What are you reading now - and then

[sukumvit boy]

"In Patagonia" by Bruce Chatwin
This is a little gem of travel writing .history and adventure in one of the most inhospitable regions on earth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Patagonia

[sukumvit boy]

The Lost Art of Finding Our Way" by John Edward Huth
Perfect for hikers ,sailors or armchair astronomers, meteorologist and ethnographers .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Patagonia

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/op...the-world.html

[ILuvGurls]

An Obvious Fact...Craig Johnson

TV series Longmire was based off these books

Any Other Name.....Craig Johnson

these are very easy reading books....seems to me I start, then before I know it I'm turning the last page

[sukumvit boy]

"North Korea's Hidden Revolution" by Jieun Baek
The author was a research fellow in science and international affairs at Harvard University and is now a Ph.D candidate in public policy at Oxford University with family ties to North Korea who has conducted extensive interviews with defectors.
This is a fascinating look at life in North Korea and the underground 'information revolution' that is connecting the North Korean people to the world as never before.


http://yalebooks.com/book/9780300217...den-revolution

[runningdownthatdream]

"North Korea's Hidden Revolution" by Jieun Baek
The author was a research fellow in science and international affairs at Harvard University and is now a Ph.D candidate in public policy at Oxford University with family ties to North Korea who has conducted extensive interviews with defectors.
This is a fascinating look at life in North Korea and the underground 'information revolution' that is connecting the North Korean people to the world as never before.


http://yalebooks.com/book/9780300217...den-revolution

Damn you read a lot! I kinda miss those days of gliding through one book after the other.

I have finally cracked the spine on 'The Travels of Ibn Battuta' which i bought months ago. Abridged version so I'm likely issing out on a lot of the nuances. So far it's interesting. Kinda dry, heavily focused on Islam and Islamic things but to be expected for the time (1350s) when he lived and traveled. To read his descriptions of places like Aleppo, Damascus, Cairo, Baghdad is poignant given the current state of affairs of those cities. Although not enough about them (maybe because abridged). A good read.

Also picked up 'A Distant Mirror' by Barbara Tuchman again which I started a few years ago and only got halfway through. coincidentally (or maybe not!) it's about the same era (1300s) but this time it's an in-depth study of Europe and more pointedly France and England and the political machinations of the day. Fascinating stuff. Depressing in some ways to read that the ideological struggles being fought then are still the same battles being fought today: working-class vs ruling class, taxation, trade, etc. It never ends.

[sukumvit boy]

I read "The Adventures of Ibn Battuta " a few months after you mentioned it here and very much enjoyed it , thanks. I got the Ross E Dunn translation which was a good mix of background information about the Muslim world of the 14th century and scholarship about Ibn Battuta and his travels.It surprised me because I thought that I had read all the 'good stuff' , like the travels of Marco Polo , but prior to your mention of it it completely fell under my radar. I think that has something to do with our Western ignorance about the Muslim world and it's literature.
I will certainly check out "A Distant Mirror" and let you know what I think.
Yes, I have been an avid reader all my life , now mostly non-fiction. I always have 2 or 3 books going as well as a few weekly magazines , "The New Yorker " and "Science". I mostly just read during my lunch hour and before going to sleep but I notice as one gets older that before going to sleep time gets longer and longer .

[Stavros]

James West Davidson, A Little History of the United States (Yale University Press, 2015)
Presenting a history of the US in one volume is a daunting task, as in all histories the question -what does one put in and what does one leave out? can shape the finished product. This book offers a condensed history of the American people in less than 300 pages and in 40 bite-sized chapters that can be read on their own and in any order, which makes it more managable than a massive 800-page tome with a thousand foot-notes. It is thus aimed at the general reader who probably knows nothing or a little about American history, and overall it does it well. There are inevitable problems, the most puzzling being the narrative which barely manages to include the Reagan presidency and the end of the Cold War with no single chapters tracing the developments since then, so Clinton, GW Bush, Obama, 9/11, the internet are all rushed through in one chapter whereas the changes that have taken place to the US since 1980 are profound and needed to be addressed with more care.
Also, the overall theme of the book is the argument that freedom and equality have driven the US from Jamestown onwards, and the story is thus a procession though positive events in history -the revolution, cotton, the railroads, civil rights, with the obvious setbacks in this project being slavery (but defeated), the Civil War and the Great Depression. Some judgements are strange, such as the claim that the Seven Years War which consolidated Britain's domination of the North America was 'the first World War'. The book is not intended to be controversial or political -there is no significant discussion of religion which I think is needed given the differences between Christianity in Europe and America, and to be fair there are other studies of the US which approach their subject from left, right, centre and some other odd places, and there are also important and readable studies in depth of the US economy, its politics and society. Nevertheless, this is an easy-to-read book for beginners and enthusiasts and does what it says on the tin even if I found it too safe at times and too willing to present the US as the greatest country on earth.

[ILuvGurls]

"Liberty's Last Stand" ......Stephen Coonts

[bimale69]

"Ghost Rider: Travels on the healing road", and "Roadshow, landscaping with drums, A concert tour by motorcycle", both by Neil Peart....along with various issues of ADVmoto,RoadRunner and Rider magazines.... I guess I've been bitten by the adventure touring bike bug.

[sukumvit boy]

"The Road" Jack London's 1890's classic about hobo life in the US.
http://www.amazon.com/Road-Jack-Lond...k+london+books
"Capitalism's Crisis Deepens "by 'neo marxist ' economist Richard D Wolff. Wolff certainly presents a whole host of interesting and compelling arguments about the shortcomings of Keynesian and neoclassical capitalism.Unfortunately, he presents very little in the way of viable Marxist alternatives.
http://www.amazon.com/Capitalisms-Cr...rd+wolff+books