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Posted: |
Sep 29, 2024 - 7:50 AM
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By: |
Graham Watt
(Member)
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I was "out of" (the habit) for a while, but now back with as much totthless vengeance as I can muster. So, over the last month or two -
"The Complete Peter Cook" - Most all of his writings, from "Beyond the Fringe", "Pete n' Dud", "Private Eye" right up to... well, the last thing he wrote. I liked this. It's funny but it's appropriately tragi-comedy.
"The Hidden Ways" by Alastair Moffat - "Scotland's Forgotten Roads" is what it's about. A great read, Moffat walking - or trying to - "all" (some of) the roads in Scotland tramped by Roman armies, pilgrims, drovers... sometimes he just has to guess where the road was. Motorways and housing schemes have made it a challenge.
"Our Fathers" by Andrew O'Hagan - You can take the boy out of Scotland... "I have scarecly read so silvery beautiful a style when it comes to Scots landscape, nor one so tender when it comes to matters of life and death." (Candia McWilliam, Financial Times). "Magnificent nightmare of a novel." (Graham Watt, Film Score Monthly).
"The Last Train to Zona Verde" by Paul Theroux - This is the one where, at the age of 70, he tries to walk it-bus it-train it from Cape Town to Angola. Angola just about defeats him. I love Theroux's books, and this is as bloody brilliant as anything he's done.
Currently halfway through Nabokov's "Lolita". One of the billions of "classics" I never had the time (more likely the inclination) to read. The thing that's surprising me the most is how very funny it is. Not all the time of course.
After that's done, next up is Jimmy Joyce's "Dubliners".
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COVID did a number on my reading, as I mostly read while commuting to and from work, and I worked from home for quite a while. Now that we are going back into the office a couple of days a week, I am back to reading again. I just finished this book, which I was inspired to read when Gary S. posted about it on this very thread. Sadly, Gary hasn't posted here in a long time.
Fun book. A mash-up of steampunk, urban fantasy and a touch of Sherlock Holmes. This is the first of a trilogy, and I enjoyed it enough that I plan to read the later volumes.
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A book about the 1986 assassination of Sweden's prime minister Olof Palme.
Coming up: Autobiographies of backing singer Tessa Niles and musician Robbie Robertson, plus a book about pop artists with a christian faith.
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After finishing "Lolita" (amazing book), I didn't feel like launching into the Jimmy Joyce I'd promised myself I'd do, so I read "The Dunny Man", the story of the now disappearing (disappeared?) sanitary workers in Australia who used to take the dunny pans from the dunny during the night, wash them and replace them with clean ones.
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Currently reading:
Nicole Perlroth: This Is How They They Tell Me The World Ends
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I just finished Michael Connelly's latest, The Waiting, which features Renee Ballard and Harry Bosch, though the latter in a reduced role. Typical page turner from Connelly. I'll stay away from more specific details for those fans who haven't read it yet.
I'm now reading Wolf Hall. On deck: James by Percival Everett. The new book tells the Huck Finn story from the viewpoint of Huck's friend Jim. Really looking forward to it.
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Posted: |
Jan 3, 2025 - 9:51 AM
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By: |
Tall Guy
(Member)
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Ian Fleming’s “Thrilling Cities”, which I didn’t know was in print until I saw it in Waterstones. Written in 1959-60, it devotes a chapter each to cities he visited on a commission from The Sunday Times, starting in the Far East, thence to the Americas and on to Europe.
It’s written very much in his Bondian style, with close detail of food, hotels, characters he encounters and musings about air travel, and it’s thoroughly entertaining. The memoir being over sixty years old, some of the language might give some progressives a touch of the vapours, and prices given are of course risibly outdated. A common criticism of the Bond novels is that they lack a sense of humour. No such issue here; I’ve laughed out loud a few times.
Very enjoyable.
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Posted: |
Jan 3, 2025 - 11:38 AM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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EINSTEIN: His Life and Universe - Simon & Schuster; Reprint edition (2008)
This is a very readable book on Einstein's personal and professional life. The book is not overly technical, although I found it much easier to understand the Special Theory of Relativity than I did the General Theory. Since author Walter Isaacson takes pains to simplify things to explain Einstein's theories to a lay audience, I suspect that if I turned to Einstein's own book that he wrote for the general public, I would really be lost.
The book benefits from the author having access to important, newly released materials--namely, the personal letters of Einstein. This aids greatly in getting to the heart and soul of the man, with information as to how he viewed his immediate family, relatives, friends and colleagues, and providing his thoughts on the important scientific and political issues of his time.
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The only reason why I bought this book is that author MacCormack writes a few pages about scoring the film WILD ORCHID in 1989.
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