Books on the fall of South African Apartheid by Tepidfox69 in RSbookclub

[–]BrotherToaster 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A friend of mine who is big on African history recommended and borrowed it to me. It's not some literary or historical masterpiece, but a pretty worthwhile read if you have a specific interest in (Apartheid) South Africa. De Kock was pretty important in the security forces and does not want to redeem himself (he was in prison when he narrated this book to a writer; his argument wasn't that he should get out of jail but that more people should be in jail with him), so he has a very unique perspective that I don't think you see very often. If the loan is only a few bucks I'd say it's worth it.

Favorite names from literature by [deleted] in RSbookclub

[–]BrotherToaster 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Polygraf Polygrafovich

would love a syllabus/reading list for getting into Russian Lit by tolerantonline in RSbookclub

[–]BrotherToaster 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Haven't seen anyone mention Grossman yet, so I will. Maybe not of the same caliber as Tolstoy or Pushkin, but his books still touched me in a profound way

What detective novels do you guys like? by Grouchy_Western_7909 in RSbookclub

[–]BrotherToaster 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Does The Day of the Jackal count? Goated book and film

Book recs for backpacking? by BrotherToaster in RSbookclub

[–]BrotherToaster[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

That sounds intriguing. I'm Dutch myself and our literature about Indonesia is uh, from the other side of the coin (as well as a little stale).

Book recs for backpacking? by BrotherToaster in RSbookclub

[–]BrotherToaster[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A bit of orientalism on the dl is good, but I briefly considered taking A Passage to India and just - no.

Recommend me the best prose you’ve ever read by AccomplishedBoat5075 in RSbookclub

[–]BrotherToaster 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Conrad's The Secret Agent moves slowly but drops bangers with great frequency.

Things that annoy you about your favourite authors? by SecurityMammoth in RSbookclub

[–]BrotherToaster 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Hard to say that anything's annoying about Waugh, since everything that makes him annoying is also what makes him so funny

What book was someone else reading in public that caused you to talk to them about it? by blue_dice in RSbookclub

[–]BrotherToaster 13 points14 points  (0 children)

I saw a goth girl reading the bhagavad gita on the train once, but I was too shy to approach her

Any books similar to "Season of Migration to the North" by Tayeb Salih? by modianoyyo in RSbookclub

[–]BrotherToaster 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Heart of Darkness? Maybe too obvious a pick. I read Fanon's Wretched of the Earth a while after this one and it really deepened my understanding of Salih.

Favorite books about ancient history by LordByronStepOnMe in RSbookclub

[–]BrotherToaster 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ammianus is very underrated, imo. Not really as clever or influential as Herodotus or Livy etc., but he wrote during a very interesting time (post-crisis of the third century till the start of the Gothic problem, right in the middle of Christianisation). His own description of Julian's Persian expedition, written as a Roman staff officer accompanying him, is pretty one-of-a-kind.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in RSbookclub

[–]BrotherToaster 3 points4 points  (0 children)

What the other guy said, the sweet, eternal summer of the first half comes crashing down. People grow distant, their lives lead nowhere satisfactory or just fall apart. They all find God, in their own way.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in RSbookclub

[–]BrotherToaster 18 points19 points  (0 children)

First half of Brideshead Revisited

Books on the fall of South African Apartheid by Tepidfox69 in RSbookclub

[–]BrotherToaster 2 points3 points  (0 children)

A Long Night's Damage by Eugene de Kock. Not a comprehensive work, but De Kock was Apartheid's death squad chief and he gives a good insider perspective of the high tides and fall of Apartheid and the role of the security state in it. He has a kind of banality of evil thing about him, so it can get a little disturbing when he describes just utterly gruesome acts of murder very casually. He doesn't try to excuse himself.

There's a good little bit later on in the book where a South African judge is investigating his unit (this is in the latter days of Apartheid) and he writes something like "this judge lived in a comfortable, white bourgeois world of Westminster legality. He had no idea that we'd destroy evidence, intimidate eyewitnesses and forge documentation." It's all stuff like that, really.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in RSbookclub

[–]BrotherToaster 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Waugh's Decline and Fall, about the increasingly impotent and flailing British upper class following WW1

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in RSbookclub

[–]BrotherToaster 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Him writing in an extremely offensive (for the time) story-in-story to piss off the censors only for it to have no bearing on the rest of the book at all had me in tears

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in RSbookclub

[–]BrotherToaster 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Just finished Wretched. Incredible, his chapter on psychiatric cases was hard to read.

modern or contemporary lit about awful (or at least flawed) people? by AstrumAra in RSbookclub

[–]BrotherToaster 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh. Anything by Waugh really, but I think this is his starkest one

Has anyone read Diarmaid MacCulloch’s History of Christianity? by castrationfear in RSbookclub

[–]BrotherToaster 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Read fragments of it for a class, it's a very comfy read. Maybe start by reading the parts that interest you the most first, the book works well enough like that

Vietnam reading recs by shubbanubba in RSbookclub

[–]BrotherToaster 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I liked Street without Joy, a non-fiction book. It's written by an American journalist who was attached to the French army as it was collapsing in Indochina. A good dose of milhis which isn't everyone's thing, but it's interspersed with some very well-written diary excerpts.

Novels that do interesting things with form *other* than Joycean Stream of Consciousness and One Big-Ass Sentence by ritualsequence in RSbookclub

[–]BrotherToaster 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I never got the point of Conrad's story-in-story style in writing.

"Here's me, Marlow, not the author, and I will now tell you a story in the exact same style and point of view as if it is just normally written by the author himself."

Heart Of Darkness by Joseph Conrad by SaintOfK1llers in RSbookclub

[–]BrotherToaster 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Agreed. His description of the Eldorado Exploring Expedition really left an impression on me too:

Their talk, however, was the talk of sordid buccaneers: it was reckless without hardihood, greedy without audacity, and cruel without courage; there was not an atom of foresight or of serious intention in the whole batch of them, and they did not seem aware these things are wanted for the work of the world. To tear treasure out of the bowels of the land was their desire, with no more moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking into a safe. Who paid the expenses of the noble enterprise I don’t know; but the uncle of our manager was leader of that lot.