What are you currently reading?

Well you can get a hint if they mention a lot about trivial details like the stuff in the room or the things they do during dialogues for example, or how and to what extent the streets, rooms and daily life are portrayed. Sometimes that can be half the fun in a good historical book.

 

Hello,

yepp, I can imagine that . Well, he is very formal while talking to his father. Or there is the part where he has to bail for the marriage-portion for is sister, the depiction of the catholic church and the pope, the scene where he as a broken man comes into the home of his rich patron. That all doesn't feel too wrong for me. But it could be as well that in that time a noble man would never let a filthy beat up guy into his home. In that case it's just a story .

Regards
Gyro

 

There's always some details filled in about a historical person's private life of course. That shouldn't be a problem otherwise there wouldn't be any historical novelles to read :-D About the noble man and what he would likely have done: that could just have gone either way I think, so if it is not a known fact the author just have to speculate a little bit. A lot of times it just isn't sure what was the most likely. And if we (or rather the authors ;P) always go by the most likely stereotype of what a rich noble man would do, then the portrayal of such characters would also get very uniform and stereotypical to the point of getting boring and charicatural (and thus slightly unrealistic).

 

You can hear a quick summary of his thesis here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hj9oB4zpHww

I'm surprised I haven't come across this man earlier. He is one of the sharpest, most lucid, and most honest thinkers I've ever heard. cannot recommend his opus enough.

 

I'm reading Deadhouse Gates by Steven Erickson (Book 2 of a series) for pleasure, and what seems like a never-ending stack of books and articles for school.

 

Hunter S. Tompson - Fear and loathing in Las vegas

 

I recommend it to everybody! (seriously). Very nice, and an easy read (in the good sense of the word )

 

^pretty cover

 

Yes, looks better than mine. That one has an extremely different cover:



It looks like a hole in an old dyke with a view on the 'new' dry land behind it. Very dutch Still has it's charm I guess, but yeah the book is about people in Iran during the '79 revolution and who then have to deal with living under the government of Khomeini (so that cover may seem a bit out of place)
The dutch version is the original one though, as the author is a refugee from that regime who arrived here in the Netherlands in the late 80's. Although it appears he studied physics in his homeland I'm glad he came here and discovered his writing talent! This is not even my fav book by him.

 

Have you read The Rum Diary by Hunter S. Thompson? It is very good as well.

 

How about his book about the Hell's angels? Haha, intriguing at least! Typical Hunter Thompson book.

 

The Hell's Angels one was good as well! Very different, but interesting. He was a very strange man.

 

Well, what I thought after reading Hell's angels is that he met some stranger men too. But it gave a fun and interesting inside look for sure. It is very nice that people with such experiences write them down (and in a good individual writing style). Not sure to what extent the (american) hell's angels chanced in the mean time. We've got Hell's angels here in the netherlands too btw. Rascals!

 

Yep I read it, and almost all his book's )

 

Still this If it is/gets translated i recommend it to english readers too! It's about the 'boer wars'/Freedom wars in South Africa. One of the 3 perspectives it is written in/from is the one of Winston Churchill who was a reporter/war correspondent there back then. All in all seems very accurate and conclusive, but most of all fun and interesting.

 

I'll have to check this out, I love reading books about middle eastern history and culture. It is such a misunderstood part of the world.

 

awesome recommendations in this thread, books in other languages look so interesting. the book im currently reading is "the age of spiritual machines", if you Canadian, you might recognize the author, or you might recognize the band Our Lady Peace based their album "Spiritual Machines" on this book.

 

Also try if you can find an english version of his book De boodschapper (the messenger), which is about the prophet Mohammed. And especially his book De koning (The king), which is about the Sjah of Persia in the late 1900's and basicly the conflicts between modernisation and traditional rule (my fav of him so far)

 

Awesome, thanks for the recommendations!