What book are you reading atm?? CHAPTER TWO

waywill1966

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122349665#Comment_122349665

annoying how Mengele and Speer were never sufficiently punished for their war crimes

miamee

Currently reading Limitless by Nuala Moore. She's a formidable woman, hard to believe she has completed so many amazing swimming feats and I hadn't heard of any of them before I met her a few years ago. Only getting around to reading the book now, bought it last year when it was first published.

https://www.gillbooks.ie/biography/biography/limitless

Nuala Moore is an Irish open water swimmer and adventurer. She has spent decades as a scuba-diving professional and has been involved in developing standards and procedures both in ice and channel swimming. She holds two Guinness World Records for extreme cold-water swimming. She is a pioneer, a cold-water safety specialist, a coach, a mentor, an event organiser and an endurance swimmer who has pushed the boundaries for women in extreme sports. She is the first swimmer in the world to swim a mile from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean, in the Drake Passage, and the first Irish swimmer to swim 1,000m at 0 degrees (as well as the third woman in the world). Nuala was awarded the Frank Golden scholarship for her work on cold water safety education. She founded the Ocean Triple R, a water safety initiative for sharing information around messaging. She has been listed three times in the World Open Water Swimming Association’s list of top 50 most adventurous women in open water swimming and twice shortlisted for the World Open Water Woman of the Year.

AMTE_21

Just finished Dirty Thirty by Janet Evanovich. As you can tell by the name, this is the thirtieth book in the series about Stephanie Plum, bounty hunter living in Trenton, New Jersey and all her adventures and strange characters she meets. They are all very similar and there’s an ongoing story about her cop boyfriend and her mentor, Ranger. An easy and amusing read.

megaten

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122352922#Comment_122352922

Seems popular with the library crowd anyways! Sounds fun, thanks for the heads up.

eightieschewbaccy

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurty, tend to limit myself to only one or two epic styles of book per year. This is just such a smooth read. About a quarter of the way through and I've invested myself in the characters. Also just stuck with that image of how isolated and lonely life could be in the old West.

silliussoddius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122362331#Comment_122362331

Enjoyed that, took me a while to get into it. I also enjoyed The Streets of Laredo which was a sequel.

pavb2

Was about to start Wuthering Heights but put the tv on, there was an old black and white film on where

Spoiler Warning

this man in prison tunnels into a neighbouring cell and escapes by taking the place of his dead friend in his body bag

turns out the film was The Count of Monte Cristo so I promptly turned it off and downloaded the book for about 45 c. This was a fantastic tale and I'm not sure a film could do it justice as the first half reads like a series of short stories I think the audio book is about 50 + hours.

Spoiler Warning

Edmund Dantes is a nice character but in his metamorphis as the Count, the superhuman, omniscient avenger, he comes across as a bit arrogant and less likeable.

Some great characters and story arcs in the novel, I did like Eugenie and considering the story was written in 1844 and translated into English it is an easy read.

Anyway I forgot about Wuthering Heights and started to read Tom Holland's Rubicon about the fall of the Roman Empire his Rest of History podcast with Dominic Sandbrook are worth a listen.

bullpost

Coast to Coast - James Morris

Travel book based on the writers travels in USA during the 1950s. Fascinating read so far with a society generally far ahead of anything in war-ravaged Europe in terms of affluence and mod cons.

AMTE_21

The House of Fame by Oliver Harris. Haven’t read this author before. I enjoyed this book. Nick Belsey is a cop in London who has been suspended on corruption charges and is in hiding. He is asked to find a missing man, and as he has nothing else to do takes it on. But it turns out the missing guy looks like he is a celebrity stalker of a famous actor and influencer. This leads to the discovery of a cult and murder. The ending was a bit ambiguous, I’m not sure if he was a good or bad guy. Maybe the next book will carry on the story.

miamee

Reading Jericho by Will Harker at the moment, took me a while to get into it though it promises to be good. About a third of the way through it at the moment.

Tauriel

Tutankhamun's Trumpet: The Story of Ancient Egypt in 100 Objects by Toby Wilkinson

The author chooses 100 artifacts recovered by Howard Carter in the 1920s, when he discovered King Tut's burial chamber in the Valley of Kings, to take the reader through nearly 4 thousand years of Ancient Egypt history. I thoroughly enjoyed, would recommend for those with an interest in egyptology.

Arghus

Was getting absolutely smashed by work commitments, so hadn't read a book from cover to cover for about two months: which is the longest I'd ever gone without reading something since I learned to read. Felt very strange. Never again.

But, anyway, got back into the saddle again with a Colm Toibin double-bill: Brooklyn & Long Island.

I'd seen the adaptation of the former whenever it came out, but I don't mind reading the source sometimes, to contrast and compare. And of course, it is a lot deeper and a lot more ambivalent about things than the film is. So, even though, I knew where the story was going, I still found the psychological insight and tension of the novel riveting. You would at times reading it be forgiven for thinking that it was the form of some memoir of a young Irish female immigrant to the US from the fifties and what she had experienced firsthand. Toibin has the ability to get inside the head of his female protagonist in a way that's uncanny. He can write about men in particular from the perspective of women in a manner that is very rare.

I found Long Island, while still good, to be not as taut or as fully realised a reading experience as Brooklyn. But it is also sadder and a crueller reflection on what the passage of time and the effects of what the roads not taken can do to people's lives.

In Brooklyn, it was kind of amazing how he pulled off writing a book of such piercing insight, but, with the use such simple straight forward language. In Long Island this style is even more to the fore, as the language and prose is more stripped back, even to the point of even deliberate simple-mindedness, but there is a discordance there then that large elements of the plot are sort of the stuff of soap-opera: a bit of a clash IMO. Long Island felt like reading, at times, really high-class chick-lit - albeit chick lit with tons of emotional repression and shrouded in a grey emotional pallor throughout. I’m not saying that I wouldn’t recommend it, but that I didn’t find it as satisfying as Brooklyn.

Loafing Oaf

Unruly: A History of England’s Kings and Queens by David Mitchell

Almost certainly the sweariest nonfiction book I've ever read, like a Horrible Histories where every joke is NSFW. Highly opionated too, full of quirky rants (Edward the Confessor is oddly his biggest bete noire) but that's what makes it more entertaining than most 'proper history'…

Dial Hard

I finally got around to finishing The Rejects. Really enjoyed it, would definitely recommend for any music trivia fans out there.

I'm currently reading Bodies, by Christine Anne Foley, which I'm feeling a bit ambiguous towards, but it's early enough days, so we'll see.

Then I'll have to read Colm Toibin's Long Island for the book club in my new job. Can't say I'm particularly looking forward to that, as I found Brooklyn boring AF. It is a million years since I read it, though.

hoodie6029

While he wasn’t publicly shamed to the extent of people in the past, one upside of the demise of Twitter, the cancellation of Kyle Gass reminded me that I’ve been meaning to read this book for years. Fascinating read. How he gets interviews with the key people is beyond me. He doesn’t just cover the internet era either, goes back to the stocks etc.

eightieschewbaccy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122413549#Comment_122413549

Highly recommend his "Things Fell Apart" podcast as well... Everything he outputs tend to be fascinating.

hoodie6029

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122414971#Comment_122414971

That was brilliant too. The bonus episode with Adam Buxton where they talk about losing their friend, Graham Linehan, to conspiracies was interesting too. I think he has other podcasts on audible too. Might be worth subscribing for a month or two just to hear his work.

eightieschewbaccy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122417268#Comment_122417268

There's a followup bonus episode of it that came out this week.

hoodie6029

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122417274#Comment_122417274

Oh! Thanks for the tip. Gonna check that out now! 😀

Dial Hard

Yeah, so I really didn't enjoy Bodies. It couldn't decide whether it wanted to be literary fiction or a beach book. Also, the protagonist was a pain in the hole.

AMTE_21

Just finished Palatine An Alternative History of the Caesars. This was an interesting read. It was an easy to read history of the Vitelli family in imperial Rome, who I’d never heard of. I did get a bit mixed up with the Latin names which were quite similar. It told the story of their lives which mostly consisted of eating and lying around spouting poetry and play acting. The rivalries of course were everywhere and life was very short. They seemed to be fond of telling people to commit suicide as a way of sentencing to death. They also were not ashamed of committing incest if it suited and having multiple marriages, great lads the Roman Emperors!

miamee

Re-reading Terry Pratchett's The Wee Free Men, I loved the Tiffany Aching books.

Jack Daw

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Tauriel

A History of the World in Twelve Shipwrecks by David Gibbins

This book looks a twelve shipwrecks from oldest to newest across twelve dedicated chapters. Got to say that I found it hard to get into this book, only thought it got interesting from chapter 8 onwards which focused on the wreck of Henry VIII's Mary Rose (which I actually visited earlier this month).

Say Your Number

We Will Not Be Saved by Nemonte Nenquimo.

About her life growing up in the Waorani tribe in the Amazonian rainforest in Ecuador and how missionaries and oil companies exploited and destroyed the land.

She grew up without electricity and cut off from the western world, they were a very superstitious group, also talks about how she and a group of tribes took on the Ecuadorian government and managed to protect half a million acres of rainforest.

Very enlightening and interesting read.

mariaalice

I am currently reading Agatha Christie It is brilliant, I am working my way through The Assassination of Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson excellent, and reading a book on Irish myths and legends.

Tauriel

The Defector by Chris Hadfield

Book two of the Commander Kaz Zemeckis series. Kaz is a one-eyed US Navy fighter pilot who would love nothing more than to get clearance to fly again after the loss of one of his eyes. The book is set in the 1970s, during the Yom Kippur War, which sees a USSR fighter pilot cross into Israeli territory in order to defect to the US. The Russian brings with him a prized MiG fighter. However, the handing of a state of the art Soviet fighter with a top gun pilot seems too good to be true.

I must say that this second book from Hadfield is miles better than his first offering, The Apollo Murders, as it is much better paced and better written. Interestingly, although a work of fiction, he states that it is based on real events.

lilith7

Currently reading The Lacuna, Barbara Kingsolver & enjoying it. It did take a bit of getting into but pleased I stuck with it.

I recently read her Demon Copperhead, loved it & was inspired to re read David Copperfield as a result.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/nov/07/barbara-kingsolver-lacuna-book-review

ancapailldorcha

I'm reading Unfinished Empire by John Darwin. It's insane how ramshackle and threadbare the world's largest and arguably most prominent empire was. Very good read.