tonyh29 Posted January 25, 2009 Share Posted January 25, 2009 currently on Kublai Khan by John Man bit heavy going so after that will go for a bit of light relief and the new John Grisham book Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jondaken Posted March 13, 2009 Share Posted March 13, 2009 Suberb books that all must read! The end. Edit: LotR and Hobbit that is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anthony Posted March 13, 2009 VT Supporter Share Posted March 13, 2009 Yes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jondaken Posted March 13, 2009 Share Posted March 13, 2009 BOM you cheeky munchkin you. Did look for a book thread by searching "books" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paddy Posted March 13, 2009 Share Posted March 13, 2009 I'm still reading "The Ball is Round" by Goldblatt I believe, it's basically the history of football, really entertaining read compared to some football history books I started. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjmooney Posted March 13, 2009 VT Supporter Share Posted March 13, 2009 Ernest Hemingway: "The First 49 Stories". I'd forgotten how great he was. The best thing I've read in a very, very long time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leviramsey Posted March 13, 2009 VT Supporter Share Posted March 13, 2009 I'm still reading "The Ball is Round" by Goldblatt I believe, it's basically the history of football, really entertaining read compared to some football history books I started. The American edition of that book is interesting, if only for Goldblatt's foreword... One could argue that American sports exceptionalism, its sense of glorious self-isolation, is in fact a perfect expression of the only superpower left standing and its willful unilateralism. However, American power has always rested on more than free agency. Its global hegemony has rested on the capacity to shape global institutions in its own image, determine the rules of the game to its own advantage, to force, cajole, and pressure others into accepting them and adapting to them. So it is, in reverse, in soccer. You will excuse me, I hope, if I express a preference for a multilateral world in which the United States is on occasion bound by collective agreements and meanings that are not entirely of its own making, and that is an America that plays and understands soccer. Soccer's mission in the United States is not, I think, to supplement or challenge American football, baseball, or basketball, but to offer a conduit to the rest of the world; a sporting antidote to the excesses of isolationism, a prism for understanding the world that the United States may shape but will be increasingly shaped by. A year with American sport [the author, after the 2006 World Cup final, spent nearly a year not watching association football; the only sports he watched were on NASN --LR] has taught me more about America than I had ever learned before, opened my eyes and heart to America's genius and to its tragedies. I have been enlightened and entertained. I offer The Ball Is Round as one route to the genius and tragedies of the rest of us. (commenting on the American edition relative to the Rest-of-the-world edition) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nigel Posted March 13, 2009 VT Supporter Share Posted March 13, 2009 Ernest Hemingway: "The First 49 Stories". I'd forgotten how great he was. The best thing I've read in a very, very long time. Have to agree with you,im just reading 'for whom the bell tolls'! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A.J.Rimmer Posted March 13, 2009 Share Posted March 13, 2009 I don't know how many of you have seen the film 'Sideways'. The pirate dvd was given to me by a visitor from Russia and I have no idea if it is famous or not. I thought it was very funny. One of the characters has written a novel, and someone says to him something like "Why make things up? There are so many fascinating facts to discover, I would never waste my time reading fiction". That rather says it for me too. Perhaps it's a function of age, but I stick mainly to history and biography. I just love all the micellaneous facts one discovers... I've just finished a history of Indiamen in the Indian Ocean in 1809/10... extraordinary. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjmooney Posted March 13, 2009 VT Supporter Share Posted March 13, 2009 I don't know how many of you have seen the film 'Sideways'. The pirate dvd was given to me by a visitor from Russia and I have no idea if it is famous or not. I thought it was very funny. One of the characters has written a novel, and someone says to him something like "Why make things up? There are so many fascinating facts to discover, I would never waste my time reading fiction". That rather says it for me too. Perhaps it's a function of age, but I stick mainly to history and biography. I just love all the micellaneous facts one discovers... I've just finished a history of Indiamen in the Indian Ocean in 1809/10... extraordinary.Hmmm. Well I definitely need both. I always have at least two or three books on the go, one of which will be a novel and the others non-fiction - lots of history, but also popular science, in fact anything that catches my imagination. At the moment, well I've just finished the Hemingway and I'm also reading a thriller "Los Alamos" by Joesph Kanon, plus Stephen Ambrose's dual biography of Crazy Horse and George Custer, and a book on Quantum Physics (really!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rjw63 Posted March 13, 2009 Share Posted March 13, 2009 Lee Child's 13th Jack Reacher book, "Gone Tomorrow" is out next month - I'll definitely be getting that Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villadude Posted March 13, 2009 Share Posted March 13, 2009 I'm a quarter way through the O'Neil book, it's all been Celtic Celtic Celtic so far... Anyone else read it on here? Opinions? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OutByEaster? Posted March 13, 2009 Moderator Share Posted March 13, 2009 Other recent reads include: The Castle in the Forest - Norman Mailer What did you make of it? I'm a big Mailer fan, but I must admit that when our narrator was revealed, I did have to stop for a moment and wonder if this was Mailer's last joke on us all. It was brilliantly delivered and thoroughly entertaining though and I think I liked it but I'm not quite sure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sie Posted March 13, 2009 Share Posted March 13, 2009 Just finished Simon Kernick's 'Relentless' the other day. Not a high brow by any means read but a great, fast paced pager turner nonetheless. Started on 'The God Delusion' this morning. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjmooney Posted March 13, 2009 VT Supporter Share Posted March 13, 2009 Other recent reads include: The Castle in the Forest - Norman Mailer What did you make of it? I'm a big Mailer fan, but I must admit that when our narrator was revealed, I did have to stop for a moment and wonder if this was Mailer's last joke on us all. It was brilliantly delivered and thoroughly entertaining though and I think I liked it but I'm not quite sure.I thought it was great, real food for thought (for those who don't know, it's an imagined telling of the childhood of Adolf Hitler - and Mailer was Jewish). I followed it up with A. N. Wilson's "Winnie and Wolf" - a novel about the relationship of Hitler with Richard Wagner's daughter-in-law. Also good, but not as good as the Mailer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjmooney Posted March 31, 2009 VT Supporter Share Posted March 31, 2009 Thought I'd bump this as I am particularly enjoying the four (!) main books I am reading at the moment: Ernest Hemingway: "For Whom The Bell Tolls" I'm on a real Hemingway kick right now, having read "To Have and Have Not" and "The First Forty-Nine Stories" and planning to move on to "A Farewell to Arms" next. I'd forgotten how good he was. Sure, it's dated a little, but not in a laughable way like (say) D. H. Lawrence. He has a knack of cutting to the essence of a situation, a feeling, an experience, in very few words. Totally politically incorrect (full of the casual racism and sexism of the time), and very "blokey", but still head and shoulders above what passes for "literary thrillers" these days. Marc Eliot: "James Stewart: A Biography" One of my favourite film actors from Hollywood's Golden Age. I've always wondered what lay behind his on-screen nice-guy persona. And the answer is: a nice guy. But that doesn't mean the book is dull (although I'm glad the author resisted the urge to call it "It's a Wonderful Life"). Full of interesting snippets - JS got an engineering degree from Princeton, shared a "men behaving badly" apartment with a hellraising young Henry Fonda, and lost his virginity to Ginger Rogers. Looking forward to reading more. Bruce Rosenblum/Fred Kuttner: "Quantum Enigma" This is the umpteenth book I've read in an attempt to understand quantum theory, and the first one that has come near to succeeding (ignore the one-star review on Amazon - my experience was the exact opposite). Perhaps let down a little by the truly awful hand-drawn illustrations, this is basically the authors' "Quantum theory for non-science students" university course. And it dares to go where many don't - into the realm of metaphysical speculation, i.e. beyond the "For All Practical Purposes" Copenhagen interpretation and on to what it all might actually MEAN. Makes your head swim, but in a good way. Nicholson Baker: "Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization" Baker is an American novelist who previously specialised in deliciously filthy books like "Vox" and "The Fermata", but here turns his hand to non-fiction, with a history of the 1930s and early 40s, showing the apparently inexorable drift towards totalitarianism and world war. It's a very easy read, eschewing the usual narrative in favour of two or three "soundbites" per page, each with a sort of "countdown clock" - "It was January 30th, 1933", "It was September 1st, 1939", and so on. He does make a number of irritating errors of detail (you can tell he's not a professional historian), and the events chosen are - by their very nature - selective. This tends to give a somewhat distorted view of events, and if you're not already familiar with the period you might find yourself thinking "Hang on - how did THAT suddenly happen?" But it still has a "page turner" effect, with much food for thought for the international politics of the present day. All four books recommended for those who like "that sort of thing" ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tonyh29 Posted March 31, 2009 Share Posted March 31, 2009 Lee Child's 13th Jack Reacher book, "Gone Tomorrow" is out next month - I'll definitely be getting that just read "Run by Jeff Abbott" very similar style ....doubt it will run to 13 books though :winkold: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Santa_Rosa Posted March 31, 2009 Share Posted March 31, 2009 Ernest Hemingway: "For Whom The Bell Tolls" My favourite book of all time. Not long finished the brilliant On Chesil Beach by the excellent Ian McEwan and am currently two thirds through The Mission Song by John Le Carre, which is very good too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjmooney Posted March 31, 2009 VT Supporter Share Posted March 31, 2009 Ernest Hemingway: "For Whom The Bell Tolls" My favourite book of all time. Not long finished the brilliant On Chesil Beach by the excellent Ian McEwan and am currently two thirds through The Mission Song by John Le Carre, which is very good too."A Perfect Spy" by Le Carre is one of my favourite books of all time. Transcends the espionage genre into the realm of literature. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jondaken Posted March 31, 2009 Share Posted March 31, 2009 I remember a thread on a Rangers forum very similar to this one. "Can you read?" No-one answered. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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