What Book Are You Currently Reading? (2.0.)

[Cassius]

The Tragedy of Heterosexuality - not really my bag, but fairly interesting.

[beaver2.0]

Studs Lonigan; A Trilogy by James Ferrell
and
Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut

[Never Made it to Graceland]

Reminisces of the Cuban Revolutionary War, by Ernesto Che Guevara.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Two great leftist or leftist-adjacent adventure classics, Capitan Tempesta by Emilio Salgari and Moby-Dick.

[Cassandra]

I'm going through the Oxford history series right now. Currently on Middlekauff's The Glorious Cause.

[Beet]

Now I am reading Lolita because I heard the prose was amazing. I was expecting something controversial, but I wasn't expecting what a terrible person the narrator is. This narrator has to be one of the worst people of all time.

[President of the great nation of 🏳️‍⚧️]

Madeline Miller - The Song of Achilles (2011)

While I don't like it as much as my sibling does, it's good.

[Benjamin Frank]

The Pelican Economic History of Britain Volume Two: 1530-1780: Reformation to Industrial Revolution by Christopher Hill

https://www.amazon.ca/Economic-History-Britain-Reformation-Industrial/dp/0140208976

[Beet]

Has anyone here read the Amie Parnes book about the Biden campaign yet? I'm trying to decide whether to order it from Amazon or to wait until it appears in one of the Free Library boxes around my town.

I didn't read it but I searched through it to find answers to some specific questions that involved key, pivotal events in the campaign (such as: why did Biden pick Harris?). Didn't find any answers. For such a long book, they have a remarkable ability to write anecdote after anecdote that seems juicy without actually saying anything. Just repeating conventional wisdom. It seems as if a committee of all the insiders and players in the campaign came together and approved the most sterile narrative possible, leaking out just enough detail to make you feel like you're in on the secret, as long as those details are relatively minor and insignificant. Which, given that the authors need to maintain access to their subjects, is not that surprising.

[Geoffrey Howe]

Law in a Time of Crisis by Jonathan Sumption. If you don’t know who he is, you really must find out forthwith. He has attracted a band of rather silly YouTube fans but he is very thoughtful and interesting to listen to.

The book is a set of slightly edited talks he has given over the years, including one on COVID-19.
The titles of the pieces are:

The Historian as Judge
On Apologising for History
Magna Carta Then and Now
Arcana Imperii: State Secrets through the Ages
The Disunited Kingdom: England, Ireland and Scotland

Home Truths about Judicial Diversity
Abolishing Personal Injuries Law - A Project
A Question of Taste: The Supreme Court and the Interpretation of Contracts

Brexit: A Primer for Foreigners
Brexit and the British Constitution
Britain in the Twenties: The Future of the Constitution
Government by Decree: COVID-19 and the British Constitution

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Law-Time-Crisis-Jonathan-Sumption/dp/1788167112/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3DO4PPMHRVJ3F&dchild=1&keywords=law+in+a+time+of+crisis&qid=1616967236&s=books&sprefix=Law+in+a+%2Caps%2C148&sr=1-1

[Mexican Wolf]

Has anyone here read the Amie Parnes book about the Biden campaign yet? I'm trying to decide whether to order it from Amazon or to wait until it appears in one of the Free Library boxes around my town.

A little late to the punch, but I just read Shattered and Lucky last weekend. Lucky was a pretty interesting read, although the ending felt very rushed compared to how the post-election actually played out. I guess you could argue that wasn't really part of the main focus of the book, though. Their depiction of Trump also seemed oddly different from what I actually remember watching in the 2020 election.

[Dr. MB]

Where the Footprints End: High Strangeness and the Bigfoot Phenomenon by Joshua Cutchin and Timothy Renner

Really good so far. Gives a much, much different perspective to Bigfoot than most other sources do.

[Benjamin Frank]

George Bernard Shaw, The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism, Capitalism, Sovietism, and Fascism

[Cassandra]

I'm going through the Oxford history series right now. Currently on Middlekauff's The Glorious Cause.

I finished this yesterday. Now I'm on to Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815 by Gordon Wood.

[Wikipedia delenda est]

Oliver Cromwell by Theodore Roosevelt.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

I recently read Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis's latest encyclical, if that counts.

I think I will start Ernest Hemingway's Forty-Nine Short Stories soon. I haven't read something as long as that in a while.

[Mexican Wolf]

Finished reading Sharks in the Time of Saviors by Kawai Strong Washburn last week. I said on another thread that I'd call it a magical realist or low fantasy novel, but in the author interview at the end of the book, apparently Washburn disagrees with both those labels.

Will be starting on The Return of the Mexican Gray Wolf: Back to the Blue by Bobbie Holaday soon. Maybe this is just because I'm searching in the wrong places, but it's been really hard to find books specifically about Mexican wolves compared to other wolf species (especially timberwolves), or books that talk about Mexican wolves outside of a single dedicated chapter. Thankfully, I've also got some Web resources on Mexican wolves bookmarked, too.

[Brother Jonathan]

Hobsbawm's The Age of Extremes, which is interesting. You can certainly see his political views come through in places, but it is an overall enjoyable read. I've also been reading out of T.S. Eliot: The Complete Poems and Plays.

[Geoffrey Howe]

Our Church: A Personal History of the Church of England, by Roger Scruton.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Hobsbawm's The Age of Extremes, which is interesting. You can certainly see his political views come through in places, but it is an overall enjoyable read. I've also been reading out of T.S. Eliot: The Complete Poems and Plays.

I loved Age of Extremes (though I pleas guilty to skipping some of the culture/science sections). An overview of the 20th century in a style I haven't seen elsewhere and something I find useful as one among a few books to use as my touchstone on general trends of the Cold War era.

[Brother Jonathan]

Hobsbawm's The Age of Extremes, which is interesting. You can certainly see his political views come through in places, but it is an overall enjoyable read. I've also been reading out of T.S. Eliot: The Complete Poems and Plays.

I loved Age of Extremes (though I pleas guilty to skipping some of the culture/science sections). An overview of the 20th century in a style I haven't seen elsewhere and something I find useful as one among a few books to use as my touchstone on general trends of the Cold War era.

I wholly agree. Hobsbawm has an excellent style that I think works particularly well for the sort of "grand history" that he writes about here (covering the whole world over a certain period as opposed to a more localized or specific area of history). 

[Babeuf]

Going to re-read Hyperion and it's sequels by Dan Simmons. Remember it being quite good when I read it a long time ago, although only read the first 2.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

Hobsbawm's The Age of Extremes, which is interesting. You can certainly see his political views come through in places, but it is an overall enjoyable read. I've also been reading out of T.S. Eliot: The Complete Poems and Plays.

I loved Age of Extremes (though I pleas guilty to skipping some of the culture/science sections). An overview of the 20th century in a style I haven't seen elsewhere and something I find useful as one among a few books to use as my touchstone on general trends of the Cold War era.

But the chapters about the interaction between new theories of quantum mechanics and the fragmentary modernist movement in the arts are some of Hobsbawm's best writing!

[Dr. MB]

The Mothman Prophecies by John Keel

[Lumine]

Simon Schama's Citizens. I really wasn't aware of it nor of its reputation as a controversial historiographical work - most books I've read on the Revolution are rather outdated - but 100 pages in I'm rather fascinated. Still in the early 1780's, but I'm certainly looking forward to the eventual explosion of events.