Book thread : Tue Dec 09, 2014 11:28 am  

Do we have one of these? can I start a new one if not.

Re: Book thread : Tue Dec 09, 2014 1:02 pm  

I was under the impression we had a sub-forum for books. Obviously not...

Anywho, after finishing A Dance With Dragons of the Game of Thrones series, I'm now onto Gone Girl. I was impressed with the fast paced introduction of the first few chapters. How Nick's viewpoint is from the present and Amy's is her diary entries from years previous. But as I'm a quarter of the way through, its started to slow down. I'll see it through to the end, but as I'm approaching the middle, I'm becoming underwhelmed.

Next up, the sci-fi big-kid of me is coming out. I've ordered The Maze Runner online.

Re: Book thread : Tue Dec 09, 2014 3:59 pm  

I'm a fan of the Alex Kava 'Maggie O'Dell' series and anything by Ben Elton. Just reading 'the first casualty' set in the Great War. Good so far

Re: Book thread : Tue Dec 09, 2014 7:57 pm  

I don't read as much as I used to, or as much as I'd like to - I used to have a job which allowed for plenty of reading opportunities and got through plenty of good books over time!! .....

Personally, I'm a big fan of Robert Ludlum, the Bourne books are top notch - The films, while good, were very unfaithful to the books. Would loved to have seen the books done properly.

For anybody into Ludlum type thrillers, you could do a lot worse than the Terry Hayes's novel, 'I Am Pilgrim'..... Intelligent, tense and very relevant to the political world we presently live in, I wouldn't be surprised to see it made into a movie very soon.

Re: Book thread : Tue Dec 09, 2014 10:17 pm  

If anyone has read any of the Jack Reacher novels by Lee Child, and then had the misfortune to watch the Tom Cruise film of the same name you'll understand why I'm sympathetic to the post above, and its not just that Tom Cruise is about 12" too short to play the character, thats the least of the films problems.

Anyway, there is a film thread so books - currently reading Toast by Nigel Slater, a very entertaining blog-style biography that you read in bite sized chunks, nothing to tax the brain with and not a food book at all but a candid revelation of his childhood and sexuality, picked it up for a couple of quid on worldofbooks.com, second hand book site - almost as good as Oxfam Bookshop.

Re: Book thread : Wed Dec 10, 2014 1:32 am  

Dita's Slot Meter wrote:

I don't read as much as I used to, or as much as I'd like to - I used to have a job which allowed for plenty of reading opportunities and got through plenty of good books over time!! .....

Personally, I'm a big fan of Robert Ludlum, the Bourne books are top notch - The films, while good, were very unfaithful to the books. Would loved to have seen the books done properly.

For anybody into Ludlum type thrillers, you could do a lot worse than the Terry Hayes's novel, 'I Am Pilgrim'..... Intelligent, tense and very relevant to the political world we presently live in, I wouldn't be surprised to see it made into a movie very soon.

I'm a Ludlum fan too and I agree I'd love to see the books made into films that accurately followed the books. Though I have to say I think the Bourne films (bar Legacy) are superb.

Like Patrick O'Brien books too, though that's probably mostly to do with me being a Napoleonic Wars geek.

Re: Book thread : Wed Dec 10, 2014 8:13 am  

JerryChicken wrote:

If anyone has read any of the Jack Reacher novels by Lee Child, and then had the misfortune to watch the Tom Cruise film of the same name you'll understand why I'm sympathetic to the post above, and its not just that Tom Cruise is about 12" too short to play the character, thats the least of the films problems.

Anyway, there is a film thread so books - currently reading Toast by Nigel Slater, a very entertaining blog-style biography that you read in bite sized chunks, nothing to tax the brain with and not a food book at all but a candid revelation of his childhood and sexuality, picked it up for a couple of quid on worldofbooks.com, second hand book site - almost as good as Oxfam Bookshop.

The problem with turning any Reacher book into a film is expressing Reacher's strategic thinking when he goes into battle. The mental preciseness is almost impossible to portray. The richness of the character's is another problem with the two hours attention span of most cinema goers.

The first Baldacci novel was turned into a film starring Gene Hackman - the film left out the central character all together - bizarre

Re: Book thread : Wed Dec 10, 2014 8:20 am  

I am currently reading You by Caroline Kepnes - interesting theme but why do all these American north east coast writers have to try an emulate Jack Karouac. It is so annoying - surely they can come up with a more original style

Re: Book thread : Fri Dec 12, 2014 2:38 am  

Since the last time I posted over twelve months ago I've largely limited my intake of physical books to political history - with special emphasis on contemporary American. My best guess puts the number at about sixty or seventy - mostly left of centre, but with a sprinkling of traditional American liberal and even the odd establishment title.

Particularly memorable are:

Jerry Freisa's "Toward an American Revolution: Exposing the Constitution and Other Illusions" - sadly now out of print but available second hand. Fascinating that a convincingly and conspicuously patriotic nation of people can paradoxically seem far more conversant with the tenets of their democracy than most folk in Britain demonstrate toward theirs - and yet their faith couldn't be more hopelessly misplaced. Freisa delivers the most powerful argument against the traditional call to "return to the Constitution" in times of political and social strife. Less a response of sensible conservatism - it is in fact the root cause.

Andrew Scott Cooper's "The Oil Kings: How the US, Iran, and Saudi Arabia Changed the Balance of Power in the Middle East" - compiled as a result of recently declassified state files which prove the Iranian Revolution and the subsequent strife it caused right up to the present day can largely be pinned on the renegade actions of two men - Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger - who conspired together (without informing anyone in any American state department regardless of rank) to sell more arms to the Shah than he could possibly afford - despite countless warnings that such would ultimately result in an economic catastrophe and massive social unrest. Sans their highly illegal actions - Saudi Arabia would today be unable to destabilise the entire region.

"The War Conspiracy" - by Peter Dale Scott. Scott's former Berkeley colleague and good friend, Noam Chomsky, gets all the plaudits (most of which he deserves) - but the limitations of his thinking on global politics and imperialism very quickly become apparent soon into Scott. Indeed, moving from one to the other is like shifting up a dimension of thinking. If there is a more perceptive, intellectually honest and exhaustively rigorous researcher in this field I've yet to find him. WC is one of those rare texts which can completely transform your thinking on issues you had thought were steel-reinforced truths. Once finished it becomes impossible to take seriously the media's oft-blathered assertion that the President of the United States wields unparalleled power. In case study after case study covering over fifty years Scott shows each occupant of the Oval Office fighting vainly to exercise some semblance of control over both the intelligence services and the military whose methods and motivations are hidden even from the "World's most powerful man". A good example being the CIA who despite strict instructions to desist continued running a clandestine counterinsurgency war and assassination program in Laos for two years. Shedding light on a question which historians have never answered satisfactorily - Scott shows this was one of the primary reasons behind Lyndon Johnson's flat refusal to run for a second term despite being the clear favourite to win.

"Destiny Betrayed" by Jim DeEugenio - I could have picked several recent scholarly works on the JFK assassination - but perhaps this is the current gold standard. Despite the mainstream media's assertion that the "Case is closed" - anyone familiar with the current state of scholarly research (you know, by people who provide citations and references at the back of their books) knows the opposite was all but proven once people began wading through the glut of declassified documents which Oliver Stone's "JFK" forced congress to release in the mid-90s. We might not know the names of the shooters - but we DO now know Lee Harvey Oswald wasn't the lone assassin. Indeed, it's now fairly certain he was either part of the US's highly-secret false defector program - or he was led to believe he was by his CIA handlers. Odd that the media never mentions the intense interest shown in Oswald by just about every facet of the US intelligence community in the run up to Dallas. Similarly odd that no one wishes to talk about the obvious conclusions that must be drawn when one discovers Oswald was being impersonated in Mexico City despite the fact that only the spooks had the ability to do so in a highly sensitive location. Perhaps the media's reticence to break ranks and claim the obvious is understandable given that they have repeatedly ridiculed contrary views for decades - even though convincing evidence absolving Oswald emerged at the very beginning. To change now would undoubtedly cause people to question their credibility. But surely the more pertinent question must be: if they can unashamedly lie and lie and lie on a matter as big as this - what else might they be lying about?

To be honest I haven't read anything fluffy and fiction up till last month (notwithstanding several audiobooks) but right now I'm working through Frederick Forsyth's canon (not Fourth Protocol - which I read as a teen) and I'm pleasantly surprised.

True, his writing style is little more than functional. But his political thrillers are surprisingly well researched, convincingly paced and enjoyable. If he does have a weakness it is in testing the bounds of credulity. Thankfully he intuitively understands that such extravagances are tolerable provided they aren't shoved down your throat with the regularity of sushi on a conveyor. Contrast the like with contemporary authors drawing "inspiration" from the morse code of absurdities 24 (subsequently beaten to the bottom by "The Black List") foist upon us. Goodness knows how much time must be wasted by real intelligence agencies untangling reality from fantasy among recruits.

Re: Book thread : Fri Dec 12, 2014 5:45 am  

I remember reading The Day of the Jackal and the Dogs of War in my teens, and loved both.

The Day of the Jackal movie made a really good fist of the book, but the Dogs of War movie was nowhere near hitting the mark. Perhaps understandably it ignored all the background dealing and arms trading involved in getting a bunch of mercenaries, but IIRC that background really helped create the sense of impending catastrophe and futility around the whole enterprise.