{"id":729,"date":"2006-01-09T16:46:46","date_gmt":"2006-01-09T21:46:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/?p=729"},"modified":"2023-02-01T15:05:44","modified_gmt":"2023-02-01T20:05:44","slug":"good-books-read-in-2005","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/2006\/01\/09\/good-books-read-in-2005\/","title":{"rendered":"Good books read in 2005"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\nSince I&#8217;m doing something complicated but not very interesting tonight, I&#8217;ll make it easy on myself and just list some of the good books I&#8217;ve read last year. I read some 78 books in 2005, slightly more non-fiction than fiction. As regular readers know, I try and keep track of what I&#8217;m reading on my <a href=\"\/books\/\">booklog<\/a> but unfortunately I still have to review most of the books I read last year. However, I still managed to scrape up ten books I think you all should read:\n<\/p>\n<ul class=\"nobullet\">\n<li>\n<a href=\"\/books\/forging-a-new-medium.html\">Forging a New Medium<\/a> &#8212; Charles Dierick &#038; Pascal Lef&eacute;vre (editors)<br \/>\nProof positive that it is possible to write about comics without mentioning <cite>biff pow zap<\/cite> or even superheroes. Proof positive also that there were comics long before <cite>The Yellow Kid<\/cite>, even outside the US.\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<a href=\"\/books\/stalingrad.html\">Stalingrad<\/a> &#8212; Antony Beevor<br \/>\nPerhaps the most important battle of World War II, the turning point of the entire war, treated by one of the best British warfare writers.\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<a href=\"\/books\/room-of-one-own.html\">A Room of One&#8217;s Own<\/a> &#8212; Virginia Woolf<br \/>\n&#8220;<cite>But, you may say, we asked you to speak about women and fiction &#8212; what has that got to do with a room of one&#8217;s own?<\/cite>&#8221; Virginia Woolf spents the rest of this slim volume answering this question. Despite its age it&#8217;s still relevant today.\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<a href=\"\/books\/lord-kalvan-of-otherwhen.html\">Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen<\/a> &#8212; H. Beam Piper<br \/>\nThis might not be the best science fiction novel I&#8217;ve read this year, but it was certainly the most enjoyable. All modern military science fiction is just a pale imitation of this.\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<a href=\"\/books\/jonathan-strange-and-mr-norrell.html\">Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell<\/a> &#8212; Susanna Clarke<br \/>\nThe adult literary equivalent of the Harry Potter craze perhaps, but also one of the best fantasy novels I&#8217;ve read in a long time. Also look up <a href=\"http:\/\/crookedtimber.org\/category\/susanna-clarke-seminar\/\">Crooked Timber<\/a> to see why it is such a good book.\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<a href=\"\/books\/war-stars.html\">War Stars<\/a> &#8212; H. Bruce Franklin<br \/>\nHow science fiction helped shape the nuclear arms race, long before Arthur C. Clarke and Robert Heinlein came to blows about SDI.\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<a href=\"\/books\/call-for-the-dead.html\">Call for the Dead<\/a> &#8212; John Le Carr&eacute;<br \/>\nThe novel that introduced George Smiley to the worl is a detective novel rather than a spy novel. Very sombre, very much of its time.\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<a href=\"\/books\/problem-from-hell.html\">A Problem from Hell<\/a> &#8212; Samantha Power<br \/>\nThe history of genocide in the 20th century, as well as the history of the concept itself and America&#8217;s responses to genocide. Not a cheerful book.\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<a href=\"\/books\/ordeal.html\">Ordeal<\/a> &#8212; Nevil Shute<br \/>\nWhat happens when a future war novel is published just as the war it predicted started&#8230;\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<a href=\"\/books\/mediterranean-volume-1.html\">The Mediterranean in the Age of Philip II<\/a> &#8212; Fernand Braudel<br \/>\nBest history I read in years, but very very dense and not exactly the right sort of light Underground reading.\n<\/li>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Since I&#8217;m doing something complicated but not very interesting tonight, I&#8217;ll make it easy on myself and just list some of the good books I&#8217;ve read last year. I read some 78 books in 2005, slightly more non-fiction than fiction. As regular readers know, I try and keep track of what I&#8217;m reading on my [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,27],"tags":[2443,2444],"class_list":["post-729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","category-posts-interesting-only-to-me","tag-book-review","tag-posts-interesting-only-to-me"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=729"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10064,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729\/revisions\/10064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}