I'm reading 'Pies and Prejudice' - In search of the North' by Stuart Maconie.

It's alright with some interesting bits in it, but should really be subtitled 'In search of the North West'. After whole chapters on Manchester, Liverpool, Blackpool, and the Lakes along with and chunky bits on Wigan and Warrington, there's been about a page on Sheffield, a page on Bradford and about five on Leeds. I think there might be a bit on Newcastle, but I haven't got there yet.

I just finished Kafka on the Shore. Didn't particularly care for it. Did make me want to hear the Archduke Trio though.

Currently reading "The Vesuvius Club / The Devil In Amber" by Mark Gatiss. It's pretty good, with some genuine laugh-out-loud turns of phrase. Recommended to anyone as behind the times as I am.

Just finished 'Europe: the State of the Union' by Anand Menon, recommended if you have an interest in how the EU is working (or not), good analysis of what it is doing compared to what it is made out to be doing.
V readable especially considering the soporific subject

back from vacation and read number of good books:

Restless - William Boyd
The Dante Club - Matthew Pearl
Buddha - Karen Armstrong
Buddhism: A concise introduction - Huston smith & Phillip Novak
The Elusive Quest for Growth - William Easterly
A Short History of Laos - Grant Evans

The Easterly book is quite sensible and excellent as an overview of what went wrong in development economics over the past 50 years. Neither the Armstrong nor the Huston books are brilliant on thier own as an introduction to the subject of Buddhism, but together they are quite good. I am certainly glad I read them - I felt much less clueless about SE Asia and its culture after doing so.

Read a bunch of stuff, since I last posted here, won't try and make a list...

Currently Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook and Roger White, The Structure of Metaphor. Enjoying the first, though it's yet to get to Nobel-winner's-masterpiece territory. The second, by an eminent colleague, is superb. Very accessible, yet deals with very technical stuff at a level of sophistication that hadn't been done before. The stuff professional reputations are made of.

I've just finished Trezza Azzopardi's The Hiding Place.

I guess it may have been discussed before since it was Booker nominated in 2000. Ms Felicity loved it and has frequently pestered me to read it, now I have and it was really impressive.

I'm reading Three Men On The Bummel, the sequel I never knew existed to Three Men On A Boat. It's very fun and gentle and warm, and, even better, is about cycling round the Black Forest.

I'm starting a grand tour of Balzac, someone I sort of neglected when I was doing 19th century novels. Rereading Le Père Goriot for starters, it's delicious. Really looking forward to the rest.

That and some random histories and biographies and such mixed in, to include something from the non-fiction all-stars thread.

Two books on development which, along with the Easterly book I mentioned earlier, seem to give a very interesting and nuanced description of the value of aid in Africa:

The Bottom Billion, by Paul Collier. He's got some brilliant empirical work in here, and rightly suggests that aid is being spread too thinkly across Aisa and Latin America (which are no longer really poor) and not heavily enough in Africa (which in most respects is essentially fucked). Tough medicine recommended here, though.

The Trouble with Africa by Robert Calderisi. Treads similar ground, but with a lot more on-the-ground stories as opposed to empirical economic work. Comes to most of the same conclusions, but with less rigour.

If you are interested in African economies and aid and development, you could do a lot worse than these two books, and the one by Easterly.

Finished the Roger White, now on Lucy O'Brien's SheBop II, which is a history of women in rock. 'sokay so far, which isn't very far.

La Lanterne Rouge, if you enjoy that, can i recommend Mark Twain's travel books to you (assuming you havent read them already). Particularly A Tramp Abroad, which covers a lot of similar ground to the Jerome book but precedes it by some years. Then there's The Innocents Abroad which covers a pleasure cruise around Europe and the Middle East, and his American books Roughing It (memoirs of his time in the wild west) and Life on the Mississippi (self explanatory). They are all wonderful.

LLR - that is one of my favourite books filled with laugh out loud moments. Its on my list of books that I'm taking to the boat with me. I've only got room for 20.

I'm taking it slowly, wallowing in it, but it's wonderful. I really never knew that it existed. It might quickly be joining the ranks of my desert island books, too, Fritz.

And, Mafu, I read the glorious Baden-Baden chapter of A Tramp Abroad when I went to Baden-Baden, but, just through having too much else to read, I never got round to the rest. Thanks for reminding me that I must.

Is it as good as (and in the same style as) Three men in a Boat? I knew that the sequel existed but I just figured that, because it wasn't really well known, it probably wasn't worth bothering with.

4/5 of the way through She Bop II, and it's irritatingly shallow. No sense of a main thesis, or even local theses for each chapter/theme - just a list of briefly discussed woman musicians with no significant parallels or similarites other than that they are women. I mean, Dusty Springfield is discussed under the head of her music, why she was more American in outlook than Petula Clark or Sandie Shaw. Then, about a hundred pages later, there's a paaage or two talking about her in the context of lesbianism/bisexuality/gender ambiguity. And there is no attempt *at all* to make the fairly obvious connection between her music and aesthetic and her orientation - or even to debunk it. It just doesn't seem to *occur* to O'Brien to talk about it.

On the other hand, there was a story about someone I know, which was nice. Even if it was about her getting beaten up in Derby.

The Lessing is cracking along. It's pretty good.