Canterbury Tales Guesthouse

[Daveo]

Books like these 120 baht each plus 50% trade in for credit when finished with them, trade in your unwanted books with us.

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Hemingway's Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost, 1934-1961 by Paul Hendrickson..

From a National Book Critics Circle Award winner, a brilliantly conceived and illuminating reconsideration of a key period in the life of Ernest Hemingway that will forever change the way he is perceived and understood.

Focusing on the years 1934 to 1961 - from Hemingway’s pinnacle as the reigning monarch of American letters until his suicide - Paul Hendrickson traces the writer’s exultations and despair around the one constant in his life during this time: his beloved boat, Pilar.

We follow him from Key West to Paris, to New York, Africa, Cuba, and finally Idaho, as he wrestles with his best angels and worst demons.

Whenever he could, he returned to his beloved fishing cruiser, to exult in the sea, to fight the biggest fish he could find, to drink, to entertain celebrities and friends and seduce women, to be with his children.

But as he began to succumb to the diseases of fame, we see that Pilar was also where he cursed his critics, saw marriages and friendships dissolve, and tried, in vain, to escape his increasingly diminished capacities.

Generally thought of as a great writer and an unappealing human being, Hemingway emerges here in a far more benevolent light. Drawing on previously unpublished material, including interviews with Hemingway’s sons, Hendrickson shows that for all the writer’s boorishness, depression, and alcoholism, and despite his choleric anger, he was capable of remarkable generosity - to struggling writers, to lost souls, to the dying son of a friend.

We see most poignantly his relationship with his youngest son, Gigi, a doctor who lived his adult life mostly as a cross-dresser, and died squalidly and alone in a Miami women’s jail.

He was the son Hemingway forsook the least, yet the one who disappointed him the most, as Gigi acted out for nearly his whole life so many of the tortured, ambiguous tensions his father felt.

Hendrickson’s bold and beautiful book strikingly makes the case that both men were braver than we know, struggling all their lives against the complicated, powerful emotions swirling around them. As Hendrickson writes, “Amid so much ruin, still the beauty.”

Hemingway’s Boat is both stunningly original and deeply gripping, an invaluable contribution to our understanding of this great American writer, published fifty years after his death.

[Daveo]

SURROUNDED BY IDIOTS: THE FOUR TYPES OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR AND HOW TO EFFECTIVELY COMMUNICATE WITH EACH IN BUSINESS (AND IN LIFE)

BY THOMAS ERIKSON ..

Do you ever think you’re the only one making any sense? Or tried to reason with your partner with disastrous results? Do long, rambling answers drive you crazy? Or does your colleague’s abrasive manner rub you the wrong way?

You are not alone. After a disastrous meeting with a highly successful entrepreneur, who was genuinely convinced he was ‘surrounded by idiots’, communication expert and bestselling author, Thomas Erikson dedicated himself to understanding how people function and why we often struggle to connect with certain types of people.

Surrounded by Idiots is an international phenomenon, selling over 1.5 million copies worldwide. It offers a simple, yet ground-breaking method for assessing the personalities of people we communicate with – in and out of the office – based on four personality types (Red, Blue, Green and Yellow), and provides insights into how we can adjust the way we speak and share information.

Erikson will help you understand yourself better, hone communication and social skills, handle conflict with confidence, improve dynamics with your boss and team, and get the best out of the people you deal with and manage. He also shares simple tricks on body language, improving written communication, advice on when to back away or when to push on, and when to speak up or shut up.

Packed with ‘aha!’ and ‘oh no!’ moments, Surrounded by Idiots will help you understand and communicate with those around you, even people you currently think are beyond all comprehension.

And with a bit of luck you can also be confident that the idiot out there isn’t you!

[Daveo]

Fight to the Finish: The First World War - Month by Month

by Allan Mallinson..

We remember months, because months have names, because they are linked to the seasons, and because they have their own character. Looking at the First World War month by month reveals its complexity while preserving a sense of time.

From the opening shots to the signing of the armistice, the First World War lasted almost 52 months. It was fought on land, sea and in the air. It became industrial, and unrestricted: Poison gas, aerial bombing of cities, and the sinking without warning of merchantmen and passenger ships by submarines.

Casualties, military and civilian, probably exceeded 40 million. Four empires collapsed during the course of the war the German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman.

The First World War is almost impossible to comprehend. Day-by-day narratives can be dizzying for the reader wanting to make sense of the conflict as a whole. Freer-flowing accounts, while helping to understand the broader trends and factors, can give less of a sense of the human dimension of time. The month is a more digestible gauge.

Based on the Allan Mallinson s monthly commentaries in The Times throughout the centenary, Fight to the Finish is a new and original portrait of The War to End War.

[Daveo]

Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West by Dee Brown...

The American West, 1860-1890: years of broken promises, disillusionment, war and massacre.

Beginning with the Long Walk of the Navajos and ending with the massacre of Sioux at Wounded Knee, this extraordinary book tells how the American Indians lost their land, lives and liberty to white settlers pushing westward.

Woven into a an engrossing saga of cruelty, treachery and violence are the fascinating stories of such legendary figures as Sitting Bull, Cochise, Crazy Horse and Geronimo.

First published in 1970, Dee Brown's brutal and compelling narrative changed the way people thought about the original inhabitants of America, and focused attention on a national disgrace.

[Daveo]

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Bangkok to Ben Nevis Backwards: A journey through Dementia, from England to Scotland, India, Thailand, and back again by Phil Hall..

BRAND NEW - 240 baht - FREE shipping within Thailand

Debt, Dementia, Emigration, and Attempted Murder! If you ever wanted to learn a little about how not to move your family to a strange and exotic country or two, this true cautionary tale is perfect for you!

Inhale the adventures of the Hall family as they move from crisis to crisis on whims and ideas, badly executed. Dealing with tropical nightmares, adventures with snakes (both human and reptile), vehicular challenges, culture shock(s), betrayal(s), career changes, debt dispersal, family diaspora, and the tragedies endemic in growing old – all crammed into an 18-month journey to self-acceptance.

Sometimes happy, sometimes sad, but never boring, Phil Hall’s account of dragging his family across the world and back again is intriguing, funny, shocking, and sometimes heart-breaking. Oxfordshire, the Highlands of Scotland, Bangalore and North East Thailand are the backdrop to these memoirs of cock-ups galore!

Edited February 11, 2021 by Daveo

[Daveo]

Hillsborough: The Truth was first published in 1999 to universal acclaim. Now, following the private prosecution for manslaughter brought by the bereaved families against two senior police officers, this revised edition considers the background, progress and implications of that court action. It examines the conduct of the seven-week trial, the legal arguments, the key evidence, the cases for the prosecution and defence, the judge's controversial direction and the outcome. The jury, while acquitting his assistant, failed to reach a verdict on the match commander, Chief Superintendent Duckenfield. The judge then refused a retrial. Using verbatim accounts, the book's detailed analysis demonstrates the inadequacy of the law and the inappropriate breadth of judicial discretion, which undermines and inhibits such cases.

Hillsborough: The Truth is already established as the definitive, unique account of the disaster - in which 96 men, women and children died, hundreds were injured and thousands traumatised - and its long-term aftermath. It reveals the contradictions between the Taylor Inquiry and the anachronistic and controversial inquest system, which returned verdicts of accidental death when negligence had been clearly established. It also exposes the appalling treatment endured by the bereaved and survivors in the immediate aftermath; the inhumanity of the identification process; problems concerning the emergency response and standards of medical care; and the systematic review and alteration of police statements by South Yorkshire police managers and their solicitors - evidently approved by the West Midlands police investigation team and Lord Justice Taylor.

Powerful, disturbing and harrowing, Hillsborough: The Truth puts the disaster into the context of institutional complacency, which made a tragedy on this scale inevitable. It shows how the law fails to provide appropriate means of access, disclosure and redress for those facing the consequences of institutional neglect and personal negligence. And it tells how ordinary people can suffer when those in authority sacrifice truth and accountability to protect their reputations. 

[Daveo]

Life with My Sister Madonna by Christopher Ciccone...

Madonna up close, by the brother who knows her better than anyone.

Christopher Ciccone's extraordinary memoir is based on his forty-seven years of growing up with, working with, and understanding the most famous woman of our time, who has intrigued, scandalized, and entertained millions for half a century.

Through most of the iconic star's kaleidoscopic career, Christopher played an important role in her life: as her backup dancer, her personal assistant, her dresser, her decorator, her art director, her tour director.

If you think you know everything there is to know about Madonna, you are wrong. Only Christopher can tell the full scale, riveting untold story behind Madonna's carefully constructed mythology, and the real woman behind the glittering façade.

From their shared Michigan childhood, which Madonna transcended, then whisked Christopher to Manhattan with her in the early eighties, where he slept on her roach-infested floor and danced with her in clubs all over town - Christopher was with her every step of the way, experiencing her first hand in all her incarnations.

The spoiled daddy's girl, the punk drummer, the raunchy Boy Toy, Material Girl, Mrs. Sean Penn, Warren Beatty's glamorous Hollywood paramour, loving mother, Mrs. Guy Ritchie, English Grande dame - Christopher witnessed and understood all of them, as his own life was inexorably entwined with that of his chameleon sister.

He tangled with a cast of characters from artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, to Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Moss, Demi Moore, and, of course, Guy Ritchie, whose advent in Madonna's life splintered the loving relationship Christopher once had with her.

The mirror image of his legendary sister, with his acid Ciccone tongue, Christopher pulls no punches as he tells his astonishing story.

"Life with My Sister Madonna" is the juicy, can't-put-it-down story you've always wanted to hear, as told by Madonna's younger brother.

[Daveo]

Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine by Jasper Becker..

In the late 1950's and early 1960's, the Chinese people suffered what may have been the worst famine in history.

Over thirty million perished in a grain shortage brought on not by flood, drought, or infestation, but by the insanely irresponsible dictates of Chairman Mao Ze-dong's "Great Leap Forward," an attempt at utopian engineering gone horribly wrong.

Journalist Jasper Becker conducted hundreds of interviews and spent years immersed in painstaking detective work to produce Hungry Ghosts, the first full account of this dark chapter in Chinese history.

In this horrific story of state-sponsored terror, cannibalism, torture, and murder, China's communist leadership boasted of record harvests and actually increased grain exports, while refusing imports and international assistance.

With China's reclamation of Hong Kong now a fait accompli, removing the historical blinders is more timely than ever.

As reviewer Richard Bernstein wrote in the New York Times, "Mr. Becker's remarkable book...strikes a heavy blow against willed ignorance of what took place."

[Daveo]

Wild China Natural Wonders of the World's Most Enigmatic Land..

China has more varied habitats for wildlife than anywhere else on the planet: rivers carve immense gorges through the world's loftiest mountain peaks; vast deserts range from searing heat to mind-numbing cold; wild horses gallop across grass steppe land; shallow seas teem with life; steaming jungles harbour colourful birds and temperate forests shelter giant pandas and golden snub-nosed monkeys.

But above all, China is a place of 1.3 billion people, most of whom still live in the countryside. By the improbable cone-shaped hills of Southern China, afloat in a sea of glistening rice paddies, streams conceal dwarf alligators and giant salamanders and trained cormorants catch fish for their masters.

In the Himalayas, where the temperature can drop nearly 30 degrees C in a day, Mongolian nomads roam on horseback along the ancient Silk Road, Kazakh herders hunt with Golden Eagles in the snow, and all share their land with wild yak, giant herds of Chiru antelope, brown bears and snow leopards.

Vast river estuaries, migrating birds, coral reefs and busy cities jostle for attention along China's 10,000 km-long eastern seaboard.

This cradle of Chinese civilization has developed into the country's most densely-populated and economically dynamic area, while remaining a Mecca for wildlife.

To survive, this wildlife must co-exist with over 600 million people in a rapidly-changing environment.

"Wild China" is a stunning visual feast - exploring the length and breadth of one of the world's most spectacular and mysterious countries.

It accompanies the BBC documentary "Wild China", as shown on BBC2 in May 2008.

[Daveo]

Unforgettable Journeys To Take Before You Die by Steve Watkins & Clare B. Jones

Following the success of Unforgettable Places to See Before You Die and Unforgettable Things to Do Before You Die, this is the third title in an exciting new series of books that will help you search out essential sights and experiences around the world.

In Unforgettable Journeys to Take Before You Die international travel writers and photographers Steve Watkins and Clare Jones draw on their years of experience in selecting thirty of their favourite trips of a lifetime.

Steve and Clare's diverse adventures range from cruising through Patagonian fjords to taking a slow barge down the Canal du Midi; from following in the footsteps of Shackleton in Antarctica to tracking gorillas through the Rwandan rainforest.

This book will introduce you to a host of unusual and amazing journeys from around the world. Lavishly illustrated with specially commissioned photographs, Unforgettable Journeys to Take Before You Die is aimed at anyone looking for ideas for an inspirational experience of a lifetime.

[Daveo]

A History of Cambodia by David P. Chandler...

This clear and concise volume provides a timely overview of Cambodia, a small but increasingly visible Southeast Asian nation. Hailed by the Journal of Asian Studies as an "original contribution, superior to any other existing work," the third edition of this acclaimed text has been completely revised and updated to include all-new material examining the death of Pol Pot and the collapse of the Khmer Rouge.

In addition, Chandler examines the unstable but influential career of Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the bloody reign of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge, and the relative calm that followed the Vietnamese invasion of 1979.

This comprehensive general description and analysis of Cambodia will illuminate - for specialists and general readers alike - the History and contemporary politics of a country long misunderstood.

[Daveo]

The Great Wall: China Against the World, 1000 BC - AD 2000

by Julia Lovell...

Legendarily 2,200 years old and 4,300 miles long, the Great Wall of China seems to make an overwhelmingly confident physical statement about the country it spans: about China’s age-old sense of itself being an advanced civilization anxious to draw a clear line between itself and the “barbarians” at its borders.

But behind the wall’s intimidating exterior - and the myths that have built up around it - is a complex history that has both defined and undermined China.

Author Julia Lovell has written a new and important history of the Great Wall that guides the reader through the conquests and cataclysms of the Chinese empire, from the second millennium BC to the present day.

In recent years, the Wall has become an ever more potent symbol of Chinese nationalism, of a determination to resist foreign domination.

But how successful was the Wall in reality, and what was its real purpose? Was it a precursor, albeit on a huge scale, of the Berlin Wall - a barrier designed to keep its population in as much as undesirables out?

Lovell looks behind the modern mythology of the Great Wall, uncovering a three-thousand-year history far more fragmented and less illustrious than its crowds of visitors imagine today.

The story of the Wall winds through that of the Chinese state and the frontier policy that defined it, through the lives of the millions of individuals who supported, criticized, built, and attacked it.

[Daveo]

Phoenix, Policing the Shadows by Susan Phoenix - Jack Holland..

When the huge helicopter crashed on the Mull of Kintyre on a summer's evening in 1994, it claimed the lives of 25 top anti-terrorist officers, among whom was Detective Superintendent Ian Phoenix, from the RUC counter terrorist surveillance unit.

Phoenix had spent 25 years of his life in an undercover war against some of the most deadly terrorist organizations in the world.

A war where heroes have no names and deeds that save hundreds of lives remain unrecorded. Until now.

PHOENIX reveals for the first time how the undercover war of covert police and SAS operations was fought in an arena where the rules were made by doorstep assassins, booby-trap bombers and snipers in the shadows.

It tells how the man responsible for almost wiping out the British cabinet was caught, how a deadly bombing campaign in Britain was frustrated and how the lives of many of those targeted for death by the IRA were saved through secret and often ruthless tactics.

PHOENIX takes the reader behind the scenes of the secret negotiations which led to the IRA cease fire and uncovers some shocking details about what political figures were prepared to do to win over the terrorists.

It exposes the struggle between the Northern Ireland Special Branch and MI5 for control of top secret information channels.

PHOENIX is more than just a story of a shadowy war. It is an intimate portrait of an Irish man and his English wife, Susan, who came to Northern Ireland thinking she would be the wife of an ordinary bobby and instead found herself thrown into the mayhem of the troubles.

Their relationship gives a personal background to the tale of terror and counter-terror where a rap on the door can mean death. It shows how love and real family life can sustain a man during a dangerous career.

[Daveo]

The time is 1933, the place, Berlin, when William E. Dodd becomes America’s first ambassador to Hitler’s Nazi Germany in a year that proved to be a turning point in history.

A mild-mannered professor from Chicago, Dodd brings along his wife, son, and flamboyant daughter, Martha. At first Martha is entranced by the parties and pomp, and the handsome young men of the Third Reich with their infectious enthusiasm for restoring Germany to a position of world prominence. Enamored of the “New Germany,” she has one affair after another, including with the surprisingly honorable first chief of the Gestapo, Rudolf Diels.

But as evidence of Jewish persecution mounts, confirmed by chilling first-person testimony, her father telegraphs his concerns to a largely indifferent State Department back home. Dodd watches with alarm as Jews are attacked, the press is censored, and drafts of frightening new laws begin to circulate. As that first year unfolds and the shadows deepen, the Dodds experience days full of excitement, intrigue, romance—and ultimately, horror, when a climactic spasm of violence and murder reveals Hitler’s true character and ruthless ambition.

Suffused with the tense atmosphere of the period, and with unforgettable portraits of the bizarre Göring and the expectedly charming--yet wholly sinister--Goebbels, In the Garden of Beasts lends a stunning, eyewitness perspective on events as they unfold in real time, revealing an era of surprising nuance and complexity. The result is a dazzling, addictively readable work that speaks volumes about why the world did not recognize the grave threat posed by Hitler until Berlin, and Europe, were awash in blood and terror.

[Daveo]

My War Killing Time in Iraq Colby Buzzell..

An extraordinary account of the war in Iraq.

'Once we passed the checkpoint at the border, it hit me. I was like, Holy Shit, this is it, I'm entering a combat zone. Cool!'

At twenty-six Colby Buzzell, unemployed and living at home, decided to join the US Army.

Within months he was in Iraq, a machine gunner in the controversial Stryker Brigade Combat Team, an army unit on the cutting edge of combat technology and the first of its kind.

Trapped amid 'guerrilla warfare, urban-style' in Mosul, Iraq, Buzzell was struck by the bizarre and often frightening world surrounding him.

He began writing a blog describing the war - not as being reported by CNN or official briefings - but as experienced by the soldier on the ground.

His story is a brutally honest and hard-hitting account of the absurdities of modern war. These are the real stories of the war: a firefight where the resistance came from 'men in black'; a night spent chain-smoking in the guard tower counting the tracer bullets being fired over the city; and the hesitation of a young soldier who had been passed around from platoon to platoon because he was too afraid to fight.

My War is a powerful story of a young man and a war, unlike any you have read before.

[Daveo]

Yellow Dog

by 

Martin Amis

 Explores the complex lives of five very different men, including Xan Meo, a one-time familial paragon who suffers a personality change following a brutal assault, and King Henry IX of England, whose life is complicated by his incapacitated wife.

[Daveo]

Immortal by Duncan Hamilton..

The two time winner of the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award on George Best, considered the greatest footballer of our time.

No other imposed himself so completely on to the romantic imagination. No other was so emblematic of the era during which he flourished. And no other will ever be as memorable as George Best.

On the field Best's skills were sublime and almost other-worldly. Off it, he had a magnetic appeal. He was treated like a pop icon and a pin-up; a fashion-model and a sex-symbol. Every man envied him and every woman adored him.

To mark the 50th anniversary of his debut for Manchester United, Duncan Hamilton examines Best's crowded life and premature death. But most importantly, Hamilton presents Best at his glorious peak - the precocious goals, the labyrinthine runs, the poise and balletic balance and the body swerves.

 

This is George Best: footballing immortal.

[Daveo]

[Daveo]

Dear Uncle Go: Male Homosexuality in Thailand by Peter A Jackson...

A landmark study of male homoeroticism in Southeast Asia. "Uncle Go Pak-nam" has been Thailand's advice columnist for gay men in a major national magazine since 1974.

Letters to him come from the confused, lovelorn, naive, worldly and lonely.

Their sexually explicit stores are often moving, sometimes shocking, sometimes delightful, but always fascinating and deeply human. Uncle Go's advice to them is wild, witty, and wise.

These engaging letters, plus Uncle Go's responses, provide the basis for Dr. Jackson's ingenious and insightful analyses and commentaries into male-to-male relationships in what may be one of the world's few non-homophobic societies.

This landmark book is a fully revised and expanded version of Male Homosexuality in Thailand: An Interpretation of Contemporary Thai Sources (New York: 1989)

Although this book is an academic study, lay people will find it readable and compelling.

[Daveo]

In the Shade of a Quiet Killing Place by Sam Sotha .....

On April 17, 1975 Sam Sotha and his wife Sony, along with thousands of others, were forced by the Khmer Rouge to leave Phnom Penh.

Shot, tortured, starved and enslaved in hard labor was the fate of many Cambodians during the Khmer Rouge years.

In In The Shade of A Quiet Killing Place: A Personal Memoir, Sam Sotha tells a moving personal story of love and a couple’s struggle for survival during the four years of their captivity by the Khmer Rouge.

In the context of intense brutality and human tragedy, Sam Sotha’s In The Shade of A Quiet Killing Place gives an inspiringly beautiful portrait of love between husband and wife that refused to yield under such terror.

Forced to leave their home and then from one prison camp to another, Sam and Sony endured and witnessed family separation, torture, starvation, mindless killings and acts more horrific than death.

Yet, against it all their spiritual bond only grew stronger and became unbreakable.

The strength of their love guided the couple through the darkest moments, when it seemed only a miracle could save them from certain death.

[Daveo]

[Daveo]

Wanderlust in Gay Asia: Exotic Encounters and Erotic Escapades

by Hans Fritschi..

Celebrated gay blogger Hans Fritschi has traveled extensively around Asia and his site is one of the leading online gay guides.

In this ground-breaking book, he shares with readers his experiences of gay life in Asia.

Through the eyes of his flamboyant heroine Suzy Size who is based in Thailand, Hans describes the exotic encounters and erotic escapades of a modern gay traveler in Asia.

Suzy Size chases after money boys and is "herself" chased by sex hungry young men who go after older Western men. Or is it just their money? Suzy has many strange, absurd and hilarious encounters all over Asia.

While not a gay guide, Wanderlust makes a good and entertaining read, covering everything from pubs and nightlife to getting "picked up".