What book are you reading atm?? CHAPTER TWO

White Riot - Joe Thomas

Novel set in Thatcher's England.

Life after life, the biography of one of the members of the guildford four: Paddy Armstrong. Well written; one story of him attacking a fellow inmate particularly but Armstrong comes across as a workshy unreliable waster. In fairness he doesn’t deny himself. He’s had a few guardian angels since his release who’s kept him on the straight and narrow and he gives them loads of credit.

The Nine Years War 1593-1603 by James O'Neill

Detailed look at the Nine Years War which ultimately led to the defeat of the Irish and the colonisation by England. It's actually frustrating how close Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, came so close to defeating the English and chasing them out of Ireland.

Yeah, I've read that too and this book briefly touches on the Battle of Kinsale. To be honest, Irish rebellions remind me a lot of the Crusades, they had the skill to win but too much self-interest and as you said, infighting to put it to any use.

The Wager: A tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann

Took me a while to get into this, just didn't grab my attention like other such books would normally do.

Well any series would after a while, what I like about the Bosch series is that it doesn't go for the constant cliffhanger trope and that they seem realisitc and flow like you'd expect a police investigation would.

Paris Requiem Chris Lloyd

Second book in a crime series about a Parisian detective set during the Nazi occupation.

1983 The World at the Brink. About tensions and paranoia in the 1980's cold war era and how things could have gone badly wrong during 1983.

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver - A pretty good read, but not without its faults. I didn't find it to be quite as good a read as some of the blurbs on the jacket and reviews elsewhere had suggested. It takes a while to get going and even though the world and characters depicted is quite vivid and well drawn, the novel itself felt a bit fundamentally 2D, and lacking in actual emotional depth - and it does veer periously close to poverty porn at times I thought - it felt quite schematic, an excercise in pastiche, if you were being uncharitable - but still it is a good page turner overall and does get more involving as it goes on and, taken as a piece of literary ventriloquism, it is pretty impressive in those terms.

Stella Marris by Cormac McCarthy - This was sitting on the shelf for a while, but I finished it off in more or less one sitting earlier. Tbh I didn't get much out of it. Feels like McCarthy wasn't that bothered with coherence and just wanted to put a lot of high-falutin' refererences to physicists and theory and so on down on the page and hope that the reader went with it - or was suitably impressed. I suppose he had earned the right by that point, but a real dissapointment of a final published work by one of the greats IMO.

Riding with the Lion

In Search of Mystical Christianity

By Kyriacos C. Markides

Re-reading this. Author is an academic who has written extensively on the mystical side of Greek Orthodox Christianity.

A lot more interesting and revealing than it sounds.

Between the Tides: Shipwrecks of the Irish Coast by Roy Stokes

The author was an amateur diver who travelled around the Irish coast in search of and cataloguing long forgotten shipwrecks.

Great Hatred: The Assassination of Field Marshall Sir Henry Wilson MP by Ronan McGreevy

Fascinating book on the assassination of Wilson (a really detestable man) which looks into the motivators of both the assassins, the assassinated and the wider political climate between The Free State, Britain and Northern Ireland.

Lamb, The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal.

I've read several people saying it' hilarious. I'll give it till page 50 and give it up if it hasn't bitten me.

The birth of Jesus has been well chronicled, as have his glorious teachings, acts, and divine sacrifice after his thirtieth birthday. But no one knows about the early life of the Son of God, the missing years—except Biff, the Messiah's best bud, who has been resurrected to tell the story in the divinely hilarious yet heartfelt work "reminiscent of Vonnegut and Douglas Adams" (Philadelphia Inquirer).

He also leads a WWI battlefield tour a few times a year to follow in the footsteps of his other book "Wherever the Firing Kine Extends: Ireland and the Western Front".

Body of Truth by Marie Cassidy

Excellent debut novel by Ireland's former State Pathologist. Unsurprisingly, this crime fiction offering centers on Dr. Terry O'Brien, the newly appointed State Pathologist originally from Glasgow, who suspects that Dublin has its very own serial killer targeting sisters.

I really hope she turns this into a series as I haven't been this gripped in the genre since Kathy Reichs' "Bones", Tess Gerristens' "Rizzoli and Isles" and J.K. Rowlings' "Strike" series.

If you have issues with surrogacy wait until you see whats coming down the line - The following book covers it:

A Waste of Shame by Jim Lusby

Irish Crime fiction series (Made into TV series "Making the Cut")

Shackleton: A Biography by Ranulph Fiennes

Greatly researched biography on the great man Shackleton. While most books on Shackleton's exploits concentrate on the infamous Endurance disaster, Fiennes details the difficulties Shackleton experienced in both his professional and personal life, as well as detailing the obstacles he had to overcome to attract funding for his explorations and resultant financial difficulties.

1519. A Journey to the End of Time by John Harrison

Account of the author's travels in the footsteps of Hernan Cortes, interspersed with episodes from his battle with cancer a few years earlier

Love this sort of combined history/travel book, and find the conquistadores an endlessly fascinating subject, so I guess this is right up my street...