I really liked Nathaniel's Nutmeg. A totally obscure bit of history that makes for a great story.

Giles Milton's book about the first (failed) English colonies in Virginia is great as well.

That's interesting.

I was very put off by the idea of someone named Milton writing a book called Paradise Lost (at least that's the title in the US).

I think his Paradise Lost book is about a city in Turkey or something?

The one about the colonies is called (in the UK at least) Big Chief Elizabeth. Not a great title really.

You're right; it's about the Turkish takeover of Smyrna in 1922.

Big Chief Elizabeth is also the the US title of the Virginia book.

'A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian' aggravates me - it's just a really cutesy title, it seems to proclaim "Hey, this is a bit wacky!"

On a related but slightly different note, I always dislike the author formulation 'Dave Crunt writing as Bazza Pompom'. It's oxymoronic, surely.

Ibn Pickthall wrote:

QUOTE:
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

I thought it was amusing self-effacement at first, then I read the book. Perhaps I just don't get Eggers.

You and me both. It's one of the very few books that I've started but failed to finish. So it wasn't just the title that I found irritating.

There is something deeply irritating about Eggers. I read the one with 'Velocity' in the title, and despite a really good premise and start, it got worse as it went along. It wasn't awful, but merely pretty average. Not sure why Eggers is hyped quite so much.

QUOTE:
'A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian' aggravates me - it's just a really cutesy title, it seems to proclaim "Hey, this is a bit wacky!"

Yeah. Tractors or Ukranian, but not both.

Any book with the subtitle "Blank Who Blank and the Blank Who Blank Them," or some variation thereof.

delicatemoth wrote:

QUOTE:
'A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian' aggravates me - it's just a really cutesy title, it seems to proclaim "Hey, this is a bit wacky!"

Thought it was quite a good book, to be fair.

I get quite irritated by the title of Alan Furst's Dark Star. It's a brilliant book (like all of Furst's stuff), but the title just reminds me of the film, to which it obviously bears no relation, and I just can't get that image of the hippy spacemen out of my head, which is totally at odds with the story.

Surely "My Booky Wook" trumps all?

I think that's quite a clever reference to 'A Clockwork Orange', wingco. Kind of works well to announce Brand's idiot savant style.

I loved Eggers' "Heartbreaking Work etc'. Again, I think the title works well to announce Eggers' style (which is part mega-confidence, part self-effacement). Also, the book really is a heartbreaking work, though probably not quite staggering genius.

I'd never noticed that about the Brand book(y wook), but you're dead right.

What Pants said about Eggers. Those passages where he's playing frisbee with his kid brother, and breathlessly explaining to the reader how nobody, nobody in the history of the world, has ever, ever exhibited the grace, the purity, the beauty and skill of the pair of them... it's all about the primacy of the subjective. Of course he knows that these valuations aren't literally true. But as Arsene Wenger said apropos of Ferguson, everybody thinks he has the best looking wife at home. The fact that the hyperbolic nature of subjective judgement has so totally overwhelmed objective standards is the whole point of Eggers' stories, and precisely what is affecting about them and the way they are told.

QUOTE:
everybody thinks he has the best looking wife at home.

But I don't think they do? Or is this just a description of certain sublime moments?

I couldn't even make it through any of Eggers' Short Short Stories when they were in the guardian at the weekend. I'd try each time, thinking, look, it's only a third of a page, you can read that no matter what - but invariably I would have to give up after about two and a half sentences. To me he's literally unreadable. But that's my fault, probably.

Nah, it's not. I remember trying one of his short stories too. I didn't get far. He's the emperor's new clothes of fiction.

Suggested by my housemate who shall remain nameless:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Scots-Invented-Modern-W/dp/0609809997/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1217965445&sr=8-1How Scotland Invented The Modern World

The book reveals how Einstein really grew up in Govan, and how Darwin didn't go to the Galapagos Islands but to Orkney and Shetland.