Book blogging.
Occassionally, I can get sucked in by a book to the point where it's hard to put it down at night to go to sleep, or to work (or to blog). Usually it happens with cheapish fiction -- David Guterson Snow Falling on Ceders or Siri Hustvedt's What I Loved come to mind. Usually, though, I read books in an effort to know stuff rather than to enjoy myself.
Anyway, while I'm a decade behind the curve on this, David Remnick's 1993 book Lenin's Tomb, 520-odd small-print pages about the end of the Soviet Union, is the first totally addictive non-fiction book I've ever read. It's suberb. I don't even know what else I could say that would do it justice except that I had no idea journalistic memoir could be like this.
Anyway, while I'm a decade behind the curve on this, David Remnick's 1993 book Lenin's Tomb, 520-odd small-print pages about the end of the Soviet Union, is the first totally addictive non-fiction book I've ever read. It's suberb. I don't even know what else I could say that would do it justice except that I had no idea journalistic memoir could be like this.
4 Comments:
It's an unbelievably good book. Perhaps one of the best pieces of journalistic literature I've ever read.
By the way... if you only have 520 pages, you're about 100 shy of the whole thing. I beleive when I read it, it was 625.
I'm pretty sure it's the whole thing -- maybe the font is smaller in the reissued version I'm reading.
This is the problem with not caring about the world until your early 20s. There's so much reading catching up to do.
I'm open to any suggestions other for indespensible literature.
Hmmm... Indispensable depends on your interests. Let me do a random "pull" from the shelf.
The Mitrokhin Archive, The KGB in Europe and the West; Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin.
A History of Warfare; John Keegan.
Paris 1919, Six Months That Changed The World; Margaret MacMillan. (If you haven't already read this, it is an absolute "must".)
Time Frames. The Rethinking of Darwnian Evolution and the Theory of Punctuated Equilibria; Niles Eldredge. (Not because he's probably right, but it gives you an idea as to the fight against biblical literalism back in 1972.)
Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings; Amy Kelly
The Fatal Shore. The Epic of Australia's Founding; Robert Hughes. (The best book on Australia's colonization I have ever read.)
The Real Bravo Two Zero; Michael Asher. (This may be of limited interest since it is the deconstruction of a whopper told by SAS Sgt. "Andy McNab" called Bravo Two Zero, about his escape and evasion during the '91 Iraq War. I was involved in the same "business" at the time and I knew McNab's story was bullshit... thus Asher's book gets a place on the shelf.)
How The Irish Saved Civilization; Thomas Cahill. (Great read.)
Barrow's Boys. The Original Extreme Adventurer's; Fergus Fleming. (Ripping good stuff from the Age of Exploration.)
The Men Who Stare At Goats; Jon Ronson. (I bought this because of the cover. Thought it odd, until I got into it and realized the truths this guy was telling about the warped side of the US military. Read this when you decide you want to scare yourself with bizarre true stories.)
Hope that helps. Hope a library still has some of those!
Off the top of my head, I’d say Niall Ferguson’s 'Colossus: The Price of America's Empire' and 'Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power' As he look’s almost certain to enter the Liberal leadership race, and will come under attack for (some of) his work, flipping through some of Michael Ignatieff's writings might not be a bad idea.
If you really want a list, I’d be happy to send you my comps reading list. I am told they're all indispensable. LOL!
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