What Book Are You Currently Reading? (2.0.)

[Kingpoleon]

About to start The Big Sleep.

Finishing up White Fang and I swear to god this is the cutest sh!t i've ever read.

Speaking of schoolroom standbys, I'm also reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder "Little House" books. It's an...interesting series. The books are deeply racist and written in the service of a political project that's glaringly obvious as an adult reader, but you can also see why generations of children and parents have found them so endearing.

I’m not sure if you’ve gotten to the Rocky Ridge/Ozark books yet, but they add a great deal of context. I’d hardly call any of the books “deeply racist.”

“Why don’t you like Indians, Ma… This is Indian country, isn’t it? What did we come to their country for, if you don’t like them?”

The books also provide one of the earliest records of black doctors practicing on white patients in America, and I believe the first one recorded as a “settler doctor”.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Almost finished with The Trial by Franz Kafka.

[Orwell]

I just finished Game Change by John Heileman and Mark Helprin, and am now listening to Why Nation's Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson

[Mexican Wolf]

Recently finished reading Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination by Toni Morrison.

I found her argument that white authors' depiction of black people in American literature reflected and reinforced the constructions of their own white identities as well as the identities of the "others" fascinating and thought-provoking.

Her prose always sweeps me up, even if I'm not always exactly sure what she's trying to say.

[John Dule]

Currently about 100 pages into The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. It's a surprisingly easy read; I'm trying to highlight all the names and key details since I often get those things turned around in my head. This book ought to be made into a miniseries. I'd be very interested to see an English-speaking actor play Hitler as a serious role and to give some of his speeches word-for-word. I've always wanted to understand what made his oratory so powerful, but the language barrier makes that difficult.

[beaver2.0]

War and Peace

Catch-22

Dubliners

[Middle-aged Europe]

I just finished the Tao Te Ching.

[SWE]

Just finished Ángel Cappelletti's Anarchism in Latin America and started Charles Cobb's This Non-Violent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible

[Middle-aged Europe]

I recently finished the graphic novel adaptation of Octavia E. Butler's The Parable of the Sower.

[SWE]

White Trash: The 400-year Untold Story of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

The Brethren.

Potter Stewart must've really enjoyed himself when he served as a source for the book.

[Brother Jonathan]

Two books at the moment. One fiction, Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward and one nonfiction, Hazem Kandil's The Power Triangle: Military, Security, and Politics in Regime Change

[Alcibiades]

Just starting The Secret History by Donna Tartt.

[Mexican Wolf]

Just finished Axiom's End by Lindsay Ellis. A pretty good debut novel about first contact with aliens and negotiating language and cultural differences.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

Nothing. My last book was What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver. The eponymous story was really moving to me.

[Mexican Wolf]

Nothing. My last book was What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver. The eponymous story was really moving to me.

Back in one of my creative writing classes in college, we read Nathan Englander's story based on this, "What We Talk About When We Talk about Anne Frank," which focuses on the two couples' different views of what it means to be Jewish. Then we each wrote stories using the same basic structures as both of these stories and incorporating a famous historical figure in some way (I chose President Truman).

It was a pretty interesting experiment.

[DINGO Joe]

White Trash: The 400-year Untold Story of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg

I've read that, makes Atlas' rural haters look like pikers.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

Nothing. My last book was What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver. The eponymous story was really moving to me.

Back in one of my creative writing classes in college, we read Nathan Englander's story based on this, "What We Talk About When We Talk about Anne Frank," which focuses on the two couples' different views of what it means to be Jewish. Then we each wrote stories using the same basic structures as both of these stories and incorporating a famous historical figure in some way (I chose President Truman).

It was a pretty interesting experiment.

It definitely sounds so. Although to be fair love as a concept is what really stokes my emotions so I am not sure if I would find as appealing to read about the meaning of President Truman or of Judaism.

[Mexican Wolf]

It definitely sounds so. Although to be fair love as a concept is what really stokes my emotions so I am not sure if I would find as appealing to read about the meaning of President Truman or of Judaism.

Haha I should've clarified; I included Harry Truman in my story, but it was actually about Japanese characters reflecting on the atomic bombing of Nagasaki 70 years later.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

It definitely sounds so. Although to be fair love as a concept is what really stokes my emotions so I am not sure if I would find as appealing to read about the meaning of President Truman or of Judaism.

Haha I should've clarified; I included Harry Truman in my story, but it was actually about Japanese characters reflecting on the atomic bombing of Nagasaki 70 years later.

Ah I understand. Indeed, the meaning of Harry Truman would have been a pretty weird topic.

[Wikipedia delenda est]

Chicot the Jester by Alexandre Dumas.

[Babeuf]

Recently finished A Godly Hero by Michael Kazin, good book about William Jennings Bryan and Gilded Age and Progressive Era politics in general. The author uses archival fan mail sent to WJB very well. Before that I read The Price of Peace by Zach Carter, which was a very good personal and ideological history of Keynes, his disciples, and opponents.

Now reading The Jakarta Method by Vincent Bevins. Next book up is The Anarchy by William Dalrymple.

[John Dule]

Nothing. My last book was What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver. The eponymous story was really moving to me.

You seen Birdman?

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

Nothing. My last book was What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver. The eponymous story was really moving to me.

You seen Birdman?

Of course. Actually, I got to know that book only because I watched Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance).

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

The Day of the Triffids is a justly iconic book that's clearly had an enormous influence on sci-fi and post-apocalyptic media of all stripes, and it's really fun to see the sources of those influences as they pop up in the plot. Unfortunately, to get that out of the book you have to be willing to overlook some of the most wildly ableist English prose ever written, so, for me at least, the book is slow going.