Out of the way

I think I have forgotten one, but going on what I am sure of...

46: The fatal shore, Robert Hughes
A history of convicts in Australia - a standard text written in the 1980s as a book for real people as well as historian, and one that was worth a read. Discusses a lot of the surrounding context, the various different settlements and the lives of all the people involved in the system, from families in england and ireland to aboriginal people and the convict's families and descendents.

47: See no evil, Robert Baer
About being in the CIA during the 70s, 80s and 90s. And what went wrong with it (the bean counters and careerists turned it into a risk-averse organisation, more concerned with filling in reports than listening to things that were reported to them, according to the author.)

48: Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
Sort of like the above - how the US government collaborated with big businesses and vice versa in building an empire by trapping people into deals with the World Bank that were unsustainable, and in using all the money they could to drive the US economy. A very interesting take on General Manuel Noriega, former leader of Panama who is now due for release from a US gaol (being one of the few sovereign leaders ever kidnapped by another country in modern times).

49: Zekannayo
Like a book I once read called "Merde" about swearing in french, this teaches you lots of gutter-japanese, through the story of a group of mostly expats behaving badly one night in Tokyo. About a 10 minute read, if you don't care about learning the vocabulary. I should learn more basic japanese too, before it becomes useful.

50: Talk to the snail
By the guy behind "A year in the Merde", these are the eleven commandments necesasry to handle living in France. An englishman who has been there for a decade, the author clearly loves the country and the people, and equally clearly sees a way to poke fun at almost everything that happens, and then explain (like a true frenchman) why it is in fact the best way to be, and the only intelligent way...

And I am in the middle of a stack of books. Il nome della Rosa, Eco's "Name of the Rose" in Italian, is sitting in Maraña with about 2/3 to read still. I have Che's "Motorcycle Diaries" in Italian hanging around somewhere too - I was at a station and thought I needed a book. It is slow going, because I am not that good at Italian. A book of Mishima stories entitled "Pelerinage aux trois Montagnes", (in the french translation I have), which includes at least one story I have read before in English, has been a pleasure. I love the way Mishima writes (at least as rendered in translation), and have only the lasst story to go. Hundre og énn dager is a norwegian journalist's account of being in Iraq at the beginning of the war - I have only read the first handful of pages. And I bought, but have not begun, Nick Cave's "And the Ass saw the Angel". In English - if all the others get too hard, that should be a quick addition to the finished books list