Books - What are you reading?
Discussion
Derek Smith said:
I’m ready a history book that’s the most depressing horror story I’ve ever read. It is ghastly. It is haunting.
Savage Continent by Keith Lowe.
I love history books. I’ve read a fair bit on the immediate post war history of the UK, but very little on that of the European mainland. This book covers the immediate aftermath. It is something of an untold story, or at least not mentioned.
The book is scary. I stopped reading it twice, not because it is written poorly. In fact, it is just the opposite. Lowe sort of chats to you, and his matter of fact style makes it worse. It just got too much. Then it drew me back, only to be appalled again.
I had no idea what went on. I knew there was some retribution handed out to collaborators. I’d seen film of a few bodies and young women with their heads being shaved. But this goes deeper. The figures are just that; figures. If you thought 100 dead was bad, then 500 is just a bit worse. But the book highlights the hundreds of thousands who were killed, maimed, died, displaced, lost. And it has, largely, been ignored.
I recently read of the ‘missing’ in the years of Franco, and the way the government have sort of covered it up, making it an offence to mention it. He was nothing compared to what went on.
Want to sober up, for days? Then Savage Continent does it for you.
That sounds interesting. I found Beevor's book, Berlin: The Downfall similar. One atrocity after another, with horrendous retribution against the non fighting people. Savage Continent by Keith Lowe.
I love history books. I’ve read a fair bit on the immediate post war history of the UK, but very little on that of the European mainland. This book covers the immediate aftermath. It is something of an untold story, or at least not mentioned.
The book is scary. I stopped reading it twice, not because it is written poorly. In fact, it is just the opposite. Lowe sort of chats to you, and his matter of fact style makes it worse. It just got too much. Then it drew me back, only to be appalled again.
I had no idea what went on. I knew there was some retribution handed out to collaborators. I’d seen film of a few bodies and young women with their heads being shaved. But this goes deeper. The figures are just that; figures. If you thought 100 dead was bad, then 500 is just a bit worse. But the book highlights the hundreds of thousands who were killed, maimed, died, displaced, lost. And it has, largely, been ignored.
I recently read of the ‘missing’ in the years of Franco, and the way the government have sort of covered it up, making it an offence to mention it. He was nothing compared to what went on.
Want to sober up, for days? Then Savage Continent does it for you.
War is not glamorous and the mythologising of WW2 (fought by their parents) by older English people is often very distasteful.
MC Bodge said:
That sounds interesting. I found Beevor's book, Berlin: The Downfall similar. One atrocity after another, with horrendous retribution against the non fighting people.
War is not glamorous and the mythologising of WW2 (fought by their parents) by older English people is often very distasteful.
You point is emphasised in the book. 8 May was not the end of the killing. War is not glamorous and the mythologising of WW2 (fought by their parents) by older English people is often very distasteful.
You can understand those in concentration camps turning on their guards. You can understand those who liberated the camps turning a blind eye. In the book it mentions a soldier shooting a guard in the legs and then leaving him to the inmates. The Americans fought their way into the first camp they liberated so, with their blood up, you can empathise with their immediate response when seeing the horror. I met a Fleet Air Arm chap who was interred in Libya by the French. They were not the nicest of captors. When liberated, and staying on a British ship in the harbour, someone returned to the camp and killed the commandant. This was not the chap who was chatting to us.
A couple of years later, PIRA terrorists murdered him for no particular reason. The same sort of mindset, that of their desires overwhelming simple moral behaviour, is what was seen in post war Europe but magnified hundreds of times.
Lowe tries to explain why he thinks the carnage has been ignored, swept under the carpet. Everyone was at it. The war was at an end, but ethnic cleansing, what the Germans did in their camps, escalated. Civilians had to march hundreds of miles, without food, shelter or extra clothing, through hostile locals, to get to a location that was devastated and suffering from its own problems, most notably too many mouths to feed. The horror didn't fit the narrative.
The saviour in all of this was the USA and Marshall Aid. They did it for their own political reasons, but they did it.
4 books down so far this year:
This is Going To Hurt
The Nightmare Before Christmas
Strangeways - A Prison Officers Story
Fifty Dead Men Walking (about a young lad working for Special Branch whilst an active IRA member)
Just moved on to these as I like to have a couple on the go:
A Short History Of Nearly Everything
12 Rules For Life
This is Going To Hurt
The Nightmare Before Christmas
Strangeways - A Prison Officers Story
Fifty Dead Men Walking (about a young lad working for Special Branch whilst an active IRA member)
Just moved on to these as I like to have a couple on the go:
A Short History Of Nearly Everything
12 Rules For Life
Just finished "My Greatest Defeat" by Will Buxton
Anyone who is even remotely interested in any form of motorsport should read this book. Some truly amazing stories from a selection of very candid interviews from the biggest names in racing, describing how they recovered from massive set backs in their lives and careers. Some of them you will probably have some knowledge of already but others are absolute eye-openers. The book is worth reading just for Ari Vatanen's story. I would be fascinated to know who turned the author down and who will turn up in any possible volume II.
Highly recommended. 9/10.
(point off only for the slightly distracting portraits.)
Anyone who is even remotely interested in any form of motorsport should read this book. Some truly amazing stories from a selection of very candid interviews from the biggest names in racing, describing how they recovered from massive set backs in their lives and careers. Some of them you will probably have some knowledge of already but others are absolute eye-openers. The book is worth reading just for Ari Vatanen's story. I would be fascinated to know who turned the author down and who will turn up in any possible volume II.
Highly recommended. 9/10.
(point off only for the slightly distracting portraits.)
Words of Radiance (Stormlight Archives). 10/10. It's the best series I've read in a while, and maybe of all time. The fantasy world-building is amazing and there's so many cool, small details in the scenery and culture that are delightful. The characters are so believable and distinctive, and the magic system is uniquely creative.
denn69 said:
Words of Radiance (Stormlight Archives). 10/10. It's the best series I've read in a while, and maybe of all time. The fantasy world-building is amazing and there's so many cool, small details in the scenery and culture that are delightful. The characters are so believable and distinctive, and the magic system is uniquely creative.
Well - that sounds interesting! Or it may just be the way you tell ‘em!I presume one should start at the beginning? “Way of Kings”, isn’t it?
K12beano said:
denn69 said:
Words of Radiance (Stormlight Archives). 10/10. It's the best series I've read in a while, and maybe of all time. The fantasy world-building is amazing and there's so many cool, small details in the scenery and culture that are delightful. The characters are so believable and distinctive, and the magic system is uniquely creative.
Well - that sounds interesting! Or it may just be the way you tell ‘em!I presume one should start at the beginning? “Way of Kings”, isn’t it?
i'm currently reading the Macro and Cato Roman legionary series and still enjoying them hugely.
'Cancer Ward' Volumes one and two by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
Translation: Nicholas Bethell and David Burg
Publisher: The Bodley Head, 1968
My first editions
These excellent first edition copies have been sitting on my shelf for some time and I finally got around to them.
A semi-autobiographical novel, set in winter/spring 1954/5, based upon Solzhenitsyn's experiences while being treated for cancer, in Tashkent, following his release from Gulag / sharashka and exile to South Kazakhstan.
(Solzhenitsyn's time in the sharashka is the subject of 'In The First Circle'.)
While the principal character, Kostoglotov, is the subject of much of the story, Solzhenitsyn explores many of the novel's characters in great depth; both the patients and the medical staff and even the cleaners. The patient's cancers, and how they cope, or not, with their circumstances, the lives the staff are forced to live, many of which are hundreds miles from their original homes.
Invariably there is a fair amount of dialogue between the patients on conditions in the Soviet Union and the principles of socialism and Marxism.
It includes a remarkable amount of detail on the various forms of cancer being treated and the treatments in use at the time, but for all the divergences (of sorts) to bring in the details of the various characters' lives and the treatments, the story holds together extremely well and flows easily from page to page.
Some readers have commented that they either found part 2 to be less interesting than part 1, or that they simply "couldn't get into it", but I suspect this is more often a result of a gap between reading the two parts.
The extended conversation between Kostoglotov and Shulubin in part two is especially note worthy.
I found the second part initially held my attention almost as well as the first, and improved rapidly to equal the first part, but would definitely recommend having both parts in hand before beginning.
As always, 'The Gulag Archipelago' excepted, Solzhenitsyn manages to give a clear insight into life in Soviet Russia without preaching, and regularly presenting the views and arguments of those that were much in favour of the state as it existed.
Translation: Nicholas Bethell and David Burg
Publisher: The Bodley Head, 1968
My first editions
These excellent first edition copies have been sitting on my shelf for some time and I finally got around to them.
A semi-autobiographical novel, set in winter/spring 1954/5, based upon Solzhenitsyn's experiences while being treated for cancer, in Tashkent, following his release from Gulag / sharashka and exile to South Kazakhstan.
(Solzhenitsyn's time in the sharashka is the subject of 'In The First Circle'.)
While the principal character, Kostoglotov, is the subject of much of the story, Solzhenitsyn explores many of the novel's characters in great depth; both the patients and the medical staff and even the cleaners. The patient's cancers, and how they cope, or not, with their circumstances, the lives the staff are forced to live, many of which are hundreds miles from their original homes.
Invariably there is a fair amount of dialogue between the patients on conditions in the Soviet Union and the principles of socialism and Marxism.
It includes a remarkable amount of detail on the various forms of cancer being treated and the treatments in use at the time, but for all the divergences (of sorts) to bring in the details of the various characters' lives and the treatments, the story holds together extremely well and flows easily from page to page.
Some readers have commented that they either found part 2 to be less interesting than part 1, or that they simply "couldn't get into it", but I suspect this is more often a result of a gap between reading the two parts.
The extended conversation between Kostoglotov and Shulubin in part two is especially note worthy.
I found the second part initially held my attention almost as well as the first, and improved rapidly to equal the first part, but would definitely recommend having both parts in hand before beginning.
As always, 'The Gulag Archipelago' excepted, Solzhenitsyn manages to give a clear insight into life in Soviet Russia without preaching, and regularly presenting the views and arguments of those that were much in favour of the state as it existed.
Just finished Charles Cumming’s, “The Man Between”.
I wouldn’t. I did, so you don’t have to; written in the style of an emotionally backward adolescent fanboi of John LeCarre.
Could be a reason for that, I guess.
I suspect this is what you get for a multi book deal and a deadline. I hope so, because if this is the best he can do...
Sorry to be so negative, but it really was that bad.
I wouldn’t. I did, so you don’t have to; written in the style of an emotionally backward adolescent fanboi of John LeCarre.
Could be a reason for that, I guess.
I suspect this is what you get for a multi book deal and a deadline. I hope so, because if this is the best he can do...
Sorry to be so negative, but it really was that bad.
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