What are you reading?

[Torurot]

 Liked the third book which wrapped it all up best.  Some nice little twists in it.


Just finished a great read

Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson
ISBN 13-978-0-374-27912-7
Johnson's novel follows eight different characters: CIA agent Skip Sands; Canadian Red Cross worker Kathy Jones; Jimmy Storm, a sergeant and henchman of Colonel Francis Sands; the brothers Bill and James Houston; a South Vietnamese fighter pilot named Minh; Father Carignan, a priest working in the Philippines; and a German assassin named Dietrich Fest.

Editorial Review - Publishers Weekly vol. 254 iss. 26 p. 30 © 06/25/2007

Signature Reviewed by Michael Coffey If this novel, Johnson's first in nearly a decade, is€”as the promo copy says€”about Skip Sands, it's also about his uncle, a legendary CIA operative; Kathy Jones, a widowed, saintly Canadian nurse; Trung, a North Vietnamese spy; and the Houston brothers, Bill and James, misguided GIs who haunt the story's periphery. And it's also about Sgt. Jimmy Storm, whose existence seems to be one long vision quest. As with all of Johnson's work€”the stories in Jesus' Son , novels like Resuscitation of a Dead Man and Fiskadoro €”the real point is the possibility of grace in a world of total mystery and inexplicable suffering. In Johnson's honest world, no one story dominates. For all the story lines, the structure couldn't be simpler: each year, from 1963 (the book opens in the Philippines: €œLast night at 3:00 a.m. President Kennedy had been killed€) to 1970, gets its own part, followed by a coda set in 1983. Readers familiar with the Vietnam War will recognize its arc€”the Tet offensive (65 harrowing pages here); the deaths of Martin Luther King and RFK; the fall of Saigon, swift and seemingly foreordained. Skip is a CIA recruit working under his uncle, Francis X. Sands, known as the Colonel. Skip is mostly in the dark, awaiting direction, living under an alias and falling in love with Kathy while the Colonel deals in double agents, Bushmills whiskey and folk history. He's a soldier-scholar pursuing theories of how to purify an information stream; he bloviates in gusts of sincerity and blasphemy, all of it charming

[Ivor Biggun]

Just started 61 Hours, the latest Lee Childs novel. It's what I call an 'oh shit' book. You look at your watch and it's 4am- Oh Shit

[Tomcat]

Just finished Dawkins book " The Greatest Show on Earth" about the proof for evolution. its really snippets of his other books cobbled together to give resounding proof that we evolved and were not designed by some fancifull God who deosnt exist ....it does the job nicely

Dawkins is an Ultra Darwinist and dislikes Religion and its followers and i suppose hes a bit left wing which is surprising when he quotes some of Darwins more unsavory lines about survival of the fittest and how the weak deserve to die etc. Basically Nature is red in tooth and claw and God if he exists must have be a sadist to have designed so much suffering .

btw
When you read Darwins and his friends orginal works ,including " The Origin of Species" , you can understand how the Nazis aquired some of this Philosophy to fit there own world view.

Anyway buy Dawkins book and go burn the nearest Bible .

[guydesavoy]

It's always amusing to hear how 'Science' supposedly disproves the possibility of the existence of 'God' or some Higher Power....

As if the Bible or some other Book was supposed to be able to tell us, 2,000 years ago, how it all was done...

Anyway, I've just finished Ronnie Wood's little opus on life with the Faces and the Stones.

Quite light reading, though equally amusing as reading dry scientists opining on the true meaning of life I guess

[f0xxee]

Hi GDS,

Welcome back? Where have you been? I hear a rumour you were busy as project manager for the Delhi Commonwealth Games? Job well done sir!

Books: Just re read Bill Brysons "A Short History of Everything" for about the third time. He has the remarkable ability to explain the big bang, quantum physics and evolution at just the right level for thickheads such as myself. And there is that typical Bryson humour as well.

Worth it.

[guydesavoy]

Hi Foxxy. Close but no cigar Have been off-shore on a work laptop so not much internet fun Heading back again next week.

Back to books... I just picked up a dog-eared copy of Billy Thorpe's biography. That should keep me entertained

[f0xxee]

(guydesavoy @ Sep. 26 2010,10:39) Back to books... I just picked up a dog-eared copy of Billy Thorpe's biography. That should keep me entertained  

"Sex and Thugs and Rock n Roll"? A great read. he comes across as the sort of guy you would have enjoyed hanging out with in your yoof. And his portrayal of Kings Cross (sydney) in the 60's is excellent.

[Tomcat]

(guydesavoy @ Sep. 25 2010,22:53) It's always amusing to hear how 'Science' supposedly disproves the possibility of the existence of 'God' or some Higher Power....

Science cant prove the non existance of God but can give other rational explanations of events.

Personally i take the the position of Daniel Eagleman a Neuroscientist who invokes the "possibilium" which is to say that there exists a range of possiblities and one perches oneself on the most appropriate pole at any time.

Even God is not completely dismissed but until evidence is found then its at the bottom of most likely causes for why we exist.

[guydesavoy]

(Tomcat @ Sep. 26 2010,17:14) Daniel Eagleman a Neuroscientist who invokes the "possibilium" which is to say that there exists a range of possiblities and one perches oneself on the most appropriate pole at any time.

I think I've seen that guy in Casanova TC    

(Another view would be that Science only demonstrates how marvelous creation truly is. But that's for the philosophy thread   )

I'm sure to enjoy Thorpie's book Fox. As you say he always came across as a real genuine guy.  

EDIT/// I just heard of a new book which would definitely be a very interesting read for anyone interested in the bizarre underbelly of Japanese society :

€œTokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan€ (Pantheon Books, 352 pages, $26), by Jake Adelstein.
An American guy working for the biggest Japanese daily mostly dealing with the Yakuza.

farangbah should enjoy that one  

[Torurot]

Vietnam War Diary - The month by month experiences of soldiers in Southeast Asia  1964-1975 Edited by Chris Bishop   2003 Aerospace Publishing LTD   959.7043 VIE     ISBN 1-85605-787-9

It's amazing how excellent the JOURNALISM is compared with today's.  Stuff from Peter Arnett and other UPI journalists from the field.  Pictures are great too. It was a very sad read. How LITTLE has been learned in 40 years.. What a waste, repeating exactly the same (and worse) in Iraq & Afghanistan...   As one of the articles says  "fish rot from the head". The same official LIES and deception, enough to gag a maggot!  Fckers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Snick]

Been reading Colin Cotterill
http://www.amazon.com/Colin-C....l_pop_1

This first Dr. Siri Paiboun mystery introduces readers to a delightful old man conscripted in 1975 to become the chief medical examiner of Laos after the nation's "only doctor with a background in performing autopsies had crossed the river" into Thailand, "allegedly in a rubber tube." Siri thought he'd settle down with a state pension after helping the Communists force the Laotian royal family from power, but the party won't let him retire until he is a drooling shell. So the spry seventysomething settles into a routine of studying outdated medical texts and scrounging scarce supplies to perform the occasional cursory examination while making witty observations about the bumbling new regime to his oddball assistants. But when the wife of a party leader turns up dead and the bodies of tortured Vietnamese soldiers start bobbing to the surface of a Laotian lake, all eyes turn to Siri. Faced with dueling cover-ups and an emerging international crisis, the doctor enlists old friends, Hmong shamans, forest spirits, dream visits from the dead--and even the occasional bit of medical deduction--to solve the crimes. If Siri lives long enough, he'll make a wry, eccentric addition to the genre. Frank Sennett

[Ivor Biggun]

New Lee Childs novel is out tomorrow I think. He was back on form with 61 Hours in my opinion. Just been re-reading The Red and Green Life Machine about the Falkland Islands field hospital.

[deepthroat]

Not much time for novels lately, but slowly working my way through "God is not great" by Christopher Hitchens in between my 5 monthly magazine subscriptions and various other forms of printed media.

GDS would love it.

[guydesavoy]

Did he write that one sober ?

[El_hefe]

 His favorite whiskey is Johnny Walker Black Label.

You may know that he is currently fighting a particularly malignant form of cancer, too bad, I've always enjoyed his books & watching his tv appearances.