What is East Dulwich reading?

[El Pibe]

"Last week I read:- We Really Must Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver"

You mentioned this in relation to El Pibi?o's penchant for meat art, I had a quick google and it looked intriguing enough.

Recommend?

For the record Pibi?o makes stuff out of anything and everything, a stool was an aeroplane, a cone his seatbelt and a shop receipt the newspaper the lady gives you, it was unfortunate there just happened to be some kidney to hand at that moment ;)

[maxxi]

Sunnyside by Glen David Gold - a kind of multi-episodic sprawling narrative type revolving around Chaplain, Pickford and Fairbanks et al. with seemingly unrelated elements like lighthouse keepers and wild west shows performing for the Kaiser coming together through the Liberty Loans campaign of future presidential candidate William G McAdoo.

only halfway through it though so it could end up being about something else entirely - it's that kind of book.

[El Pibe]

Jiri Weil's Mendelssohn is on the Roof.

First impressions are that this is excellent; there are things about it that bring to mind Catch 22 a little bit. As this was published 6 years beforehand I wonder if it had some influence over Heller's own work.

---

hmm, given it wasn't translated til the nineties this is unlikely. Anyway, recommended.

[Jah Lush]

I've finally discovered the joys of Ian Rankin's Rebus novels. So, last week was Hide And Seek, this week it's The Hanging Garden and next week will be The Naming Of The Dead.

[Otta]

For anyone who likes a good page turner thriller, Linwood Barclay is my new favourite. Just finished "Trust your eyes" which has quite a good back story where a crime is caught on camera by an internet mapping camera (like Google streetview, but called something different in the book).

I have just started my first ever Robert Goddard book after my wife got me 10 of his novels cheap from the book people. Only a few pages in, but seems okay so far, and a couple of people at work tell me they're fun.

[Chillaxed]

Just finished reading 'High Concept' by Charles Fleming. About Don Simpson and the copious amounts of blow and hookers he got through (before said blow and hookers caught up with him and he died). Worth a couple of hours of your time.

[Otta]

I'm reading a book starring Michael Palaeologus.

[TillieTrotter]

Is it about curry?

[El Pibe]

I've just finished Ready Player One.

One reviewer desxcribed it as a nerdgasm, which is about right.

It's very silly, but as a child of the eighties a book obsessed with bad hair, John Hughes films, blue monday, erin grey, godzilla, the dungeons and dragons cartoons, deloreans, coin op arcades and the Atari 2600 was right up my street.

[Otta]

TillieTrotter Wrote:

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> Is it about curry?

Haha, yes, there is an ancient curry recipe buried under his house, and people will kill to get their hands on it.

[Moos]

I'm reading a book by the fabled Victoria Glendinning.

Is it me, or is her writing a bit turgid and sometimes incomprehensible?

[Dopamine1979]

Just finished 'The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared' by Jonas Jonasson.

A very sweet and funny book translated from the Swedish original.

difficult to describe but if it was made into a film it would be a combination of 'Up' and 'Forrest Gump' and would be directed by the Coen brothers.

[El Pibe]

reading Marc Morris' The Norman Conquest.

Very good, well worth it and makes you realise how little we were taught about this period bar the headline soundbites (most of which are simplistic, dubious, misleading or plain myth).

The first hundred pages provides fascinating insight into the background.

I did find lots of references to Cnut and Harthacnut constantly gave a jolt gievn waht we konw abuot how we inerrptet wodrs on the paeg

[El Pibe]

Ha ha, poor old king cnut, autocensored out of the history books!!

[maxxi]

El Pibe Wrote:

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> Ha ha, poor old king @#$%&, autocensored out of

> the history books!!

you can't hold back the tide of history

[Jah Lush]

Just started Skagboys by Irvine Welsh, a prequel to Trainspotting which has already got me laughing out loud and going urgh! at the same time. Before that I read A Week In December by Sebastian Faulks which I highly recommend as a modern day satire.

[LVWT]

Skagboys is so much better than porno (and you don't get to say that too often!!)

[bonniebird]

11.22.63 by Stephen king, really enjoying it.

[fernado]

Star Of The Sea by Joseph O'Connor. Stupendous.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/jan/25/featuresreviews.guardianreview12

[Otta]

bonniebird Wrote:

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> 11.22.63 by Stephen king, really enjoying it.

Is this the sequel to The Shining?

[Otta]

Ah, no, that's called "Doctor Sleep". Heard mised reviews on Radio 4 review show.

11.22.63 sounds good. Reminds me of a film I say years ago called Running against time, where they try to stop JFK getting killed, thinking it would have stopped the Vietnam war. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100529/plotsummary?ref_=tt_ov_pl It was probably rubbish, but I remember it being good.

[El Pibe]

He was pretty instrumental in escalating the conflict, so seems a dubious conclusion to come to.

I've a very interesting diplomatic and policy history of the war, much of it based upon transcripts of declassified conversations, many of them in the oval office itself.

Basically it boiled down to 3 presidents in a row thinking the war was a very bad idea but each one thinking it had to pursue it in the first term in order to extricate themselves in the second term; political posturing for domestic consumption.

President 1 died, 2 retired and 3 did what he said.

All told that involved keeping a war going for votes 10 years longer than necessary.

We'll never know if Kennedy would have managed to extricate the US from the conflict, but given that withdrawal would have resulted in the overthrow of a client government by a communist insurgency, I can't see how he'd have done it any differently to Johnson.

Nixon certainly didn't achieve peace with honour and was probably responsible for the most killing by indiscriminate bombing, but he did finally say, ok we'll lose the war on my watch!!

A very interesting read if anyone wants borrowage (once I have it back from lendage)

[El Pibe]

.aaaanyway.

I'm partial to a bit of speculative hitory fiction.

I have C.J Sansom's Dominion (the usual in a long tradition of bad guys winning world war 2) ready to go, and from the blurb it seems to share some traits from Man in the High Castle and Fatherland, both of which I enjoyed.

[Otta]

El Pibe Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> He was pretty instrumental in escalating the

> conflict, so seems a dubious conclusion to come

> to.

>

> I've a very interesting diplomatic and policy

> history of the war, much of it based upon

> transcripts of declassified conversations, many of

> them in the oval office itself.

>

> Basically it boiled down to 3 presidents in a row

> thinking the war was a very bad idea but each one

> thinking it had to pursue it in the first term in

> order to extricate themselves in the second term;

> political posturing for domestic consumption.

>

> President 1 died, 2 retired and 3 did what he

> said.

> All told that involved keeping a war going for

> votes 10 years longer than necessary.

>

> We'll never know if Kennedy would have managed to

> extricate the US from the conflict, but given that

> withdrawal would have resulted in the overthrow of

> a client government by a communist insurgency, I

> can't see how he'd have done it any differently to

> Johnson.

>

> Nixon certainly didn't achieve peace with honour

> and was probably responsible for the most killing

> by indiscriminate bombing, but he did finally say,

> ok we'll lose the war on my watch!!

>

> A very interesting read if anyone wants borrowage

> (once I have it back from lendage)

Dude is was an early 90s made for TV movie. Don't overthink it man!

[El Pibe]

Doh.

I did check out the link, looked quite the Blockbuster.

It's lovely clicking on the actors and seeing what they're 'known' for, The Bogus Witch Project(2000), The Guiding light (1952), all wonderfully Troy Mclure.