Canterbury Tales Guesthouse

[Daveo]

From Condoms to Cabbages: An Authorized Biography of Mechai Viravaidya by Thomas D'Agnes..

@ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange.

In Thailand, a condom is called a "Mechai". Mechai Viravaidya, Thailand's condom King, has used this most anatomically suggestive contraceptive device to turn the conventional family planning establishment on its head. First came condom-blowing contests, then T-shirts with condom shrouded anthropomorphic penises.

Then condom keyrings followed by a Cabbages and Condoms restaurant, When it comes to condoms, no one has been more creative than the Condom King.

To equate Mechai with condoms or family planning alone underestimates the man and fails to capture his essence. Mechai Viravaidya is engaged in a relentless pursuit to improve the well-being of the poor by giving them the tools to lead a fruitful and productive life.

His achievements in family planning, AIDS prevention, and rural development are a means to an end - the alleviation of poverty in Thailand. Mechai's journey From Condoms To Cabbages - from his roots in family planning to his goal of poverty alleviation - has spanned 34 years.

Along the way, he has been labeled a visionary iconoclast and cheerful revolutionary.

He is also an ordinary man from modest origins. This book will shed light on both Mechai's.

[Daveo]

From Condoms to Cabbages: An Authorized Biography of Mechai Viravaidya by Thomas D'Agnes..

@ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange.

In Thailand, a condom is called a "Mechai". Mechai Viravaidya, Thailand's condom King, has used this most anatomically suggestive contraceptive device to turn the conventional family planning establishment on its head. First came condom-blowing contests, then T-shirts with condom shrouded anthropomorphic penises.

Then condom keyrings followed by a Cabbages and Condoms restaurant, When it comes to condoms, no one has been more creative than the Condom King.

To equate Mechai with condoms or family planning alone underestimates the man and fails to capture his essence. Mechai Viravaidya is engaged in a relentless pursuit to improve the well-being of the poor by giving them the tools to lead a fruitful and productive life.

His achievements in family planning, AIDS prevention, and rural development are a means to an end - the alleviation of poverty in Thailand. Mechai's journey From Condoms To Cabbages - from his roots in family planning to his goal of poverty alleviation - has spanned 34 years.

Along the way, he has been labeled a visionary iconoclast and cheerful revolutionary.

He is also an ordinary man from modest origins. This book will shed light on both Mechai's.

[Daveo]

Sukhumvit Road by David Young

This book Asia books cost 465 baht - our price 180 baht + 50% trade in for credit when you have finished with it @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange.

Bami is Bangkok's #1 butterfly girl, fluttering from dream to dream and lover to lover.

Her life turns upside-down as former boyfriends and present beaus suddenly converge over one long weekend in the City of Angels. There's Nathan, a thoroughly deluded young Bachelor set on marrying her.

Owen, an ex-minister hoping to erase his sins in forbidden love. Frank, the broken-hearted bar owner whose life is spinning out of control, and Roley, an alcoholic writing the story of her life.

Filled with laughter and demons, the shocking and the hilarious, David Young weaves a no-holds barred tale of Bangkok that urban legend can't compete with.

And it all takes place on Sukhumvit Road.

[Daveo]

All Necessary Measures by Cameron Spence

@ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange.

In 1994 Cameron Spence travelled to Bosnia as Second-in-Command of an SAS troop.

This book details the patrol's rollercoaster ride through a lawless country, leading to the book's climax: a daring bid by a trapped SAS patrol to break out of the besieged Muslim town of Gorazde.

[Daveo]

A Real Good War by Sam Halpert

Find this and many like it in the War section @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange.

Historic fiction, this novel follows a B-17 crew through WWII.

It depicts their humor, despair, fear and courage while flying mission after mission, their friendships brutally "scrubbed" by mounting casualties.

You'll taste the terror of flying each mission through heavy black barrages of flak and flame, bearing wounded or dead buddies.

Praised for its "gutsy realism," its "stoic humor and crusty humanity," this book transports the reader into the very belly of the Flying Fortress, as its bombs rain on Nazi Germany and its young crew learns the real meaning of war.

[Daveo]

Sleepless in Bangkok by Ian Quartermaine. . .

@ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange.

In its initial release in Thailand, ‘Sleepless in Bangkok’ engendered a tremendous amount of controversy.

It was unofficially banned for review in the press on the basis that it was ‘uncensored’.

Sex in Thailand - as the world knows - is available in any and every conceivable format, but apparently such goings on cannot be spoken about or acknowledged.

[Daveo]

The Last Godfathers: Inside the Mafia's Most Infamous Family by John Follain..

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"The Last Godfathers "charts the spectacular rise and the fall of one of the richest and most powerful criminal organizations in history, the Sicilian mafia's Corleone clan. From humble origins in the town of Corleone, they manipulated the Cosa Nostra's code of honor, deceiving and bludgeoning to the summit of the secret brotherhood, purging rivals and launching terrorist campaigns which decimated anti-mafia judges, police and politicians. Journalist John Follian focuses on the three godfathers who headed the clan from the 1950's on.

Luciano "The Professor" Leggio, Salvator "The Beast" Riina and Bernardo "The Tractor" Provenzano, who forged a vicious gang bent on the subversion of democracy. Cutting through the romantic aura of Hollywood films, "The Last Godfathers "portrays the true face of the Corleone mob, delving into the bloody facts behind the myth of the modern mafia.

[Daveo]

Road Dogs by Elmore Leonard..(1st edition)

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Legendary author Elmore Leonard returns with three of his favorite characters: Jack Foley from Out of Sight, Cundo Rey from LaBrava, and Dawn Navarro from Riding the Rap.

Fresh out of prison, Foley hooks up with Dawn Navarro, the common-law wife of Foley's extremely wealthy friend, Cundo Rey, in a plan to relieve Cundo of his fortune. What's "trust" among friends when money is involved?

[Daveo]

The Castle by Franz Kafka,

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Left unfinished by Kafka in 1922 and not published until 1926, two years after his death, The Castle is the haunting tale of K.’s relentless, unavailing struggle with an inscrutable authority in order to gain access to the Castle. Scrupulously following the fluidity and breathlessness of the sparsely punctuated original manuscript, Mark Harman’s new translation reveals levels of comedy, energy, and visual power, previously unknown to English language readers.

[Daveo]

Mekong by Paul Adirex. . . .

@ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange.

A Laos adventure...

[Daveo]

Gangland: London's Underworld by James Morton... .

In the True Crime section @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange.

An examination of London's gangs over the last century. From the Dover Road Gang and the Green Gate Fighting Gang of the 1880's to the era of the Krays and the Richardsons to the Triads and Yardies of the present, the author looks at the people who ruled, robbed and regulated vast areas of the city.

[Daveo]

Marching Powder: A True Story of Friendship, Cocaine, and South America's Strangest Jail by Rusty Young. . .

@ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange.

Rusty Young was backpacking in South America when he heard about Thomas McFadden, a convicted English drug trafficker who ran tours inside Bolivia's notorious San Pedro prison.

Intrigued, the young Australian journalisted went to La Paz and joined one of Thomas's illegal tours.

They formed an instant friendship and then became partners in an attempt to record Thomas's experiences in the jail.

Rusty bribed the guards to allow him to stay and for the next three months he lived inside the prison, sharing a cell with Thomas and recording one of the strangest and most compelling prison stories of all time. The result is Marching Powder. This book establishes that San Pedro is not your average prison. Inmates are expected to buy their cells from real estate agents.

Others run shops and restaurants. Women and children live with imprisoned family members.

It is a place where corrupt politicians and drug lords live in luxury apartments, while the poorest prisoners are subjected to squalor and deprivation.

Violence is a constant threat, and sections of San Pedro that echo with the sound of children by day house some of Bolivia's busiest cocaine laboratories by night.

In San Pedro, cocaine "Bolivian marching powder" makes life bearable.

Even the prison cat is addicted. Yet Marching Powder is also the tale of friendship, a place where horror is countered by humor and cruelty and compassion can inhabit the same cell.

This is cutting-edge travel-writing and a fascinating account of infiltration into the South American drug culture.

[Daveo]

Both these best read books @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange.

[Daveo]

From other Worlds by Ian Quartermaine. .

60 baht @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange.

An alien civilisation from another galaxy has arrived on Earth in a fleet of spaceships spread amongst the cities of the world, but why have they chosen to focus their contact with humanity in Bangkok?

And what will be the fate of the three children who’ve escaped the clutches of the human-yet-animal-like aliens – are things about to get very unpleasant indeed? Oh yes they are.

The enigmatic ‘Ian Quartermaine’ (you can read my article about him in The White Notebooks #1) employs some sleight of hand in a novel that intentionally blends The Day the Earth Stood Still with Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End and adds a side order inspired by a certain famous Damon Knight short story.

Quartermaine quickly settles into an unchallenging yet decent enough y/a groove, and yet at two points in the novel he confounds the reader with some intentionally graphic and non-y/a material (the cover does warn the reader).

This creates a problem with which target audience is being addressed: is the novel actually intended as y/a or adult? Surely Quartermaine is self-aware enough that it’s difficult enough to be both in this particular instance, and yet the question lingers.

Quartermaine wants to disturb our ‘civilised’ sensibilities and he breaks some unwritten rules in doing so, but when the true structure of the story is finally revealed it didn’t satisfy this reader quite as much as the writer may have intended.

It’s clear that From Other Worlds was intended as a ‘dangerous vision’, and not all such stories can succeed on their shock value alone. This one certainly succeeds in that you will remember it, but it would also have benefited from more effort to better conceal those well-known sources of inspiration.

[Daveo]

We have a lot of Grisham's at 60 baht each @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange.

[Daveo]

Rough Cut by Owen Carey Jones...

@ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange.

When a New York dealer in gemstones discovers a number of top quality synthetic diamonds in a batch he has bought, industry watchdog, the Federation of International Diamond Traders calls in Belizean, Carter Jefferson to trace their origin.

Carter, a synthetic diamond specialist who recently quit working for the FIDT to concentrate on writing but still works for them on an ad-hoc basis, is reluctant to take the case until he finds a reference in the file which takes him back 25 years to the time he was a geology student at Oxford University.

Old relationships are revived and family Secrets emerge as an attractive English girl and a passionate young Frenchman are sucked into the web of deceit and death surrounding the illicit g...

[Daveo]

Kong: Skull Island by Tim Lebbon. . .

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When a scientific expedition to an uncharted island awakens titanic forces of nature, a mission of discovery becomes an explosive war between monster and man.

[Daveo]

A Splendid Little War by Derek Robinson. . .

@ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange.

The war to end all wars, people said in 1918.

Not for long. By 1919, White Russians were fighting the Bolsheviks (Reds) for control of their country, and Winston Churchill (then Minister for War) wanted to see Communism 'strangled in its cradle'.

So a volunteer R.A.F. squadron, flying Sopwith Camels and DH9 bombers, went there to duff up the Reds.

'There's a splendid little war going on,' a British staff officer told them. 'You'll like it.' Looked like fun. But the war was neither splendid nor little.

It was big and it was brutal, a grim conflict of attrition, marked by cruelty, betrayal and corruption. Before it ended, the squadron wished that both sides would lose. If that was a joke, nobody was laughing. "A Splendid Little War" tests the pilots' gallows humour in a world of armoured trains and elegant barons, gruesome religious sects and anarchist guerrillas, unreliable allies and pitiless enemies.

The comedy of this war, if it exists, is very bleak. Derek Robinson is at once our finest living comic novelist and a master of military fiction. Biggles was never like this.

[Daveo]

Barry Sheene Biography by Stuart Barker..

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The definitive life story of the seventies world 500cc motorcycle champion Barry Sheene - the Brit whose death-defying crashes and playboy lifestyle made him the most famous bike racer on the planet.

Written by the only journalist to have ridden on the roads with him, this book features interviews with closest friends, team mates and former rivals.

Sheene's story traces his humble beginnings through an apprenticeship as a part-time rider and full-time mechanic, to a works team racer, with a host of diversions in pursuit of the opposite sex.

After being diagnosed with cancer in 2002 he shunned conventional treatments, preferring natural remedies, but died early in 2003.

This is the complete portrait of perhaps the greatest circuit racer of them all.

[Daveo]

The Lost Temple by Tom Harper.....

@ Canterbury Tales Bookshop *-* Book exchange.. ….

For three thousand years, the world's most dangerous treasure has been lost.
Now the code that reveals its hiding place is about to be broken...
Sam Grant is a disgraced ex-SOE soldier and an adventurer by trade.
But he has a secret: six years ago, a dying archaeologist entrusted him with his life's work, transcripts of mysterious writing found in a hidden Cave on Crete. Deciphered, it could lead to one of the greatest prizes in history.
But the treasure is as dangerous as it is valuable.
The CIA wants it; so does the KGB, helped by a brilliant Oxford professor, and a beautiful Greek archaeologist with her own Secrets to hide, Grant is plunged into a labyrinth of ancient cults, forgotten mysteries and lost civilizations.
But time is running out.
The Secrets of the distant past may hold the key to the newest threats of the modern world...

[Daveo]

 

A Book to look out for @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop *-* Book exchange.. ….

 

[Daveo]

Rod: The Autobiography by Rod Stewart & Simon Vance..

Traded in @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop *-* Book exchange....

The extraordinary life and career of music legend Rod Stewart, in his own words for the first time.

With his soulful and singular voice, narrative songwriting, and passionate live performances Rod Stewart has paved one of the most iconic and successful music careers of all time.
He was the charismatic lead singer for the trailblazing rock and roll bands The Jeff Beck Group and The Faces, and as a solo artist, the author of such beloved songs as "Maggie May," "Tonight’s the Night," "Hot Legs," "Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?," "Young Turks," "Forever Young," and "You Wear It Well."
Now after more than five decades in the spotlight, he is finally ready to take a candid and romping look back at his life both on and off the stage.
From his humble British roots to his hell-raising years on tour with his bandmates, not forgetting his great loves (including three marriages and eight children) and decades touring the world, Rod delivers a riveting ride through one of rock's most remarkable lives.

[Daveo]

Red Sparrow (Red Sparrow Trilogy #1) by Jason Matthews...

@ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange.

In the grand spy-tale tradition of John le Carré comes this shocking thriller written with insider detail known only to a veteran CIA officer. In present-day Russia, ruled by blue-eyed, unblinking President Vladimir Putin, Russian intelligence officer Dominika Egorova struggles to survive in the post-Soviet intelligence Jungle.

Ordered against her will to become a “Sparrow,” a trained seductress, Dominika is assigned to operate against Nathaniel Nash, a young CIA officer who handles the Agency’s most important Russian mole. Spies have long relied on the “honey trap,” whereby vulnerable men and women are intimately compromised. Dominika learns these techniques of “sexpionage” in Russia’s secret “Sparrow School,” hidden outside of Moscow.

As the action careens between Russia, Finland, Greece, Italy, and the United States, Dominika and Nate soon collide in a duel of wills, tradecraft, and - inevitably -forbidden passion that threatens not just their lives but those of others as well.

As secret allegiances are made and broken, Dominika and Nate’s game reaches a deadly crossroads. Soon one of them begins a dangerous double existence in a life-and-death operation that consumes intelligence agencies from Moscow to Washington, DC. Page by page, veteran CIA officer Jason Matthews Red Sparrow delights and terrifies and fascinates, all while delivering an unforgettable cast, from a sadistic Spetsnaz “mechanic” who carries out Putin’s murderous schemes to the weary CIA Station Chief who resists Washington “cake-eaters” to MARBLE, the priceless Russian mole.

Packed with insider detail and written with brio, this tour-de-force novel brims with Matthews’s life experience, including his knowledge of espionage, counterintelligence, surveillance tradecraft, spy recruitment, cyber-warfare, the Russian use of “spy dust,” and covert communications. Brilliantly composed and elegantly constructed, Red Sparrow is a masterful spy tale lifted from the dossiers of intelligence agencies on both sides of the Atlantic. Authentic, tense, and entertaining, this novel introduces Jason Matthews as a major new American talent.

[Daveo]

Codename Villanelle (Killing Eve #1) by Luke Jennings.,.,.

@ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange.

Villanelle (a codename, of course) is one of the world's most skilled assassins.

A catlike psychopath whose love for the creature comforts of her luxurious lifestyle is second only to her love of the game, she specializes in murdering the world's richest and most powerful.

But when she murders an influential Russian politician, she draws a relentless foe to her tail. Eve Polastri (not a codename) is a former MI6 operative hired by the national security services for a singular task: to find and capture or kill the assassin responsible, and those who have aided her.

Eve, whose quiet and otherwise unextraordinary life belies her quick wit and keen intellect, accepts the mission. The ensuing chase will lead them on a trail around the world, intersecting with corrupt governments and powerful criminal organizations, all leading towards a final confrontation from which neither will emerge unscathed. Codename Villanelle is a sleek, fast-paced international thriller from an exciting new voice in fiction.

[Daveo]

Crete 1941: The Battle at Sea by David A Thomas..

Traded in @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop *-* Book exchange - Cafe - Guesthouse * Pattaya....

No punches are pulled in this strong account of a major disaster that cost the lives of 2,000 British sailors.

In the six-week period between April and June 1941, in the waters around Greece and Crete, the British navy suffered constant aerial bombardment, with little or no support from the RAF.

Even though the Germans had no sea fleet, this running battle could hardly have been won by the British, caught with nowhere to hide.