I just finished Earth Abides by George R. Stewart. It had been on my 'to read' list for awhile after seeing it discussed on Hubski various times and it's probably the best book I've read this year. I love how it used its premise to explore civilisation and ecology to the extent that it did. It had much more gravity that I was expecting. I'm now reading Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, a book I've been meaning to get around to for even longer. It was on sale for 99p on the Kindle store so I felt obliged. I've only read the first chapter so far which seemed to mostly be a meandering preamble, so I'm looking forward to getting into the actual meat of it.
I loved Earth Abides. I read it at kleinbl00's suggestion, since I was trying to write a "more realistic" post-apocalyptic future story. EA struck me in a couple of ways. First, the dogged determination of the people in the story to remain in their atomic 1950's-era living situation - living in houses with running water, etc. - while the generation after them became more "feral" or comfortable with the actual reality they were living in. Then, at the end, the protagonist's descent into Alzheimers/dementia, as told from the first-person perspective, was surprisingly heart-warming and gentle. I may be ready to read it again. I know I will eventually.
For sure. It really made you consider what kind of person you would be in such a world. One who would, along with the loss of civilisation, lose their mind? Or one who somehow adapt in someway, even if that came long with coping mechanisms? I also really liked how the concept of time breaking down as Ish neared his death: "Time in its old sense of appointments to be kept and things to be done - all that had long since ceased to exist, both because the way of life had changed and because he himself was so old as to be almost out of life. In certain ways, he had already, as it seemed, passed from time to eternity." Thinking back, one element I would've liked to have seen explored more deeply is interaction with other tribes. I know they sent Dick & Bob on that expedition, but the details that emerged from it weren't too extensive. It was just a summary of what they'd encountered. Though I guess the book would've had to have been notably longer to fit it in, which isn't necessarily desirable. It certainly feels like a complete story as it already is.
I let the idea of this roll about in my mind over the last few days and I think you're right. Like you said, they do integrate with a nearby tribe at one point. And not that much is said about it because in reality the union of two peaceful tribes would likely be uneventful. In the event of there being a clash with something more threatening, you got a taste of that with the introduction of Charlie. It allowed for a perspective of how they would handle hostile outsiders without the need to divert the narrative to inter-tribe politics etc.
So, I guess everyone should write about currently read books, right? - Art of Attack in Chess by L. Vukovic. I'm rereading this book because it just kicks all kinds of arse when it comes to dissecting strategies. It's one of those "every time you read it, you get more out of it" types of texts. It's not without its flaws, as far as intermediate books on chess go, it's very worth recommending. - The Story of Civilisation, Part III: Caesar and Christ by W. Durant. That's the closest I got to fiction in a while. I'm about to cross the middle point. Not much more to say, but I very much enjoy reading it. Which still surprises me, as I never thought I'd be saying something like that about learning history. - The Theory of Integral Equations by a whole bunch of Russians. It's as riveting as the title makes it sound. I'll leave it for you to guess whether I'm sarcastic or not.
It's good. Translation definitely could have been better. I don't know if the translator was bad in Polish or (and?) Russian, or didn't know anything about mathematical terminology, but it's the biggest detriment to the book. Reading more than a section at a time gets me the feeling you would likely get after hours of reading Wikipedia in Simple English. That's with what I'm dealing here. Almost makes me wish I actually stuck with learning Russian. Almost. It feels like a mockery after the night I had, but thank you.how smart you are
I finished the rest of the existing A Song of Ice and Fire books. I'm not sure how I feel about them, the giant world of characters let's the story be told from all sorts of views, but it is also kind of unfocused. I've had a small weird obsession and over the last year I've listened to almost every diet book my library has on Overdrive. I started because I was curious about the major ideas in the debate (carbs/fat, omnivore/vegetarian). My concussion is that whole vegetables are probably less suspect than everything else. No other conclusions can be drawn without starting over with biology, anthropology, nutrition, med-school, and then 30 years reading and evaluating existing research, by which time I will have developed my own blinding bias of course. In Defense of Food probably resonated with me most.
I've heard Dance with Dragons was rewritten entirely once because the first draft, one of his buddies said "but if X is with Y then this whole thing with Z is wrong" so he had to start over. It's also the book where the story goes from "expanding outward" to "wrapping up loose ends" which means he had to be a lot more precise with it. I kinda feel a lot of the important stuff got buried in chaff so it wouldn't be so obviously important.
Went down the diet rabithole a couple times myself. These are the only recommendations that seem true to me: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/21/upshot/simple-rules-for-healthy-eating.html
I would agree with those guidelines. I had hoped that after reading a bunch I would be able to narrow it down more than "less processed, and don't forget veggies." There is some surface level BS that's easy to rule out, but I don't have the background to critique the scientific parts, and I have come to distrust the authors to use the same statistical criteria on evidence they like as on evidence they don't.
His writing feels very undisciplined to me. Events and people of greater and lesser significance are jumbled up together and what seemed to be entire plot lines are simply cut off or abandoned because (I think) the author has become distracted by something else.
I've only recently started reading a bit again after being almost unable to look at a book since the spring. Right now I'm reading these three. Wuthering Heights This is a beat-up copy that I acquired somehow a couple of years ago, and really it's just been on the to-read pile since. Like Pride & Prejudice a few months ago, I'm mostly reading it just to have read it. Also like P&P, I'm not particularly into the florid language used, though the narrator is unintentionally hilarious at least. Sceoin sa Bhoireann The name translates to "Terror in the Burren", that being a famous karst area in the west of Ireland. The book is about a shipwrecked family of Scandinavians thousands of years ago who end up in the Burren; the father dies, the brother disappears, and then they meet a bunch of Celts and intermarry and settle down. It's a bit crimmy-ish; there's an evil goat-demon-beast haunting the area. So... yeah. I read Gafa earlier on this year by the same author, which was about a drug addict in a broken family, so I wasn't expecting this at all. I am at least making better progress with this than the former book, though; I've been reading a chapter every day or two and it's only wee so I'm halfway done. Gafa took me about six months to get through. Poor Green Erin I've actually been reading this since February. It's a collection of translated excerpts of German travel writers' letters and essays from the late 1700s to the late 1800s. It was in the pub and I would dip into it every now and then and read a few pages, but generally I always either have something to do or there are customers who'd probably be a bit peeved if I just sat there reading a book and ignoring them. It is bleak. Every single writer describe the utter destitution of the Irish people - clothed in rags, living in mud hovels with a small gap for a door and no windows or chimney, and living off of nothing but potatoes and some buttermilk. And I haven't even gotten to the Famine yet.
a pop-science book by matt ridley (no relation to his lordship, as far as i can tell) about the human genome. because there is no permanent room in my head for real science, because i'm an idiot, i must continually snack on hors d'oeuvres to keep up https://www.amazon.com/Dispatches-Michael-Herr/dp/0679735259 nowaypablo i imagine you would find this interesting or perhaps you've read it and can educate me
Yeah I'm pretty deeply obsessed with the Vietnam war/era at the moment. Dispatches is another great memoir among plenty of its kind that try to paint pictures of "just how fucked up the most fucked up shit of all time was." I mean, the term "fubar" originated in WW2 but the expression doesn't cover Vietnam. Nothing does. That shit was the most fucked shit in modern history from the perspective of the American warfighter. If you're looking for a vivid war memoir with a bonus couple layers of insight, that's a great book. Same effect as The Things They Carried. A '56 grad from my school sang me this song at lunch earlier this month. Edit: I could talk about this shit for literally forever. Be sorry you even got me started.
well, i disliked the things they carried. i prefer my war commentary to be clever, like catch-22, or well-written, like goodbye to all that. but i think dispatches is a in a slightly different category so far. napalm sticks to kids. hmm. jesus.
Has it been that long already? Tempus fugit, I guess. Anyway, I've done more public transportation than usual so I've been reading more than usual recently: I usually listen at 2-2,5x so that's more than 50 hours of audiobook just for October. As soon as I graduate I think I'll jump to a higher Audible tier. Last time around I was halfway through Postwar. It kept fascinating me and the hours kept flying by. Highly recommended for anyone interested in European history. Because I wanted something a bit lighter than Judt I read Jon Ronson's The Psychopath Test. It's as good as any Jon Ronson, although he could've been much more critical of the "scientific test" that is at the core of the book. I then attempted to read Algorithms to Live By by Brian Christian. A friend of mine was interested in the book and Audible has been shoving it in my face ever since I've read Weapons of Math Destruction and it was on sale so I figured why the hell not. It's not a very good book. Here's a summary of every chapter I read: someone faces a problem, there exists an algorithm in computer science that can kinda help, here's how that algorithm works without any math or numbers whatsoever (so I ended up more confused, not less) and because my publisher wanted to make this book insightful, let me talk for a few pages about how this algorithm explains Life, The Universe and Everything. I then listened to Jon Ronson's new The Butterfly Effect in less than 24 hours. To everyone who listens to podcasts and hasn't read a lot of Jon Ronson, I highly recommend it. It's a podcast series about porn, and it perfectly encapsulates everything I love about Jon Ronson books: he takes you into a fascinating and weird part of the world that you never thought about and talks to the people in it with an open mind and great questions. My only beef with it is that it suffers a bit from the podcast format when compared to a regular audiobook: every episode has an intro and outro which is annoying when you listen to it back to back, and Jon's slow-mo voiceover speed vs Jon's rapid talking speed in conversation is laughably disjointed. A buddy told be to watch Narcos. I don't watch many series, but I was interested in the topic, so I picked up Narconomics by Tom Wainwright. His book looks at the business logic behind cartels and drug lords, which I found quite interesting. The bigger point that he makes is that our War on Drugs doesn't work from a business point of view, and that there's a pretty compelling economic argument to legalizing drugs. I then decided to tackle another big book on my reading list: A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn. It's a great book, but I noticed that my enjoyment per chapter depended highly on whether I knew a little or nothing about the topic. So I was trudging a bit throughout the 18th century striker chapters, but really liked the 20th century chapters. One outlier earlier on was his chapter about women and their role in society, I wish he'd discussed that more because it was a fascinating perspective. I think I will read this book again in a decade or so when I've hopefully read more history books. I also read Strangers Drowning by Larissa MacFarquhar. The book tells the stories of a bunch of different do-gooders from all across the world, interspersed with a few chapters on critique about altruism. To no one's surprise, Peter Singer gets mentioned often. But if I read between the lines correctly, the stories she tells depict people who struggle with the purity of doing good that Singer's philosophy demands and kinda shows that that is either unworkable or unsustainable. I liked the book and the stories in it, so if you want a broader perspective on what it means to do good it might be a book for you. Finally, as you can see in the screenshot, I am largely done with Peter Wohlleben's The Secret Life of Trees. This book has been on my list for something like two years I think? I knew about it before that Radiolab episode, that's for sure. So far it's an okay book. Peter tells a bunch of interesting facts about how trees work and how we only just learned that trees in a forest can "communicate" with each other by excreting scents. There's two problems I have with the book though: he anthropomorphises the shit out of trees and glosses over most of the (still new) science, which means that I find it hard to take what he says seriously. Maybe he should've waited a bit longer before writing this, or maybe someone else should have written it. I don't know. Next up: my reading list is a bit short, so if anyone has suggestions let me know. I am considering reading The Better Angels of our Nature as my next big book. Also on my list, unless someone tells me it's crap: The Antidote by Oliver Burkeman, City of Light, City of Poision by Holly Tucker, Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit and American Kingpin by Nick Bilton. (kleinbl00, didn't you hate Nick Bilton?)
I'm readigng Varieties of Religious Experience by William James, which is a collection of lectures he gave in 1901 to 1902. I'm borrowing it from my dad, and I'm not gonna lie, I first picked it up on a lark. The early 1900s, in my mind, strike me as a really weird time, as people were experimenting with all sorts of new ideas in religion, science, politics, etc. But no, this book is actually pretty mundane. Mundane and meandering as Mr. (Dr.?) James seems to wander left and right with an idea, speaking at length sometimes, as if he's on a country road. Shoot, as he’s meandering half the time I don't even know what he's talking about, but every few pages he finally gets to his destination and drops on something insightful and or compelling enough to encourage me to keep reading. It's actually good enough where I wish other people on here were reading it with me, as I'm reading it, so I could see what they think. Here’s two random excerpts I picked out, because both I somewhat agree with, somewhat disagree with, and some of it I wonder is because of different background experiences or my desire to split hairs. But either way, when I read them, I think “Well, yeah, I can see his point and it’s enough to at least make me think.” . . . It makes a tremendous emotional and practical difference to one whether one accept the universe in drab discolored ways of stoic resignation to necessity, or with the passionate happiness of Christian saints. The difference is as great as that between passivity and activity, as that between the defensive and the aggressive mood. Gradual as are the steps by which an individual may grow from one state into the other, many as are the intermediate stages which different individuals represent, yet when you place the typical extremes beside each other for comparison, you feel that two discontinuous psychological universes confront you, and that in passing from on to the other a “critical point” has been overcome. If we compare stoic with Christian ejaculations we see much more than a difference of doctrine; rather is it a difference of emotional mood that parts them. When Marcus Aurelius reflects on the eternal reason that has ordered things, there is a frost chill about his words which you rarely find in a Jewish, and never in a Christian piece of religious writing. The universe is “accepted” by all these writers; but how devoid of passion or exultation the spirit of the Roman Emperor is! Compare his fine sentence: “If gods care not for me or my children, here is a reason for it” with Job’s cry: “Though he slay me, yet I will trust in him!” and you immediately see the difference I mean. The anima mundi, to whose disposal of his own personal destiny the Stoic consents, is there to be respected and submitted to, but the Christian God is there to be loved; and the difference of emotional atmosphere is like that between an arctic climate and the tropics, though the outcome in the way of accepting actual conditions uncomplainingly may seem in abstract terms to be much the same.In the natural sciences and industrial arts it never occurs to anyone to try to refute opinions by showing up their author’s neurotic constitution. Opinions here an invariably tested by logic and experiment, no matter what may be their author’s neurological type. It should be no otherwise with religious opinions. Their value can only be ascertained by spiritual judgments directly passed upon them, judgments based on our own immediate feeling primarily; and secondarily on what we can ascertain of their experiential relations to our moral needs and to the rest of what we hold as true.”
“I accept the universe” is reported to have been a favorite utterance of our New England transcendentalist, Margaret Fuller; and when some on repeated this phrase to Thomas Carlyle, his sardonic comment is said to have been: “Gad! she’d better!” At bottom of the whole concern of both morality and religion is with the manner of our acceptance of the universe. Do we accept it ony in part and grudgingly, or heartily and altogether? Shall our protests against certain things in it be radical and unforgiving, or shall we think that, even with evil, there are ways of living that must lead to good? If we accept the whole, shall we do so as if stunned into submission – as Carlyle would have us - “Gad! we’d better!” - or shall we do so with enthusiastic assent? Morality pure and simple accepts the law of the whole which it finds reigning, so far as to acknowledge and obey it, but it may obey it with the heaviest and coldest heart, and never cease to feel it as a yoke. But for religion, in its strong and fully developed manifestations, the service of the highest never is felt as a yoke. Dull submission is left far behind, and a mood of welcome, which may fill any place on the scale between cheerful serenity and enthusiastic gladness, has taken its place.
I'm finally getting down to the end of my friend Adam LeBor's spy/espionage novel, The Budapest Protocol. Adam was a good friend when I lived in Budapest, and was a journalist and war reporter. He broke the story about the Swiss banks enabling the Nazi's ("Hitler's Secret Bankers") and wrote the biography of Slobodan Milosevic, after reporting on the wars in Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo. As I was leaving Budapest he began his career as a novelist, and now is highly regarded for his spy/espionage/WWII series of novels and characters. The Budapest Protocol is his first novel, and deals with a shadow cabal of ex-Nazis who went underground at the end of WWII, and secretly worked together to form the EU, and gain control over it. I'm glad I waited so long to read it, as the events in Central and Eastern Europe of the last 2 years seem like they are ripped directly from the pages of Adam's book! Hungary/Slovakia/Poland's rejection of the liberal ideals and movements that stemmed from the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and embracing nationalist and racist policies... corporate manipulation of elections and politics... stagnation of EU efforts at modernization, and the vacuum created by the EU's lack of leadership.... etc. Reading his book is like looking at the future 18-months away from today. Oh. And did I mention it is based on a real story?!? Good stuff.
Has anyone read Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72? Reading it at a military institution gets you looks like you're reading Dianetics while drawing a pentagram on your forehead in charcoal. Everyone's already on edge because of some recent drama about an openly Communist recent graduate and 2nd Lieutenant. The dynamics of Washington in general as HST observes it are, while not surprising, are still disturbing in similarity to the present. I'm not even halfway yet but I'm hoping someone here might've read it or the other Fear and Loathings enough to throw in their thoughts.
of course i have. see also: https://www.amazon.com/Boys-Bus-Timothy-Crouse/dp/0812968204 if you look past the murk and gin haze you can witness in those books the evolution of the presidency from a powerful position held by a reasonably qualified individual into the place where you put the glossiest show pony, painted blue or red as you please sheen is the modern presidential necessity which has replaced intelligence
Oh shit, another reporter for Rolling Stone on the same campaign? This is awesome!
I read a book called Art and Fear in a couple days. It's kinda a practical advice book for artists on how not to quit and what to do if you have trouble working or you aren't happy with your work. Really liked it. Got out mah highlighter. I'm technically reading All Quiet on the Western Front but I'm not super into it. I've been distracted Also I just checked out the first volume of In Search of Lost Time
Ooooooh! Swann's Way is pretty groovy. It's a lot more widely read than the rest of the book because the third chapter about Swann and Odette can be read as a sort of standalone story within the rest of the novel - but if you do like it, the rest won't disappoint you. Which translation is it?Also I just checked out the first volume of In Search of Lost Time
I'm reading Ghosts in the Yew and I can't, for the life of me, figure out if it's good or not. I mean, I like it so far, but there are times when the characters are silly tropes or completely one dimensional - then there are times when characters have this amazing depth and insightfulness. I can't figure out if the female character is supposed to be a little flat as a point of growth, or if it's some male power fantasy. Whatever, it's intriguing.
I am reading: > The Cold Commands by Richard K. Morgan. He normally writes sci-fi, but also did a fantasy trilogy, collectively called A Land Fit for Heroes (of which this is the second). Morgan excels at making characters that are flawed, even shitty, but still people you want to know. He also does some great world-building, and is a master at showing-not-telling. This series definitely plays with the usual fantasy tropes (not least by having the main character be gay, which is generally as well-accepted as you'd expect). > Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse. His prose is amazing, and I've wanted to check out this "most violently misunderstood" (in Hesse's words) of his books. The plight of the titular Steppenwolf (actually named Harry Halleck) is one of undesired isolation and disconnect, and it's hard not to relate. > Don Quijote. I've been reading it to my daughter at bedtime (who knows it as "the Spanish book"). She doesn't speak Spanish yet, but likes how it sounds. I'm enjoying it (it's one of those books I've probably started a dozen times), and it seems like my reaction to the main character is different every time. There's actually something Trumpian in don Quijote's madness: deciding he wants things to be a way and forcing that view onto the world while refusing to see any evidence to the contrary. Maybe we should start referring to John Kelley as Sancho Panza. > Still working on the NT, albeit much more slowly, and also chipping away at Coptic. Also on the spiritual front, I'm working on translating the Spiritual Guide written by Miguel de Molinos, a 17th-century Spanish priest and mystic who was a proponent of Quietism (which emphasized quiet listening and contemplation over meditation and prayer). It's pretty neat. I also found an archive of a bunch of the works by Origen as well, and his theology is fascinating. That's a ways off, as I definitely need more Greek practice before I get there. > Also listening to the audio book of Ron Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton. I got the paper book for Christmas last year, but my ADHD kicked in before I could really finish it. When I saw the audiobook at the library a couple weeks ago, I figured I'd give it a shot. I don't drive as much as I used to what with teleworking a lot, but it's still nice to have (and I got through 3 discs worth during our trip to DC for the weekend).
I'm still reading War and Peace. I'm terrible about reading at home and mostly read in airports and on planes. I need one good trip to finish this off. I think I have about 300 pages left.