Books - What are you reading?
Discussion
Prolex-UK said:
Leithen said:
i4got said:
Leithen said:
i4got said:
Leithen said:
i4got said:
lowdrag said:
Next off the pile is a novel by - to me - an unknown author, Denzil Meyrick, and it is called "Well of the Winds". Frankly, I don't think I have read a better detective novel since I don't know when. 400 pages of good writing, and i am only at page 150. It is so well written that you can only guess at the plot, but can't be certain, and it keeps you going onwards. Based on a small island off Kinloch, with the secret service already involved, it is twisting and turning in a brilliant way. I can highly recommend it.
That sounds right up my street. I see its book 5 in a series. Do I need to read them in order or is it reasonably standalone?
Are they showing as read on your Kindle?
Prolex-UK said:
Leithen said:
i4got said:
Leithen said:
i4got said:
Leithen said:
i4got said:
lowdrag said:
Next off the pile is a novel by - to me - an unknown author, Denzil Meyrick, and it is called "Well of the Winds". Frankly, I don't think I have read a better detective novel since I don't know when. 400 pages of good writing, and i am only at page 150. It is so well written that you can only guess at the plot, but can't be certain, and it keeps you going onwards. Based on a small island off Kinloch, with the secret service already involved, it is twisting and turning in a brilliant way. I can highly recommend it.
That sounds right up my street. I see its book 5 in a series. Do I need to read them in order or is it reasonably standalone?Well that's embarrassing. Just went to Kindle store and apparently I bought the first two books in the series about 5 years ago. Can't remember them for the life of me.
Are they showing as read on your Kindle?
lowdrag said:
Prolex-UK said:
Leithen said:
i4got said:
Leithen said:
i4got said:
Leithen said:
i4got said:
lowdrag said:
Next off the pile is a novel by - to me - an unknown author, Denzil Meyrick, and it is called "Well of the Winds". Frankly, I don't think I have read a better detective novel since I don't know when. 400 pages of good writing, and i am only at page 150. It is so well written that you can only guess at the plot, but can't be certain, and it keeps you going onwards. Based on a small island off Kinloch, with the secret service already involved, it is twisting and turning in a brilliant way. I can highly recommend it.
That sounds right up my street. I see its book 5 in a series. Do I need to read them in order or is it reasonably standalone?Well that's embarrassing. Just went to Kindle store and apparently I bought the first two books in the series about 5 years ago. Can't remember them for the life of me.
Are they showing as read on your Kindle?
I've just finished "Blood of Angels" by Michael Marshall, which I enjoyed, though it started as quite a few totally separate stories that merged into one. There's quite a lot of reference to a previous novel of his - "The Straw Men" - which I'm pretty sure I've read, but don't remember it being along the same lines as suggested.
I've just finished "The Arctic Event" by Robert Ludlum and James Cobb. Bomber crashes on a remote island in the fifties with a deadly cargo, scientific team finds it, small team of agents try to retrieve the deadly cargo and have to fight off some other people who either want to destroy it or steal it. A good read. Turns out there are other books in a series about this team "Covert One" so I'll have to look out for them. This one has a bit of a plot-spoiler about the first book, but that's what I get for reading them out of order.
From a recommendation by someone who was born in the then Soviet Union and which is amongst her favourite fiction, I am just starting The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov.
I know absolutely nothing about this book.... surely one of the best ways to ever embark on a new book-experience??
I know absolutely nothing about this book.... surely one of the best ways to ever embark on a new book-experience??
hole in his youth.K12beano said:
From a recommendation by someone who was born in the then Soviet Union and which is amongst her favourite fiction, I am just starting The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov.
I know absolutely nothing about this book.... surely one of the best ways to ever embark on a new book-experience??
It is a wonderful story but, as with any foreign language novel, the translation matters. Do you know which one you have? I read the Glenny translation but there are others.I know absolutely nothing about this book.... surely one of the best ways to ever embark on a new book-experience??
Levin said:
It is a wonderful story but, as with any foreign language novel, the translation matters. Do you know which one you have? I read the Glenny translation but there are others.
Yes - Michael Karpelson - who, for example, translates the one character name as "Homeless", I noted from some reviews that this was a potential issue. I'm hoping I will find it a good read, nevertheless.....K12beano said:
Yes - Michael Karpelson - who, for example, translates the one character name as "Homeless", I noted from some reviews that this was a potential issue. I'm hoping I will find it a good read, nevertheless.....
I seem to remember Goaty Bill (where did he go anyhow?) read it as well, but I don't recall which translation. I think even a loose translation is a worthwhile endeavour, purely because the story itself is worth telling. I haven't read any of Karpelson's translations but at minimum someone, somewhere, found them publishable!Levin said:
K12beano said:
Yes - Michael Karpelson - who, for example, translates the one character name as "Homeless", I noted from some reviews that this was a potential issue. I'm hoping I will find it a good read, nevertheless.....
I seem to remember Goaty Bill (where did he go anyhow?) read it as well, but I don't recall which translation. I think even a loose translation is a worthwhile endeavour, purely because the story itself is worth telling. I haven't read any of Karpelson's translations but at minimum someone, somewhere, found them publishable!"Literary writer Kevin Moss considers the early translations by Ginsburg and Glenny to be hurried, and lacking much critical depth.[26] As an example, he claims that the more idiomatic translations miss Bulgakov's "crucial" reference to the devil in Berlioz's thoughts (original: "???????, ???? ??????? ??? ? ????? ? ? ??????????…"[27]):
"I ought to drop everything and run down to Kislovodsk." (Ginsburg)
"I think it's time to chuck everything up and go and take the waters at Kislovodsk." (Glenny)
"It's time to throw everything to the devil and go off to Kislovodsk." (Burgin and Tiernan O'Connor)
"It's time to send it all to the devil and go to Kislovodsk." (Pevear and Volokhonsky)
"To hell with everything, it's time to take that Kislovodsk vacation." (Karpelson)
"It's time to let everything go to the devil and be off to Kislovodsk." (Aplin)
Several literary critics have hailed the Burgin/Tiernan O’Connor translation as the most accurate and complete English translation, particularly when read in tandem with the matching annotations by Bulgakov's biographer, Ellendea Proffer.[28] However, these judgements predate translations by Pevear & Volokhonsky, Karpelson, and Aplin. The Karpelson translation, even when republished in the UK by Wordsworth, has not been Anglicised, and retains North American spellings and idioms.
To my eye, Karpelson's translation of this phrase seems easily the best one. "??????? ??? ? ?????" literally translates in to English as "throw everything to the devil", but it is a phrase used in everyday Russian to express general frustration at something. But given the context of this novel, in the original Russian it obviously has a literal allusion to the devil also, and that does seem to be missed in the Glenny translation, and others. Some of those other translations seem enormously clumsy and don't flow in the English either. So full marks to Karpelson from me, for that phrase at least. I'm interested to read his whole translation now. Glenny here seems more interested in emphasising the literal translation of the place name Kislovodsk, which means "Place of the Sour Waters", and doing so has some merits as people do indeed mainly visit the place to "take the waters", so that's an excellent detail which a non-Russian reader would benefit from picking up, but surely the devil reference is more important here.
Tricky business, innit?
EDIT: oh bugger PH doesn't let you post Cyrillic letters evidently.....hey ho.
Edited by ElectricSoup on Tuesday 15th December 09:39
Moving on, I am continuing with the Jack Aubrey serties by Patrick O'Brian, this time "Desolation Island". I'm sure it will be a good read as always and I have my encyclopedia at hand to understand some of the words. Takes me back to my Chaucer days with the glossary at the end of the book!
I held back on finishing "Well of the Winds" purely because I had liked it so much and wanted to think about where it would finally take me. I was mostly right but had arrived at well past page 300 before I had a clue. Maybe, for those who have purchased, I am just old and doddery and you'll get it much earlier! As always, the disappointment comes in that you have finished it and wonder if the next book is going to be as good. But I am sure it will be.
I held back on finishing "Well of the Winds" purely because I had liked it so much and wanted to think about where it would finally take me. I was mostly right but had arrived at well past page 300 before I had a clue. Maybe, for those who have purchased, I am just old and doddery and you'll get it much earlier! As always, the disappointment comes in that you have finished it and wonder if the next book is going to be as good. But I am sure it will be.
Goaty Bill 2 said:
'MAO The Unknown Story' by Jung Chang & Jon Halliday
One cannot pretend that this is a dispassionate and unbiased historical document.
It is without doubt or pretense a scathing polemic. One that is exceptionally well researched and highly detailed.
If you find you doubt that - there are near 150 pages of references, lists of interviewees and footnotes at the end of the book as well a further detailed index.
Investigation includes not just China (by Jung) but also Russian archives and interviews (by Halliday).
Given the number of fanboy books and articles in praise of Mao, going back to Edgar Snow and Bertrand Russell amongst others, and the numerous books written by Maoist apologists, this book certainly has and deserves its place IMO.
Anyone that can read this and continue to defend Mao by the 'results achieved' would have to be seriously disillusion or ideologically possessed.
photo obtained from internet
bump, currently halfway through. (I just don't get the reading time I'd like, although our beloved leaders may just be seeing to that.)One cannot pretend that this is a dispassionate and unbiased historical document.
It is without doubt or pretense a scathing polemic. One that is exceptionally well researched and highly detailed.
If you find you doubt that - there are near 150 pages of references, lists of interviewees and footnotes at the end of the book as well a further detailed index.
Investigation includes not just China (by Jung) but also Russian archives and interviews (by Halliday).
Given the number of fanboy books and articles in praise of Mao, going back to Edgar Snow and Bertrand Russell amongst others, and the numerous books written by Maoist apologists, this book certainly has and deserves its place IMO.
Anyone that can read this and continue to defend Mao by the 'results achieved' would have to be seriously disillusion or ideologically possessed.
photo obtained from internet
absolute must read, can't put down. Yes its not written to do him any favours but it feels petty honest. The man was an absolute psychopath; if you need proof that murder, torture and genocide are features of the marxist ideology, rather than the uneccesary side effects its apologists routinely claim, here it is right here.
Teddy Lop said:
Goaty Bill 2 said:
'MAO The Unknown Story' by Jung Chang & Jon Halliday
One cannot pretend that this is a dispassionate and unbiased historical document.
It is without doubt or pretense a scathing polemic. One that is exceptionally well researched and highly detailed.
If you find you doubt that - there are near 150 pages of references, lists of interviewees and footnotes at the end of the book as well a further detailed index.
Investigation includes not just China (by Jung) but also Russian archives and interviews (by Halliday).
Given the number of fanboy books and articles in praise of Mao, going back to Edgar Snow and Bertrand Russell amongst others, and the numerous books written by Maoist apologists, this book certainly has and deserves its place IMO.
Anyone that can read this and continue to defend Mao by the 'results achieved' would have to be seriously disillusion or ideologically possessed.
photo obtained from internet
bump, currently halfway through. (I just don't get the reading time I'd like, although our beloved leaders may just be seeing to that.)One cannot pretend that this is a dispassionate and unbiased historical document.
It is without doubt or pretense a scathing polemic. One that is exceptionally well researched and highly detailed.
If you find you doubt that - there are near 150 pages of references, lists of interviewees and footnotes at the end of the book as well a further detailed index.
Investigation includes not just China (by Jung) but also Russian archives and interviews (by Halliday).
Given the number of fanboy books and articles in praise of Mao, going back to Edgar Snow and Bertrand Russell amongst others, and the numerous books written by Maoist apologists, this book certainly has and deserves its place IMO.
Anyone that can read this and continue to defend Mao by the 'results achieved' would have to be seriously disillusion or ideologically possessed.
photo obtained from internet
absolute must read, can't put down. Yes its not written to do him any favours but it feels petty honest. The man was an absolute psychopath; if you need proof that murder, torture and genocide are features of the marxist ideology, rather than the uneccesary side effects its apologists routinely claim, here it is right here.
Read it iin stages
Him and stalin....
leglessAlex said:
K12beano said:
grumbledoak said:
I just finished 1Q84, all three books. It's begins with a young woman stuck in traffic in a taxi in Tokyo, who has to disembark and use an emergency escape ladder to make her appointment in a hotel. Where she kills someone. It goes on to involve a religious cult and a long lost love in a parallel world that she entered on the ladder. It starts well, an intriguing situation, and there are interesting bits along the way, but it didn't really merit three books.
Three?I don’t remember it being three books!
I do recall the premise was immediately original and intriguing.... and I will give you that once it got going it did seem to coast towards the end a bit.
The first Murakami I read and certainly hooked me in for more!
I love Murakami, but he is a bit weird and I'd probably have recommended starting with Kafka on the Shore, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle or Norwegian Wood. Still, I have to say I enjoyed 1Q84 too, and will probably read it again at some point.
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