What book are you currently reading?

[snorri]

I'm reading Wonders of Salvage by David Masters published in 1944.
It's a non-fiction book about marine salvage that I bought for £1 at a charity sale.

 

[stephec]

[QUOTE 1952734, member: 259"]When The Lights Went Out - Britain in the Seventies by Andy Beckett

It's "social history" (groan), but full of surprises and very well written. It's about when I grew up and it has helped me to reconcile what I remember with what actually happened.[/quote]

I usually like this type of book, as long as it's not written in a heavy text book kind of way.

 

[stephec]

I sometimes go through a book a week, so once a month I usually go to The Works and stock up.

Mainly social history, autobiographies, sport, general history, etc, I've never been a fan of fiction.

This is my last one - http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Birds-S...=8-1&keywords=do+the+birds+still+sing+in+hell

The description makes it sound pretty grim, and it is in parts, but still a cracking read.

 

[Dave Davenport]

Al Murray; Watching war films with my dad.
Got it for Christmas, looks like a standard 'celeb auto-biography', but it's nothing of the sort.

 

[stephec]

Al Murray; Watching war films with my dad.
Got it for Christmas, looks like a standard 'celeb auto-biography', but it's nothing of the sort.

I've done that one as well, there seemed to be more pages on Operation Market Garden than actual war films though.

 

[User169]

Matt Rendell: Olympic Gangster.

It's a biog of the French cyclist Jose Beyaert who rode 2 TdFs in the 1950s and won the gold medal at the 1948 London Olympics.

Aside from the that he was also a gymnast, a boxer and an arms trafficker during the Second World War, but ended up in Colombia to inaugurate a new velodrome in Bogota in 1951, promptly winning the Tour of Colombia in 1952. He liked it so much that he stayed in Colombia, intially as a cycling coach, but later variously as a businessman, restauranteur, hair dresser and hair product salesman, balsa wood logger, flight attendant, emerald-trader, and (possibly) a hired killer for the Colombian mob. He eventually left Colombia in the 90s, as the narcoguerillas got into kidnapping retired cyclists, and moved back to France.

All his life he seems to have liked a good fist-fight and once threatened to break Fignon's jaw - Fignon having made some derogatory comments about Colombian riders.

 

[andylaw79]

Books play a huge role in our house. I wrote the above post tongue in cheek but it is a brilliant kids book and I was hoping others would suggest books in a similar vein for us to read to the littleun.

If you haven't already got them or read them there are a couple by William Bee that both our kids love. 'The Train Goes' and 'Beware Of The Frog'. There is a third by the same author but I forget what it's called.

 

[Biker Joe]

I'm currently reading Book 2 of "The Saga of the Exiles" by Julian May.
There are four Books altogether.
I'm enjoying them very much.

 

[robjh]

I'm reading a series of interviews with Günter Schabowski, the man who accidentally triggered the opening of the Berlin Wall on 9th November 1989, that were recorded and published as a book in 2009, for the 20th anniversary. It is a fascinating, and critical (often self-critical) account of the East German régime from the inside, from a man known in Germany for his public 'repentence' and wholesale conversion to western democratic ideals. Not very popular with the old comrades, apparently.

 

[cyberknight]

Winnie the witch under the sea is my lads current fave bed time book.

 

[Basil.B]

Just finished Cavendish at speed, now reading Boy Racer.

 

[Bollo]

....Yevgeny Zamyatin, the author of the dystopia novel, We, also wrote to Stalin for permission to leave the country. Surprisingly it was granted. This may have been a mistake, because George Orwell ripped off the plot, characters and the ending of We for 1984.

The Ding isn't so far that I can't pop up there and demand satisfaction, Fang! . Anyone who disses Orwell will have to go 12 rounds with me and the Guardian style guide!

I never bought the 'Orwell rips off Zamyatin' line completely as the doomed lovers vs authority plot goes back to Shakespeare and beyond. 'We' (arguably ripped off from Brave New World) is fantastic in the formal sense. 1984 manages to walk the fine line between fantasy, history and the possible in a way that few other books have ever managed. The core of 1984 is the relationship between Winston Smith and O'Brien anyway.

I recently read 1985 by Anthony Burgess. Don't bother, it's crap.

 

[Yellow Fang]

The Ding isn't so far that I can't pop up there and demand satisfaction, Fang! . Anyone who disses Orwell will have to go 12 rounds with me and the Guardian style guide!

Oh yeah, what about that elephant he was supposed to have shot, or that hanging he was supposed to have attended, or that beating he was supposed to have received at prep school, or that French hospital he was supposed to have convalesced at for so long?

 

[Bollo]

Oh yeah, what about that elephant he was supposed to have shot, or that hanging he was supposed to have attended, or that beating he was supposed to have received at prep school, or that French hospital he was supposed to have convalesced at for so long?

First train tomorrow Fang! First Train!

 

[SteCenturion]

Just finished Cavendish at speed, now reading Boy Racer.

A bit of reverse reading there -
Like it.