What Book Are You Currently Reading?

[bore]

American Caesars by Neil Hamilton - I've done FDR Truman and Eisenhower.

[bore]

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.

I'm glad to hear it

I read The Brothers Karamazov last year and am coincidentally also reading Crime and Punishment at the moment, although I'm a bit closer to the end (I have 30 pages left, so should be finished today or tomorrow).

[bore]

Just finished A People's Tragedy by Orlando Figes (He of the Amazon fame)

It was beautifully written and incredibly informative but also, perhaps inevitably given it's subject was the russian revolution, deeply depressing. I would recommend it to anyone.

[bore]

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.