Grand unified books thread

[Ed Anger]

Just finished reading The Last Thousand Days of the British Empire.

Enjoyable read.  He picks up the story in early 44, and spends a lot of time on the big conferences of Quebec, Teheran, and Yalta.  Some good stuff in there, but also fairly familiar.

The events post VE Day however (which cover half of the 1000 day timeframe) are rushed, which was a real shame.  That's the era that frankly I knew the least about, but it seems to get skimmed over very rapidly in the last third of the book.  Perhaps Atlee just wasn't as interesting a subject as Churchill.   

Still, I'd recommend it.  The author is  Brit living in Canada, so he also makes nice mentions of Canada's war effort, and gives several contemporary quotes about how Canada was the only Dominion doing everything that could be expected. :canuck:

I've always found anything on the end of the Empire to be depressing as hell.

[Barrister]

I've always found anything on the end of the Empire to be depressing as hell.

Well, yeah, it is. 

But it was still interesting to see how something like partition went down.  The author heaps a lot of criticism on Ghandi - not knowing much of that era, I wouldn't have expected that.

[Syt]

Started Warren Ellis' Crooked Little Vein.

Hillarious. It's like Neil/CdM/Monkebutt collaborating (and actually, the scene of the Large Lizard fetishists masturbating to scenes of Godzilla movies set to love msuic/porn groans makes me think Mr Ellis lurks here).

The language/weirdness of characters is pretty familiar if you've read Transmetropolitan.

Enjoying it so far (30 pages in) and had a couple LOL moments.

[Alatriste]

The author is  Brit living in Canada, so he also makes nice mentions of Canada's war effort, and gives several contemporary quotes about how Canada was the only Dominion doing everything that could be expected. :canuck:

I would say that's quite unfair with New Zealand, fair with Australia and more than fair regarding South Africa.

[Admiral Yi]

I would say that's quite unfair with New Zealand, fair with Australia and more than fair regarding South Africa.

What's the knock on Australia?

Re Canada's contribution: Keegan wrote in Six Armies at Normandy that French Canadians dodged the WWI draft in large numbers, which would seem to undercut Beeb's claim.

[BuddhaRhubarb]

I would say that's quite unfair with New Zealand, fair with Australia and more than fair regarding South Africa.

What's the knock on Australia?

Re Canada's contribution: Keegan wrote in Six Armies at Normandy that French Canadians dodged the WWI draft in large numbers, which would seem to undercut Beeb's claim.

How so? they're French... isn't that normal?

seriously though... iirc most Canuck soldiers were Vollies.

[Barrister]

I would say that's quite unfair with New Zealand, fair with Australia and more than fair regarding South Africa.

What's the knock on Australia?

Re Canada's contribution: Keegan wrote in Six Armies at Normandy that French Canadians dodged the WWI draft in large numbers, which would seem to undercut Beeb's claim.

Did you mean to say WWI?

The draft (or conscription) was hugely controversial in Canada exactly because of Quebec and French Canadians.  It was for that reason that the government brought in conscription, but would not send conscripts overseas to fight.  That eventually changed in late 44 or 45, but in the end very very few soldiers were ever forced to go overseas.

Not sure how anti-war sentiment in Quebec translates into the Canadian government not doing all it could do though.   

[lustindarkness]

I would like to read Xenophon's Anabasis, are all translations just about the same or is there one I really should be looking for?

[jimmy olsen]

Started Warren Ellis' Crooked Little Vein.

Hillarious. It's like Neil/CdM/Monkebutt collaborating (and actually, the scene of the Large Lizard fetishists masturbating to scenes of Godzilla movies set to love msuic/porn groans makes me think Mr Ellis lurks here).

Ogle?

[Admiral Yi]

Did you mean to say WWI?

My bad, I misread your original post.

[saskganesh]

The author is  Brit living in Canada, so he also makes nice mentions of Canada's war effort, and gives several contemporary quotes about how Canada was the only Dominion doing everything that could be expected. :canuck:

I would say that's quite unfair with New Zealand, fair with Australia and more than fair regarding South Africa.

what about India? 2.5 million troops don't matter? they were not a Dominion, but they were very damn important.

[Sheilbh]

But it was still interesting to see how something like partition went down.  The author heaps a lot of criticism on Ghandi - not knowing much of that era, I wouldn't have expected that.

This book's quite good on the period:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Never-Again-1945-1951-Peter-Hennessy/dp/0141016027
It's also entirely focused on the Labour government, so it would seem to fill that gap.  Of course the end of Empire's only a bit of it as it's a history of the period so there's as much on the creation of the NHS, developing a British nuke and so on.

I think that recently Gandhi's being looked at more critically and that Nehru's attracting (at last!) more respect and admiration. 

[Syt]

Started Warren Ellis' Crooked Little Vein.

Hillarious. It's like Neil/CdM/Monkebutt collaborating (and actually, the scene of the Large Lizard fetishists masturbating to scenes of Godzilla movies set to love msuic/porn groans makes me think Mr Ellis lurks here).

The language/weirdness of characters is pretty familiar if you've read Transmetropolitan.

Enjoying it so far (30 pages in) and had a couple LOL moments.

Finished it. The book is bright, over the top and would probably work well as graphic novel. The main character makes his own descent into the American sexual underworld, led by two competing Virgils; one representing puritanic values, the other sexual liberation. The hunt for the maguffin takes them from New York to Columbus/OH, San Antonio/TX, Las Vegas/NV, to finish in LA while encountering ever weirder characters and fetishes. Durng the flights the main character meets strange folks on the plane, including a 71 year old serial killer and a fellow private eye called "Falconer", and arrogant prick en route to LA to find "an avian statue from Malta". A lot of the story is heavily constructed, and Ellis injects it all with a (not too moralizing) commentary on modern communications society and a lot of humour. What struck me as worrying, though, was that none of the fetishes mentioned in the book really shocked me or offended me too much, which included:



[spoilers]




- body modification through saline solution injections
- sexual gratification with dead animals
- eel sex
- injecting heroin and jacking off to the fashion channel while shitting oneself
- a mother killing her son's girlfriend by shoving the preserved placenta from being pregnant with him down her throat, then stealing his semen to inject it into her veins as means of age retardation
- weirdos jacking off to Godzilla
- Russian Roulette parties where the rich and powerful rape third world kids and bet on which kid catches HIV from them
- a blind guy rapoing his seeing eye dog (I think we had a thread about that once)
- baby jesus buttplug
and probably a couple more that I'm forgetting.

Most stories and encounters according to Ellis are real world stories slightly adapted, and I guess I have read about almost all of them before.

Still an entertaining book if probably more interesting to people who haven't seen too much of the dark side of the internet (Timmay, Wags) and who are still shocked by rotten.com news stories.

[garbon]

Sounds like a terrible and senseless book.

[Syt]

Sounds like a terrible and senseless book.

As said, would probably work better as a graphic novel, but it also works as a rather mindless page turner (what comes next?) that mixes detective story with fetishes.

Doesn't hold a candle to his graphic works, like Transmet or Crecy, of course.