Book talk! Mongers who read

Hokay just a thread about books. Fine litritcher or potboilers, it's all cool.

For me, I just finished Journey to the End of the Night.

Kind of a darker Catcher in the Rye.

Anyone else read something they liked?

Well, my tastes are a bit different than most people's I would imagine.

One of my favorite books of all time is called "1632" by Eric Flint. It is on the border between science fiction and science fantasy. In it, a town named Grantville, of about 10,000 inhabitants (something like that) in West Virginia finds itself suddenly and irrevocably transplanted in time from modern times to 1632, in the midst of "the Germanies", right next to Austria, the seat of the Holy Roman Empire. All of this at the time of the 30 Years War in Europe.

The book deals with how people from the future would impact people from the past, in the midst of the past's world. It's very interesting, extremely well researched and the events that happen seem very reasonable, once you get past the actual event of the "Ring of Fire" as the event that transported them was called.

The book has actually gone on to have a rather large series and sets of anthologies written by Eric Flint, as well as a number of other authors who have co-written with Flint or written entirely solo works based on the same universe.

One of my favorites was a book about a small group of "up-timers" going to Venice to start a more advanced dye factory and get rich, when some of the younger members of the families that went got mixed up in politics and revolutionaires in Venice, then went to Rome to stir up some trouble there and end up thwarting an assasination attempt (in which they were unwittingly involved to begin with) on the Pope during Gallileo's trial for heresy.

The authors who work on this have created a large "library" of facts that everyone who writes stories in the series works from. The original book based the town of Grantville on an actual town in West Virginia. They have researched the area and have only included likely talents, shops, weapons, materials, etc, that were known or likely to be in the town. No tanks, super helicopters or anything corny, no presidents visiting, only to lead them on to greatness in the past, nothing like that.

Any good crime fiction set in BA? I like Death & the Compass by Borges, but it's short and old.

Modern BA seems like an exciting setting for a crime fiction: massive corruption, secretive politics, mafia-ridden culture.

[QUOTE=Sham Bo]Any good crime fiction set in BA? I like Death & the Compass by Borges, but it's short and old.

Modern BA seems like an exciting setting for a crime fiction: massive corruption, secretive politics, mafia-ridden culture.[/QUOTE]Rent the DVD of Nueve Reinas. Nice crime caper set in BsAs.

Not my most recent reads, but two I read last Summer that are related and make Buenos Aires much more interesting.

One is fiction, it is a book by Nathan Englander called "Ministry of Special Cases". It is a novel about a family that was impacted by the Disappearances in the late 70s / early 80s. Very vivid descriptions of Bs Aires and a great story line linking history of that time to the plot.

The other is non-fiction and is a factual count of the same subject. It is called "Guerillas and Generals - The "Dirty War" in Argentina" by Paul H. Lewis. It is about the Dirty War of 1976 to 1983 in Argentina. My Novia's Father was a student during that period and told her stories about the things that happened to him. My guess is he was on the Radical side and got in some trouble; he never finished Law School.

Some of the players from La Guerra Sucia are still being tried down there today.

I read this somewhat dispatched and really don't have an opinion, but it definitely gave me an understanding about how Portenos carry themselves.

Read it before you pass judgement on an entire society. It might expand your views a little. Then again, it might not.

Either way, they are both good reads. Enjoy.