DIR Return Create A Forum - Home
---------------------------------------------------------
Hax Community
HTML https://haxnuts.createaforum.com
---------------------------------------------------------
*****************************************************
DIR Return to: Entertainment (Music/Poetry/Books/Movies)
*****************************************************
#Post#: 262026--------------------------------------------------
Re: What are you reading?
By: offtopicalways Date: July 14, 2024, 11:36 am
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=MidwestmikkiJ link=topic=68.msg261958#msg261958
date=1720929109]
[quote author=muskrat link=topic=68.msg261940#msg261940
date=1720920275]
fyi: NYT 100 Best Books of 21st Century
i only skimmed, and seems I've only read five on the list. i'll
have to take a closer to see what good ones i've missed.
HTML https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/books/best-books-21st-century.html?unlocked_article_code=1.7E0.x6mL.mt6QjvLEwhJF&smid=url-share
[/quote]
I’ve read 4. I thought there’d be more.
[/quote]
Only 5, and a number more sitting unread on my kindle.
#Post#: 262032--------------------------------------------------
Re: What are you reading?
By: MidwestmikkiJ Date: July 14, 2024, 11:53 am
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=muskrat link=topic=68.msg261940#msg261940
date=1720920275]
fyi: NYT 100 Best Books of 21st Century
i only skimmed, and seems I've only read five on the list. i'll
have to take a closer to see what good ones i've missed.
HTML https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/books/best-books-21st-century.html?unlocked_article_code=1.7E0.x6mL.mt6QjvLEwhJF&smid=url-share
[/quote]
At least it was a different list from the older ones that are
almost entirely old white guy authors.
#Post#: 262033--------------------------------------------------
Re: What are you reading?
By: MidwestmikkiJ Date: July 14, 2024, 11:56 am
---------------------------------------------------------
I recently finished The Narrowboat Summer by Anne Youngson
If you want something a little light but a bit more than a beach
read give it a try. I enjoyed it and we had enough to discuss
for a book club meeting.
#Post#: 264510--------------------------------------------------
Re: What are you reading?
By: Lurknomore Date: July 23, 2024, 4:14 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
I just ordered from library The Truths We Hold, by Kamala
Harris. I’ll keep you posted.
ETA
Halfway through and it’s fascinating. Not braggy like most books
of this type. She talks about her failures too. Really
impressed.
#Post#: 264674--------------------------------------------------
Re: What are you reading?
By: LesserGoddess Date: July 24, 2024, 1:21 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=muskrat link=topic=68.msg261940#msg261940
date=1720920275]
fyi: NYT 100 Best Books of 21st Century
i only skimmed, and seems I've only read five on the list. i'll
have to take a closer to see what good ones i've missed.
HTML https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/books/best-books-21st-century.html?unlocked_article_code=1.7E0.x6mL.mt6QjvLEwhJF&smid=url-share
[/quote]
I've read 11 of them - I don't understand why Zadie Smith is
always cited. Boring books .
Never Let Me Go was just devastating, one of if not the saddest
book I've read
Really liked Atonement
#Post#: 264684--------------------------------------------------
Re: What are you reading?
By: muskrat Date: July 24, 2024, 1:44 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=LesserGoddess link=topic=68.msg264674#msg264674
date=1721845305]
[quote author=muskrat link=topic=68.msg261940#msg261940
date=1720920275]
fyi: NYT 100 Best Books of 21st Century
i only skimmed, and seems I've only read five on the list. i'll
have to take a closer to see what good ones i've missed.
HTML https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/books/best-books-21st-century.html?unlocked_article_code=1.7E0.x6mL.mt6QjvLEwhJF&smid=url-share
[/quote]
I've read 11 of them - I don't understand why Zadie Smith is
always cited. Boring books .
Never Let Me Go was just devastating, one of if not the saddest
book I've read
Really liked Atonement
[/quote]
agree re Never Let Me Go: read it a couple months ago and it
stayed with me a long time (unlike so many things that are
easily forgettable). beautifully written.
#Post#: 267286--------------------------------------------------
Re: What are you reading?
By: kkt Date: August 7, 2024, 12:06 am
---------------------------------------------------------
I've been reading Nicholas Shakespeare's biography of Ian
Fleming, Ian Fleming: The complete man (Harper, 2023). Ian
Fleming is most famous for writing the James Bond novels, also
was highly placed in British naval intelligence during WW II had
some triumphs: The Germany radio transmissions were encrypted
and decrypted with an Enigma machine. You might have seen them
in the movie The Imitation Game. The reason Bletchley Park got
ahold of one was Fleming's group smuggling it out of Poland. As
the war was ending, Fleming's group of commandos went into
Germany and spirited out their best submarine designer, much of
his working group, and a prototype submarine. And his group got
away with pretty complete Germany naval archives all the way
back to the unification of Germany up to most of the way through
the war.
Iam Fleming's grandfather was one of the wealthiest men in 19th
century Europe. He managed to borrow money in the city at 3%
and then loan it to American railroads at 7%. Unfortunately for
Ian and his brother, they ended up not inheriting most of the
fortune. Eton, yes, (and he got kicked out), but he was going
to have to work for his living. Before the war, he worked at a
newspaper foreign desk, getting reports from Germany and Russia
and rewriting them as newspaper articles. After the war he
worked for a different newspaper but again collecting foreign
news, and employed a lot of his friends from the secret service.
Fleming was quite a womanizer. The biography seems to me to go
into more detail about that than I really needed. Anyway, one
of his lady friends gave him a house with some land on Jamaica,
called Goldeneye. The house was nice but modest, very private
with a fair amount of land, and its own path down to a cove for
diving, swimming, or boating. A good part of the year Goldeneye
was rented out, often to friends.
Prime Minister Anthony Eden had severe health problems, no doubt
made worse by stress during the Suez disaster. The UK seems
like a very small country at times, in which at least among the
aristocracy everybody knows everybody, even prime ministers and
disinherited sons. So Eden was looking for a quiet, low-stress
place to recuperate, and Fleming offered to rent him Goldeneye.
The first few Bond books Fleming wrote had fairly modest sales,
in fact he was at the point of killing Bond off and doing
something else. But then it got out the Eden stayed at
Goldeneye and his sales soared after that. Fleming's next Bond
got serialized in a newspaper which brought a lot more readers.
That's how far I am now, though there's another couple of
hundred pages of text before I get to the bibliography and
index.
Oh, yes, this is a long book. Large pages and about 700 pages
of text, not counting the bib. and index. I really wouldn't
have minded an edited down version, but the author did chase
down a lot of archives and I suppose they didn't want to prepare
different versions. It could have used another pass by a copy
editor. Nicholas Shakespeare has an annoying habit of referring
to people by their first names alone, and I (at least) can't
necessarily recall who that was from 300 pages ago, and of
course you can't look up a first name in the index. Most of the
time Fleming's wife is Ann, but sometimes she's Anne, and I
won't even bother to complain about times in quotes when she's
referred to as Annie. And, yes, there are other Anns in the
book. A few just plain misspellings too. This is a published
book, by a major publisher (Harper). I expect better.
That said there are plenty of interesting bits, so I'm not at
the point of putting it down in disgust. Two cheers, I guess.
#Post#: 267373--------------------------------------------------
Re: What are you reading?
By: kkt Date: August 7, 2024, 1:31 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
Oh, as I read the very next chapter, we get to the next tidbit:
at the same time as they arranged for Anthony Eden (Conservative
Party PM) to stay in Goldeneye, the leader of the Labour Party,
Hugh Gaitskell, was in bed with Ann Fleming. I guess they've
got their bases covered!
#Post#: 267765--------------------------------------------------
Re: What are you reading?
By: constant_craving Date: August 9, 2024, 7:56 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
Recently finished Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
and I haven't enjoyed a book that much in a long time. I highly
recommend it. If you've already read it and can recommend books
with a similar feel, please do.
#Post#: 267803--------------------------------------------------
Re: What are you reading?
By: Aardtacha Date: August 10, 2024, 9:01 am
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=constant_craving link=topic=68.msg267765#msg267765
date=1723251388]
Recently finished Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
and I haven't enjoyed a book that much in a long time. I highly
recommend it. If you've already read it and can recommend books
with a similar feel, please do.
[/quote]
I quite liked it as well. Have you tried Lessons in Chemistry
by Bonnie Garmus? It is not exactly like the miniseries that is
based on it, but I found it good.
*****************************************************
DIR Previous Page
DIR Next Page