Books - What are you reading?

I wrote 'I look forward to reading your book' which is quite different to the formulation you have misquoted. I thought it was quite gentle, and also a nod to Oliver's evident lay interest in this subject area.

This is overly long and boring already, but I think the line that mildly peaked me in the original response was that it is 'utter nonsense' that Neanderthals were a divergent intelligence. To briefly reprise some of the arguments from the book:

1). Given the distance since a common ancestor, it is reasonable to believe that there is evolutionary divergence between Neanderthals and Sapiens. For context, it is one twentieth of the span from the common ancestor that separates us from all other apes

2). Neanderthals brain size was evidently larger than sapiens, allowing for the possibility of significant differences in cognition.

3). There is scant evidence for neanderthal art, contra to sapiens who created art that is relatable to us at all times and places since the species emergence. This demonstrates asignificant difference in the way we understand the world. In Slimak's view it demonstrates egotism in Sapiens that was absent in Neanderthals, who he believes were more in harmony with the cosmos.

4). In the production of tools, Sapiens demonstrated standardisation of processes since the advent of behavioural modernity at least 70 millennia ago. By contrast, Neanderthal tools were each individual and expressed the craftsmanship of the artisan.

There is more, but that is the core of his thesis. It is obviously speculative, because there is limited material evidence. I would be interested in a survey of the literature that argues alternative views.

More chat about actual books, less arguing about people not having written books :-) >>>>>>

I’ve been really enjoying Alien Clay (Adrian Tchaikovsky), as I mentioned upstream, but there are a couple of thinks that I’m struggling with. Not enough to ruin it, but I do a sort of internal rollyeyes every time. The main character/narrator keeps doing this sort of on the nose foreshadowing thing where he says something like ‘you may think that everything was going to go according to plan. Let me tell you dear reader, it did not, but more about that later’. It’s often enough to be tiresome. It feels clumsy for Tchaikovsky, who I feel has more writey chops than that.

I think he does this fairly often. He'll grab a premise that he seems quite pleased with and then repeat it every few pages.

I went through the 'Service Model' freebie chapter and there's an initial bit about the servant having a set of protocols that prevent them from being able to address obviously ridiculous situations, and just going through the motions each time. Making an unused bed daily because he was once told to do that and nobody revoked the instruction. The point is made pretty early on but then they make about another dozen examples of it and every time re-explain that it's a bit silly but nobody has told them otherwise.

Other bit I noticed in Children of Time where it's a female dominated society. So he brings up a few examples... men staying home to watch the house etc, the females being stronger fighters etc.
But then every other example where he's switched traditional gender roles is then re-explained as that, or we get the internal monologue each time about how unhelpful the stereotypes might be to an evolving society.

I rattled through a few others of his before and similar examples of the 'let me tell you dear reader' in Ogres and Dogs of War

Still quite like the books generally, but those bits feel slightly forced, or that he assumes the reader might forget the really obvious commentary he's already made a few times.

I guess we should move the discussion to the Neanderthal thread.

Now that is funny.

Actually now you mention it, I do remember some of that in Ogres. Labouring a point that most readers can be relied on to have absorbed the first time.

I ordered The Bike Riders, Danny Lyon after seeing the flick.

I’ve finally started Dispatches by Michael Herr whilst lounging in Italy. I’m only 5 pages in and I feel like I’m there. The smells, the sounds and silence. Also a lot of death or eminent death.

Couple of books I really enjoyed recently:

The Magician by Colm Tóibín - a fictional retelling of the life of Thomas Mann. It's amazing what he lived through. He's not always a very sympathetic character but the telling doesn't suffer from it.

The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim - 1920s fiction with two suburban women making a very out-of-character plan to escape from their everyday lives with a month in an Italian villa. There's no way of explaining it that does it justice. Funny and well written.

The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker - she's a hell of a writer. Funny, vivid, rude. I love that she's an 80+ year old woman writing gleefully about anal sex and blowjobs.

One of the top books that give a real impression of the insanity of war. The Vietnam helicopter pilot one mentioned upthread, and the junior officers reading club are two that sit alongside it

I really liked the children of time and the war dog series, but I don’t think Tchaikovsky is a great writer. Great ideas, occasionally well written, but often clunky

Heart Songs - E.Annie Proulx

Short stories by one of my very favourite living authors

Yeah, I'd agree with this statement. He can do some things very well, but I often feel like he'd benefit from a more assertive editor

The Vietnam helicopter pilot one

Chickenhawk.

Exceptional read.

Yeah, that was.

I wished he’d talked more about his life after though - but he was pretty clear that the book was therapy for him, rather than a story for others

I read the Hal Moore/Joe Galloway account of the battle of Ia Drang immediately before reading Chickenhawk. Moore was all "The best of the best of the best"; while Mason was "Two of our pilots never flew a single mission but logged hundreds of combat hours for themselves, while our CO was so dangerously incompetent that at one point he had to hide in his tent while a fellow pilot took potshots at him with a pistol, and I barely remember Ia Drang because I'd been flying 10 or more hours a day for the week leading up to it and most of the way through." Quite the contrast.

I wished he’d talked more about his life after though

There is a sequel. He went a bit nuts and got busted for drug running in S America

Treacle Walker was excellent. Really enjoyed it, short, but wonderful. So interestingly written.

Any other recommendations of his, or similar?

House on the Borderland up next, though I got a weird version from WoB that looks more like a text book haha.

I didnt know - i'll check it out, thanks

Chickenhawk: Back in the World

I haven't actually read it but I want to now

Any other recommendations of his, or similar?

I'm still catching up with more recent Alan Garner work, but have you ever read anything by Robert Holdstock? Start with Mythago Wood. If you like it, there's more.

I just finished Perfume by Patrick Süskind. Highly recommended. Dark but humorous and really well written. Blasted through it in no time. On to Player Piano by Vonnegut which I'm loving so far. I find him quite hit and miss but this is shaping up to be a banger.

I just finished Perfume by Patrick Süskind. Highly recommended.

+1. Wicked little book.

I'd never even heard of it but stumbled across it in a bookshop and thought it sounded worth a punt. Very glad I picked it up!