Last Book That You Read- Non- Fiction

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Reading Thrilling Cities.

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Erica Ambler wrote:

Rene J. Francillon's Japanese Aircraft of the Pacific War and R.Crumb's Sex Obsessions. Sinfully heteronormative...

Brilliant.

At home, I tend to be fond of biographies. Have just finished Steve Coogan's 'Easily Distracted' and next up is Sir Rog's 'Last Man Standing'.

Chipping away at:

- Strategy
- The Grocer's Daughter - John Campbell
- Shattered:Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign - Amie Parnes and Jonathan Allen (an amusing read post- 'What Happened?')
- No, Minister - Alan Behm
- THE PROFESSIONALS: STRATEGY, MONEY AND THE RISE OF THE POLITICAL CAMPAIGNER IN AUSTRALIA - Stephen Mills
- The Costello Diaries - Peter Costello
- the Jordan Peterson book.

Recently finished:
- The Road to Ruin - Nikki Savva
- The Gatekeepers - Rhodes and Tiernan
- What Happened? Hillary Clinton
- Discipline Equals Freedom - Jocko Willink

Any insights into these? Realise they're a bit Australian centric.

Genuinely thought 'What Happened?' was a great read, albeit probably not for the reasons the author intended.

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Erica Ambler wrote:

Jordan B. Peterson is an interesting character - still not sure what to make of him; I have 'Maps of Meaning', but it's a hard slog. Yet to read 'Why My Failure Was Everybody Else's Fault' by Hillary Clinton, but it's on my list.

The foreword pitches the Jordan Peterson book interchangeably as a starting point for Maps of Meaning, or a a less dense, more accessible version of it. I've only made it through the infamous lobster essay, it's engaging but it's certainly not a page turner.

There's a good book somewhere in what Clinton wrote but it's not the angle she went with I also didn't need to know about her jalapeno omelettes for breakfast to imagine her fiery shits. At 560 something pages I'd love to know who read the whole thing because I'd suspect I was in the minority of doing so.

It's good to cross reference with Shattered though to see what a lot of she considers highlights were the biggest omnishambles from the campaign's point of view.

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Against Education

by Bryan Caplan

Argues persuasively that America's education system is a bloated, astronomical waste of time and money whose primary function is to signal conformity, diligence and basic intelligence from its inmates to potential employers. We learn very little that is useful and retain only a smattering of what we learn, but if we have that sheepskin (preferably two or three, actually) employers think we're okay. There are better and cheaper ways to ratify our suitability for employment. A book that should be read and heeded, but will not be.

Blake

by Peter Ackroyd

I am still in the middle of it. Very good read, I can only recommend it. Very easy-going for a non-fiction book.

I just find Ackroyd's statement that Blake had real visions difficult to accept. Blake had real visions. Period. I have difficulty with that. How could we know that? There are some wild speculations out there as for what mental disease Blake may have had or why he might have been able to have visions. I do not say that he did not have them. I just say that this is something we cannot understand that easily as outsiders some hundreds of years later. And, having visions was something like a fashion for the poets of the Romantic period. Just saying.
Again, I do not say that he did not have them. I just don't like such a flat and simplified approach to such a difficult matter.

Any other opinions?

I have that feeling that my nerdiness is reaching a new level...Well.

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Fan of Ackroyd's works, I vaguely remember his Blake work though. Recently read his one on Hitchcock which wasn't too bad, Wilkie Collins and Dickens. He's good at the slim volumes -I love his writing.

Currently reading an abridged version of Solzhenitsyn's THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO. This should be compulsory reading in Australia and, if it's not the case already, in every Western school.

The Story of a Soul autobiography of Thérèse of Lisieux

Am currently approaching the end of Fleming's The Diamond Smugglers, must admit despite its relative brevity it's been a bit of a slog ... it's quite a 'dry' read. Apparently Fleming himself was unhappy with it ... he called it a 'poor book' and he expressed annoyance at all the 'libellous' content DeBeers made him remove.

Compared to Thrilling Cities it is, as you say, a dry read. I'm sure I read once it was going to be turned into a film or maybe I'm confusing it with DAF in some shape or form.

To quote from Fergus Fleming's intro in my edition (this is from the paragraph that Ian wrote on the flyleaf of the copy he had bound for his own library) -

'It is adequate journalism but a poor book and necessarily rather 'contrived' though the facts are true'.

And yes, it was due to be a movie (the book was a massive success in its day, shifted hundreds of thousands of copies) but ultimately nothing came of it.

Currently reading Thrilling Cities ... the contrast with The Diamond Smugglers is a marked one. Fleming brings his journalist's insight and thriller writer's curiosity to these travelogue essays, and the results are a delight. It fascinates as a series of 'snapshots' of the world as it was 60 years ago.

Delightful snapshots indeed. Nice summary, BI!

Rereading your post above about The Diamond Smugglers makes me less enthused to reach out and read it. Been sitting on the shelf for several months.

In its favour, it is at least short and there's the occasional glimmer of what you'd expect from Fleming. But overall, maybe the fact that the proposed film version never saw the light of day is telling.

As said, reading Plummer's In Spite of Myself. I think it's the third or fourth time since I first got it from the library eons ago.

In an interview from 2008 I saw this week, it apparently was written over a 15 year period which explains certain remarks to people who passed well before the book came out and so on. Another interview, Theatre Talk I think, had a critic who said this was the best memoir ever.

It's up there. Fandom of Plummer aside, this is a remarkable read. I've read autobiographies/biographies most of my life of all sorts of people and this is frothily entertaining. It certainly feels and sounds like Plummer, not all books even when written by the subject have the sound of the person writing. The stories are entertaining sometimes eyebrow raising and it's unflinching. I mean, some people surely would sugarcoat if gloss over their, shall we say, wanderings. I forget sometimes he did so much theatre and was really more of a stage actor than a film actor and a regret I feel is never getting the chance to see him tread the boards. So many names are mentioned (a funny story about Connery and film execs during Man Who Would Be King) and ultimately at the end, you're sorry it's over.

By way of what I think can safely be called contrast, am currently reading Bruce 'Evil Dead' Campbell's 'If Chins Could Kill : Confessions Of A B-Movie Actor'. Great fun, and the second volume 'Hail To The Chin' is on my 'to read' pile.

IN SEARCH OF BEING by G.I. Gurdjieff.

Makes me wonder if Patrick McGoohan read him.