Bought a book recently?

[dom]

Listening to the audiobook of Julian Jackson's "A Certain Idea of France"

Julian Jackson's brilliant biography of Charles De Gaulle. Absolutely fascinating!

[pdw1]

Listening to the audiobook of Julian Jackson's "A Certain Idea of France"

Julian Jackson's brilliant biography of Charles De Gaulle. Absolutely fascinating!

That is sitting on my shelf waiting to be read. It is a bit daunting at 890 pages.

Just finished 'The First Enigma Codebreaker' about Marian Rejewski, the Polish mathematician who first broke the Nazi Enigma code back in the 1930s and laid the foundations for Alan Turing's work. A good read and you do not need to be a mathematician to read it.

[R6GYY]

I'm hoping for some book tokens to be in my Christmas stocking (so to speak). To help fund the following:

https://titanbooks.com/72287-the-fantasy-worlds-of-irwin-allen/

[pxr5]

I've nearly finished the 3rd book in the Three Body series - still brilliant. Then it will be The Redemption of Time by Baoshu. I'm so impressed by Cixin Liu I've just bought The Wandering Earth, The Supernova Era and Ball Lightening.

[R6GYY]

I'm hoping for some book tokens to be in my Christmas stocking (so to speak). To help fund the following:

https://titanbooks.com/72287-the-fantasy-worlds-of-irwin-allen/

And . . . just ordered 

[Nickslikk2112]

For Christmas Mrs S bought me 1923: The Mystery of Lot 212 and a Tour de France Obsession by Ned Boulting. Who'da thunk it.

Personally I've recently bought


The Anglo-Saxons: A History of the Beginnings of England by Marc Morris

Viking Britain: A History by Thomas Williams
Britain AD A Quest for Arthur, England and the Anglo-Saxons by Francis Pryor

Says something about where my head is at.

[R6GYY]

Thanks to a few more book tokens, I have bagged a couple more science fiction art books (not from Amazon):

Rayguns And Rocketships - Revised Edition: Vintage Science Fiction Book Cover Art

Hardware - The Definitive SF Works Of Chris Foss

[pxr5]

I'm all done with the Three Body series. The last, additional, book written by Baoshu is definitely worth reading after the main 3 books. For anyone who's not read it, it goes into detail about what happened (and happens) to Yun Tianming. The last page has a neat little twist too. All in all a fascinating series of hard Sci-fi.

Next book for me to read will be Dark Matter by Blake Crouch.

[Slim]

I'm listening to an overview of the conflict in Yugoslavia and the factors leading to it called The Collapse of Yugoslavia, by Alastair Finlan.

I've been there (Montenegro, Croatia and briefly Bosnia) quite a few times now and have had friends from there since the '70s so I've always been fascinated by the war. But because I'm idle, and because it's really very complicated - I've never got round to trying to understand it. So I'm hoping this brief (4 hrs) audiobook will do the job. So far so good, 90 mins in.

Still listening to Boris Johnson's brilliant Unleashed, which has proved to be a masterwork - so engaging, and so endearingly frank and honest. His chapter on the causes of deeper European integration in the '90s following the reunification of Germany - and the tensions that led ultimately to the referendum - is a profoundly scholarly insight. It really should be compulsory reading in our schools.

Earlier in the book, I've never heard a case for equality of opportunity so eloquently and earnestly made. Bravo.

[Nick]

This is quite a good book on the subject by the excellent Tim Marshall.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Shadowplay-Behind-Lines-Inside-Europes/dp/1783964456

[Slim]

This is quite a good book on the subject by the excellent Tim Marshall.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Shadowplay-Behind-Lines-Inside-Europes/dp/1783964456

Turns out I've already bought that one! Must be in my Audible library, will have a look.

[pxr5]

I've been meaning to get these for ages, but finally got round to it with a good deal on ebay:

Simon Stålenhag - Tales from the Loop

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tales-Loop-Simon-St%C3%A5lenhag/dp/1624650392

Simon Stålenhag - The Electric State

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Electric-State-Simon-St%C3%A5lenhag/dp/1471176088

[pxr5]

Blake Crouch - Dark Matter - I finished this some weeks backs. It is exactly the same as the TV show in every way. So it's pretty good, as I did like the screen version. There is to be a second series of the show - which is probably a cash in on the success of the first one as there is no follow on book 7/10

Stephen King - You Like it Darker I generally like Stephen King stories but they can be a bit hit and miss. This one is a bunch of short stories. Older books like this of his I've loved and include some of the greatest stories around (Shawshank, The Mist etc.). But this latest one really isn't good. Out of the dozen or so stories a couple are average at best, the rest are quite poor though. Some of them are great ideas that go nowhere and sometimes just end without any resolution or a decent conclusion. In fact I'd go as far to say that these feel like the scraps that were brushed up from his book writing study. I really can't recommended this book in any way at all 2/10

[pxr5]

Another book of short stories: Cixin Liu - Hold Up the Sky which is so, so much better than the Stephen King one.

[David L]

I've just started Keith Richards - Life. I've never been a fan of the Stones but this is as good as you'd expect it to be given his extraordinary story.