A few friends are on my Christmas gift list, where I send them ten of the books I have most enjoyed reading in the year, wrapped in brown paper, string and ceiling wax, from Mr. B\u2019s Bookshop in Bath.\u00a0 \u00a0 This year these were my ten gift books.<\/p>\n
A Legacy of Spies\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 John Le Carr\u00e9<\/p>\n
The Golden House\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Salman Rushdie<\/p>\n
Dead is Good\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Jo Perry<\/p>\n
An Officer and a Spy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Robert Harris<\/p>\n
The Comedians\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Graham Greene<\/p>\n
Prussian Blue\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Philip Kerr<\/p>\n
How To Build a Universe\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Professor Brian Cox and Robin Ince<\/p>\n
The Hand\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Georges Simenon.<\/p>\n
The Bomb Maker by Thomas Perry would have made it but of course it\u2019s only just now in the shops.<\/p>\n
Happy New Year and have a great year of reading.<\/p>\n
I spent most of the month reading this great narrative of World War Two. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Then I found\u2026.<\/p>\n
A most wonderful read and a really informative book especially right after reading Anthony Beevor\u2019s World War Two where I was constantly asking myself how could anybody do this.\u00a0\u00a0 Here is the answer.\u00a0\u00a0 They become a junkie.\u00a0 Crystal meth, amphetamine, coke, morphine, half the Supreme Command was on something, and Hitler was on everything.\u00a0\u00a0 At the end his doctor\/dealer could hardly find a vein.\u00a0 The German army, navy and pilots were fed amphetamine to stay awake.\u00a0 Blitzkrieg?\u00a0\u00a0 How did the army move so fast and without stopping?\u00a0\u00a0 Easy: Pervitin, a form of speed manufactured in enormous quantities by Merck to keep the armies rolling and the factories churning.\u00a0 Why did the army stop and not continue their charge to obliterate the English at Dunkirk?\u00a0 Hitler gave a stoner command!\u00a0 \u00a0How did he condemn an entire Army to die at Stalingrad? \u00a0\u00a0Crystal meth.\u00a0\u00a0 Locked away in his bunkers he felt invincible.\u00a0\u00a0 Possessed of super powers.\u00a0 This is an important book to read and solves some of the many puzzles about the war.\u00a0\u00a0 You can even begin to feel slightly sorry for the Germans, especially at the end when kids were given speed to help them face the Red Army. Ironically, much of the stuff was grown at Dachau.\u00a0\u00a0 Oh the unspeakable ironies of History.\u00a0 This is also downright fucking hilarious.\u00a0\u00a0 The picture of the Fuhrer at the end in his bunker, strung out, suffering from withdrawal symptoms, drooling, shaking with reality finally breaking in is just wonderful.\u00a0 We should check the Doctors of our leaders.<\/p>\n
Just saying\u2026<\/p>\n
Another very fine tale from the Master of Maigret.\u00a0\u00a0 He is a constant bright spot in the months reading.<\/p>\n
I very much enjoyed these excellent essays. He is particularly good on the film industry and the horrors of being a screenwriter.\u00a0 In fact I enjoyed him so much I turned to:<\/p>\n
which I enjoyed all of.\u00a0 \u00a0I also bought three of his novels at Iliad but then realized I had already read:<\/p>\n
And I wasn\u2019t knocked out by the other two.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Too Irish too Catholic too much dialogue.<\/p>\n
The thriller element is potentially very good but nothing much happens while they talk and talk.\u00a0 And Apostolic intrigue is not interesting, not even when Trollope did it.<\/p>\n
Each year the surprisingly nice Jeffery sends me his latest book, and last year he said sadly that I never read them.\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s not true.\u00a0\u00a0 This year I had seen and bought this book of short stories before I even opened my mail.\u00a0\u00a0 I enjoyed them very much.\u00a0 He is a real writer, not just an enormous world-wide best-selling author!\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That\u2019ll teach me to be a book snob.<\/p>\n
My old friend Stephen warned me that I wouldn\u2019t like this book, but I read and enjoyed a lot more than he would expect.<\/p>\n
Despite a very churlish intro from me this is a wonderful book.\u00a0 They have made it as simple as possible to understand as much as possible about the Universe and I really recommend it to everyone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A few friends are on my Christmas gift list, where I send them ten of the books I have most enjoyed reading in the year, wrapped in brown paper, string and ceiling wax, from Mr. B\u2019s Bookshop in Bath.\u00a0 \u00a0 This year these were my ten gift books. A Legacy of Spies\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 John Le Carr\u00e9 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=696"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":697,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696\/revisions\/697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}