I’ve heard stories of people reading *The Jungle * and being turned into vegetarians from the experience. I’ve read The Jungle and did not feel the least bit inclined to become a vegetarian. Just what do people think goes on in a slaughterhouse anyway?
I just know that if I were more clever I could extract a Soylent Green joke from this.
I think for many people it wasn’t the slaughtering per se, but the description of the conditions and needlessly harmful acts that turned them veg.
Finished Skinny Dip, by Carl Hiassen, and am about to start McAuslan in the Rough, by George MacDonald Fraser.
Uh oh. Nothing to shout about, huh? 
Excellent choice!
When you are through with the McAuslan books, you may want to read his autobiography of his experiences in Burma during WW2, called Quartered safe Out Here. One of the best WW2 memoirs around.
On my recent 9+ hour plane rides, I read The Other Boleyn Girl, Rebecca, and Water For Elephants. Currently I’m reading a People magazine and trying to recover from jet lag. 
I’m behind in my reviews, but that reflects my workload this week, not the books. I’ll catch up soon, I promise. Reading a book in the tub by the people who started Lonely Planet; on the treadmill, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, and in bed, The Social Lives of Medicines. I saw some of my undergrads reading The Glass Castle (assigned by another instructor) rather than foraging for coffee on break, so it must be good.
Just finished Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson. Lovely, unsentimental story of a boy’s summer with his dad in a cabin in Norway. Amazon US only has used copies, but Amazon UK has new ones. This one won a big award in Europe, and it’s amazing.
Now reading New Grub Street by George Gissing and am enjoying it.
Barbara Tuchman, The March of Folly . Written in the 1980’s, it’s about how “wooden-headed” governments wind up shooting themselves in the feet through certain military endeavours. It has four sections, including one on the British Empire’s loss of her American colonies, and another on Vietnam (from 1945 on). Just about every page evokes a parallel to the U.S.'s situation in Iraq today.
Father Knows Less: One Dad’s Quest to Answer His Son’s Most Baffling Questions, by Wendell Jamieson.
Well, he’s no Cecil Adams. I’ve been on the verge of tossing it aside more than once, but each entry is short, so it’s a good fit for my ten-minutes-a-day-during-breakfast reading time.
I just finished The English Passengers, already mentioned a couple of times in this thread, and enjoyed it very much. Also I read Joe Haldeman’s newest book The Accidental Time Machine. It’s a straightforward little time travel story, but Haldeman’s stuff is always pretty good.
Now I’m halfway through Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth. I was really annoyed in the beginning by the author’s writing style - it’s choppy and repetitive, and the inner voice for every character sounds childlike. But I’ve gotten accustomed to it, and I’m hooked on the story now.
Finished and loved Water for Elephants, re-read Sense and Sensibility and now I’m on a Vietnam kick.
I’m reading and really enjoying up Country, by Nelson DeMille, Lizzie’s War by Tim Farrington and I just started Nam-a-rama, by Phillip Jennings.
I hope I don’t get 'em all mixed up.
I just finished Annie Freeman’s Fabulous Traveling Funeral. The idea is charming, really, and I like the characters, but the writing isn’t very good. I’d classify it as heavy-handed cosmic. (Really, I was tempted to count the number of times she used the word cosmic in the kitchy, New Age sense.) I probably would have put it down if I hadn’t been reading it for my book group.
I’ll be interested to hear how you like Lizzie’s War, koeeoaddi. I’ve read several of Tim Farrington’s books and really enjoyed them.
Up next: Freedom and Necessity.
GT
Would love to, but the private library I belong to does not have it. I love Fraser’s work, and I assume McAuslan in the Rough and **The General Danced at Dawn ** are largely autobiographical. You can find some of the Flashman series in a few of the bookstores here, but that’s about it.
From now until eternity, it seems I’ll be reading off my dystopian-must-reads. I’m on the last 20 pages of Brave New World, I’m dying to start Oryx and Crake, after that, I’ll toss in a few Guns, Germs and Steel, then probably Lathe of Heaven.
I must say, this kick I’m on has really lit my fire for reading again, I never, ever am not reading something, but since I’ve started this, I’m plowing through them.
P.S. I really didn’t like A Canticle for Liebowitz. I really must have missed out on something significant the way people praise it.
I dig *The Lathe of Heaven. * I use excerpts sometimes when I teach professional ethics. Plus my first images of Portland were formed when I read it and it’s pleasing to superimpose those images on actual Portland (where Le Guin lives).
You assume correctly, I believe.
The difference of course is that the “McAuslan” books mostly take place after the end of the war, and are mostly comedies (indeed, some of them are hysterically funny); his straight autobiography is his record of the War, and moving and tragic rather than funny (though it has its moments of humour as well).
Anyway, it is obviously not going to be easy to find in Thailand … something to keep in mind when the opportunity arises.
For example, as a result of reading that book, I got interested is Field Marshal Slim, who also wrote an autobiography - but it was years before I read it. It was very good, too. Slim is one of the most underrated generals of WW2, and not a bad writer, at that.
Guns, Germs and Steel isn’t a dystopian book, though; a more dystopian selection by the same authour (again non-fiction) would be Collapse.
A recent must-read dystopian novel (or rather, apocalyptic novel) is Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, though it is not for everyone … “bleak” and “minimalist” doesn’t begin to describe it.
As for Canticle, I read it years ago and liked it a lot; I think part of the appeal was the cyclic nature of history, and the fact that errors created out of pure ignorance spark faith (for example, a shopping list added to an ordinary blueprint becomes a sacred text).
I think the Rabbit series is terrific. For me, it’s one of the great American novels. It’s the only Updike I’ve been able to get into, and I have 2 or 3 more of his books.
I just got done with A Passage to India which was just OK. I much prefer Rohinton Mistry for tales of India. I suppose I should try reading some Kipling. I’m putting A Passage to India on my Netflix queue to do a comparison, though.
I’m working on A Prayer for Owen Meany and I’ve got Infinite Jest and Little Children as backups. Infinite Jest is an anvil though and is tough to take anywhere, even in the paperback version.
Sorry, Lionne, just can’t do it. I’m 200 pages into it and though I’m feeling guilty about bailing, bail I must – too technical for me, and I have too many other things I really want to read.