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Pile 'o books

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Non-Fiction, just read, being read, going to get read...


The Politically Incorrect Guide to The Founding Fathers - Brion McClanahan

Stalingrad - Antony Beevor (second time around)

The Culture Of Fear - Barry Glassner (ten years down the road and it now seems to have been prescient)

John Zogby - The Way We'll Be - The Zogby Report on the Transformation of the American Dream

The Most Powerful Idea in the World; A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention - Willian Rosen

Forgotten Voices of the Holocaust - Lyn Smith

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Partial Differential Equations: Modeling, Analysis, Computation - Mattheij a.o.

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The Enchanted Castle by Edith Nisbet.

Started reading this to my grandchildren on one of their stop overs.
They fell asleep and I could not put the bloody thing down.

An incredible children's book written in the early 1900's.
It's good to keep the boy inside of you alive.

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JG Ballard The Kindness of Women.

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The divisive symmetry of the far right on RHP. Oh wait, that's the book I'm writing.

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Full of Money by Bill James

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Originally posted by DrKF
JG Ballard The Kindness of Women.
Wow! If you're a Ballard fan, this is an absolute must read. Now annoyed with myself that I didn't read it long before now.

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Recently read:

The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon
by Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan

A Discourse on Inequality
by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Marx's Das Kapital: A Biography
by Francis Whelan

Home Cheese Making: Recipes For 75 Homemade Cheeses
by Ricki Carroll

Currently reading:
The Dispossessed
by Ursula K. LeGuin

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The Millennium trilogy by the Swedish writer Stieg Larsson

Avenger (2003) by Frederick Forsyth

My Sister, My Love (2008) by Joyce Carol Oates

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Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami

East Of Eden by John Steinbeck

The Gathering Storm by Winston Churchill

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Originally posted by lolof
The Millennium trilogy by the Swedish writer Stieg Larsson

Avenger (2003) by Frederick Forsyth

My Sister, My Love (2008) by Joyce Carol Oates
I read that trilogy as well. I usually avoid the "must read" books of the season but these were good fun. Lisbeth Salandar, a one of a kind character.

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Originally posted by DrKF
Wow! If you're a Ballard fan, this is an absolute must read. Now annoyed with myself that I didn't read it long before now.
What put you off?

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Originally posted by badmoon
I read that trilogy as well. I usually avoid the "must read" books of the season but these were good fun. Lisbeth Salandar, a one of a kind character.
Yes, I agree - I tried to avoid these books too, for a long time. After reading the first one I wasn't all that impressed but the other two... and the films! What a pity the writer never even experienced the edition of the novels, he died before that.

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Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
What put you off?
Nothing except other books - it got put to the bottom of a pile, then recycled in to my bookcase and was forgotten about. (I think I was reading an interview with Will Self on Ballard when he mentioned it, and I thought 'don't I have that?'. Devoured it in two days.)

I loved the oblique glimpse (maybe) at Ballard's life and the events that fed in to his fiction, but - more than that - I liked the subversion of autobiography (like the details that differed so much from Empire and the bits, like how his wife died, that I knew to be 'untrue'😉.

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In the pile just now:

John Gray Black Mass (reread)

Iain Sinclair London Orbital

Malthus An essay on the principle of population (must be a reread, I'd have thought, but have no real memory of it.)