Slumpade böcker från Akiyamas bibliotek
Cooler Than Chillies av Lesley Waters
Dragon #302 av Paizo
The Debt to Pleasure av John Lanchester
Tastes of Britain av Dorinda Hafner
Never Had It So Good: A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles av Dominic Sandbrook
The War of the World av Niall Ferguson
In the Beginning...Was the Command Line av Neal Stephenson
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Medlemsanknytningar
intressanta bibliotek: akagodsent, Arctic-Stranger, AsYouKnow_Bob, byzanne, clamairy, DonSiano, Doug1943, fannyprice, foxpoint, gregtmills, haig51, heina, Hera, jenknox, jmnlman, mandywritesromance, Megami, museli, MyopicBookworm, ragwaine, reading_fox, Savages, Shrike58, SqueakyChu, timspalding, veritas, _Zoe_
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Medlem: Akiyama
Bibliotek303 böcker — se bibliotek
Recensioner2 recensioner — se recensioner
Molntaggmoln, författarmoln
TaggarNonfiction (154), Fiction (83), Illustrated (62), RPG (54), 20th Century fiction (53), British fiction (51), Speculative fiction (49), England (45), History (41) — se alla taggar
Grupper18th-19th Century Britain, 50 Book Challenge, Ancient History, Asian Fiction & Non-Fiction, Ask LibraryThing, Bestsellers over the Years, Books Compared, Books in Books, Books on Books, Books that made me think — visa alla grupper
FavoritförfattareScott Adams, Richard Dawkins, George MacDonald Fraser, Gary Gygax, Steve Jackson, Lawrence Miles, George Orwell, J.N. Stroyar, J. R. R. Tolkien, Lao Tzu, Bill Watterson, Jacqueline Wilson (Delade favoriter)
Om mig I'm a 30-something British male, currently unemployed due to illness, married to a hard-working Japanese woman. I spend far too much time messing around on time-wasting websites. My interests include social psychology, history, alternate history and role-playing games.
Books I hated
The Alchemist, The Celestine Prophecy, The Da Vinci Code, Hitler's Willing Executioners, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, A Northern Light, Saturday.
Om mitt bibliotek I'll read pretty much anything. My reading tastes change as I go through phases of interest in different topics. At the moment, I'm interested in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries. I prefer fiction to be thought-provoking, funny or original.
About my tags
Children's fiction: includes fiction aimed at teenagers.
City/region tags: Are only used for novels if the place plays an important role in the book. For example, Cotillion by Georgette Heyer is tagged "London" because Kitty Charing goes sight-seeing there. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is not tagged London, because Diagon Alley and Platform 9 3/4 could just as easily be located in Manchester or Birmingham.
Cliodynamics: used to describe history books that offer general theories about why things happen.
DnD: Dungeons and Dragons. The LibraryThing tagging system doesn't like ampersands.
RPG: Rulebooks, sourcebooks and adventures for tabletop role-playing games, for example, Dungeons and Dragons.
Sociodynamics: invented word that I use to describe books that offer theories about why things happen in society. "Sociology" and "Social science" are both too broad for what I want to describe.
Speculative fiction: Includes science fiction, fantasy, horror and alternative history. In other words, anything not set in the real world.
Riktigt namnMartin Akiyama
PlatsBurnham, near Slough, Buckinghamshire, England, UK
E-postmartin.akiyama
virgin.net
Kontotypoffentlig, betald
AnknytningsnyheterAnknytningsnyheter
URL:er
http://www.librarything.com/profile/Akiyama (profil)
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/Akiyama (bibliotek)
Medlem sedanNov 30, 2006
Dina senaste aktiviteter
 Akiyama betygsatta, inlagda:Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain av George Monbiot Stjärnor:  NY! Akiyama betygsatta, inlagda:Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide (6th Edition) av Nick Rennison Stjärnor:  NY! |
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I actually did read Stormbreaker and watched the movie. It is the first book I always recommend to my male reluctant readers. I love that it's a series but you don't actually have to read them in order. It's fast-paced with just enough story to keep them interested but not bored! Once they make it through those, if they want more books, I then send them to the On The Run series by Gordon Korman. I love his books, too!
inlägg gjort av brainlair vid 9:54 pm (EST) Jan 15, 2008
And I have been very slack with book reviews lately! I will have to update them soon.
inlägg gjort av Megami vid 10:11 pm (EST) Nov 11, 2007
inlägg gjort av fannyprice vid 11:23 am (EST) Oct 30, 2007
inlägg gjort av kcasada vid 1:10 pm (EST) Sep 28, 2007
Alternate history is not my cup of tea
The characters for the most part have no interior lives. Narrative passages that could be used to illuminate the characters, provide motivations, and generally make them three dimensional are used instead to recap/explain/advance plot points instead.
One point that does not ring true for me is the heroines are all modern women with modern attitudes.
Not being a fan of alternate history, I can't really address success or failure of the story, but I don't find anything too unreal. So far the book has been more about the war between the Union and the Brits, rather than North and South. That may change in the last 150 pages, but I don't know.
It's an easy and quick read, the style flows and so far I have not been brought up short by fractured syntax, misuse, or spelling. The editing is excellent. The story never gets bogged down or dull, it's a great read as a palate cleanser after reading more heady stuff, which of course was the author's aim.
I an reading this book for a reading group and would never have considered it otherwise, but If you don't mind fantasy with characters named after real prople it would be, if nothing else, a quick, fun read.
Sorry I can't help you more than that.
BTW, I see you live in Burnham near Slough. You don't happen to work at Wernham Hogg Paper company do you?
inlägg gjort av geneg vid 10:17 am (EST) Sep 19, 2007
inlägg gjort av Megami vid 4:06 am (EST) Jul 24, 2007
Sorry it's taken so long to reply. I'm a sporadic LibraryThinger (ie, when I have spare money to splurge on books...). I did move, and all is well. How're you?
Lauren.
inlägg gjort av museli vid 10:06 am (EST) Jul 13, 2007
inlägg gjort av midnightrose vid 1:37 pm (EST) Jul 10, 2007
I see you noticed the other post with the similar idea to your book bin.
I just wanted to personally say that I think it's a great idea as it is different from a wishlist. Hopefully one day LT is able to implement something like this.
Currently I'm doing the same as you with lots of browser bookmarks for the non-wishlist boooks. All the best, ryn
inlägg gjort av ryn_books vid 1:11 am (EST) Jun 22, 2007
I mentioned Shillony as even though his work might not be that easy to get ahold of, he has the ability to write about inherently controversial events without seeming as though he has an ax to grind.
Also, I might note that Louise Young's "Japan's Total Empire" has the virtue of dealing with Japanese imperialism as a mass movement. Like Shillony, she's working at getting beyond the pat standard interpretation of letting the Japanese military being the scapegoat for all the ill-thought-out moves of the Thirties.
inlägg gjort av Shrike58 vid 7:02 am (EST) May 29, 2007
Not knowing what your library resources are and how much you like to own your own books, I'd say start with Saburo Ienaga's "Pacific War" and Carol Gluck's "Showa" for general overview. While Ienaga is an angry polemicist, his work is still classic; Gluck is a more restrained in her assessments and will take a bit of the edge off.
I'd then look at the relevant sections of Gerhard Weinberg's "A World at Arms" for military aspects. If you have access to inter-library loan this might also be a good point to read Leonard Humphries' "Way of the Heavenly Sword" for the pre-history of the violent Japanese military politics of the 1930s.
By this point you might want to look at Herbert Bix's "Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan." This is also a very polemical work, but it seems to be unavoidable. If available, it wouldn't hurt you to look at the relevant sections of the volume of the "Cambridge History of Japan" dealing with the 20th century.
Finally, try to get hold of Ben-Ami Shillony's "Politics and Culture in Wartime Japan," if only because he apportions what seems like appropriate blame to Japan's parlimentarians for the disasters of World War II. He's also said to have written a good book about the assorted murder plots of the Japanese military in the Thirties, but I've never gotten around to looking at that book. Inter-libary loan is your best bet here.
I wish I could suggest one good book about the Sino-Japanese conflict, but one modern book is not coming to mind.
inlägg gjort av Shrike58 vid 12:30 pm (EST) May 27, 2007
This is my 2nd day at LibraryThing, haven't posted any books yet, but saw the Nordica/Baltica group and saw your question.
In my 20s (68 now) spent 3- years in Finland. Those years turned me in to a kind of Finophile, so here is a suggestion or two.
Civil wars are always ugly. Even Eino Jutikkala the well respected Finnish historian, in his -A History of Finland- gives only 6 pages to the civil war. There is a great novel though, a triligy really, that gives a fine, fair, human, and in Vol.3, even hopeful telling of those times. The title: -Under the Northern Star-, vols. 1,2 & 3. Vol. 1 covers the generation just before the Civil war; Vol.2 (sometimes titled -The Uprising-) covers the war; Vol.3 (sometimes titled -Rconciliation-) tells of the time after the war, and the painful healing from the bitter fighting. I've only read the 3rd Vol. and loved it. Next for me will be Vol. 2 and then Vol, 1. You're Questions will most directly be answered by Vol. 2, of course. Look for the translation by Richard Impola, ISBN 0-9685881-7-4 (pbk.:V.2)
I'll resist giving further suggestions now but if you want more just let me know.
Hei hei, Robert Redd, Utah, USA
inlägg gjort av rbredd vid 7:11 pm (EST) Mar 9, 2007