This book covers two different topics: operation Halyard to rescue hundreds of stranded allied airmen who had bailed out over occupied Yugoslavia; and the Serb general Draža Mihailović, and his relationships with the various parties.

The coverage of operation Halyard is interesting, as there's not much else in print on this topic. But the writing style is a bit simplistic and sometimes repetitive.

The coverage of Draža Mihailović seemed very one-sided. It seems he can do no wrong, and is misunderstood and attacked by all sides. There may be a need for a revision of the allies' treatment of Mihailović; but this isn't the way to do it.

I read The Iliad shortly before reading The Odyssey. I found The Odyssey by far the better book: it's structure is clever, starting in medius res, and then giving the hero a chance to fill in the gaps later.

It contains a lot of the classic episodes that are often retold in different settings: the sirens, the cyclops, scylla and charibdis, the beguiling woman who keeps the hero hostage.

The only bit that I felt dragged a bit was when Odysseus returned to Ithaca as a beggar and stayed with the swineherd. But other than that, it was a surprisingly good read for a classic that dates back to ancient Greece.

I found the plot a bit too thin for a novel, and it's fairly predictable. Also the various disguises stretch credulity to the limit.

It's worth reading, but I think Ivanhoe is a much better novel in comparison.

This book is often shown as being second in the "civil war trilogy", which I think is misleading: this book was written first, and the other two book in the so-called "trilogy" were written by someone else. So I consider this a stand-alone book.

As a British person, I didn't know much about the battle of Gettysburg other than it was the first big defeat for the confederacy and marked the turning of the tide for the American civil war. I think the book expects you to know a bit more about the battle, as it makes comments that are ironic or pathetic when you know the final outcome.

So I'd recommend that people who don't know much about the battle do a bit of research first, as that will help the enjoyment of the book.

An interesting book, although a bit dry in places.

I was quite interested in some of the characters connected with Katherine like Thomas Seymour who Elizabeth said had "much wit and very little judgement".

I found some of the material fairly familiar, probably because there's so much coverage of Tudor times in books and on TV. Even so, it's quite interesting to read about the period between Anne Boleyn's execution and Elizabeth's reign.

An outstanding book. Yes, as others have mentioned, it misses some things out and can be a bit biased at times, but I don't know any other single book that gives such a good account of British history from the Roman invasion to the battle of Bosworth field.

It's easy to criticise this book for what it leaves out, but there are plenty of 500-page books that just deal with one monarch's reign, so any single volume trying to cover such a long period is bound to skip bits and summarise.

The area where it does fall down a little is that it tends to concentrate on the English victories, e.g. Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt comprise most of the section on the hundred years war. Hence just four stars rather than five.

I got this book as a free download, and found it much more interesting that I expected.

If you used PCs in the late 1980s or early 1990s you'll remember WordPerfect as the de facto word processing standard. This book tells the story of the rise and fall of WordPerfect corporation from the perspective of W.E. "Pete" Peterson who rose from a junior management role to VP of sales before being fired by the shareholders.

From a technology point of view, wordperfect overtook wordstar as the standard word processor in the late 1980s, and was then overtaken itself by microsoft word in the 1990s. There's also the challenges of building a rapidly growing company, and the competition between the various companies.

Then there's the management style and personality issues. This book was told from Pete Peterson's point of view, but there are a few hints that he wasn't the easiest person to work with.

All in all an enjoyable and interesting book.

I became aware of this book through a reference in "Stranger in a strange land". It's not a book that I'd have picked up otherwise.

I'm not a legal professional, but I found it an easy and interesting read from a layman's perspective. I can't comment on how accurate or useful it is for a modern barrister though.

It mainly consists of "war stories" from the author's career as a barrister, which are used as examples of what and what not to do when conducting a cross-examination.

I'd not seen the film before reading this book. Reading through the other comments it seems that I'm in a minority, and most people read this book after seeing the film as it apparently fills in some gaps.

What I enjoyed most about this book was the background of the British royal family in the early 20th century, especially George V, Edward VIII and George VI. The speech therapy was almost an aside for me, but perhaps that's because I've not watched the film.

A couple of things struck me when reading this: one was the way that George V's death was "helped along" by his doctor; and the other was how right George V was about Edward VIII when he said he'd "ruin himself in a year". It seems the country were very lucky that he did abdicate, or he could have been quite a liability during the war.

They say "worse things happen at sea": this story recounts some of those worse things that can happen.

Ultimately it's a tale of triumph over extreme adversity, and how one man can inspire and lead others in what appear to be impossible situations.

If this was fiction, it would seem too far fetched. Some of the things they got through are truly remarkable.

Having read "The Worst Journey in the World", I wonder how Scott's ill-fated expedition would have fared with Shackleton in charge.

An interesting and thought-provoking book.

But it's far too long and repetitive, and the author lets his ego show through a bit too much and sometimes appears arrogant.

This book is quite slow going, and the dense writing style makes it fairly heavy going. I had the feeling that the story would be more suited to a novella than a full novel. I also felt the format of the story being told through Marlowe a bit awkward.

The latter part of the book reminded me a bit of Kiplings "the man who would be king", and I wonder if Conrad was influenced by Kipling? Or perhaps the idea of a white man becoming lord/king of a small foreign country appealed to British people at that time.

Looking back on the story as a whole, it's an interesting tale, but would benefit from going on a diet and being told in a different format.

Well, now I know where the hacker culture word "grok" comes from, and I suspect one of the influences behind Bowie's Ziggy Stardust character.

This is an important and influential book, but not really a good one, hence three stars. It's far too long (I read the later uncut version, perhaps the earlier shorter edition would have been better), and it seems like the author wants to push his free-love agenda a little too much.

I'm glad I read it, but probably won't want to read it again.

I found this book rather slow going, and didn't really feel much connection with any of the characters. So at the end I didn't really care what happened to them very much.

The central character seems to be Larry, who goes on a spiritual journey. But he's absent from the story for much of the time, only popping up from time to time. Some parts of the book are good, but there are some tedious bits in between them. I didn't really care for the high society Americans much at all.

This is the second Maugham novel I've read, and overall, I much preferred Of Human Bondage.

Some interesting bits about encryption ciphers, and associated work during WWII, but ultimately unrewarding.

This book interweaves two time periods: the 1940s during WWII, and the 1990s. I found some of the WWII stuff and characters interesting, but couldn't connect with the 1990s characters (despite, of perhaps because of being a bit of a Unix and crypto nerd myself).

I would have much preferred a factual account of the WWII codebreaking operations, and by the end of the novel I didn't really have much empathy for the characters.

I also don't think this novel needed around 1200 pages to tell this story. Perhaps putting it on a diet would improve it.

Having said all that, I found it easy to read, and was never tempted to quit reading it.

An amusing and well-written tale of a sad man approaching middle age but still behaving as a teenager. This sort of book will never be great literature; but it's funny, easy to read, and is easy to relate to (for me at least).

I was a teenager in the 1970s, and like most teenagers was interested in music, so I could relate to the bands and mix tapes. I also used to do a few "top five" lists.

This just seems to be one long rant by some crazy guy. There are a few interesting points, but not enough to redeem the book. The author doesn't really expand on, discuss or attempt to prove any of the points. His argument seems to boil down to: I'm telling you how it is.

The Orgone energy concept seems like some type of new-age mysticism, and I find it unconvincing.

A socialist manifesto masquerading as a novel. It's too long, too repetitive, and very naive in hindsight now we have a few examples of 20th century communist states. Everything is black and white: good socialists, and bad capitalists. And the workers who don't agree with the socialist viewpoint deserve their fate according to the author. There are many strawman arguments put forward so the author can knock them down to show the superiority of socialism.

I was surprised to see no mention of the Labour party. This book was written around 1910, and the labour party would have stood for at least two elections by then and won a handful of seats each time. But you only hear about the tories and the liberals.

It's still an interesting book though, being one of the key texts on the development of British left-wing politics. And some of the concepts and thoughts are quite insightful. But it was a bit of a slog to get through. It's a shame, because with better writing, a tighter story, and less politicising, this could have been the British equivalent of The Grapes of Wrath.

Interesting and accurate nautical details, but a bit too "boy's own" for my liking. It reminded me of a nautical version of a Sharpe novel.

I didn't really get on with the writing style, and I would have much preferred the book to have covered the real events that a lot of the action is based on, rather than fitting it into a fictional story.

I didn't really get on with this book. I found the first part fairly interesting once I'd got over the rather boring introduction, but it was written like a journal (we then went to this town, so-and-so died on the way and was buried by the road). The second half didn't really interest me much at all.

I also found the method of telling the story through a third party felt clumsy and didn't really work. I don't know why the author chose to write the book like this, when a simpler first-person account would have worked better.

This book seemed rather pretentious and dated to me.

It kept me reading, and there were a few interesting bits, but it was more complex and longer than it really needed to be. And the ending wasn't very satisfactory.

Some good bits, that I think could have profitably been explored more were the WW1 battle where the dice was loaded against the soldiers, and the question of Conchis' collaboration. But I found the focus on love and morality got boring after a while, and it just didn't seem believable that Nicholas would keep returning to Conchis when it becomes clear that he's being lied to and deceived.

The ending feels like Fowles just wanted to wrap it up but didn't know how, and felt very unsatisfactory to me.

An engrossing bildungsroman that I found hard to put down. I didn't think I'd enjoy a Somerset Maugham novel, so I was surprised by how good it was.

It follows the life of Philip Carey from birth until he's around thirty. It's a long and sprawling story, which follows Philip through many careers and relationships.

Apart from Philip's journey through life, there are a couple of deeper points: firstly that love can be something that keeps people in bondage, and secondly the big "what's the meaning of life". While I don't totally agree with Maugham's answers, these are interesting observations.

Another good and readable chunk of English and Welsh history, covering the period from 1156 to 1171, when Henry II was King of England.

I'd read "When Christ and His Saints Slept" several years before reading this, so I was familiar with the background and some of the characters.

My main criticisms of this are the use of fictional characters like Ranulf, although I can see why SKP found this necessary; and that sometimes it feels like she puts words in people's mouths that they would never really have said.

Having said that, I found this a good and readable account of an interesting period of English history, with Henry II, the future kings Richard I and John as children, and the Thomas Becket affair and assassination.

A good story, which is let down a little by the writing.

The story is set in the twelfth century, during the period when King Richard I was on crusade and prince John was in charge. It covers the friction between Saxons and Normans, antisemitism, the knights templar, and with Robin Hood and his men thrown in for good measure.

The writing gets a bit ponderous at times, but the story is good enough to keep you reading despite this.

I found the blatant antisemitism difficult, especially as it's difficult to know whether this was Walter Scott's view, or whether he was just trying to show what things were like in the twelfth century.

Some of the suspense is a little overdone: for example, everyone has worked out who the black knight is long before his identity is revealed. Likewise Locksley and the clerk of Copmanhurst.

But that said, it's still a good story. And it's not surprising that there have been many film and TV adaptations.

I didn't like this book: the chapters were too long, none of the characters are particularly likeable, and the overall plot seems rather weak. I must be missing something though, because many people like it.

I much preferred One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Two stars for some good descriptive writing though.

This is my third James Clavell novel: previously I've read Shogun and King Rat.

Tai-Pan is about the foundation of Hong Kong in the 1840s, with the main characters being the families of two Scottish traders.

This is another engrossing tale, with Clavell's unique style. Surprising easy to read, and difficult to put down once you become interested in the characters and situations.

I didn't find it quite as good as Shogun, but that's maybe because I read Shogun first and it's difficult for other books in the same style to compete.

My main criticism is that I felt some of the characters were a bit one-dimensional, and there was a bit too much black and white. For example, Dirk Struan is a good guy, and his son is basically good if a bit naive; whereas Tyler Brock is a bad guy, and his son is just evil. I felt that Shogun was better in this respect.

I found the pigeon English interesting, because I wasn't aware of this meet-half-way language that was used in the Chinese pors in the 19th century.

This is quite a good novel, but not one of PKD's best.

The main problem for me was that the ending just seemed too far fetched. Drugs often feature in PKD novels, and parallel dimentions or alternative realities are common SF concepts, but the was these two things were combined just didn't seem at all convincing to me. In fact, it felt like a deus ex machina.

Perhaps I missed something, but the epilogue seemed totally unnecessary: it didn't really add anything to the story.

Currently, I rate Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, A Scanner Darkly, and Ubik higher than Flow My Tears.

I'm not from the US, and my US geography is pretty limited. So I didn't realise just how vast the Mississippi river was until I read this. And the size of the 1927 flood is just astounding - a gap between levees three miles across still wasn't enough to contain it.

This book covers a lot of ground, some of which is only tangentially related to the flood. Most of it is interesting and valid, but some could have been cut out to make the book a bit crisper.

I also now know what that Led Zeppelin song is about.

This tells the story of the American Polaris expedition to the north pole in 1871.

The expedition was a total failure, and it was really doomed from the start because of poorly defined responsibilities, and rivalry between the crew members.

The most gripping part is the story of the voyage home after they had given up on reaching the pole. In particular, the survival of Tyson's group on the ice floe is both harrowing and remarkable. If it wasn't for the Inuit with them on the ice, they would surely have died.

When you read the list of disasters caused by bad decisions, stupidity and bad luck, it's surprising that only one person died.

No one comes out of this looking good. There's no glory and no heroes.

It's an interesting story, but I have two problems with this book:

1. I don't particularly like the author/protagonist, as he comes across as a totally amoral person with a huge ego; and

2. I don't know how much of this is true. If you do some background research, you'll find that much of what is claimed can't be substantiated. And you must remember that you're dealing with a con man, so how much can you trust what he says? I think this book is a little selective and one-sided to put it mildly.