Grand unified books thread

[grumbler]

Also, I'm looking for a good, interesting and not difficult to read history book that I can buy at Amazon's Kindle store. Suggestions are welcome. I'm not picky about what history, as long as it's a "page turner".

Flashman.

[garbon]

Introducing Anne to a hotter, younger and less bitchy (and less whig-y) relation wasn't a good move on Sarah's part. 

Indeed, indeed.

[Josephus]

Yann Martel's Beatrice and Virgil.

Henry is a writer who plans on writing two books on the Holocaust. One, an essay on the Holocaust, specifically about Holocaust literature and how it's always so literal; and  the other  a piece of fiction, with the Holocaust as allegory. He plans on publsihing oth together as a flip book, where the essay is on one side, and flip it over, the story is on the other side. No front, no back.

His publishers flip. It isn't marketable. It's a silly idea. forget about it.

Depressed, he decides to move with his wife to another, nameless European city, and get away from it all. There, he meets a taxidermist who is writing a play. The play is about two animals, a donkey named Beatrice and a monkey named Virgil. In this play, the two animals wax philosophically about a terrible event they call The Horrors. More specifically they talk about how to talk about it once it's all over. and they talk about pears and bananas.

Bit by bit, as the metaphorical banana peel falls, the writer, Henry begins to understand what the play is really about and slowly, maybe too late, begins to understand the mystery behind the taxidermist and the purpose behind the play.

Or something like that. It's really bizarre. Interviwing the author tomorrow. Not sure how that's gonna go.

That said...I really recommend this book

[Kleves]

Alright, Peter the Great is added to the list. Now I need something that I can, thematically, order with it.

Has anyone read Trevor Royle's Crimea?

[garbon]

Started The House of Mirth recently. Much better than Age of Innocence so far.

[Josephus]

Do you guys read anything good?

[garbon]

Finished The House of Mirth. Wharton has been redeemed for me.

[Josephus]

Reading Guy Gavriel Kay's latest, Under Heaven. Not my cup of tea, normally, though I liked Ysobel, his last one.

This one is a fantasy novel takes place in 8th century china. I think that alone will give some of you hard ons.

[Neil]

The Safeguard of the Seas, N.A.M. Rodgers' first volume of his three volume history of the navy.  Very good.

I've been waiting for volume three for years now.

[Neil]

Now even the Federated Suns are tainted. 

They always have been, even before Tim.

[Neil]

Has anyone read Massie's Peter the Great? If so, is it any good? If not, does anyone have any suggestions for a good book on the Great Northern War or Russia during that time period?

It's excellent.

[The Brain]

Has anyone read Massie's Peter the Great? If so, is it any good? If not, does anyone have any suggestions for a good book on the Great Northern War or Russia during that time period?

Massie's Peter the Great is enjoyable.

A very good book on among other things Russia and the GNW is Robert Frost's The Northern Wars 1558-1721. A little gem.

Ragnhild Hatton's Charles XII of Sweden remains the best Charles XII bio which by necessity deals A LOT with the GNW.

Peter Englund's Poltava/The Battle that shook Europe is very enjoyable military history. It describes the Russian campaign and the battle of Poltava, but from the Swedish perspective.

[garbon]

This one is a fantasy novel takes place in 8th century china. I think that alone will give some of you hard ons.

Psellus isn't into ancient China yet.

[Kleves]

A very good book on among other things Russia and the GNW is Robert Frost's The Northern Wars 1558-1721. A little gem.

Ragnhild Hatton's Charles XII of Sweden remains the best Charles XII bio which by necessity deals A LOT with the GNW.

Peter Englund's Poltava/The Battle that shook Europe is very enjoyable military history. It describes the Russian campaign and the battle of Poltava, but from the Swedish perspective.

Awesome. Many thanks.

[Malthus]

Just finished reading Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada, only recently translated into English; a drama about a couple living in wartime Nazi Germany who, inspired by the death of their son in battle, engage in a campaign of dropping post-cards critical of the regime around Berlin (inspired by a true story, and written immediately after the war by a German writer who survived incarceration in a Nazi insane asylum - and who died almost immediately after writing the novel, in fact before it was published).

I was initially kinda meh about it, but as I read more of it I found it increasingly gripping, and moving.

I don't think I've ever read a novel that made me sadder for the authour. It is obvious that he loathed the Nazi regime with every fibre of his being, and that he above all respected the sort of hopeless, quiet dignity and courage that his heroes in his novel display - willingly dying rather than be compromised by evil. A courage that, quite obviously, he personally did not display ...