2019 50 Book Challenge

[Geoffrey Firmin]

17 Your Heart Is A Muscle The Size Of Your Fist by Sunil Yapa

Backdrop Settle WTO demonstrations day one 1999. Pick up Forty Licks play Street Fighting Man then Gimme Shelter.

An ambitious multiplicity of a novel about the disparity between the first and third world, between the winners and losers of globalisation, the peoples right to protest versus the state. Add an estranged son and father, something of a love story. Then mildly spice it up with some Gandhian non-violent protest, which proved totally useless against a self righteous police force defending their city.

Limit the time frame then add a healthy dash of anarchism replay Street Fighting Man. Season with morality, guilt and ethics and you have an interesting novel set on the first day of the protests which were something of a global cultural game changer in 1999.

 

[Geoffrey Firmin]

18 The Strain by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan

I am fan of Del Toro’s films so it was with interest I picked this up in an op shop.

The narrative does take an interesting twist on Vampires as a plague, once I worked that out my dread of another zombie apocalypse story passed. The writing is tight and characterisation pushes the story forward at pace. I’ve haven’t read a horror novel in years and just hope that this is not reflective of the current state of play.

It serves as the first book in a trilogy. Am I inclined to read the other two tomes in this series? No. Would i recommend it? No.

Any way it helped past the time this week getting over a cold.

 

[LonerMatt]

Spoiler: List

1. The Broken Kingdoms
2. The Kingdom of Gods
3. Semiosis
4. Bridge of Clay
5. Blackwater City
6. Bullshit Jobs: a Theory
7. Harry Potter: Goblet of Fire
8. The People vs Tech
9. The Outrun
10 Ancillary Justice
11. Words without Music
12. Digital Minimalism
13. When Rivers Run Dry
14. The Uninhabitable Earth
15. Do we need inequality?
16. Carbon Ideologies: No Immediate Danger

16. Carbon Ideologies: No Immediate Danger

Sprawling 500 page tome (close to 800 with references) that explores such questions as:
- How efficient is coal?
- How much MORE efficient is gas?
- Which greenhouses gases affect the atmosphere? How can we compare them?
- Including the enriching process, does Nuclear offer us much more?
- etc

This is a wildly ambitious book that contains so many charts and tables. The first 200 pages or so are literally the author just making sense of different fuels and comparing them using a standarised measurement (BTU). He moves on the greenhouse gases including a scalding take on HFCs in refrigerators/AC which, allegedly are 'better' than the FLC they replaced, but are still ******* severe.

Throughout the whole book is the cynicism of someone who sees today's problems as inevitable, and the price we pay less than the cost (at a social level). This is a deeply despairing book and one that demonstrates that even with good information, the incentive to act just does not exist.

Extremely dry, MUCH closer to a textbook than a novel.

 

[Fueco]

32. Tristessa by Jack Kerouac

 

[Harold falcon]

Twenty-something. Dirty White Boys by Stephen Hunter.

Entertaining story of an ad hoc family of thieves, murderers, buggers, and an artist who go on the run pursued by a policeman with holes in his chest and his personal life. Well written, exciting pace, satisfying payoff. Tangentially related to the Bob Lee Swagger Point of Impact novels.

3.5/5.

 

[noob in 89]

What is a bugger?

 

[Geoffrey Firmin]

19 Capital City Gentrification and the Real Estate State by Samuel Stein

Once upon a time a house used to be a home, then at some stage and depending on its location in the Urbane landscape it became a line of credit. This study follows the changing face of the city via gentrification and dispossession as it occurred and still occurs in New York following the decline of Western urban industrialisation and the manufacturing sector combined with Neo Liberal ideology, the arrival of the creative class and the transformation of real estate in to the principal commodity of the City.

A timely study, its premise and core argument and concept of the Real Estate State is easily translatable to any contemporary city environment. Case in point in Sydney why should public housing tenants have million dollar views when said property could be better used by the state to sell off to the highest bidder, and attract a more effluent class of citizens. Millers Point in Sydney being a case in point or the demolition of public housing on Northbourne Avenue in Canberra to provide accommodation to Civics drones who can now get to work courtesy of the new light rail system.

Also looks at the Donald and his remarkable back room dealings in getting city taxpayers to fund his dreams of real estate avarice. Progressive social commentary at its best.

 

[Geoffrey Firmin]

What is a bugger?

 

[LonerMatt]

Spoiler: List

1. The Broken Kingdoms
2. The Kingdom of Gods
3. Semiosis
4. Bridge of Clay
5. Blackwater City
6. Bullshit Jobs: a Theory
7. Harry Potter: Goblet of Fire
8. The People vs Tech
9. The Outrun
10 Ancillary Justice
11. Words without Music
12. Digital Minimalism
13. When Rivers Run Dry
14. The Uninhabitable Earth
15. Do we need inequality?
16. Carbon Ideologies: No Immediate Danger
17. The Secret Life of Trees

17. The Secret Life of Trees

A largely dull fluff piece about how great trees are. I think trees are amazing, and this was a really dull book. Several interesting sections exist, but they are few and far between. 3 good ideas crammed into a turgid reading experience. Many friends and family love this book, so maybe I'm missing something.

 

[California Dreamer]

What is a bugger?

Context is everything. It all stems from buggery, the renowned hobby of English private school buys. "Bugger it" is a mild expletive signifying what the expleter would like to see done to "it". Something being "a bugger" means that it is mildly unfortunate or annoying, of the degree that your typical English aristocrat scion would consider being required to participate in said activity by a senior student. Calling someone a "silly bugger" is an almost affectionate attempt at an insult tinged with the wry acknowledgment that the subject of your insult is inadequate to the task of gaining release through the regular means.

 

[Geoffrey Firmin]

20 The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes; The Adventures of The Great Detective in India and Tibet by Jamyang Norbu

“When you have excluded the impossible,whatever remains, however impossible, must be the truth.” And so beings the adventures of Sherlock Holmes in India and Thibet.

Based on the ideas in the Conan Doyle novel The Empty House where Holmes explains upon his return to London how he survived the Reichenbach Falls. He informs the good Doctor Watson he had been traveling in India and Tibet. Then add one of the central characters of Kipling’s Kim. As the narrator and Holme’s assistant Babuji Hurree Chunder Mookerjee Fellow of the Royal Society London and Imperial spy.

Jamyang Norbu spins out a stirring tale of the sojourn of Sherlock Holmes in India and Tibet via a rollicking tale of murder, adventure and mysticism. The author deftly captures the essential character and style of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock blended with Kipling’s India and a healthy addition of Tibetan buddhist mystique to the tale. Highly recommended.

 

[California Dreamer]

Spoiler: Previously Read

1. Andy Kaufman: The Truth, Finally, by Bob Zmuda and Lynne Margulies
2. Illustrado, by Miguel Syjuco
3. Kill 'Em All, by John Niven[
4. The Black Monday Murders, volume 1: All Hail God Mammon, by Jonathon Hickman
5. Bad News, by Edward St. Aubyn
6. Education, by Tara Westover
7. Europe: A Natural History, by Tim Flannery
8. No Tomorrow, by Luke Jennings
9. Scrublands, by Chris Hammer
10. The Kingdom, by Fuminori Nakamura
11. The White Darkness, by David Grann
12. Sacred Cesium Ground and Isa's Deluge, by Yusuke Kimura
13. The Black Monday Murders, Volume 2: The Scales, by Jonathon Hickman
14. Dark Echoes of the Past, by Roman Diaz Eterovic
15. Acute Misfortune, by Erik Jensen
16. The Low Road, by Chris Womersley
17. Steve Smith's Men: Behind Australian Cricket's Fall, by Geoff Lemon
18. River of Salt, by Dave Warner
19. City of a Million Dreams, by Jason Berry
20. Nagaland, by Ben Doherty
21. Queen of Kenosha, by Howard Shapiro
22. Daisy Jones and the Six, by Taylor Jenkins Reid
23. Saga, Volume One (Eps 1-3), by Brian
24. The Forest of Wool and Steel, by Natsu Miyashita

25. The Waiter, by Matias Faldbakken

The waiter is a hidebound traditionalist working at one of Oslo's foremost dining establishments, The Hills. He exists to serve, but also has high expectations of his guests and his colleagues in terms of their conduct within The Hills' hallowed environs.

At the outset, the waiter is a man in command of his surroundings, albeit under pressure. His aloof demeanour begins to be disturbed when a beautiful ingenue his thinks of as Child Lady arrives and starts breaching protocols, such as showing up an hour late and ordering quadruple espressos. Child Lady begins to exert her charms on other regular guests and the increased departures from the waiter's stiff, formal routines begin to leave him frazzled and his equilibrium starts a steady slide into chaos.

This idea has the makings of a good comedy in the style of Wodehouse, for example, or of a neat parable about the folly of tradition for the sake of it in a modern world. Sadly, it is neither; it is just a character study about the gradual discombobulation of somebody that the author doesn't really succeed in making you care about anyway.

26. Manchester Happened, by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

* I would like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to review this book. *

This is a collection of short stories from Ugandan writer Jennifer Makumbi about the experiences of (mostly) women emigrating from Africa to live in Manchester, and the struggles that they encounter immersed in a foreign culture. The stories in the second half of the book deal with emigrants returning home to find that they no longer quite fit in Uganda either.

These stories reminded me very much of Junot Diaz, in that Makumbi is adept at immersing the reader in the language and culture of an ethnic enclave living in a foreign city. Like Diaz, she has some recurring characters that she builds a narrative arc for across different stories. The collection is carefully put together and shines quite a different light on the emigrant experience.[/QUOTE]

 

[Geoffrey Firmin]

Context is everything. It all stems from buggery, the renowned hobby of English private school buys.

Oh that sort of bugger!

 

[LonerMatt]

Spoiler: List

1. The Broken Kingdoms
2. The Kingdom of Gods
3. Semiosis
4. Bridge of Clay
5. Blackwater City
6. Bullshit Jobs: a Theory
7. Harry Potter: Goblet of Fire
8. The People vs Tech
9. The Outrun
10 Ancillary Justice
11. Words without Music
12. Digital Minimalism
13. When Rivers Run Dry
14. The Uninhabitable Earth
15. Do we need inequality?
16. Carbon Ideologies: No Immediate Danger
17. The Secret Life of Trees
18. Educated

18. Educated

Tour de Force. Way better than the blurb (which is already interesting). Master class in restraint, pacing and depth. Avoids all caricature (which would have been easy) and manages to cover an impressive breadth of story and backstory.

 

[California Dreamer]

Spoiler: Previously Read

1. Andy Kaufman: The Truth, Finally, by Bob Zmuda and Lynne Margulies
2. Illustrado, by Miguel Syjuco
3. Kill 'Em All, by John Niven[
4. The Black Monday Murders, volume 1: All Hail God Mammon, by Jonathon Hickman
5. Bad News, by Edward St. Aubyn
6. Education, by Tara Westover
7. Europe: A Natural History, by Tim Flannery
8. No Tomorrow, by Luke Jennings
9. Scrublands, by Chris Hammer
10. The Kingdom, by Fuminori Nakamura
11. The White Darkness, by David Grann
12. Sacred Cesium Ground and Isa's Deluge, by Yusuke Kimura
13. The Black Monday Murders, Volume 2: The Scales, by Jonathon Hickman
14. Dark Echoes of the Past, by Roman Diaz Eterovic
15. Acute Misfortune, by Erik Jensen
16. The Low Road, by Chris Womersley
17. Steve Smith's Men: Behind Australian Cricket's Fall, by Geoff Lemon
18. River of Salt, by Dave Warner
19. City of a Million Dreams, by Jason Berry
20. Nagaland, by Ben Doherty
21. Queen of Kenosha, by Howard Shapiro
22. Daisy Jones and the Six, by Taylor Jenkins Reid
23. Saga, Volume One (Eps 1-3), by Brian
24. The Forest of Wool and Steel, by Natsu Miyashita
25. The Waiter, by Matias Faldbakken
26. Manchester Happened, by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

27. This body's Not Big Enough For Both of Us, by Edgar Cantero

Edgar Cantero has come up with a truly bizarre character for this detective novel. Kimrean suffers from an incredibly rare chromosomal disorder, being two persons equally sharing the one body. They are male and female. The male, Adrian, owns the left brain, and so he is 100% logic and rational thought. The female, Zooey, owns the right brain and she operates purely from aesthetics and impulse. The two switch control of the body between themselves at unpredictable moments.

That have set up a private investigator's office in San Francisco, and Adrian's peerless logical thought makes him an in-demand resource for the local cops, at least those that can deal with such a bizarre person. However Adrian cannot prevent Zooey from taking over at the most inopportune times, resulting in a Kimrean that acts out her impulses with no rational thought at all.

Cantero is a cartoonist, and you could easily see this concept working well in graphic novel format. The characters and action are overblown and silly at times, and the narration bristles with wise-cracking and jokes. The plot, surrounding the death of a local mobster and the subsequent repercussions, is pretty good and Cantero gets a few good plot twists and red herrings in. He did lose me a bit at the end, but overall I thought this was a unique take on the PI genre and a lot of fun.