What Book Are You Currently Reading? (2.0.)

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Just splurged on a book order since I worked overtime last paycheck.

Currently:
Crime & Punishment, Fyodr Dostoevsky
Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut
The Age of Extremes, Eric Hobsbawm

Just put on my bookshelf without finishing because I needed to organize my desk:
Seeing Like a State, James Scott

Bought a week ago or ordered today:
We the Living, Ayn Rand
Strategies of Containment, John Lewis Gaddis
Daredevil by Frank Miller & Klaus Jason Omnibus, Frank Miller, et al
Armenia on the Horizon of Europe: Successes and Shortcomings of Democratization Efforts by European Organizations in a Post-Soviet State, Anahit Babayan

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

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

The latter sounds fascinating (no offense to Solzhenitsyn), and I'd been doing a fair amount of thinking in that area without having any real reference text, so hearing about this may be fortunate. How you like it so far?

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

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

The latter sounds fascinating (no offense to Solzhenitsyn), and I'd been doing a fair amount of thinking in that area without having any real reference text, so hearing about this may be fortunate. How you like it so far?

I've found it interesting. It is almost entirely centered on coups in the Middle East/Turkey though, so if you are looking for a broader description of coups or regime change around the world it won't be of much help. It focuses in Egypt, Turkey, and Iran and examines why each took a different path following their respective coups, which Kandil attributes to differences in the interplay between the major players in the coup (military, political, and security apparatus).It is very interesting for what it is.

So most of my reading has centered around "revolution" as such, but getting a better view on the choices made by the security services would be fascinating. This was in part stimulated by a lot of reading on Armenia, where you had reports of troops in uniform protesting, and where the internal security services appear to go about its new tasks rather enthusiastically upon Pashinyan's election, which included the arrest and prosecution of corrupt military officials. This got me wondering about when and under what circumstances siloviki and the like decide to go over to the side of the opposition.

[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.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

I'm rereading The Lord of the Rings, but this time I'm reading it in Japanese (Yubiwa monogatari). I've never attempted to read something so long in Japanese before, even when I was majoring in the language, and I figured a story that I'm already intimately familiar with would be a good place to start, especially since this way I get the fun of seeing what makes the translation tick. It's going well so far.

This summer I was tempted by a Russian language copy of "The Two Towers" at a Russian bookstore in SF, but knew my limits/lacked the courage.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Just ordered Submission by Michel Houellebecq, which a friend has strongly recommended to me.

Good grief.

Well, tell us what you think, I guess.

I just looked this up and it sounds hilarious. Half tempted to order it.

Near Abroad: Putin, the West, and Contests over Ukraine and the Caucaus by Gerard Toal

This has been buried in my Amazon cart for a while.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

I've almost finished Stephen King's first Dark Tower book, as part of my effort to read more fiction. I also finally finished reading Dune, which I had stopped about halfway through some years ago. Both are somewhat enjoyable, but they're not really rekindling my interest in fiction. The Dark Tower is too miserable and weird for my taste, and Dune-- while fantastically creative-- is really a slog to get through. The terminology alone is enough to induce a headache.

I swear I am the only person I've met who found "Dune" to be a surprisingly easy read given its length. I was obsessed and raced through it.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

I've been doing a close reading of Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West and Francis Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man for a project. 

That's awesome.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Considering buying a Michel Houellebecq book.

Currently in the fourth book of the Book of the New Sun.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

The Histories, Herodotus
The Odyssey, Homer
The Balkans, 1804-1999: Nationalism, War and the Great Powers, Misha Glenny

Very Greek selection.  

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Just went through Revolution and Restoration, a book detailing the inner-party conflicts in the CCP and China’s turn towards capitalism. interesting book, but it misses key elements like the university assaults by the Chinese army in 1969 and unfairly paints Chen Boda and Liu Shaoqui in unfair lighting, as well as handglossing over the fact that a huge amount of uni students and universities were in and apart of upperclass society.

Ignoramus on the subtleties of Chinese history, but this would be fascinating if not for the fact that it is a pdf.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Just went through Revolution and Restoration, a book detailing the inner-party conflicts in the CCP and China’s turn towards capitalism. interesting book, but it misses key elements like the university assaults by the Chinese army in 1969 and unfairly paints Chen Boda and Liu Shaoqui in unfair lighting, as well as handglossing over the fact that a huge amount of uni students and universities were in and apart of upperclass society.

Ignoramus on the subtleties of Chinese history, but this would be fascinating if not for the fact that it is a pdf.

Just convert it to another format. PDF’s aren’t that bad.

I just dislike reading on a screen in general. DK if the ol' printer is going to willingly push out 400 pages.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Just went through Revolution and Restoration, a book detailing the inner-party conflicts in the CCP and China’s turn towards capitalism. interesting book, but it misses key elements like the university assaults by the Chinese army in 1969 and unfairly paints Chen Boda and Liu Shaoqui in unfair lighting, as well as handglossing over the fact that a huge amount of uni students and universities were in and apart of upperclass society.

Ignoramus on the subtleties of Chinese history, but this would be fascinating if not for the fact that it is a pdf.

Just convert it to another format. PDF’s aren’t that bad.

I just dislike reading on a screen in general. DK if the ol' printer is going to willingly push out 400 pages.

You can spend hours on atlas reading 50 pages worth of text at a time, I think you can do it man.

I actually almost rarely read posts longer than a few sentences for this reason lol.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Currently reading:

"Jefferson: Architect of American Liberty" by John Boles
"Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln" by Doris Kearns Goodwin
"The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia" by James Scott
"Legal Systems Very Different from Ours" by David Friedman

I'm not a James Scott expert, but he comes highly recommended.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Gotta pick out books to take on my trip. Borrowed a history of Central Asia and Neuromancer from a friend.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Gotta pick out books to take on my trip. Borrowed a history of Central Asia and Neuromancer from a friend.

Neuromancer's great, I really need to read more Gibson.

I'm only a bit into Neuromancer but it is super cool.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Gotta pick out books to take on my trip. Borrowed a history of Central Asia and Neuromancer from a friend.

Neuromancer's great, I really need to read more Gibson.

I'm only a bit into Neuromancer but it is super cool.

It gets easier to follow--and the concepts, thus, even cooler--as it goes on.

Actual Neuromancer Joe Manchin

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Gotta pick out books to take on my trip. Borrowed a history of Central Asia and Neuromancer from a friend.

Neuromancer's great, I really need to read more Gibson.

I'm only a bit into Neuromancer but it is super cool.

It gets easier to follow--and the concepts, thus, even cooler--as it goes on.

Actual Neuromancer Joe Manchin

The pun on "necromancer" actually is made in-text late in the book.

And here I thought that pun was made in the title.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Gotta pick out books to take on my trip. Borrowed a history of Central Asia and Neuromancer from a friend.

Neuromancer's great, I really need to read more Gibson.

I'm only a bit into Neuromancer but it is super cool.

It gets easier to follow--and the concepts, thus, even cooler--as it goes on.

Just finished. I don't wanna say "life changing", but I wanna say "life changing".

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Гарри Поттер и философский камень.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Finished Roadside Picnic before I left the country. On the buses I've been reading The Russia House by LeCarre (fun!) and rereading the first half of the New Sun cycle. I have other books in my bag--too many, in all likelihood--including Metro 2033.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Finished Roadside Picnic before I left the country. On the buses I've been reading The Russia House by LeCarre (fun!) and rereading the first half of the New Sun cycle. I have other books in my bag--too many, in all likelihood--including Metro 2033.

Finished The Russia House. Wonderful love story.