What book are you reading atm?? CHAPTER TWO

“Twelve Days” by Victor Sebestyen. The story of the Hungarian uprising of 1956 and the subsequent crushing of it by the Soviets.

Just getting to the revolution itself about halfway through the book. First half is the lead up to it from the end of WW2. Very interesting and well written account so far.

I haven't read a book all year, until I got a kindle paperwhite on monday. I've read through two books, One of Our Thursdays is Missing by Jasper Fforde and The Rithmatist by Brandon Sanderson. I didn't realize that The Rithmatist was the first book in a series, and he hasn't started writing the second one yet. Now I'm reading The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins.

Being The Supervet: How Animals Saved My Life by Noel Fitzpatrick

This book sees Noel chronicle his journey through a stressful overtreatment complaint review, recovery from a broken neck, the introduction of Ricochet into his life, his numerous challenging veterinary cases and his mental health struggles over the years.

Same here it was a great read too. Getting through Messiah much slower now though

Just finished Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. It was awful, am gutted as I loved Jonathon Strange and Mr. Norrell.

The Darkness Echoing: Exploring Ireland's Places of Famine, Death and Rebellion by Gillian O'Brien

The author is a historian with a special interest in Ireland's Dark Toursim, e.g. Spike Island After Dark Tours, etc. I really enjoyed this book as O'Brien travels around Ireland visiting tourist sites, museums, prisons, forts, castles, battlesites and cemeteries. This book has definitely helped to add to number of places that I would like to visit.

My 12yr old son is military mad, and has started to take an interest in the Irish Defence Forces.

Would it be a suitable read for a youngster? Is there any adult themes or language?

Sally Rooney' s latest book, Beautiful World. I'm finding it a bit tough going, the charters are so one dimensional, pretentious and up their own you know what. At lot of emails between the two main characters going on about climate change, left wing politics and saving the world.

Now part of the problem is that I've also just started Shuggie Bains by Douglas Stuart which really couldn't be a more polar opposite book about a child growing up in the slums of Glasglow in 1980s/1990s with an parent who is an alcoholic.

I know its really not fair to be reading the two books together but really if the characters in Sally Rooneys novel represent the twenty somethings of today then god help us all!

It's most likely just represents the people in Rooney's world and the people in Stuarts and is no true reflection on either generation as a whole

About to start One Day , by David Nicholls , I think.

Finished Women Talking last week, snuck in a quick re-read of Stephen King's Joyland for pleasure after such a stark subject, then started Emma Donoghue's Frog Music today.

^^ Yep, Band of Brothers is excellent.

Reading two books again:

Simon Winder, Danubia. A Personal History of Habsburg Europe: "plunges the reader into a maelstrom of alchemy, royalty, skeletons, jewels, bear-moats, unfortunate marriages and a guinea-pig village. Full of music, piracy, religion and fighting, it is the history of a strange dynasty, and the people they ruled, who spoke many different languages, lived in a vast range of landscapes, believed in rival gods and often showed a marked ingratitude towards their oddball ruler in Vienna."

Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad: "Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, this #1 New York Times bestseller chronicles a young slave's adventures as she makes a desperate bid for freedom in the antebellum South."

With the band Genesis on tour for almost certainly the last time, I read Mike Rutherford's autobiography The Living Years. The title is from the Mike & the Mechanics song, and he does discuss his father a little in the book, but the book is understandably mostly about the band that made him his millions.

It's a fairly bland book in general, with some funny / WTF stories particularly from the early years when they really had it rough. One example is driving hundreds of miles to play a working man's club for not much money, then sleeping on the club changing room floor because they couldn't afford any hotels in those days. He admits to doing some dumb things, such as getting caught carrying "a square foot" of weed back from the USA through Heathrow, then lying about his criminal record whenever he went back to the USA over the following decades.

He's generally nice about everyone in the book, but with two occasional exceptions: Tony Banks and himself. For example, he says they were both thoughtless and insensitive about others such as Peter Gabriel, who (he says) was thinking about leaving the band to work in Hollywood, but wasn't exactly encouraged by the lack of sympathy when his newborn baby nearly died. Some of the things Mike says about Tony are the kinds of things you can imagine Tony saying about himself, comments on his quirks and personality, but there were reports that he was unhappy that Mike said them. He says worse things about himself, though and has mostly positive things to say about Phil Collins.

South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami

This is the fourth Murakami novel I've read after Norwegian Wood, Sputnik Sweetheart and Kafka on the Shore. The story is closer to the first two: a man who likes music and reading becomes a bit obsessed about a woman. There's also the usual nostalgia, uncanny coincidences and grievong. It's not a long book but it did take me a while to get into. Enjoying it now with about a hundred pages to go.