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  1. #51
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    Buckaroo Banzai's Avatar
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    I recently got a Kindle . and with recent retirement from work, and staying at home I started ordering books to pass the time.
    If you like historical novels , no one is better than Gore Vidal . Lincoln. Burr and Julian were great.
    But I just finished Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt . His Autobiographical novel of growing up in Ireland and coming over to America.
    Great book.
    The sooner you fall behind, the more time you have to catch up.

  2. #52
    Thailand Expat Saint Willy's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Buckaroo Banzai View Post
    Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt
    Agreed, very decent read. Interesting life.

  3. #53
    Thailand Expat Saint Willy's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by TheRealKW View Post
    Agreed, very decent read. Interesting life.
    Apparently this post deserves a red. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


    11-07-2020 10:29 AM
    Latindancer
    Thread: The Book Club - Recommend /Review
    You actually read ?

  4. #54
    Thailand Expat tomcat's Avatar
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    ...pre-ordered from Kindle:

    Author Christopher Buckley: 'Everything Trump touches dies'

    Suzanne Smalley Reporter
    July 11, 2020, 3:41 AM

    Christopher Buckley, author of the new satirical novel "Make Russia Great Again." (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Simon & Schuster, Sean Zanni/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)

    Christopher Buckley’s new novel “Make Russia Great Again” is a rollicking satire of Donald Trump’s White House — and of a president whom Buckley told Yahoo News must not be reelected or “we’re all going to be sitting in lifeboats.”

    “It’s not really very funny when you think about it,” Buckley said during a Friday interview on the Yahoo News “Skullduggery” podcast. “If he gets another four years, I don’t think satire’s going to be possible.”

    Buckley’s book hits stores on July 14 and follows the success of earlier books like “Thank You for Smoking,” (2010) a send-up of the tobacco industry and political correctness. This latest effort skewers the Trump administration and its various enablers, including a South Carolina senator modeled after Lindsey Graham named Squigg Lee Biskitt “whose ability to adapt was beyond even Darwin’s imagination.” Other characters include speechwriter Stefan Nacht von Nebel — modeled after White House anti-immigration hardliner Stephen Miller — billed as the author of the “thought-provoking essay, ‘The Final Solution to the Mexican Problem.’”
    Buckley’s father, the late William F. Buckley Jr., is widely considered to be the intellectual dean of modern conservatism; he founded and led the influential conservative magazine National Review and hosted the long-running public affairs television show “Firing Line.”

    Christopher Buckley said his father would be “appalled” by the Trump presidency.

    “Donald Trump is not conservative,” Buckley said. “He has no ideology beyond the cravings of his own id. ... Some of the things that Trump does are quote unquote conservative, but those are merely aspects of his crowd pleasing.”

    Buckley revealed that he has personally intervened twice in the past couple of years to keep conservative media prizes out of the hands of Trump supporters. Buckley said that he almost sued National Review for awarding their William F. Buckley prize to Rush Limbaugh last fall.

    “It came very close to a lawsuit, but in the end I couldn’t go through with it because I figured it only would have added oxygen,” Buckley said. “I was very upset. Amidst the volley of increasingly angry letters between me and the chairman of the board of directors, I asked him if he was planning to serve Vichy water at the awards ceremony.”

    Describing himself as a Never Trumper, Buckley said that his anger at National Review stemmed from his realization that for the magazine to endorse Rush Limbaugh was a proxy Trump endorsement. While William Buckley was a fan of Limbaugh in the 1990s, Christopher Buckley said his father would not approve of Limbaugh now, since he has “quaffed very deeply at the Trump trough.”

    Buckley said that when he learned recently that the Media Research Center founded by his cousin Brent Bozell intended to bestow its own William F. Buckley Award on Sean Hannity of Fox News, he again intervened. Bozell retreated, leaving Hannity “snarling,” according to Buckley. (Hannity, a vocal Trump defender from his perch at Fox News, is depicted in “Make Russia Great Again” as media personality Seamus Colonnity).

    “Everything Trump touches dies,” Buckley said. “Look at what he’s managed to do to the reputation of every Republican senator but one. These people are gonna be dissembling: History will judge. And the entire Republican Senate is going to have to spend the rest of its life saying, ‘Well, we don’t know the half of it,’ [suggesting] that they were working furiously behind the scenes and they were horrified by Trump.”

    Buckley recalled an essay by his father published in Cigar Aficionado in 2000 in which he called Trump a narcissist and a demagogue.
    “When he looks at a glass, he is mesmerized by its reflection,” William F. Buckley wrote of the president. “If Donald Trump were shaped a little differently, he would compete for Miss America.”

    Writing “Make Russia Great Again” is a homecoming of sorts for Christopher Buckley. He gave up political satire for historical fiction about 4 years ago, he said, “on the grounds that American politics had become sufficiently self-satirizing.” As time passed, and perhaps as he reflected on his father’s own essay on the president, Buckley decided he was ready to try his hand at political satire again.

    “A number of people said, ‘Gee, why aren’t you writing about Trump?’” Buckley recalled. “And I said, ‘I don’t really know how.’ Trump as an object of satire is both a low-hanging fruit and a challenge — and he’s a challenge precisely because he’s a low-hanging fruit.”

    Lucky for us, Buckley said, he just decided to “suck it up and get back in the water.”
    Majestically enthroned amid the vulgar herd

  5. #55
    Thailand Expat helge's Avatar
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    I'll recommend Joseph Heller of Catch 22 fame.

    Haven't read him in 25 years, but shall start up 'Good as Gold' soonest

  6. #56
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    A few autobiographies. Debbie Harry's memoir "Face It" is a standout.



    One of the world's most photographed, iconic rock / pop stars, but still a very down to earth, stoic, and sweet woman.

    From a blurb:

    In an age when young reality TV stars produce memoirs about having sex, getting drunk and wetting the bed, it’s good to read the recollections of someone who has had enough experiences to fill nine lifetimes, yet has waited until 74 to relate them in one lush, louche, luxe volume. ‘I’ve had a very, very lucky life,’ she writes at one point. We were lucky too to have had such a perfect pop star for a while — even if she herself didn’t enjoy it much.

  7. #57
    Thailand Expat Saint Willy's Avatar
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    Into Thin Air by John Krakauer. Non-fiction book about the Mount Everest disaster of 1996 in which a bunch of people died on the mountain, written about a journalist who joined the trip and managed to summit. It's grim, it's vivid, it's dark. Written about 6 months after the disaster, the book was obviously an attempt at cathesis.

    4.5 stars out of 5.
    Warning: Be cautious if you are a fragile pink

  8. #58
    Making people dance. :-)
    Edmond's Avatar
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    Was there a film about that or am I imagining it?

  9. #59
    Thailand Expat Saint Willy's Avatar
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    Dunno, might have been. It was a pretty famous event.

  10. #60
    Thailand Expat Saint Willy's Avatar
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  11. #61
    Making people dance. :-)
    Edmond's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by TheRealKW View Post
    Everest (2015 film) - Wikipedia 72% on Rotten Tomatoes.
    That's the one. Downloading it now as I forget how good or bad it was (though the cast screams American Hollywood crap).

    Will try to buy the book, cheers.

  12. #62
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    panama hat's Avatar
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    Went to pick up my youngest at the charity shop she works at on a volunteer basis on Saturday and bought two book for $1 each




    and




    I'd read the series before but that was a long time ago . . . they didn't have the full set but after a week of reading King Rat I'm going to find the others.

    One of the good things about historical literature is that it doesn't date as badly as 'modern' technology isn't part of the story.

  13. #63
    Thailand Expat Saint Willy's Avatar
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    I really enjoyed those series.



    Quote Originally Posted by panama hat View Post
    One of the good things about historical literature is that it doesn't date as badly as 'modern' technology isn't part of the story.
    How about use of sexist and racist tropes and sterotypes? Some books may well date in that regards. (Wilbur Smith's Africa series, for instance)

  14. #64
    I'm in Jail

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    Rereading one of my old paperbacks. As I recall I haven't been through this since...
    ....1984


    Wait, that was Orwell.

  15. #65
    Thailand Expat Saint Willy's Avatar
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    Great book, how does it stand up to the test of time?

  16. #66
    Thailand Expat lom's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by TheRealKW View Post
    Great book, how does it stand up to the test of time?
    it is light-years ahead

  17. #67
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    With the passing of John Le Carre last week, it rekindled my memories of his works. I firstly downloaded and watched the 1979 BBC 6 part series of 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy' (excellent, though now odd watching in 4:3 tv screen aspect), followed by the 2011 movie of the same name (good, but the TV series better due to it's more in depth story telling).

    Just bought the 7 book Smiley collection from Kindle, and look forward reading them in their proper sequence of publishing.

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