April 2018 reading thread

[RJM Corbet]

Re: Mao by Jung Chang/ Jon Halliday

I read this with a lot of interest, in part because I'd read a fair amount of modern Chinese history back in the early 70s, when (horrors!) just about everything I read praised the Cultural Revolution. (Aargh!)

It was fascinating to read new versions of events. For instance on the Long March there was said to be a truly heroic capture of a bridge over a gorge, which had always seemed too heroic to be true, whereas the authors say that the army crossed by another bridge entirely.

Yet by the end of the book I was a little suspicious: it was just too unremittingly awful. It's a while back that I read it, but I don't remember a single positive note.

Nevertheless, a much needed account.

Thanks. I haven't finished it yet. I don't expect a single positive note about this devil in human form, Hugh.

He was the master of disinformation. But would you expect a positive note about Hitler or Stalin? Mao's terror and cruelty and utter callousness dwarves them both?

Clearly he cared nothing for peasants. He starved and worked them to death in their tens of millions, controlling every second of their existence in the cruellest ways imaginable, to produce food to give away to Russia to pay for armament factrories. Mao ruled by terror, pure and simple.He wrote the textbook. There aren't words.

It WAS 'unremittingly awful'.

I wish everyone knew the truth about him ...

 

[RJM Corbet]

Etc ...

Sorry, no more. It's heartbreaking ...

 

[Hugh]

View attachment 44265

Sorry, no more. It's heartbreaking ...

One can only read so much....

 

[dask]

Sickening.

 

[Allegra]

For his sake, I'm kind of glad he didn't have to see some of this. He earned a break. Now we've got to find someone else to take up that mantle!

Indeed!

 

[Pedro Del Mar]

Currently reading Mark Lawrence's The Prince of Thorns.

 

[Toby Frost]

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. It's not bad so far, if a bit twee.

 

[Amberlen]

Men of the North by Elin Peer
light on details, humorous as hell,kind of a Handmaids Tale in reverse(remotely, and I may be inserting my values heavily with that opinion)
*note to @Parson sex scenes may or may not be poorly written according to taste

 

[unbusy thing]

I finally finished Ada Palmer's Too Like the Lightning on my second attempt. I hate glossaries but if ever a book needed one, this did. Tor.com has some helpful articles by the author that helped make sense of her world. A lot of effort for half a plot. So now that I've got to grips with her premise, can I be bothered to read on? A creative writing tutor once told me something I'd written was 'too clever to be clear' - then admitted to marking assignments while quaffing absinthe (sometimes correlation really is causation). I think this book could have benefited from me drinking absinthe

 

[Av Demeisen]

I finally finished Ada Palmer's Too Like the Lightning on my second attempt. I hate glossaries but if ever a book needed one, this did. Tor.com has some helpful articles by the author that helped make sense of her world. A lot of effort for half a plot. So now that I've got to grips with her premise, can I be bothered to read on? A creative writing tutor once told me something I'd written was 'too clever to be clear' - then admitted to marking assignments while quaffing absinthe (sometimes correlation really is causation). I think this book could have benefited from me drinking absinthe

After such effort, not reading Seven Surrenders would be like scaling a mountain and then asking to "Beam me up, Scotty" instead of skiing downslope on a rewarding piste. Perhaps wait with the absinthe until the après-ski?

 

[tobl]

Currently reading Mark Lawrence's The Prince of Thorns.

read that. not bad. just didn't liked the final.

 

[HareBrain]

Finished Shogun by James Clavell, all 1150 pages of it. I was inspired to read this by reading Daughter of the Empire by Feist/Wurts. If I'd done them in the reverse order, Shogun might have seemed a being a pretty obvious influence on DOTE. Anyway, it knocks it out of the park and into a cocked hat. It's messy and convoluted (I'm not sure I can entirely account for the middle 600 pages or so) and the central romantic relationship didn't always interest me as much as I felt it was meant to, but still, monumental. Adding Taipan to my TBR pile.

 

[unbusy thing]

After such effort, not reading Seven Surrenders would be like scaling a mountain and then asking to "Beam me up, Scotty" instead of skiing downslope on a rewarding piste. Perhaps wait with the absinthe until the après-ski?

Did you prefer Seven Surrenders to the first book? The ebook of TLtL had the first few chapters of SS at the end. Not grabbed...

 

[Pedro Del Mar]

Finished Shogun by James Clavell, all 1150 pages of it. I was inspired to read this by reading Daughter of the Empire by Feist/Wurts. If I'd done them in the reverse order, Shogun might have seemed a being a pretty obvious influence on DOTE. Anyway, it knocks it out of the park and into a cocked hat. It's messy and convoluted (I'm not sure I can entirely account for the middle 600 pages or so) and the central romantic relationship didn't always interest me as much as I felt it was meant to, but still, monumental. Adding Taipan to my TBR pile.

Shogun is amazing, you'll really enjoy TaiPan, two of my favourite novels