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After all the hassle with misprints that I suffered to this book earlier in the year, I was glad to finally get a chance to read it fully at long last.

It didn’t disappoint.

I first bought the book having watched the film version multiple times and truly loving it, and have to admit the book is fantastic, if a little different from the film. Clearly for the purposes of ‘Hollywood’ it was decided to make Lefty the main mob-link for Donnie throughout the operation, whereas in the book and fact Sonny Black was the pivotal link in the end, with Lefty only serving any real purpose as introducing Donnie to the crowd.

For those unaware of either the book or the film, it is based on a true story in which an FBI agent, Joseph D Pistone, infiltrated the mafia undercover over several years in the 1970’s , resulting in a number of succesful convictions for the Government over the Mob.
To this day he still has a $500 000 bounty on his head (apparently) and lives under various assumed identities.

His book brings up a number of issues and solutions he found whilst on the operation, which at the time was a completely novel situation for the FBI, having never had any agents under ‘deep cover’ before.

It’s entertaining, interesting, thought-provoking, and question-raising and provides a great insight into many key areas of the mob at that time.

Read it.

Superb.

I had already been impressed by Monbiot’s style of journalism / investigating from what I’d read before of his travels in ‘No Man’s Land’ and ‘Poisoned Arrows’.

I enjoy greatly the way he writes, with clear concern, but at the same time clearly articulating a very concise and accurate picture of what he believes needs to be done to solve the problems raised. He’s realistic in acknowledging what’s feasible and what’s impossible, and states very simple common-sense solutions that could be implemented easily if the people who have a say were prepared to look the other way.

Out of the three travel books of his that I’ve read (this, ‘Poisoned Arrows’, and ‘No Man’s Land’), I would say this is a good place to start with what he’s setting out to do, although I would recommend buying the most recent prints of it – the copy I read was an early one, so the only ’status update’ of the current situations was from 1991. From reading the other two titles from a more recent print, these more recent progressions and updates are much more accurate.

For people interested in such matters as the state of the Amazonian Rainforest (of which I personally know very little) I would think this has established itself as necessary reading. Monbiot’s thoughts and questions probe deeply for important and sometimes glaringly obvious answers which appear to not be answered.

I guess it was because I enjoyed the Da Vinci Code, combined with the fact the the reviews bill this as the greatest challenger to it, that prompted my mother to buy me this book a while back, although it has taken me a while to actually getting around to reading it.

I enjoyed it a lot. As with the Da Vinci Code, I have a tendency to read it for what it is – a work of fiction – and try not to get caught up in the whole ‘but it’s a distortion of the truth theories’ – if I wanted to find out the facts behind the theories mentioned in any of these books I’d go and read non-fictional titles about them, but as it is, I just enjoy the storyline… Sorry.

Having read all four of the Dan Brown novels and enjoying them, I guess it was a reasonable assumption that I’d enjoy this, and I did. In honesty, I actually preferred it to the Da Vinci Code or any of the other Dan Brown novels I’d read – the story was more engrossing, a little bit more realistic (if that’s the right term) and with slightly more ordinary characters. Although perhaps half the reason I enjoyed it more is that I have only read this one of Bourne’s novels – by the end of the fourth Dan Brown novel I was noticing the same trends in all the stories – hopefully Bourne won’t fall into the same trap with his future novels.

However, as with Dan Brown’s novels, The Righteous Men did bring some interesting ‘real-life’ societies / beliefs to my attention that I didn’t know about and would like to read more about. The direction towards useful reading sources at the end of the novel definitely helps point me in the right direction. Find my Amazon wishlist if you want to buy me a gift…

Definitely worth a read, and very addictive once you start, but I don’t know how quickly I’d go back to read it again – just like with Brown’s novels. I think it needs a substantial break from it before going back and seeing if it gets any better second time around, which my guess is it won’t, and I don’t want it to disappoint!

After reading and enjoying Crime and Punishment I figured I had to try another Dostoyevskiy, and The Idiot was the one I’d heard the most about, so I figured I’d give it a try.

Like with Crime and Punishment, I didn’t find it an easy read, and it took me a good while to work through, but it was enjoyable, and some moments of sheer genius.

There’s lots of long-winded explanatory parts, which sometimes can start to feel tedious but usually just before it does there’s a really nice segment that breaks it up and brings it back together.

It’s an entertaining read, and most probably ranks as a classic, so of course it’s worth a look. Maybe I find them a harder read than others, there’s only one way to find out.

Weird. But interesting.

This is the first Salman Rushdie novel or book that I’ve read, and on that basis I think I’ll be reading many more yet.

Really interestingly written, with a tidily unfolding plot full of things I wasn’t expecting and little twists. It also meant I was struggling for the first ten chapters to work out exactly what was going on, probably to do with the sporadic moments I managed to read bits over getting prolonged periods of time to read a few chapters.

Some good vocab use, although I probably need to re-read it entirely to truly appreciate some of the words used – quite a few I hadn’t met before.

The search now begins for other interesting Rushdie reads…

Simply.

Stunning.

Personally, and whether it sounds biased on the grounds that I held little religious beliefs before, everybody should read this book – atheist, gentile, jew, muslim, hindu, roman, jedi, whoever.

Dawkins makes clearly logical arguments covering many areas, many of which I’d never thought of before but leading me to re-analyze where and why I stand on certain issues, the one example coming to mind right now being the appreciation and mute acceptance of other beliefs and their associated traditions and the cultural ‘benefits’ they bring (the primary example being the Amish community).

His arguments are clear-cut and thought provoking, providing the evidence and logic needed to encourage the inquisitiveness and scepticism to constantly question and take facts into consideration.

But there’s a price to pay for all this, and when I first started reading the book – even, as I mentioned earlier without any real religious background to counter – I found the attitude at times too abrasive and sometimes petty, in a similar vein to how I find over-zealous people of other religious backgrounds abrasive sometimes. But then other times you see that this approach sometimes has to be taken on the non-religious side and leaves one questioning why the atheist side of the spectrum is so (relatively) muted on voicing their arguments and reasoning. One would presume it is a feeling of consideration, or not wanting to cause offence. There’s also, of course, the danger that it’s not politically correct.

Whilst the language is clear, the references solid, and the various facts and ‘true stories’ sometimes shocking, it is not easy reading. But it is addictive.

Already I want to go through it again, and feel I will need to at least a couple more times to really understand a lot of the points made, and gain confidence with them.

But – whether it is overly-abrasive or not, whether you are deeply religious or not – if you will read just one book this year, I would strongly recommend you make it this.

Following on from this post, some brilliant news.
The publisher’s in question (Hodder) got back to me with admirable speed and not only promised to exchange the book for me but also to give me another paperback title of my choosing from their catalogue…! How funky’s that!? The only drawback is that I actually I want a couple of titles, but I didn’t want to be greedy so I select Dune as my freebie. Looking forward to it.

Of course, the downside is the fact that I’m in Egypt for the next few months, so time-until-book-collection could take a while. Still, it’s nice to have a positive result, and full marks to Hodder for their admirable customer service and swift replies. Service matters!

A collection of letters, stage routines, and some lyrics written by Bill Hicks throughout his life, right from some of his earliest shows right through until some of his final material before his death in 1994.

Anyone who’s listened or seen any of his routines before will recognise much of the stage routines, some of which get a little bit repetitive when reading a book like this, although it is interesting to see the different ways in which he approaches the same topics a few years after originally doing the material. And it doesn’t detract from it being funny, but if you’ve read essentially the same paragraph half an hour before it is tempting to skim the current one and move on to stuff you hadn’t seen before.

But for me, the really interesting stuff comes through all the things I hadn’t heard or seen before, his letters to various people, his own personal comments / stories / thoughts on life, the universe, and everything, and the few pages of lyrics either as poems or song lyrics for of the bands he was a part of or hoped to form allow the man’s intelligence and just how broad his mental scope was on dealing with issues.

Whilst many of his points are ‘way out there’ in comprehension, simply because they fly so clearly in the face on everything one is taught and told and has reflected in society, he makes his points well, and provides arguments that are often difficult to counter.

Definitely worth a look, although from what I’ve heard if you are looking for a book about Bill Hicks and his life, Agent of Evolution by Kevin Booth should come closer to what you’re after.

First off, took me way too long to actually finish this, although I started well I just didn’t make time to read it when I got back home.
But, that’s not to say it’s a bad read – far from it.

Based on his personal experiences during the Second World War, in which he was recruited into the German army (he has a German mother and French father), Sajer describes his training and experiences of war vividly and clearly with trouble.
Every now and then, he digresses and concentrates on a certain feeling or memory which, rather than disrupting the flow of the book, adds another dimension of reality to it.

All in all a fascinating read, although with finishing it it strikes me as something that really needs to be re-read a few times to really get to grips with it, and I reckon it will be just as gripping and interesting each time.

It feels almost wrong to describe it as entertaining, given the subject matter, but with it being something I can’t really expect to relate to there’s no other real way to sum it up as a read without resorting to fake sympathy and pretending I understand everything that went on.

Read it.

A detailed history of the transfer of power from the former British Empire to the new Indian and Pakistani states, the buildup to it, the players involved and their respective roles, and the immediate aftermath, with brief notes as to what the future held.

For someone with near enough zero knowledge on the subject before reading the book I found it absolutely fascinating. Extremely well written, detailed, concise, calling upon obviously many interviews, references, cross-references and a vivid viewpoint, the pair get across their points with a clear interest and level of devotion to the subject matter rarely found in histories.
For me at least, it brought the situation alive and aroused an interest I didn’t think I was going to find in the subject, as well as beginning to detail the complexities involved in the removal of the British as the ’supreme power’ in the area.

Definitely I will re-read this at some point, probably after I have sought out more books on the subject, most urgently at the moment in my mind is finding and reading books / biographies on the Mountbattens, Churchill, Nehru, Jinnah and, of course, Gandhi, amongst others.
Thinking about it, it could be a while until I get around to reading it again…