What Books Are People Reading Now ?

[Odysseus123]

I am reading;

 

"American Prometheus-The tragedy and triumph of J.Robert Oppenheimer"

 

Kai Bird and Martin J.Sherwin.

 

A hefty biography on the man who headed the scientific work on the Atomic bomb at Los Alamos and who ruefully uttered the words "Now I am become Death-the Destroyer of Worlds" after the first successful "Trinity" test at Alamogordo.

Edited March 31, 2017 by Odysseus123
clarity.

[tukkytuktuk]

The Karma Sutra for sheep farmers - by Ivor Zoophobia

[Ace of Pop]

The Jewish Book of Free Gifts. Only read online books ,but nothing compares to a Real [emoji432]


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[tutsiwarrior]

still searchin' fer U Grant's memoirs on the laptop...musta deleted it from the kindle...been reading some short stories by Wm Trevor meantime...

 

I must say that War and Peace had a serious impact...quite unusual fer a mid 19th century writer to have a progressive anti war perspective...highly recommended...

 

sorta coincides with my broken leg gettin' stronger...pretty soon back down the local market to enchant the pretty market vendor ladies again...

 

and the wife screams: 'tutsi! I'm watchin' yew!...' and then the gorgeous 19 y.o. niece appears to bolster me and murmurs: 'lean on me when yer not strong, I'll help ye carry on...'

 

there's a load of good material out in these asian rural places...I hear what Wm Faulkner was talkin' about...

 

 

Edited April 1, 2017 by tutsiwarrior

[Andrew Dwyer]

I'm just starting again on Spike Milligan - War Memoirs ( a trilogy), actually turned out to be 7 books.

Obviously some wacky humour in there but some touching moments also , covering his war years and the final book (Peace Work) when he finishes army life and embarks on his musical comedy career.

Interesting how he teams up with Michael Bentine , Harry Secombe and Peter Sellers to create The Goons ( Monty Python of the radio world !, for those unfamiliar).

 

I can strongly recommend !

 

[Dmaxdan]

I'm just starting again on Spike Milligan - War Memoirs ( a trilogy), actually turned out to be 7 books.
Obviously some wacky humour in there but some touching moments also , covering his war years and the final book (Peace Work) when he finishes army life and embarks on his musical comedy career.
Interesting how he teams up with Michael Bentine , Harry Secombe and Peter Sellers to create The Goons ( Monty Python of the radio world !, for those unfamiliar).
 
I can strongly recommend !
 

I need to give these books another go. I owned a box set of the paperbacks many years ago when I was a teenager. I tried a number of times to read them but just couldn't get into them.


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[Andrew Dwyer]

I need to give these books another go. I owned a box set of the paperbacks many years ago when I was a teenager. I tried a number of times to read them but just couldn't get into them.


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I know what you mean, Spikes humour can be over the top at times but these books, although have some crude humour and hilarious barrack room antics, are very touching at times.

I couldn't read any of his poetry or watch him on tv ( Q, I think it was called ), just too much over the top .

But biographies, or autobiographies, are my favourite reading material.

[Ulysses G.]

10 hours ago, tutsiwarrior said:

 

I must say that War and Peace had a serious impact...quite unusual fer a mid 19th century writer to have a progressive anti war perspective...highly recommended...

 

 

I know I read it when I was very young and enjoyed it, but not enough to remember it now. I also read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, but can't remember much about that either. 

Right now I am reading a biography of Al Capone. It is nothing extraordinary, but good enough and tells the good as well as the bad. He was a ruthless murderer, but helped a lot of people at the same time. 

[tutsiwarrior]

1 hour ago, Ulysses G. said:

I know I read it when I was very young and enjoyed it, but not enough to remember it now. I also read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, but can't remember much about that either. 

Right now I am reading a biography of Al Capone. It is nothing extraordinary, but good enough and tells the good as well as the bad. He was a ruthless murderer, but helped a lot of people at the same time. 

 

the novel that affected me the most was Crime and Punishment when I was about 17...the character Raskolnikov threw me fer a loop, someone who was perfectly rational and mad at the same time...it was alternately terrifying and inspiring...later it took me awhile to get my head around the Bros Karamazov as I struggled with the idea of the odor of corruption and the grand inquisitor...The Idiot helped to calm things down as prince Mishkin was someone that I could relate to...

 

always inna Constance Garnett translation as later ones that tried to colloquialise Dostoyevski always rendered an absurd mishmash...

 

the War and Peace translation that I read was recent and pretty stupid and ye sorta hadta play it by ear...resolved to read it again but with Constance Garnett...

 

 

 

Edited April 2, 2017 by tutsiwarrior

[Odysseus123]

1 minute ago, tutsiwarrior said:

 

the novel that affected me the most was Crime and Punishment when I was about 17...the character Raskolnikov threw me fer a loop, someone who was perfectly rational and mad at the same time...it was alternately terrifying and inspiring...later it took me awhile to get my head around the Bros Karamazov as I struggled with the idea of the odor of corruption and the grand inquisitor...The Idiot helped to calm things down as prince Mishkin was someone that I could relate to...

 

always inna Constance Garnett translation as later ones that tried to colloquialise Dostoyevski always rendered an absurd mishmash...

 

the War and Peace translation that I read was recent and pretty stupid and ye sorta hadta play it by ear...

 

 

Yes.

Constance Garnett is the most readable translation by far.

Are you referring to the excruciating Pevear-Volokhonsky translation where they leave vast swathes of the conversation in the original French?

[tutsiwarrior]

13 minutes ago, Odysseus123 said:

Yes.

Constance Garnett is the most readable translation by far.

Are you referring to the excruciating Pevear-Volokhonsky translation where they leave vast swathes of the conversation in the original French?

no, it was a 2004 or so translation by a Richard someone (the kindle's upstairs and I gotta bad leg)...in his intro he said that he thought that he could improve on the translation that you mention by using no french and with east end London yob english...he even used 'Oi! 'a number of times...

 

 

Edited April 2, 2017 by tutsiwarrior

[Odysseus123]

21 minutes ago, tutsiwarrior said:

no, it was a 2004 or so translation by a Richard someone (the kindle's upstairs and I gotta bad leg)...in his intro he said that he thought that he could improve on the translation that you mention by using no french and with east end London yob english...he even used 'Oi! 'a number of times...

 

 

Okay.Yep  that "oi!" would be well nigh intolerable....

Best of luck with the leg.

[Wilsonandson]

How to be a Serious Chap - by General Payne and Major Bloodboil

[bannork]

it was interesting to read The Pigeon Tunnel  by John Le Carre recently, his first memoir. It  gives the reader some insight into the background to his characters over the years.His actual old man was really quite a rogue, living out an extraordinary number of public roles  over the years,. It's  amazing how he produced 2 sons who became so distinguished in writing, albeit in different spheres.

On a more local note I picked up Tales and Travels of a Teacher in Thailand  by Jeff Sparks. Once I started reading it it was hard to stop, I've met people, teachers in some cases, similar to some of the characters he describes. Thailand attracts them all.

.He clearly knows Thailand well too, made me want to get on a motorbike again!

[tutsiwarrior]

The Sportswriter - Richard Ford...a bit heavy going at first but it puts in the hook...

 

The Devil's Star - Jo Nesbo...good crime...

 

The Silver Linings Playbook - Matthew Quick...narrated by a bipolar, delusional guy, quite unlike the film...think of the novel narrative (by Chief Broom) and the film one flew over the cuckoos nest..

 

Love, Again - Doris Lessing...a fiction within a fiction, thought of the Roberto Bolanos novels and the characters' pursuit of a fictional novelist...never read her before, amazing prose style...

 

oh (sob!) so many good writers... whatever is tutsi gonna do when he wantsta write and get published?

 

 

Edited May 15, 2017 by tutsiwarrior

[bannork]

Tutsi- did you ever read Henry Miller's Sexus, Plexus and Nexus trilogy in your younger days?

Sexus just bowled me over as a young man. I wonder how it would read now 40 years later.

[tutsiwarrior]

22 minutes ago, bannork said:

Tutsi- did you ever read Henry Miller's Sexus, Plexus and Nexus trilogy in your younger days?

Sexus just bowled me over as a young man. I wonder how it would read now 40 years later.

I started tropic of cancer mostly to see what the big censorship issue was all about and to see what Miller was about in Paris in the 20s as he was never mentioned as being part of the Hemingway - Stein - Pound milieu...but I got distracted and put it down...

 

I useta read the Evergreen Review back in the 60s and they published some good stories (also a lot of photo collections with a lot of frontal nudity and assorted T&A...) and the magazine was associated with the Grove Press and the obscenity trial...the Grove Press published a lot of stuff that I was interested in at the time...

 

 

Edited May 15, 2017 by tutsiwarrior

[bannork]

2 minutes ago, tutsiwarrior said:

I started tropic of cancer mostly to see what the big censorship issue was all about and to see what Miller was about in Paris in the 20s as he was never mentioned as being part of the Hemingway - Stein - Pound milieu...but I got distracted and put it down...

 

I useta read the Evergreen Review back in the 60s and they published some good stories (also a lot of photo collections with a lot of frontal nudity and assorted T&A...) and the magazine was associated with the Grove Press and the obscenity trial...the Grove Pres published a lot of stuff that I was interested in at the time...

 

 

Yes, he was never part of that crowd, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Wolfe scene.

Do read him again if you have the chance.

[sharktooth]

Currently rereading the Sharpe series by Bernard Cornwall. On Sharpes Siege just now.

[bannork]

Tutsi, talking about the Keith Richards book, have you read this? I enjoyed it.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/low_concept/2010/11/please_allow_me_to_correct_a_few_things.html

[tutsiwarrior]

1 hour ago, bannork said:

Tutsi, talking about the Keith Richards book, have you read this? I enjoyed it.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/low_concept/2010/11/please_allow_me_to_correct_a_few_things.html

itsa long article and I'll read it later...but I did read Keef's book mostly to see what/who his influences are and to get the skinny on why Mick Taylor left the band of which Keef doesn't reveal much...

 

always considered Taylor (saw him both with Mayall and the stones) to be the better musician that didn't like to be talked down to by the likes of Keef...an artist that didn't care about the money or the fame, etc. and the best guitarist the stones ever had...reminded me of my all time hero Mike Bloomfield...I'd gladly meet de man down at de crossroads if I could play like that...

 

 

[bannork]

Years ago I read he got fed up with the drug taking and lack of action musically. He was a mess himself by the time he left, a junkie. A young kid, I gotta agree he was a brilliant guitarist, both with John Mayall and The Stones. I remember an interview with Keef, not so long ago, where he criticized Mick Taylor for leaving- ' He was a great guitarist but what has he been on his own? Nothing, a nobody,  The Stones are bigger than any individual.'

But perhaps Mick didn't care so much about being a nobody so long as he could play when he wanted and what he wanted.

 

 

[bannork]

Mike Bloomfield- what a tragedy!

[stander]

Just finished reading Killers of the Flower Moon, The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, by David Grann. 

[Sandy Freckle]

Barbarian Days - William Flannigan

 

[giddyup]

3 hours ago, Sandy Freckle said:

Barbarian Days - William Flannigan

 

William Finnegan.

[Ulysses G.]

Shakey: Neil Young's Biography by Jimmy McDonough. Good stuff. Not as good as Life by Keith Richards, but interesting never-the-less. To me, Neil Young is probably the more talented of the two, but the writing is not as good and they are both phenomenal artists. 

[Odysseus123]

Currently reading,

 

John W.Dower

 

'War Without Mercy'-A startling study of both Japanese and U.S racial hatred in World War 2.

 

Which is an excellent companion volume to the author's

 

'Embracing Defeat-Japan in the wake of World War II'

 

[CaptHaddock]

On 2/22/2017 at 3:09 PM, Odysseus123 said:

Referring to Grant's Memoirs..

 

Most definitely and written at a time when Grant had virtually lost everything due to stock market speculation.He basically wrote the Memoirs to save his family from penury and at a time when the cancer-which was to kill him-had already made its appearance.

 

Well worth a read even today and being a westerner Grant was never popular with the eastern establishment-and neither was Lincoln for that matter.

 

I have just finished L.A Carlyon's 'Gallipoli' and immediately purchased the sequel 'The Great War'.A superb book if one is looking for a fresh look at that campaign.

 

 

Grant wrote his memoirs at the suggestion of Mark Twain.  Grant was dying of throat cancer, probably brought on by smoking cigars.  He was indeed broke at the time, not because of stock speculation, but because his partner in the brokerage firm, Grant and Ward, founded by Grant's sone.  The partner Ferdinand Ward carried out a scam involving shares held as collateral for multiple loans that caused the firm to fail, but not before Grant put all his own plus borrowed money into the company to try to save it.

 

Grant's memoirs are so well written that rumors circulated at the time that Mark Twain had ghost written them, but that was not true.  Grant wrote daily for a year and finished the manuscript a week before he died.  His purpose, which he accomplished, was to provide for his wife after his death.  The memoirs hardly mention his scandal-ridden presidency and focus almost exclusively on the war.  For Grant fighting the war was a chess game especially in the latter period against Lee.  Grant never so much as mentions the vast human suffering which surrounded him.  What's striking about the memoirs is the clarity of Grant's writing style, which probably arose from his need as a commander to be fully understood by subordinates carrying out orders.

 

Sherman's memoirs by contrast are a complete snore.

[Sandy Freckle]

1 hour ago, giddyup said:

William Finnegan.

Yes indeed, that man also