What Book Are You Currently Reading?
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  What Book Are You Currently Reading?
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Author Topic: What Book Are You Currently Reading?  (Read 397230 times)
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Miamiu1027
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« Reply #1300 on: June 12, 2015, 01:43:31 AM »

a good read for anyone on the Left: Class, Culture and Conflict in Barcelona, 1898-1937

https://www.academia.edu/7379675/Class_Culture_and_Conflict_in_Barcelona_1898-1937_London_Routledge_2005
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bore
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« Reply #1301 on: June 12, 2015, 03:43:19 PM »

Well, since I finished university for the year I've had a lot of spare time for reading so I've already finished 4 books:

The Fall of the House of Dixie by Bruce Levine - This was a very interesting look at the collapse of slavery in the south. Especially depressing was the point that even comparatively benign slave owners were still utterly brutal, and correspondingly amusing, was the shocked revelation to them that even (and often especially) their favoured slaves were the first to run off. Also entertaining was the hypocrisy of the planter elite when it came to actually fighting the war they started, not so much not fighting in the army as refusing to use their money and slaves for the war effort.

Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves - A very interesting memoir of the years around and including the first world war. I gathered after reading it that some of the facts were somewhat dodgy but even so. Mainly it further emphasised to me that public schools are utterly bizarre and the first world war was both horrific and incredibly bloody, the amount of characters in the book who died was pretty shocking.

The Master and the Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov - A brilliant satire on Stalinism, among other things. In parts very funny and very moving. I especially enjoyed the seance and (if enjoyed is the right word) the interrogation dream, but probably liked the pontius pilate's the most.

The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard J Evans - A very capable and well done history of how the nazis came to power and their very early days in control. Obviously given the subject matter it's pretty depressing, especially knowing what came next, but it's especially interesting just how quickly every potential opponent of the nazis gave up (making the rare counter examples given like Otto Wels in his speech on the enabling act)  all the more inspiring. Obviously those of us who live in easier times can't make a sweeping judgement of people who didn't speak out, knowing the consequences, but it does seem that Bulgakov was right that cowardice is the most terrible of all vices.
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World politics is up Schmitt creek
Nathan
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« Reply #1302 on: June 14, 2015, 06:32:51 PM »

I've finally started The Sea of Fertility. I'm a little more than halfway through Spring Snow.

What is there to say about a story as absolutely gorgeous yet morally repelling as this?

I will say that Mishima made me root for Kiyoaki and Satoko even though I knew from the get-go that their relationship was doomed (as in the back cover of my copy of the book calls it 'doomed'); that he kind of screwed this up with the way he narrated their first time having sex, which is one example among several so far of the way he makes Kiyoaki break character in an attempt to have him conform to a sexually dominant gender role that the rest of his personality doesn't justify (particularly in light of the 'tumor of arrogance' line earlier on); that Honda is an interesting character of whom I look forward to seeing more in subsequent books; and that 'undoubtedly authentic and totally unpredictable', from the courtroom scene two chapters after the sex scene, is a wonderful turn of phrase and I think I'm going to be using it as a variant of GUBU. Also I've been underlining every single simile in the book because they're all absolutely incredible.

I also read Kitchen and liked it, and might have more to say about it later than I feel like saying right now.
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Mr. Smith
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« Reply #1303 on: June 18, 2015, 10:26:59 PM »

A book called Scar Night, looked decent enough for a library check out.

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World politics is up Schmitt creek
Nathan
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« Reply #1304 on: June 25, 2015, 01:32:38 AM »
« Edited: June 25, 2015, 01:48:33 AM by sex-negative feminist prude »

So why, exactly, did I like The River Ki better than Spring Snow, despite recognizing that Spring Snow is by most 'objective' (ha!) measures the better book? Is it because I preferred The River Ki's focus on women, or because I have a formal preference for traditional straightforward generational sagas? Is it because the characters in The River Ki are presented in a more sympathetic and, frankly, more humane manner than those in Spring Snow, even when they're behaving in comparably repulsive ways? It's probably all of the above. They're both books that are going to stick with me for a long time, but I know which one I'd rather reread.

I'm committed to The Sea of Fertility for the long haul, though. I'll be starting Runaway Horses some time soon.
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RogueBeaver
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« Reply #1305 on: June 25, 2015, 07:31:52 AM »

Antony Beevor's The Battle for Spain and Max Boot's Invisible Armies. Enjoying Beevor so far.
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« Reply #1306 on: June 25, 2015, 10:28:01 PM »

Picked up "Social Origins of Democracy and Dictatorship" by Barrington Moore Jr. a few weeks ago. More than halfway through, but I've been distracted, and it's due back about July 7th, I think. If I wanted, I could probably plow through it by then, but I'm not predicting it'll be so easy.
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Mr. Smith
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« Reply #1307 on: June 25, 2015, 11:13:59 PM »

Taking a break from Scar Night to browse As You Wish, which is Cary Elwes experience in the making of The Princess Bride
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Blair
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« Reply #1308 on: June 26, 2015, 03:17:59 AM »

No idea how I haven't read this-absolutely loved it purely because I didn't realize the GOP establishment  begged Christie, Daniels, Barbour and Bush to enter the race just to push Romney off.

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MalaspinaGold
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« Reply #1309 on: June 27, 2015, 12:43:23 AM »



Binge read both of these over the last two weeks. Both were very well written, even if Agulhon has a habit of overusing exclamation marks. Of course they overlapped quite a bit in discussing French socialism and communism post 1900. Smiley
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Filuwaúrdjan
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« Reply #1310 on: June 27, 2015, 07:50:24 AM »

Ah, yes. The Sassoon book is really very, very good.
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Hash
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« Reply #1311 on: June 27, 2015, 10:26:49 AM »

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All Along The Watchtower
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« Reply #1312 on: June 27, 2015, 11:57:53 AM »

Reading Rick Perlstein's The Invisible Bridge.

Entertaining.
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TNF
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« Reply #1313 on: June 27, 2015, 12:01:47 PM »

Problems of Everyday Life by Leon Trotsky
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benconstine
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« Reply #1314 on: June 27, 2015, 02:26:49 PM »

Friday Night Lights
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World politics is up Schmitt creek
Nathan
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« Reply #1315 on: June 28, 2015, 06:19:44 PM »

I'm giving Spring Snow some time to sink in before I start Runaway Horses so right now I'm reading one of Noor Inayat Khan's Jataka stories every night before I go to sleep. They're very very short and very light. Khan was a children's book writer and artist and the daughter of a Sufi leader who during World War II became an Allied spy and was eventually captured and executed in Dachau; she's a personal hero of mine.
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Mr. Smith
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« Reply #1316 on: June 29, 2015, 01:57:06 AM »

Just One More Thing, which is Peter Falk's (aka Columbo) memoir
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MalaspinaGold
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« Reply #1317 on: July 01, 2015, 07:23:04 PM »



Both good; the second one was particularly insightful as to the roadblocks set up by mixed mining centers (spoiler alert: businesses being businesses were more of an issue, especially in the early years).
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Classic Conservative
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« Reply #1318 on: July 14, 2015, 09:50:11 PM »

A Time for Truth: by Senator Ted Cruz
Great read for all conservatives, libertarians and small government folks.
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Mr. Smith
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« Reply #1319 on: July 14, 2015, 10:09:17 PM »

Nixon: An Oliver Stone Film

Has little articles here and there on one part, an annotated script on the other
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World politics is up Schmitt creek
Nathan
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« Reply #1320 on: July 14, 2015, 10:41:47 PM »

The Lake, by Yoshimoto Banana. I'm also two chapters into Runaway Horses, the second Sea of Fertility novel, but I'd like to finish The Lake before I go further.
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MalaspinaGold
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« Reply #1321 on: July 16, 2015, 05:12:09 AM »




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World politics is up Schmitt creek
Nathan
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« Reply #1322 on: July 25, 2015, 09:43:14 PM »

I started Runaway Horses. I'm in the middle of an absolute bear of a chapter, forty-nine pages in my edition (the book is four hundred and twenty-one pages, and has forty chapters), that reproduces in its entirety an in-universe political/religious pamphlet. One definitely gets the sense that Mishima was way too into this, but it actually makes for pretty interesting reading.
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True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)
Ernest
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« Reply #1323 on: July 25, 2015, 10:35:42 PM »

A good read so far, and the first of Spong's books I've ever opened. I think he overstates his premise, but there do seem to be some genuine nuggets of golden insight.
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Mr. Smith
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« Reply #1324 on: August 02, 2015, 11:22:48 PM »

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

In spite of perhaps a pessimistic edge regarding the outcome of abolition and obliteration of the old Jim Crow laws, it's still a chilling, eerie, but compelling read.
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