The Thunderer has produced one of those lists.  This time it's the 50 greatest British writers since 1945.  Of course it's total pants and I could have done far better etc.

( The List )

Norman Naimark - "The Russians in Germany A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945-1949", Cambridge, Mass 1995This a hefty read; almost five hundred pages plus apparatus. It's a good reminder too that history is not inevitable. Few events seem more inevitable in hindsight than the division of Germany or the collapse of Soviet communism ( Read more... )

From chiller, book meme (who could resist):

Hardback or trade paperback or mass market paperback?

I like fine bindings and even for standard editions i prefer the solidity of hardback. Mass market paperbacks feel icky and are hard to read with my ancient failing eyes.

Amazon or brick and mortar?Both. I tend to use Amazon more as I am cheap and like ( Read more... )

Gakked from chiller

This is one of those odd top N lists. This time it's the BBC's view on what one ought to have read. The one's I've read are bolded and mostly commented on.

( The big, big list )

I've just finished listening to a very good BBC production of Germinal. Now, I'm not a great novel reader. I read far more non-fiction than fiction. That said, I like Zola a lot and Germinal best of all. In fact, I'm hard pressed to think of too many novels that I admire more. I've read the novel at least twice and seen the Depardieu film ( Read more... )

After a year or two's absence the Folio Society has tempted me back into the fold. The bribe arrived today. It's the Norton facsimile edition of Shakespeare's First Folio but in a much nicer edition than the standard trade hardback. It's quarter bound in leather with a slipcase and all the usual Folio accoutrements. Being a full sized facsimile ( Read more... )

I posted a while ago and got invaluable advice from rparvaaz on which edition of The Mahabharata to buy. I settled on ordering the Rupa Editions hardback of the Menon translation/rendering from India via abebooks.com. The actual merchant was Manohar Book Service in New Delhi ( Read more... )

I have a snuggly grey cat on my lap and, like the bengals, she is healthy and hasn't been eating tainted catfood. This makes me very happy though my sympathies go to those of you with high temperature bengals or cats who have been eating the recalled brands. I hope everybody makes it through OK ( Read more... )

I've been listening to a very enjoyable, though much abbreviated, BBC Radio dramatisation of The Mahabharata. It has left me wanting more. I now there are several people who will read this who have relevant knowledge and opinions so I thought I would use this channel to ask for recommendations on good English translations. I'm not unfamiliar ( Read more... )

chickenfeet2003 reading a book on pirates? Has frivolity overwhelmed the dry and scholarly environs of Scadding Avenue? Not quite. I've been reading Marcus Rediker's Villains of the Nations - Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age. It's quite good, though, being Rediker, one has to scrape the Marxist theory off with a trowel to get at the stuff about pirates. ( Read more... )