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Author Topic: What Book Are You Currently Reading?  (Read 396875 times)
MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!
Kalwejt
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« Reply #1175 on: January 16, 2015, 07:19:59 PM »

Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954–1962
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Mopsus
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« Reply #1176 on: January 20, 2015, 12:11:24 PM »



Just finished reading Part One. All the stories were great (except The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim, which didn't seem quite up to the same level as the others), but I think that I liked The Lottery in Babylon the best.
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RogueBeaver
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« Reply #1177 on: January 21, 2015, 08:43:21 PM »

The Big Red Machine: How the Liberal Party Dominates Canadian Politics by Stephen Clarkson.
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Filuwaúrdjan
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« Reply #1178 on: January 22, 2015, 02:12:51 PM »

Citizens, a milestone in the history of trolling (and also in the historiography of the French Revolution).
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Insula Dei
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« Reply #1179 on: January 22, 2015, 03:46:44 PM »

Just finished Genette's Figures III and I.A. Richards' Practical Criticism, moved on to De Man's Allegories of Reading and re-reading some Flannery O'Connor on the side. Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Française lies waiting next to my bed.
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angus
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« Reply #1180 on: January 22, 2015, 08:29:25 PM »

I'm about a quarter of the way through 1493 by Charles C. Mann.  Somewhat dry, but well researched and interesting.  I had started reading it at the local public library, in short bursts when I took my son to check out books, but eventually I got hooked and decided to commit:  I checked it out last Saturday.  Today we hauled off to Philadelphia, which is a one hour and ten minute train ride each way, and I polished off a big chunk of it en route.  I'm up to malaria and yellow fever in the Virginia and Carolina colonies circa 1620-1750.  It turns out that West Africans aren't so susceptible to the ravages of Plasmodium vivax as are people of British extraction.  Who knew?

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DKrol
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« Reply #1181 on: January 23, 2015, 12:18:32 AM »

George R.R. Martin's "A Dance With Dragons" is my pleasure reading, but I'm also reading "1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus" by Charles Mann at the behest of a teacher of mine.
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angus
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« Reply #1182 on: January 23, 2015, 09:05:26 PM »
« Edited: January 23, 2015, 09:28:39 PM by angus »

I may pick up 1491, if I ever finish 1493.  I am somewhat more familiar with the topics that I imagine would be covered in 1491.  For a long time I enjoyed a serious American fetish, and have read many scholarly and many not-so-scholarly volumes regarding the pre-classic, classic, and post-classic achievements of the Americans, although I have not yet read 1491.  I have visited all the countries in Central America, several in South America, and 22 of the 31 Mexican states, many of them several times.  I once spent nearly three months just backpacking around southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and El Salvador, climbing pyramids, savoring the local herbs, teas, and fragrances, inquiring about the sacbeob and the ubiquitous juegos de pelota, and of course trying desperately lay into the curvaceous and stocky dark-skinned local campesinas--with the occasional success, I might add!  (Emphasis on occasional.)  

No doubt, lots of interesting original culture exists in the Western Hemisphere, and it did not just disappear 500 years ago--although if Jay Leno took his mic out on the streets of New York I suspect that he would find few who would be aware of any of it.  In my observation most of it is overlooked in the ethnocentric curriculum taught in high-school and university history lessons.  The Eurocentrism prevailing in the curricula of US public schools seems to be changing, lately, and I regard that as a good thing.  Nowadays, Asia, the Americas, and Africa are being studied to a much greater extent than they were when I was a university student.  Not that I'm advocating that any of us should bask in the warm glow of White Man's Guilt, but we Europeans have claimed religious, racial, and moral superiority over the rest of the world for at least 700 years with disastrous results.  The fact that your instructor wants you to learn about pre-Columbian American cultures suggests that others feel the same way that I do.  I do hope that you take your reading assignment seriously.

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World politics is up Schmitt creek
Nathan
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« Reply #1183 on: January 24, 2015, 04:45:45 AM »

In a Glass Darkly, by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. I'd read 'Carmilla' before but the other stories in it are all new to me.
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Storebought
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« Reply #1184 on: January 25, 2015, 01:00:24 AM »

Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management

I attempted one of her chicken recipes, but discovered that I didn't have arrowroot or pounded mace at hand.
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World politics is up Schmitt creek
Nathan
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« Reply #1185 on: January 30, 2015, 03:49:01 AM »
« Edited: January 30, 2015, 10:32:17 AM by sex-negative feminist prude »

I haven't actually started reading either of these yet, but a couple of days ago I found and bought two modern Japanese novels in a used bookstore in my town. One is The River Ki by Ariyoshi Sawako; I'm not sure what this is about, exactly, but it seems to be a family drama along roughly the same lines as The Makioka Sisters--which is probably my all-time favorite novel and definitely in the top five--and was apparently Ariyoshi's first major work. Ariyoshi, who died young in 1984, seems to have been an enormously popular and respected writer in her lifetime, at least in part because her writing was more topical than that of most of her contemporaries--many of her novels are the equivalent of 'very special episodes' on certain types of television shows, but by all accounts of vastly greater artistic merit. This seems, however, to have changed since her death, and I was never taught her in my major, nor had I even heard of her until I found this book.

The other is an interesting edition of Miyazawa's Ginga tetsudō no yoru, usually translated Night on the Galactic Railroad and occasionally Night Train to the Stars, which afleitch read recently. Miyazawa is a writer I like a lot but I'm mostly familiar with him as a poet; this is the only one of his prose works I've actually read before--efforts to find a copy of 'Kaze no Matasaburō' have met with failure. It's by far his best known work overall, with the only remotely conceivable contender being the didactic poem 'Ame ni mo makezu' ('Not Losing to the Rain'). This edition is unusual in that it's an English translation, given the non-standard title The Night of the Milky Way Train, published in Japan, with Japanese paratext even, as school study material for English learners. There are glossaries before each chapter. I'm very interested to see how if at all the choices that the translation itself makes differ from more general-audience English versions of the text.
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afleitch
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« Reply #1186 on: January 30, 2015, 07:00:30 AM »

I haven't actually started reading either of these yet, but a couple of days ago I found and bought two modern Japanese novels in a used bookstore in my town. One is The River Ki by Ariyoshi Sawako; I'm not sure what this is about, exactly, but it seems to be a family drama along roughly the same lines as The Makioka Sisters--which is probably my all-time favorite novel and definitely in the top five--and was apparently Ariyoshi's first major work. Ariyoshi, who died young in 1984, seems to have been an enormously popular and respected writer in her lifetime, at least in part because her writing was more topical than that of most of her contemporaries--many of her novels are the equivalent of 'very special episodes' on certain types of television shows, but by all accounts of vastly greater artistic merit. This seems, however, to have changed since her death, and I was never taught her in my major, nor had I even heard of her until I found this book.

The other is an interesting edition of Miyazawa's Ginga tetsudō no yoru, usually translated Night on the Galactic Railroad and occasionally Night Train to the Stars, which afleitch read recently. Miyazawa is a writer I like a lot but I'm mostly familiar with him as a poet; this is the only one of his prose works I've actually read before--efforts to find a copy of 'Kaze no Matasaburō' have met with failure. It's by far his best known work overall, with the only remotely conceivable contender being the didatic poem 'Ame ni mo makezu' ('Not Losing to the Rain'). This edition is unusual in that it's an English translation, given the non-standard title The Night of the Milky Way Train, published in Japan, with Japanese paratext even, as school study material for English learners. There are glossaries before each chapter. I'm very interested to see how if at all the choices that the translation itself makes differ from more general-audience English versions of the text.

Let me know who translated it. I've read two translations so far; Roger Pulvers and a really old library copy from John Bester.
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World politics is up Schmitt creek
Nathan
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« Reply #1187 on: January 31, 2015, 04:17:57 PM »

I haven't actually started reading either of these yet, but a couple of days ago I found and bought two modern Japanese novels in a used bookstore in my town. One is The River Ki by Ariyoshi Sawako; I'm not sure what this is about, exactly, but it seems to be a family drama along roughly the same lines as The Makioka Sisters--which is probably my all-time favorite novel and definitely in the top five--and was apparently Ariyoshi's first major work. Ariyoshi, who died young in 1984, seems to have been an enormously popular and respected writer in her lifetime, at least in part because her writing was more topical than that of most of her contemporaries--many of her novels are the equivalent of 'very special episodes' on certain types of television shows, but by all accounts of vastly greater artistic merit. This seems, however, to have changed since her death, and I was never taught her in my major, nor had I even heard of her until I found this book.

The other is an interesting edition of Miyazawa's Ginga tetsudō no yoru, usually translated Night on the Galactic Railroad and occasionally Night Train to the Stars, which afleitch read recently. Miyazawa is a writer I like a lot but I'm mostly familiar with him as a poet; this is the only one of his prose works I've actually read before--efforts to find a copy of 'Kaze no Matasaburō' have met with failure. It's by far his best known work overall, with the only remotely conceivable contender being the didatic poem 'Ame ni mo makezu' ('Not Losing to the Rain'). This edition is unusual in that it's an English translation, given the non-standard title The Night of the Milky Way Train, published in Japan, with Japanese paratext even, as school study material for English learners. There are glossaries before each chapter. I'm very interested to see how if at all the choices that the translation itself makes differ from more general-audience English versions of the text.

Let me know who translated it. I've read two translations so far; Roger Pulvers and a really old library copy from John Bester.

The publication date is 2005 and it's translated by Stuart Varnam-Atkin and Yoko Toyozaki, neither of whom I've heard of. A cursory Google search indicates that Varnam-Atkin is some sort of journalist and commentator for a couple of different English-language news outlets based in Japan and that both of them were involving in translating the manga Chihayafuru, which is about a girl who gets really into the card game karuta. (The Wikipedia article on the series uses the phrase 'overuse of CG sakura' in its discussion of the anime adaptation.)
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Tetro Kornbluth
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« Reply #1188 on: January 31, 2015, 04:40:41 PM »

I'm almost done with my earlier list but I've managed to acquire a large selection of books since then - this will probably bring me until April.

Saving Normal: An Insider's Revolt Against Out-Of-Control Psychiatric Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma, and the Medicalization of Ordinary Life - Allen Francis
One Hundred Years of Socialism: The Western European Left in the Twentieth Century - Donald Sassoon
Madness in Late Imperial China: From Illness to Deviance - Vivien Ng
Manufacturing Depression: The Secret History of a Modern Disease - Gary Greenberg
All Can Be Saved: Religious Tolerance and Salvation in the Iberian Atlantic World - Stuart Schwartz
Thinking, Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman
Madness on the Couch: Blaming the Victim in the Heyday of Psychoanalysis - Edward Dolnick
Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century - Geoffrey Parker
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Filuwaúrdjan
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« Reply #1189 on: February 06, 2015, 06:30:00 PM »

Have you seen Michael Haneke's adaptation of The Castle?
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politicus
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« Reply #1190 on: February 06, 2015, 07:02:37 PM »

Citizens, a milestone in the history of trolling (and also in the historiography of the French Revolution).

Trolling can be an artform.
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Gustaf
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« Reply #1191 on: February 07, 2015, 06:41:10 AM »

What's the focus of your course Averroes? It's sort of my field. Smiley
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King of Kensington
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« Reply #1192 on: February 07, 2015, 01:50:56 PM »

Fiction:

Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake (first book in MadAddam series)

Non-Fiction: 

Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction

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Murica!
whyshouldigiveyoumyname?
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« Reply #1193 on: February 09, 2015, 03:19:41 PM »
« Edited: February 09, 2015, 03:22:52 PM by Murica! »

About to start reading The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov.
Also about to read Engeles' Anti-Dühring.
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traininthedistance
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« Reply #1194 on: February 09, 2015, 03:31:16 PM »

About to start reading The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov.

One of the greatest books of all time, IMO.  Hope you enjoy it!
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SWE
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« Reply #1195 on: February 09, 2015, 08:58:33 PM »

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MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!
Kalwejt
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« Reply #1196 on: February 16, 2015, 08:56:18 AM »

Harold James, A German Identity 1770-1990 and Geoffrey Parker, Philip II
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TNF
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« Reply #1197 on: February 22, 2015, 07:07:57 AM »

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compson III
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« Reply #1198 on: February 23, 2015, 07:03:55 PM »

Thinking, Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman
I'm a big fan of prospect theory as opposed to mainstream assumptions of rationality, but this critique by Gigerenzer is good to read along with it:
http://library.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/ft/gg/gg_how_1991.pdf

Human behavior is so domain dependent we should be wary of any experimental studies.  

What's really interesting to me is how institutions and organizational structure can be a domain in which rationality is enhanced.  Behavioral economics needs to link up with sociology and make some headway here.
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Gustaf
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« Reply #1199 on: February 26, 2015, 09:48:16 AM »

The thing with prospect theory, as I recall, is that it adds a lot of complication without much extra predictive power. The classic model actually holds up pretty well when you test them against each other.
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