What have you just READ?

[Urinator]

Almost through the Rum Diary by Hunter S. Thompson. But the one I last read completely through was Henry Rollins' Black Coffee Blues, that book was the shit.

[Bobbobthebob]

The Martian by Anthony Weir
An astronaut on one of the first few missions to Mars is left for dead after an accident during an evacuation in a sandstorm. He wakes up, injured, abandoned and running out of air with no realistic expectation of rescue. It kinda turns into Robinson Crusoe meets MacGuyver on Mars. The author's a NASA engineer and his expertise on this stuff really shines through. The problems and issues are believable, the solutions make sense and are explained sometimes in excruciating detail (which as an engineering grad I enjoyed). The characterisation and writing is about as bad as most airport novels but it was such a page-turner I didn't care too much. I'm looking forward to this being on the big screen.

So You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson
Jon Ronson (journalist & author of The Men Who Stare at Goats amongst others) writes about the increasing phenomenon of public shaming via social media. It's really interesting as he delves into how shame was used in smaller pre-modern societies and why it was abandoned in favor of less public punishments for wrongdoers - contrary to popular opinion it wasn't because shame didn't work in larger city-sized communities but that it was considered unusually cruel and inhibited reform by stripping all dignity from the punished. These days we don't even have judges to decide who gets shamed and harangued. It's a digital form of mob justice that really does wreck lives and careers while those everyday individuals within the mob fairly promptly forget about it and move on to the next "complete bastard" of the moment. It's framed around several cases, many of which you'll dully recall as you read it. The aftermath for many of the victims is pretty bad.

Exterminate All the Brutes by Sven Lindqvist
A Swedish author's dreamlike travelogue of visiting Mali in the early '90s while simultaneously cogitating on the history of the region, the exterminationist policies of the European empires and linking a direct connection from them to the later ideologies of Nazism (if you have a view of progress that sees "lesser peoples" inevitably falling by the wayside in the name of science, it's actually supposedly a mercy if you actively get rid of them as quickly as possible. Just expand the "lesser peoples" group to non-Germans and you have the Holocaust).

Currently reading Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie - a sci fi novel which won a whole pile of awards last year. Still in the disorientated early stages of it but it's p. good so far.

[Silkie]

The Last Hero. Illustrated Hardback. I spotted this bargain at a little local book fair in mint condition and although it's shorter than most Terry Pratchett books it comes with some fantastic illustrations by Paul Kidby. Very enjoyable and quite a smart looking book.

[ListerofSMEG-2]

Tortillas to Totems by Sam Manicom

A bloke who went on a motorbike tour round Europe and ended up travelling the globe for 8 years. This is the last part of 4 books detailing central America to the USA.

Also have read Jupiter's Travels & Dreaming of Jupiter by Ted Simon (Motorbike adventurer)

The Long Ride Home by Nathan Milward - bloke riding a 110cc Aussie post bike from Sydney to London in order to get over being dumped!

Love my adventuring books me