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Offline Crudblud

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Re: FES Book Club
« Reply #220 on: February 13, 2016, 12:54:43 AM »
James Kelman - How Late It Was, How Late

Saddam Hussein

Re: FES Book Club
« Reply #221 on: March 01, 2016, 03:31:45 AM »
Greg Sestero and Tom Bissell - The Disaster Artist

This was a great read.  Anyone with any interest in The Room, or even filmmaking in general, ought to check it out.  It's hilarious, cringey, and surprisingly well-written.

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Offline Crudblud

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Re: FES Book Club
« Reply #222 on: March 01, 2016, 11:16:09 AM »
Previously: Don DeLillo - Mao II

Currently: Hector Berlioz - Memoirs

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Offline Crudblud

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Re: FES Book Club
« Reply #223 on: March 06, 2016, 08:21:24 PM »
Previously: Juan Rulfo - Pedro Páramo (reread)

Currently: Thomas Hobbes - Leviathan

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Offline Crudblud

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Re: FES Book Club
« Reply #224 on: March 12, 2016, 07:47:40 PM »
Hermann Hesse - The Glass Bead Game

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Offline Crudblud

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Re: FES Book Club
« Reply #225 on: March 18, 2016, 06:44:37 PM »
David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas

Offline Dionysios

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Re: FES Book Club
« Reply #226 on: March 19, 2016, 04:17:09 AM »
'The Great Conspiracy Against Russia'
By Michael Sayers and Albert Kahn
(1946)
http://marxism.halkcephesi.net/Great%20Conspiracy/index.htm

This was the best historical book I read last year. I came across it in a footnote of Harry Haywood's autobiography 'Black Bolshevik' which I stopped one third of the way through because Albert Kahn's book was stupendous.

I'll return to Haywood's autobiography later. It's packed full of rich pieces of knowledge and and insight like that. Haywood's book is also likely the best history of the communist party USA showing the causes and history of its degeneration in the 1950s.

I think it's also the best history of black civil rights in the past 100 years I've come across critiquing the drawbacks of things like the Garvey movement, NAACP, and Martin Luther King and the American power structure.

I'm saving Haywood's older and controversial 1948 book 'Negro Liberation' for later as I know its strategy goes way beyond reparations for slavery. I have read it contains a strategy to give the descendents of slaves and poor whites 40 acres and a mule which Reconstruction failed to do when it was back stabbed in 1877. This strategy involves the possibility of dismemberment of the USA by means of a liberated American black south gaining its sovereignty and the right to secede if it so chooses, although not necessarily. Such a reality would involve breaking the back of American military power and the book doesn't shy from violence if necessary and views the black belt in the American south as an oppressed nation just like Hawaii and Puerto Rico. It differs from Garvey in that it views exploited white minorities as friends and fellow blacks. Opposition to this book was one of the major causes of division in the CPUSA in the 1950's. It is basically the application of Stalin's thesis of national liberation to American blacks. It is critical of King, urban League, and NAACP as being loyalists of American empire.

Offline Dionysios

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Re: FES Book Club
« Reply #227 on: March 19, 2016, 05:14:38 AM »
'Negro Liberation'
By Harry Haywood
(1948)
http://www.marx2mao.com/Other/NL48.pdf

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Offline Ghost Spaghetti

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Re: FES Book Club
« Reply #228 on: March 21, 2016, 01:39:58 PM »
I'm currently finishing The Voyage of the Discovery by Captain Robert Scott


Although Scott is most famous for being beaten to the South Pole by Amundsen and his team in 1911, this book recounts his first expedition to Antarctica ten years previously where his crew became the first people to have wintered within the Antarctic Circle.

The book itself is a mixture of geographical field notes, diary extracts, and adventure story written largely in a style which is surprisingly easy-to-read. He paints a picture of life in the Antarctic in beautiful detail and gives the reader painstakingly clear accounts of the problems they faced and how they addressed them. His descriptions of the food stocks and how they had been calculated is reminiscent of recent books like Weir's The Martian

The version I read is a slightly abridged version of the original 2-volume collection which excludes a lot of the charts, maps, and sketches which would have been useful to include. For instance, there is an expedition map which was included in the original which traces Scott's sledding expeditions south. I'd probably recommend picking up the two-volume version to get the most from it.

The Discovery herself still exists and is now a floating museum ship in Dundee which is well worth visiting if you're ever in the city (and not just because there's sod-all else to do in Dundee)


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Offline Crudblud

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Re: FES Book Club
« Reply #229 on: March 21, 2016, 04:36:13 PM »
David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas

Gave up on this half way through after reachin'e bit w're'vr'yun talks like 'is 'n'I be want'n'a punch 'em all right 'n 'ems gobby 'ole if y' be 'earin' me. I'd have to think about it before saying for certain, but this might be the most badly written, irritating, obnoxious pile of shit I've ever read.

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Offline Crudblud

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Re: FES Book Club
« Reply #230 on: March 21, 2016, 07:41:36 PM »
Now: Orhan Pamuk - The White Castle

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Offline rooster

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Re: FES Book Club
« Reply #231 on: March 22, 2016, 01:05:34 PM »
Neil Gaiman - The Ocean at the End of the Lane

It's the first Neil Gaiman book I'm reading, though I've wanted to read his work for quite some time.

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Offline Jura-Glenlivet

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Re: FES Book Club
« Reply #232 on: March 22, 2016, 04:11:34 PM »
Neil Gaiman - The Ocean at the End of the Lane

It's the first Neil Gaiman book I'm reading, though I've wanted to read his work for quite some time.

It's a grand book!
Just to be clear, you are all terrific, but everything you say is exactly what a moron would say.

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Offline rooster

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Re: FES Book Club
« Reply #233 on: March 23, 2016, 01:17:17 PM »
Neil Gaiman - The Ocean at the End of the Lane

It's the first Neil Gaiman book I'm reading, though I've wanted to read his work for quite some time.
I loved it.

Only childhood has that kind of magic and pain. Kinda made me want to read through His Dark Materials again.
But instead I'm now reading..

Murder on the Orient Express - Agatha Christia

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Offline Jura-Glenlivet

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Re: FES Book Club
« Reply #234 on: March 23, 2016, 03:08:08 PM »
Neil Gaiman - The Ocean at the End of the Lane

It's the first Neil Gaiman book I'm reading, though I've wanted to read his work for quite some time.
I loved it.

Only childhood has that kind of magic and pain. Kinda made me want to read through His Dark Materials again.
But instead I'm now reading..



Think Dark Materials was Pullman, Gaiman wrote Stardust & Coraline, both good although the film is actually better as far as Stardust's concerned, probably cos' it has Michelle Pfeiffer in it, and Clare Danes, oh and Sienna Miller.

Of his childhood oriented novels The Graveyard Book is excellent, but read American Gods (for adult) which is the bollocks!
Just to be clear, you are all terrific, but everything you say is exactly what a moron would say.

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Offline rooster

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Re: FES Book Club
« Reply #235 on: March 23, 2016, 04:08:15 PM »
Neil Gaiman - The Ocean at the End of the Lane

It's the first Neil Gaiman book I'm reading, though I've wanted to read his work for quite some time.
I loved it.

Only childhood has that kind of magic and pain. Kinda made me want to read through His Dark Materials again.
But instead I'm now reading..



Think Dark Materials was Pullman, Gaiman wrote Stardust & Coraline, both good although the film is actually better as far as Stardust's concerned, probably cos' it has Michelle Pfeiffer in it, and Clare Danes, oh and Sienna Miller.

Of his childhood oriented novels The Graveyard Book is excellent, but read American Gods (for adult) which is the bollocks!
I know it's Pullman, I've read them before. But the theme of children going through terrible shit while set in a fantasy setting made me want to bounce right back into that trilogy (which I own).

My friend also has The Graveyard Book so I'll probably just borrow that one next.

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Offline Crudblud

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Re: FES Book Club
« Reply #236 on: March 23, 2016, 10:16:38 PM »
John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

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Offline Jura-Glenlivet

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Re: FES Book Club
« Reply #237 on: March 31, 2016, 08:33:17 PM »

Apologies Rooster, it was the "his" that threw me. Another great book in the same vein is The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly

Just finished Dan Simmons "The Terror" A fictional telling of the ill fated Franklin trip to find the north west passage mixed up with horror and Innuit legends, excellent!
Just to be clear, you are all terrific, but everything you say is exactly what a moron would say.

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Offline rooster

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Re: FES Book Club
« Reply #238 on: April 01, 2016, 02:06:21 PM »

Apologies Rooster, it was the "his" that threw me. Another great book in the same vein is The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly

Yeah, that's part of the trilogy title though.

Just finished The Graveyard Book. I really liked how every chapter was a new adventure in Bod's life, but I think I prefer The Ocean at the End of Lane overall in terms of theme and setting.

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Offline rooster

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Re: FES Book Club
« Reply #239 on: April 07, 2016, 01:01:49 PM »
Right now I'm trying to read through The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks and it's kinda shit.