What are you reading now?

[George K]

@bachophile, some website had a list of the "Best Spy Books."

Of course, "Tinker, Tailor..." was on the list and other well-known books.

"Damascus Station" is on that list. I've not read McCloskey's books - any good?

[bachophile]

Yes I enjoyed Damascus station. The author is ex CIA so I guess that helps with the realism.

But it’s not Le carre . Nothing is Le carre.

[Aqua Letifer]

You can read it for free here: https://d.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/text/robinson-merlin

Robinson was a fucking master. Some great lines in the first few chapters:

Time swings a mighty scythe, and some day all your peace goes down before its edge like so much clover.

You are young Gawaine, and you may one day hold the world between your fingers, knowing not what it is that you are holding. Better for you and me, I think, that we shall not be kings.

The Devil got somehow into God’s workshop once upon a time, and out of the red clay that he found there he made a shape like Modred, and another as like as eyes are to this Agravaine. ‘I never made ‘em,” said the good Lord God, ‘But let ‘em go, and see what comes of ‘em.’ And that’s what we’re to do.

[George K]

I've been a fan of Alastair Reynolds' science fiction for a while. His books are complicated, dense, and, with him being a retired astrophysicist. he gets the science right.

The first book of his that I read was "The Prefect."

Tom Dreyfus is a Prefect, a policeman of sorts, and one of the best. His force is Panoply, and his beat is the multi-faceted utopian society of the Glitter Band, that vast swirl of space habitats orbiting the planet Yellowstone. These days, his job is his life.

A murderous attack against a Glitter Band habitat is nasty, but it looks to be an open-and-shut case – until Dreyfus starts looking under some stones that some very powerful people would really rather stayed unturned. What he uncovers is far more serious than mere gruesome murder… a covert takeover bid by a shadowy figure, Aurora (who may once have been human but certainly isn’t now), who believes the people of the Glitter Band should no longer be in charge of their own destiny.
Dreyfus discovers that to save something precious, you may have to destroy part of it.

Really enjoyed it so, when the sequel came out, I devoured it.

Prefect Tom Dreyfus has a new emergency on his hands. Across the habitats and their hundred million citizens, people are dying suddenly and randomly, victims of a bizarre and unprecedented malfunction of their neural implants. And these “melters” leave no clues behind as to the cause of their deaths

Now, there's a third one:

I'd forgotten much of "Elysium Fire," so I'm re-reading that one before jumping into "Machine Vendetta."

Really enjoying it. HIs stuff is as complicated as anything by Frank Herbert.

The "Prefect" books are prequels to the series of books that make up his "Revelation Space" universe.

Highly recommended. The books are dense, rich and somewhat difficult.

[kluurs]

Just started reading this one. For a brief time, I had two complete sets of the OED - 1st and 2nd editions - but I'm down to one.

Both the Professor and madman are intriguing. The "Professor" quit school at 14 - was largely self-taught; however, he did have some skills which he enumerated in a letter applying for a position with the British Museum Library. Sadly, his qualifications were deemed inadequate.

Interestingly, his linguistic skills seem quite impressive, especially when we consider how assiduously most students in this country avoid second languages.

*I have to state that Philology, both Comparative and Special, has been my favorite pursuit during the whole of my life, and that I possess a general acquaintance with the languages and literature of the Aryan and Syro-Arabic classes—not indeed to say that I'm familiar with all or nearly all of these, but that I possess that general lexical & structural knowledge which makes the intimate knowledge only a matter of a little application. With several I have a more intimate acquaintance as with the Romance tongues, Italian, French, Catalan, Spanish, Latin & in a less degree Portuguese, Vaudois, Provencal, & various dialects. In the Teutonic branch, I am tolerably familiar with Dutch (having at my place of business correspondence to read in Dutch, German, French & occasionally other languages), Flemish, German and Danish. In Anglo-Saxon and Moeso-Gothic my studies have been much closer, I having prepared some works for publication upon these languages. I know a little of the Celtic, and am at present engaged with the Sclavonic, having obtained a useful knowledge of Russian. In the Persian, Achaenenian Cuneiform, & Sanscrit branches, I know for the purposes of Comparative Philology. have sufficient knowledge of Hebrew & Syriac to read at sight the Old Testament and Peshito; to a less degree I know Aramaic Arabic, Coptic and Phenecian to the point where it was left by Gesenius.*italicised text

[taiwan_girl]

@kluurs I read that one. Quite interesting how they went through getting the word entries for the dictionary.

[Aqua Letifer]

@kluurs great book. (I think @George-K told me to read it?)

Sadly, I don't think OED is the same as it used to be. For my money, I much prefer the AHD, the only dictionary I am aware of that (1) is American and (2) provides both prescriptive and descriptive definitions.

[bachophile]

[George K]

Finished books 2 & 3 of the "Prefect Dreyfus" series by Reynolds. Enjoyed them - a lot.

Got me thinking...the third book has lots of references to events from book 1 ("The Prefect/Aurora Rising"), so I started a re-read of that yesterday.

Such a great tale.

[Aqua Letifer]

@George-K said in What are you reading now?:

Finished books 2 & 3 of the "Prefect Dreyfus" series by Reynolds. Enjoyed them - a lot.

Got me thinking...the third book has lots of references to events from book 1 ("The Prefect/Aurora Rising"), so I started a re-read of that yesterday.

Such a great tale.

On deck for me. Just gotta finish one of the other three I have going on right now.

[George K]

Finished the re-read of "The Prefect" this afternoon. I'd forgotten what a great tale it is.

Yeah, some parts could have been shorter (a LOT shorter), but I thoroughly enjoyed it as a re-do.

[George K]

I started reading the second book in Ann Leslie's "Ancillary" series, "Ancillary Sword," but I've just found it tedious. I suppose I'll finish it, but in the meantime, I thought this might be a nice diversion.

I've only read this once, back in 1982 (?). Some say it's better-written than Dune, so we'll see.

Halfway through, and really enjoying it.

[taiwan_girl]

Very good book about a very very terrible organization. I had heard of the KKK before, but did not really know the background or its history. It is a non-fiction book

A historical thriller by the Pulitzer and National Book Award-winning author that tells the riveting story of the Klan's rise to power in the 1920s, the cunning con man who drove that rise, and the woman who stopped them.

The Roaring Twenties--the Jazz Age--has been characterized as a time of Gatsby frivolity. But it was also the height of the uniquely American hate group, the Ku Klux Klan. Their domain was not the old Confederacy, but the Heartland and the West. They hated Blacks, Jews, Catholics and immigrants in equal measure, and took radical steps to keep these people from the American promise. And the man who set in motion their takeover of great swaths of America was a charismatic charlatan named D.C. Stephenson.

[Horace]

Not much has changed since then, unfortunately. The KKK is as terrifying as ever, and courageous women are still standing in their way.

[taiwan_girl]

@Horace said in What are you reading now?:

Not much has changed since then, unfortunately. The KKK is as terrifying as ever, and courageous women are still standing in their way.

I think fortunately that they are not very popular now.

[Horace]

@taiwan_girl said in What are you reading now?:

@Horace said in What are you reading now?:

Not much has changed since then, unfortunately. The KKK is as terrifying as ever, and courageous women are still standing in their way.

I think fortunately that they are not very popular now.

KKK members will vote for Trump. And Trump, according to polling, is likely to be our next president.

[Renauda]

@Horace

KKK members will vote for Trump. And Trump, according to polling, is likely to be our next president.

Of course they will. Only a fool would expect them to vote for either Biden or RFK Jr.. Both are Catholic or, at least, nominally so.

[Mik]

Winter Counts.

"Virgil Wounded Horse is the local enforcer on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. When justice is denied by the American legal system or the tribal council, Virgil is hired to deliver his own punishment, the kind that’s hard to forget. But when heroin makes its way into the reservation and finds Virgil’s nephew, his vigilantism suddenly becomes personal. He enlists the help of his ex-girlfriend and sets out to learn where the drugs are coming from, and how to make them stop.

They follow a lead to Denver and find that drug cartels are rapidly expanding and forming new and terrifying alliances. And back on the reservation, a new tribal council initiative raises uncomfortable questions about money and power. As Virgil starts to link the pieces together, he must face his own demons and reclaim his Native identity. He realizes that being a Native American in the twenty-first century comes at an incredible cost.

Winter Counts is a tour-de-force of crime fiction, a bracingly honest look at a long-ignored part of American life, and a twisting, turning story that’s as deeply rendered as it is thrilling."

[George K]

I think the movie version is available to adult users in Texas.

[taiwan_girl]

Really good book. It gives (I think) a good view of the world drug issue and shows that it is not a simple good guys vs. bad guys. The UWSA (United Wa State Army) is a pseudo-country within Myanmar. It functions as its own country (government, interstructure, taxation, military, etc.). The Myanmar army is not powerful enough to take them over, so they let them exist up in the northeast mountains. Not very well known in the US, but the border of Wa State goes up against Thailand - right up by Mae Hong Son area that I went to a couple of years ago.

They got their start growing poppies for heroin, as that was the only crop that grew well in the mountain soil. US wanted them to stop doing it, but provided no real alternative. Stop poppy growing, nothing else grows, no money for the people.......

Recommended to read.

In this gripping history, NPR correspondent Winn (Hello, Shadowlands) follows the Wa people—a tribe situated along the Burma-China border and best known for head-hunting—over the last half-century as they established the United Wa State Army, an independent government in control of a 30,000-man fighting force and a colossal drug cartel that produced heroin and later switched to manufacturing methamphetamine. The book centers on several Wa figures, including Saw Lu, a Baptist who fought to unite and modernize his people (he led a successful campaign in the 1960s to get them to stop head-hunting) and to wean them off drug trafficking, all while serving as an informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration; and his nemesis Wei Xuegang, the secretive criminal genius who turned the UWSA into the dominant cartel in Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle region. Stirring the pot is the feud between the DEA, which backed Saw Lu, and the CIA, which nurtured the drug trade and sabotaged Saw Lu’s efforts. Part gangster saga, part espionage thriller, and part liberation epic, Winn’s narrative alternates between rollicking adventure and harrowing violence conveyed in vivid, muscular prose. It’s a riveting portrait of how deeply the drug trade is embedded in Southeast Asia’s modernizing economies—and in America’s foreign policy.