libraries the country over are closed, and I assume they are following the pattern mine is -- any books you had checked out are yours until the present danger is past
i am therefore the temporary owner of graham greene's reflections, a shortish survey of his periodical work
and
waugh abroad, a thousand pages which claims to contain all of that author's travel writing.
i may need however long the pandemic gives me for the latter.
I'm currently stuck with Bulevarden och andra texter which is a collection of essays by Tove Jansson. It is a great collection containing everything from travel essays from Paris, Dresden and Verona from before the war, reflections on the motives of the author of children's books, the value of islands, and a great essay on Moomin architecture which is why I borrowed it. I'm also the custodian of another book called Familjen i dalen ("The family in the Valley") which is a study of Tove Jansson and The Moomins. It contains a lot of Jansson's satire drawings for the magazine Garm during WWII which I had never seen before. Can you spot the Moomin troll?
Currently attempting to slog through the Mothman Prophecies. In my opinion it's one of those unique circumstances where the movie is legitimately better than the book. What I enjoyed about the movie is that it feels like this understated homage to the Silent Hill series and it is a strange amalgamation of campy thriller and art-house. The book ultimately ends up as an UFO/supernatural tabloid-esque read. I'm normally a fast reader and it's taking me ages to finish the book because there's only so much I can handle lol There's a really decent documentary on Tubi TV called "Eyes of the Mothman" that's free to watch. It's light years more informative about the Mothman crypto-zoology mythos than the book ever claims to be, in my opinion. There's aspects of the book that I do like, but it's very dated and in my opinion, reads like a B-movie synopsis for 200+ pages.
Crime and Punishment is my white whale. I trudged through a gabillion pages of a sociopath treading the same thought process a thousand times... and gave up 20 pages from the end of the book. That was about 20 years ago. I still have the book. The bookmark is still on the page where I finally stopped reading. I don't care what final decision Raskolnikov comes to... or if he ever does. Dostoyevsky owes me.
Was reading that book about the brain (How emotions are made) and it started out super well and interesting. Got a new perspective on brain functioning and all, was really excited about it! But then it got repetitive and boring. Got though 3/4 of the book and I fear I won't finish it. My mom then gave me Homo Deus (by the same guy how wrote Sapiens) and i feel kind of the same about it. There's some good ideas, but I feel a lot of it is stuff I've read 10 times over the internet already and the writing is infantile and not engaging. I'm almost 200 pages in, and am practically forcing myself to stick with it. Don't know if i'll make it. I used to love reading and be unable to peel away from a good book. Maybe I'm just choosing my literature poorly lately, or my attention span is shit now. I'll try some fiction next, see if it makes a difference. I've also been reading my friend's book - it's kind of a self-help thing, with weird actionnable advice like becoming a "smeller" and start smelling things because it's a sense we don't use much of these days. He lived some years in China, is a goofy super spontaneous dude. When i first met him, he played guitar upside-down on his head at a home concert he and his friends organized while living in Colombia for the winter. The book is not flawlessly written, feels like an old school blog post almost, but I can really hear his personality through it and it's been enjoyable. I'm not sure how interesting it would be to person that has never met the guy personally. And there is some real cool and funny insight from his life experiences: https://www.amazon.fr/Will-Light-You-Fire-Forever-ebook/dp/B086BJK368 Something about it not being written for the masses like those best-sellers, where every word gets reviewed by an editor gives it an amateur rawness that pulls me in more. What's this cooky man gonna come up with next? Unpredictable! That's what's fun.
How about travel writing? Respectable escapism. This story appeared in Salon's Wanderlust collection. Gutenberg has a nice collection, if you don't mind electronic books:
I’ll check it out! It’s funny tho - I love traveling but am only mildly interested by other people’s travels unless they have something unique about it. I’ve made ove 200 travel videos (mostly for my personal memory bank) and barely ever watch anyone else’s. But maybe in writing it’s different, never read any travel books before. Started a Mordecai Richler book yesterday, and it’s going way better! It’s hard to believe it was written more than 50 years ago, it feels very contemporary.
i have noticed that unless i have 5+ books going at once, usually more like 15, i don't read as much in total because my preferences shift so rapidly. and i have found that i have to alternate fiction and nonfiction pretty stringently or else i get into a rut. i can't be sure if i have grown this way after getting a smartphone, having responsibilities, internet use, etc.
What a great question. All due dates have been moved to July 6 (for now). Here's what I had out: Elemental How the Periodic Table Can Now Explain (nearly) Everything (2019) by James, Tim Freedom Is A Constant Struggle Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of A Movement (2016) by Davis, Angela Y. How Democracies Die (2018) by Levitsky, Steven Proof of Conspiracy How Trump's International Collusion Is Threatening American Democracy (2019) by Abramson, Seth I kept reading this guy on Twitter and became curious. Anyone else follow this guy? Witness Lessons From Elie Wiesel's Classroom (2018) by Burger, Ariel beautiful writing and inspiring for teachers
Ah I initially thought this would be a thread on what books are you struggling with. Which for me is the Wheel of Time series, always get to about book 6/7 and I just cbf. But as to the physically stuck with a book, none! I haven't been to our library in ages actually.. That can go on my list of things to do post-lockdown.
Fall was perpetually checked out from our local branch, which was closed for Öffentlichebibliotheksumbaurenovierungssammlungsbeschränkungsangst before being well and truly closed. blackbootz reminded me of the silliness of considering $15 too much to pay for probably twenty hours of activity that brings me more pleasure than a $5 beverage or movie, so Fall is my kindle reading now. A paperback military history from the World Bank book store (permanently closed some time ago) got me through March. In the time between schools closing and e-learning getting started, I pulled together a homeschool library that could keep me occupied if it comes to that.
I've never dug into Gardner, but I think I should. Every time I've read something by him I'm impressed.
The Night Is Large is $5 on eBay and gives a broad sampling of his ideas. Here's the table of contents:
I signed up for kindle unlimited just before this hit. It's been a great bargain. I'm still on my free first two months and I've read 6-8 books easy. I won't say they're all quality books but right now, I value entertainment just as much as I do intellect.
Economics with Mrs. Johnson was in another century. Cowen and Tabarrok are, of course, the duo behind Marginal Revolution and both work at the free-market-oriented Mercatus Center. But the principles of Econ 101 are pretty settled and I haven't noticed any bias in the early chapters. On page 3 they write There's a colorful quote from Milton Friedman on page 11, then a quote from Paul Krugman (comparing the field of economics to the field of medicine) on page 12. I was surprised to see them introduce comparative advantage early, in Chapter 2, before supply and demand in Chapter 3. They describe it as one of the few ideas in economics that is "true and not obvious" according to Paul Samuelson. Their presentation is clear, with a chart that clearly illustrates the bonus from trade. But the example seems contrived and unrealistic, comparing $100 shirts and $300 computers. Those prices are not impossible, but so unusual they might as well be abstract widgets. Looking for that Samuelson quote, I found another explanation that has no numbers or charts but is very clear. A True but Nonobvious Proposition? Trade is about cooperation, not competition. It mentions Krugman's classic article in which he defends comparative advantage as absolutely orthodox, "simple and compelling to those who understand it," but resisted or rejected by many intellectuals, either as an attempt to be fashionable, or due to ignorance of other basic economic ideas, or from an aversion to mathematical models. It's an important idea to grasp then, so one may avoid saying things like people in Fiji should build cars.When markets don't properly align self-interest with the social interest, another important lesson of economics is that government can sometimes improve the situation by changing incentives with taxes, subsidies, or other regulations.
I didn’t have any physical books checked out as I had been working on reading from things I have my own copies of. The good news is that my library has a great e-branch system so we will probably be ok even if we run out of stuff to read on our own shelves.