What book are you currently reading?

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FD2
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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#241 Post by FD2 » Sat Apr 21, 2018 9:59 pm

Really enjoying 'Red Notice' by Bill Browder. Great reading - some padding with Browder's back story but a scary indictment of Russia today.

In November 2009, the young lawyer Sergei Magnitsky was beaten to death by eight police officers in a freezing cell in a Moscow prison. His crime? Testifying against Russian officials who were involved in a conspiracy to steal $230 million of taxes.

Red Notice is a searing exposé of the whitewash of this imprisonment and murder. The killing hasn’t been investigated. It hasn’t been punished. Bill Browder is still campaigning for justice for his late lawyer and friend. This is his explosive journey from the heady world of finance in New York and London in the 1990s, through battles with ruthless oligarchs in turbulent post-Soviet Union Moscow, to the shadowy heart of the Kremlin.

With fraud, bribery, corruption and torture exposed at every turn, Red Notice is a shocking political roller-coaster.

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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#242 Post by Cacophonix » Thu Apr 26, 2018 5:36 am

Reading '19 With a Bullet: A South African Paratrooper in Angola' by Granger Korff.

Korff is a hard man. formerly a 'breeker' from the mean streets somewhere on the East Rand. His narrative rings true, treating it as it does his days as a South African Army (SADF) conscript try out for the Reconnaissance Battalion who finally dropped out within a gnat's priaprick of making the grade, simply because, I believe, he knew he could make it and thus had nothing more to prove to himself and dropped back to the elite 1 Parachute Battalion who were merely hardcore as opposed to dangerously psychopathic. His story of his battalion's travails, victories, losses, experiences and final ousting in Angola as per the political (but never military) defeat of SA in Angola and South West Africa makes for compelling reading.

Well worth a read, even if you are an effete RAF type who might stroll the boards on this hallowed forum! o:-)



https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10. ... 011.634143

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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#243 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Tue Jun 02, 2020 8:27 am

'Razors Edge - The Unofficial History of the Falklands War' by Hugh Bicheno (or Birchenhaugh).

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/ ... aincontent

The author is a former intelligence officer and now historian and author whose detailed, iconoclastic and fascinating history of the Falklands War is well worth reading in that it is controversial, sometimes just plain wrong (he incorrectly spells names etc.) and yet still very good, not least for its detailed understanding and exegesis of Argentinian history and society prior to the war and for its detailed, often alternate, view of some of the events that occurred before and during the the war.

Highly recommended.
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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#244 Post by ribrash » Tue Jun 02, 2020 8:48 am

Fate is the hunter.

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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#245 Post by Woody » Tue Jun 02, 2020 11:20 am

ribrash wrote:
Tue Jun 02, 2020 8:48 am
Fate is the hunter. Again
Fixed it :-bd
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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#246 Post by tango15 » Tue Jun 02, 2020 12:45 pm

'The Man with the Golden Gun'. The original paperback Fleming version and so different from the film.

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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#247 Post by ian16th » Tue Jun 02, 2020 1:58 pm

tango15 wrote:
Tue Jun 02, 2020 12:45 pm
'The Man with the Golden Gun'. The original paperback Fleming version and so different from the film.
An 'original paperback'?

I'll raise you a 1st edition hardback.
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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#248 Post by Capetonian » Tue Jun 02, 2020 2:15 pm

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As always with Bryson, an excellent read, witty, well-researched and fascinating, with an aviation theme running through it.

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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#249 Post by tango15 » Tue Jun 02, 2020 2:30 pm

ian16th wrote:
Tue Jun 02, 2020 1:58 pm
tango15 wrote:
Tue Jun 02, 2020 12:45 pm
'The Man with the Golden Gun'. The original paperback Fleming version and so different from the film.
An 'original paperback'?

I'll raise you a 1st edition hardback.
20200602_155055.jpg20200602_155143[1].jpg
Nice!

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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#250 Post by fin » Tue Jun 02, 2020 2:53 pm

The Daniel Silva series about Gabriel Allon. On number 16 or so now.
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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#251 Post by ian16th » Tue Jun 02, 2020 2:55 pm

tango15 wrote:
Tue Jun 02, 2020 2:30 pm
ian16th wrote:
Tue Jun 02, 2020 1:58 pm
tango15 wrote:
Tue Jun 02, 2020 12:45 pm
'The Man with the Golden Gun'. The original paperback Fleming version and so different from the film.
An 'original paperback'?

I'll raise you a 1st edition hardback.
20200602_155055.jpg20200602_155143[1].jpg
Nice!
They were bought to read at the time.
Very dated in the 21st cent.
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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#252 Post by om15 » Tue Jun 02, 2020 4:49 pm

Prince Rupert - The Last Cavalier by Charles Spencer, just finished Italy's Sorrow by James Holland, Amazon is delivering a couple tomorrow, the sixth one in the girl with the dragon tattoo series, and Burma '44 by James Holland.

Quite like this aspect of lockdown.

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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#253 Post by tango15 » Tue Jun 02, 2020 7:20 pm

ian16th

Very impressive! As a mere youth when they first came out, I could only afford the paperback version - a whole 3/6d. I don't recall seeing them in hardback previously. The dustcovers are clearly very different from those on the paperbacks.

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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#254 Post by Pinky the pilot » Wed Jun 03, 2020 6:07 am

Just finished 'Journey of the Pharaohs' by Clive Cussler and
'Call of the Raven' by Wilbur Smith.

Now half way through Tom Clancy's 'Code of Honour' written by Marc Cameron.

They will do until I can find some Aviation related books.

ian16th; Love the first editions shown! :-bd
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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#255 Post by FD2 » Wed Jun 03, 2020 6:18 am

Some collected books by Nicholas Monsarrat including The Cruel Sea. All on Kindle as books are expensive here and take an age to arrive from the UK. Not the same as holding a real one though.

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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#256 Post by Capetonian » Wed Jun 03, 2020 6:58 am

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We are just having a clearout. I hate getting rid of books but it has to be done sooner or later. We have hundreds, mainly 'coffee table' type books from all over the world.

Apart from the above, I thoroughly enjoyed The Cruel Sea, and Monsarrat's best known novel, The Kapillan of Malta, which I took and read when we went to Malta.

Ruark's books are a good read too, Uhuru is a classic, set against the background of the Mau Mau terrorist war in Kenya. So many books .......

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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#257 Post by FD2 » Wed Jun 03, 2020 7:29 am

An ideal read there as I think he lived in Gozo for years before he died.

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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#258 Post by ian16th » Wed Jun 03, 2020 11:01 am

Pinky the pilot wrote:
Wed Jun 03, 2020 6:07 am
ian16th; Love the first editions shown! :-bd
Thanks, One of them isn't!

I do have an almost full set of 1st editions, of the Bernard Cornwell Sharpe novels. One signed, but on a sticker.
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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#259 Post by Pinky the pilot » Wed Jun 03, 2020 11:28 am

Bernard Cornwell Sharpe novels
An excellent series! :-bd Only read a few so far but....
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Re: What book are you currently reading?

#260 Post by ian16th » Wed Jun 03, 2020 12:34 pm

Pinky the pilot wrote:
Wed Jun 03, 2020 11:28 am
Bernard Cornwell Sharpe novels
An excellent series! :-bd Only read a few so far but....
Now that the series is finished, it seems, you can read them in chronological sequence.

Its interesting to read how he 'filled in the blanks' from reading the ones that he wrote later, about Sharpe's early days in India.

Of course before you read any of the Sharpe novels, you should read C.S. Foresters 'Death to the French'. It was Cornwell's inspiration.
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