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Just finished and still mulling it over. On the whole I enjoyed it a lot. It was helped by listening to the author's narration; at several points you could tell he was getting emotional and that added to the impact of his words. It's just a pity that he veered off into gender politics in the Rule 11 chapter—Do Not Bother Children when they are Skateboarding. It's not that I don't disagree with him, it's that it seemed to stand out as not quite in keeping with the chapter heading and he was just looking for somewhere to slot in his views. It didn't quite fit. I did, as a former skater, enjoy listening to him describing the street skating around Toronto or wherever it was!

The highest impact moment for me was in Rule 7—Pursue what is Meaningful (Not what is Expedient). It moved me to tears and prompted me to send a screenshot to a friend that I think would get a lot of out of this chapter if not the whole book.

This is probably the book I've got the most highlights in this year. So much stood out to me as being meaningful and worth returning to. His adherence to the bible fits with my current worldview and philosophy, as too does his love of Dostoyevsky. As for Solzhenitsyn, I've had Gulag Archipelago on my TBR for a while now and have bumped it up for a definite read in 2025. I have the nice hardcover anniversary edition.

The more anecdotal parts of the book really helped to keep me engaged, like when he talked about his friend Chris (RIP) or went through the horrific story of his daughter's health issues.

Will I follow up with Beyond Order? Honestly, I feel like diving straight in to keep it going, otherwise it'll slip down the TBR and possibly right off the bottom.

And now I'm off to read some more reviews to learn why I'm wrong. Ha ha.

For some reason this book has stayed in my mind since childhood. It makes me think of sitting in the old English block at my high school on a dark, winter afternoon. It's a very vibey book, with a strong sense of Englishness and of winter, particularly Christmas. The family Christmas scenes are very cosy and quintessentially English, perhaps even of southern England. The setting was strongly presented and well written, as was the light vs dark trope.

The characters seem a bit flat and under-developed, even the main character of Will. I'm not sure whether that's simply because this is children's literature and so it moves a lot faster than a more adult fantasy novel would. The plot felt similarly under-developed and fast-paced in a lot of places. Again, maybe because it's for children. We just have to accept things as they are without really being given much of a back story as to how they came to be, although I did enjoy the story arc of the Walker—that was more fleshed out and had a satisfying ending.

I'll be continuing with Greenwitch very soon.

I'm pretty sure I read the full sequence as a kid, though I really only remember the titular Dark is Rising. That's the book that brought me back to this adult reread, but I figured I'd start with the first book. I have to say I enjoyed it more than I expected to. Sometimes childhood loves don't hold up well—I'm looking at you, David Eddings!—but in the case of this opening novel to the sequence, it really does. There are strong vibes and a sense that this book knows what it is.

And what is that?

I'd say that England is the vibiest part of the book. I know Cornwall pretty well and have visited Mevagissey, the town on which the setting of this book is based, so I had a good time with the location and scenery. The plot was a straight forward grail quest with kids outwitting the baddies in Scooby-Doo fashion. They really would have got away with it had it not been for those pesky kids! They're of a time, when kids weren't helicoptered as they are now. I can just imagine modern parents' horror as the characters set off around a headland at low tide to seek out a grail in a cave in nothing but shorts and sandals.

Character development was thin, with the possible exception of Barney, the youngest of the three siblings. Plot development was fast and also thin, but hey, it's children's literature.

A masterful retelling of this epic tale. I recommend the audiobook in particular—Fry’s narration brings it to life in spectacular fashion.

Best of the Elderlings yet. Hobb’s writing and plotting have improved and they were already very good. I didn’t care much for Dutiful and Civil Bresinga in Fool’s Errand, but the way Hobb has developed them here is masterful. So far, the second book of the Elderlings trilogies has been strong and Golden Fool continues that pattern.

The audiobook narration of this is outstanding. I find the sounds of the names going round in my head: Enkidu, Ereshkigal… the narrator really adds a lot to this story.

I’ve read some reviews that say multiple

first-person POV narrators is a terrible idea. I say pfooey to that. Although I did go back and read through the Ninshubar chapters again when I’d got about half-way because I’d got a bit mixed up. That helped.

It’s a fast-paced book and I could easily go back and read it again now. But, instead I’m going to get Snow Crash off the shelf and read the librarian’s infodumps about Enki. That book led me to this one.

I’ll probably go straight into Gilgamesh. Inanna ends on a note with some strong forward motion—not quite a cliffhanger, but it certainly makes me want to continue.

The blurb on the front cover says that 'Jen Stout is very brave, a storyteller of supreme gifts'. (Fergal Keane). It's a perfect description of Jen. She's not fearless, far from it, but she breenges in regardless and takes advantage of every opportunity that comes her way. The writing is very personal and she's sensitive to the plight of the inhabitants of Ukraine. She puts her interviewees at ease with her personality and gets some wonderful responses and some heartbreaking stories.

She describes the friendships she builds with the people she meets in a way that lets us get to know the characters and get a feel for what life is like in these war-torn cities. One of my favourite scenes was of the bakery in Kharkiv.

The thick walls of the old building made it a good shelter. But they also kept the heat in, much better than the thin walls of Tanya's apartment. 'If there's electricity and we can use the ovens, it will be warm inside. I think a lot of people could stay here,' she said. These girls, I thought, really had built a hearth. I was finding warmth and determination all over the place, when what editors expected was fear and despair. This had often been an issue, and I tried to explain that the resilience I described wasn't an individual phenomenon but society-wide. The more Russia attacked Ukrainian society, the less inclined people were to despair. They only got angrier.

Another heartwarming scene was the dancing in the Teatralna metro station in Kyiv. If you look up Jen's website, you can see photos to accompany these stories, including a beautiful shot of a couple dancing in the metro station. Music features a lot in the book—from buskers on the streets to charity gigs and music therapy for children. That makes me happy.

I also loved that she included some Scots language and culture — 'are you, aye?' That bit had me chuckling. (It's a humorous Scots response to someone making a ridiculous statement about themselves). And the reference to the hilarious lift scene in Burnistoun, where the voice-activated lift can't understand a Scotsman shouting out his floor, 'eleven!' How did that make its way to Ukraine?

Jen doesn't shy away from describing some heartbreaking scenes, too. The search for Volodymyr in Kapytolivka was difficult to read but tactfully described. Her trip with the young drone operators was exciting, and the scene where she accidentally hopped into the truck going to the more dangerous city of Siversk instead of waiting for her ride to Chasiv Yar made for an interesting story.

I've come away from reading this book with a sense of hope for Ukraine. Jen perfectly portrays the resilience of the Ukrainian people, and I felt her love for the country blossoming as she got to know it. At one point, she even mentions that she'd considered staying. I hope she goes back and keeps writing her stories to share with us.

An annual listen and an utterly enthralling one. You all know the story, but you've not heard it narrated so well before, unless perhaps you've seen the Simon Callow version. Both essential and both annual.

Essay, first arts Russian lit, December 1993:

Discuss the moral and psychological implications of Zoshchenko's use of humour in his stories of the 1920s.

58/80

Q good, although I should have appreciated something on the positive cathartic effect ... ach, I can't read Dr Keys' writing

I bought this book on a whim whilst on holiday in the town of my Alma Mater, St Andrews university. It was my first time visiting Toppings Books and I happily spent a few hours in there.

I've had a fascination with the Stalin era of the Soviet Union since my army days when I studied GCSE Russian Studies and wrote a paper on the show trials and purges.

You might find this a little hard to believe, but I had never heard of Sholokhov, or his famous novel The Quiet Don. Why should it be hard to believe? Because I studied Russian language and literature for four years and spent years living in the former Soviet Union. When I saw the book in Toppings, I thought I was buying a book written about Stalin by his official scribe!

So, even though I thought I was reading something else entirely, I found myself completely drawn in anyway.

On the face of it, it's about an author whose magnum opus ‘The Quiet Don' is iffy at best because of plagiarism charges levelled against Sholokhov, and who wrote very little of note after that. But there is so much more to it than that.

It's about an author who was able to navigate the tricky political landscape and still managed to stay alive, become wealthy and even win the Nobel Prize for Literature. That in itself makes for a good story, and that is exactly what this book turned out to be.

Sholokhov was not afraid of speaking truth to power and was able to use his influence over the years, including instigating the release of 3 political prisoners released from the clutches of the NKVD after he'd learned of the truth behind the great terror.

Not only did Sholokhov manage to keep from being imprisoned, exiled or shot, he also managed to stay in the good books of the leaders of the Soviet Union right up to the present, as it is mentioned in the afterword that Putin visited Sholokhov's home in Vioshki in 2005 to mark the centenary of Sholokhov's birth.

The writing style of the book made it easy to read. The research was well done and obviously extensive. It did seem to jump forward in time pretty fast towards the end, but I guess that's because there wasn't much else to say? Maybe it was edited down to make it shorter and an easier read? I'm sure it could quite easily have been twice as long.

It was interesting to read that there are still documents in locked archives.

“Though some of his secrets no doubt remain buried deep in closed archives, his contributions to Soviet history can now be recognized.”
P338

And Santa Barbara gets a mention in the afterword. That made me laugh. I spent a year in Odessa during my undergrad degree in 1995/96 and my landlady was obsessed with that show. She was also quite fond of Mr Bean.

Mildly interesting.

This is my third time reading these chronicles. I'm 45. I must've been in my late teens the first time I read these and I now wonder how I could've understood them at that age, but I know that I did. My past self undoubtedly got something different from them.

The novel covers emotion in a more deep and meaningful way than anything else I've read: love, fear, desire, greed, self-pity.

“There is also love in the world.” Those words have stayed with me since the first time I read them, and I feel them more now than ever before. They help me to cherish what I have and to understand why I am here. Each time I read them, I understand a little better.

Reading on Kindle is great too, as the dictionary is only a fingertap away. Where does he get that knowledge of vocabulary from?

Lots of takeaways in this that I'm going to start implementing. Yes, it's sales pitchy as in ‘buy my KPI course', but it's still a valuable read.

A lovely little book that explains in very simple terms how to meditate and why. I read this in the Arran Youth Foundations cabin while waiting for a guitar pupil to show up and it was a nice moment of calm for me.

 I've read a lot about Soviet and Russian history. Some of it is dry and challenging. This book is not. It has led to a pile of books appearing on my desk as I have a strong urge to follow up on some of source material.
It's the first book I've read that juxtaposes the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact with what was happening concurrently in the UK and USA; that added a lot of context for me that I hadn't thought about before.
I was born in 1971 in the UK, so I was aware of some of what was going on geopolitically and politically—thanks, largely, to Spitting Image—but I was much more interested in BMX and booze.
I would really have liked for the story to have gone further forward, through Yeltsin's presidency and into Putin's era. Is the white pill still a possibility? I hope Malice is researching for the sequel! 

This was recommended to me by a photographer whose work I follow and whom I met through the On Taking Pictures podcast. I know of Chris Orwig through his Lightroom tutorials on Lynda.com. I took his Lightroom course for Lightroom 1.0 and have stuck with that software and what I learned from Chris ever since.

I read this book over a couple of days in peace and tranquillity and Chris's words really hit home. A lot of it reads like cliché, but, in the peace and quiet, I'm reminded that clichés become so because they are essentially true. Follow your dreams, be creative above all, all that sort of thing. He writes in a style that is accessible and uses a lot of well-known quotations that illustrate his points. This works well. I only wish that the Kindle version had bigger images. I read it on my iPad and the images illustrating his points are thumbnails.

There is a wealth of follow-up material that I haven't checked out, but hope to when time permits. I can see that the assignments could make me a better photographer too.

I rated this book 5 stars simply for the memories it brought back. I went through the same apprentices' college as the authors and did my basic training in the same squadron three years later. Not much, if anything at all, had changed in the three years that separated us. I'd forgotten all about lining up under the glass shelter outside the cookhouse. I guess there were no squadron track suits in 85 though, awful blue nylon jobs that made recruits stand out even more than misshapen berets and white flashes on one epaulette. The authors seemed to cotton on quick to the fact that room inspections were unpassable. Figuring that our early must've made things a bit easier! The most enjoyable thing about the book was hearing some of the jargon again; the bit where the sergeant says he could make more noise banging his bell end on the armoury door had me spraying coffee. Words that seemed absent to me were:

Jiff, i.e. to be ‘volunteered' to do some crappy job for someone with seniority, e.g. I've been jiffed to do a Naafi run
Areas: to be jiffed to go out and pick up litter before or after breakfast, generally fag butts
Utes. I guess these were called eating irons in 85
Jack: to let your mates down or get one over on them, causing them or everyone to be punished, e.g. he's a jack bastard for using any of the sinks marked out of bounds by toilet paper before a room inspection.
From the right, NUMBER! Just after CORRIDOR! is called in recruit troop to make sure everyone is there.

The pace of the book is just right, not dwelling too much on any aspect. It felt quite tightly edited and, thankfully, the profanity was allowed to stay just as it was. Well it wouldn't have been much of an army book without it!

The authors get across the sense of pride and camaraderie that develops in a short space of time and are to be commended for that.

I got this as a Christmas present in 2008 and it's taken me that long to get through it. That's not because the book is boring or rubbish, but because it's a dip-in-and-out kind of book. Some of it really knocked my socks off, to discover certain things that I've always thought about were actually philosophy! It's a good primer and the interpretations of the quotes are well written and clear.

This opened my eyes in a big way and made me realise how closed-minded I actually was. I was one of those who worried about socialisation. For me, that's what school was all about. But for our 5-year old son with AS, school is about something different. He's just not ready for school at all, poor wee lad.

The final chapter with the legal ramifications was very useful, although I'm in Scotland and am aware that the legislation is different here.

The book was well edited (although I could do without the circumflex on role) and well put together. Some of the chapters are more relevant than others, so whatever was useful to me and my family may not be the same as for yours.

The list of resources is excellent and gives one a springboard into what was, for us at least, the unknown.

Recommended.

“You can't build happiness on someone else's pain.”

I enjoyed the Twitter bits in particular. I've never seen that in a novel before. I bet @bobblypops is grabbing a lot of followers, eh? lol

Luca Veste mentioned this book on his podcast with Steve Cavanagh (Two Crime Writers and a Microphone - recommended!) so I thought I'd give it a whirl. Started on Sunday on grass mowing duty and finished today on a nice dog walk. Two stars seems a little unfair, but it's not quite a three so my actual rating would be 5/10.

I bought this book years ago and read only one or two stories in it. The two chapters that stand out now were the two that I read back then too. The first is called the Last 18 Drops and is about alcoholism in Russia, two things I know about. Did you know that if you finish a bottle of vodka and then lay it down on its side for a while, you'll get 18 drops out of it? I've not tried it myself, but the author swears it's true.

The other story that stood out was that of a mother seeking her son's body after he's killed in Chechnya. It brings that situation to life in a moving way.

The rest of the book was pretty forgettable. In fact, it's not that long since I finished it and the only other story that springs to mind is about the Romanovs, which was pretty dull, and a short story about a soldier coming home to his village and following a girl around like a lost sheep. Also pretty dull.

“You can't build happiness on someone else's pain.”

I enjoyed the Twitter bits in particular. I've never seen that in a novel before. I bet @bobblypops is grabbing a lot of followers, eh? lol

Luca Veste mentioned this book on his podcast with Steve Cavanagh (Two Crime Writers and a Microphone - recommended!) so I thought I'd give it a whirl. Started on Sunday on grass mowing duty and finished today on a nice dog walk. Two stars seems a little unfair, but it's not quite a three so my actual rating would be 5/10.

What a chilling book. It's superbly well-researched and surprisingly easy to read, given its subject matter.  I was led to it after reading Michael Malice's book, The White Pill: A Tale of Good and Evil. 

I'd be fascinated to read another couple of chapters from when the book left off with the events of 2014 and the secession of Crimea. 

Just as a point of interest, I spent a year in Odessa in 1995–96 as a student of Russian, and at that time it seemed to be an exclusively Russian-speaking city, albeit with the Ukrainian ‘H' sound replacing the hard Russian ‘G' sound. And the household in which I rented a room from a Ukrainian woman and her son spoke Russian and watched exclusively Russian-language TV. Maybe Ukrainian was more common outside the city. 

I had a similar experience when I spent two years in Almaty, Kazakhstan, although I did hear Kazakh more than I heard Ukrainian in Ukraine. I'd be interested to read a book like Red Famine about what went down in Kazakhstan, as it received only short mentions in Red Famine. If anyone knows of any that you can recommend, drop a comment! 

It was interesting to read in Red Famine about Gareth Jones' walking trip through Ukraine. Michael Malice mentioned this in an interview I heard him give to either Chris Williamson or Lex Fridman. (I listened to both can can't recall which one it was). In the interview, he talked about a book called Experiences in Russia–1931—credited on Goodreads as being written by Gareth Jones, but it was actually written by the Jack Heinz II mentioned in Red Famine. The full text is available here.

Dense and informative. Worth $125? Not really, although I applaud Brian Kurtz for taking on custodianship and putting it back into print. I will read it again after I have put some of what I learned into practice.

A good primer on Putin's journey. It has awoken my curiosity and I'm now looking for some more in-depth material. I used to follow Russian politics pretty closely back in my Bradford days; I would read Johnson's Russia List most days.

This Audible production has me wondering how my life could have been quite different if I'd followed that path instead of the translation path. A fruitless wondering of course, but I can't help myself.

The production is very surface-level, but very well done and easy to listen to. Well worthy of your time if you have even a passing interest in international politics.