DID WE ALL FORGET TO CARRY ON READING BOOKS?

Is that what the new TV series on Apple is based on?

Yup. According to the book fans I've seen, it's a very good adaptation. Not seen it myself.

Murderbots the series is very silly. The first episode takes some getting used to but once you do it is highly entertaining. I have all of the Martha Wells books but in tried and testing fashion have not started reading them yet.

The Forever War by Joe Halderman is an incredible book especially since it was written in 1974. It is incredibly Prescient now let alone the time of the Vietnam war. I highly highly recommend it. Of course it is an elergy for that war but good lord does it remain on point to this day.

Speaking of which, Climate change, birth rates and all that. I just bought Children Of God off Ebay as well as Cocaine Diaries and Fast Charlie (about organised crime in Florida) so i should be happy for the short term.

Chicago: Exploring the dark side.

I'm currently listening to the audio version of David Goldblatt's new book Injury Time. It covers the modern history of British football alongside the correlating social history of the nation, this time through the financial crisis, Brexit and Covid. I guess it's not everyone's cup of tea as it deals with a lot of the issues around the game, rather than patterns on the pitch, but it does provoke a lot of questions about the state of the game.

I've been reading an advance copy of The Hour of the Predator by Giuliano da Empoli which is due to be released in English in October. I totally recommend it, but crikey what a terrifying read.

This is the blurb:

**A CHILLING ASSESSMENT OF THE DISINTEGRATING WORLD ORDER: the rise of autocratic regimes, erosion of traditional diplomacy, and growing influence of tech billionaires and unregulated AI

"The one book you absolutely need to read in order to understand current politics" — Anne Applebaum, author of the New York Times bestseller Autocracy, Inc.**

Blending the internationally bestselling author’s personal insight with startling historical comparisons to the days of Machiavelli and the Spanish conquest of Mexico, Giuliano Da Empoli’s The Hour of the Predator is a timely and incisive examination of the shifting power dynamics in global politics, where traditional government institutions find themselves increasingly outmatched by technology tycoons and autocratic strongmen: geopolitical predators who shape the world through brute force, ceaseless deception, and chaotic disruption.

Drawing on his experience as a political advisor to a former Italian Prime Minister, Da Empoli takes the reader on an eye-opening journey around the international political circuit—from New York to Riyadh, and from the United Nations to Mohammed bin Salman’s Ritz-Carlton— and through the looking glass to a world of ruthless power struggles, where the tech lords already seem to inhabit another world and AI is already out of control.

The Hour of the Predator is the latest book from the internationally bestselling author of The Wizard of the Kremlin, which has been translated into thirty-five languages and is now being adapted for a major movie by Olivier Assayas starring Jude Law as Vladimir Putin.

Finished Brandon Sanderson's first Mistborn trilogy. Magnificent. Will have a break with something different, then get straight into the next series.

Also took a break from the ongoing collection of Dredd anthologies, and bought the first Rogue Trooper collection. It's good, but not as good as I remember.

Arnhem: Black Tuesday by Al Murray (yes, that one).
Bought it for my dad as he’s ex-airborne and growing up, Arnhem was always a big deal.
When he gave it a glowing review, I knew I should read it.
Interesting take on the battle by focusing on one pivotal day from four viewpoints. Meticulous, if that’s your sort of thing, and really hammers home that the whole thing was almost inevitably doomed. But, as the author points out about anytime you watch A Bridge Too Far, you still think they’ll find a way to win this time.

That sounds interesting. Also probably confirms my personal view that any resistance to the worst that AI can do is a battle that's already lost.

The second era is a very different setting, but I think its even better.

I'm currently reading book 2 of his Stormlight Chronicles series.

Because of recommendations on here, I bought Injury Time - the new David Goldblatt book and also just read, "Be Good, Love Brian", about the Clough family adopting two boys (although only one of them stayed for a significant amount of time), from a depressed area of Sunderland and their life with the family and Forest in itself. It was a good read but immensely sad in it's own way. The Clough family were not only big hearted but fucking wonderful people who wanted to give someone a good life and who ultimately betrayed them. Also, it was significant that it wasn't Peter Taylor's departure that started Cloughie's decline into drinking it was actually Hillsborough.

It seems like Nigel, Barbarta and Simon clough were/are incredibly lovely people too.

Also, during that part of history in the late 80's and early to mid 90's I was pretty much at all the games where incidents happened. It tugged at my heart strings when I read this book. Maybe I am too emotional but it moved me.

Next up, something a little more uplifting. Hannibal Rising by Thomas Harris. The Hannibal Lecter prequel book that was given to me as a christmas gift. I don't have high hopes for it as Reg Dragon was the second greatest book I have read (definitely the best thriller I can recall) and Silence Of The Lambs was decent too but Harris completely lost it with "Hannibal", which was dogshit. So onto book four where hopefully I can be pleasantly surprised but probably not because they are start to give justification for Lecter's behaviour.

Chicago: Soppy sod.

Blasted through Project Hail Mary, the most recent book by Andy Weir who wrote The Martian and which is also about to come out as a movie. It is MAGNIFICENT. I don't want to say anything about it because I didn't know anything about it before I read it except that it was once again about an astronaut alone in space, and I'm very glad I knew nothing else.

Since I last posted on this thread I have given up on Graham Greene; monotonous bilge. Unless your idea of entertainment is forcing yourself to finish something for the sake of it then avoid at all costs. Of course, Orr, Yossarian's tent mate in Catch-22 had a theory: when he was enjoying himself, time seemed to pass really quickly. He therefore set about boring himself as much as possible in order to prolong his conscience existence as much as possible. If you have the Orr worldview, then I highly recommend Graham Greene.

I then tried reading Henry James and got through a few of his works, including The Portrait of a Lady - probably the most well known. Too long winded to be honest, and there's only so much stuffy 19th century romance I can bear to suffer.

On the other hand, if you seem to actually enjoy your conscience presence in the only life you have (with apologies for any offence caused to religious types), then I can recommend the Inspector Grant series by Josephine Tey, in particular "A Shilling for Candles". From the "golden age" of crime novels, they are well written with good characters and decent twists.

Following on from this, I've continued my journey through golden age detective fiction by reading the Wimsey series by Dorothy L Sayers. I was a bit hesitant at first as I initially found the leading character rather irritating, but he has grown on me. The plots are full of twists and I've yet to figure out the culprit until late in the story, if at all. Of course, there is the racism that is a feature of much work from this period:

"'God bless my soul', said Sir Charles horrified, 'an English girl in the hands of a nigger. How abominable"

It is of its time, however, and the quote above was actually from a scene where a red herring was deliberately set by the culprit to implicate a black man (not a spoiler, should you read it; by this point the murderer is known and this is part of the denouement). In fact, Sayers regularly pokes fun at members of the upper classes, and the attitude of Sir Charles is, I suspect, strongly representative of such people at that time (Sir Charles is Chief Constable in this particular story - Unnatural Death).Jewish people tend to come out worse, probably due to there being more of them in the country at the time. But, racism is rare and can generally be overlooked.

Anyway, I'd recommend the Sayer books if you enjoy a good detective novel.

I too love Sayers (The Nine Tailors a masterpiece) & Josephine Tey (I particularly recommend A Daughter of Time, which is her take on the Princes in the Tower malarkey). I largely agree with your Graham Green take, too - though Stamboul Train is good (or so I recall from reading it about 30 years ago).

I am on a bit of a non-fiction spree at the moment. Philippe Sands' "East-West Street" (which I read again a few weeks ago as part of preparing for my recent trip to Ukraine) and Danny Finkelstein's "Hitler, Stalin, Mum & Dad" are, in different ways, both about the Holocaust and both highly recommended. As is Steven Walker's"Beyond" (about Yuri Gagarin).

Nine Tailors is probably the best of those I've read so far; a very labyrinthine mystery. I'm currently on Gaudy Night which is a wonderfully weighty tome. Sayers likes a long novel which is a good thing in my eyes.

Stamboul Train is one of the best of Greene, I concur. Talking of antisemitism, it is highly apparent in that particular work. Reading literary works of that time is a good reminder (or teaching for anyone who didn't realise) of the general prevalence of antisemitism across the West prior to WWII (of course it's been prevalent for centuries; Dickens used many Jewish stereotypes).

IIRC, there is a character in Stamboul Train who has had his "Jewish Nose" altered, but the tell-tale scar gives him away. Like I say, it's of its time, and anything written during a period of history will reflect the beliefs and values of the era. The works themselves are not racist or antisemitic, but they do make you realise that the bounds of acceptability change radically over time. Christie was not immune, and of course Blyton's Golliwog ensured that children were also exposed to racial stereotypes. As works of fiction they are important reminders of how far we have come, despite the efforts of certain current leaders to regress.

Even more prevalent before WW1; try reading John Buchan!

I can well believe that. Would you recommend his books?

Depends how much you like Jews.