What are you reading ? '23.

[Lilith7]

Just finished Deep deception, Alison, Belinda, Helen Steel, Lisa & Naomi. About women in various protest movements who were targeted & abused by UK police. A very interesting read.


https://www.londonreviewbookshop.co.uk/s...elen-steel

[Oh_hunnihunni]

William Gibson, Mona Lisa Overdrive.

Prescient...

[jackford]

Just finished Deep deception, Alison, Belinda, Helen Steel, Lisa & Naomi. About women in various protest movements who were targeted & abused by UK police. A very interesting read.


https://www.londonreviewbookshop.co.uk/s...elen-steel

Will be in Whitcoulls tomorrow, hope they have copy.

[jackford]

Update: Copies to be found aplenty online, Was going to purchase same thru Mighty Ape, then saw their beat the price. Found one cheaper but was denied with them asking
            for a link. Provided said link, but this was also declined I quote "At Mighty Ape we try extremely hard to earn your order and provide the best possible customer service possible. This feels better to us than competition purely on price. Our investment in fast delivery and customer service does mean that we're not always the cheapest - but hopefully we make up for it by fast overnight delivery of in stock products."

Then today this: I am very sorry for not being able to price-match your order.
"If you can find a price through another site apart from Trade Me, Amazon or eBay I can see if our Product Manager can accept the price match"

Use to use The Book Depository, had no issues whilst using them.
On one occasion purchased the  Michael Parkinson book Parky's People with free shipping. Said book arrived I perceived it had ben shipped in a damp environment. informed them, their response was to despatch a replacement copy plus not having to return original order, Sold the new copy on Trade Me. Still retain the original.

[Lilith7]

I've found Blackwell's to be quite good, have used them since the demise of The book depository.There's no postage charge & they have that book. but you could probably borrow it from the library.

https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/home

https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/produc...1529108316

[jackford]

Thanks for the link, have bookmarked same,

Will have a browse tonight

[harm_less]

Currently enoying 'The Boy From Gorge River' by Chris Long. Chris is the son of the family that Ben Fogle has twice visited as part of his 'Where the Wild Men Are' TV series.

Chris spins a good yarn about his growing up in the wilderness location and venturing out across the world using his accumulated abilities to conquer fear and challenges.

Read Ben Fogle's 'Up' last year. Also highly recommended it's a self development story as he works towards summiting Everest.

[Lilith7]

I remember Ben Fogle from what may have been the first ever 'reality' series, Castaways. A group were on a Scottish island & had to cope with being away from civilisation for the time, it was quite good too.

[Lilith7]

Just finished this,Crimes of the father- an interesting read about abusive priests within the catholic church in Oz. Especially interesting as Keneally trained as a priest when younger so he has a good understanding.


https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/j...lly-review

[Oh_hunnihunni]

I definitely prefer fairy stories, and The Protectorate Trilogy is a stunner of a series.

Except she wiil keep saying 'stepped foot' instead of 'set foot' and it really grinds my gears.

[Lilith7]

I definitely prefer fairy stories, and The Protectorate Trilogy is a stunner of a series.

Except she wiil keep saying 'stepped foot' instead of 'set foot' and it really grinds my gears.

That tends to annoy me as well, & also when American writers write in brand names; came across a character who slipped into their Birkenstocks years ago & it took ages to discover what the hell they were, back in pre interenet days.

[Lilith7]

Have just finished The night watchman, Louise Erdrich, abiout the attempt in the 50s to 'terminate' any govt help tp Native Americans. Her grandfather was involved in it & the book drew on his experince, which for his tribe, The Turtle Mountain band, was successful. others weren't so fortunate.
Well worth reading, I really enjoyed it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertain...story.html

"The National Book Award-winning author of “The Round House” and more than a dozen other treasured novels had abandoned several manuscripts and given up. She was certain her “impetus had disintegrated.”
Fortunately for us, she was wrong.
One day, she woke from her depressed slumber impelled to read a cache of letters written in the middle of the 20th century by her grandfather Patrick Gourneau. He had been chairman of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Advisory Committee during the tribe’s modern-day fight for survival. The threat at that time was legal but as potentially disastrous as earlier assaults: In 1953, the U.S. House passed a resolution declaring that a number of tribes should be rapidly “freed from Federal supervision.”



Beneath that glorious promise of emancipation lurked the government’s true plan: the unilateral abrogation of treaties, the wholesale termination of tribes’ rights and the abandonment of Native Americans already impoverished by centuries of genocidal policies.
Reminded of that dark era and her grandfather's heroic role in saving the Turtle Mountain Reservation in North Dakota, Erdrich knew she had found the inspiration for her next book."

[Oh_hunnihunni]

K Wagers, Neo G series, about a group of semi military peace custodians living and working out in the solar system, with interesting explorations of gender politics (Wager identifies as they/them), AI and the singularity, game theory, and family power relationships. And they do excellent fight scenes...

[Zurdo]

That sounds interesting, it so long since I read a good Space Opera. Seems to be a lost segment...or has it morphed into fantasy, like Piers Anthony ?

[Lilith7]

Now reading fear, Byron C Clarke, about the rabid right here - these are seriously unbalanced people. And yet, I keep laughing since the nonsense they somehow manage to believe is so very off the wall it is laughable. Some of them are definitely loony tunes.


https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programme...n-aotearoa

"In Fear: New Zealand's Hostile Underworld of Extremists, Christchurch activist Byron C Clark traces the roots of the occupation to the re-emergence of the alt-right. 
A video essayist on YouTube, Clark began his "deep-web" research into extremist groups and the spread of misinformation after the mosque terrorist attacks in 2019. 

Receiving death threats is "pretty regular", Clark says.
Clark told Saturday Morning he had to be careful to not go down the "rabbit hole" while researching and not see these groups and people within them as bigger or more threatening than they really were.
"They certainly try and portray themselves as if they represent the people, that they are the true voice of the people."

While only a small fringe of people in society, Clark said it was important not to ignore them as they could still have a big influence of politics and be disruptive - as the country saw during the Parliament occupation early last year.

He began paying attention to alt-right groups around 2016, but after the 2019 terrorist attack in Christchurch, he began researching more seriously.

While there were women in these movements, it was predominantly men, he said.
"Why they've become such a big part of this movement is a resentment of women, of the LGBT community, of immigrants, of indigenous people, they believe that these groups are now the ones who are privileged."
Clark said it was a combination of economic marginalisation and resentment of people they saw as moving ahead of them that encouraged "a lot of young men to get involved in reactionary political movements".

[harm_less]

Just started Material World by Ed Conway. "A substantial story of our past and future", based on our use of resources of sand, salt, iron, oil, copper & lithium. ~500 pages and data heavy so I'm expecting to take a while on this one. Good so far.

[Lilith7]

Just started Hazards of time travel, Joyce Carol Oates, dystopian fiction. Scary as hell - we are sometimes a very cruel species.


https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/n...tes-review

[Lilith7]

Hazards of time travel started well but fizzled out in the middle & wandered off in another direction altogether & never returned. Not reading any more of her books.

Now reading One minute crying time, Barbara Ewing. I've read some of her fiction & enjoyed it but this is more or less about her life as an actor, playwright & writer & so far very interesting. It includes some of her diary entries from the 1950's as a teenager.

[Oh_hunnihunni]

I picked up a couple of the Halo series this week, so far so good. Easy reads, perfect for sunny days on the deck under the brolly...

[Olive]

"Other Pandemic" is a fascinating read, highly recommended as an explainer of the QAnon phenomenon.

https://www.amazon.com/Other-Pandemic-QA...B0BSKYWS4M