Yes it's a great book. I re-read The Black Dahlia last weekend,
and will read the rest of the LA Quartet over the summer, as
I wanted to read it again before the film comes out. Brian De
Palma directing, Scarlett Johansson, Hilary Swank, Aaron Eckhart
(Thank You for Smoking) and it's from Focus Features who've
made loads of good films in recent years. I'm looking forward
to seeing it.
I loved Black Dahlia and White Jazz but LA Confidential was a drag and Big Nowhere bored me to death and I left it midway through.
American Tabloid has a better tempo though, I can't put it down.
Call me a light wieght fool if you like but my last book was Going Postal by Terry Pratchett very chuckle worthy with plenty of rye comments and observations on popular culture.
Next up Micheal Crichton/ Timeline and or Prey
anyone read those?.
Lightwieght can be good. I'm reading the second book in Games Workshops Horus Heresy trilogy. First one was by Dan Abnett (yay!) and the third one will be by Ben Counter (also yay!). Second one is by Graham McNeill, and this is the first of his I've read.
If you don't mind a bit of Warhammer 40k, the Eisenhorn omnibus is pretty damn good. Gotta love the Inquisition.
Cracking book, but I keep forgetting I'm supposed to be reading it - I'm about halfway through, on my second copy (left one on a plane), and so far it's taken me over 2.5 yrs
mutantcamel wrote:Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang.
It's part biography and part history of China from 1900, and bloody brilliant with it, interesting to see how historical events and figures manage to criss-cross each other through the years. For example, the author recounts in one chapter how she used to have some of her meals cooked by the stepmother of Deng Xiaopeng, and the feeling of wanting to devote herself to Mao and communism at the age of thirteen during the Cultural Revolution.
I have read that, awsome, try Red Azalea by Anchee Min, similar type book.
I'm up to the Cultural Revolution/Cult of Mao bit. One of the things that I picked up in Beijing was a geniune Little Red Book that looked like it had been "used", it's odd to read these chapters and look at Chairman Mao nasty little work on the same shelf. It's like looking at a sleeping wolf after having seen it slaughter a lamb.
What has pissed me off most resently book wise was when i found an old book about the science of the cosmos and how it effected humans on a day to day basis.
Everything from sun spots to cosmic rays sun cycles .
it was a book from the seventys but based on published science papers with some truly fundimental points regarding world confict and external influences and especially sun cycles.
However i lost it at work(i think some no brain noob chucked it) and i'll be buggered if i can rememeber the authors or book name and i was a chapter off the conclusion. .
Couple of good books about china by a Canadian journalist...
Jan Wong - Red china blues
Jan Wong - Lunch with Jan Wong
What's interesting is that she went to China as a student an wanted to experience and be part of the revolution. Then went back again as an adult to compare and contrast.
DTB wrote:Call me a light wieght fool if you like but my last book was Going Postal by Terry Pratchett very chuckle worthy with plenty of rye comments and observations on popular culture.
Next up Micheal Crichton/ Timeline and or Prey
anyone read those?.
Prey I enjoyed a lot, Timeline left me a little cold... my main problem with Michael Crichton is the way he writes. To me it's always seemed he's done his research, dumps it onto the page, banged out a few chapters linking between the setpieces and voila, one book. (You can also pretty much guarantee the scenario - put group together, isolate group, group nearly solve problem against overwhelming odds, twist suggest problem isn't over...)
True true, with time line you definitely get the feeling that the first half was written to justify the reasearch expence of a long holiday in the south of France
I've only just started prey but i liked the introduction.
i may have to look up some of the quoted material on nano bots etc.
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