of the best-known hotspots. The gaps in the political resources, the unwillingness of the hierarchy to understand the situation on the ground and Etherington's own self-confessed desire to do things "the right way" make for a nigh-on impossible task and a sobering read.

Despite the fairly heavy and solemn subject matter, both of these accounts are highly readable and cast a lot more, distinctly un-sensational light on both situations.

On a lighter note, I also read The Steep Approach to Garbadale last summer, the latest Iaian Banks. Not among his best, I'd say, but readable as ever. Reginald Hill's Dalziel and Pascoe continue to provide as much pleasure as the TV version brings me pain. A Cure for all Diseases is no exception, featuring a convalescing Dalziel conspicuously NOT being officially involved in a classic grisly murder at the Country House.

Picklehead by Rohan Candappa is the true story of a boy growing up in South London in the seventies and beyond against the backdrop of his family's Sri Lankan cultural heritage. Light and humorous in tone, but with some genuinely moving tales, the book's USP is the many and varied recipes it includes - some more appetising than others!

For Christmas, my literary cup overrunneth, having been given "Homicide - a year on the Killing Streets" by Wire author David Simon, Almost Unbelievable - Clive James' Memoirs, Things the Grandchildren should Know - by Mark E Everett (otherwise known as the singer with Eels) and Netherland, a complex story about a Dutch banker in Post 9/11 New York and cricket. I'm about 1/3 through it and it's shaping up nicely, though the style reflects the narrator's intense and pedantic character, making it hard to read quickly!

I've just finished John O'Farrell's An Utterly Impartial History of Britain: (or 2000 Years of Upper Class Idiots in Charge).

Its about as impartial as you would expect with a title like that, and while 90% of it is well humoured and interesting enough, the remaining 10% I found very irritating. I'm not sure that a humourous re-write of the speeh Chamberlain made declaring war on Germany is actually in very good taste. Plus, O'Farrell loves the Labour Party and makes no effort whatsoever to hide it, so the bits about the last 100 years are rather skewed. Things can only get better is still his best book.

Before that was Watching the English by Kate Fox. Its a social anthropology book aimed squarely at the intelligent layman - and very very well observed. Makes you cringe every time you think 'Yes, that is a stupid bit of behaviour, and I do it every day'. If you liked Paxman's The English, you will probably like this.

Now reading Batting on the Bosphorous, which is a book about an improbable Cricket tour (See also Penguins Stopped Play), but funny.

I loved Penguins Stopped Play - very readable, with a sad postscript. As a player of cricket in a vaguely improbable location, I'm a sucker for this stuff!

Damn, I lent someone my copy of Watching the English... I shall have to ask them for its return. Only, being English, this is of course something which Is Not Done[tm]...

I'm almost finished reading "Margrave of the Marshes" by John Peel and Shelia Ravenscroft. Its been hilarious, sad and intresting - and all for £2 for a charity shop!

Since Xmas:

Morrissey's Perfect Pint. Nice light read and interesting little facts if you like your beer.

Wiffle Lever to Full.

Nice light read, bit of a nostalgia trip for the author as he spends a summer attending Sci-Fi conventions. If not into your sci-fi its propably not worth reading. If you are, it's possibly worth reading.

Well, I finished Netherland and despite all the enticing ingredients, it was - for me - rather disappointing. The careful and even rather beautiful prose rather smothered the story and I found the characters frustrating. Possibly it was a deliberate device to show the characters' flaws, but I don't know...

I've now started the autobiography of Eels frontman Mark "E" Everett. Rather gloomy stuff so far, but written in a very readable and self-effacing style, pretty funny in places.

In between I read an incredible book called The Translator. Now, although this is my occupation, this story has no discernible connection with my life, thank God. It is the true story of a courageous man called Daoud Hari.

Hari is a Darfur tribesman who recounts the massacre and later the genocide of his people by the Arab-Sudanese government of Sudan, in a quest for land and mineral resources. The story is very simply written and the book can easily be devoured in a few hours, but it is a deeply affecting work, perhaps because of this. The unbearable cruelty of the Janjaweed militia, many of whose "soldiers" are only 14 years of age, the desperate plight of the IDP (Internally Displaced People), the ineffective intervention by outside organisations and - despite it all - Hari's good humour and humbling humanity.

He works as an interpreter (to be pedantic) between English-speaking journalists and the various militias and local people, enabling the story of the genocide to be told. He assists the UN, the BBC, New York Times and others, but he is considered to be a spy by the Sudanese government and, when finally captured, his life hangs by the finest of threads. Many times he expects to be shot, or worse.

But the humour - often rather black - is as funny as it is unexpected. At one point, a BBC journalist falls over onto an unexploded bomb. After the initial heart-in-mouth moment, Hari realises he has spent too long with Brits, as he starts to laugh. The shaken journalist asks why he's laughing; "Well, you'd have laughed if it had been me" replies Hari. "That's because if it had been you, it would have been funny" says the Englishman!

I seriously recommend The Translator - it gives a great insight into an appalling - and continuing *right now* - human disaster, but in a way that connects with the reader immediately. There's some extremely unpleasant and moving stuff, but a lot that's uplifting too...

It's good to see the return of the book review thread - I did mean to post to it earlier, but things have been a bit hectic.

Anyway, my recent readings ...

Snuff by Chuck Palahniuk
I didn't rush out to buy this after his last, frankly dreaful, effort Rant, but I was bought it as a Christmas present. The story is set around an attempt by porn-star Cassie Wright to break a world record by having sex with 600 men in one day and takes place almost entirely in the grotty waiting area where three men, identified as 72, 139 and 600, interact, occasionally talking to Shelia, Cassie's personal assistant, who is organising the day.

Everybody expects Cassie to die during the record attempt, leaving a fortune in life insurance payouts to her child that she gave up for adoption 20 year previously and has not seen since.

The good news is that this book is a far better read than Rant, the bad news is that it's still nowhere close to Palahniuk's best work - it's certainly not up there with Haunted or Choke. For most of the time the story seems to lack direction and the bitter satire that he does so well is missing. It does provide laugh out loud moments, mainly at the titles of imaginary porn films that are scattered throughout, but the real porn industry churns out these titles just as well and you don't have to wade through a 300 page book to get them.

The Tales of Beadle the Bard by J K Rowling
This one was from Emma's Christmas pile and ... well, it's crap. Rowling fails to live up to her own depressingly low literary standards and delivers a book of 5 tales, tied in to the Harry Potter mythos through notes on each of the stories by Dumbledore. The whole thing takes about 30 minutes to read, and probably took about twice as long to write. Unless you absolutely must by every book with Rowling's name on the cover give this one a wide berth.

Watchmen by Alan Moore (illustrations by Dave Gibbons)
Finally buying my own copy of this book inspired me to re-read it and, once again, I took something new away from the experience.
For those who aren't familiar with this one it is the definitive graphic novel and one of the works most responsible for showing that comics didn't have to be aimed at children.
The story is set in late 1985, more than 8 years after a police strike forced America's masked adventurers to retire. Three of them remain active; the utterly immoral Comedian, the god-like Doctor Manhanttan - both of whom work directly for the government - and the vigilante fugitive Rorschach. When Rorschach begins investigating the murder of a diplomat, Edward Blake, he discovers that he was the Comedian and contacts the other heroes with his theory that one of their old enemies may be killing them.
Initially he is dismissed as paranoid, but when Doctor Manhattan, who is the lynch-pin of America's nuclear defence programme, is forced to leave Earth, an assassination attempt is made on another ex-hero and Rorschach himself is betrayed and imprisoned his old partner, Nite Owl, and another retired heroine, Silk Spectre, begin to investigate.
Ultimately the heroes discover that the events they have seen are part of a far larger plot, with world-shattering consequences, which is equally destructive to the morally black and white worlds they live in.
What gives this story depth is that, unlike traditional comics, where super-heroes tread lightly upon the world, the alternative America portrayed is one where the presence of super-heroes, particularly Doctor Manhattan, has made a huge difference to life. It also provides insight in to the minds of those who would think it was a good idea to wear a costume and beat up criminals. The Comedian and Rorschach are both mysoginistic and right-wing, almost to the point of Nazism, Doctor Manhattan, who has seemingly unlimited powers and complete knowledge of his own past and future, is detached from humanity and Nite Owl's sexual ability is tied to his costumed identity.
Within the story is a sub-plot, unfolding as a young man reads the classic pirate comic Tales of the Black Freighter, wherein a stranded mariner is driven by love and nobel desires down a path of utmost horror and in to insanity, which provides a neat parallel to the heroes' investigation. There's also the background of mounting nuclear tension between America and Russian, each chapter of the story starting with a doomsday clock, its hands getting closer to midnight.
Hopefully the release of the forthcoming film will encourage more people to overcome their prejudices and give Watchmen a try - by any standards it's a classic - intelligent, complex, multi-layered and moving ... and not a "ka-pow!" in sight.

Dam Busters - A Landmark Oral History by Max Arthur

You've seen the film, you know the march, but this book tells us the real story, in the words of the people who made it happen.

One of the most famous raids of all time, this book gives a fascinating insight into the planning and execution of the raid. Told in a series of interviews with the major players in the raid, Wallis, Gibson even Goebbels and Speer.

It's quite something to get a better feel for the men who flew on that raid. To understand their sense of duty, their fears and their elation.

The staff and groundcrew at Scampton and their realtionships with the crews, together with the work they put in for a mission they knew nothing about.

It goes deeper than that, with eyewitness accounts of the devastation the floodwaters caused by the people it affected. Thats the forgotten side of the raid and it's hard not to feel for the civilians who bore the brunt of the floodwaters.

For anyone interested in WW2 I'd recommend it.

To go with that, you should also read the book 'The Dambusters' by Paul Brickhill. And in a reference to another thread, note the name of Guy Gibson's dog, used as a code word for success in the raid, and what it was changed to in the film.

By one of those strange quirks of fate, the daily mail (I think) are giving the film away with the paper tomorrow (sat.).

The graveyard book by Neil Gaiman

As Gaiman's last book for children, Coraline, was a huge success it's good to see him unleashing his dark imagination onto younger readers again with this book.

The story opens with an unnamed toddler accidentally escaping the clutches of a murderer who has dispatched the rest of his family and wandering in to a graveyard, the residents of whom rescue him, name him Nobody Owens (Bod, for short) and resolve to bring him up. Given the freedom of the graveyard he can see the dead, walk through solid objects and see in the dark and the book describes his life up until the age of 15.

Given the age of the central character, his deceased parents and his unflappable guardian, Silas (who is neither of the living nor the dead) and the target audience comparisons to Harry Potter are perhaps inevitable, but Gaiman creates a much darker, more satisfying world which, in contrast to Rowling's work, feels more consistent and unhampered by over-working.

This is a great book, which will delight anybody from 10 upwards, although younger readers may find it a little scary and moan about the lack of a happy ending.

I finished "Things the Grandchildren should Know" by Eeels lead-singer, Mark E Everett, but was left feeling that he is pretty much having a long whinge. He has had enormously bad luck, not least in terms of the untimely deaths of many of his family and friends, but beyond cataloguing this and the number of rejections he receives from the record company, leaving him crying, there isn't much to engage the reader.

I'm now enjoying with great relish the work that inspired The Wire: Homicide by David Simon...

Just read Fight Club. I've been a fan of the film ever since I first saw it in a Bangkok bar (it got a standing ovation in a bar!!).
To be honest, I wasn't so impressed with the book.

I think Fight Club is one of a very few films that is better than the book it's based on. Hmmm, could be a thread of its own there...

I had the delight of hearing Neil read the first chapter a year ago (before it was published). Excellent, and he read it very well; I'd buy the book based on that chapter. Indeed, I'd like to hear it done on Radio Four.

Yes, the film of Fight Club is better than the book, but don't forget it was a first novel and the result of Palahniuk taking a creative writing course - he's written better since.

I'd say that Haunted is his best work to date (providing you've a strong stomach) and is well worth a read.

Have just finished Sniper One by SGT Dan Mills. Totally addictive and makes Bravo Two Zero look like a tea party by comparison. Best military non-fiction book I've ever read. 10/10. Check the reviews on Amazon!

I'm half way through The Saga of Guns n Roses(xmas pressie from my daughter)...Quite interesting, very rock n roll and I'm enjoying it. So much so, Buckcherry came off the car CD player and GNR went on. Its interesting listening to songs you've loved for years after reading about the people and places and incidents they are about. Mr Brownstone, I'd always assumed, was about hash, but its not its about brown heroin. And I'm pretty sure alot of my friends assumed it was hash aswell. Normally I dont pay much attention to the people behind the music I like, but I find myself listening to appetite for destruction with a new perspective.

Naomi Kleine - Shock Doctrine

Well researched and constructed. It's a real eye opener to the ways of the large corporations and the US and British governments.

Is that the same Naomi Klein that wrote 'No Logo'?

Yes. Nuff said.

just reading Duma by Stephen King. for some reason i find most of his books eminently readable, but somehow feel guilty for doing so. i feel i should be reading the classics or some arcane poetry book, and try to educate myself - but i always find myself reading something "candy-flossy"

I know that feeling, Proccy. I reckon as long as it's not Dan Brown, it's ok to read anything! But then I have recently binged on more "worthy" stuff...