Got this a couple of Christmases ago, finally got round to reading, and , I have to admit got completely hooked on the story. So much so, that I'm now onto Book 3:



and watching the series:

I had forgotten this thread but I have read two excellent books in the last couple of months - Ian McEwan's Atonement and better still Kate Atkinson's A God in Ruins, the follow-up to Life After Life. I am very fond of Atkinson as an author though I was a bit disappointed in Human Croquet which I read a couple of months ago. Both Atonement and A God in Ruins had endings that put everything going before it in doubt, but since I prefer happy endings in the Atkinson one I went with that. Anyway it made more sense of the details of the main character's life. Also making my way very slowly through the excellent Sea People by Christina Thompson about Pacific sea travel, both European and by Pacifica people (mostly the latter). Great research. (I think I owe my existence to the Tahitian Tupaia, who directed Cook and his crew and was able to understand what the rather war-like Maori were saying. He was an all-round genius, and only now being given his due.)

My sister's a big Kate Atkinson fan and has read most if not all of her books.

I've read a couple of her Jackson Brodie detective novels and found them to be quite engrossing. Last one I read was this:

Trike, the third book of ASOIAF was my personal favourite of the series.

I've recently finished a thriller by German writer, Cay Rademacher, set in British occupied Hamburg a couple of years after the end of World War II.  It's called The Wolf Children and features in part some orphaned children who have managed to get to Hamburg from some of the eastern German provinces which were removed from German government after the war.   The plot is relatively simple - the two main characters are a German inspector and a British lieutenant who try to solve some murders.  I found it interesting for the depiction of children, well teenagers, having to live by their wits in a city badly affected by bombing in the recent past, by people caught up in problems which they couldn't wholly control such as a widow forming a new attachment and then discovering her husband was not dead and the black market which the authorities are struggling to control.  The blurb about the writer says he was born in 1965 but studied Anglo-American history, ancient history and philosophy. The youngsters doing the best they could to survive made me think of Arya in ASOIF/GoT though Arya's story is quite different to the stories of the wolf children except that she is having to survive largely on her own wits.

Edit: Added a word - 'who' to improve the sentence where it had been omitted.

LiR,

Some time ago while waiting for a dentist's appointment I read something in an old Reader's Digest.
A tale allegedly taking place around 1960, a man about 30 reporting to the Standesamt - municipal office in German - that a child had been born in his household.
His 15 year old daughter had given birth to a daughter.
When questioned he said that he and his wife had been living by their wits as orphaned refugees at the end of the war and some time after, and that meant that his later wife had given birth to a couple of children before they - the parents - were of an age to be married.
He ended by saying that he hoped to be a gt. grandparent before turning 50.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

Trike, the third book of ASOIAF was my personal favourite of the series.

That doesn't surprise me, LiR. George R R Martin doesn't have any qualms about killing off some of his major characters in Storm of Swords.

Book 3, is split into 2 volumes, Steel and Snow & Blood and Gold. Nearing the end of Blood and Gold, so yet another trip to Waterstones in the near future.

 

Trike, I misread 'Waterstones' as 'Westeros'.   For non-readers of ASOIAF, Westeros is the fictional continent where much of the action of the novels takes place.

Nielsen, I could believe that the story you read in the Reader's Digest was true.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

Trike, I misread 'Waterstones' as 'Westeros'.   For non-readers of ASOIAF, Westeros is the fictional continent where much of the action of the novels takes place.

One of the resources / inspirations that Martin used for ASOIAF was The Accursed Kings by Maurice Druon.

I've a vague memory of these books being discussed either on Res or perhaps back on the BBC boards.

I've just started The Shepherd's Crown. It's been sitting waiting for me to decide to read it for several years, and it's finally time. the vile mistreatment in "The Watch" of several characters meant that, finally, I needed some new STP - even if it was the last one and the death of Granny Weatherwax was to be expected.

I am reading Mark Twain's A Tramp Abroad and really liking its amusing style (especially the appendix talking endlessly of the vagaries of the German language). He also has a very long passage on duelling at the university. I am a third of the way through and he hasn't left Germany yet. Really praising of the German people and their friendliness, not at all like their present stereotyping.

Caro - in that case, if you haven't yet read it, you might appreciate "Three men on the Bummel" by Jerome K. Jerome.

Well that's all the available ASOIAF books read. The last 16 pages of a Dance with Dragons is an excerpt from Winds of Winter. DWD was published in 2011, WOW is still not published. A long wait to see what happens next.

Speaking of long waits, it's 17 years since Book 2 of NAM Rodger's trilogy of the history of the Royal Navy was published. Book 3, "The Price of Victory" is scheduled, according to Amazon, to appear in October 2022. However, publication dates for this book have appeared before, then disappeared.

Trike, there was about 20 years between the publishing of the fourth book in the Poldark saga and the next one but that was due to Winston Graham spontaneously thinking about what might have happened to his characters after the conclusion of the fourth book (Warleggan).

I can't judge the series as I've never read it but my understanding is that The Kingkiller Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss is another saga that's taking time to finish.  The Wheel of Time (of which I've only read the first book) was finished by Brandon Sanderson because Robert Jordan became ill and died while writing the twelfth book in the saga.

Anyway, as I said on the Mark Rylance/Cromwell thread I may re-read Little Women/Good Wives by Louisa M Alcott.  I've mentioned that my pre-teenage self was saddened that Jo and Laurie didn't end up as husband and wife.  I've done some online background reading (though it's hard to verify what is correct).  It seems the March sisters were based on the author of the books, Ms Alcott and her sisters - Meg was based on her sister Anna.  Ms Alcott had a sister called Elizabeth (in one online article her pet name was given as Lizzie, in another as Beth) who was a good pianist and who died in her early twenties from scarlet fever, so maybe my younger self was somewhat harsh judging the story for having Beth recover in Little Women but succumbing in Good Wives. To my adult self it is plausible that someone could be permanently weakened by scarlet fever.  Amy was based on Ms Alcott's sister May who was apparently a gifted artist. Ms Alcott herself never married and I read one account where she originally wanted Jo to stay single but her publisher told her Jo needed to marry.   I'm not sure if that's true because in another account the Professor who Jo marries is said to be based on someone Ms Alcott admired in real life but of course Ms A didn't marry him.  The 1994 and 2019 actors playing Friedrich (Gabriel Byrne and Louis Garrel respectively) are probably more  handsome than the book version of Professor Bhaer.  Anyway, I want to squeeze in a re-read of the books in view of what I've recently found out an also to see if I pick up on anything my younger self missed all those years ago.

Green George wrote:

I've just started The Shepherd's Crown. It's been sitting waiting for me to decide to read it for several years, and it's finally time. the vile mistreatment in "The Watch" of several characters meant that, finally, I needed some new STP - even if it was the last one and the death of Granny Weatherwax was to be expected.

The Watch is screening on BBC2 Thursday 12th August at 9pm. Not expecting a great deal.

Doubt if it will compare with the books:

The Librarian ??

Ook!

Start of the football season:

The team I support could do with Dr Worblehat as Custodian of the Reticule.

Triceratops wrote:

Well that's all the available ASOIAF books read. The last 16 pages of a Dance with Dragons is an excerpt from Winds of Winter. DWD was published in 2011, WOW is still not published. A long wait to see what happens next.

Trike, I've been following the Afghanistan thread though I haven't posted there because I feel other members of Res Hist have contributed to the thread more eloquently than I can.

Apparently George R R Martin said that the events unfolding in Mereen (fictional city in Slaver's Bay in ASOIAF) were difficult to write - a "Mereenese knot".  He has likened Dany's hardships in controlling Mereen to the problems the Americans and their allies encountered in Afghanistan/Iraq.

The library book I finished most recently was Lady in the Lake, a thriller loosely based on an unsolved American murder in the 1960s. The author of the book is Laura Lippman who was a reporter before turning to writing novels.

Started on this one, the prequel to Game of Thrones:

I want to read A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms by GRRM which is a combination of three 'Dunk and Egg' books by GRRM but I haven't been able to find it in the library yet.

I haven't read any of The Game of Thrones series, but I have read quite a lot of Terry Pratchett, though not recently. At the moment I am reading The Siege of Krishnapur by JG Farrell. This is a Booker Prize winner and was also in the top five chosen for the Best of Booker award. It is the story of a siege (I had assumed Krishnapur and the siege was based on a real event, but it seems not) as seen through the eyes of a British community in the mid 19th century. It mixes serious war problems with a mockery of the English class system. For example: "Harry and Fleury had laid their sabres beside them on the parapet; they had decided that should their defences be overrun they would sell their lives as dearly as possible, rather than trying to bolt for it...[sic] Fleury had succeeded (but only with difficulty) in overcoming certain qualms as to whether selling one's live as dearly as possible, or even putting it up for sale at all, was, in fact, the wisest course."

LadyinRetirement wrote:

I want to read A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms by GRRM which is a combination of three 'Dunk and Egg' books by GRRM but I haven't been able to find it in the library yet.

That one will be next on my list.

Fire and Blood is a history ( imaginary, of course) and is a bit dry compared to the novels. Six chapters in, and already mixed up with all the different Targaryens and sundry others.

Caro wrote:

I haven't read any of The Game of Thrones series, but I have read quite a lot of Terry Pratchett, though not recently. At the moment I am reading The Siege of Krishnapur by JG Farrell. This is a Booker Prize winner and was also in the top five chosen for the Best of Booker award. 

I'll need to have a look at this. I've never read it or even encountered it, despite being written in 1973. Reviews are very good. 

I might have guessed. Fire and Blood is split into two volumes. Number 2 has not yet been published.

I can recommend "Krishnapur", and also "Troubles", his "Lost Man Booker" prizewinner (1970 saw a rule change, so books publoshed then were never eligible) see https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1417512.J_G_Farrell

That's that one read. Quite enjoyable and all three novellas reach a conclusion.

At the end we are promised further adventures of Ser Duncan the Tall and Egg....... six years and counting.

I see above someone recommending a Jerome K Jerome book: I haven't got that one but I do have Three Men in a Boat and do intend to read it sometime. 

But at the present time I am reading Roxana by Daniel Defoe, and finding it a bit of a slog. It is seen from the pov of the eponymous Roxana, who might be something of an unreliable narrator. She writes all the nouns with a capital letter which took a bit of getting used to, and apparently has a number of affairs all leading to her gaining money and goods.

Lest it be thought that my reading consists of worthwhile classics I should say that my favourite author is probably Georgette Heyer who does at least have the advantage from the point of this board of writing historical and I gather well researched Regency (ie end of 18th C beginning of 19th) romances. I have about 20 of her books and when I feel like a relaxing read get one of these out.

Caro, I haven't read them myself but I have heard that Georgette Heyer wrote some 'serious' historical novels as well as the romances.  There's nothing wrong with reading something light from time to time.

I am currently reading (thanks to my local library) a historical mystery by a Scots author called Shirley McKay.  It's called Hue and Cry.  I've read some of the later novels in the same series.  This is the first one and is set in St Andrews circa 1579/80.  It's early days yet though there have been two murders so far.  It's arguable that historical mystery novels are entertainment rather than mental gymnastics but hey, I like reading for pleasure.  I'm also dipping in and out of A-Z of Crochet printed by Search Press.  I know the basic crochet stitches but I did the trick of lending the booklet explaining them to someone a long time ago and never got it back.  I'm hoping to to crank my technique up a notch or two but was I hope for and what I achieve are sometimes different.

Strictly speaking this is 'just read' rather than currently reading.  I'm waiting for a new charger for my laptop which means I'm less tempted to while away time on the internet*.  I read Edward Marston's mystery thriller 'Dance of Death', part of his Home Front Detective' series. It has a background of ballroom dancing and is set during World War I.  The murder in the story takes place the night in which a Zeppelin was shot down over London.  The story is fictional but I recall a friend, older than me, talking about a Zeppelin being shot down.  Of course bring a young lad at the time he cheered but his mother chided him, explaining that the crew in the airship who lost their lives would most likely have had wives and families.

Another book I've recently finished is 'Foxglove Summer' by Ben Aaronovitch.  It's fantasy (the book is dedicated to Sir Terry Pratchett) set in an England where Scotland Yard has a branch which deals with magic.  It worked, well for me in did.  I'm not a prolific reader of fantasy though I did like A Song of Ice and Fire (mostly) which are the source novels for Game of Thrones.

* In case anyone wonders how I can access this site without a functioning computer, I'm on my mobile phone, so I apologise for any typing errors.

The crews of 4 German airships (note - SL11 wasn't a Zeppelin but a Schütte-Lanz) are buried on Cannock Chase.

https://military.wikia.org/wiki/Cannock_Chase_German_war_cemetery

Have started this one about the Java Sea Campaign of 1942.

MM, I checked the book and it does say a Zeppelin.  Maybe the author was taking dramatic licence.  The Cannock Chase German cemetary is not that far from me as the crow flies though I hadn't realised there were war dead from World War I interred there.

One of the very last things we did when we were last in England was go to Cannock Chase as there is an area there for Kiwi soldiers who died in the war. I have just read the following link which talks about a memorial put there in 2019 to commemorate those trained there and those buried there. NZ soldiers remembered at CC

I've been watching a video on YouTube about the Trent.  https://youtu.be/8At7e1llvxk  I've only got to as far as where the Derwent joins the Trent.  The Trent flows near Cannock Chase and the video makes mention of the German cemetery - it even mentions the crew of the airship which was shot down but calls it a 'zeppelin'.  I wonder if the term 'zeppelin' has become somewhat generic - like people sometimes use 'to hoover' for using a vacuum cleaner, irrespective of the make of the vacuum cleaner.

I've just started reading Lost Christianities by Bart D Ehrman - I found it on archive.org.  It's a study of various Christian apocrypha but states that one of its aims is to examine why some books made it into the accepted form of the New Testament and others did not.  There's a lot to it so it will take some time to read.  Like the video about the Trent, I will have to digest it in increments.

Yes, I suspect that is the case. Partly, perhaps, because "zeppelin" was the hate word (as was "Gotha" later in the Great War), and SL11's true identity wasn't publicised. The other 3 crews buried (reburied, to be accurate) there were from genuine metal-framed Zeppelins, not a wood-framed SL.

In Aotearoa/New Zealand the go-to word for vacuum cleaners is 'lux' and it is the verb for the action too. In my youth in a wealthy farming area, everyone bought an Electrolux, so it may be more a southern thing. When I was first married I remember a man coming to our house wanting to sell me an Electrolux, and I kept repeating that I would have to wait and discuss it with my husband, having every intention of buying one. He wouldn't accept that, and became very pushy but I remembered being told in an assertiveness training course (mostly I presume about warding off unwanted advances by men) just to repeat things so I did that. It ended with him calling me a 'silly little girl' and us never ever buying an Electrolux. Once I was at a fair and told my experience to a woman selling Electroluxes and she was very shocked.
Off the subject of Zeppelins, but not absolutely off topic. Andway back to the thread I am currently reading The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot and enjoying it a lot. It gives a very vivid picture of the disgrace caused by bankruptcy and I identify with Maggie feeling misunderstood. Eliot seems to have understood the feelings of childhood well; as well as Maggie she seems to have got the character of her brother Tom, quite different in his attitudes, right too.

This is my current book. Probably 3rd or 4th reading:

Not long ago, Trike, I read the same author's autobiography "Stationed safely out here," telling of his time in India and Burma in WWII.
Interesting.

That's a good one, Nielsen. Well worth a look.

I think so too - even when I misnamed it.
Let me not forget GMF's tales of "McAusland in the rough," I switched between laughs and giggles.

And the autobiography of John Masters, whose middle of three volumes deals with the same time period.

I've got this one, but not the other two;

I happen to have a few others of his books, including the entire autobiography, interesting reading when one cares for militaria and autobiograpies.
My interest in John Masters writings started when on a camping tour in Northern Germany as a youngster at some in the middle 1960'es, my parents had a lovely time, and I was bored so I bought this book in the shop - the first part of Masters' autobiography - and I was hooked - and still am - on reading I mean.

Enjoying the GMF book, comparing screenplays with history:

7th Earl of Cardigan



Trevor Howard in The Charge of the Light Brigade 1968.

Triceratops wrote:

That's a good one, Nielsen. Well worth a look.

Agree.
Try this as a companion piece. I suppose WWII, and to a lesser extent, the Great War, mark the point where near-universal literacy, coupled with conscription mean that stories of life in the ranks reached a wider public than the public bar. https://www.keymilitary.com/article/recollections-rifleman-bowlby

George, thanks for the recommendation.

I've ordered a copy from Amazon. There was a new paperback edition published last November.

It's arrived and started.

Learned something new already. The 8th Army in Italy called the Germans, "Teds", from Tedeschi, the Italian for German.

Today is World Book Day. What's your all time favourite book? Doesn't matter if you reading it at the moment or not.

No prizes for guessing mine:

I don't really have a single favourite.
For relaxation, perhaps this one (or another from the series)

First read this book  years ago. This is a new paperback edition, bought from Amazon:



Extract from the book review by the N Y Times (May 1972):

 The action jumps off the mark on the very first page and carries the reader skimming like hurdler over the clichés. The pace is so swift, the drama so heightened by alternating flashes of tragedy and comedy that one has to stop frequently just to catch breath and to marvel at the majesty and absurdity of the bloody fighting over so‐called sacred soil.

For my 60th birthday recently I was given the full 20 volume set of Émile Zola's Rougon-Macquart novels. I'd already read one without realizing it was part of a series, and one towards the end too.  
They're very good, but there are no likeable characters at all in them, everyone is a complete b*****d to a greater or lesser degree. 
They're set in the French Second Empire of the 1850s to early 1870s and reflect Zola's extreme dislike of Napoleon III's regime, he only began writing them after Napoleon's fall. 
The one I read first was Nana, it is superb even though you feel you need a shower after each chapter such is the behaviour of the characters, every one of them.