Matej wrote:

QUOTE:
Waiting for the amazon [US] release of Soccer in a Football World

Look for my name in the introduction!

Finishing up Glitter Stucco and Dumpster Diving a collection of essays on mostly Southern California architecture by John Chase. I normally really like Verso, but this was really sloppily edited--missing punctuation and a few misspellings. I have the first hardcover edition, so hopefully it was corrected.

Currently I'm about a third of the way through Allan Bullock's excellent Hitler & Stalin: Parallel Lives. The author has intelligently broken the subject matter into alternating chapters on each man covering about a decade of their lives. It's the first time since leaving school that I've read any historical work of this depth on the topic of the Soviet Union so I'm only now learning about the Ukranian famine caused by collectivisation, the birth pangs of the first Five Year Plan, etc. It's harrowing but simultaneously gripping and all the more sobering considering that the loss of life suffered by Russia during and between the two World Wars still hasn't really been acknowledged in our culture (7.8 million Ukranians died during the famine caused by Stalin's enforcement of collectivisation on the largely rural population). Certainly not to the same extent that the Holocaust, the First World War or the Western Front have been recognised.

Tales Of The Alhambra by Washington Irving. I've not had much time for it since starting it but it's dead good, although it might prove an expensive purchase in the long term because it's making me really really REALLY want to go back to Granada and see it all again.

My first ever post outside 'Football'... the new board's had some effect then.

Currently I'm reading no books at all. And haven't since I finished Revolution In The Head by Ian MacDonald. I'm just not in the mood for books at the moment. I hope that this feeling will pass. Soon.

just finished White Heat by Dominic Sanbrook which takes his post-war review of GB up to Heaths 1970 election win...

decent concise summaries of the Wilson period without being ground breaking...

Market Forces by Richard Morgan.

Executives fight duels with each other in bids to win contracts and promotions. To the death, in armoured vehicles. Kind of Mad Max 2 meets Wall Street.

Ha, I read Market Forces too. Enjoyable guff, perfect for non-taxing summer holiday reading.

Have you read any of his other stuff, Crusoe? I have Black Man lined up next.

I liked the Takeshi Kovacs novels - Altered Carbon, Broken Angels and Woken Furies. Intelligent action movie sci-fi is how I think of them.

No, my dad gave me that one - let me know how they turn out. I'll look at the Kovacs ones as well.

Just finished Understanding Comics - it's ace. I'm now debating whether to reduce my stack of unread novels, or head back into The Quest For Consciousness.

I've just finished NonNonBā, a BD by Shigeru Mizuki, about his childhood in a small village in 1930's Japan. It's full of supernatural elements and is quite moving in places.

It's beautifully produced by Editions Cornelius. It reads Japanese-style, right-to-left and starting from the "back". You get used to it within a couple of pages.

I also quite enjoyed Shenzhen and Pyongyang by Guy Delisle, about his trips to China and North Korea, where he worked as an animator. Nothing massively profound by way of observations, but I like his drawing style.

That's comics for me for a bit, so, after ten years, I'm finally reading A Confederacy of Dunces again. It's such a delight to read.

Pound's cantos, a guide to pound's Cantos, George Steiner's Grammars of Creation, two books by Simon Blackburn, and my thesis in excruciating detail...

Currently splitting my time between:

The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda's Road To 9/11 by Lawrence Wright....does what it says on the tin. Cant recommend it enough, although I keep getting dragged away to read something else.

and

Conned by Matthew Klein.....A California con-man crime thriller.
Its OK.

Recently finished novel: Wallace Stegner's Angle Of Repose. One of my favourite writers, and a beautiful book written (circa 1970) by an aging misanthrope in a wheelchair as he writes the novelised history of his own grandmother.

Recently finished 'I should really try and be a bit more intelligent about science and stuff' book: Simon Singh's Big Bang, which taught me that I didn't pay anything like enough attention to physics at school (I dreamt the other night my old teacher Mr Fox gave me a B+ when I told him I was reading Singh's book), and which has also made me start buying astronomy magazines and looking at expensive telescopes on the internet.

Just finished Gold by Dan Rhodes. Strange but likeable. The ending was not a complete surprise and lightened what could have been an otherwise sickly read, but even so the slightly sad aftertaste was a little unwelcome.

Now starting on Natsuo Kirino's Grotesque. I really enjoyed her first English translation (Out, which I only picked up because I liked the covers of the Vintage East editions) and this one seems to be going the same way of cold, clinical and slightly unnerving characters getting into unpleasant situations.

Broken Clock wrote:

QUOTE:
The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda's Road To 9/11 by Lawrence Wright....does what it says on the tin. Cant recommend it enough, although I keep getting dragged away to read something else.

Sounds interesting, might check it out. Have you read Jason Burke's book on the same topic? Superb study of militant Islam, extremely well-researched and well-balanced.