Thread: READ ANY GOOD BOOKS RECENTLY?

Good books - where to start!

These books (available free as pubs) by Major General Sir Ernest Dunlop Swinton
- Defence of Duffer's Drift
- The Green Curve (and other stories)
- The Great Tab Dope (and other stories)

Also did by daily Bible readings. That's a good book too.

There is a modern version of Defence of Duffer's Drift written by the US Army for a tank brigade too.

"Doctoring Data" by a Scottish GP. - Dr Malcolm Kendrick.

Refreshingly cynical of his own profession. Not short on logic, sensible interpretation of language and debunking of rubbery figures.

Quite confronting to learn that a certain 'accepted' surgical procedure is not backed up with the gold standard. - 'Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled ... etc... study'.

Amazed at the different genre of reading material that all of us commonly bonded by Land Rovers read.

I just bought an "assumed" gem (because I haven't had a chance to read it....and it's going to be heavy reading).....but its a book I found in the Endeavour Foundations yard at Archerfield.

This book is A Narrative of Arctic Discovery by Sir John Franklin ,written by a John J. Shillinglaw printed in 1850 , which I bought for $5.

It has a preface from the House of Commons written in the syntax of that era and has logs from 1598 to 1832.

Now I need some quiet and some time.

A book coming out on FEB 1 , written by Australian Financial review Journalist Aaron Patrick, sounds very interesting. " Credlin & Co. how the Abbot government destroyed itself" should be an interesting read. His previous book, " How the Labour Party ripped itself apart", is also on my list.

Is no one reading novels ? Always on the look out for something with a twist or slips under the hype . Other wise it is pic a letter at random then check what is in that particular section.

I was just thinking this morning I should start a thread about books people have read & some one beat me to it.
I have just started reading THE WORLD'S FASTEST INDIAN by Roger Donaldson . Burt Munro- A scrapbook of his life. Very interesting so far , I have seen the film but this goes into a lot more detail & starts from when he was born. Another interesting book was ANDRE CITROEN Engineer , Explorer, Entrepreneur by John Reynolds. Very smart man & built well engineered motor vehicles until Michelin took control of the business. A book i read over Christmas was ONE MAN TRAFFIC JAM which is the story's of my mate Rick Thurgood's collection of cars & motor bikes in his small museum at his B&B at Maleny . I find it interesting the history of peoples cars , Rick has 5 x land Rovers & a Rover P3 four light amongst his collection.

Courtesy of Westprint Friday, a book that must be read.

Descent into Hell. $35.00. No man has the command of words needed for conveying...the courage and the cowardice; the loyalty and the treachery; the dedication and the dereliction; the strengths and the frailties; the kindness and the brutality; the integrity and depravity; the magnificence and the enormities of men, as revealed by and to those fated to pass through the entrails of hell, in Thailand Burma, during and after the Railway was built.' Descent into Hell is a scrupulously researched and ground-breaking account of one of the most traumatic calamities in Australian history - the Malayan Campaign, the fall of Singapore and the subsequent horrors of the Thai-Burma Railway. Unpicking the myths and legends of the war, Peter Brune goes to the heart of the Australian experience. He describes the shambolic planning by the British in Singapore and the failures and incompetence of some of the Australian command. He debunks the claims about Australian deserters in Singapore, and we learn of the black market in Changi and the beatings, torture and murder on the Thai-Burma Railway. Here too are stories of the war's many heroes and villains: of officers who looked after their men and optimised their chances of survival, and others who looked after themselves at their men's expense; the heroes of battle who became ineffectual and lost in the camps and on the Railway, and the least liked and least respected battlefield officers who came to be great leaders. And then there are countless acts of kindness and decency performed by one POW for another in the cruellest of circumstances. Impressive, compelling and rich in human spirit, Descent into Hell is an unprecedented chronicle by one of Australia's finest military historians