I just finished "My Friend the Mercenary" by James Brabazon:
True story (memoir), first part is about Liberia and second is about the Equatorial Guinea coup.The thing I really liked is that I watched a Reality TV series last year about a group of mercenaries that would get contracts with African goverments to help improve their security. The main guy is Obus, and in this book, he is the person who introduces James to Nick. It blew my mind and really cemented how real this book is, because some of it just seems like fantasy.
Quote:
In a fly-blown bar in West Africa, war reporter James Brabazon found himself discussing military plans to overthrow the government of Equatorial Guinea with one of Africa’s most notorious mercenaries - his friend Nick du Toit.
I really recommend it. It talks a lot of about the fight in Liberia (things like soldiers eating the heart of a captured soldier, being on the front lines of civil war, etc). Second part goes really deep into the coup and the weapon trader/mercenary World. It's probably the best book i've read in a while.
A couple years ago I read "The Sex Lives of Cannibals" by J. Maarten Troost:
Also a memoir of sorts, and incredibly funny. One of the best books I have -ever- read. Went through it in a night. It's a really light read but really worth it.
Quote:
At 26, Troost followed his wife to Kiribati, a tiny island nation in the South Pacific. Virtually ignored by the rest of humanity (its erstwhile colonial owners, the Brits, left in 1979), Kiribati is the kind of place where dolphins frolic in lagoons, days end with glorious sunsets and airplanes might have to circle overhead because pigs occupy the island's sole runway. Troost's wife was working for an international nonprofit; the author himself planned to hang out and maybe write a literary masterpiece. But Kiribati wasn't quite paradise. It was polluted, overpopulated and scorchingly sunny (Troost could almost feel his freckles mutating into something "interesting and tumorous"). The villages overflowed with scavengers and recently introduced, nonbiodegradable trash. And the Kiribati people seemed excessively hedonistic. Yet after two years, Troost and his wife felt so comfortable, they were reluctant to return home. Troost is a sharp, funny writer, richly evoking the strange, day-by-day wonder that became his life in the islands. One night, he's doing his best funky chicken with dancing Kiribati; the next morning, he's on the high seas contemplating a toilet extending off the boat's stern (when the ocean was rough, he learns, it was like using a bidet). Troost's chronicle of his sojourn in a forgotten world is a comic masterwork of travel writing and a revealing look at a culture clash.
inky wrote:
Just from the top of my head:
Stories (fiction/based on true events/memoirs)
Night
Execution by Hunger
Brave New World
1984*
Fight Club*
Slaughter-House V*
A Clockwork Orange*
Perks of Being a Wallflower
Siddhartha
The Bell Jar
Catch-22
Nine Stories
Misc./ Special Interests - Educational
Games People Play
The God Delusion
Art of War
*movie available
There's a God Delusion adaptation by the BBC. It's really good. The God Delusion was one of our assigned readings for an Intellectual History class (never got the link, I think the prof just wanted us to read it). I didn't read the book, just watched the adaptation and read the book afterwards. Although not my favorite reading, it is my favorite book.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Root_of_All_Evil%3FCatch-22 was also made into a movie. You can find it on Netflix. Siddartha too, IIRC.
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