Summer Reading

The Sunday Supplements are full of recommendations about books to take on holiday which can range from crime thrillers, passionate love stories all the way to literary novels. Not entirely sure where the dividing line comes for fiction with the term "literary" which always sounds, well frankly snobbish to me.

These "literary" critics are the types that generally turn their nose up at science fiction and fantasy which is normally the main area of fiction I choose to enter. They are the same types who pointed Godzilla (the nineties version) was just a monster coming out and getting shot at by the military.  My girlfriend and I enjoyed it. Good fun. Not so sure about the new one but I'll watch the forthcoming sequel on DVD when it comes out.

Point is one of these critics recommended some film about gay men in a Turkish Bath slapping each other with towels. Not exactly what I want to see. I'm sure it has an audience but I would find paint drying more entertaining. Or Godzilla!


Still it's about time I caught up with my reading and had already started Maoism: A Global History by Julia Lovell (Bodley Head Hardback £30) when I picked up a crime thriller recommended by The Observer reviewers which captivated me from the moment I started.

The Chain by Adrian McKinty (Orion Hardback £12.99) is about a woman who has her child getting kidnapped and having to pay a ransom and kidnap another to free not just her child but that of the kidnappers. If she fails both children will be killed, The Chain must not be broken. She must then pass on the task to the next set of parents and so on.

A policeman is killed very early on in the story and our heroine gets warned by the kidnappers and someone else who was part of The Chain previously not to diverge from her task. The participants are all being watched by the originators of The Chain. Fascinating and gripping.

I'll finish this before returning to  Julia Lovell's tome on the world phenomenon of Maoism which in the age of emergent Chinese capitalism under communist control would seem worthy of some attention. Maoism never really took off in the UK. The only "major" figure was trade unionist Reg Birch who founded the still existing Communist Party of Britain Marxist- Leninist who publish The Worker magazine.

Most British Maoists have been tiny very strange cults like The Workers' Institute of Marxism–Leninism–Mao Zedong Thought who once told the workers that the Chinese Army was already here....it's founder and leader was one Aravindan Balakrishnan now in prison for slavery and abuse of his remaining female followers.

Nevertheless modern China has risen to become a serious challenger to US economic hegemony and I look forward to returning to this book which once read will inspire me to read Max Hasting's Vietnam: A tragic History 1945 to 1975 (William Collins Hardback £30) which was a Christmas present. Hastings being a journalist has a very readable style and I have several of his books which are all worth reading.

Finally somewhere between all this I need to read A Prophet Without Honour by Joseph Wurtenbaugh  an alternative history novel written in the form of memos and documents from fictional participants in The Second World War. I picked this up a while back via an ad on Facebook.

It was shipped from the USA so I have no idea if it was ever published over here and I've forgotten the price. Sorry. It wasn't that expensive, I'm a pensioner so have a limited budget.

These are my choices for summer as I reduce my blogging for a while but don't go away I will still be posting just not daily so do check in and leave a comment if you wish.