What Book Are You Currently Reading?

[angus]

Atlas Shrugged

oh, you're like clay to be molded.  Don't take this forum so seriously.

By the way, once you get past the first five hundred pages, it actually starts to get interesting.  You'll fly right through next five hudred pages. 


Me?  I just started another Tony Hillerman novel, Hunting Badger. 

[angus]

Atlas Shrugged

oh, you're like clay to be molded.  Don't take this forum so seriously.

By the way, once you get past the first five hundred pages, it actually starts to get interesting.  You'll fly right through next five hudred pages. 

1) What makes you think I'm a clay to be molded? I don't agree with everything in the book. It's not like I'm going to convert to atheist/objectivism, and tell William Buckley he's "much too intelligent to believe in God".

2)You're right abour the first five hundred pages. I'm on page six-hundred-something, and it's a heck of a lot more interesting than some of the incredibly boring back story and stuff that you read in the first five hundred pages.

I said that to a friend one time about twenty years ago, that stuff about the last five hundred pages being more interesting than the first five hundred, and he laughed, like I was joking. Like, how can a book be a thousand pages long.  Anyway, I got into Ayn Rand after I found out she was one of Niel Peart's influences.  I was a big RUSH fan back in high school and college.

I was just ribbing you about being easily influenced, and I meant more by the posts of the posters on this forum than by any book. 

[angus]

I actually started reading this book before I ever heard anyone outside of my dad mention it. He brought it home one day from like the salvation army or a garage sale. I only read a couple of pages, then I pikced it up about a jonth or two ago and decided to keep reading.

Good for you, man.  I read Anthem first, then some other stuff by Ayn Rand, then eventually Atlas Shrugged.  You started right off with the driest, longest of the Ayn Rand books.

Yesterday I started another Tony Hillerman novel, The Wailing Wind.  Good stuff.

[angus]

Just finished "To kill a mockingbird."  We have a bunch a books coming due on Sunday (borrowing is for three weeks at the local public library), so I'll pick something else up.  I read a nice review of Leon Uris' "Armageddon" and I see that it's in stock, so maybe I'll get that one.

[angus]

wow.  there's a book?  That's disturbing.

[angus]

Jean-Paul Sartre's "The Age of Reason."

At first it was toilet seat reading, but the Cable Guy came over this morning--connected the internet, finally, and gave us 300+ channels of garbage.  I suppose this will cost an arm and a leg, but it's good to be back in touch.  Anyway, he noticed the book splayed, spine down, on a box in the basement and commented on it.  Apparently he'd read it because he was very well versed on it and had a detailed analysis regarding the development of characters.  We discussed it somewhat, but I felt a bit guilty that I was only on page 42 at the time.  Since then I've read another 30 pages.  I relate to Mathieu.

[angus]

Victor Hugo "Les Miserables"

I'd read that Hugo Chavez was influenced by Victor Hugo and his thinking, and that he urged Venezuelans to read Les Miserables.  Apparently his government even printed and gave away a million copies of the book to its citizens, so I figured I'd give it a go.  Man, it's long.  Jean Valjean doesn't get introduced till page 78 or so.  I read a bit when I take a dump or when I'm waiting for someone.  I'm on page 193 (out of 1432.) 

[angus]

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

If you want to read in interesting book, see Inside the Third Reich, by Speer.

Currently I'm reading Achebe's, A Man of The People 

"In the Garden of the Beasts" by Erik Larson if you want a the perspective of an American Werewolf in Berlin.  Well, not a werewolf, actually, but William E. Dodd, Roosevelt's ambassador to Germany 1933-37.  A good read.  Tense, gritty, non-fiction. 

[angus]

Just finished "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" ten minutes ago.  Like, I mean ten minutes ago.  Long story.  Homework, sort of.  Pretty interesting read anyway. 

[angus]

Inspired by jdb I borrowed "Twelve Years a Slave" by Solomon Northup from the MTPL last night.  It's a 2007 edition published by Barnes & Noble (216 pages).  I've only read the timeline of Northup's life, the B&N Intro, and the editor's original 1855 preface so far, but I'll read more of it over the weekend when I have time.  It is interesting that by 1855 the American English spelling had evolved, more or less, into its modern form.  For example, the editor's spelling of words like advice and labor are not like those of Thomas Jefferson and his contemporaries.  Also, the dedication page, presumably written by Northup, is to Harriet Beecher Stowe and suggests that his narrative will provide "another key to Uncle Tom's Cabin."  I suppose that Northup must have observed that the intensity of the abolitionist movement had increased greatly between the time he was kidnapped in 1841 and the time he was released in 1853. 

[angus]

Crime and Punishment.  I'm about 3/4 finished.  Don't tell me how it ends.

I was actually inspired by Senator bore:

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=200553.msg4338757#msg4338757

Well, I was inspired to pick up Brothers Karamazov, but at the library all the copies of that book were really fat and really old but right next to them was Crime and Punishment.  The book was shaped better.  Tall, and therefore thinner, with newer binding.  The Idiot was there too, but I have already read that.  I'll probably read Brothers Karamazov when I can find a more aesthetically pleasing edition.  So far, every Russian book I've ever read was very depressing--we have discussed Anna Karenina and War & Peace elsewhere.  Not as depressing as Dickens, but depressing nonetheless.

Anyway, Sonya's father has just been laid to rest.  I think I'm about to find out whether Raskolnikov has given himself away to the cops.  I imagine he has, although I'm not entirely sure what will happen to his sister and his mother.

[angus]

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?

[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.

[angus]

Just started Idiot today.  My son had a piano practice at 6pm and I usually bring my NGM to read but I finished it this morning while I shat, and I don't have any other interesting magazines, so I walked over to the big library just after lunch thinking of getting a book.  I went to the sub-subbasement where the M-Z section of the general collection is kept in compact shelves was somehow drawn to the slavic (PG) book section.  Maybe it was because I had checked out Crime and Punishment a year ago and my subconscious mind was taking me to the same spot.  Man, I hate compact shelves.  Anyway, I noticed a dusty old tome, rebound forest green, with only IDIOT stamped on it and became intrigued so I borrowed it.

I'm only on page 11 yet--I get distracted listening to the music and the instruction so I never really get much reading in there--but it is very interesting so far.

[angus]

Just finished Genesis:  Memory of fire, volume I, by Eduardo Galeano.  Good stuff.

That's probably why I'm so keen on the concept of "forced conversion to monotheism" 

I still have volumes II and III to go, sitting on the dresser, so I'll probably get even more obnoxious before I get more mellow.

[angus]

I just started reading Disordered World by Amin Maalouf.  I'm only in chapter 2, but so far it is very depressing.  

There's something for everyone:  Confusion in Europe; the Arab world "sinking deeper into a pit of rage" from which it seems incapable of extricating itself, Sub-Saharan Africa "plagued by civil war, epidemics, sordid trafficking, widespread corruption, disintegrating institutions, mass unemployment, and despair"; Russia struggling to recover from seventy years of communism and the chaotic way it ended; and the United States, "having defeated its principal global adversary, finding itself engaged in a titanic enterprise which is wearing it down and leading it off course."

I think perennially melancholy Beet would love it.  

[angus]

Is this a novel or non fiction?

It is non-fiction.  Analysis, op/ed sort of stuff.  Basically, the rantings of a middle eastern writer living in Paris for 20 years.  I think it was originally written French because there's a long English translator's preface in the front.  Finished it last week and returned it.  It's not particularly challenging, but a decent read because of the fresh perspective. 

[angus]

some residents of Wrocław still reefers it to Breslau
...
some reefer to Wrocław

reefer madness, Polish-style.

[angus]

Baudolino

I just finished that one as well.  I enjoyed especially the irreverent and, at times, bawdy sense of humor.  Also, I found myself researching the the details of the third crusade and of Barbarossa's life. Excellent read.