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A Good Read: Book Suggestions & Recommendations

Well..no one ever commenetd on my question on the Rivers of London series by Aaronovich so I bought the first 3 anyway....so far I am enjoying the first one ...Midnight Riot as it's called in the US.
 
Well..no one ever commenetd on my question on the Rivers of London series by Aaronovich so I bought the first 3 anyway....so far I am enjoying the first one ...Midnight Riot as it's called in the US.

I've read the first two and quite liked them, very readable. Felt like a London I recognise too. Sorry, didn't see your comment.
 
THE LABYRINTHS OF ECHO SERIES BY MAX FREI.
https://www.amazon.com/Strangers-Woes-Labyrinths-Echo-Book/dp/0575089806

I picked up Book Two in this series out of a sense of duty as I was just looking for new material for my blog. I am no fan of the kind of Urban Fantasy that this ostensibly belongs to, and certainly not (as I have said more than once on these threads) of multi-book serials!

I came in at Book Two - translated and out with Gollancz - and am now about half way though it. I approached it expecting it to be along the lines of Lukyanenko's Daywatch/Nightwatch Cycle - which I only really appreciate because it offers quite a good introduction to modern Russia - but it is something quite different.

(Max Frei is the pen name of Svetlana Martynchuk, who sometimes works in collaboration with her husband Igor Steopin. Thay are Ukranians who write in Russian - and are mostly read in that language too).

The premise is a familiar enough one: The protagonist and narrator - Max Frei - is a twenty something young man who likes eating, drinking and smoking and is a nobody in the Real world - but he has somehow slipped into an adjacent world called Echo of the Unified Kingdom. Here, as Sir Max, he works for the Secret Police to investigate illegal uses of magic alongside a bunch of characters with names like Sir Juffin Huffy and Sir Melifaro, and so on.

It's the style more than the content that I have warmed to though: it's a very exuberant affair with the episodic action being held up by spirited and humorous banter between the characters who display great camaraderie and affection for each other throughout.It s quite unlike anything I have encountered before. I was completely at sea for the first several pages, almost ready to give it up - then I began to `get it` - in the same kind of way you can `get` a new type of music that is introduced to you after a while.

If I had to make a comparison it would be with the Irish author Flann O'Brian or with the American-Irish author J.P Donleavy (in his flightier moments) but I doubt that there has been any direct influences there.

Anyway, it's simply great escapism - I haven't detected any subtext to it all as yet - and escapism might be what we all need in this preposterous, fragmentred, bleak period of history we are all going though.

I am going to write a more detailed review in my blog.
 
I've read the first two and quite liked them, very readable. Felt like a London I recognise too. Sorry, didn't see your comment.
No problem...it was sort of a rhetorical remark I guess....I like quirky fiction about 'law enforcement' or 'investigators' involved with the supernatural or occult cases set in contemporary cities. I have read several series over the years so this one was new for me. I'm about halfway through the first book and I quite like it. I read the first 2 Jasper Fforde 'Thursday Next' books and while they were entertaining they were also a bit silly at times. I read the Grant and May books by Fowler and really enjoted those..not supernatural but very strange cases nevertheless.
Any one who has recommendations in this genre please post them...thanks. :)
 
From Archive.org -
Magic," black and white; charms and counter charms. Divination and demonology among the Hindus, Hebrews, Arabs and Egyptians ... An epitome of "supernaturalism" magic, black, white and natural; conjuring and its relation to prophecy, including Biblical and Old Testament terms and words for magic ..


"Magic," black and white; charms and counter charms. Divination and demonology among the Hindus, Hebrews, Arabs and Egyptians ... An epitome of "supernaturalism" magic, black, white and natural; conjuring and its relation to prophecy, including Biblical and Old Testament terms and words for magic .. : Davies, T. Witton (Thomas Witton), 1851-1923 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
 
Got three books on the go currently.

I'm finally reading and really enjoying Passport to Magonia by Jacques Vallée, which I've wanted to read for a long time due to it's connection to the Keel school of thought which I tend to side with.

Also really enjoying R. S. Thomas Collected Poems 1945 - 1990. And Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian which is simply brilliant, if you haven't read this one give it a go! McCarthy's style and description of the old west is stunning.
 
^ If you like Passport To Magonia I highly recommend Messengers of Deception and Invisible College by Dr Vallee.
 
Having finished the MaddAddam trilogy , I'm now starting on another dystopian fiction , FEED. It's a young adult book which I'd usually steer clear of but I'm liking the sound of the dangers of the Internet " feed" plugged into ones brain via wetware. Scary and could happen.....

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/169756.Feed
 
I've also been dipping in and out of Monatgue Summers The Werewolf
 
There are some great books on this website. All old and forgotten, but in need of revival. Nice pictures too (see alien gynecology)

https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/source/francis-a-countway-library-of-medicine

And this book. Like a list by Umberto Eco:

Obesity -- Dwarfs -- Gigantic races -- Unlawful cures -- Voice and speech -- Ecstatic exaltation -- Varieties of mankind -- On the inhumation of the dead in cities -- Buried alive -- Spontaneous combustion -- Brassica eruca -- Cagliostro -- Lunar influence on human life and diseases -- Spectacles -- Leeches -- Somnambulism -- Medical powers of music -- The food of mankind -- Influence of imagination -- Ancient ideas of phrenology -- Perfumes -- Love philters and potions -- Ventriloquism -- Chaucer's description of a physician -- Dæmonomania -- The plague -- Abstinence -- Poison of the upas, or ipo -- Homophagous and polyphagous -- Causes of insanity -- Leprosy -- The aspic -- Selden's comparison between a divine, a statesman, and a physician -- The lettuce -- Medical fees -- Enthusiasm -- Medical effects of water -- Proverbs and sayings regarding health and disease -- The night-mare -- Incubation of diseases -- Quackery and charlatanism -- On the use of tea -- Mandragore -- Barber-surgeons, and the progress of chirurgical art -- On dreams -- On flagellation -- On life and the blood -- Of the homoeopathic doctrines -- Doctrine of signatures -- Coffee -- Aqua tophania -- Plica polonica & human hair -- Animal magnetism -- Poisonous fishes -- Memory & the mental faculties -- Affections of the sight -- Hellebore -- Sympathies and antipathies -- The Archeus of Van Helmont -- Monsters -- Longevity -- Cretinism -- Temperaments -- Solar influence -- Sweating fever -- Smallpox -- Drunkenness -- Decapitation -- Mummies -- Hydrophobia -- Rise and progress of medicine -- Medicine of the Chinese -- Experiments on living animals.

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/39074
 
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Assignment: Oswald - James P. Hosty Jnr with Thomas Hosty - currently £1.99 on Kindle on Amazon UK (RRP £9.99).

I like to have lots of choices on my Kindle as much as I love physical books.
 
This book looks more and more realistic. So realistic it ceases to be funny:

Daniel W. Drezner
Theories of International Politics and Zombies: Revived Edition

What would happen to international politics if the dead rose from the grave and started to eat the living? Daniel Drezner's groundbreaking book answers the question that other international relations scholars have been too scared to ask. Addressing timely issues with analytical bite, Drezner looks at how well-known theories from international relations might be applied to a war with zombies.

https://www.amazon.de/Theories-Inte...ional+relations+zombies&qid=1609871971&sr=8-1
 
This looks like it might be one of interest.

The Stranger Times

‘There are dark forces at work in our world (and in Manchester in particular), so thank God The Stranger Times is on hand to report them . . .

A weekly newspaper dedicated to the weird and the wonderful (but mostly the weird), it is the go-to publication for the unexplained and inexplicable.

At least that's their pitch. The reality is rather less auspicious. Their editor is a drunken, foul-tempered and foul-mouthed husk of a man who thinks little of the publication he edits. His staff are a ragtag group of misfits. And as for the assistant editor . . . well, that job is a revolving door - and it has just revolved to reveal Hannah Willis, who's got problems of her own.

When tragedy strikes in her first week on the job The Stranger Times is forced to do some serious investigating. What they discover leads to a shocking realisation: some of the stories they'd previously dismissed as nonsense are in fact terrifyingly real. Soon they come face-to-face with darker forces than they could ever have imagined.

The Stranger Times is the first novel from C.K. McDonnell, the pen name of Caimh McDonnell. It combines his distinctive dark wit with his love of the weird and wonderful to deliver a joyous celebration of how truth really can be stranger than fiction.’
 

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This looks like it might be one of interest.

The Stranger Times

‘There are dark forces at work in our world (and in Manchester in particular), so thank God The Stranger Times is on hand to report them . . .

A weekly newspaper dedicated to the weird and the wonderful (but mostly the weird), it is the go-to publication for the unexplained and inexplicable.

At least that's their pitch. The reality is rather less auspicious. Their editor is a drunken, foul-tempered and foul-mouthed husk of a man who thinks little of the publication he edits. His staff are a ragtag group of misfits. And as for the assistant editor . . . well, that job is a revolving door - and it has just revolved to reveal Hannah Willis, who's got problems of her own.

When tragedy strikes in her first week on the job The Stranger Times is forced to do some serious investigating. What they discover leads to a shocking realisation: some of the stories they'd previously dismissed as nonsense are in fact terrifyingly real. Soon they come face-to-face with darker forces than they could ever have imagined.

The Stranger Times is the first novel from C.K. McDonnell, the pen name of Caimh McDonnell. It combines his distinctive dark wit with his love of the weird and wonderful to deliver a joyous celebration of how truth really can be stranger than fiction.’
Interesting - one review on Goodreads says "a bit like Terry Pratchett meets The Fortean Times".
 
A review I've submitted to FT.

The Hitler Conspiracies
The Third Reich and the Paranoid Imagination
By Richard J. Evans.

Richard Evans sets out to demolish five myths which are popular in revisionist accounts of theThird Reich's history and aftermath. In doing so he has upset not just neo-Nazis but historians both mainstream and amateur. Evans states: "This book is not about real conspiracies It examines five alleged conspiracies" and that "This is a history book for the age of 'post-truth' and 'alternative-facts'.

The protocols of the elders of Zion has long been shown to be a forgery but Evans questions whether it was actually composed by a Russian Spy as he traces the origins of the text. Hitler and Goebells doubted the veracity of the document but used it in their propaganda. Even here Evans suggests that the pamphlet had only an indirect impact on the development of Nazi Anti-Semitic laws and policies. He says that Norman Cohen's views to the contrary attempts to analyse the conspiracy in "psychoanalytical terms'' and is only convincing to followers of Freud.

There is little evidence that Hitler blamed the Jews for "Stabbing The Army In The Back" at the end of World War One. The Nazis were reluctant to put any blame on the Home Front for the military collapse, not wanting to alienate potential voters. General Ludendorff had warned as early as September 1918 that the Germany Army could no longer be relied upon. Hitler held the Kaiser and his ministers responsible for the defeat and the Social Democrats and the Catholic Centre Party for the harsh peace terms.

Hitler and his inner circle used to inflict practical jokes on each other so when Goebbels was first phoned about the Reichstag Fire he hung up thinking he was being pranked. Wilfried Kugel a parapsychologist, suggests that a Seance predicted the fire and the arsonist van der Lubbe was hypnotised by the Nazis into setting it. There is also the more mundane theory of Nazis entering the Reichstag via tunnels from Goering's office to burn down the parliament. Evans convincingly portrays Maximus van der Lubbe as the Lone Matchman.

There is no evidence that Hitler had prior knowledge of Rudolf Hess's flight to Britain but some interesting tales surround the event. When the Duke of Hamilton went to London to brief Churchill on his conversations with Hess, Churchill insisted on watching a Marx Brothers film first. There are many claims of a double being substituted for Hess and the double subsequently being murdered in Spandau, they waited a long time though. The best such theory is by Joseph P. Farrell who includes a Nazi UFO from Antarctica being responsible for Roswell in his Hess survival tale.

Did Hitler escape from the Bunker? A FBI list of reported sightings of him in late 1945 included a Spanish Monastery, an island in the Baltic and living with Bandits in Albania. He was also spotted in Dublin, dressed as a woman; this might fit in with a 1953 report from Argentina when Hitler was riding a ladies bicycle, selling herbs from door to door. .Eva Braun apparently had several daughters with Hitler, one of whom was Angela Merkel. Perhaps the ex-Fuhrer went to live in a Tibetan Monastery, died a remorseful old man in Argentina aged 83; though he might have lived to 98 but he could have flown UFOs in Antarctica, happily unrepentant. More books have been published in the 21st Century about Hitler's survival than in the previous 55 years, there are also documentaries such as Grey Wolf and Hunting Hitler but no real evidence has been unearthed. Hitler was a sick, prematurely aged man in 1945, he died in the Bunker but old and new media keep the survival legend alive.

Evans dispels the myths but his polemics towards his non-revisionist opponents may irk some readers.

8/10.

Páiric O'Corráin.
  • Imprint: Allen Lane
  • Published: 01/10/2020
  • ISBN: 9780241413463
  • Length: 288 Pages
  • Dimensions: 240mm x 28mm x 162mm
  • Weight: 499g
  • RRP: £20.00
 
Run the Storm by George Michelsen Foy (2018)

An account of the sinking of the freighter the SS El Faro in 2015.

Some have criticized it for being overly technical but it isn't and if anything enhances the story as the writer is an ex- merchant mariner himself. You get a real feel for what it is like to be on one of those massive container freighters that supply the world.

A very preventable tragedy that particularly highlights shocking corporate stinginess and lack of any crew resource management training within maritime crews which is ridiculous as it happened so recently. They are light years behind the aircraft industry.

Ships have a similar "cockpit", (bridge), voice recorder that aircraft have and much of the crew's dialogue is repeated in the book and some of it is quite harrowing.

It's a disaster that really sticks with you particularly as you get to know the crew.

My only criticism was the lack of an overview of the investigation itself. I felt it ended rather abruptly.


I had the Audible edition and the narration was by the ever-dependable L J Ganser - he really made it.

8/10.

https://www.amazon.com/Run-Storm-Ge.../ref=tmm_aud_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
 
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I bought a book a while ago from The Book Depository (UK company) but have generally turned my nose up at browsing them. There is a competition in which you could (but I won't) win £100 worth of books by creating a wishlist.

So i thought that I'd give it a go. I'm surprised to find quite a few interesting books in the 'unexplained/paranormal' section, including a few that have been reviewed in the Fortean Times.

So if you're looking for something to read it may be worth having a browse on their website.
 
I bought a book a while ago from The Book Depository (UK company) but have generally turned my nose up at browsing them. There is a competition in which you could (but I won't) win £100 worth of books by creating a wishlist.

So i thought that I'd give it a go. I'm surprised to find quite a few interesting books in the 'unexplained/paranormal' section, including a few that have been reviewed in the Fortean Times.

So if you're looking for something to read it may be worth having a browse on their website.
https://www.bookdepository.com/

https://www.bookdepository.com/category/2848/Unexplained-Phenomena-Paranormal

https://www.bookdepository.com/category/2842/Psychic-Powers-Psychic-Phenomena
 
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