Thread: The Book Club - Recommend /Review

Originally Posted by KOBRIEN

And I doubt he cares too much about Luton anymore,Just a steppin stone.

I guess that's why he writes so much about his time there?

Originally Posted by Marmite the Dog

I guess that's why he writes so much about his time there?

the adventurist, blinding book, just finsihing it, worth looking for

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this but just found out the half of it was completely fabricated..

Came across this review in the Observer - 10 best neglected literary classics



The Real Charlotte

Somerville and Ross (1894)

Somerville and Ross (the pen names of Edith Somerville and her second cousin, Violet Martin) are best known for their comic stories, Some Experiences of an Irish RM. But their masterpiece is the chilling The Real Charlotte, in which our antiheroine reveals her terrible nature when her marriage plans for her orphaned and beautiful cousin, Francie, go badly wrong. Insanity, sexual jealousy and a decaying Anglo-Irish country estate: the novel has them all. Truly creepy, it will be republished by Capuchin Classics, with a new foreword by Colm Tóibín, next month



The Vet’s Daughter

Barbara Comyns (1959)

Everyone should read Barbara Comyns. Graham Greene was a fan and so is Alan Hollinghurst. Plus, there is no one to beat her when it comes to the uncanny. The Vet’s Daughter tells the story of 17-year-old Alice, who lives with her savage veterinary father (a “terrible genie” in a waxed moustache and yellow gloves) in a horrible south London suburb. When she escapes his tyranny – she moves to the country, where she discovers a peculiar talent – Alice’s life seems to be improving. But it can’t last. A return to Daddy and his new wife and things grow nastier than ever. Nightmarish



The Rector’s Daughter

FM Mayor (1924)

The Rector’s Daughter is heartbreaking – not a term I use lightly. Mary lives in a decaying village rectory with her father, Canon Jocelyn, a fussy and distant old man. Having nursed her invalid sister until her recent death, Mary has given up on the things other women might take for granted – love, marriage, a happier home elsewhere. Until, that is, the arrival of Mr Herbert, for whom Mary conceives a passion. The Rector’s Daughter is the story of how she endures this ill-fated love, rescued by such unfashionable qualities as dignity, stoicism and duty



School for Love

Olivia Manning (1951)

In spite of the efforts of the BBC, which turned her Balkan and Levant trilogies into Fortunes of War, starring Kenneth Branagh and a cute pair of horn-rimmed spectacles, Olivia Manning remains one of the 20th-century’s most-neglected writers. But she is so good! School for Love tells the story of Felix Latimer, a young orphan who is marooned in wartime Jerusalem, alongside other flotsam and jetsam, in lodgings belonging to the repulsive Miss Bohun. A tremendous book about the way in which war makes adults of children – and avarice monsters of us all



The Wife

Meg Wolitzer (2003)

The Wife was published less than a decade ago, but I say it is already a classic – and I have no idea why its author remains so less well known than her US compatriots, Alison Lurie and Lorrie Moore. A postmortem of an ossified marriage, the novel is narrated by Joan Castleman, who has been married to Joe – a great American writer – for 45 years. Not for much longer, though; as soon as he receives his Helsinki prize (the Nobel by any other name), she’ll be off. A brilliantly funny novel about how women facilitate the lives of men, Wolitzer imbues Joan’s story with an invigorating seam of barely suppressed rage



A Way of Life, Like Any Other

Darcy O’Brien (1977)

The bastard child – if you can imagine it – of Slim Aarons and JD Salinger, A Way of Life, Like Any Other is a coming-of-age story like no other. Set in 50s Hollywood, the novel is narrated by a teenager called Salty, whose father once starred in westerns and whose mother was a goddess of the silver screen. In the old days, they enjoyed the high life, but now their careers have crashed, their marriage is broken, and the only way is down. Stylish, hilarious and touching, Salty is every bit as deadly (and as deadpan) a narrator as Holden Caulfield before him



The Odd Women

George Gissing (1893)

I love all these books, but The Odd Women is the one I wish everyone would read. Virginia and Alice Madden, impoverished by the death of their father, are growing old together in a genteel boarding house, a fate their younger sister, Monica, has been spared thanks to a loveless marriage. All are desperate. But then the Maddens meet daring feminist Rhoda Nunn. Will her example encourage the Maddens to escape their rhetorical and emotional prisons, or is Rhoda, having fallen suddenly in love, soon to bow out of the great struggle herself?



The Blank Wall

Elisabeth Sanxay Holding (1947)

The Blank Wall has been filmed twice – as The Reckless Moment in 1949, and as The Deep End in 2001 – and its author was admired by Raymond Chandler. But does it hold up today? Oh, yes. Lucia Holley is a suburban housewife coping alone while her husband serves in the Pacific. Then, one morning, she finds the body of her teenage daughter’s dubious lover and, desperate to protect her family, rapidly becomes implicated in his murder. Will she keep her cool? Atmospheric and difficult to put down, Sanxay Holding is as clinical and as clever as Patricia Highsmith



Ann Veronica

HG Wells (1909)

Ann Veronica – aka Vee – is 21 and lives in a dull commuter suburb of London with her father. Tired both of his inability to understand her, and the stream of dreary suitors he parades before her, she runs off to Bloomsbury where she meets bohemians, suffragettes and other dangerous modern types. But she also falls in love – with Capes, who has, alas, already been married. The adulterous Wells was rather a naughty man and Ann Veronica, with its advocacy of free love – not to mention a heroine who goes climbing in knickerbockers – caused outrage when it was first published


The Victorian Chaise-Longue

Marghanita Laski (1953)

Melanie Langdon, spoilt and sickly and recovering from TB, lies down on her antique chaise-longue one afternoon in 1953 and wakes up trapped inside the body of a young Victorian woman called Milly. Is she dreaming? No. Melanie really is marooned in a claustrophobic world that stinks of stale clothes, rancid butter and hypocrisy (judging by the whispers of the servants, Milly has been involved in some kind of scandal). More terrifyingly, the body Melanie inhabits is far frailer than her own. A book that will cure you for ever of your secret longing to live in Barsetshire

RobsLife: The Forgotten Soldier. One of my all time favorites. Have a leatherbound copy on the bookshelf right behind me. Great read; I hit it every couple of years.

Originally Posted by Davis Knowlton

RobsLife: The Forgotten Soldier. One of my all time favorites. Have a leatherbound copy on the bookshelf right behind me. Great read; I hit it every couple of years.

Yes it is a great book, I've also read it several times over the years.
It certainly is harrowing in it's grim reality, but well worth it to put our own lives into perspective.

Do you know the author Antony Beevor? He's probably the best (British) military historian at this time.
Antony Beevor | Home

I read his account of the D-Day invasion recently which was excellent, his best works though are probably Stalingrad and Berlin, partly due to him being one of the first historians to gain access to Russian military archives.

His history of the Spanish Civil War should be compulsory reading for all, it is an exceptionally dirty episode in European history that the powers that be have gladly swept under the carpet.

I'm looking out for this book at the moment:



I saw a documentary about him the other night and what an amazing story, truth certainly can be stranger than fiction. He was responsible for feeding the Nazi's false information, through a ficticious spy network of his own creation, that lead them to believe the main European invasion would come in the Pas De Calais, even after the Normandy landings had become established, which meant that the bulk of German forces where kept out of the battle for Normandy. The lives that he helped save are immeasurable his role in the success of the invasion is without doubt. A truly humble man who after the war lived in anonymity.

Joan Pujol Garcia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://www.mi5.gov.uk/output/agent-garbo.html

^I've read Operation Garbo; great read. I read a lot of military history, as my grandfather was in both WWI and WWII, my Dad in WWII and twice in Vietnam, my brother and I both in Vietnam, and now my brother-in-law in Iraq (both times) for a total of four years and now on his second year in Afghanistan. My nephew also just came out of Afghanistan. What a mess that one is......

I was never in the forces, although it probably would have done me good to go in the Army, my fascination with military history is the extremes that humans can operate under, out of a sheer will to survive. Would I have had the fortitude to survive the 1812 retreat, the Somme, or Stalingrad? It's impossible to say, but I admire those that had the tenacity to push on in the face of adversity.

been reading Nic Dunlop's The Lost Executioner. Dunlop's a photographer, and his curiosity inspired him to investigate and eventually identify Khmer Rouge mass murderer and torturer Comrade Duch, the former commandant of S-21.



only about 1/3 through it but it's the best book about Southeast Asia i've read so far (but then i find stuff like Private Dancer to be tedious, and find visiting sites of infamy like S-21 or the killing fields strangely satisfying).

Jack Charltons autobiography :

Good read,Jack is honest in this book if not at times daft.

Highlight : The reason he does not talk with his brother anymore.

Guns, Germs and Steel - Jared Diamond



A truly great book.

I really enjoy football autobiographies,Its normally the only time the person in question can state an honest opinion without getting flak from the press.

This without fail has got to be the worst I have come across,The stories are so
mundane,Every sentence seems to start by introducing somebody new and ends with
Yeah he was a right laugh...

Every joke and story seems to end without a punchline or point and I found myself
getting irritated that Kenny decided to write a book in the first place.

Summary: Great player,Awful story teller !

0 / 10

Originally Posted by ItsRobsLife

Guns, Germs and Steel - Jared Diamond



A truly great book.

Well you have read it , I have not -
but it sure looks like one of those books that politically correct liberals ,with nice deep pockets and lashing of WT guilt , love .
perfect for them to beat themselves up with .

''Jared Diamond (JD) has done extensive field work in New Guinea...
why did white Eurasians dominate over other cultures by means of superior guns, population-destroying germs, steel, and food-producing capability ?
He wishes to play down Eurocentric thinking and racist explanations because they are loathsome and wrong. Modern stone age peoples "are on the average probably more intelligent, not less intelligent, than industrialized peoples." New Guineans are "more intelligent, more alert, more expressive, and more interested in things and people around them than the average European or American is", traits which he attributes to survival of the fittest.''

Is he having a laugh ? its obvious that Europeans are a superior type of human.
If he wants to evoke , the ''survival of the fittest'' idea -well its way harder to survive in northern Europe , than in the tropics .
People from 4 season climates are ,always smarter than warm all year countries.
eg Japanese are smarter than ,say ,Thais .

I downloaded it to read ,then deleted it after reading the review.
Go on wallow in your whitey guilt , but not me ,
I've got beer to drink ,and ancestors to honour - for the wonderful modern world around me .

Keep um coming anyway lads ,
I love this thread

As you say, you haven't read it, and you're talking out of your arse as usual.
Now toddle off back to the shallow end.

Yet another book for the "if it doesn't make out that Caucasians are superior, it must be liberal-guilt horseshit" crowd to hate.

Nevertheless, as a broad survey of political and economic patterns built on primarily archaeological findings, the book is fascinating. Calling his scholarship "chainsaw art", Morris admits that much of what he has to say is necessarily imprecise, but goes on to insist that his tracing of comparative developmental levels between East and West must be "correct" and it seems likely that it is.

Morris is a witty and charming writer and the book is sometimes quite funny. His division of developmental "causes" into "maps and chaps" (roughly geography and individual agency), while useful, does seem to ignore culture altogether, a weakness that many will find, well, weak. He more or less insists that when various groups are examined statistically it becomes apparent that humans are the same everywhere and when-- a broad statement of (liberal?) faith that people who've spent long periods actually living in different cultures might find somewhat naive.

The weakest part of the book is the final section on the future. He sees us as poised on the brink of a vast and inevitable change which must go one of two ways: Nightfall or Singularity. Nightfall is taken from Asimov's story of the same title and Singularity refers to a post-human techno-u-topia wherein we all load our consciousnesses into computers and live forever after undergoing a lot of plastic surgery and organ replacement for a few generations.

He lost me at the end, but I recommend the book as a bloody good read for anyone interested in trying to understand how and why history unfolds as it does.

Quite simply the best book about SE Asia I've had the pleasure to read .
These guys were/are legends , no matter which side of the fence you sit on in regards to the war .

Prior to that I had just read;

Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors
by Piers Paul Read

On October 12, 1972, a Uruguayan Air Force plane carrying a team of rugby players crashed in the remote, snow-peaked Andes Mountains. Ten weeks later, only 16 of the 45 passengers were found alive. This is the story of those ten weeks spent in the shelter of the plane’s fuselage without food and scarcely any hope of a rescue. They survived by protecting and helping one another, and coming to the difficult conclusion that to live meant doing the unimaginable. Confronting nature at its most furious, two brave young men risked their lives to hike through the mountains looking for help—and ultimately found it.
https://www.amazon.com/Alive-Survivors-Piers-Paul-Read/dp/038000321X/ref=pd_sbs_14_1/140-8274534-6062831?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=038000321X&pd_rd_r= 74aeef15-a7ac-4506-9988-5cd70c090572&pd_rd_w=EM4JO&pd_rd_wg=v8d1O&pf_rd_p= bdc67ba8-ab69-42ee-b8d8-8f5336b36a83&pf_rd_r=3P6NN5A38DDXC514ZY74&psc=1&re fRID=3P6NN5A38DDXC514ZY74

It was ok, but 127 hours was gripping, this was just ok.

Originally Posted by TheRealKW

Just finished reading 127 Hours: Between a Rock and a Hard Place


The true story of Aron Ralston who was hiking into remote Utah canyonlands, when eight miles from his truck, in a deep and narrow slot canyon, an eight-hundred-pound boulder tumbled loose, pinning his right hand and wrist against the canyon wall. The book details his six days of hell, with low water, almost no food, or warm clothing, and knowing that no one knew where he was.

I had seen the movie, so knew the ending, [careful SPOILER] but reading his words was something else. Aron tried everything to get free, until finally he amputated his own hand/arrn with a hand held knife tool, hiked 8 miles back out, including a repel down a 6 story cliff one handed.

Robot Check

Gripping movie, the book must be better.