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Spoilers What Book Are You Reading?
- Thread starter Huntn
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Fact or fiction?
Long or short?
As a starter book, I would recommend a book that is both quite short, and very readable, namely, A J P Taylor's "The First World War: An Illustrated History."
Fact. I’ve read fiction, mainly the excellent Pat Barker Regeneration trilogy. Was thinking of Max Hasting’s Catastrophe.
Pat Barker's trilogy is superb.
Sebastian Faulks wrote a book entitled "Birdsong" which is also very good (not as good as Pat Barker's trilogy) and is also set in, and during, the First World War.
However, as an undergrad, I remember reading (and enjoying) A J P Taylor's work.
Recent years, on account of the plethora of WWI centenaries, have given rise to many publications, but some are incredibly detailed, and not all are engagingly written.
Recommendations would probably vary depending on whether you're interested more in the military history or the factors that led up to the war, social and cultural history of the times, aside from memoirs and novels like the Barker trilogy. I've spent some time looking at the time after and time before WWI in the past couple of years.
There is Juliet Nicolson's absorbing look at the emotional and sociopolitical aftermath: The Great Silence: Britain from the Shadow of the First World War to the Dawn of the Jazz Age. Her book is prefaced by that haunting photographic portrait by Hugh Cecil titled 'Grief' that was published in Tatler in November 1919, a year after the armistice was signed.
Awhile back I read Florie Illie's 1913: The Year Before the Storm. That was somewhere between entertainment and name-dropping, useful for knowing the pre-war cultural and artistic milieu mostly in Germany (the author is German) as well in France and Russia (not much on the US), but takes an almost novelistic approach. There was certainly ample evidence that some parts of our societies are on about our lives and interactions with each other as usual even as other characters and forces may see the stage set for imminent conflict. The book was set up as a chronology in 1913, by month, of mostly the European social and cultural fabric, via events that took place that year. There were references to some chance real (or in a few cases, plausible) meetups of notable figures of the times before the war that changed so many lives and nations forever.
But that book opens with a startling account of the first few seconds of 1913 in New Orleans of all places, where a young delinquent kid named Louis Armstrong fired a stolen gun to celebrate the New Year and was hauled into the sheriff's office where thanks God he happened to be introduced to a trumpet and so blew the first notes of what would be a notable career in jazz.
It was enlightening to read Illie's book, but tbh I couldn't tell you now what i learned from the book itself versus all the lookups I had to do from the dropped names of artists of the times. I had to read the thing as an ebook on a laptop so I could pop my "uh.. who?" into Wikipedia or a tab left open to a search engine, sometimes many times per page to keep up. Art and some art history are of interest to me but I remain mostly an ignoramus on the subject even now.
Anyway I kept meaning to post about Illies' take on 1913, so you've done me the favor of a reminder... but that book is almost surely not what one looks for first in reading up on WWI itself. I remember laughing to read one comment by a German reader about that book:
"Etwas zu viel 'showing off' des Autors, aber ganz unterhaltsam."
A little too much 'showing off' by the author, but very entertaining.'
And then of course I was thinking yeah, 1913 was probably the last year a lot of people may have found anything very entertaining once they had looked back from any point after the following summer.A search on 'books history WWI' does pop up sites that have collected "top 20 histories of..." etc. while you're waiting for more of the MacRumors history buffs to weigh in here with their best take on your query.
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Terrific, erudite, informed, intelligent post, @LizKat.
On such matters, you always come up with fresh, and arresting perspectives. (And sources, and recommendations). Not to mention food for thought.
Don't seem to be able to settle well into fiction at the moment. Took a handful of books on holiday with me - only one I ended up reading was my newly arrived British Superliners of the Sixties by Philip Dawson which was a very interesting dissection on the development of the SS Oriana, SS Canberra and RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 at the time that shipping was moving away from being a serious passenger transport option and into an at the time uncertain, but ultimately very fruitful future as a leisure activity.
I was prompted to get it after hearing about Harland and Wolff's recent near bankruptcy (I hadn't realised Canberra was the last significant non naval ship they had built (in 1960!) I thought they were still very much in business) a real shame for possibly the most innovative and successful shipbuilding company in history (and moreover that they are now mostly associated with that one ship that didn't do so well).
I was prompted to get it after hearing about Harland and Wolff's recent near bankruptcy (I hadn't realised Canberra was the last significant non naval ship they had built (in 1960!) I thought they were still very much in business) a real shame for possibly the most innovative and successful shipbuilding company in history (and moreover that they are now mostly associated with that one ship that didn't do so well).
Thanks, you are way too kind and have even helped me fix some of my erroneous references in my first-draft-last-draft posts. Your own posts and recommendations I think have more useful range, certainly on history since you've taught it.
My typos or ill references are notorious, with or without Apple's infernal autocorrect. I just now fixed the spelling of Juliet Nicolson's name up there, wow, not the first time I've bollixed that reference. I threw in the book's subtitle while I was at the edit job. That is a wonderful book, just such a perceptive offering on what was the war and what its aftermath for the British people from crown to towns and all round the country. Of course the fates would have to throw in the flu of 1918 in case life in the world was not hard enough as the war drew to a close. So much death in that ensuing year, so much grief. No wonder 1920 practically demanded liveliness be found again.
Speaking of subtitles, and typos... I noticed in the ebook of Nicolson's offering that "Britain" is misspelled in the subtitle, fortunately not on the cover but in the interior on the title page.. as "Britian" !!! That should be annoying but actually made me feel better. Everyone needs a proof reader, even Grove Press.
Indeed, and I believe that is why he is regarded as America's greatest president, regardless of which political side one adheres to.
I found the book especially enlightening about his character and manner of dealing with difficult people.
I remember reading this book a number of years ago. It was a fascinating read. Do enjoy.
Another book to consider, among those already recommended by the others, is Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour: Armistice Day, 1918. I read this one last year and it was very good. It goes into a bit of what led to WWI, to what it was like among the elite of society and military folks at the time and what it was like for the troops on the Front.
Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour
s/t: World War I and Its Violent Climax November 11, 1918. The final hours pulsate with tension as every man in the trenches hopes to esc...
www.goodreads.com
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I started another book I picked up at the local library the other day. The Headspace Guide to Meditation & Mindfulness
The Headspace Guide to Meditation & Mindfulness
This program was previously published as Get Some Headspace: How Mindfulness Can Change Your Life in Ten Minutes a Day. Quiet the mind, ...
www.goodreads.com
@Huntn may be interested in having a look at this one.
"Quiet the mind, feel less stressed, less tired, and achieve a new level of calm and fulfillment in just ten minutes a day
Andy Puddicombe, a former Buddhist monk, the Voice of Headspace, and the UK’s foremost mindfulness expert, is on a mission: to get people to take 10 minutes out of their day to sit in the here and now.
Like his readers and students, Andy began his own meditation practice as a normal, busy person with everyday concerns, and he has since designed a program of mindfulness and guided meditation that fits neatly into a jam-packed daily routine—proving that just 10 minutes a day can make a world of difference.
Accessible and portable, The Headspace Guide to Meditation and Mindfulness offers simple but powerful meditation techniques that positively impact every area of physical and mental health: from productivity and focus, to stress and anxiety relief, sleep, weight-loss, personal relationships...the benefits are limitless. The result? More headspace, less stress. Andy brings this ancient practice into the modern world, tailor made for the most time starved among us."
In my search for the best meditation app, Headspace was one of the apps I tried, but I don’t remember if they used mantras or not.Indeed, and I believe that is why he is regarded as America's greatest president, regardless of which political side one adheres to.
I found the book especially enlightening about his character and manner of dealing with difficult people.
I remember reading this book a number of years ago. It was a fascinating read. Do enjoy.
Another book to consider, among those already recommended by the others, is Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour: Armistice Day, 1918. I read this one last year and it was very good. It goes into a bit of what led to WWI, to what it was like among the elite of society and military folks at the time and what it was like for the troops on the Front.
Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour
s/t: World War I and Its Violent Climax November 11, 1918. The final hours pulsate with tension as every man in the trenches hopes to esc...www.goodreads.com
-----
I started another book I picked up at the local library the other day. The Headspace Guide to Meditation & Mindfulness
The Headspace Guide to Meditation & Mindfulness
This program was previously published as Get Some Headspace: How Mindfulness Can Change Your Life in Ten Minutes a Day. Quiet the mind, ...www.goodreads.com
@Huntn may be interested in having a look at this one.
"Quiet the mind, feel less stressed, less tired, and achieve a new level of calm and fulfillment in just ten minutes a day
Andy Puddicombe, a former Buddhist monk, the Voice of Headspace, and the UK’s foremost mindfulness expert, is on a mission: to get people to take 10 minutes out of their day to sit in the here and now.
Like his readers and students, Andy began his own meditation practice as a normal, busy person with everyday concerns, and he has since designed a program of mindfulness and guided meditation that fits neatly into a jam-packed daily routine—proving that just 10 minutes a day can make a world of difference.
Accessible and portable, The Headspace Guide to Meditation and Mindfulness offers simple but powerful meditation techniques that positively impact every area of physical and mental health: from productivity and focus, to stress and anxiety relief, sleep, weight-loss, personal relationships...the benefits are limitless. The result? More headspace, less stress. Andy brings this ancient practice into the modern world, tailor made for the most time starved among us."
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Not so much. More like counting instead. What a person does in this context really is irrelevant. If we count 1 to 10 or chant oommmm over and over, it achieves the same ends.
When I meditate I prefer to listen to the sounds I already make, not use my internal voice which I am trying to quiet to generate something to focus on. 1Giant Mind pushes mantras as I recall, but I like it the best and skipped the mantra because there was no talking by the guide during the session, and I liked their voices at the beginning when starting a session, and at the end calling you back.
The Head Space book you mentioned, it might be interesting to see what kind of suggestions the author makes. Do you remember?
You're on a roll with this guy, about to outrun his latest trilogy, no? You must be liking his writing!
Amazon has Shoreside (2020) listed as "#2 of 2 in The Founders Trilogy." I thought about that for a minute and realized a) the trilogy, she ain't done yet and b) interesting that Bennett plans so far ahead he's decided his project is a trilogy.
That approach does seem better than confusing us by ending up with say four books in what was once a trilogy, as I have occasionally seen with some writers. Although could it mean Bennett may sometime end up with an over-compressed last third of a third book in a planned trilogy?
Caroline Moorehead wrote three books about the resistance in WWII, and by time of the second one was calling it The Resistance Trilogy. But then after the third, a fourth and related book appeared... so then booksellers were suddenly hemming and hawing about the implausibility of pitching it as "fourth in a trilogy" or suddenly calling the lot of them The Resistance Quartet. I haven't read any of those yet but noticed the other day that a search engine query on either does bring up the quartet. One of those books took quite a beating by some folk who apparently had a more constrained view of what counted as "real" resistance in Vichy France. I rolled eyes and kept moving when I hit that piece, guess I'll revisit it sometime if I get around to reading Moorehead's work.
On the word "series" though: Starting to wonder if I've missed out on some inside-baseball stipulation that the term "series" is considered gauche by writers trying to avoid being tagged as producers of genre fiction. Writers of speculative fiction may balk at most attempts to categorize their work, because their own work still can get pigeonholed as not serious. I can almost see any of them deciding to have a "series" of related works be instead a trilogy or quartet, and naming the books as part of such at the outset. So many popular works that are parts of a "series" tend to be romance or crime novels, with the not always incorrect insinuation that such novels just roll off an assembly line.
He was recommended to me by someone with whom I worked abroad; he writes great action scenes, with amazing world building, raises interesting issues of religion, politics, trade, war, empires, oppression, societies, racism, the role of gods past and present, - the fantasy is impressive and imaginative, the magic credible to its world, and - above all - he writes terrific female characters, who are not defined by their relationships wth male characters and who have careers and lives and destinies of their own.
And no, the third book of his previous trilogy was not over- compressed. Moreover, each book of the trilogy took the perspective of one of three different characters, although the three characters had each played a role in each of the books.
Actually, the protagonist of the first book (of the previous trilogy, City of Stairs) was a somewhat dark complexioned woman of short stature, not remotely athletic, who wore glasses, had been a historian and became a sort of diplomat but still cooked a serious curry. As I subsequently wrote to the former colleague/friend who had sent me the book, I have no idea whatsoever why that particular protagonist appealed so strongly to me. The protagonist of the second book was a formidable female military officer - who had been a regional governor in the first book, while the protagonist of the third was the male secretary (and enforcer - a real scene stealer) of the protagonist of the first book.
Anyway, I think that he plans his trilogies carefully and closely, - and there is no creep or bloat in the stories. Moreover, it is clear to me that he has decided and is determined to bring the story -he is telling - the narrative arc - to a conclusion by the end of the third book.
The current trilogy is very different; I am at present re-reading the first volume (Foundryside) as the second book in that trillgy is due to be released in April.
And, yes, I recommend them strongly.
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I think I should check out The Founders trilogy even as it unfolds. I'll let booksellers keep their Moorehead "first through fourth in a trilogy" quandary on ice for awhile.
I had to give WWII a break for awhile anyway. I can tell when I need to shift gears when I actually bother reading some of the airport-bought paperbacks I didn't throw away upon getting home from some biz trip back in the day... and also didn't toss out forever on my way out of my city apartment.
Now I'm in read-and-toss mode, and not always even bothering to finish up those two-dollar dime novels. It's quite amazing how the prospect of a flight from NY to Chicago or SF and back again always made the cover of almost any paperback look positively must-read.
Just now though, I'm reading a book by the English (albeit stateside resident) literary critic James Wood, How Fiction Works. An updated edition. Fun seeing his examples of the actual mechanics of getting the reader into the right frameworks to appreciate the writing. As he points out, it can be no small task, for instance, to help an adult willingly inhabit once again the confusion of an adolescent. Whether telling, or showing, the trick for the writer is not to be seen working at it. He starts his book off with an epigraph from Henry James:
"There is only one recipe --to care a great deal for the cookery."
I'd recommend that you try the already completed Divine Cities (City of Stairs, City of Blades, and City of Miracles) trilogy first, for a flavour of the writer's style.
However, advance reviews of the second book in the Foundryside (Shorefall) series suggest that it will be very good.
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I finished The Secret Commonwealth. It was disappointing. SPOILERS AHEAD. On one hand, I relish any chance to dive back into the world of Lyra and Will, but I was immediately aware that the world of this book felt less magical than the world of HDM or even of La Belle Sauvage. I guess this is the "young adult angst" installment, but the bleakness and coarseness (and absence of some characters I was hoping to see again!) made it seem almost like a different world. HDM was dark, no denying that, this is not Narnia here. But having Pan call Lyra a "stupid cow" and having Lyra and other characters say "f*ck" multiple times, not to mention the attempted rape, felt gratuitous, only to hammer in the idea that this an "adult" series now. My other major problem was the elements of the plot that were such obvious nods to contemporary issues that I had to sigh and say "not you too" to Pullman as I was reading. This world was never above parallels to reality; the Magisterium is an obvious stand-in for organized religion as a whole, but it has an archaic medieval character to it and isn't such an obvious play on specific current events. This book, OTOH, has the European migrant crisis and ISIS so blatantly referenced that it took me out of the world for a moment--something no good work of fantasy should do. I'm surprised there wasn't an orange-faced tyrant named Krump. I hope the final installment is better, because this has dashed a lot of my hopes for this series.
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I loved How Fiction Works. Reminds me that I need to read more criticism.
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I loved How Fiction Works. Reminds me that I need to read more criticism.
Discourses and Selected Writings (108 AD) by Epictetus.
This Penguin edition contains the 4 surviving books of Epictetus' discourses, the Enchiridion (aka The Manual, the most famous of his texts), and the Fragments.
Another great, classical view on the world from a Stoic perspective. Most of the Discourses are easy to read and quite actual in their content. Definitely worth a read or two.
![51jK7L8LYuL._SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_.jpg]()
This Penguin edition contains the 4 surviving books of Epictetus' discourses, the Enchiridion (aka The Manual, the most famous of his texts), and the Fragments.
Another great, classical view on the world from a Stoic perspective. Most of the Discourses are easy to read and quite actual in their content. Definitely worth a read or two.
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I finished The Secret Commonwealth. It was disappointing. SPOILERS AHEAD. On one hand, I relish any chance to dive back into the world of Lyra and Will, but I was immediately aware that the world of this book felt less magical than the world of HDM or even of La Belle Sauvage. I guess this is the "young adult angst" installment, but the bleakness and coarseness (and absence of some characters I was hoping to see again!) made it seem almost like a different world. HDM was dark, no denying that, this is not Narnia here. But having Pan call Lyra a "stupid cow" and having Lyra and other characters say "f*ck" multiple times, not to mention the attempted rape, felt gratuitous, only to hammer in the idea that this an "adult" series now. My other major problem was the elements of the plot that were such obvious nods to contemporary issues that I had to sigh and say "not you too" to Pullman as I was reading. This world was never above parallels to reality; the Magisterium is an obvious stand-in for organized religion as a whole, but it has an archaic medieval character to it and isn't such an obvious play on specific current events. This book, OTOH, has the European migrant crisis and ISIS so blatantly referenced that it took me out of the world for a moment--something no good work of fantasy should do. I'm surprised there wasn't an orange-faced tyrant named Krump. I hope the final installment is better, because this has dashed a lot of my hopes for this series.
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I loved How Fiction Works. Reminds me that I need to read more criticism.
Interesting what you write about The Secret Commonwealth; I have both La Belle Sauvage and The Secret Commonwealth on my sofa, nice, fat, inviting hard-backs, both waiting to be read.
Now, I must admit that I really loved the original His Dark Materials trilogy, and had it for ages before I actually sat down to immerse myself in this world, when I read all three together, one after the other, a few years ago.
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