Whatcha reading recently? Love it? Hate it? Discuss below.
According to Hubski, it's been 69 days since we've had a book thread: And, seeing as I have about an hour and a half each way, 5 days a week, at 2x to do audiobooks, I've done a lot of books. That doesn't include time on planes or trains. - Notes on a Foreign Country - a bored grant winner discovers that Turkey is not in fact an Islamic hell, and that the totalitarianism of Attaturk was not, in fact, a 100% undiluted good for freedom of expression or religion. who knew? I got about halfway through. - The Quiet American - geopolitical Twitter is all about this book right now. Maybe because the guys who were active for Vietnam are all dying. I didn't make it fifteen minutes. "Oh, those poor Americans, forced to oppress Vietnamese geishas." - Harry Potter & The Chamber of Secrets - Harry Potter books are fucking fun. But - more on that. - Seeing Like a State - Fuck this book. Archetypal right-wing conservative "I reject your facts and substitute my own A Modest Proposal was a how-to manual." - Our Man - there's a broad swath of the intelligentsia that are deeply disturbed that Richard Holbrooke never became president or secretary of state or some shit who also acknowledge he was an asshole that hated people. The biggest problem with the intelligentsia, in my opinion, is that they don't understand that assholes that hate people are dictators, not diplomats, and that the world is a fucking shithole right now because they feel entirely okay compelling the world to their worldview rather than attempting to help out the small folk who are just trying to live their lives. If you wanna know why "neoliberal" became an epithet, it's not because of Richard Holbrooke, it's because of people who lionize Richard Holbrooke. They also want you to read The Quiet American, by the way, and they need to fuck off with that shit. - Casino Royale. - The Spy In Moscow Station. - Zero History by William Gibson. I decided to mainline me some William Gibson while waiting for more Harry Potter books from the library. Zero History is of a trilogy with Pattern Recognition and Spook Country. It was familiar. Not great, but certainly familiar. Curtas, Festo, International Klein Blue... Gibson and I read the same shit. - The Peripheral by William Gibson. Actual sci fi from Gibson for a change, about a future in which 80% of the world is about to die, and another future in which 80% of the world has already died. It's kinda fun. It makes you realize that pretty much everything Gibson has ever written is about an organization attempting to increase its power through the surgical application of rogue freelancers, basic noir storytelling with lots of glitzy atmospheric bits. I mean, it worked for Raymond Chandler. - Idoru by William Gibson. Basically a remix of Neuromancer. Eh. - Harry Potter & The Prisoner of Azkaban. Azkaban is probably where I noticed that the fundamental characteristic of the good guys in the Harry Potter universe is "incompetence." I think that's something that's always bugged me about the HP universe: the grownups universally fucking suck at their jobs. This is how plot is advanced - by tossing the idiot ball around. - Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire. Except that Death Eaters? Death Eaters, in general, have their shit together. And while bureaucracy isn't necessarily evil, it always benefits evil. Is Goblet of Fire where Hermione starts spending every free moment on freeing the house elves? I have thoughts on that as well. - The Aeronaut's Windlass by Jim Butcher. Jim Butcher wrote the Dresden Files, about a wizard who pays the bills by being a private investigator. That always struck me as a little too trite but people seem to dig it. I'm now literally thumbing through Overdrive looking for shit to read while waiting on Harry Potter books, and this came up. It's kind of a Master & Commander book where the ships are magical zeppelins and the port cities are giant magical arcologies and by the way cats can talk. I enjoyed it. It's definitely a Dudley DooRight vs. Black Bart setup where the good people are very very good and the bad people are horrid but it's enjoyable. - Range by David Epstein. - Distrust that Particular Flavor by William Gibson. A bunch of essays written by Gibson for magazines, newspapers and as introductions for other people's books. Disneyland with the Death Penalty is worth reading. - The Uninhabitable Earth. I mean... yeah. Global warming is bad. This book is someone shouting at you THAT GLOBAL WARMING IS BAAAAAAAAAAAAD largely through analogies. Over and over again. There's no real call to action, nothing is added to the greater narrative, it's pure disaster porn. didn't finish it. - Bond investing for Dummies. LOOOOL. Everybody's all "pile into the bond market, equities are tanking" but fuckin' hell I can get a better rate out of a 3 month CD than I can out of any bond worth buying. I read this book to see if there was something I was missing about bonds. There is not. They are fundamentally a bad deal for retail investors. The end. - The Hidden Life of Trees. Trees are cool, and this book explains that they are even cooler than you think. I doubt this book will change anyone's life but it sure is a fun examination of plant life. - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. This is one of those thrillers that everyone thought was bugshit awesome back in the '80s, probably because the BBC did an adaptation of it but it's fucking boring. Also I'm really getting sick of the British pretending that the sun didn't set on the British Empire at fucking Dunkirk. I gave it a few days but fuck this book. - Whirlwind by James Clavell. Clavell is mostly famous for Shogun because it was a Richard Chamberlain miniseries. But he was also a prisoner of war in WWII who based his first book on his experiences. Then he wrote the script for The Great Escape. Then he wrote some more stuff. Whirlwind is his incredibly long distillation of the true events of a helicopter company operating in Iran during the two weeks immediately following the Revolution. He clearly hates Iranians and as it was written in 1986, everything is the USSR's fault. I'm probably a third of the way through it, and will likely continue, but it moves with the agility of a retreating glacier. - Harry Potter & The Order of the Phoenix. I'm still reading this, too - put Whirlwind down so I could focus on something lighter. PSYCH! this is a book about how everyone is a dick to Harry Potter because they're incompetent adults. I'm enjoying it but halfway through this book is about where I decided that the whole of the Harry Potter series is an interesting, unintentional portrait of Brexit politics, which is a Bl00's Review that you are all going to be subjected to whether you like it or not. - Showa: A History of Japan by Shigeru Mizuki. This is a five volume set that covers the history of Japan from the start to the end of the Showa Era (1926-1989). I'm two volumes into it. It's brilliant. Imagine a History of The United States from the Depression to the fall of the Berlin Wall, drawn by Will Eisner, interspersed with the personal life of the author as he grows up, goes to war, and becomes a famous cartoonist. Oh, and it's narrated by Donald Duck. I know what I know of the Japanese War in the Pacific I know through Toland's Rising Sun and Mizuki's book is the exact same facts with a lot less distance. - Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths, also by Shigeru Mizuki. This is Platoon if instead of Americans in Vietnam you have a Japanese garrison in New Guinea. And they will lose. Based on Mizuki's own experiences. This is an anti-war graphic novel written in 1973, right about the time America was pulling out of Vietnam, and it's powerful. It wasn't translated into English until like 2011. - Appleseed. Because Mizuki demonstrated that I can read graphic novels and comic books while working so I downloaded all of it. So far? Meh.
I ended up reading Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy after you ripped Casino Royale a new one since Smiley appeared to be a reaction and antithesis to Ian Fleming's fantasies. A fat and ugly spy whose wife repeatedly cheats on him felt a bit too much on the nose. I did finish it, but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a bore. I think the book kind of paints the picture of Britain as a country in decline that has been sidelined by their allies, or maybe I'm confusing it with only acknowledging being a "temporarily embarrassed empire" that will surely rise again. After finishing it I learned it was the first part of a trilogy. Yeah, no, I'm out.
My all-time favorite "spy" book is Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett. It is legitimately great writing and a debut novel to boot. Follett later wrote the Century Trilogy which I also found deeply engaging and enjoyable- it's a "gone with the wind" treatment of the 20th century through the perspectives of a British, a Russian and an American family. I suspect that everyone who loves Herman Wouk loves him because Follett had yet to write the Century Trilogy. Second and third place would be Day of the Jackal and Dogs of War by Frederick Forsythe. There was a time when friends of mine decided we were going to set ourselves up as despots in a small African nation. Chinese guns and ammo were cheap. We settled on a force of 1500 and overthrowing Togo. Six months later I discovered that Frédérick Forsythe had written a book about mercenaries overthrowing a small African nation for profit... And for research, set about with his buddies to overthrow the government of Togo.
Me and my brother used to take turns re-reading Day of the Jackal. Must have read it close to ten times. I don't know why I never checked the library for more books by Forsythe, the only other book by him in my parents bookcase was Codename Odessa. Dogs of War has been added to my library queue along with Eye of the Needle. Thanks!
I read Murakami's Colorless, I liked it more than I've liked anything of his in a while. If you used to like Murakami but got weary of his often used conciets, you might like it. I'm in seven volumes of a halfway decent fantasy series. It isn't amazing but I've invested enough that I feel like I need to find out how it ends. Maybe mk will come by and tell us all how dope Treasure Island was.
Treasure Island is dope indeed. I read it on the shore of Lake Superior, and it was exactly the read I needed this summer. Stevenson paints scenes and characters in melodic prose, and the story seems to unfurl on its own. The haphazardness of action and the sympathetic account of every archetypal character makes Treasure Island a stellar adventure novel. 5 stars.
Since the last thread, I read Atomic Habits by James Clear, which as far as productivity books go is one of the better ones. Found my few diamonds in the rough and moved on. I also finally got around to reading That Orange Mark Manson Book, mostly out of spite. It's basically some Buddhist/Taoist ideas wrapped in a shouty, infantalizing narrative. It's Essentialism rewritten for people who watched too much South Park. The annoying part is that I do agree with a bunch of things he says, I just hate the way he says it. Read a Dutch book called Elite Gezocht ("Elite Wanted"), a book that perfectly characterizes and explains the creation and demise of the modern Dutch elite and its beliefs. I also simultaneously read Primates of Park Avenue, the latter referenced by the former just a few hours after I read the referenced paragraph, which was kinda funny. I found both absolutely fascinating and may or may not have enough thoughts to put into a review of some sorts. Read How to Change your Mind by Michael Pollan. Nearly quit because the second chapter is so godawfully bad, but kept on reading to see if there was more around the corner. There wasn't a lot, and I came away from reading it more convinced that the noetic quality of LSD/psylocibin (the quality of the drugs that makes it feel like it's truth-revealing, instead of just a drug trip) is bullshit. Pollan actually makes half on an argument about the potential reason for this quality, which is that from an evolutionary point of view it makes sense for a drug to convince people that it's the greatest thing in the world, and while he does ignore that argument I simply cannot. So while I won't recommend the book, it at least made me think. I started reading In Search of Zarathustra on kb's recommendation, as I have become somewhat fascinated with Zoroastreanism lately. It's an ebook though so progress is kinda slow. I also started reading Bowling Alone, which I have read parts of in college but haven't yet read back to back. I think it's a good sign that the majority of the reviews talk about how dry it is - so far I quite like it in a Tony Judt/Edward Said deep-dive kind of way. On my reading list: Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland and Disneywar.
Steinbeck I've read The Pastures of Heaven, To a God Unknown, Tortilla Flat, In Dubious Battle, and Of Mice and Men. I'd guess I actually started these before the last book thread was posted, but I didn't finish this volume of works until recently. To a God Unknown was my favorite of that batch, followed by The Pastures of Heaven. I could read Steinbeck describe land all day. In Dubious Battle was the only one that I really wished were longer. Felt abridged. Henry David Thoreau Natural History of Massachusetts, A Walk to Wachusett, and Sir Walter Raleigh. Didn't bother to find out which version of Sir Walter Raleigh I read (apparently there are two), but A Walk to Wachusett is the only one I'd read again. Basically a hiking trail report. Alice Munro Started a collection of her short stories. I only got three stories in, but I really liked it. Need to rebuy the book so I can finish it. F. Scott Fitzgerald I just finished This Side of Paradise. Not entirely sure what I think of it, yet. A quarter of the way through I was pretty sure I didn't like it at all. Then I was miffed when I realized I was reaching the end.
I'm reading John Muir's Nature Essays. It's good. ecib lent it to me. I think at some point, you run out of ways to describe splendor. Last night I read about a couple of encounters with bears that he had. That was a welcome change of pace. It's interesting, he regularly just slept on the ground alone. I'm surprised that he didn't nosed by bears in the middle of the night. I suppose most animals in those days had very few encounters with humans, which might have made them more cautious. UPDATE: In last night's read, Muir quoted a bear-hunter named Brown that wondered about the same thing. Brown suggested that it was a matter of respect the bears had for slumbering creatures.
Welp, you've inspired a volume of some of Muir's writings to start winging its way through the postal system. Should be here today or tomorrow. I'm between books, so I'll probably start it as soon as it arrives. Thanks! Don't think I would have found him on my own.
You’re a bear hunter and respect is what you come up with? Hmm. What were you saying about people falsely anthropomorphizing our own intelligence on to wild animals? I bet that happens more readily the more time you spend with an animal, like a kind of bias.
I'm 50 pages away from the end of Les Trois Mousquetaires (The Three Musketeers) and it's wonderful!! The writing is beautiful and amusing. But I've been reading other books in between.... I read Robin Sloan's Sourdough, recommended to me by demure and a truly delightful read. It was a quick read and a quirky story and I loved every word. I also recently read Code Name Verity, a YA novel about two young female WWII spies/pilots. I picked it up because it's supposedly based in the city in France where I just spent the semester! If you're looking for a page-turning tear-jerking YA quasi-historical read, it's good!
I'd like to issue a challenge to my Hubski friends. I have two friends who have become famous novelists of spy novels, spanning WWII through the Cold War era. A couple of their stories have been (or are being) made into movies, even. But I have not taken the time to dig through their books! I don't read a lot anymore, and when I do it tends to be on practical topics, rather than speculative ones. --- The first one is Fulbright Scholar, Olen Steinhauer. He came to Hungary while I was living there, and fell into my group of friends. (Many writers in this group.) Olen is a great dude, and fell in love with the woman who ran the crew that was renovating my flat. They've now been married for eons, and have a daughter, and live between Budapest and NYC. His first big hit - that then became a movie - was The Tourist, although Bridge of Sighs was my first, and I remember loving it. --- The second one is war correspondent, author, biographer, and journalist Adam LeBor. As a journalist working in the Balkans during the wars there, he was on the front lines, in a flak jacket, before "embedded journalists" became a term. He wrote extensively on the wars, their reasons for being, and their impacts, and eventually wrote the definitive biography of Slobodan Milosevic, who single-handedly destroyed Yugoslavia and turned the Balkans into a 3rd world region. He then wrote gorgeous non-fiction books, like A Heart Turned East (about Muslims living outside of the Middle East, and how they lived their beliefs in cultures where they weren't necessarily supported), and City of Oranges (interviews with multiple generations of Muslims, Jews, and Christians living next to each other in Jaffa, and how their worlds have changed over time). But he and I both had a deep and abiding love for the Cold War spy novels of Alan Furst. Adam always wanted to write something like Furst did, but didn't have a story yet, and didn't have experience writing fiction. Then, during the research phase for his non-fiction book on Hitler's Secret Bankers, Adam discovered some very interesting documents, and a conspiracy plot, that seeded his idea for his first a Cold War spy novel, The Budapest Protocol. It was a fun book for me to read, because his characters are all based loosely off people we knew mutually. I'm even named in the Thank Yous! He has gone on to write two different series of novels, featuring the same characters, and his books have been very well received. --- I'd love to hear more about both Olen and Adam's books from Hubski! Anyone into spy novels? Wanna read any of these and report back? Could be a fun book club/thread idea, with some specific link back to Hubski!
Civilization and its Discontents by Freud. It kind of sucks. It's Freud being depressing as usual, about how civilization is an engine designed to prevent humans from getting what we really want and as a result we'll remain perpetually frustrated and unhappy. I'd agree with him if maybe his analysis wasn't so simplistic. I would argue that human beings have innate drives, but that things such as instinct and sexuality are more mutable than we think they are and can be directed toward positive ends that are self-fulfilling and we aren't being perpetually crushed under the weight of social hierarchy. I suppose that's capitalism is a nutshell but "let's grab, kill, and fuck" seems a bit oversimplified. We have those urges but I think they're tempered by more than the just the intellect. Creativity is in some sense this, I'd argue it's not just an attempt to get the sex later, albeit that might be part of it. Example, do you frequently experience the homicidal impulse and only pull back when you think of legal consequences? I do, and I don't. It never rises above slight observation. And again, assuming Freud is right about the constant compromise, I have yet to see it ruin my life or happiness. Repression for me is more of feeling like I can't tell people what I really think or feel, not "let's kill my neighbour." Multivariable Calculus by James Stewart. Really straight forward but there's some gaping plot holes. 6/10.
- This Life by Martin Hägglund - I was sceptical of this book at first because it appeared to be another one of those "atheists tries to disprove the existence of God with facts and logic". Instead it goes at it from another direction, arguing that eternity is not desirable and that the finitude of a lifetime is what gives it meaning. It starts out arguing that the experience of grief over the loss of a person can only be understood properly in a secular sense and tries to illustrate how even deeply religious persons like C.S Lewis, Martin Luther and Augustine failed to find comfort in their beliefs when experiencing loss. The book covers a lot of terrain and shifts between being a work of philosophy, self-help book, Marx explainer and a rallying cry to strive for democratic socialism. I wouldn't been able to do it justice in recounting it here, but I highly recommend it. - The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan - A history of the world centered around trade and trade routes from ancient times up until today. I still have about a quarter left of it, but for someone like me who hasn't read much history in adulthood this one is really interesting and easy to digest. - Mannen i skogen (The man in the forest) by Jens Liljestrand - A biography of Vilhelm Moberg, which felt topical to read this summer since there was a small storm in a pond this summer when the Sweden Democrats sort of tried to "claim him" as one of them in a speech. After reading the biography, I have a hard time seeing how any political party could be able to claim him.
Hey, I'm also reading This Life! This book is the shit. I'm not totally convinced by his preachy-atheist arguments (religion is not only unnecessary but also always genuinely harmful), but his work to construct a way of being without the classic atheist turn of "man I'd love to believe in God if I could" is so good. Has been pretty influential for me personally.
Neil Gaiman Norse Mythology is the one I keep trying to read, next to my bed. It is totally wonderful. I love Gaiman's voice, and in this, he simply takes the odd wording in common Norse mythological tales, and modernizes it for today's reader. His voice: Norse stories. What's not to like? Unfortunately, I spend far more time reading the Clymer manual for my Suzuki. The text is boring, but it has a lot of nice pictures... =>
I have made 0 progress on Yo el supremo, as I don't really have a good time during my daily routine to read something that requires that level of concentration. If I do, I'm probably reading Greek. But I am reading A Choir of Ill Children by Tom Piccirilli, and holy shit is it good. Imagine that Chuck Palahniuk was born in a shack on some Mississippi swamp with no running water, and this is what he would've written when he grew up. It's true Southern Gothic: it's never clear just how much of the seemingly-supernatural stuff we're supposed to take seriously, and the characters really don't distinguish between what's "natural" and what isn't.
Currently in progress: Moby Dick - yeah, idk man, it's fine. Not that far in yet. I have a poster of "The Lee Shore" in my room so I figured I should finally actually read the book. The Art of Fielding, for roughly the 6th time. Wonderful book. Kind of a silly story, but Harbach just gets baseball. Also another reason for reading Moby Dick (plays a relatively significant role in TAoF). Exhalation: Stories: thanks to mk for posting an excerpt. Chiang is amazingly deft at constructing sci-fi scenarios that are simultaneously fascinating in their mechanics and revealing in their philosophy. Reminds me of Clarke or Asimov at his best. Recently finished: Impossible Owls: Essays: an odd collection of travel writing that somehow manages to reveal important truths about the world, like the fact that tigers are real freakin animals that exist in the world holy shit guys how cool is that
I'm 50 pages away from the end of Les Trois Mousquetaires (The Three Musketeers) and it's wonderful!! The writing is beautiful and amusing. But I've been reading other books in between.... I read Robin Sloan's Sourdough, recommended to me by demure and a truly delightful read. It was a quick read and a quirky story and I loved every word. I also recently read Code Name Verity, a YA novel about two young female WWII spies/pilots. I picked it up because it's supposedly based in the city in France where I just spent the semester! If you're looking for a page-turning tear-jerking YA quasi-historical read, it's good!
I was supposed to be finishing A Little Life, but the heavy subject matter (not to mention the book itself) isn't doing great things for me at the moment. It's been put back on hiatus. I decided to go with something a little lighter and I have started The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett. I had previously read Small Gods, which I absolutely loved, but didn't realise that there were so many Discworld novels. I'm looking forward to getting deeper into them.
My tumble into American comics found a nice resting point. Neil Gaiman had written the Sandman decades before writing American Gods. I’m on the ninth out of 10 volumes. It’s sweet seeing common threads, themes, and characters crop up that clearly informed Gods. Sandman (protagonist is the Lord of Dreams) meanders through plots, but I’m flipping back through prior volumes even to the first seeing how far back some of them are set in motion. Nice read on the whole, the 9th is where it all comes to a head. Looking forward to the mental boom, I guess. Total side: since it was published by DC Comics, there are cameos and plot lines following heroes and villains from DC. Makes for a bit of extra fun.