2006: What you reading now?

**REVIP** · 12/01/2006, 6:59 PM

Originally Posted by Dr.Nightdub

Not current affairs, but I just started re-reading "Foucault's Pendulum" by Umberto Eco. It's basically "The Da Vinci Code" with long words.

Think your allowed past affairs as well as current ones.

Read Eco's 'Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana' in the summer (much of it is in Fascist Italy) it's quite similar to Carlos Luis Zafon 'Shadow of the Wind', (set in Franco's Spain,) which I read straight afterwards and kept getting the stories confused with each other.

**tiktok** · 13/01/2006, 7:42 AM

Originally Posted by REVIP

.......it's quite similar to Carlos Luis Zafon 'Shadow of the Wind', (set in Franco's Spain,)

One of the better books I read last year.

Finished 'The Men who Stare at Goats', wasn't that good in the end.

Just started Joel Bakan's 'The Corporation', tough to stay interested 40 pages in, he assumes a level of knowledge on terms, US laws and organisations that I just don't posess.

**Passive** · 13/01/2006, 3:06 PM

Started Fisk's monster book last week. He's been writing it for 16 years, so it's basically a biography of sorts of his life in the Middle East over the past few decades.

The first chapter deals with his interviews with Bin Laden. Quite interesting, even if you've heard it all before. The fact that he is talking about Bin Laden's facial expressions and movements is almost more interesting that what he is actually saying.

I'm only half way through the second chapter, it deals with the modern history of Afghanistan, mostly post-'79. Again, nothing new but it makes for interesting reading regardless.

Over 1800 pages in total, so I reckon this will be my last contribution to this thread for a while!

**pete** · 13/01/2006, 3:22 PM

Originally Posted by tiktok

Just started Joel Bakan's 'The Corporation', tough to stay interested 40 pages in, he assumes a level of knowledge on terms, US laws and organisations that I just don't posess.

Thats on my shelf waiting for me too. Great minds 'n all that...

**centre mid** · 13/01/2006, 4:21 PM

An oldie but..

Che Geuvara.. A Revelutionary Life
By John Lee Anderson

**hamish** · 13/01/2006, 4:59 PM

The Last Empire - Gore Vidal
Tell me no lies - (edited by) John Pilger
Iraq Confidential - Scott Ritter

**Dr.Nightdub** · 14/01/2006, 9:58 PM

Passive, if you haven't already done so, check out Fisk's "Pity The Nation". Superb account of what happened in the Lebanon and probably the one thing that put him on legend status in my mind.

**ken foree** · 15/01/2006, 1:32 PM

hey i just found the current affairs forum, cool - me not the sharpest, etc! some good sounding stuff rec'd in here.

dunno if this qualifies but it's 'rings of saturn' by w.g. sebald, translated from german. i'll let the publisher take it from here:

Publisher Comments:
A fictional account of a walking tour through England's East Anglia, Sebald's home for more than twenty years, The Rings of Saturn explores Britain's pastoral and imperial past. Its ten strange and beautiful chapters, with their curious archive of photographs, consider dreams and reality. As the narrator walks, a company of ghosts keeps him company — Thomas Browne, Swinburne, Chateaubriand, Joseph Conrad, Borges — conductors between the past and present. The narrator meets lonely eccentrics inhabiting tumble-down mansions, and hears of the furious coastal battles of two world wars. He tells of far-off China and the introduction of the silk industry to Norwich. He walks to the now forsaken harbor where Conrad first set foot on English soil and visits the site of the once-great city of Dunwich, now sunk in the sea, where schools of herring swim. As the narrator catalogs the transmigration of whole worlds, the reader is mesmerized by change and oblivion, survival and memories. Blending fiction and history, Sebald's art is as strange and beautiful as the rings of Saturn, created from fragments of shattered moons.

it's very great and i think that last analogy works. sections bleed into each other and they are rarely over-long. also discusses roger casement in a small section.

**davey** · 16/01/2006, 9:28 PM

Has anybody read " We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families" by Philip Gourevitch? Possibly the best book I've ever read - and the most disturbing. Its basically an account of the Rwandan genoicide, how it started, its duration and aftermath. For those of you saw Hotel Rwanda and think you want to know more about the worst genocide since ww2 - I urge you to read this book. It will make you angry - but thats not always a bad thing