TD Online

After reading (and loving) the Bourne Trilogy a while ago I finally got around to buying another Robert Ludlum novel.
Similar to the Bourne Trilogy, except a tad more predictable and not quite as gripping, The Tristan Betrayal makes for a pleasant read with an interesting take – inserting the main character (Stephen Metcalfe) as a silent but critical player in two real moments in history (the formation of Operation Barbarossa and the fall of Communism in Russia 50 years later). Ludlum (as is fairly self-explanatory from someone who’s sold as many novels as he has) writes well, providing a fairly vivid feel to the various scenes in which the action is set.
Whilst, as I said earlier, some of the plot becomes predictable in places, certainly the twist right near the end which finally reveals who the inside leak is was, to me at least, a complete surprise.

Would I read it again? Sure, but it isn’t high on my ‘to re-read’ list.

Funny, intriguing, unbelievable, interesting, witty – true.

I can’t really think how to put any form of description as this book, it’s just a book that I think everybody should read and that everybody will enjoy.

Couldn’t put it down. Already I want to re-read it. Go get a copy.

Here’s the Amazon Link

One word: Fantastic.

I though when I read ‘Posioned Arrows’ a year or so back that it was a fascinating thing for the author to have done, and this book just helped reconfirm what a cool thing it was for him to have done, with the three books (Amazon Watershed being the next one I want to read, preferably soon!) covering diffferent areas all with a similar style.
As I already said about ‘Poisoned Arrows’, his writing style is fantastic and is a voice of reason it is difficult for even the most die-hard opposition to oppose. He argues with reason, clarity and, most importantly facts from both sides of the equation, demonstrating the inherent misunderstandings on behalf of the (largely) Western conservationists.

My biggest regret of reading this is that I now feel I have a moral obligation to NOT visit the Savannahs and Safari Resorts, and I feel doing it the way Monbiot did it would become quite awkward!

Short, but a very interesting account as to the decline of Joey Massino. Whilst serving as more of a brief introduction to the subject than a complete history (which I get the impression would span MANY more pages) it is clearly written and captivating.
If you have any sort of passing interest in the American Mafia or the Five Families then you should pick up a copy of this.

First things first – this book took me way too long to read – by a long way.
Not because it’s a poor book by any means – whenever I started reading it I got into it – but it is a fairly arduous read, being a translation from the original Russian into English, which makes it at times hard work to plough through – although not in the same way Dostoyevsky is hard work – Gogol’s tone throughout is much more mocking and easy to read.

And that’s also what I like about the book – it is such a mockery of what Gogol saw as wrong with Russia, and more specifically the Russian nobility, at the time as to be highly enjoyable (or at least that’s how I read it) and indeed, very funny throughout. It’s a shame the second part is a broken manuscript as I feel I could have read much more of it quite easily, but the first part alone is entertaining enough.

If you’re into reading some Classic literature then it’s definitely worth looking at.

The second book by Iain M. Banks (as he is known in his science fiction writing) that I have read, and the first I have read of the ‘Culture Novels’ as he calls them. Whilst it took me ages to read (I hardly read it whilst I was at home for a month) it was definitely very enjoyable and interesting. The story line was full of little twists and turns, ending up very differently to what I would have expected.

Read the rest of this entry »

Being a book that just caught my eye when browsing through Diwan bookstore in Cairo a while back I was interested to see how it turned out. The answer is pretty damn interesting.

Read the rest of this entry »

Having read ‘Unpeople’ by the same author about a year ago, I had an idea of what to expect from this book – impressive investigative journalism centering on the terrifying things going on in our own government that go largely unnoticed / uncommented on by the mainstream media and people in general.

Read the rest of this entry »

Scary, twisted, sick, fucked up, but funny and immensely brilliant at the same time. This collection of short stories and the novella ‘A Smart Cunt’ are addictive to read and enjoyable, but still presenting certain issues. As with ‘Trainspotting’ the language is at times difficult to read and always colourful, but once you get into the swing of how it needs to be read I find it an interesting thing to do in itself.
Definitely a book I would read again and one I can reccomend whole-heartedly to others. I doubt everyone will like it but it did it for me.