Remorseless reading: "Iron Curtain" by Anne Applebaum

Let's start by clearing up a couple of small things which might arise from the full title of this book: "Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-56". 

First, the expression "Eastern Europe" is used, as the author explains, in its "political sense", i.e. to encompass those countries of Central and Eastern Europe which fell under Soviet sway in the postwar period. It does not include countries we would now define as Eastern European, but which were in Applebaum's reference period part of the USSR (Ukraine, the Baltic States, Belarus and co.). Second, in reality, even with this clarification, the title is a bit misleading, as, for reasons which are again explained, the book concerns almost exclusively Poland, the Former GDR and Hungary, though doubtless many of their experiences were shared elsewhere.

Where have I been?

Oh dear! The last post on this blog was posted over six months ago. What happened? Did I stop reading books? 

Digitally enlightened reading: "How to Thrive in the Digital Age" by Tom Chatfield

It is unreasonable, a contradiction in terms actually, to expect serendipity. So when, after an interval of only two weeks, I again stepped into the Foyles at St Pancras station, it was with the sensation of making unreasonable demands on Providence.

Subterranean reading: "London Under" by Peter Ackroyd

The Great Serendipity Bookshop has struck again! I have had cause to mention the Foyles in St. Pancras railway station before as a reliable source of unexpected in-between books: this one and this one being the examples, and now it's happened again. On this occasion, in contrast to the two previous occasions, I had actually heard of this book before I entered the shop, but only semi-consciously, which is perhaps why this book even more egregiously leapt off the bookshelf at me.

Not reading, writing... "A word on the page is worth two on the web?"

For once, not about a book I have read, but random thoughts provoked by a book I have published. Couldn't really let it pass unmentioned on this self-proclaimed book blog, could I?

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What’s so special about a book? If I were to tot up the words I have written, at school, at university, in notes taken, in letters (yes, I remember those…), in exams, in birthday cards, emails, blog posts, facebook updates, tweets, and, of course, in the workplace in myriad reports, administrative notes, drafts for others to sign, brochures, the website… the quantity would surely be War and Peace hundreds of times over. And yet, alongside this humungous mass of verbiage, the 70,000 or so words I have written for a single purpose will be marked out as special.

Supposedly Upbeat reading: "That Used To Be Us" by Thomas L. Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum

The subtitle of this book says it all: "What Went Wrong with America - and How It Can Come Back".

Some books don't really need to be read. In the sense that, if someone explains to you what they say, then you've basically got it; it's not really vital actually to read the (in this case) 360 pages of text. This may indeed be a case in point, though I don't regret the effort. It's one of those books where the authors pile on example after example, anecdote after anecdote, argument after argument, to demonstrate what they said at the outset they were going to say.

It comes down to this (I quote):

"The end of the Cold War, in fact, ushered in a new era that poses four major challenges for America. These are: how to adapt tp globalization, how to adjust to the information technology (IT) revolution, how to cope with the large and soaring budget deficits stemming from the growing demands on government at every level, and how to manage a world of both rising energy consumption and rising climate threats."

Relentless reading: "The End" by Ian Kershaw

Is it perhaps a symptom of Europe's currently troubled times that a eurocrat is drawn to books reminding him of just how bad things once got on our continent? Possibly. Maybe also it is that I am a sucker for these magisterial works of narrative history that I was drawn, having read a few reviews, to Ian Kershaw's latest hefty tome on the Third Reich.

9/11 Reading: "The Submission" by Amy Waldman

After my recent foray into "urban fantasy", something meatier, picked up, like so much else lately, from the podcast "Inside the New York Times Book Review" - this episode. (Fear not, by the way, I didn't read this book in one day, I was just very slow producing the last review.) The NYT touted Amy Waldman's book as perhaps - finally - being the "definitive" 9/11 book, the literary response to an event now ten years old which would somehow put a finger on what that event meant for New York and America more widely. 

Magical police reading: "The Rivers of London" by Ben Aaronovitch

Just now and then, a combination of cover design, blurb and the mood of the moment induces a serendipitous book purchase. This is one reason I hope that bookshops never disappear - this can't happen in the same way on Amazon. The bookshop in question was (again!) the small Foyles in St Pancras railway station, which is developing a talismanic status as the home of the random purchase.