What are you reading now - and then

[broncofan]

Just read Deep Water by Patricia Highsmith. I really like her books even though she was problematic as a person. She seems to have a penchant for depicting solitary male sociopaths...makes for dark, but very readable fiction.

Read 1984 a little while back because I was never assigned it in school and thought I should see what it was all about (for basic literacy if nothing else). I enjoyed it. Every facet of the totalitarian experience thoroughly explored and fleshed out.

I also read Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett a couple months ago (or longer). His plots are very complicated...tough to keep track of characters and factions, but Red Harvest in particular is a worthwhile read. For those who don't know, Hammett wrote the Maltese Falcon. I never read it but saw the movie. Though he only wrote a few full length novels, he is considered by many the quintessential American hard-boiled detective novelist, along with Raymond Chandler and James Cain.

Edit: I had included Jim Thompson but his books aren't detective books in the same vein.

[south ov da border]

Currently Isis Unveiled by Blavatsky ... last book Tao of Jeet kune do

[emilydelano]

The Black Eyed Blonde by Benjamin Black. It's the new Phillip Marlowe novel by the Iriah author John Banville. It's quite good, different to how Chandler wrote the character but atill definitely Marlowe at it's core

[broncofan]

The Black Eyed Blonde by Benjamin Black. It's the new Phillip Marlowe novel by the Iriah author John Banville. It's quite good, different to how Chandler wrote the character but atill definitely Marlowe at it's core
That sounds like a good read Emily. Maybe I'll take a look at that next!

[trish]

Recently read George Saunders' Tenth of December (some dark short stories),
Maud Casey's The Man Who Walked Away (very interesting fictionalized take on a compulsive traveler who lived in 19th century France).
Currently reading Out of Sight by the late Elmore Leonard and
Ian Mortimer's Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England.

[joanne_sven]

Jaycee by Vickie Ternhttp://www.vickietern.com/1997/04/jaycee/

[Odelay]

Currently reading Out of Sight by the late Elmore Leonard
Trish, did you by chance see Soderbergh's film version of this? I confess I haven't read any Leonard because the tele/film versions of his work have usually been quite good (midway through the television series, Justified, as an example).

I really liked the film version of Out of Sight. Part of the reason is that the two main actors played against type. Clooney sort of abandons his usual cool in control persona to play someone much more crazy and on edge. Lopez really dials back her vixen persona - I really think this is her best job acting, not that that was ever a high bar to clear. Anyway, I should probably read some Leonard.

ON TOPIC: currently reading Nathaniel Philbrick (http://www.audible.com/search/ref=a_pd_Histor_c2_1_auth?searchAuthor=Nathaniel+P hilbrick)'s Bunker Hill.

[broncofan]

Odelay,
For what it's worth, I saw the film version with Clooney and Lopez about a month after I read the book (this was in the theaters so a long time ago). I liked both.

Just read The Chill by Ross Macdonald. Also read the Black Eyed Blonde by Benjamin Black. Liked them both...both set in Southern California. I think Ross Macdonald is my favorite mystery writer for the moment. Shame none of his books made good movies. I saw Harper with Paul Newman the other week and it really wasn't much better than an average movie I didn't think.

[trish]

Trish, did you by chance see Soderbergh's film version of this? I confess I haven't read any Leonard because the tele/film versions of his work have usually been quite good (midway through the television series, Justified, as an example).

I really liked the film version of Out of Sight. Part of the reason is that the two main actors played against type. Clooney sort of abandons his usual cool in control persona to play someone much more crazy and on edge. Lopez really dials back her vixen persona - I really think this is her best job acting, not that that was ever a high bar to clear. Anyway, I should probably read some Leonard.

ON TOPIC: currently reading Nathaniel Philbrick (http://www.audible.com/search/ref=a_pd_Histor_c2_1_auth?searchAuthor=Nathaniel+P hilbrick)'s Bunker Hill.No I haven't seen the film...didn't even know there was one. Thanks for the recommendation (you too Bronco); I'll put it on my queue of films to stream.

Actually have haven't heard of Elmore Leonard (shows how out of touch I am) until Justified flickered into my living room one evening a few years ago. Since then I read Maximum Bob (totally loved it), Stick and Out of Sight. Since my late discovery of his work I found out some of my favorite films were inspired by Leonard stories: Get Shorty (a very funny and engaging film) and Jackie Brown (one of my all time film faves). Looks like I need to pay more attention to the credits.

On topic: Now relaxing with Robert Galbraith's Silkworm.

[sukumvit boy]

Just read John Waters ,"Carsick" . Funny guy , enjoyable read. I have been a fan of his for many years. I find him to be such a funny ,articulate and gentle person with a wildly unconventional slant on life.

Carsick: John Waters Hitchhikes Across America: John Waters: 9780374298630: Amazon.com: Books@@AMEPARAM@@http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51woxOQWgQL.@@AMEPARAM@@51woxOQWgQL (http://www.amazon.com/Carsick-Waters-Hitchhikes-Across-America/dp/0374298637/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1405904611&sr=8-1&keywords=john+waters+carsick)
Thanks Trish , buttslinger , and Prospero for alerting me to Ian Mortimer , John Richardson and Haruki Murakami . Reading"The Wind Up Bird Chronicals " now and looking forward to the Picasso and Medieval England books.
What happened to Stavros? Really miss his contributions around here!

[trish]

I love your description of John Walters. I love his gentleness. And of course his kinky, understanding attitude.

I just heard a great review of Greg Iles's Natchez Burning. I haven't read any of his stuff and wonder if anyone has a Greg Iles's favorite to recommend?

[Prospero]

I saw Stavros posted something yesterday in the strand about the Ukraine aircrash... but he is, otherwise, keeping a low profile.

I've just finished reading "The Garden Of Evening Mists' by Tan Twang En, a beautifully written rather poetic novel set in Malaysia about the relationship between an ageing japanese landcsape gardener and a young Chinese woman who was a POW of the Japanese during WW2. It is by turns beautiful and emotionally powerful.

[sukumvit boy]

Brad Stone , "The Everything Store: Jeff Besos and the Age of Amazon" good read .

Josephine Tey , "Miss Pym Disposes" classic 1950's mystery , liked "The Daughter of Time " more but I'm a fan now.

Michael C Corballis ,"The Recursive Mind" , make the argument that the brain shaped the creation of language in opposition to the Naom Chomsky argument that language shaped the brain.

Barbara Ehrenreich ,"Living With a Wild God: A Non-Believer's Search for the Truth About Everything" , fascinating discussion about the 'mystical experience' in our lives ,and the authors'.

Stephen L. Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde , "Slights of Mind: What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals About Our Everyday Deceptions" , the title says it all, great read.

Moises Velasquez-Manoff , "An Epidemic of Absence :A New Way of Understanding Allergies and Autoimmune Diseases" . important information about the paradigm shift that's taking place in this field. The argument goes : "We need more manure ,mud and animals in our lives because that's what our immune system evolved to fight , now with those things gone the immune system is attacking it's own body."

James V. Stone ,"Bayes' Rule : A Tutorial Introduction to Bayesian Analysis" , nice intro to this powerful tool used in so many fields , including economics and medicine.

[trish]

I put the Recursive Mind on my reading list. Sounds intriguing. I always conjectured that what distinguishes the human mind from those of other Earth beings is that it effectively simulates a universal Turing machine, hence allowing us to run arbitrary programs and to simulate any other brain. This gives us the capacity to imagine the world as our friend might see it, as a hunted animal might see it, etc. i.e. to empathize and strategize. I imagine evolution jogging along randomly trying one mutation after another, accumulatively building automaton brains with more and more layers, more a more capacities (like primitive recursion) until once day a primate appeared that had the capabilities of a universal Turing machine. That’s when thought truly became possible. Turing machines are the main conceptual tool of the mathematical field once known as Recursion Theory, though now rebranded (for the purposes of gaining grant money) as Computation Theory. My little conceit never got beyond this rather simplistic stage, so I’m interested to see if it’s in anyway parallel to Corballis’s conception.

[broncofan]

Moises Velasquez-Manoff , "An Epidemic of Absence :A New Way of Understanding Allergies and Autoimmune Diseases" . important information about the paradigm shift that's taking place in this field. The argument goes : "We need more manure ,mud and animals in our lives because that's what our immune system evolved to fight , now with those things gone the immune system is attacking it's own body."

My brother's wife insists that everything in their house be sterilized for their kids. We are forced to wash our hands before visiting with them etc. I've tried to nicely tell her that is actually not good for the development of the immune system. It's hopeless though and quite honestly I was barely even able to bring up the subject.

[trish]

My brother's wife insists that everything in their house be sterilized for their kids. We are forced to wash our hands before visiting with them etc. I've tried to nicely tell her that is actually not good for the development of the immune system. It's hopeless though and quite honestly I was barely even able to bring up the subject.Just slip a little manure in their soft soap next time you visit. Just a little, not so that she'll notice :)

[MrFanti]

Now = "The Walking Dead" Graphic Novels
Then = Anne Rice's "Servant Of The Bones"..

[diddyboponTOP]

Lord of the Flies,Before that Beowulf

[Odelay]

Anyone here ever read any A.S. Byatt? Any of the Brits who participate here? She's supposedly the "Beloved" Byatt in England. Just wondering what a good entry point is to her works. The only thing I'm familiar with is Possession which is a movie adaption of one of her books, which I thought was rather good. But I'm not big fan of reading the book after seeing the movie.

Currently blowing through some old 70's and 80's era New Mexico police mysteries by Tony Hillerman, Dance Hall of the Dead and The Blessing Way. Quick, easy, entertaining reads.

EDIT: corrected for gender. Hadn't realized Byatt is a she.

[BatMasterson]

Murder In Baracoa by Paul E. Walsh, a 1958 pulp novel

[Prospero]

Just finished The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell. An imaginative tour de force. But I am not surprised it did not make the Booker shortlist. I also just read J by Howard Jacobson - a very disturbing novel about hate in the near future and the latest by Haruki Murakami. J was the best of the three and is a Booker shortllsted book.

[trish]

(Thanks for the review, Prospero. I bought Bone Clocks a week or so ago, but I haven't started it yet. I'm waiting for an appropriate window of spare time to materialize.) Just finished The Frangipani Hotel which is collection of Vietnamese "ghost stories" collected and reworked by its Vietnamese/American author, Violet Kuppersmith.

[Prospero]

That sounds good Trish... I will get it. I am presently reading a novel called A Tale For the Time being by Ruth Ozeki... who is now a Zen Buddhist nun.

I think if you liked Mitchell's first three books - Ghostwritten, Number9dream and Cloud Atlas yu'll like The bone Atlas. I was not so keen on the two books in between.

[Odelay]

How to Build a Girl by Caitlin Moran. Think of it as a better version of Almost Famous told thru the eyes of a girl, with better music (England/early 90's). The main character is pretty entertaining.

[Absarokah]

AD&D 2nd Edition Night Below Campaign Box Set
Book 1: The Evils Of Haranshire

[trish]

In the middle of William Gibson's Peripheral. Gibson's got his mojo back.

[Laphroaig]

Currently in the middle of "Revelation" the 4th book in the Shardlake series by C.J. Sansom.

[Odelay]

Finished Munich Airport by Greg Baxter (2015), which is an accomplishment for me as it's modern fiction and I struggle with this genre. Your mileage may vary, but it reminded me stylistically of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, which I was never able to finish. LOL

Here's a very favorable paragraph from a review in The Guardian:

This rich and profound book is full of philosophical ideas and stark, ascetic beauty. There are no speech marks. The past and present interleave with one another in long blocky paragraphs without chapters or line breaks (as in Bernhard). The writing is scrupulous and often superb. Plot backs blushingly away and, instead, we are sifting deep into the archaeology of character in order to try to see existence itself

[buttslinger]

I bought this book used on Amazon, total bullshit. Turns out it's a book for women.

[sukumvit boy]

"John le Carre" the new biography by Adam Sisman.
A scholarly yet very readable biography of David Cornwall , pen name John le Carre , whose life was every bit as interesting as his novels.
http://www.amazon.com/John-Carre-Biography-Adam-Sisman/dp/0062106279
"To Explain the World : The Discovery of Modern Science " by Steven Weinberg
New from the Nobel physicist , very fresh and readable treatment of the history of science.
http://www.amazon.com/Explain-World-Discovery-Modern-Science/dp/0062346660/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1455990349&sr=1-1&keywords=to+explain+the+world

[BatMasterson]

The Beast In Berlin (Crowley and Weimar Republic stuff) by Churton
Incidents of Travel in Yucatan by Stephens

[donaghey30]

Just finished 1984 George Orwell
currently 11/22/63 Steven King
before 1984 George Pelacanos Martini Shot

[biggdawg]

I've noticed no matter what site I see this thread on a LOT of people seem to be into really deep thinking type of literature. Not that I would ever question anyone's honesty. I'm more of a read for fun type guy.

Presently about to finish Star Island by Carl Hiaasen and read Make Me a recent Jack Reacher novel by Lee Child. Any other crime fiction fans here?

[cassieukts]

Currently reading Leading by Sir Alex

[Gillian]

I've noticed no matter what site I see this thread on a LOT of people seem to be into really deep thinking type of literature. Not that I would ever question anyone's honesty. I'm more of a read for fun type guy.
US viewers when asked how much PBS they watch claim far more hours than any of the actual monitoring methods reveal. Same phenomenon. We all want to be seen as more intellectual than we actually are.

Personally, I just stick with the Ladybird series ... ;)

http://www.primaryopinion.com/sites/default/files/articles/article_4830_4.jpeg

[peejaye]

Cocaine Train by Stephen Smith. "Tracing my bloodline through Colombia".
Railways,
Everyday life in Colombia during the 1990's.

[trish]

Just finished So You Don't Get Lost in the Neighborhood by Patrick Modiano

A short novella set in Paris and the in the tangled and confused memories of a lonely and paranoid old Steppenwolf. It's an post-modern, existential mystery. Not everyone's cup of tea (I would presume). It was my first experience with Nobelist writer. I'll probably give him another try or two.

Currently reading Falling in Love with Hominids by Nalo Hopkinson, a Jamaican writer of "speculative fiction." This is a collection of some of her fantastical short stories, full of magic and wonder. Also my first experience with Nalo's Caribbean flavored fiction. If I saw her on the shelf, I wouldn't hesitate picking her up.

[tacocorp]

Millennium trilogy

[sukumvit boy]

I've noticed no matter what site I see this thread on a LOT of people seem to be into really deep thinking type of literature. Not that I would ever question anyone's honesty. I'm more of a read for fun type guy.

Presently about to finish Star Island by Carl Hiaasen and read Make Me a recent Jack Reacher novel by Lee Child. Any other crime fiction fans here?
Yup. Read all the Reacher series , Hiaasen is good too. All the way back to Lawrence Block.

[sukumvit boy]

Just finished 1984 George Orwell
currently 11/22/63 Steven King
before 1984 George Pelacanos Martini Shot
You may enjoy Orwell's "Burmese Days" a great read , based upon his experience in the Colonial British Foreign Service. He was born in British India and his father and he both served. Biting reportage about the social injustice of colonialism in Burma .

[fab]

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/515%2BA0ri85L._SX323_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

[Ambiguous shyster]

Devine adoratrice and vengeful spirit even though I've read the latter twice...great thread

[Ambiguous shyster]

I'm not a reader for pleasure, and I prefer articles over books in the non-fiction realm, but my favorite book is Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. If you've never heard of it, you will... when the movie comes out next year. ;)

~BB~
The books sound Interesting, the film didn't get good reviews but I liked it. I love dystopian sci fi themes and these children are pushed into war... I forgot to order these gonna check the local oxfam which always has a good range of books if not than ordering the series. Thanks for the reminder .

[biggdawg]

Yup. Read all the Reacher series , Hiaasen is good too. All the way back to Lawrence Block.

James Ellroy is probably my favorite crime writer. The guy is brilliant in a twisted way. Of course I'm a big Elmore Leonard fan as well. RIP. I've tried a lot of the most popular and or acclaimed people in the genre. I love stuff that's either hard boiled or quirky. Currently reading House of Thieves by Charles Belfour. It's set in 1886 New York and I'm enjoying it so far.

Have you ever read any of the Serge Storms series by Tim Dorsey? I know it sounds trite but he's like Carl Hiaasen on acid.

[fab]

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51adXk-KsDL._AC_UL320_SR208,320_.jpg

[bobagemman]

928576

[broncofan]

James Ellroy is probably my favorite crime writer. The guy is brilliant in a twisted way. Of course I'm a big Elmore Leonard fan as well. RIP. I've tried a lot of the most popular and or acclaimed people in the genre. I love stuff that's either hard boiled or quirky. Currently reading House of Thieves by Charles Belfour. It's set in 1886 New York and I'm enjoying it so far.

Have you ever read any of the Serge Storms series by Tim Dorsey? I know it sounds trite but he's like Carl Hiaasen on acid.
You ever read any Jim Thompson? The Killer Inside Me, Population 1280, The Grifters, The Getaway. If you like hard boiled, the guy is excellent. Even darker and more twisted than Ellroy...but very difficult to like one but not the other.

Thompson also helped Kubrick write screenplays of Paths of Glory and The Killings...but Kubrick only gave him credit for writing "dialogue" for the Killings which was surely unfair but that's a longer story.

[broncofan]

I've noticed no matter what site I see this thread on a LOT of people seem to be into really deep thinking type of literature. Not that I would ever question anyone's honesty.
Not into classics of literature but this comment reminds me of when people respond to a sentence with a multi-syllable word by accusing the speaker of trying to confuse or impress them. I'm sure some people like good literature because they get enjoyment out of reading it. There are probably people who read Melville, Dickens, or Orwell because they have a different temperament and can delay gratification.

[Stavros]

Not into classics of literature but this comment reminds me of when people respond to a sentence with a multi-syllable word by accusing the speaker of trying to confuse or impress them. I'm sure some people like good literature because they get enjoyment out of reading it. There are probably people who read Melville, Dickens, or Orwell because they have a different temperament and can delay gratification.

The 'classics' are appreciated for both form and content, that is, the way the writer writes, and what he or she writes about. Taste then tends to determine whether a reader prefers, say in the 19th century, Balzac to Dickens or Cooper to Eliot, or in the 20th century the intensely stylish modernists like Conrad, Woolf and Joyce to the plain narrative/content driven books by writers such as Kurt Vonnegut and Cormac McCarthy. There is room for all, just as some readers prioritise a genre in their reading -say, 'science fiction' or 'crime' and there may be a distinction between literary fiction and popular fiction, but that is not for me to judge.

One small point, I don't now if people are intimidated by Melville, perhaps because Moby-Dick is such a large book -but Melville's literary genius is on show in some short stories, notably Bartleby, which I imagine is a classic for law students as well as the general reader. I also recommend Billy Budd, as the execution of the 'Handsome sailor' is surely one of the most beautiful examples of English prose that we have to read, again and again and again.

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/bb/Chapter26.html

[buttslinger]

I just checked out "Scarlett Hawthorne"......not the book, the new Grooby chick!
But it started me to thinking about a short story by Hawthorne that I read years ago and want to re-read, The Birthmark.
It's about a guy that marries a perfect woman except for one flaw, a small red hand shaped blemish on her left cheek.
While he sees past the blemish at first and they are happy, the longer they stay married the more and more he becomes obsessed with that little imperfection, and everybody knows that can't end well.

[sukumvit boy]

http://www.amazon.com/Mutants-Genetic-Variety-Human-Body/dp/0142004820
Given that the current estimate is that 1 in 200 live births carry chromosomal abnormalities and that most abnormalities involve the sex chromosomes I think that this is a book many here would find interesting.

Well written and accessible to the non scientist and includes some fascinating photos and illustrations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_chromosome_disorders
http://www.who.int/genomics/gender/en/index1.html

[sukumvit boy]

You ever read any Jim Thompson? The Killer Inside Me, Population 1280, The Grifters, The Getaway. If you like hard boiled, the guy is excellent. Even darker and more twisted than Ellroy...but very difficult to like one but not the other.

Thompson also helped Kubrick write screenplays of Paths of Glory and The Killings...but Kubrick only gave him credit for writing "dialogue" for the Killings which was surely unfair but that's a longer story.
:Bowdown: Shout out to broncofan , rereading Jim Thompson's "The Grifters" great stuff! I loved the movie too.

[sukumvit boy]

Any film fan interested in the careers of legendary directors Werner Hertzog and Roman Polanski , actors Klaus and Natassja Kinski and even their connection to Sharon Tate and the Charles Manson Murders will find this to be an important addition to their reading.
Basically , Klaus Kinski , Natassja's father ,was a text book Sadistic Sociopath


https://www.amazon.com/Beauty-Beast-Story-Nastassja-Kinski/dp/1466396741?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0
943248943249943250943251

[Stavros]

Any film fan interested in the careers of legendary directors Werner Hertzog and Roman Polanski , actors Klaus and Natassja Kinski and even their connection to Sharon Tate and the Charles Manson Murders will find this to be an important addition to their reading.
Basically , Klaus Kinski , Natassja's father ,was a text book Sadistic Sociopath


There is an account of Kinski's early years in Berlin in a special feature on one of Herzog's DVD's, I can't recall which one right now. Herzog revisits the apartment they shared, and gives an account of the crazy things that used to happen -bearing in mind that Herzog is a bit of a nutter too. I have often wondered what it means to be a 'hell raiser' when that term is used of film stars, and it seems to me to mean they shout when they could speak, get drunk as often as they can, and assault women, or for that matter anyone who gets in their way. You might have heard the claim made by the actor Errol Flynn (or made by someone else about him) that when erect, his cock was so big he could put it through the handles of three beer mugs and hold them up with room to spare...why anyone would want to see it I don't know. A short book that might be worth tracking down, thanks for the reference.

[dc_guy_75]

I hate followers of Islam, and oddly, I would be considered "left wing" in context of American politics.

Alas, my hatred of Islam only continues to grow.

[Stavros]

I hate followers of Islam, and oddly, I would be considered "left wing" in context of American politics.

Alas, my hatred of Islam only continues to grow.

Perhaps I could recommend The Cambridge Companion to Muhammad (edited by Jonathan E. Brockopp, Cambridge University Press, 2010). 14 chapters that explore various aspects of Muhammad's life and the way in which his recitations and other aspects of his life and work have shaped Islam, for better or worse.

[sukumvit boy]

There is an account of Kinski's early years in Berlin in a special feature on one of Herzog's DVD's, I can't recall which one right now. Herzog revisits the apartment they shared, and gives an account of the crazy things that used to happen -bearing in mind that Herzog is a bit of a nutter too. I have often wondered what it means to be a 'hell raiser' when that term is used of film stars, and it seems to me to mean they shout when they could speak, get drunk as often as they can, and assault women, or for that matter anyone who gets in their way. You might have heard the claim made by the actor Errol Flynn (or made by someone else about him) that when erect, his cock was so big he could put it through the handles of three beer mugs and hold them up with room to spare...why anyone would want to see it I don't know. A short book that might be worth tracking down, thanks for the reference.
:cheers: Thanks , Stavros , for your insightful and interesting comments .
Funny story about Errol Flynn , I hadn't heard that one before . I remember a few stories about legendary Hollywood members ,like Milton Berle's , from Kenneth Anger's "Hollywood Babylon".943881
But I now see that Flynn is in most Hollywood 'Top Ten' lists.
http://forum.rottentomatoes.com/topic/show/549804
https://www.lpsg.com/threads/errol-flynn.108653/
With regard to the clip about Hertzog reminiscing about his relationship with Kinski it sounds like a reference to Hertzog's 1999 film "My Best Fiend". Kinski died in 1991 . You may have seen one of the excellent "Criterion Collection" dvd's which are loaded with such Extras. The earlier Hertzog / Kinski collaboration surrounding the making of "Fritzcarraldo" 1982 , which almost killed them both , is covered in the excellent 1982
film directed by Les Blank "Burden of Dreams".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Best_Fiend
943883943886943887

[Stavros]

A couple of supplementary notes -
-I have My Best Friend in one of the two box sets of Herzog films (with the Kinski films) and a quick viewing just now means I must correct my earlier comment, as after the intro it starts in the place in Munich, not Berlin, where Herzog first met Kinski. At one time I even thought I saw it on a Michael Haneke video which is how the memory plays tricks with reality.

-The box sets of Herzog were marketed in the UK by Anchor Bay, and I bought them at a fairly cheap price whereas the British Film Institute has a set which is three times as expensive, but I don't know if it has substantial extras.

-Criterion did not market DVDs in Region 2 where I live until April this year when they began releasing the 'Criterion Collection' on Blu-Ray the first films being Speedy, It Happened One Night, Grey Gardens, Macbeth, and Tootsie. Criterion have a high reputation in the UK amongst nerds, particularly in the case of Tarkovsky as their editions of his films are considered superior to Artificial Eye who market them in the UK. Artificial Eye dominate the UK market on (mostly European) 'Art films' and are resistant to customer service. I emailed them with several queries about the running times of the films of Greek director Theodor Angelopoulos after buying all three box sets of his films, and was told someone else would reply to my queries -that was three years ago and I am still waiting...

-I would caution against Kenneth Anger on all fronts, both as a shameless gossip queen about Hollywood -just can't be relied on to tell the truth- but mostly because of his desperately awful films. In the 1970s when films were censored here or just refused a licence, you had to join a 'private film club' (in fact anyone could join for a fee, in effect a quarter or 25 pence) to see them. Anger's films were denied licences, and joining a club to see Invocation of my Demon Brother, Scorpio Rising and Kustom Kar Kommandos, all in terrible prints (like the originals!) turned out to be worth less than the experience. Sometimes using the term 'underground film' is a way of elevating self-indulgent nonsense to the status of 'art', but that is a whole other story.

-Lastly you might be aware that Clark Gable was famous for having bad breath, and long before Warren Beatty was said to have the biggest cock in Hollywood, that accolade (if that is what it is) belonged to Gary Cooper, who certainly used it to thread his way through as many willing women as he could find -other than his wife- of which there were rather a lot in Hollywood. There was even a web-site in the early days of the internet that had photos of male stars without their boxers, including two hilarious shots of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis. One wonders if the smaller it is, the greater the need to be an 'action hero'...?

[sukumvit boy]

LOL , good stuff , thanks.
Very interesting about the differences in film marketing and availability over the decades in the UK vs the US , as well as the censorship and region code differences which I was not aware of. I've never seen Artificial Eye over here , but Anchor Bay and Criterion have been around forever.
Yes , Anger is the worse kind of hack.
I must look into the work of Theodor Angelopoulos , "The Beekeeper " and "Landscape in the Mist" sound familiar but I can't recall them at this moment . Thanks .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theo_Angelopoulos

[sukumvit boy]

And back to books...
Recently finished reading the excellent and authoritative Alan Turing biography by Andrew Hedges. This is ,without a doubt, the definitive Turing biography.
A pleasure to read , full of fascinating details not only about Turing's life and career but also life in pre and post war Britain ,the public school system and the history of mathematics.
http://www.amazon.com/Alan-Turing-Enigma-Inspired-Imitation/dp/069116472X
I hadn't read Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" since school days but in adult life I kept on running into references to it's influence on so many fronts , such as the character Kurtz in "Apocalypse Now ", British Colonialism and the history of the Congo .
So I decided I should read it again. I than I discovered this outstanding Norton Critical Edition loaded with backgrounds and contexts such as : "Imperialism and the Congo" and "Nineteenth Century Attitudes Toward Race" .
Funny thing is the story itself is only 75 pages long . A fine piece of writing . It was the 'mega blockbuster " bestseller of it's day .

http://www.amazon.com/Heart-Darkness-Norton-Critical-Editions/dp/0393926362?ie=UTF8&ref_=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top

[Stavros]

Heart of Darkness is Conrad's most misunderstood novel, but lends itself to various interpretations because of the elliptical narratives that operate on so many levels -with the implication that the heart of darkness is in London, the hub of the Empire, rather than -or as well as being in (?) -Africa. I never understood the connection between Conrad's study of personal ambition, and that second rate film by Coppola, Apocalypse Now. And in the meantime, Michael Herr, the author of Despatches (who also worked on the screenplay for Apocalypse Now) has died. I was impressed by Despatches which (like Heart of Darkness) is a short but visceral account of the Vietnam War, however accurate it is. And am I right in thinking that in some places he refers to Thai ladyboys when describing 'grunts' on R&R in Thailand?

Lionel Trilling once said he realised how deep the impact of film and tv coverage of the Vietnam (and other wars) had been when his students read Heart of Darkness but the hair did not stand up on the back of their necks, whereas these days I guess the lecturer would have to issue a 'trigger warning' to his or her students asked to read the book...and grandiloquent though it sounds, I would rank Conrad's Nostromo as one of the best novels ever written in English, but these days modernism is too complex for many readers.

[Fitzcarraldo]

I just finished reading Peter Viertel's White Hunter, Black Heart. It's a fictionalized account of his experiences in Africa when working with director John Huston on the script for The African Queen. Clint Eastwood made a decent movie of the book, wherein he played "John Wilson." It's a bit odd seeing him imitate Huston, and the movie is very different from typical Eastwood fare.

Anyway, the book is excellent! It provides great insight into Huston (whose own autobiography An Open Book is also a great read), human nature, racism among European colonial powers, and how someone magnificently talented can also be a magnificent bastard.

[hamdasl]

The Great Arabic Conquests by Hugh Kennedy.

[sukumvit boy]

I just finished reading Peter Viertel's White Hunter, Black Heart. It's a fictionalized account of his experiences in Africa when working with director John Huston on the script for The African Queen. Clint Eastwood made a decent movie of the book, wherein he played "John Wilson." It's a bit odd seeing him imitate Huston, and the movie is very different from typical Eastwood fare.

Anyway, the book is excellent! It provides great insight into Huston (whose own autobiography An Open Book is also a great read), human nature, racism among European colonial powers, and how someone magnificently talented can also be a magnificent bastard.
:iagree: Yes , some interesting stories surrounding that whole project . The apocryphal story of the local tribes that provided the crew with fresh meat "long pig" which were feared to be the butchered bodies of tribal enemies.:whoa

[sukumvit boy]

http://www.amazon.com/Pirate-Exquisite-Mind-Naturalist-Buccaneer/dp/042520037X
The amazing life of late 17th century British explorer , naturalist and buccaneer William Dampier .
The Map That Changed the World:
http://www.amazon.com/Map-That-Changed-World-William/dp/0061767905/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1471490732&sr=1-1&keywords=the+map+that+changed+the+world

William Smith and the birth of modern geology.

[qwerty81]

just finished stefan zweig's the world of yesterday... his memoir of his life living through the fall of the austro-hungarian empire and anschluss... some of it kind of reminded me of today. which made me depressed.

[runningdownthatdream]

Nice analogy... I was trying to articulate an appropriate response but yours is so much better!

(This in response to Broncofan's response)

[runningdownthatdream]

http://www.amazon.com/Pirate-Exquisite-Mind-Naturalist-Buccaneer/dp/042520037X
The amazing life of late 17th century British explorer , naturalist and buccaneer William Dampier .
The Map That Changed the World:
http://www.amazon.com/Map-That-Changed-World-William/dp/0061767905/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1471490732&sr=1-1&keywords=the+map+that+changed+the+world

William Smith and the birth of modern geology.

That Dampier biography is a great read. Amazing how the man's life intersected with so many other well known events and persons from English history. I think I read somewhere he inspired R.L. Stevenson's writings as well.

Just read through this entire thread. It's been a few years since I contributed and it was nice to read all the great comments and reviews by Prospero, Stavros, RobertLouis, Trish and others. Sad that we lost Prospero but at least we still have his thoughts.

Haven't read much since 2012 for various reasons. Started 'A Distant Mirror' by Barbara Tuchman around then and got about half-way through. Entertaining and insightful read about the 14th century in Europe with a major focus on French and English affairs. Bought The Travels of Ibn Batutta a few months back but haven't even cracked the spine yet.

[sukumvit boy]

Nice to see you back ,RDTD .
That "The Adventures of Ibn Battuta ..." looks like a really good read, thanks.
http://www.amazon.com/Adventures-Ibn-Battuta-Traveler-Fourteenth/dp/0520243854

[runningdownthatdream]

Nice to see you back ,RDTD .
That "The Adventures of Ibn Battuta ..." looks like a really good read, thanks.
http://www.amazon.com/Adventures-Ibn-Battuta-Traveler-Fourteenth/dp/0520243854

It should be although I stupidly picked up the abridged version!

https://www.amazon.com/Travels-Ibn-Battutah-Batuta/dp/033049113X

[sukumvit boy]

Interesting and controversial new book from highly respected American writer / journalist Gay Talese , "The Voyeur's Motel" well written page turner.


http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/17/books/review/gay-talese-voyeurs-motel.html?_r=0

http://www.amazon.com/Voyeurs-Motel-Gay-Talese/dp/0802125816 (https://www.amazon.com/Voyeurs-Motel-Gay-Talese/dp/0802125816)

[MrFanti]

Now - back to the Walking Dead comics....er...."graphic novels"

[buttslinger]

"Hell's Angels" -Hunter Thompson

[sukumvit boy]

"Dark Star Safari:Overland from Cairo To Capetown" , Paul Theroux
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/nov/02/featuresreviews.guardianreview9
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Star_Safari

In the 1960's Theroux worked in Africa ,in the Peace Corps as a teacher. 40 years later he decided to return , in part to assess the impact of foreign aid , which he sees as having been mostly counter productive . " All news out of Africa is bad".
Also a very interesting and well written travel adventure.

[Stavros]

"Dark Star Safari:Overland from Cairo To Capetown" , Paul Theroux
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/nov/02/featuresreviews.guardianreview9
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Star_Safari

In the 1960's Theroux worked in Africa ,in the Peace Corps as a teacher. 40 years later he decided to return , in part to assess the impact of foreign aid , which he sees as having been mostly counter productive . " All news out of Africa is bad".
Also a very interesting and well written travel adventure.

You may or may not know that Paul Theroux has acquired the reputation for being a 'grumpy old man' and had a famous/notorious falling out with his mentor Vidia Naipaul although that appears now to have been healed by the passage of time. There was also a follow-up to Dark Star Safari which does appear to confirm that Theroux tends most of the time to write about himself rather than Africa.

His son, Louis Theroux makes some interesting documentaries.

http://www.newstatesman.com/world-affairs/2013/05/last-train-zona-verde-paul-theroux-how-not-write-about-africa

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/11361208/V.S-Naipaul-and-Paul-Theroux-in-emotional-Jaipur-Literature-Festival-reunion.html

[sukumvit boy]

Yes , thanks for adding all that interesting background to this thread.
I have family in Cape Town , and a much loved zoology professor took his PhD from Wits University and I never tire of Africa stories.
I have read most of Theroux's and much of Naipaul's work and followed that legendary falling out with much delight.
I just discovered his sons in preparing this thread . looking forward to exploring Louis's work .

[ILuvGurls]

Warhawk by James Rollins

[sukumvit boy]

Lee Child , "Night School"
http://www.bookseriesinorder.com/jack-reacher/
Yup , I'm a Jack Reacher addict . You too?

[sukumvit boy]

"The Making of Donald Trump" by David Cay Johnston.

Another frightening laundry list of Trump's treachery and deceit . Oh my , I've got to stop reading this stuff if I hope to get any sleep the next 4 years .
At least George Bush was just stupid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Making_of_Donald_Trump

[ILuvGurls]

An Obvious Fact...Craig Johnson

TV series Longmire was based off these books

[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
985703

[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
985709
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/opinion/sunday/losing-our-way-in-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/9780300217810/north-koreas-hidden-revolution
988849
988848

[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/9780300217810/north-koreas-hidden-revolution
988849
988848

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-London/dp/1466203277/ref=sr_1_12?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1487989586&sr=1-12&keywords=jack+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-Crisis-Deepens-Economic-Meltdown/dp/1608465950/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1487989923&sr=1-1&keywords=richard+wolff+books

[MrFanti]

Coach Tony Dungy's "Quiet Strength"....

[sukumvit boy]

"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.
Looks like a good read and an interesting pass time if one can avoid becoming part of the frightening highway accident statistics associated with motorcycle travel.
https://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Rider-Travels-Healing-Road/dp/1550225480

[sukumvit boy]

Looking forward to reading the just discovered 'lost' Walt Whitman auto biographical novel...
996242996242

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/feb/21/walt-whitmans-lost-novel-the-life-and-adventures-of-jack-engle-found

https://www.amazon.com/Life-Adventures-Jack-Engle-Auto-Biography-ebook/dp/B01N4SQYS0/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1487994573&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=the+life+and+adventures+of+jack+angle

[Stavros]

John McHugo, Syria: A Recent History (Saki, 2015)
This is a narrative history of Syria that begins at the end of the First World War, and ends circa December 2014. The final chapter does have the superficial problem all contemporary chapters have, not least in a time of war when much can change, but this is an excellent introduction to Syrian history and a worthy successor to the studies by the late Patrick Seale. If you want to know how Syria developed into the mess it is today, a combination of internal greed and autocracy, and external meddling and often complete indifference to Syria's genuine rights, this book will tell you. If you want a more analytical study Raymond Hinnebusch is recommended but this is a welcome addition to a rather small core of books on this extraordinary country, diverse in geography and culture and religion, so let down by small minds with big bank accounts to protect. At my age I don't expect to see Syria or Aleppo again, and that alone is a negative testament to the savages who litter this country with their violence and criminal neglect.

[sukumvit boy]

John McHugo, Syria: A Recent History (Saki, 2015)
This is a narrative history of Syria that begins at the end of the First World War, and ends circa December 2014. The final chapter does have the superficial problem all contemporary chapters have, not least in a time of war when much can change, but this is an excellent introduction to Syrian history and a worthy successor to the studies by the late Patrick Seale. If you want to know how Syria developed into the mess it is today, a combination of internal greed and autocracy, and external meddling and often complete indifference to Syria's genuine rights, this book will tell you. If you want a more analytical study Raymond Hinnebusch is recommended but this is a welcome addition to a rather small core of books on this extraordinary country, diverse in geography and culture and religion, so let down by small minds with big bank accounts to protect. At my age I don't expect to see Syria or Aleppo again, and that alone is a negative testament to the savages who litter this country with their violence and criminal neglect.
Looks interesting.
http://www.amazon.com/Syria-Recent-History-John-McHugo/dp/0863561608/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1488593737&sr=1-3 (https://www.amazon.com/Syria-Recent-History-John-McHugo/dp/0863561608/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1488593737&sr=1-3)

[BatMasterson]

Against The Day by Thomas Pynchon

[joesocalif]

Shemale stories on Hung Angeles

[ILuvGurls]

Tripwire....Lee Child

Jack Reacher novel

[Stavros]

Against The Day by Thomas Pynchon

Have struggled with Pynchon so many times I have all but given up. I might try again one day, but I do wonder what the appeal is of this particular writer.

[sukumvit boy]

Have struggled with Pynchon so many times I have all but given up. I might try again one day, but I do wonder what the appeal is of this particular writer.
I've had the same difficulty with Pynchon , but looks like a great read if you're a Pynchon fan .
http://www.amazon.com/Against-Day-Thomas-Pynchon/dp/0143112562/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1488760296&sr=1-1&keywords=against+the+day

[sukumvit boy]

Tripwire....Lee Child

Jack Reacher novel:cheers:
Long time Reacher fan . Fortunately ,his latest novel is released each year to coincide with my winter holiday in Nov.-Dec. Good airport / airplane reading.

[BJ4TS]

I tend to read books from one author at a time. Currently reading the Mitch Rapp series by Vince Flynn.

[sukumvit boy]

"Killers of the Flower Noon , The Osage Murders and the Birth if the FBI"
http://www.amazon.com/Killers-Flower-Moon-Osage-Murders/dp/0385534248
http://charlierose.com/videos/30603

[sukumvit boy]

John McHugo, Syria: A Recent History (Saki, 2015)
This is a narrative history of Syria that begins at the end of the First World War, and ends circa December 2014. The final chapter does have the superficial problem all contemporary chapters have, not least in a time of war when much can change, but this is an excellent introduction to Syrian history and a worthy successor to the studies by the late Patrick Seale. If you want to know how Syria developed into the mess it is today, a combination of internal greed and autocracy, and external meddling and often complete indifference to Syria's genuine rights, this book will tell you. If you want a more analytical study Raymond Hinnebusch is recommended but this is a welcome addition to a rather small core of books on this extraordinary country, diverse in geography and culture and religion, so let down by small minds with big bank accounts to protect. At my age I don't expect to see Syria or Aleppo again, and that alone is a negative testament to the savages who litter this country with their violence and criminal neglect.
TKS , Stavros , for the John McHugo recommendation. I got a copy of Syria: A History of the Last Hundred Years and found it to be so helpful in untangling the complex history of Syria and how it got to the present condition. A fascinating history of how Syria's unique geographical location as a cross roads for Asian , African , Middle Eastern and Western cultures and outside meddling led to the present sorry state of affairs.
http://www.amazon.com/Syria-History-Last-Hundred-Years/dp/1620970457

[broncofan]

:cheers:
Long time Reacher fan . Fortunately ,his latest novel is released each year to coincide with my winter holiday in Nov.-Dec. Good airport / airplane reading.
It took me a while to get into Lee Child books. At first I was annoyed that Reacher was so easily able to beat everyone up and seemed almost infallible in his deductive process. But I got over that. Child knows an impressive amount about our military, law enforcement, combat tactics, weapons, mechanics. Once I got into them, I went through them all very quickly. And now I don't have any left until the next one.

But I'm now out of authors for the fast paced style of book I like. I've read all the pulp fiction ones..I think we talked about Jim Thompson...I've read all Ross Macdonald....and am having trouble finding anyone new in the mystery genre. If you have anyone to recommend me, please let me know!!!

[qwerty81]

at home, i'm reading a history of the confederate navy by raimondo luraghi, mr midshipman hornblower by c.s. forester, and then on the ship i'm reading shield and sword the us navy in the persian gulf war... or something like that.

[Laphroaig]

But I'm now out of authors for the fast paced style of book I like. I've read all the pulp fiction ones..I think we talked about Jim Thompson...I've read all Ross Macdonald....and am having trouble finding anyone new in the mystery genre. If you have anyone to recommend me, please let me know!!!

Maybe not quite in the same style, but try Craig Russell's Lennox series about a Canadian PI, set in Glasgow shortly after WW2. Also, have you considered the Joe Pickett books by C J Box?

[josehip]

This is a good thread. So I will post this here.
I need some tips about Some really good Queer/non-binary authors to read (but not books). Like blogs, sites or medium. Transwomen, cis women, WOC or whatever.
Any help?

[sukumvit boy]

It took me a while to get into Lee Child books. At first I was annoyed that Reacher was so easily able to beat everyone up and seemed almost infallible in his deductive process. But I got over that. Child knows an impressive amount about our military, law enforcement, combat tactics, weapons, mechanics. Once I got into them, I went through them all very quickly. And now I don't have any left until the next one.

But I'm now out of authors for the fast paced style of book I like. I've read all the pulp fiction ones..I think we talked about Jim Thompson...I've read all Ross Macdonald....and am having trouble finding anyone new in the mystery genre. If you have anyone to recommend me, please let me know!!!
Hey broncofan , yes the Reacher series are addictive page turners and Lee Child actually provides a lot of fascinating behind the scenes factual information.
I would recommend the detective Harry Bosh series by Michael Connelly , fast paced ,and if you like his style there are 20 of them now .
In a more retro vein , I enjoyed the is hard boiled detective novels of Dashiell Hammett . Including The Thin Man and The Maltese Falcon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashiell_Hammett

I'm also a long time Lawrence Block fan and his Matthew Scudder mystery series as well as his more lighthearted and amusing Bernie Rhodenbarr burglar series . The Bernie character is a New York City used and scholarly book store owner by day and a burglar by night . Lawrence Block was named a Grand Master of The Mystery Writers of America since 1994 and I envy you if you haven't read any of his books yet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Block

[Stavros]

This week is Banned Books Week, and it is of some interest that the official website lists 10 'Challenged' books that have been banned from libraries and schools, and that most of them have been banned for sexual content (often LGBTQIAPN/B related).

It is hard to believe some of the comments that have been made when either banning or recommending the banning of books, and this just in the USA where

The first ban of Mark Twain’s American classic (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) in Concord, MA in 1885 called it “trash and suitable only for the slums.”

Incredibly, to me, Leaves of Grass became a victim: New York Society for the Suppression of Vice found the sensuality of the text disturbing. Caving to pressure, booksellers in New York, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania conceded to advising their patrons not to buy the “filthy” book.

And even Moby-Dick was harpooned when a Texas school district banned the book from its Advanced English class lists because it “conflicted with their community values” in 1996. (1996!!)

The UK has had a long list of banned books, the most famous being DH Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, and the first copy of George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London I read was censored so that words like 'Bugger' and 'Bloody' were blanked out.
My personal favourite has been Hubert Selby Jr's Last Exit to Brooklyn which became a landmark case in obscenity trials, losing in court but winning on appeal. It was the first time I had encountered a graphic description of a man having sex with a transgendered woman, and one that was positive and thrilling also. It is a wildly outrageous book but written with great verve and a sense of place, being the Brooklyn dockyards of the 1950s.

http://www.bannedbooksweek.org/censorship/bannedbooksthatshapedamerica

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Exit_to_Brooklyn

[sukumvit boy]

Very interesting post and links.
Your mention of "Leaves of Grass "reminds me of a time in my teenage years when I carried that book with me wherever I went , like a Christian Evangelical carries his bible ( no offence to Christian Evangelicals).Along with Alan Watt's , "The Way of Zen" and Bertrand Russel's ,"Why I Am Not a Christian" , LOL adolescent rebellion of a former Catholic alter boy.
Also , although I'm familiar with Hubert Selby Jr. , I can't remember ever reading "Last Exit to Brooklyn" , need to give that a look. I read pretty much all of Allen Ginsberg and William S Burroughs ( some of that stuff is virtually unreadable ) and other Grove Press authors but "Last Exit " looks like a good read . Selby's "The Room " also looks interesting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubert_Selby_Jr.
All of Orwell , Including," Down and Out in London and Paris" is in a class by itself. I loved "Burmese Days".

[sukumvit boy]

This is a good thread. So I will post this here.
I need some tips about Some really good Queer/non-binary authors to read (but not books). Like blogs, sites or medium. Transwomen, cis women, WOC or whatever.
Any help?
Hey , josehip , welcome to the thread . Are you looking for erotica or something more along the lines of social commentary or journalism ?
You are certainly on the right Forum as far as sites and blogs go . With regard to authors to read , "but not books" I would suggest posing the same question to Google and see what it comes up with.

[trish]

Currently I’m doing a little light reading: Legacy of Spies by John Le Carre’. Although it’s set in the current day, the story harkens back to an operation that took place during the ‘Cold War.’ The good guys aren’t so good and neither are the bad guys. I’m not a Le Carre’ reader: the only other book of his I ever read was The Delicate Truth.

[gaiseric]

I've just finished reading the 6 available novels in the Peter Grant series by Ben Aaronovich. The main theme of these books is magic and weird stuff in the criminal world being dealt with by a sceptical police force. They're a really good read. There are also 3 complete graphic novels available as well.

I am now reading Sahara by Clive Cussler which is set in Mali in Western Africa.

[ILuvGurls]

"The Late Show" by Michael Connelly

[Ts RedVeX]

1032490

[sukumvit boy]

Currently I’m doing a little light reading: Legacy of Spies by John Le Carre’. Although it’s set in the current day, the story harkens back to an operation that took place during the ‘Cold War.’ The good guys aren’t so good and neither are the bad guys. I’m not a Le Carre’ reader: the only other book of his I ever read was The Delicate Truth.
I hope you enjoy that , I like his more recent work and non fiction much more than the earlier George Smiley spy novels and I am looking forward to reading "Legacy...",his latest.
His real life is almost more interesting than his novels , "The Pigeon Tunnel : Stories From My Life" 2016 was fascinating . His father Ronnie Cornwell was an amazing character and con man.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-lineup/man-of-mystery-the-dark-t_b_9643316.html

[Stavros]

Some of you may have read the brief exchange I had with RedVex on Solidarity in the thread on the Las Vegas massacre. I did not respond to one post because I felt the thread had lost its way and did not want to push it further away from the event in Las Vegas. It does, however, raise interesting questions about Solidarity (to give it its English name) and the transition in Poland, not least because RedVex has a radically different view from most, and one that I think is both mistaken and confusing.

The sources I have used for my initial comments are worth reading in their own right, and are Archie Brown: The Rise and Fall of Communism (2009), and Tony Judt: Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (2005). Both historians attribute the collapse of communism to a combination of factors, with the economic incompetence of central planning at its core, combined with Gorbachev's internal reforms and foreign policy (Afghanistan being a disater for the Soviet military). Nevertheless, this does not lessen the importance, in Poland of the Solidarity movement and the role it played in breaking the back of the Polish United Workers Party and seeing it off in the elections of September 1988.

This is what RedVex wrote (I have edited out irrelevant passages):
1. You wrote "Solidarity" rather than solidarity, so no, you were indeed referring to the party rather than solidarity or empathy.
2. Originally, Solidarity, was called PPS (Partia Pracownicza Solidarnosc) and itwas indeed a communist labour party of comrades. There isn't much resources in about that one so that people don't have many opportunities to know it even existed. The Solidarity that was formed in 1980, NSZZ Solidarnosc (Niezalezny Samorzadowy Zwiazek Zawodowy Solidarnosc), after PPS had been dissolved, was merely a medium for transferring power from the state to someone the state could easily control, e.g. by blackmail, so to agents of the Secret Police, SB (Sluzby Bezpieczenstwa), and petty snitches like Lech Walesa. Such operation was necessary as people had enough of "the system" and would not trust anyone related to it (such as gen. Jaruzelski). They would however trust an simple electrician from the shipyard.
General Wojciech Jaruzelski's decision about overthrowing the communist regime by introducing martial law was a partially successful attempt to liberate Poland. Otherwise, NSZZ Solidarnosc, which consisted of gen. Czeslaw Kiszczak's agents, would have taken over. Unfortunately no reforms took place under Jaruzelski's reign until 1988.

-I concede I had not heard of the PPS and cannot find much on the internet in either Polish or English, and it could either be the early attempts at an independent trade union that flourished briefly in 1978-79, or the first grouping in the Lenin Shipyard in 1980 prior to the formal creation of Solidarity that year.
-What I find odd is the designation of Solidarity as merely a medium for transferring power from the state to someone the state could easily control, when the reality is that what Solidarity exposed was the weakness of the Polish United Workers Party and the fact that it was not controlled by the party at all. It is just as odd to claim that Jaruzelski's decision about overthrowing the communist regime by introducing martial law was a partially successful attempt to liberate Poland when he successfully rounded up and imprisoned those leaders whom we were earlier told were stooges of the government, and delayed the transition in Poland rather than hastening it.

-A signal problem that I find with the language of RedVex's interpretation is the inability to distinguish between Communists and whoever else lives in Poland. The point may relate to the 'problem' for her, that as with Gorbachev in Russia, many if not most of Solidarity's members wanted to reform the system rather than to replace it. If many were themselves members of the PUWP but defected to Solidarity or worked for the state, then in a sense they were 'communists' by employment and affiliation. But what RedVex does not mention, is that most of Solidarity's members, whatever they job or party affiliation before 1980, would have claimed to be Roman Catholics. Indeed, a passionate fidelity to Catholicism was one of the key components of the transition in Poland which undermines the attempt to smear Solidarity as, in effect, just a tool of the Communists. The role played in all this by the Polish Pope hardly needs a reference.

-Where it becomes intriguing is in the relationship the church had with the State, from the (Stalinist) attempt to crush the church after the war, to the accommodation that was eventually reached in 1956 which became crucial in creating a space between the Party and the People in which Poles were free to express their faith, to the extent that one can see how this space (also found in a vibrant arts scene, notably in film and theatre) became vital for the anti-party protests in the 1970s and 1980s -mostly caused by price rises for basic commodities- which led in time to the eclipse of the party itself, while the Roman Catholic Church went from strength to strength. There is a brief overview of this here-
https://chnm.gmu.edu/1989/exhibits/roman-catholic-church/introduction

-In other words, I am confused, because a Communist cannot also be a Catholic, so why has RedVex dismissed the Solidarity movement as a Communist outfit when if anything, it could be re-designated a Catholic one? And all this without discussing the conspiracy theorists who see a conduit of CIA money via the Catholic Church to Solidarity members and other dissidents as also playing a role in the 1980s.

[Lk123456779]

Right now I'm reading The 16th Round by Rubin Carter and The Undisputed Truth by Mike Tyson

16th round is The book/story the holllywokd Denzel Washington movie was based on.

Really good book. Interesting and I've blasted through heaps of pages without feeling like I've been doing so. The pages have passed by easily.
Im not the biggest reader so when I get engaged in a book and don't realise how much I'm passing through it's always a good Sign.

I'm only a couple chapters into Mikes book but enjoying it so far. Will probably put it down until I finish 16th first as I don't want to split my thoughts between 2 books at once.


As for what books I like reading. For me it's exclusively autobiographys with the ocasional biography written by someone else (as I did with Unforgiveable Blackness the biography written about the first black heavyweight boxing champ). I have no interest in reading some made up story.

[sukumvit boy]

Welcome to the Forum and this thread ,Lk123456779.
I have noticed that as I get older I have less interest in reading fiction , no matter how well written I know it is.
Also enjoy autobiography , and it is so satisfying to find an author who has both an interesting story to tell and the ability to tell it well .

[sukumvit boy]

Some of you may have read the brief exchange I had with RedVex on Solidarity in the thread on the Las Vegas massacre. I did not respond to one post because I felt the thread had lost its way and did not want to push it further away from the event in Las Vegas. It does, however, raise interesting questions about Solidarity (to give it its English name) and the transition in Poland, not least because RedVex has a radically different view from most, and one that I think is both mistaken and confusing.

The sources I have used for my initial comments are worth reading in their own right, and are Archie Brown: The Rise and Fall of Communism (2009), and Tony Judt: Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (2005). Both historians attribute the collapse of communism to a combination of factors, with the economic incompetence of central planning at its core, combined with Gorbachev's internal reforms and foreign policy (Afghanistan being a disater for the Soviet military). Nevertheless, this does not lessen the importance, in Poland of the Solidarity movement and the role it played in breaking the back of the Polish United Workers Party and seeing it off in the elections of September 1988.

This is what RedVex wrote (I have edited out irrelevant passages):
1. You wrote "Solidarity" rather than solidarity, so no, you were indeed referring to the party rather than solidarity or empathy.
2. Originally, Solidarity, was called PPS (Partia Pracownicza Solidarnosc) and itwas indeed a communist labour party of comrades. There isn't much resources in about that one so that people don't have many opportunities to know it even existed. The Solidarity that was formed in 1980, NSZZ Solidarnosc (Niezalezny Samorzadowy Zwiazek Zawodowy Solidarnosc), after PPS had been dissolved, was merely a medium for transferring power from the state to someone the state could easily control, e.g. by blackmail, so to agents of the Secret Police, SB (Sluzby Bezpieczenstwa), and petty snitches like Lech Walesa. Such operation was necessary as people had enough of "the system" and would not trust anyone related to it (such as gen. Jaruzelski). They would however trust an simple electrician from the shipyard.
General Wojciech Jaruzelski's decision about overthrowing the communist regime by introducing martial law was a partially successful attempt to liberate Poland. Otherwise, NSZZ Solidarnosc, which consisted of gen. Czeslaw Kiszczak's agents, would have taken over. Unfortunately no reforms took place under Jaruzelski's reign until 1988.

-I concede I had not heard of the PPS and cannot find much on the internet in either Polish or English, and it could either be the early attempts at an independent trade union that flourished briefly in 1978-79, or the first grouping in the Lenin Shipyard in 1980 prior to the formal creation of Solidarity that year.
-What I find odd is the designation of Solidarity as merely a medium for transferring power from the state to someone the state could easily control, when the reality is that what Solidarity exposed was the weakness of the Polish United Workers Party and the fact that it was not controlled by the party at all. It is just as odd to claim that Jaruzelski's decision about overthrowing the communist regime by introducing martial law was a partially successful attempt to liberate Poland when he successfully rounded up and imprisoned those leaders whom we were earlier told were stooges of the government, and delayed the transition in Poland rather than hastening it.

-A signal problem that I find with the language of RedVex's interpretation is the inability to distinguish between Communists and whoever else lives in Poland. The point may relate to the 'problem' for her, that as with Gorbachev in Russia, many if not most of Solidarity's members wanted to reform the system rather than to replace it. If many were themselves members of the PUWP but defected to Solidarity or worked for the state, then in a sense they were 'communists' by employment and affiliation. But what RedVex does not mention, is that most of Solidarity's members, whatever they job or party affiliation before 1980, would have claimed to be Roman Catholics. Indeed, a passionate fidelity to Catholicism was one of the key components of the transition in Poland which undermines the attempt to smear Solidarity as, in effect, just a tool of the Communists. The role played in all this by the Polish Pope hardly needs a reference.

-Where it becomes intriguing is in the relationship the church had with the State, from the (Stalinist) attempt to crush the church after the war, to the accommodation that was eventually reached in 1956 which became crucial in creating a space between the Party and the People in which Poles were free to express their faith, to the extent that one can see how this space (also found in a vibrant arts scene, notably in film and theatre) became vital for the anti-party protests in the 1970s and 1980s -mostly caused by price rises for basic commodities- which led in time to the eclipse of the party itself, while the Roman Catholic Church went from strength to strength. There is a brief overview of this here-
https://chnm.gmu.edu/1989/exhibits/roman-catholic-church/introduction

-In other words, I am confused, because a Communist cannot also be a Catholic, so why has RedVex dismissed the Solidarity movement as a Communist outfit when if anything, it could be re-designated a Catholic one? And all this without discussing the conspiracy theorists who see a conduit of CIA money via the Catholic Church to Solidarity members and other dissidents as also playing a role in the 1980s.
Very interesting overview of Solidarity and the history of post war Europe and Communism , Stavros , thanks.

[ILuvGurls]

"Paradise Valley" by CJ Box

[Stavros]

Very interesting overview of Solidarity and the history of post war Europe and Communism , Stavros , thanks.

If you are aware of the critical view of my version by RedVex, you may also be aware that there are ferocious debates taking place on Polish history both within Poland and without. In fact I would go as far as to say that in recent years the rage and bitterness that has taken place resembles the Historikerstreit that convulsed Germany in the 1980s where the key issue was the 'correct' location of the Holocaust in German history, and whether or not it and the Third Reich was unique or a 'logical' development of the processes of modernization that followed the industrial revolution, or some aberration which has dislodged the practice of history by making it so exceptional much of what is written about the Third Reich attains the status of myth rather than verifiable history, and in doing so has created such a 'national guilt' that Germans were unable to appreciate and celebrate the fact they are German. The wikipedia article is here, followed by a more difficult interview with Nolte.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historikerstreit
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v14/v14n1p15_warren.html

Just as the primary architect of this view, Ernst Nolte was attacked for being a 'revisionist' who in effect downgraded the importance of the Holocaust (but he did not deny it), so a ferocious debate has followed the publications in English of the historian Norman Davies. Davies, a protege of AJP Taylor, made his name with a study of Polish history, God's Playground (1979, updated in subsequent editions) and his since published a vast 1,000 pages plus book Europe: A History (1996), Europe at War, 1939-1945: No Simple Victory (2006) and Vanished Kingdoms (2010).

Davies sued Stanford on the grounds of discrimination when the university rejected his application for tenure (this took place between 1984-88), the heart of the dispute then and since being a plea by Davies (whose wife is Polish) to re-assess the history of Poland in a Polish context in which the suffering of the Poles in the period between 1939-45 is worthy of comparison to the Holocaust, thus again appearing to 'relativize' two strands of history and to some downgrading the Holocaust. Davies was attacked by the eminent historian of the Holocaust, Lucy Dawidowicz, and others weighed in to attack what they claim is Davies' sloppy scholarship, factual errors in terms of dates and events, the falsification of history and in particular his treatment of Polish history and its most difficult period in the modern age. A flavour of these attacks can be gained from the articles below:
https://newrepublic.com/article/102117/vanished-kingdoms-norman-davies-europe-history-nation-states
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v19/n04/neal-ascherson/in-the-hands-of-the-cannibals
http://www.countercurrents.org/riggins271107.htm

What is intriguing for an outsider is how, at the heart of these arguments, a different perspective emerges on the fate of European Jewry than one used to get in standard studies of the period from the end of the war in 1918 to the 1945. Far from being passive Jews led like sheep to the slaughter, believing what they were told about re-location, disbelieving news of the death camps as impossible, the Jews in Poland offer a narrative of robust defenders of their communities but also communities divided amongst themselves.

Poland had at the time the largest and most diverse number of Jews in Europe - Orthodox, Liberal, Assimilated- and had established themselves in a variety of professions across the country. In addition to the anti-semitism embedded in Polish society, what convulsed the Jews of Poland were the arguments over the merits of Zionism, whether it was a Nationalist cause or a Socialist cause, with the influence of the Russians and the impact of the Bolshevik Revolution stirring the pot even further. This robust approach to politics led to allegations that even before the German invasion Polish Jews were organized into gangs that attacked Poles, or used violence to defend Jewish communities against anti-Jewish attacks by Poles, with the Warsaw Uprising being the most celebrated if ultimate example of this trend. In this mix, you find Vladimir Jabotinsky and Menachem Begin of the Betar movement, two men who eventually left Poland for Palestine where they carried on fighting, this time the British -as well as other Palestinian Jews.

The core problems revolved around Polish anti-semitism and Jewish resistance, and whether or not left-wing Jews welcomed the Red Army into Poland and thus demonstrated a lack of loyalty to Poland. A good example of the bitterness generated by Norman Davies in relation to his treatment of the Jews in Poland before the Holocaust can be found in this exchange with Abraham Brumberg, though I doubt it settles the matter.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1987/04/09/poles-and-jews-an-exchange/

Given the scale of the destruction of Poland's Jews, 90% of them setting aside those who managed to escape, the sorry tale is alleged to have continued after the war when, in 1946 Poles murdered 42 survivors of the Holocaust in Kielce.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/jan/31/secondworldwar.poland

The ferocity of the arguments continues to rage in Poland with the latest target the Museum of the Second World War, which Davies (on the Museum Board) and others have said is a project being hi-jacked by the government for its own purposes:
A spectacular new museum (http://www.muzeum1939.pl/en/home-page) of the second world war is at the centre of an extraordinary row between international academics and Poland’s political leadership, amid claims that the country’s ruling Law and Justice party is putting history at the service of politics.

And, to bring it back to Solidarity you get a sense of the distress with Davies attacking the leader of the Law and Justice Party:
“He is behaving like a Bolshevik and a paranoid troublemaker. Law and Justice are the most vindictive gang in Europe. Gdańsk is a particular target because of the association with Wałęsa and Solidarity, and Tusk, who is Gdańsk-born, is a history graduate and laid the foundation stone of the museum. Kaczyński was in Solidarity and managed Wałęsa’s election campaign before he became president of Poland [in 1990]. Wałęsa sidelined him, and Kaczyński has been planning his revenge ever since.’’
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/24/polish-leaders-using-war-museum-to-rewrite-history-says-academic

What strikes me about a lot of this history, is that I do not understand how anyone can not recognize the Holocaust as a unique event, it would be like ignoring the presence of a turd in a glass of water. The roots of its anti-semitism are undeniable, but the organization, the management, the operations that led to mass slaughter (labour camps, medical experiments, forced marches, starvation, untreated disease) -documented in print, photography and film- are of an order so unusual that it cannot just be slotted in to the history of the 20th century along with everything else. This does not mean the suffering inflicted by totalitarian regimes should be sidelined, it just calls for a nuanced treatment without losing the overall context.

But also because it is part of that whole debate about politics and society, the conflct between the Nazis and the Fascists and the Communists which some now want to collapse into one narrative in which there is no difference between them because they represented an extreme example of the State replacing the citizen, with the chilling rider that some do not feel the 'liberal democratic' states that survived are these days that much better than the regimes they have marshalled off the world stage.

[Post Op Preferred]

Currently I’m doing a little light reading: Legacy of Spies by John Le Carre’. Although it’s set in the current day, the story harkens back to an operation that took place during the ‘Cold War.’ The good guys aren’t so good and neither are the bad guys. I’m not a Le Carre’ reader: the only other book of his I ever read was The Delicate Truth.
I just finished Legacy. It's a bit of a throwback to the epistolary novels of the 18th century, incorporating archival memos to supply backstory, but does a great job of tying up loose ends from its predecessors, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and the Karla Trilogy (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Honorable Schoolboy and Small Town in Germany). If you binge watch rather than read TSWCIFTC was an early Richard Burton movie classic, and the others were televised on BBC/PBS starring Alec Guinness as Smiley. I thought Legacy was a great read on its own but it helped to have read and watched the predecessors, even if that was decades back. Writing must keep Le Carre's mind sharp. He hasn't lost a bit in 60 years of writing.

[BlüeKarma]

I just started the first book of the "Saga of Recluse" series. Its called The Magic of Recluse and follows Lerris, a young, innately powerful Order Mage who has to leave his home and find out exactly what he needs to do with his life...or else.

[slave2u]

dan brown's origin. not so art based puzzley as his previous books - but interesting romp.

[Stavros]

Steven Livitsky & Daniel Ziblatt. How Democracies Die. What History Reveals About Our Future (Penguin Random House twenty eighteen).

This is an easy to read primer on the threats to US democracy that the authors believe has entered a dangerous new phase following the 2016 Election Campaign and the election of a man the authors claim has the potential to be a demagogue. They do not hide their concern for the 45th President but in the chapter on his first year, while highlighting the themes of the book concede that in reality he has not yet gone as far as he can and has threatened, but that it is just the first year.

The strength of the book is its theoretical premise, derived from the classic 1978 study by Juan Linz The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes. The authors use his template of decline and fall, noting that democracy as an open system contains within it the opportunity for political leaders to destroy it from within, but that this often happens because a lenient class of people who could prevent it, enable the ambitious politician -often a maverick figure not connected to existing political elites- to enter high office and then subvert the democratic system -often triggered by a crisis, be it economic, a security or war scenario-, creating in effect a one-party state or dictatorship that causes even more damage than it is claimed the democracy had which preceded it. They cite examples from Fascist Italy, Germany under the Third Reich, Peru under Alberto Fujimori and Venezuela under Huge Chavez, the last being a notably chilling example given that Venezuela was and should still be a petroleum rich democracy. Key indicators that the authors use are
1) a rejection of the rules of the game that has maintained the political system the leader is opposed to and blames for decay;
2) denies the legitimacy of opponents in the democratic system;
3) tolerates or encourages violence;
4) expresses a willingness to curtail the civil liberties of opponents, often the media.

Of particular interest is the way in which they trace the breakdown of the bi-partisan consensus in Congress as a precursor to the election of 2016, and argue that the 1867 Reconstruction Act that enfranchised Black voters led to such huge victories for the Republican Party in the South that throughout the period from the 1870s to 1912 southern States a white elite that felt it had lost control of its own states, then enacted numerous laws to disenfranchise Black voters to the extent that Black voter turn out went from 61% in 1880 to barely 2% in 1912 to the benefit of the Democrat Party. Thus the stability of the US political system between the 1880s and 1965 was based on a compromise whereby the Northern 'victors' of the Civil War, in effect stood by while the southern 'losers' re-shaped their states to deny Black Americans the equal rights that they had been granted as a result of that war and the end of slavery. Moreover, it was the civil rights reforms of the 1960s that not only restored these rights, but in doing so broke the consensus, transformed a south of 'Dixiecrats' into almost solid Republican territory but brought with a fierce intensity that became expressed in the kind of aggressive language that demonizes fellow Americas as no longer partners in democracy, but opponents in a war. And over the succeeding years, the Democrats became a party of diverse Americans while the Republican Party became a party of White Evangelical Christians and political conservatives.

One such prescursor who denied the legitimacy of the opponent, was provided by the young Newton Gingrich when he ran for Congress in 1978 using language that was aggressive, arguing he was in a 'war' for power that could not be fought with 'boy scout words'. By the 1990s he was recommending that in their campaign literature and statements Republicans should describe Democrats with words such as 'pathetic, sick, bizarre, betray, antiflag, antifamly and traitors' (p148).

Thus the authors argue that the US was in 2016 and remains today vulnerable because the 'gatekeepers' who could have prevented the candidate with the least practical experience of public office from becoming President thought they could nevertheless control him; that they bear a responsibility for his outrageous behaviour and lies, and, ominously while they concede the worst excesses have been curtailed by Congress wonder how long that can hold. The attacks on the media and state institutions, the vulgar and aggressive language used by the President, his refusal to adhere to norms on the hiring of staff and the blurring of lines between his business interests and his responsibility as President present the US with potentially its most severe crisis since the Civil War.

A bracing read, and one that is recommended, even to those who think that the President is legitimate because he was elected to break the stranglehold of two now rigidly opposed parties even if, in destroying a two party system it is not clear what will replace it.

[trish]

Stephen Greenblatt’s The Rise And Fall Of Adam And Eve. Greenblatt is interested in the evolution of the story, its elaborations and interpretations in art and literature through time as well as its impact on our understanding of morality and the relation between men and women (or their impact on tellings of the story). Interesting read. Takes you through Babylon, introduces you to St. Augustine, the Renaissance, Milton, Mark Twain and Darwin. One of Greenblatt’s thesis is that from Augustine, through the Renaissance painters and sculptors to Milton, Adam and Eve became more and more real, moving beyond the two-dimensional cutouts they were in Moses’ telling of the garden story. But by becoming real, they became mortal. The cracks and flaws in the story became obvious to those who thought about it and the myth was opened up to the ridicule of humorists (like Bayle and Twain) as well as to criticism from science. It’s a nice way to think of it, but I’m not sure it explains why it’s still taken literally by so many people on my side of the Atlantic.

[sukumvit boy]

Hey stavros , I see that your reading list parallels mine with regard to concern about the the future of our economic /political systems since we both read Joseph Stieglitz's " The Cost of Inequality".
My thoughts revolve around issues such as : Is the Trump election a symptom of the deep dissatisfaction with a political and economic system where real wages for the average citizen have not increased since the 1970's , while 1% of the populace controls 99% of the wealth and in America , any third ( or more )political party is doomed to failure in our" winner takes all" political system instead of true proportional representation as in European democracys . The failure of Capitalism and the failure of nations is made of such stuff...
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307719227/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
http://www.amazon.com/Price-Inequality-Divided-Society-Endangers/dp/0393345068/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1521596621&sr=1-4&keywords=joseph+stiglitz
http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-at-Work-Cure-Capitalism/dp/1608462471/ref=la_B001H6PV5A_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1521596510&sr=1-1
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1785781766/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

[broncofan]

Sukumvit Boy, have you read all of those or are you working through some of them now?

[Stavros]

Hey stavros , I see that your reading list parallels mine with regard to concern about the the future of our economic /political systems since we both read Joseph Stieglitz's " The Cost of Inequality".
My thoughts revolve around issues such as : Is the Trump election a symptom of the deep dissatisfaction with a political and economic system where real wages for the average citizen have not increased since the 1970's , while 1% of the populace controls 99% of the wealth and in America , any third ( or more )political party is doomed to failure in our" winner takes all" political system instead of true proportional representation as in European democracys . The failure of Capitalism and the failure of nations is made of such stuff...


The point of interest is the way in which trends come and go. You may be old enough to recall the books on modern life and resource management, such as Future Shock, Small is Beautiful, and the books by Ivan Illich such as Deschooling Society and Tools for Conviviality (which these days have been succeeded by books by Steve Pinker and Michio Kaku). Set beside these were the 'personal development' works that ranged from the religious/spiritual works of Alan Watts and Krishnamurti through the 'anti-psychology' of RD Laing and Thomas Szasz, the revival of Nietzsche, the fetish for that most peculiar nonsense of Carlos Castaneda, and the vogue for Marxism and 'protest' literature from Gramsci via Marcuse to Alinsky, Fanon and the Black Power movement. If these were eclipsed in the 1980s by the vogue for structuralism, semiotics and deconstruction, it may be a reflection of the decline of industry in the west (though most of Derrida's important works were published in the 1960s and early 1970s) and the growth of post-modernism as an expression of post-industrialism though few then or now read much of the late Andre Gorz and probably too many read Foucault's 'horizontal' critiques of power. But what these trends show is how the literature of change became a literature of adaptation. There was to be no revolution, only survival.

What I thus see in the books you have cited is a delayed reaction to the way capitalism has evolved since the 1980s, but I wonder if Robert Reich in particular is willing to take responsibility for being an architect of the widening gap between rich and poor and the erosion of the Democrat Party's affiliation with a declining working class.

It seems to me that there are other trends at work here. The short term trend can be stated simply: the Democrats were desperate for power and the Presidency, and won the White House when Clinton in effect accepted the legacy of Ronald Reagan but pledged to manage capitalism better than he did. To the extent that the Clinton Presidency inherited Reagan's colossal debt, but left the US with a budget surplus, Clinton succeeded, but accepting the Reagan legacy meant a lenient attitude to the off-shoring of production at the expense of America jobs and a 'regulation-lite' approach to banking and the financial sector which meant that even after the Savings & Loans failures of the Bush Presidency, the sector carried on without the regulation it maybe should have had. There was a similar trend in Europe with the Labour Party under Blair desperate to win elections and trading in their working class inheritance for a middle class vote and a relaxed attitude to wealth, whereas in Germany after Kohl, the CDU has re-established itself as the party of power by moving to the left to such an extent that the latest Grand Coalition with the SPD must make many Germans wonder what the point is of voting. But that also raises questions as to why the Green Party surged throughout the 1980s but failed to grow after unification, notably in the East where the SPD is also weak.

But there is a longer term way of approaching this, which is to argue that the industrial revolution that began in the 18th century ended in the 1970s as there were no new developments in industrial production, but a new revolution in computing and communications technology that has transformed 'the means of production' and the 'social relations of production' as Marx would put it, except that there has been a dislocation between the two, not only trashing a key component of Marx's critique of capitalism, but helping to widen the gap between those who benefit from the 'knowledge economy' and those left out of it, doomed, it seems, to a life on welfare or the magical realism of a Dickensian, overnight win on the lottery. This is not covered in the interesting set of essays in the two-volume Cambridge History of Capitalism, that was published in 2014.

But, and this I think is important, had China not industrialized in the old fashioned way after 1984, would we have had globalization and the phenomenal growth of wealth that we have had since then? Not at the level we have experienced. In fact, I would go as far as to say that China's industrial growth rescued capitalism from its moribund decade, and that it is simply coincidental that it took place as the USSR collapsed and in turn created for capitalism in the 1990s an expansion of markets -and consumers- that had not been seen since the last quarter of the 19th century in North America and central Europe, with the added benefit of huge -and hugely profitable- mineral resources in Russia and Central Asia that had previously been closed to international business.

It is hypocritical for your President to attack China without which he would not have either the capital or the goods he sells that are made Anywhere but America. Without China there would be no affordable smart phones, tablets and computers; no affordable shirts, shoes and trousers; no affordable long-haul holidays in Thailand or South Africa, and so on. Far from attacking China, we should maybe thank it and its workers for accepting levels of pay that were unacceptable indeed impossible in Pennsylvania in 1989 and China is still more competitive than the US can match for the simple reason that capitalism survives on cheap costs and high returns.

But who gets the rewards? As Stiglitz has argued, the politics of re-distribution that distinguished Labour from Conservative was dumped for market opportunities masquerading as personal choice at a time when the household income that was supposed to make this feasible was not growing as fast as the cost of living. The result is not just the dislocation of production from society, but of society from politics with a generation that was born into guaranteed work now facing no work, or re-training for jobs that were once done by school-kids at weekends for pocket money. In the US this is complicated by the legacy of race, in the UK as we have seen by the EU and immigration. Above all, I think that this cluster of factors that Stiglitz in particular is good on, has bred the resentment that fed into the anger and aggression of the 2016 US campaign and the EU Referendum in the UK, both characterised as Cambridge Analytica would put it, by the replacement of truth with lies and emotion.

The bleak view is that resentment being a negative emotion cannot solve the problem of millions of Americans in search of gainful employment and security; the more positive view is that people adapt. Millions of women used to work as telephone operators and typists. Those jobs disappeared yet there are now more women in work than ever before, so something happened to fill the gap when one set of jobs disappeared and so there is no reason to despair. BUT- I think that there is the geographical problem that new jobs may not appear in all places at the same time; the 'racial' problem that in the US means some people may benefit more than others; and the wider resource problem that water deficit areas may not be sustainable forcing people to move -from south to north in the case of the south-west of the US.

Crucially, and I think your selection of books makes the point, the ruthless profile of capitalism may have to be modified and the concept and practice of 'fair shares' and a more equitable re-distribution of wealth return to the agenda to end the alienation and resentment of citizens, and revive their sense of belonging in the state. But this was at the heart of John Rawls A Theory of Justice and that was published in 1971. At the moment, Republicans would dismiss it as 'socialism' yet the irony may be that for all the failures of Marx, the future may have to be more socialist in a broad sense, or be lost to a dystopian nightmare of greed, desperation and violence -and that is a whole other set of books to read!

[sukumvit boy]

Thanks for those interesting comments and speculations which move me to agreement and further exploration of some of the books and issues you mentioned. I certainly want to read Rawls's ,"A Theory of Justice " and see if I can find a reasonably priced set of ,"The Cambridge History of Capitalism" . And yes, I remember the various trends that you mentioned and read those books , some of which ,like the Casteneda , were complete nonsense.
I was wondering what you think of Richard Wolff ,as I find myself particularly enamored by the 'worker's cooperative ' experiments such as Mondragon for which he expresses such a fondness. And , as you say a modification of the current "ruthless profile" of capitalism certainly seems to be what is needed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation
With regard to politics , America needs a more diversified system of representation , more proportional representation as in your Parliament. We have reached a point where the 'Tweedledee and Tweedledum ' of the Democrats and Republicans , and the 'winner takes all' mindset just is not working anymore.

[Stavros]

In retrospect I may not have been very clear - I see those earlier books as dealing with the anxieties of living in a modern capitalist state than being about capitalism itself so the personal development books offered alternative ways of living to the 'rat race', whereas at the time most of the books on capitalism as such were partisan, being written by libertarians like Hayek, Friedman, Rothbard and in the UK Patrick Minford and a stable of writers at the Institute of Economic Affairs; or they were Marxian critiques. If there is a time lag involved, it may be that it is only after policy makers have moved on that they can reflect on their time in government, but also the 2008 crisis that appeared to bring an end to the so-called 'Neo-liberal' regime established by Reagan, Thatcher and Kohl forced some reflection that emerged in the 'what went wrong' books.

The dilemma for the left, particularly in the UK is that on the one hand there is evidence that the post-war consensus that was built on Attlee's reforming government of 1945 and was maintained by Churchill, Eden and MacMillan presided over economic growth and a more equitable distribution of wealth. As often happens, either politics is more ambitious that economics will allow, or economic changes advance ahead of political change, and with capitalism it appears that the growth of computing and automation took policy makers unawares, but energy price crises in the 1970s obscured the deeper changes that were taking place to production. The State then became, in the UK the guarantor of jobs in failing companies, in particular motor car manufacture entered a crisis in the 1970s and with inflation it became absurd for the State to use taxes to prop up firms with no commercial value. So on the one hand people want some form of state guarantee or backup, but don't want their taxes raised for white elephants. Labour under Corbyn promising to spend billions on domestic industry and jobs sounds too good to be true, but there has also to be something that restores faith in the economy and the ability to live reasonably well and while jobs are key to that, the trend in recent years for low-wage jobs, short-term or zero-hours contracts makes structural change harder than I think Labour understand.

We don't have proportional representation in Parliamentary election in the UK, though it exist for local elections in Northern Ireland. There was a referendum on the electoral system in 2011 when PR was rejected. It sounds democratic but in fact it tends to produce parliaments with no overall control and deals with parties that can often see the largest party form a government with parties that have less than 10 or 15% of the vote. The thought of PR in the UK with someone like Nigel Farage making a deal with the Tories that makes him Home Secretary is chilling, and I would not recommend it.

I am away for the Easter weekend into April and will respond to any more posts when I return.

[Stavros]

Tom Wolfe has died in New York. He has many admirers, and was an accomplished writer, of that there is no doubt, be it the 'new journalism' essays on American culture be it The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers and The Right Stuff (an outstanding film too) or novels like The Bonfire of the Vanities. My own favourite is The Painted Word, a short book which packs a punch, aimed at the means whereby influential New York art critics created a market worth millions of dollars that Wolfe argued was worth nothing.

The problem is that while Wolfe was an eloquent conservative critic of 'counter-culture' and its derivatives- in fact there is a superior critique of the counter-culture in The Radical Soap Opera: Roots of Failure in the American Left (1974) by David Zane Mairowitz- it is not so clear what his alternative was, what it is that he was for. Moreover, the more recent interview with him suggests he was more comfortable as a critic than an advocate, and thus the opposite of William F. Buckley who made a point of offering a conservative alternative to New Deal economics. He is thus not very intelligent when comparing the Republican and Democrat candidates in the 2016 Election -"I have no idea who to vote for", while one of his last books - The Kingdom of Speech- is devoted to ridiculing the concept of the Big Bang, Darwin and what to him is the failure of Chomsky and others to tell us where language comes from -a critique that offers no alternative theories of his own.

An enjoyable read, but his flamboyant style lacks the elegance of Dorothy Parker, and there is in some of his work a whiff of anti-semitism which comes across as the self-invented snobbery of a 'Southern Gentleman' who thinks selling stock on Wall St may suit the grandson of the Shtetl but is far beneath his aspirations as an American.

[slave2u]

just to lower the tone: harry harrison's invasion earth. a lovely slice of pulp sf.

[BlüeKarma]

I'm reading two. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte and Sabriel by Garth Nix.

[sukumvit boy]

http://blogs.sciencemag.org/books/2018/06/04/energy-a-human-history/

[josehip]

Just finished this sci-fi short story by [trans] writer Jamie Berrout called THE WAITING ROOM about a story in the future about a trans woman and an android woman who are both waiting for their consultation at a surgical clinic.
You can download the PDF here (https://www.patreon.com/posts/new-short-room-7110019)

[Stavros]

Fear, by Bob Woodward (Simon & Schuster, 2018).

I paid £20 for this book earlier today and have so far read the first 10 chapters. I would not call the book rubbish - I have not read all of Woodward's books so I don't know if this is his worst, but as it appears to be an assembly of notes and personal comment I am not really sure it merits the attention it has received.

If you think the current occupant of the White House is an idiot, a moron, a narcissistic arrogant and lying 'son of a bitch' and a danger to world peace, you don't need to read this book to have your prejudice confirmed. There are some vignettes, as reported in the Press though the first that had me laughing (in a coffee shop where I took the book after purchase) concerns Paul Manafort who did not realize when he opened a Twitter account that it was public, and revealed his membership of a New York City bondage and swingers club called 'Decadence'.

In the rush to both assemble the text and print it, I don't believe it was properly proof read. For example, in Chapter 5 when discussing the career of James Mattis in the Obama administration before he was sacked, reference is made to Leon Panetta when he was Defence Secretary, but this is not even noted in the text. The sentence in which he appears reads: Panetta told Mattis his stance on Iran put him in real trouble with the Obama White House. We already know that Obama was President, but just lobbing in 'Panetta' without a qualifying ID, eg, Leon Panetta, Secretary of Defence at the time, told Mattis... is unprofessional.

Other examples read like memos or notes, thus in Chapter 8 in a discussion of Russia's involvement in the 2016 election (a topic dealt with in several chapters) a paragraph begins: What has not been previously reported: and on the next page This has also not been previously reported: This is sloppy wrtiting from a man who has made his living using words.

That Woodward believes it was wrong of James Comey to add a rider to a memo on Russian involvement that also included the allegation the President paid prostitutes to piss on the same bed the Obama's slept in seems odd, just as the claim the Russians had full audio and video surveillance of the Presidential suit in the Moscow hotel suggests they must also have tapes of what the Obamas did when they were there.

As for the President, this is a man who loves money, yet in discussions on the economy doesn't understand why the US cannot just print as much money as it likes, which seems far-fetched to me.

I was expecting from Woodward a thoughtful book that would give me a detailed account of the origins of Presidential campaign and how and why it broke the mould of previous elections -none of this so far. I wanted deeper background on the Man himself and what motivates him -nothing so far. I am looking for portraits of key figures from Ivanka to Kushner and particularly Stephen Miller: so far nothing. I want a narrative structured chronologically to build a momentum from 2010 to where we are today: no such narrative structure exists, just chapters that seem to appear at random -this one on the campaign, then Russia, then NATO, then Russia, and so on.

I shall labour it out and read it to the end, but so far this is a big disappointment.

There is a negative review here-
https://mashable.com/article/fear-woodward-trump/?europe=true

[Stavros]

I have now finished reading Fear, by Bob Woodward, and as I suggested above, it tells the reader little about the President they do not already know. The question, what is this book for? seems to me to have an answer, to save the Presidency as a respectable institution in American political life.

One concludes from the book that what upsets Woodward so much are not the policies, but the style and lack of substance in a man so clearly unfit for the job, whose crude rhetoric, lack of interest or curiosity in the world around him, and the ease with which he insults and abuses his staff when insisting he is always right, undermines the purpose of the Presidency which is to lead the country by example. On key issues the solution is simple: Afghanistan: cant win, costs too much: get out. Or, stay in but take the minerals and get rich doing so. South Korea: costs too much, South Korea should pay for ther own defence: get out. Tariffs makes sense: impose as many as you can. Immigration is bad: so stop it. Bashar al-Asad is a bastard: so kill him. And so on.

As for the sources, it seems clear to me by their ubiquity in the book that the sources are Steve Bannon, Rob Porter, Senator Lindsay Graham, John Kelly and the lawyer John Dowd who surely is the source for the all but verbatim account of his meeting with Robert Mueller that forms the last chapter in the book.

Woodward has spent decades cultivating key sources in Washington DC: the military, the intelligence community, and Congress. For this reason there is a lack of alternative sources. Rupert Murdoch for example, who has been a 'confidant' of every Republican President since Reagan, is a key figure owing to his ownership of Fox News, but is only mentioned once in the book when Kushner and Ivanka are on his yacht. Thus there is also no mention of the Fox team that work so hard to maintain a postive profile for the President and his policies, and thus no additional material from the supposedly influentiual Evangelical Preachers, and nothing on supporters who are Governors.

If there is a lack of background from anyone outside the Beltway, there are three deep problems with Woodward's book.

The first is that Woodward has no deep understanding of some of the issues in the book. Like a Washington trained parrot, he illustrates his pathetic ignorance of Lebanon by calling Hezbollah a 'terrorist organization', a 'state within a state' funded by Iran and a strategic threat to Israel, as is Iran. At no time does Woodward show the slightest understanding of how Hezbollah came to be the largest party in Parliament in Lebanon, let alone a single thought on what rights Lebanon and Iran have to defend themselves from nuclear Israel. Similarly, Saudi Arabia comes and goes as a US ally without even the hint that it is a brutal, undemocratic, threatening regime that provided most of the 9/11 Hi-jackers, has funded the terrorist Taliban for decades, and has the long-term aim to replace the Ottoman Empire as the sole Caliphate in the MIddle East with all that implies for the existence of Israel.

But this is because of the second major absence in the book identified by the advice Deep Throat gave him: Follow the Money. There are a couple of references to the President going berserk when told the Mueller enquiry is looking into his finances, but where are Woodward's 'deep background' sources to give him the information on how much many the President has, in how many onshore and offshore bank accounts does it rest, tax free, and how much of it, before, during and after the 2016 campaign came from Russian and Arab sources? Felix Sater is mentioned once, as if Woodward was barely interested in a business partner of the President who is also a convicted felon and intermediary for the Russian mafia.

Because the third omission is the most startling of all: Woodward does not see any traction in the 'Russian collusion' claims. If it is astonishing, consider that while Woodward notes the appeal the candidate made to Russia to help him attack Hillary Clinton -twice in one day-, he does not take it further. But here is the problem: if it is the case that the Russian interference in the US election was in legal terms an 'attack' on the US, then the Republican Candidate, by seeking support from a state that was attacking the USA for his own attack on a US citizen is literally committing Treason. That this argument has not been pursued is surely a dereliction of duty. But Woodward is soft on this issue, referring briefly to Wikileaks, not at all to Cambridge Analytica.

As for the powerful women the President hates- Christine Lagarde, Angela Merkel, Theresa May and Nicola Sturgeon-, not one of them gets a mention in this book. Melania occasionally flits in and out, often in the middle of these hastily written chapters, and for all their affection there is no suggestion they have a sexual relationship, which could raise the question, does the President?

In the end this was a rushed job, and it shows. It is written by a liberal Republican who wants to remove the current President from office because he is so crazy and dangerous, but is committed to the very kind of compromising, collegiate Presidency that is lacking. Spare a final thought for the American people, who only exist in this book as a 'crowd', having little or no character, a set of vague rights and demands, and no access at all to the circes of power that revolve around Woodward's ferocious and ever deepening swamp.

[slave2u]

brian keene - ghoul. reasonable horror, a little bit stephen king meets light weight splatterpunk.

[Stavros]

Becoming Michelle Obama (Viking, 2018)

This is an eloquent, often moving, and I hope inspiring book for those who feel they don't have the capacity to improve themselves. The book is in three parts, a childhood and youth in Chicago, marriage and maturity with Barack, and in the third, the experience of being the 'First Lady' of the USA. The first part is the strongest and most interesting, setting an important background in the 'just coping' end of Black Chicago with a very strong family infrastructure and two parents who were always firm but gave Michelle and her brother the space in which to grow on their own terms. Her career at Princeton and as a lawyer in Chicago gives the reader a strong sense of her belief in social justice, while her courtship with her husband has some delightful moments. So strongly woven is the first and to a lesser extent the second phase, I felt the third and last was a bit rushed and mostly concerned with the difficulties of raising two children in the White House. There is little gossip about Washington politics, some recollections of meeting Mandela and Queen Elizabeth but few other politicians make it into the book, the one exception being some negative comment on the man who succeeded her husband to occupy the White House.

A good read and recommended.

why does the digit eight become an emoji? How to stop it?

[Laphroaig]

why does the digit eight become an emoji? How to stop it?

Put a space between the 8 and the bracket, 8 )

[Stavros]

Many thanks, I thought there would be a simple way of doing it!

[tacocorpv2]

Dark Tower series by mister King, quite a read if you like this type of literature.

[broncofan]

The 7 and a half deaths of evelyn hardcastle-this book is described as Agatha Christie meets Groundhog Day and it's a good description. It involves a murder at a high profile event and the main character wakes up each day inhabiting the body of a different person at the party.

It was well reviewed and though the ending is good because it explains what is otherwise a strange premise, it gets tedious in the middle. The author is very pleased with his ability to bury dozens and dozens of clues in the middle of the book that the main character sees pieces of from the perspective of each person at the party. This makes for interesting reading at first but the novelty wears off.

In conclusion: I found it exciting at the beginning, tedious in the middle, but wrapped up surprisingly well at the end. Might be worth a look.

[Nick Danger]

Currently re-reading War and Peace for maybe the 5th time. I used to read current fiction and some alleged non-fiction, but now I just stick to the classics - Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Nabokov, et al.

Modern fiction is occasionally entertaining. Mostly it's formulaic and dull, and that's not merely an opinion. I strongly advise anyone who feels patronized by modern fare to get off the media tit and suckle instead at the ever-flowing fountain of classical thought.

1138771

[broncofan]

Currently re-reading War and Peace for maybe the 5th time. I used to read current fiction and some alleged non-fiction, but now I just stick to the classics - Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Nabokov, et al.

Modern fiction is occasionally entertaining. Mostly it's formulaic and dull, and that's not merely an opinion. I strongly advise anyone who feels patronized by modern fare to get off the media tit and suckle instead at the ever-flowing fountain of classical thought.

1138771
I've read at least one work from each of the authors you mention above but three of them only because I took Russian Literature in college, so I also read Turgenev and Lermontov. I also find most of the popular fiction to be pretty bad and I don't have high standards. I've already said this in the thread but a decent compromise I think are detective novels from forty or fifty years ago. Jim Thompson, Ross Macdonald, John D. Macdonald, Donald Westlake, etc. The writing was simply better but the subject matter every bit as dark. I think I've read pretty much everything from these four. I also read Dashiell Hammett's The Red Harvest and though it had some bright spots was not my favorite. A bit convoluted if I'm honest.

Occasionally I'll go outside that genre and read sci fi or spy novels. Read The Stars My Destination recently which I enjoyed a lot and A Coffin For Dimitrios by Eric Ambler which was pretty good. This helps me avoid having to grapple with the big ideas while I'm reading for enjoyment but doesn't force me to read a lot of the absolute garbage that makes the bestseller lists (ie. James Patterson, Stuart Woods, even Harlan Coben….occasionally a decent plot but awful prose and embarrassingly bad ideas).

[Stavros]

Kevin O'Rourke, A Short History of Brexit (2019)
Although a biased account, as the author has Irish/Danish roots and lives part of the year in France, the book is a well-written view of what Brexit means and how it happened, tracing the UK's relationship with the EU from the detached views of the 1950s through the 1960s rejection by France to membership and beyond in 1973. O'Rourke is particularly good on Anglo-Irish complications and the extent to which the notorious 'Backstop' in Northern Ireland reflects age-old suspicions and enmities for geographical as well as political reasons.
The book does not really address some of the issues around sovereignty and 'ever closer union' but is recommended for anyone not exhausted by Brexit who wants an insight into what it means.

[sukumvit boy]

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/30/books/review/blowout-rachel-maddow.html

[Stavros]

George Steiner has died, aged 90. He was with Edmund Wilson one of the most eloquent literary critics and historians of the 20th century, and in Steiner's case a compelling writer on European culture. I owe an enormous debt to Steiner because before I started reading his works in the 1970s, I knew the Holocaust happened, but did not know much else about it. It was the essays in Language and Silence that introduced me to some of the shocking details, but also the cultural context in which Steiner agonized over the power of language to simultaneously expose and conceal realities that in some senses cannot in fact be put into language. He introduced me to Adorno's provocative remarks such as 'there can be no poetry after Auschwitz' and 'after Auschwitz all European culture is garbage', but its most eloquent rebuttal, the poetry of Paul Celan. And in Celan one also encounters the possibility and the impossibility of translating the Holocaust into language, as well as being the finest German poetry since Hölderlin
His lectures tended to be theatrical, in the sense that his oration was flamboyant, and, one knew that he would supply answers to his questions with references to Marx, Kafka, Karl Kraus and Celan. In one lecture he began with the declamation: 'Absolute tragedy is very rare', and proceeded to offer examples from Shakespeare in which only Timon of Athens had no light relief -and was all the poorer because of it- and when he pointed out there is a Fool in Othello, I had to go immediately to my collected works to find out he is right -the character is dropped from most productions of the play. His point, was that humans cannot bear absolute tragedy, it is too bleak, too hard to cope with, and is perhaps one reason why so many people if they do not reject the Holocaust prefer to not talk about it. It touches on that absolute darkness that cannot be illuminated by language, and which we would not want it to be. With his withered arm on one side, his live arm gesticulating, the lectures were illuminating, melodious, and deeply satisfying. And he never went anywhere without Zara, who taught the diplomacy of the interwar years in the History Faculty.

Steiner also held deeply controversial ideas about Israel, and unfortunatelly some have adopted his views without the cultural and religious context in which Steiner offered them. For that reason, I offer this from the interviews he held with Laure Adler. Link is at the bottom, as is a link to a critical article on Steiner's views.


"And I am fundamentally anti-Zionist. Let me explain — even if, as I strongly fear, everything that I’m going to say now may be misunderstood, misinterpreted. For several thousand years, approximately from the time of the fall of the First Temple in Jerusalem, Jews did not have the wherewithal to mistreat, or torture, or expropriate anyone or anything in the world. For me, it was the single greatest aristocracy that ever existed. When I’m introduced to an English duke, I say to myself, “The highest nobility is to have belonged to a people that has never humiliated another people.” Or tortured another. But today, Israel must necessarily (I stress this word, and would repeat it 20 times if I could), necessarily, inevitably, inescapably, kill and torture in order to survive; Israel must behave like the rest of so-called normal humanity. Well, I’m a confirmed ethical snob, I’m completely arrogant ethically; by becoming a people like others, the Israelis have forfeited that nobility I had attributed to them. Israel is a nation between nations, armed to the teeth. And when I look from the top of a wall at the long line of Palestinian workers trying to get to their daily jobs, standing in blistering heat, I can’t help seeing the humiliation of those human beings in that line, and I say to myself, “It’s too high a price to pay.” To which Israel answers: “Be quiet, you fool! Come here! Live with us! Share our danger! We are the only country that will welcome your children if they have to flee. So what right do you have to be so morally superior?” And I have no response. To be able to respond, I would have to be there, on the street corner, giving my absurd spiel, living the daily risks there. Because I don’t do that, I can only explain what I perceive as the Jew’s mission: to be the guest of humanity. And, even more paradoxical (which places the mark of Cain on my forehead), what convinced me was something Heidegger said: “We are the guests of life.” Heidegger came up with that extraordinary expression; neither you nor I could choose the place of our birth, the circumstances, the historical time to which we belong, a handicap or perfect health."



<strike></strike>https://forward.com/culture/367139/you-really-need-to-read-this-terrific-interview-with-george-steiner/

https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/280640/george-steiner-progressive-anti-semitism

[BlüeKarma]

Now: The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

Then: The Misfit’s Manifesto by Lidia Yuknavitch

[Stavros]

A Very Stable Genius. Carol Leonnig & Philip Rucker (2020).

Two main points about this book.
1) though adding details we might not have known before, it documents the ignorance, the stupidity, the arrogance and the chaos we already know that governs the life of the 45th President.
2) The major takeaway from the book is the dismal realisation that This chaos happens either because people with responsibility are terrified of disputing facts with the President and telling him to his face he isn't wrong and the policy is wrong, or they support him.
But books like these cannot be written without the revelations, often verbatim that the same people he sacked, or who resigned were unwilling to say to his face, just as we have seen John Bolton preferring to say nothing in public about the Ukraine crisis but sell a book instead. Whatever, the tragedy is that the man who claims to be President and the sycophants, hypocrites and extremists who support him are causing much damage to the image of the USA as well as is domestic politics, with the rule of law now appearing to be a toy in the hands of a King without a kingdom but one who is convinced he has one.
That the Democrats appear to be impotent, that Hillary Clinton may yet re-emerge as their Presidential candidate, suggests there is a deep crisis in the country that is not being publicly debated at the level it should be.

[sukumvit boy]

Yes, The New Yorker magazine where Steiner worked for 30 years had a goog article about him in the most recent issue.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/postscript/the-seriousness-of-george-steiner

[sukumvit boy]

Also in the most recent New Yorker an interesting article about changes in the UK Land Use Policy resulting from Brexit and Jake Fiennes.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/02/17/can-farming-make-space-for-nature

[Stavros]

Yes, The New Yorker magazine where Steiner worked for 30 years had a goog article about him in the most recent issue.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/postscript/the-seriousness-of-george-steiner

Thank you for the link. George's wife, the historian Zara Steiner died 10 days later -obituary in the link. She was a quite different lecturer to George, replacing his theatricality with a sober, even ride through the topic of the day, and keen to talk to students afterwards. Her two monumental books are frankly not for the casual reader as she amassed a colossal amount of detail over the years it took to research them, and used as much as she could. Her cardinal point is that the 1920s were intended by the Weimar politicians to be a decade of stability and reconstruction, and that for the most part they achieved it, but were blown off course by the Crash of 1929 and the conditions that followed which made the Third Reich possible when it had never been inevitable, a correction to those histories which trace the parallel decline of Weimar and the 'rise' of Hitler as a process that began at Versailles.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/feb/23/zara-steiner-obituary

[sukumvit boy]

Thanks for that interesting reply and link ,Stavros.
Do you have any interest in the other article about restoring the English countryside and hedge rows? I find the whole thing so interesting,
Also, given your interest in history , I'll mention another book which I found to be a fascinating read . Bold new ideas connecting anthropology and culture.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapiens:_A_Brief_History_of_Humankind

[Stavros]

Sukumvit Boy --Joan Thirsk is the doyenne of landscape/farming historians, and well worth the effort in tracing her books. She is in the eclectic list linked below, but Amazon has a more extensive list. Articles in The Journal of Historical Geography are worth exploring if you have access to an academic library and several hours free, I have the dubious dishonour of having an article returned by JHG with so many objections from an anonymous reviewer I withdrew it -it was a work in progress anyway, but I had other things to do and the research is gathering dust in a box along with other 'work in progress'...

https://fivebooks.com/best-books/english-countryside-paul-brassley/

[sukumvit boy]

Many thanks,Stavros . that looks like some fascinating reading . I'll look into those books.

[sukumvit boy]

By the way , great link . I ordered the first 2 books by Hoskins and Thirsk in a flash.
"Dubious distinction " indeed , sounds extremely interesting .

[Stavros]

Alan Ryan, On Politics (Penguin Books, 2012)

Weighing in at over 1,000 pages this looks a daunting task, but as each chapter can be read in itself this makes it easier to manage. The book is thus an encyclopaedia, though Ryan offers unifying themes to his studies in the introduction. As it stands this is possibly the finest account of Western political philosophy I have ever read, written with a fluency and a clarity that I wish I had access to when I was an undergraduate. I actually went to one of Ryan's lectures at the RPS in London in the early 1980s but cannot recall what it was about, which doesn't sound like much of an endorsement.
The chapters on Hobbes, Locke, Hegel and Marx are riveting and offer a welcome balance of thought, given the controverises these men have generated. There is more than one chapter on the Americans, from the ideas that shaped the Revolution to the differences between John Dewey's definition of Liberalism compared to the ideas of John Stuart Mill. The book is teeming with small insights that illuminate the depth of Ryan's scholarship, such as the revelation that in the British Empire (prior to 1776) the only place where Jews and Catholics were allowed to openly worship alongside Anglicans was in Philadelphia.
You can't go wrong with this book, even if it very large and heavy -maybe a Kindle version better for those who have this technology (I don't).

[sukumvit boy]

I think you have found the perfect COVID-19 stay at home reading . Glowing reviews on Amazon USA and I see that a paperback edition is coming this fall for only $30.00 , hopefully by that time we will all be able to bring it to the beach in Thailand or somewhere.
https://www.amazon.com/Politics-History-Political-Thought-Herodotus/dp/1631498142/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2CAUDHOVF888Z&keywords=on+politics+alan+ryan&qid=1586809665&sprefix=on+pol%2Caps%2C217&sr=8-1

[sukumvit boy]

Anne Case and Angus Deaton ,"Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism"
https://www.amazon.com/Deaths-Despair-Future-Capitalism-Anne-ebook/dp/B082YJRH8D/ref=sr_1_2?crid=1W7KZF6ZN4QGN&dchild=1&keywords=deaths+of+despair+and+the+future+of+capit alism&qid=1586810123&s=books&sprefix=deths%2Caps%2C213&sr=1-2
Deaton and his wife ,both Princeton University professors and he the 2015 Nobel Economics Prize winner have examined an alarming American phenomenon ; the rise in American deaths in the last few decades due to suicide, alcohol and opioid drug abuse and place the blame on the antiquated American health insurance system .
Fascinating and convincing .
Also ,although I don't usually read much fiction I just finished the Stieg Larson 'Millennium trilogy' and very much enjoyed it. (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo).

[Stavros]

I think you have found the perfect COVID-19 stay at home reading . Glowing reviews on Amazon USA and I see that a paperback edition is coming this fall for only $30.00 , hopefully by that time we will all be able to bring it to the beach in Thailand or somewhere.


$30? I bought my copy (mint condition paperback) in a charity shop for £2.50...do you have charity shops in the US?

[AsianBabe_]

The political economy of international relations (Gilpin)

[Stavros]

The political economy of international relations (Gilpin)

Influential in its day, but I suspect overtaken by events since the 1980s, particularly 'new wave' Globalization. There is a useful summary of Gilpin in the link, and if you are not familiar with it, the study by Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: the End of Empire and the Birth of NeoLiberalism (Harvard, twenty eighteen) is worth a look.
Review of Gilpin here-
https://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1312&context=mjil

[sukumvit boy]

$30? I bought my copy (mint condition paperback) in a charity shop for £2.50...do you have charity shops in the US?
Yes we do. Unfortunately, at the present time here in the Los Angeles area they are deemed 'nonessential' services and are closed.
I usually use them a great deal given the large amount of reading that I do ,for buying , selling and trading. There is also an excellent used book store attached to a public library in my area that I donate to regularly with a wonderful selection of 'scholarly' used books where I think I may be able to find "Politics" . Unfortunately ,it too is closed because the libraries are classified as nonessential and are closed?!
By the way ,I thoroughly enjoyed Hoskins, "The English Countryside" and Thisk,"Alternative Agriculture"

[steviedresses]

Mission: Jimmy Stewart and the Fight for Europe.

Dude did 20 combat missions in B-24's. The real deal. He flew in Big Week. He was a squadron commander so flew every 5th mission on a rotating basis. First mission was December of 43, last was March of 45.

Good read for you history & Jimmy Stewart fans.

[Stavros]

I offer you this on the friendship between Stewart and Henry Fonda-
https://libertyconservative.com/the-friendship-of-jimmy-stewart-and-henry-fonda-shows-that-partisanship-can-be-overcome/

WIth regard to Stewart, I have occasionally wondered why this stern, conservative man made such subversive films for Hitchcock, two in partcular: Rear Window, and Vertigo. I am sure I remember a quote from somewhere -Camus?- 'every voyeur is a conservative' -relevant to both films given that Stewart's character is a voyeur in the first and a stalker/voyeur in the second. Did Stewart at some level relate to the men in those films?

[steviedresses]

Stewart, like so many who experienced the horror of combat, came back a changed man. The scene in It's a Wonderful Life where he is freaking out just before he ran out of the house was so genuine. I had wondered how he pulled that out... After reading about his combat experience, well he had lots of horror to draw on.

[sukumvit boy]

Anne Case and Angus Deaton ,"Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism"
https://www.amazon.com/Deaths-Despair-Future-Capitalism-Anne-ebook/dp/B082YJRH8D/ref=sr_1_2?crid=1W7KZF6ZN4QGN&dchild=1&keywords=deaths+of+despair+and+the+future+of+capit alism&qid=1586810123&s=books&sprefix=deths%2Caps%2C213&sr=1-2
Deaton and his wife ,both Princeton University professors and he the 2015 Nobel Economics Prize winner have examined an alarming American phenomenon ; the rise in American deaths in the last few decades due to suicide, alcohol and opioid drug abuse and place the blame on the antiquated American health insurance system .
Fascinating and convincing .
Also ,although I don't usually read much fiction I just finished the Stieg Larson 'Millennium trilogy' and very much enjoyed it. (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo).
Also ,in reading Stieg Larson's "Millennium Trilogy " it becomes obvious that he had a real life fixation on the unsolved murder mystery of the 1986 assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme. Quite difficult to follow unless one is familiar with the details of Swedish politics.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/sep/20/stieg-larsson-and-the-unsolved-case-of-olof-palme

[broncofan]

Also ,in reading Stieg Larson's "Millennium Trilogy " it becomes obvious that he had a real life fixation on the unsolved murder mystery of the 1986 assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme. Quite difficult to follow unless one is familiar with the details of Swedish politics.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/sep/20/stieg-larsson-and-the-unsolved-case-of-olof-palme
I read at least two of them years ago. I recall them being exceedingly detailed which I enjoyed but maybe got a bit tired of later on. Stieg Larson died fairly young I recall but I enjoyed his writing and that memorable main character Lisbeth Salander.

I've read all of the Reacher books which I remember you mentioned a while ago. I've read some of Tana French which have been hit or miss for me. Harlan Coben is hit or miss for me as I find the plot twists and the planning of his books better than the writing. I have only read his stand alone books because his sports agent character books annoy me and are just too implausible.

Just curious, have you read any of the Richard Stark/Donald Westlake books? There are a ton I haven't read but I never loved them, whether they were the Parker books or those written under Westlake. I recall we have a mutual like of Jim Thompson but I've read everything there.

I almost wish all the best mystery writers had been warned of the pandemic a year ago as there would be a ton of books to go through.

[broncofan]

Hey broncofan , yes the Reacher series are addictive page turners and Lee Child actually provides a lot of fascinating behind the scenes factual information.
I would recommend the detective Harry Bosh series by Michael Connelly , fast paced ,and if you like his style there are 20 of them now .
In a more retro vein , I enjoyed the is hard boiled detective novels of Dashiell Hammett . Including The Thin Man and The Maltese Falcon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashiell_Hammett

I'm also a long time Lawrence Block fan and his Matthew Scudder mystery series as well as his more lighthearted and amusing Bernie Rhodenbarr burglar series . The Bernie character is a New York City used and scholarly book store owner by day and a burglar by night . Lawrence Block was named a Grand Master of The Mystery Writers of America since 1994 and I envy you if you haven't read any of his books yet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Block
Maybe I should have gone back to these recommendations. I haven't come close to reading all of the Michael Connelly or Lawrence Block books but have read some since you wrote this in 2017. They're both pretty good writers imo.

Edit: By the way I should thank you because I probably read at least 5 Lawrence Block books, both Matthew and Bernie series. Appreciated.

[sukumvit boy]

Maybe I should have gone back to these recommendations. I haven't come close to reading all of the Michael Connelly or Lawrence Block books but have read some since you wrote this in 2017. They're both pretty good writers imo.

Edit: By the way I should thank you because I probably read at least 5 Lawrence Block books, both Matthew and Bernie series. Appreciated.
Hey broncofan ,yes the Stieg Larson are dense novels which I usually don't read but I think the house bound pandemic and the long delivery times on Amazon gave me just enough of a push to slog on, and I'm glad I did ,after the first one I was addicted and sailed through the next two. I also think that the fact that they were translated from the Swedish (although I think an excellent translation) and all the Swedish references made it more difficult at first reading.
Yes, I remember our previous discussion and thanks for reminding me about the Donald Westlake /Richard Stark books ,I really want to get some of those and give them a try.
I especially enjoy the Block Bernie 'gentleman burglar 'series and the series with the hit man who is a stamp collector.
Amazon has a link that gives all the Lawrence block books separated into series and publication date I tried to send it to you here but I can't get it to open so that I can copy the header, I'm sure you can find it though.
Best regards,stay well.

[jonah609]

Just finished Billy Connolly's Tall tales and wee stories. Laugh out loud stuff :)

[sukumvit boy]

Just finished Billy Connolly's Tall tales and wee stories. Laugh out loud stuff :)
Very funny man,as well as actor and accomplished banjo player.

[sukumvit boy]

A recently discovered short story by Ernest Hemingway as well as a quirky little short story by Haruki Murakami.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/06/08/pursuit-as-happiness
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/06/08/confessions-of-a-shinagawa-monkey

[sukumvit boy]

Ben Macintyre's "A Spy And A Traitor",2018
https://www.amazon.com/Spy-Traitor-Greatest-Espionage-Story/dp/1101904194
Quite good ,includes some interesting material about some old friends such as James Jesus Angleton ,Kim Philby and 'the fifth man'.

[Torris]

John M. Barry - The Great Influenza. How America’s entry into World War I led to 50 million deaths world wide in 1918-1920

[filghy2]

The Anarchy by William Dalrymple - the story of the relentless rise of the East India Company, the ultimate predatory capitalists.

[Torris]

The Anarchy by William Dalrymple - the story of the relentless rise of the East India Company, the ultimate predatory capitalists.

Dalrymple is a terrific writer on India

[sukumvit boy]

Dalrymple is a terrific writer on India
This looks very interesting.

[broncofan]

The book Filghy mentioned sounds like something I'd like to read if I were reading nonfiction right now.

I've been reading a bunch of James Ellroy books. He's the guy who wrote LA Confidential and Black Dahlia. I've now read his LA Quartet, which I thought was very good, though maybe White Jazz was the weakest link.

I'm now reading the first book of his underworld trilogy called American Tabloid. I have to say I'm really liking his books. Lots of vulgarity and all of his characters are racists, which I'm not sure is inaccurate in 1950s America though it's sometimes uncomfortable to read pages of slurs. His books have a lot of stuff about McCarthyism and the House of Unamerican Activities along with mob activity at the time and corrupt law enforcement. The books are very detailed but not so much that it gets boring or derails the plot. Also, the violence is pretty graphic so you have to have a strong stomach.

[sukumvit boy]

Yes I'm now reading his latest "This Storm" 2019. I have read most of his books starting with "The Black Dahlia" 1987. Excellent writer but in some ways too much with the jive language ,distracting! Of course you know about his disturbing childhood and history?

https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/james-ellroy/

[Stavros]

This is a true statement: I went into the recently re-opened Waterstone's bookshop we have in town this morning, to see if they have an illustrated version of Pinocchio suitable for a 10 year old, a gift for a friend (they don't) -and saw on the new arrivals shelf John Bolton's The Room Where it Happened, which I did not realize has been publshed here. I will read it and review it, unless I die laughing while doing so.

[broncofan]

Yes I'm now reading his latest "This Storm" 2019. I have read most of his books starting with "The Black Dahlia" 1987. Excellent writer but in some ways too much with the jive language ,distracting!
That's part of what's hit or miss with his writing. He really does his homework and wants to be historically authentic and for the characters to talk like he thinks certain subcultures do. But it makes tough reading. For instance, I enjoy the Yiddish, which he has the 1950s Jewish characters use. And it's probably the 100 or so phrases that people of that generation spoke. But someone who doesn't know any Yiddish has to figure out what it means and frankly he probably overdoes it. But there's tons of slang I don't recognize generally.

But having gone through the LA Quartet he really does seem to bring back a lot of the politics of the time. Gangsters who had leverage over police departments, the Zoot suit riots and racial tensions, and everything 1950s that I don't know enough about. In American Tabloid I'm reading about Bobby Kennedy investigating the Teamsters and J Edgar Hoover not wanting to look into organized crime because it's a distraction from pursuing communists. Kind of a fun ride. Thanks for the article.

[sukumvit boy]

This is a true statement: I went into the recently re-opened Waterstone's bookshop we have in town this morning, to see if they have an illustrated version of Pinocchio suitable for a 10 year old, a gift for a friend (they don't) -and saw on the new arrivals shelf John Bolton's The Room Where it Happened, which I did not realize has been publshed here. I will read it and review it, unless I die laughing while doing so.
From what I see in reader reviews ,Stavros,by reading and reviewing Bolton you will be preforming an onerous public service for all of us ,"In desperate need of an editor " is one review that comes to mind. LOL

[sukumvit boy]

That's part of what's hit or miss with his writing. He really does his homework and wants to be historically authentic and for the characters to talk like he thinks certain subcultures do. But it makes tough reading. For instance, I enjoy the Yiddish, which he has the 1950s Jewish characters use. And it's probably the 100 or so phrases that people of that generation spoke. But someone who doesn't know any Yiddish has to figure out what it means and frankly he probably overdoes it. But there's tons of slang I don't recognize generally.

But having gone through the LA Quartet he really does seem to bring back a lot of the politics of the time. Gangsters who had leverage over police departments, the Zoot suit riots and racial tensions, and everything 1950s that I don't know enough about. In American Tabloid I'm reading about Bobby Kennedy investigating the Teamsters and J Edgar Hoover not wanting to look into organized crime because it's a distraction from pursuing communists. Kind of a fun ride. Thanks for the article.
Yes, he really does his homework and is in most respects a very fine writer which is why I keep reading his books in spite of the gradually increasing use of the jive lingo to carry the story along. It has become so much worse since "The Black Dahlia". Which is why my copy of "This Storm;A Novel" has sat on my bedside book case for about 2 months ,half read,and will probably remain there for another 2 months before I manage to get through all 590 odd pages.
With regard to the Yiddish, Ha ,(as if the hep talk was not bad enough) I am fortunate in that my mother spoke Yiddish,Russian,Polish,Lithuanian and English growing up and learned Italian when she met my father!
By the way I recently finished the 1st of the Parker novels "The Hunter" as per your recommendations and very much enjoyed it.

[Stavros]

Kim Ghattas, The Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Rivalry that Unraveled the Middle East (2020).

The core argument in this book is that there was little confict between Sunni and Shi'a Muslims in the MIddle East before 1979, and that two events that year -the Islamic Revolution in Iran, and the Siege of the Grand Mosque in Mecca- shaped events thereafter by creating a vicious lethal competition for power across the region. Taking Islam into areas of personal life not known before, the author attempts to address the question 'What Happened to Us?' and in doing so produces an often gripping account of how formerly marginal aspects of Islam became weaponized as Political Islam transformed the Middle East, but can only do so by showing that these trends existed in the region before 1979.

What she does show is how the competition to be a 'better Muslim' led States such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iran, to impose their version of Sharia law to significantly restrict the freedoms citizens had before, be it in terms of women's dress, the freedom to go to the cinema -many of which were shut down after 1979-, and crucially, how the expression of dissenting views in the media became a matter of life and death, or imprisonment and torture. The dual influences of the Wahab version of Sunni Islam and Iran's sponsorship of change, notably in Lebanon is shown to have common roots to the extent that many Sunni Muslims in Saudi Arabia supported the Revolution in Iran, but that in the years that followed, the Iran-Iraq War, the conflict with the USA and all forms of the liberal nationalism that had been common in the region, even in dictatorships, spiralled out of control as extremist opinion became mainstream, with the result that radicaization from this position ended up in the form it took with Daesh where petty doctrinal disputes could lead to instant death and nobody ever experienced security, when every day was shaped by fear.

The book is riddled with errors of fact, misleading statements and questionable language -why describe Mecca as 'God's throne on Earth'? She claims Israel's Ambassador to the UK was assassinated in 1982, whereas he survived the attempt and lives in retirement in Israel. Ghattas claims twice the British supported Ibn Saud whereas they backed his enemies, the Hashemites, and her claims the RAF defended ibn Saud aganst his own rebellious Ikhwan, masks the fact that they invaded British controlled TransJordan in order to kill the Hashemite Emir Abdullah and integrate Jordan into the emerging Saudi Kingdom -that the British after the seizure of Mecca in 1925 did retain some relations with Ibn Saud was shaped by the Empire's anxieties that Muslims in India not be given the cause to make politics there any worse than it was.

At one point (page 120) she remarks of Ronald Reagan's America ushering in 'a decade of social conservatism...marking the end of America's own era of leftist revoutionary fervour' -What? She argues most of the 'Arab Afghans' such as bin Laden and the Mujahideen were not state funded, then says in effect that they were, ie by Saudi Arabia, just as at one point she claims Iran had no cash to splash in Lebanon because of the Iran-Iraq war, then says they splashed the cash, and also claims the war cost a trillion dollars, not a figure I am familiar with. And while she is right to identify the PLO as a crucial provider of training camps for miliants and terrorists both Shia and Sunni, most but not all Middle Eastern and North African states were privatizing violence, much as Russia does today (via the 'Wagner' group and others), while the one area that was off-limits to all other than Hezbollah, was Israel, and even there the Iranan tactic was merely to harass Israel -not once did firebrand revolutionary Ayatolah Khomeini put words into action in an attempt to 'Liberate Jerusalem'.

Her sterling efforts to delineate the intellectual contradictions of Salafist Islam is evident throughout: she refers to Mohammed Abduh as a 'progressive Salafist' which is not how Albert Hourani sees him in his classic study Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798-1938, (1962) and the first and most elegant analysis of the fundamental problem: Islam and the the Modern industrial age; and she probably exaggerates the militancy and violence of extremists in Pakistan. For all its gruesome violence and intolerance, the view offered by Dominic Lieven in his chapter on 'Religions' in Pakistan: A Hard Country (2011) seems more balanced to me than the view offered by Ghattas.

Alternative views of Lebanon and the Shia can be found in Augustus Richard Norton, Amal and the Shi'a: Struggle for the Soul of Lebanon (1987), and Vali Nasr The Shia Revival (2006) both of which trace a resurgence of Shi'a politics and religion which was developing before the revolution in Iran, but which has been boosted, in part because of that event, but also in more recent years by the catastrophe of regime change in Iraq, with Libya not mentioned at all in Ghattas's book, and the later introduction of Yemen offered without any context or understanding of Yemen's complexities.
The irony being that at the end, she sees a new generation in Iran exhausted by the Islamic intolerance they face in their daily lives, but unable by themselves to end the experiment that began in 1979, while Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia, personally not committed to Wahabi extremism, uses his power to open cineams, allow women to drive -and extort billions from family members accused of corruption, or murder critics, such as Jamal Khashoggi (a supporter of the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the politics of Saudi Arabi until he woke up to the folly only to be slaughtered by his former allies in the most horrible way).

Revolutions devour their children, and there are few signs that this feast has ended, or how it will end.
I recommend the book, but with reservations as noted above.

[sukumvit boy]

This looks very interesting ,however way above my pay grade with regard to the Middle East . I'm still trying to figure out the whole Shia /Sunni thing and just when I think I have ,it becomes entangled with other issues.
I did read a recent New Yorker Magazine article about the search for King Solomon and King David's lost temples and weather or not the Bible accounts are just fiction . Includes interviews with and references to Middle Eastern and Jerusalem scholars with whom you are probably familiar.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/06/29/in-search-of-king-davids-lost-empire

[Stavros]

The Sunni-Shi'a schism is these days mostly about politics rather than theology, and as Ghattas tries to show the recent revival of the schism has more to do with the politics of the State than the state of a Muslim mind. There is rarely any acknowdgement of the way many individuals in the Middle East, as elsewhere, have turned to religion as solace in times when dictatorship and war have undermined their confidence in their fellow man. In its pure meaning, a Salaf is thus someone who revives a piety for themselves divorced from politics precisely because their religion has been defiled by politics, and is thus something one should consider particularly in the case of brutal dictatorships in Egypt, Syria and Iraq. One finds extremists everywhere, but less of them at the political level in Jordan, the Gulf Emirates and Oman, even Lebanon, where Hezbollah is at core a political rather than a relgious movement.
If you are interested enough in the theology, there is a fine set of essays in The Cambridge Companion to Muhammad (2010) edited by Jonathan E. Brockopp. Be warned, that as with Bible studies, there are some arcane discussions on the meanings of words and how differently they can be translated, particularly in the chapter on the splitting of the Moon.
Set against this intellectual exercise, one occasionally comes across the absurdities of the schisms in Islam, of which the Sunni-Shi'a is only one. A Libyan colleague in a UK university where we were both graduate students complained to me about a Saudi who he had been praying with on campus. After the first sequence of bowing and kneeling, the Lbyan had stood up with his hands by his sides, and was asked 'why do you pray like that?', the Saudi having crossed his arms. 'Did I do something wrong' the Libyan asked, and it went no further, but he was clearly annoyed by the question, as if it questioned his faith. To make matters even more absurd, there is even a debate for those who do cross their arms: should the arms be above or below or on the navel? When it gets to navel gazing, I think we -or they- have lost the plot, and I don't doubt in the 'Islamic State of Iraq and Syra', one such 'mistake' and the miscreant would lose his head...

[Stavros]

John R. Bolton, The Room Where it Happened (Simon & Schuster, 2020).

John Bolton has written a book about a devoted servant of the USA; an efficient, focused head of his Department in Government; an incisive intellectual, a brilliant strategic thinker, indeed, probably a genius. That man is John. R Bolton. Such is the halo of respect that surrounds him, that when he is in an out of the transition team after the 2016 election, the President-elect, Kushner Bannon and Reibus all tell him what a great guy he is, how much they appreciate his advice, that they love what he says and want him on the team in the New Year -but is only offered Deputy of this or that, and puts his failure down to 'not working the room' be it in Manhattan or Mar-a-Lago. Or to put it another way: he was a natural, so why did they acknowledge his skills but not recruit him?

No matter, even Not-in-Office, the new team had listened to him, and acted on his recommendations: Move the US Embassy in Israel from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem -check. Withdraw from the UN Human Rights Council- check. Withdraw funding from UNRWA- check. Prepare to withdraw from the Paris Climate Change and the Iran Nuclear Agreements -check, and check. Meanwhile, as he observed the Presidency become a bear pit with one senior official coming and then going, it was simple: sit back, and wait, and the call will come: and it did.

No need to crash through the door of the Oval Office and yell 'Here's Johnnnyyy...!!!', just arrive with an agenda that dominates this book: Iran, Iran, and then, Iran. Throw in North Korea, and you have more than half the book, with an amount of tedious detail that suggests he often just wrote up his notes. The strategic vision Bolton has is represented by the quotation from the Duke of Wellington at the threshold of the book-

'Hard poundng, this gentlemen. Let's see who will pound the longest' - replace pound with bomb to update to Bolton's view.
Whether it is military force or sanctions, what Bolton says about sanctions sums up his strategic imperative, saying of them:
'they're about using America's massive economic power to advance our national interests. They are most effective when applied massively, swiftly, and decisively, and enforced with all the power available (p.271).

Had such power been used there would by now have been regime change in Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela (all three discussed in the book), and you might as well throw in Cuba and Nicaragua, though change leading to what and to whom is never considered, and given what happend with regime change in Iraq, that might be the best thing to do.
The reason why such changes did not occur? Because Bolton's advice was undermined by the President -liable to change his mind and policy in an instant, depending on who he has been talking to-; indivduals in the administration -specificially Steven Mnuchin, dismissed as someone constantly referring decisions back to the bureaucrats, a 'Democrat', and on China, a 'Panda hugger'. Mike Pompeo comes across as, at time a loyal comrade, at other times untrustworthy and at the end, the man he claims was (with Mick Mulvaney) the source of the leaks to the Times and Post that the President accused Bolton of.

Then there is Nikki Haley, elevated to do his former non-job at the UN in the machine of 'global governance' Bolton sees as an obstacle and futile restraint on American Power. Claiming her only motivation for taking the job is/was her Presidential ambitions, she never gets a kind word. Indeed, this never made it to the press, presumably because of the shocking language in the account by the President to Bolton of an Oval Office meeting with Rex Tillerson and Haley:

Haley, said Trump, had some disagreement with Tillerson, who responded "Don't ever talk to me that way again". Before Haley could say anything, Tillerson said "You're nothing but a cunt, and don't ever forget it" (p.57).

Hmmm...is that the kind of language Tillerson would use?

Throughout the book, Bolton regards the 45th President de haut en bas, being so much more intelligent than he, and it is clear that in spite of the damage limtation he had to engage in because of tweets and temper tantrums, he does not care about the President's style or its impact on political life in the USA. He joined the Administation to pursue his own agenda, shaped by the belief that Iran poses the most serious and immedate security risk to the USA. As a devotee of Jeanne Kirkpatrck, he does not believe Dictatorships can be reformed, and proposes regime change in Iran, through massive and effective sanctions to all but destroy the economy (as happened with sanctions in 1951-53 though he doesn't mention this example); and if necessary military strikes to incapacitate Iran's nuclear and missile development.
However, in spite of the successes of his earlier recommendations, he failed on Iran, just as he failed to persuade the President and his team that there was nothing to be gained from even meeting Kim Jong-un, and that just meeting the Taliban (referred to by Bolton as 'thugs') would amount to a concession undermining the purpose of the USA's presence in Afghanistan, which Bolton defends as essential for US security, albeit something that can be sustained with fewer boots on the ground. Indeed, the prospect of the Taliban meeting the President at Camp David was a resignation issue, as it was too for Pompeo.

Again and again, Bolton finds that his insistence that the US act decisively, swiftly and with purpose is either ignored, or the President agrees, then changes his mind at the last moment: Iran's attacks on Drones reaches a crisis which Bolton wants to resolve with the bombing of the two or three batteries that launched the missiles: The President agrees, but at the last moment, decides to cancel the operation, one of the first occasions in which Bolton considers resigning. Bolton is thus resigned to the fact that while he is NSA supremo, the President is just as likely to take advice from Jared Kushner, Rudolph Giuliani and even Rand Paul, whom Bolton loathes and detests. Indeed, at one point when discussing the proposal that the President meet the Iranian Foreign Minister Javid Zarif, something Kushner (a 'democrat') approves of, which Rand Paul also wanted, Bolton writes

Secretary of State Paul later persuaded Trump to defer the Zarif sanctions for thirty days. I wonder if he cleared that with Secretary of State Giuliani? (p411).

On one level, this ought to be an insight into the machinery of the Executive Branch of US Government, but is not because the whole of the book is a justification for Bolton's extreme views. In spite of having served so often in Republican administations, he seems unable to appreciate why the US has such a large burueacracy- with more than 70 years of treaties and agreements, it is obvious that a Presidential order must not conflict with existing agreements, which is why Defence has to refer to State and State to Treasury and so on, that 'inter-agency' process that consumes time and alters judgments when Bolton wants action now, today, and without the intervention of a clerk somwhere in Foggy Bottom. That Bolton is also upset and frustrated by the shadow policy makers like Kushner and Giuliani also begs the question -has he never seen Presidents swayed by their friends and associates?

At the end, his account of the Ukraine crisis is poor. He becomes aware only late in the day that Giuliani has been representing unidentified people in the Ukraine -one assumes, people with lots of money- and that he has been inventing stories about Joe and Hunter Biden and the Democrats rather than the Russians interferig in the 2016 election. But he never does further to try and find out who the people are or why Giuliani is doing what he does. He refers to Marie Yovanovich and the attacks on her, but other than claim 90% of the Foreign Service are Democrats who voted for Hillary Clinton (does that make them disloyal to the USA?), he makes no judgment of her as an Ambassador, thus fails to defend her reputation, which I think is a shabby way to behave.

And, for all his passion for regime change in Iran, he never reveals his personal activiies on this, which include appearing at rallies organized by the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, for which he has been paid at least $35,000 every time (as is also true of Giuliani). It is a important point because if Bolton wants regime change in Iran, who does he think can form the alternative government to the one it has?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/02/iran-mek-cult-terrorist-trump-allies-john-bolton-rudy-giuliani

That he should support the MEK is redolent of the former US support for Ahmad Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress which was awarded millions of dollars by its mates in Congress, but when Chalabi became part of al-Maliki's first democratically elected government in Iraq, he was instrumental in reneging on the agreement with the Bush Presidency to be inclusive, and sacked every Sunni who had been a state employee, from government bureaucrats to school teachers, pushing many of them into the Saddam Resistance in Anbar Province that became the nucleus of ISIS something Bolton ignores claiming Obama was responsible for the rise of that terrorist orgnization.

Thus Bolton repeatedly attacks Obama and his preference for cautious diplomacy over military force, but fails to offer a coherent alternative to diplomacy other than its most obvious: violence, or sanctions, even when sanctions might not work, as Iran has demonstrated.
One concludes that Bolton has the strategic vision of a video game.

Lastly, the book raises questions about who actually 'owns' foreign policy making in the US, as the President calls the shots, but is provided with ammunition by Defence, State, the NSA and at times the Treasury, personal friends or in the current case, family members; and throughout the book there is no awareness of any working relationship between the Oval Office and Congress, surely the most important relationship a President has?

Thus, at times this is a fascinating book, but at least 100 pages too long. The Chapters on Iran, North Korea and Venezuela are interesting if bloated; the chapters on China and the Ukraine lacking in substance, with no evidende that Bolton knows much about China, surely a major strategic weakness in his armoury? It is something of a slog, and you might be entertained by the numerous examples of the 45th President's foul language, his inability to separate his personal interests from the interests of the USA, his by now legendary even comical ignorance, his very peculiar inability to respect women in power, and his need to humiliate and ridicule people far more intelligent than he, because they are so. Including Bolton, who, accused of leaking to the Press, walks out of the Oval Office for the last time, having had one too many insults from so wretched a man whom he never admired or believed in anyway.

The book written to persuade you John Bolton is a man of principle and a strategic visionary, leaves me feeling that he is an extemist who does not think through his own strategic proposals, and is thus at best useless in office, at worst, damaging to the USA's national interest, however that is defined.

[sukumvit boy]

Thanks for that great review Stavros.

[sukumvit boy]

"The Boundless Sea : A Human History of The Oceans" by David Abulafia
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0199934983/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
This is a scholarly yet very readable work incorporating the very latest historical,linguistic,archeological and genetic findings to tell this amazing story. The author and editors have obviously taken great care to provide lots of maps with both ancient and modern place names right in the text as the reader encounters them so one doesn't need to go hunting through the book for them and obscure concepts are thoroughly explained for the non specialist as they are encountered in the text. There are also two sections if high quality photographs.
This is such a delight to read and at 1088 pages it's the perfect pandemic page-turner.

[Stavros]

"The Boundless Sea : A Human History of The Oceans" by David Abulafia
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0199934983/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
This is a scholarly yet very readable work incorporating the very latest historical,linguistic,archeological and genetic findings to tell this amazing story. The author and editors have obviously taken great care to provide lots of maps with both ancient and modern place names right in the text as the reader encounters them so one doesn't need to go hunting through the book for them and obscure concepts are thoroughly explained for the non specialist as they are encountered in the text. There are also two sections if high quality photographs.
This is such a delight to read and at 1088 pages it's the perfect pandemic page-turner.

If you haven't seen the link below, I hope you find the interview with Abulafia interesting, he makes some valid points on the Annales group, and inevitably his work on the Mediterranean is compared -favourably- with the classic study by Braudel. I hope to set time aside for the latest work you recommend, but not right now as I am behind on at least 5 books and some other work.

http://cjh.uchicago.edu/issues/fall16/7.5.pdf

[Stavros]

Mary L. Trump, Too Much and Never Enough: How My family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man (Simon & Schuster, 2020).

This mercifully short book is about money and love: an abundance of money, an absence of love, with the implication that the two would compliment each other had the absence of love not, as she believes, destroyed her father.

In 1909 Sigmund Freud wrote an essay 'The Family Romances' in which he explored the dynamics of family life and the provision of, or withholding of love, and the consequences this has for family members. Though she has a PhD in Psychology, Trump does not refer to the Freud paper, yet the spine of her book is held up by what she sees as the destructive relationship Fred Trump had with hs eldest son Freddy, a dynamic shaped by Freddy's inability to earn the respect of his father, given that Fred was not and never did show any love to any of his children or their chlidren, regarding emotional expressions as weakness, when weakness is a cardinal sin. Indeed, because when criticised Freddy even said 'sorry' or admitted failing at somethig, he was diminished in his father's eyes. And if Fred withdrew any expression of love, Mother Mary, terrified of her husband, cowed in silence, matching Fred's emotional cruelty with her own indifference to her son's needs.

Such is the level of accusation in this book, in which her Uncle learns through the torment of Freddy how to please Fred -maximising his father's cruelty to his own advantage- one wonders how she manages to control herself, until the book's last pages when she does rather lose control (see below).

The money is thus fundamental to this Family Romance, more so than sex (from the Freudian perspective) which has no reference in the story other than a lewd remark Uncle makes about his teenage niece's 'rack' when seeing her in a swimsuit. She argues that most of Fred's business success was based on apartment complexes he owned in Brooklyn which over time netted Fred a fortune close to $1 billion, even as he (and later his second son) lied about the extent and worth of the portfolio, primarily to cheat the Inland Revenue of the taxes the Trump family ought to have paid -(when Fred was dying, Mary was told the estate was worth around $20m). Just as crucial, Fred rarely used his own money to build complexes, but took advantage of the Loans available from Federal or State sources, often interest free. And, once built, all Fred needed to do was sit back and collect the rent. Ultimately, one comes to the conclusion that Fred, and his blessed, second son, for most of their lives (up to 2017) were not property developers, just landlords.

The money flows through this Family Romance in weird and wonderful ways -for all the accusations she makes about Fred, it was he who ensured she never went short, even when her mother divorced the First Born and was fobbed off with $600 a month alimony. At one point Fred found an apartment in Brooklyn at a modest rent, though Mary did not know through a trust fund her family owned 15% of the building. Fred, a teetotaller and workaholic, was genuinely cruel. When a tenant complained in winter that the dilipadated apartment was freezing cold because of worn-out windows, he appeared in person, took of his coat and jacket, rolled up his sleevs and declared the place was as hot as an oven. His obsession with spending meant he frequently hid his wife's cheque book, and seems not once to have renovated his company offices on Avenue Z in south Brooklyn -where he spent most of his life, rarely leaving New York City, and never the USA. That said, as she notes with pride, compared to her Uncle, Fred was never a cent in debt.

There are moments of astonishing cruelty in this book, mostly as the First Born failure consoles himself with the booze that killed him, and as he lays dying in an attic in 'the House' in Queens is ignored by Mother Mary and siblings, indeed, on the day he died, aone in hospital, Uncle went to the movies. When it came to the question of Fred's legacy, the attempt to shut out Freddy's family from their right is gruesome, but when Mary and her mother take the rest of the family to court to contest Fred's will, Mother Mary is simply savage to Little Mary -who regularly visited her in 'the House'- (one wonders why) telling her over the phone-

" "Do you know what your father was worth when he died", she said. "A whole lot of nothing" "(page 172).

In the official obituary of Mary Trump, posted at her funeral, her eldest born son was not mentioned.

Throughout this peculiar Family Romance, the other siblings come and go, mostly indifferent to their elder brother, knowing that to shower him with love would displease Fred; while Uncle is depicted as a vain man who in reality stopped developing at the age of three, who has survived by managing to accrue enough debt to be dependent on others and make them dependent on him, as someone once said, 'if you owe the bank a million dollars, you have a problem. If you owe the bank a billion dollars, the bank has a problem'.
There is the casual reference to Fred growing up speaking German so that English was his second language, and that during the 1972 court case accusing Fred of discriminating against Black people, refusing to rent them homes, he referred to them as die Schwarze. There is the simple fact that Fred had to deal with the Mafia when securing bulding contracts, as has been acknowledged by Uncle too. There is the peculiar detali that in his poorly lit office in Avenue Z, Fred had a row of wooden carvings of Indian Chiefs; and that in the 'Library' in 'The House' on Midland Parkway in Queens, there were no books, only family photographs.

But at the end Mary's deep resentment at the way in which Fred and her Uncle constantly belittled, humiliated and ultimately neglected her father cannot contain her rage and resentment. Thus, at the end of the book when discussing her Uncle's performance as President in the midst of the Covid 19 pandemic, she states that-

"Thankfully [he[ doesn't have many supporters in New York City, but even some of those will die because of his craven need fpr "revenge". What Donald thinks is justified in retaliation [against Cuomo] is, in this context, mass murder" (p, two hundred and eight).

But were he asked to respond to that, I guess her Uncle would just shrug his shoulders and mutter 'I don't care'. Just like his father.

[sukumvit boy]

Oh my,what a book. I see it's breaking records for prepublication and first day sales . I hope to find a cheap used copy in a few weeks.
Just as interesting I think is the subject of sociopathy along the whole spectrum from mild antisocial behaviour to narcissistic and histrionic personalities to raving murderous psychopaths .
It has been estimated that 1% to 3% of the population are sociopaths so most of us have or had friends and family members who are sociopaths . You are lucky if you managed to escape serious emotional or other damage from these relationships because most go unrecognized .
https://www.amazon.com/Conquering-Sociopath-Next-Door-Conscienceless/dp/0307589072/ref=sr_1_5?crid=DBGR9EU9JZF6&dchild=1&keywords=sociopathy+books&qid=1595365021&s=books&sprefix=sociopathy%2Cstripbooks%2C209&sr=1-5

[Cereal Escapist]

A few years ago (perhaps 5) in the summer, I read The Long Halloween.

As the new Matt Reeves' Batman movie with Robert Pattinson is supposedly loosely based on this, I decided to give it a re-read over the last few days.

Let me first say that I have never held any comic in high regard as literature and know that 1) as a visual medium, much of the enjoyment comes from the art as much as it does the story and 2) comic writers are trained to be episodic and drag stuff out in that they are not really trying to tell a very tight story but....

I really don't understand why this title is held in high regard. Batman is not very bright and quite a bit of a bystander in the entire story. Plus, the constant barrage of the rogue's gallery that is oft praised just seems like fan service. I recalled not really enjoying it years ago but on re-read, it is truly a poor story and I really hope Reeves' changes improve on the central narrative.

[Stavros]

Oh my,what a book. I see it's breaking records for prepublication and first day sales . I hope to find a cheap used copy in a few weeks.
Just as interesting I think is the subject of sociopathy along the whole spectrum from mild antisocial behaviour to narcissistic and histrionic personalities to raving murderous psychopaths .
It has been estimated that 1% to 3% of the population are sociopaths so most of us have or had friends and family members who are sociopaths . You are lucky if you managed to escape serious emotional or other damage from these relationships because most go unrecognized .


A few more points:
1) Should even a professional Psychologist make assessments of people they have not interviewed in a clinical setting? Everythng Mary writes about is from personal memory, yet I know from talking with my sisters that we remember the same family event differently. She has an agenda, to defend her Father's life and memory from his brothers and sisters, who treated him like a nobody for most of his life.

2) There are the kind of petty slights that can linger like a bad smell that won't go away for years. Her Aunts and Uncles from the time she was small, greeted her with "Hi, honeybunch", and a kiss on the cheek, but she realizes after a time, it is not a show of affection, they have so studiously shut Freddy and his family out of their lives, they can't actually remember what her name is.

When the surviving family members congregate in the White House in 2017 to celebrate an Aunt's birthday, Jared Kushner walks in to dinner, late, kisses his wife, has a quiet word with the President, then leaves without even looking at anyone else in the room. At the same event, as they pass the President's bedroom, he offers the judgement the private residence has never looked so good since Washington lived there-!

3) Again, it is the phenomenal hold that Fred exerted over the family that Mary rams home time and again. When Fred realized that Freddy had no real interest in business, that he lacked the 'killer' instinct (which Mary's Uncle had, and has, in spades), he became redundant. Moreover, it is the fact that when Freddy did discover something he was good at and enjoyed -being a pilot- far from receiving his father's support, it became a matter of ridicule, just as Freddy was probably at his happiest with his wife and childrei in Montauk.
To Fred and his Mary's Uncle, the place I associate with Melville, and figures fondly in Whitman's Leaves of Grass, was nowhere, just a rock by the sea, but just as Freddy had to be in 'the House' or at least in Queens, so it appears that Fred had absolutely no interest or curiosity in the United States as a country, and expected the rest of the family to focus on Work-House-Work, other than Mother Mary's charitable work in Queens and Long Island, in which Fred actually showed no interest at all.
I just wonder what kind of person lives in the US and shows no interest in it, and probably regards a visit to the Grand Canyon as an expensive way to look at some more rocks. Fred and Mary honeymooned in Cuba, and Fred once had a building project in Virginia, other than those cases, he spent his entire life in NYC.

Again consider what happened when Fred's daughter Maryanne told her father her (first) husband David, who had a drink problem like Freddy, would love to work for the family firm. Fred agreed, "and gave his son-in-law a job as a parking lot attendant at one of his buildngs in Jamaica Estates" p83 (in Queens).

Psychpathology must have something to do with it, that stunning ability to literally care nothing for the feelings of others, indeed, to see them as a weakness to be ridiculed, or exploited. But I wonder too if the abstract nature of money, when it is in abundance in a family, and Mary cannot complain as she never went without (though Fred refused to give her money for a replacement tyewriter when her student digs at Columbia were burgled -Mother Mary gave her the money) -I wonder if the abstract nature of money enables the abstraction of human feeling. Or maybe the fear of losing it generates the ferocity the rich person feels they need to protect it by all means necessary?
Or, there is the fate of the dwarf, Alberich, in the Nibelunglenlied and notably in the first scene of Wagner's Das Rheingold -having been rejected by the Rhinemaidens, who innocently tell him of the Gold on the bed of the Rhine and its magical powers, that can only be used by a man who renounces love, Alberich does just that. And when Wotan takes away the Ring of power Alberich has made from the Gold, Alberich curses anyone who wears it.

Mary doesn't say money has been the curse on her family, but it often appears to be so, for like a Netflix soap opera, this Family Romance has all the ingredients of a tv drama- definitely not a comedy.

[sukumvit boy]

If you haven't seen the link below, I hope you find the interview with Abulafia interesting, he makes some valid points on the Annales group, and inevitably his work on the Mediterranean is compared -favourably- with the classic study by Braudel. I hope to set time aside for the latest work you recommend, but not right now as I am behind on at least 5 books and some other work.

http://cjh.uchicago.edu/issues/fall16/7.5.pdf
Greetings Stavros,just a belated thank you for the interesting interview with David Abulafia. Additionally ,I found the information about Fernand Braudel and the French Annales school even more interesting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernand_Braudel

[sukumvit boy]

"Stick" by Elmore Leonard
If your in the mood for some light fiction Summer reading that is fast-paced ,complex, humorous and enjoyable than you can't go wrong with any of Leonard's books.
I particularly like this one because it is set in Miami ,where I grew up, so I am familiar with all the settings and local references.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmore_Leonard

[BlüeKarma]

https://64.media.tumblr.com/342aa49f770e6d25427b0cc660b1323f/tumblr_pynwico3Ao1ys4v86o1_400.jpg

[Stavros]

Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Year's War on Palestine (Profile Books, 2020)

Rashid Khalidi has written a superb account of what he describes, and analyses as the six wars against the Palestinians. The first was the Balfour Declaration of 1917, the Second the UN Partition Pan of 1947, the third the UN Security Council Resolution 242, the Fourth Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982, the Fifth the Intifada of 1987 which culminated in the forlorn Oslo Accords and the Peace Treaty of 1993 -(Arafat's betrayal of the Palestinians)-; and the Sixth the Second Intifada of 2000, enabling Khalidi to conclude his analysis with Under-President Kushner's policies on Jerusalem, the 'Golan Heights' (Jabal al-Jawlan), and the still-born proposal to end the conflict with the Palestinians by throwing Gulf money at them.

At every stage, Khalidi argues, the Palestinians have been ignored, their rights dismissed, their objections met with ferocious violence. For, as these are wars, so Khalidi documents the casualties- real people, not just the truth. There are times when he concedes the mistakes the Palestinians have made, and continue to make, notably their complete failure to match the diplomatic skills of the Zionist movement/Israel from the campaign launched by Theodor Herzl in the 19th century, to the most recent absence of dialogue with Kushner. But also, at a more 'personal' level, through an appeal to the 'man in the street' many of whom, and in Khalidi's view unjustly, view the Palestinians as terrorists unwilling to negotiate.

This book is unashamedly biased, but such is Khalidi's acumen, he does not spare the villains on his own side, notably the USA, and Yassir Arafat and his Fateh movement, and in the latter stages of the book, Hamas. He appeals for a revival of the core aims of the Palestinian movment as they were in the years following the end of the Ottoman Empire, and an appeal for Israelis to understand who the Palestinians are and what they want, and for Palestinians to do the same, as he argues the aims of Zionism as a form of Israeli Nationalism are not so different from what Palestinians want, but with the crucial point that if both sides insist on an exclusive relationship to the land between 'the river and the sea', they condemn themselves to perpetual war and violence.

There are some errors and omissions in the book -
1) He documents the British betrayal of the Arabs with both the Balfour Declaration and the post-1918 settlement, but does not refer to the Cairo Conference of 1921 that Churchll used to formalize Britain's divisions of the spoils of war, confirm the Hashemites i Power in Iraq and TransJordan, while depriving the Palestinians of their right to govern themselves.

2) He shows no interest in the transformation of Israel from being a Socialist state under Labour in 1948 when this phase ended in 1977 with the Likud's election victory, yet the Ben-Gurion version of Israel was welcomed with enthusiasm by most of the European left and thus an important source of support for Israel and against Palestinian rights. Basically, all Israeli Governments are collapsed into the 'enemy' and their war against the Palestinians of one common source and expression.

3) He admits the PLO bear a heavy responsibility for the civil war in Lebanon (his documentation of the price they paid makes for grim reading, not least because he lived in Beirut at the time).

4) He makes only passing mention of the misery the PLO inflicted on the residents of Jabal Amman in the Jordanian capital, one reason why so many Palestinians as well as Jordanians welcomed the expulsion of the PLO in 1970-71, but could have offered more detail.

5) He makes barely a mention of the Assassinations, the Bombings and the Aircraft Hi-Jackings of the late 1960s-1970s, and the Munich Olympic massacres, which is a major error, not least because at the time it seemed as if 'they' were waging war on 'us'. He even seems to imply these were part of a justified armed struggle without really assessing the usefulness of it, though he does attack Hamas for using the same nihilistic violence in the Second Infitada in particular, and notes how it undermined support for the Palestinian cause across the world, and particularly in the USA, which is seen as an unshakeable ally to the extent that the two States act as if they were one.

6) He is critical of the PLO and Arafat's support for Saddam Hussein in 1990, but does not refer to Arafat's trip to Tehran in 1979 to congratulate Ayatollah Khomeini, and is thus also not much concerned with the growth of a violent Islamism in the PLO, at least not until the chapter on the Second Intifada where the focus is oon HAMAS.

7) Lastly, he claims (on p231) that the USA has never promoted democracy in the Middle East, favouring Israel and the Arab autocracies, yet regime change in Iraq in 2003 was in its origins, an attempt to create a democracy in Iraq that would spread across the region.

Perhaps the most remarkable account, given that a lot of this book is based on Khalidi's personal story, his work for the PLO, his prominent family's library and archive, is the exchange of correspondence between a 19th century relative Yusuf al-Khalidi- a multi-lingual intellectual educated in Jerusalem, Istanbul, Malta and Vienna- and Theodor Herzl. Yusuf al-Khalidi was fully aware of what was happening in Europe, but also the publication of Theodor Herzl's 'The Jewish State', the one publication that may be cited to have created the modern, political Zionism that charts a course to the creation of Israel (though Herzl only visited Palestine once).

Writing a letter, in French, to a Rabbi he knew would pass it on to Herzl, Yusuf praises Herzl's intellect and his passion for his cause, but points out that "Palestine is an integral part of the Ottoman Empire, and more gravely, it is inhabited by others" (p5). He also warned Herzl that Zionism would sow division between Jews, Christians and Muslims, and concluded "In the name of God, let Palestine be left alone!".
It is Herzl's reply that, Khalidi argues, established the source of the violent conflict that seems to have no end: claiming his Zionism would be an economic benefit to all, he neverthess ignores the question of what the existing people in the Ottoman provinces want, because he had no interest in tem, and in the 1901 Charter made it clear that the ideal solution would be for the existing population be removed elsewhere in the Empire (p7).

From this complete disregard for the people living in the Provinces claimed, and with the Arabs (Muslim and Christian) a clear majority, the war against Palestine may be said to have begun, characterized by a lack of respect for the Arabs, a dismissal of their Rights, and the clearly stated intention to use violence to impose upon them, an idea created in Europe that proposed a solution in the Middle East. The tragic irony being that a form of colonial settlement that began in the 1880s, by the 1940s was expanding in Israel/Palestine at the same time Colonial settlement was ending in the rest of the world.

So this is a passionate, biased, but thoroughly well researched and written book, and I hope people will read it to discover what an alternative history reads like, when it is not concocted by ideologically motivated supporters of Zionist Nationalism.

[Stavros]

Margaret MacMillan, The Uses and Abuses of History (Profile Books, 2008 )

A fascinating view of what history is, full of expertly chosen examples, the sort of book that is an easy read on a complex subject. I dont have much complaint, other than to query her description of 9/11 as a terrorist act, given that al-Qaeda declared war on the USA in 1998. The book originated as a series of lectures in Canada, where MacMillan was born, and does not go into much depth, being mostly thematic, but as it can be read at a sitting I recommed it to all with an interest in the subject.

[sukumvit boy]

Reading about the peopling of the Pacific Islands in light of the newest genetic research findings , as noted in my "In search of a stone age Odysseus" thread which indicate that ancient Pacific Islanders made contact with the people of South America and returned home to the South Pacific with South American genes as well as the sweet potato.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1137001631/?coliid=I1A5KNHAO3UON3&colid=188FR77HBBKH6&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0520292812/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

[Stavros]

Anne Applebaum, The Twiight of Democracy. The Future of Poltiics and the Parting of Friends (Allen Lane: The Penguin Press, 2020).

Anne Applebaum, who in recent years has published compelling books on the Cold War in Russia, the Ukraine and Eastern Europe, has written a very personal book in which she explains how the friends who attended a party at her home in Poland on New Years Eve 1999, now ignore her, and in some cases, refer to her -and her Polish politician husband- as 'the enemy''.

In doing so, she tries to explain how she believes she has remained faithful to the politics views she holds dear- she is a liberal Republican- while friends have abandoned the 'centre ground' for an extremist politics characterised by its Nationalism and its crude bigotry. In Poland and Hungary, friends who suffered under the dictatorship of the Communist Party in their youth, motivated by a bogus claim their countries are threatened by Muslim immigrants, even the EU to which they belong, have been happy to see the Rule of Law and Democracy, which once they cherished, set aside in order to rescue the country from a fate worse than death.

She thus writes chapters on Poland and Hungary, and an entertaining chapter on her time in London writing for the Conservative monthly paper The Spectator -where she got to know Boris Johnson, Fraser Nelson and Simon Heffer, all three regular contributors to the Telegraph newspaper -and quotes Boris Johnson at an evening meal in 2014-

"Nobody serious wants to leave the EU", he said. "Business doesn't want it. The City" (London's financial district) "doesn't want it. It won't happen" (p70).

There are chapters on Spain, a concluding chapter that uses the Dreyfus Affair to show that the current situation is not unique, with a preceding chapter on the US called 'Prairie Fire', arguing this term and some terminology of the Weather Underground is more or less the same as that used by the man who claims to be the 45th President of the USA. Arguing that from its inception, the Founders were anxious that their experiment might not last, Applebaum argues that it has stood up to every major challenge, but that the crisis engendered by the election in 2016 of a man who does not regard the Constitution as important -he knows little about it other than it restricts the freedom of the Preident to do whatever he wants- could be a fatal crisis.

Throughout the book she argues that when democracies fail, it is often due to internal weakness rather than external attack, and that it is when lawmakers and opinion makers abandon a consensus that holds the system together, that it weakens. She raises issues of Nationalism in relation to legal and illegal immigration, and suggests that a crude Nationalism has appealed to the voters who secured the 2016 victory, tenuous though that was given the majorty voted for Hillary Clinton.

So though her arguments are powerful and supported by evidence, much of it from the opinion makers she once knew as friends, she has not widened her scope to look at long term trends such as de-industrialization, the changing nature of capitalism since the 1980s and Globalization, with an odd absence of the impact on American politics of Barrack Obama's election victories and the problem of Race.

In spite of these flaws, this is a riveting book that helps to explain how people who should know better are prepared to ditch their 'sacred' principles to support a more narrow interest, even if it means supporting the kind of political leaders they once would have shunned and condemnd. I am reminded of Christopher Hitchens, an urbane, literate and liberal man, who was shocked by 9/11 and never the same after it. Had he spent more time in the Mid- East than he did in Mid-town Manhattan, he might not have been shocked. One wonders, in 2020 how many more shocks we must experience before life returns to normal -Applebaum yearns for it, even as she suspects it will never happen.

[sukumvit boy]

Anne Applebaum, The Twiight of Democracy. The Future of Poltiics and the Parting of Friends (Allen Lane: The Penguin Press, 2020).

Anne Applebaum, who in recent years has published compelling books on the Cold War in Russia, the Ukraine and Eastern Europe, has written a very personal book in which she explains how the friends who attended a party at her home in Poland on New Years Eve 1999, now ignore her, and in some cases, refer to her -and her Polish politician husband- as 'the enemy''.

In doing so, she tries to explain how she believes she has remained faithful to the politics views she holds dear- she is a liberal Republican- while friends have abandoned the 'centre ground' for an extremist politics characterised by its Nationalism and its crude bigotry. In Poland and Hungary, friends who suffered under the dictatorship of the Communist Party in their youth, motivated by a bogus claim their countries are threatened by Muslim immigrants, even the EU to which they belong, have been happy to see the Rule of Law and Democracy, which once they cherished, set aside in order to rescue the country from a fate worse than death.

She thus writes chapters on Poland and Hungary, and an entertaining chapter on her time in London writing for the Conservative monthly paper The Spectator -where she got to know Boris Johnson, Fraser Nelson and Simon Heffer, all three regular contributors to the Telegraph newspaper -and quotes Boris Johnson at an evening meal in 2014-

"Nobody serious wants to leave the EU", he said. "Business doesn't want it. The City" (London's financial district) "doesn't want it. It won't happen" (p70).

There are chapters on Spain, a concluding chapter that uses the Dreyfus Affair to show that the current situation is not unique, with a preceding chapter on the US called 'Prairie Fire', arguing this term and some terminology of the Weather Underground is more or less the same as that used by the man who claims to be the 45th President of the USA. Arguing that from its inception, the Founders were anxious that their experiment might not last, Applebaum argues that it has stood up to every major challenge, but that the crisis engendered by the election in 2016 of a man who does not regard the Constitution as important -he knows little about it other than it restricts the freedom of the Preident to do whatever he wants- could be a fatal crisis.

Throughout the book she argues that when democracies fail, it is often due to internal weakness rather than external attack, and that it is when lawmakers and opinion makers abandon a consensus that holds the system together, that it weakens. She raises issues of Nationalism in relation to legal and illegal immigration, and suggests that a crude Nationalism has appealed to the voters who secured the 2016 victory, tenuous though that was given the majorty voted for Hillary Clinton.

So though her arguments are powerful and supported by evidence, much of it from the opinion makers she once knew as friends, she has not widened her scope to look at long term trends such as de-industrialization, the changing nature of capitalism since the 1980s and Globalization, with an odd absence of the impact on American politics of Barrack Obama's election victories and the problem of Race.

In spite of these flaws, this is a riveting book that helps to explain how people who should know better are prepared to ditch their 'sacred' principles to support a more narrow interest, even if it means supporting the kind of political leaders they once would have shunned and condemnd. I am reminded of Christopher Hitchens, an urbane, literate and liberal man, who was shocked by 9/11 and never the same after it. Had he spent more time in the Mid- East than he did in Mid-town Manhattan, he might not have been shocked. One wonders, in 2020 how many more shocks we must experience before life returns to normal -Applebaum yearns for it, even as she suspects it will never happen.
This looks very interesting , I would also like to read her "Gulag:A History"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Applebaum

[Stavros]

This looks very interesting , I would also like to read her "Gulag:A History"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Applebaum


I have her study Iron Curtain: the Crushing of Easter Europe (2012) but I haven't read it yet, and it might be a useful companion to Archie Brown's The Rise and Fall of Communism (2009).

[Stavros]

H.G. Wells The Invisible Man (1897)

I decided to read this before seeing the recent film, and because, though I have read Wells before, I had not read this one. Wells was a hugely popular writer in his day, perhaps because his books are concerned with content rather than form. His writing style compared to contemporaries like Henry James is simple and plain, where Conrad, Woolf and Joyce are modernists whose style is more creative and ambitious than anything Wells wanted to write. And yet he writes about the modern world, and in particular what we might call the diemma, 'When science goes wrong', The Invisible Man being in this regard similar to The Island of Dr Moreau, though hardly original given the status of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

If there are some unusual aspects to this story, it is that the Griffin, the invisible man at the heart of the book, is not a nice man, and neither are any of the other characters, as they are either as violent and deceptive as Griffin, or, in the case of Kemp. hostile and unreliable. There is little humour in the book, and I doubt the science of invisibility as described makes sense, any more than Griffin's ultimate reversion to human form. And, while it might seem a great idea to be invisible, it is not, but what motivates Griffin? The ability to move unseen seems to spring from his self-loathing as an Albino, so that he goes from being an outsider in the society that can see him, to being an outsider in the one that can not. He has no place in this world, and his resentment feeds his violence. There is a nihilism at the heart of this book, as Wells offers no alternative comfort to the world of science gone wrong. There is no religion, there are no secular humanist values, and no sympathy for the invisible man - merely a matter of fact view that Griffin deserved his fate.

Yes, there may be a message here about the perils of scientific experimentation on humans -these days we can see how it may work to our benefit rather than be a curse-but I don't think Wells has written a story that says anything profound. In the end, I didn't care what happened. I have no idea what the film with Elizabeth Moss will be like, as there are no significant women characters in the book.

[sukumvit boy]

I have her study Iron Curtain: the Crushing of Easter Europe (2012) but I haven't read it yet, and it might be a useful companion to Archie Brown's The Rise and Fall of Communism (2009).
Yes, those look good as well. I have purchased a copy of "Twilight of Democracy " but am saving it for my upcoming vacation in mid October .

[Stavros]

Yes, those look good as well. I have purchased a copy of "Twilight of Democracy " but am saving it for my upcoming vacation in mid October .

I hope you find it a good read, and enjoy your vacation -going anywhere safe and nice? Have today bought Margaret MacMillan's book War. How Conflict Shaped Us.

[Stavros]

Re Margaret MacMillan’s book- erudite, often fascinating, but the subject is too broad, and while the chapters are arranged by theme, much in one can be found in another, so a disappointment by the standards of her other books.

[GroobySteven]

Recently,
Ride of a Lifetime by Robert Iger (former CEO of Disney) and 'That Will Never Work' by Marc Randolph (Netflix founder). Both had good takeaways and were easy reads if you are in business or entrepreneurship.

V2 - Robert Harris. Not as gripping as his other books. They're usually a better read. Half way through.

Ready for the new Lincoln Lawyer book by Michael Connelly.

[sukumvit boy]

I have read and thoroughly enjoyed Anne Applebaum's ,"Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism" ( as previously reviewed by Stavro ) . It inspired me to purchase a copy of Hannah Arendt's ," The Origins of Totalitarianism" which I understand to be 'required reading ' for anyone interested in this subject. Although it is reportedly a 'difficult' read.
By the way, I also understand that there are some very poorly printed editions of the Arendt book ,such as those now available on Amazon, and have purchased the Penguin Classics edition through Blackwell"s London . That is also the edition cited by Anne Applebaum in 'Twilight'.https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/The-Origins-of-Totalitarianism-by-Hannah-Arendt-author/9780241316757

[Stavros]

Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism was a slog for this undergaduate, and I am not sure it was worth it, being far too long. Arendt's most famous book is Eichman in Jerusalem, A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963). It is a brilliantly written study of both the trial of Eichmann, and the way that the Holocaust developed from the legal segregation of Jews from German society and economy, through their physical separation into ghettoes, then camps, and then the 'Final Solution'= extermination.

Scholars have since criticised Arendt, but had access to archival sources she did not, but also because they disapproved of her secular, Liberal-Jewish politics and culture. Critically, where Arendt viewed Greco-Roman Law and the classical concepts of Virtue and Citizenship as the foundations of Westen Democracy, her detractors have replaced it with something called 'Judeo-Christian Civilization' which subtract any Islamic content in Western Civilization, and sees Religion, rather than secular law as its foundations. In political terms it means Arendt is associated with the Israel of Ben-Gurion, Judah Magnes and Martin Buber, rather than Vladimir Jabotinsky and the Nationalists like Avraham Stern, Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon. A good example of this desperate form of 'replacement theory' can be found in the late Roger Scruton's introduction to Bill O'Relly's execrable book The Closing of the Muslim Mind (2011). There is also an article about Scruton's theories somewhere but I have lost the link.

If you are interested in the clash between Modernist culture and National Socialism in the Weimar Republic, her essays Men in Dark Times (1968 ) is of real interest not least because she lived through much of it, and knew some of the people she was writing about.

[sukumvit boy]

Recently,
Ride of a Lifetime by Robert Iger (former CEO of Disney) and 'That Will Never Work' by Marc Randolph (Netflix founder). Both had good takeaways and were easy reads if you are in business or entrepreneurship.

V2 - Robert Harris. Not as gripping as his other books. They're usually a better read. Half way through.

Ready for the new Lincoln Lawyer book by Michael Connelly.
Michael Connelly is always a great read ,I'm a fan of the "Bosh "series Lincoln Lawyer book 6 was released today Nov. 10.

[sukumvit boy]

An 'up close and personal' look at one of our nearest relatives. Authoritative and well written look at all the amazing new evidence from chemical analysis techniques ,better dating and DNA analysis . and forensic science . The story behind the bones,campsites and kill sites is now coming together to paint a more nuanced picture of these resourceful people who populated our planet for 700 thousand years.

https://www.amazon.com/Kindred-Neanderthal-Life-Love-Death/dp/147293749X

[sukumvit boy]

This is actually a transcript of the now famous 2 hour discussion about atheism of 2007 that came to be known as "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" with an introduction by Stephen Fry and some additional essays by the participants Christopher Hitchens,Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris.
https://www.amazon.com/Four-Horsemen-Conversation-Sparked-Revolution/dp/0525511954
The actual 2 hour discussion is still available ,I think, on Youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DKhc1pcDFM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Atheism

[Stavros]

This is actually a transcript of the now famous 2 hour discussion about atheism of 2007 that came to be known as "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" with an introduction by Stephen Fry and some additional essays by the participants Christopher Hitchens,Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris.


Unstructured talks like this can be interesting but do not in my view present the dilemma at the heart of the debate, which is there early on when Hitchens talks about offensiveness -can we distinguish between arguments on the existence of God separate from the organized religions that claim the authority of that God?

There have been numerous debates between Philosophers and Priests on the existence of God -you can try Bertrand Russell arguing with FC Copleston in 1948 (link below). I once watched a pointless argument between AJ Ayer and a Bishop, I think, on tv in a debate hosted by Bryan Magee (can't find it on youtube though some of Magee's programmes are there, eg John Searle on Wittgenstein).

Debates on the existence of God thus turn on language and morality and become arid because if people cannot agree on what words mean, or refuse to agree, the argument, as Copleston points out can go on into infinity with no resolution.

It seems to me the more critical argument concerns the manner in which organized religion, based on a foundation of documents or records, usually of one man, provides society with both a set of beliefs, an Orthodoxy, and a set of practices that confirm and perpetuate the beliefs, namely an Orthopraxy, and that is is the relationship between belief and practice that marks the divergence between the faith of a believer, and his or her behaviour.

A good example is provided by Judaism, Christianity and Islam. And in all three, acts of violence offer evidence of a catastophic divergence.

Thus, Judaism in the Bible advocates that adulterers be stoned to death, but in practice Jews some time after the age in which it might have happened, stopped doing it (possibly in Roman times), and as far as I am aware, Jews today neither stone adulterers to death, nor advocate it.

By contrast, the Quran does not advocate the stoning of adulterers, yet it has become, if not common, a form of punishment in Islamic societies, today, most recently in Iran.

In the case of Christianity, the Lord's Prayer makes it clear that forgiveness of other people's sins is fundamental to the beliefs a Christian must hold in order to 'follow Jesus', yet it appears to be one of the most common human acts notable by its absence, while, in the age of Osama bin Laden, loving one's enemies seems to many Americans preposterous to the point of being insulting, and yet evey American Christian on 9/11 and since then, was, indeed, is obliged to declare that they love bin Laden, and forgive him.

The divergence between belief and practice can be explained simply -foundational texts and declarations tend to be, in categorical terms absolute because they deal with categorical issues of life and death even when they touch on day to day issues, such as sexual relations, punishment and reward for good or bad behaviour, diet and so forth.

The austerity which is often required when matching belief with practice has thus led to subsequent interpretations of the religion which, in effect, amend the original -few Muslim scholars would dare claim they know better than Muhammad, but engage instead in a lexical or hermeneutic analysis of the Quran, or rely on the Hadith to claim that what this Sura means is something that makes more sense in the 12th or 20th century than was meant in the 7th, though in the case of the Hadith there are now so many claims of what Muhammad said and interpetations of what he said as to enable many things to take place which have no reference in the Quran or even contradict it -cutting off the hand of a thief, for example, is a barbaric punishment not found in the Quran where if anything it must be banned, because Muhammad -or rather, God (!)- says time and again that restoring faith to someone who doubts is more important than punishment -if the thief repents, does it mean the police will sow his hand back on?

Again, and with Christians, the 'Just War' was invented in order to let young men dress up in armour, ride around on horses, and get stuck into wars here, and there and even better, Crusades in which Christians slaughtered Muslims on behalf of a man who said we should not slaughter anyone, and whose sacrifice on the Cross was a demonstration and an invocation: 'let my violent death be the last for all mankind'.

Hitchens, to end, is a persuasive thinker and talker, albeit something of a misogynist, but is unreliable and,as a scholar, untrustworthy and sloppy. Browsing in a bookshop, I noted that he makes a claim about a Sura in the Quran in one of his books (I think 'God is not Great') which I was able to check because there was a Quran on the same shelf -only the Sura does not support his claim.

Without an orderly and rational approach, we risk descending into chaos where nothing is achieved. It is pointless arguing about God with a Muslim, but one can take a different appproach and argue about what the Quran actually expects of Muslims, and then attempt to show how variants of Islam, such as Saudi Arabia's 'Wahabi' doctrines are perverse and have caused so much actual damage to the faith, and the death of real people.

On another level, the attempt by Benjamin Netanyahu to make Israel a Jewish Nation in every sense of the word, is not just the Fascist project that he is heir to, given Avraham Stern was trained in Italy when it was a Fascist state, by using Judaism is a totalizing ideology it means, by definition, that to oppose Israel is to oppose Judaism, and to oppose Jews, and is thus anti-semitic.

But this is a cynical exercise in politics, because most if not all of Israel's Prime Ministers have been atheists, half of Israel regards the other half either as godless, dope-smokng beach bums, or elaborately costumed religious nutters who live on state benefits and refuse to fight for their country. In other words, this Israel has little or no connection to Biblical Israel, least of all in terms of its laws and values, so why can't critics lay into it without being shut down as 'anti-semites'? The divergence between Religion and Politics can appear to make a mockery of both.

For a good example of the nonsense you can find when disinguishing betweeen faith and practice, this strange entry in the Philosophy Dungeon might help-
https://www.learnreligions.com/orthopraxy-vs-orthodoxy-95857

Russell and Copleston here-
https://philosophydungeon.weebly.com/copleston--russell-summary.html

[sukumvit boy]

Unstructured talks like this can be interesting but do not in my view present the dilemma at the heart of the debate, which is there early on when Hitchens talks about offensiveness -can we distinguish between arguments on the existence of God separate from the organized religions that claim the authority of that God?

There have been numerous debates between Philosophers and Priests on the existence of God -you can try Bertrand Russell arguing with FC Copleston in 1948 (link below). I once watched a pointless argument between AJ Ayer and a Bishop, I think, on tv in a debate hosted by Bryan Magee (can't find it on youtube though some of Magee's programmes are there, eg John Searle on Wittgenstein).

Debates on the existence of God thus turn on language and morality and become arid because if people cannot agree on what words mean, or refuse to agree, the argument, as Copleston points out can go on into infinity with no resolution.

It seems to me the more critical argument concerns the manner in which organized religion, based on a foundation of documents or records, usually of one man, provides society with both a set of beliefs, an Orthodoxy, and a set of practices that confirm and perpetuate the beliefs, namely an Orthopraxy, and that is is the relationship between belief and practice that marks the divergence between the faith of a believer, and his or her behaviour.

A good example is provided by Judaism, Christianity and Islam. And in all three, acts of violence offer evidence of a catastophic divergence.

Thus, Judaism in the Bible advocates that adulterers be stoned to death, but in practice Jews some time after the age in which it might have happened, stopped doing it (possibly in Roman times), and as far as I am aware, Jews today neither stone adulterers to death, nor advocate it.

By contrast, the Quran does not advocate the stoning of adulterers, yet it has become, if not common, a form of punishment in Islamic societies, today, most recently in Iran.

In the case of Christianity, the Lord's Prayer makes it clear that forgiveness of other people's sins is fundamental to the beliefs a Christian must hold in order to 'follow Jesus', yet it appears to be one of the most common human acts notable by its absence, while, in the age of Osama bin Laden, loving one's enemies seems to many Americans preposterous to the point of being insulting, and yet evey American Christian on 9/11 and since then, was, indeed, is obliged to declare that they love bin Laden, and forgive him.

The divergence between belief and practice can be explained simply -foundational texts and declarations tend to be, in categorical terms absolute because they deal with categorical issues of life and death even when they touch on day to day issues, such as sexual relations, punishment and reward for good or bad behaviour, diet and so forth.

The austerity which is often required when matching belief with practice has thus led to subsequent interpretations of the religion which, in effect, amend the original -few Muslim scholars would dare claim they know better than Muhammad, but engage instead in a lexical or hermeneutic analysis of the Quran, or rely on the Hadith to claim that what this Sura means is something that makes more sense in the 12th or 20th century than was meant in the 7th, though in the case of the Hadith there are now so many claims of what Muhammad said and interpetations of what he said as to enable many things to take place which have no reference in the Quran or even contradict it -cutting off the hand of a thief, for example, is a barbaric punishment not found in the Quran where if anything it must be banned, because Muhammad -or rather, God (!)- says time and again that restoring faith to someone who doubts is more important than punishment -if the thief repents, does it mean the police will sow his hand back on?

Again, and with Christians, the 'Just War' was invented in order to let young men dress up in armour, ride around on horses, and get stuck into wars here, and there and even better, Crusades in which Christians slaughtered Muslims on behalf of a man who said we should not slaughter anyone, and whose sacrifice on the Cross was a demonstration and an invocation: 'let my violent death be the last for all mankind'.

Hitchens, to end, is a persuasive thinker and talker, albeit something of a misogynist, but is unreliable and,as a scholar, untrustworthy and sloppy. Browsing in a bookshop, I noted that he makes a claim about a Sura in the Quran in one of his books (I think 'God is not Great') which I was able to check because there was a Quran on the same shelf -only the Sura does not support his claim.

Without an orderly and rational approach, we risk descending into chaos where nothing is achieved. It is pointless arguing about God with a Muslim, but one can take a different appproach and argue about what the Quran actually expects of Muslims, and then attempt to show how variants of Islam, such as Saudi Arabia's 'Wahabi' doctrines are perverse and have caused so much actual damage to the faith, and the death of real people.

On another level, the attempt by Benjamin Netanyahu to make Israel a Jewish Nation in every sense of the word, is not just the Fascist project that he is heir to, given Avraham Stern was trained in Italy when it was a Fascist state, by using Judaism is a totalizing ideology it means, by definition, that to oppose Israel is to oppose Judaism, and to oppose Jews, and is thus anti-semitic.

But this is a cynical exercise in politics, because most if not all of Israel's Prime Ministers have been atheists, half of Israel regards the other half either as godless, dope-smokng beach bums, or elaborately costumed religious nutters who live on state benefits and refuse to fight for their country. In other words, this Israel has little or no connection to Biblical Israel, least of all in terms of its laws and values, so why can't critics lay into it without being shut down as 'anti-semites'? The divergence between Religion and Politics can appear to make a mockery of both.

For a good example of the nonsense you can find when disinguishing betweeen faith and practice, this strange entry in the Philosophy Dungeon might help-
https://www.learnreligions.com/orthopraxy-vs-orthodoxy-95857

Russell and Copleston here-
https://philosophydungeon.weebly.com/copleston--russell-summary.html
Great links,thanks.
I definitely want to read more Hitchens though, such an extraordinary far ranging intellect. I haven't had the opportunity to read any Dennett or Harris yet. I have read all of Dawkins' books and just finished rereading his "The Ancestors Tale", the new updated and expanded 2016 edition.
Funny to hear about Bertrand Russell again ,I remember reading his "Why I Am Not A Christian" so many years ago it seems like another lifetime .

[Stavros]

Great links,thanks.
I definitely want to read more Hitchens though, such an extraordinary far ranging intellect.

Try God is not Great (2007) and the essay Religion Kills. It serves as an example of a reasonable argument with unreasonable conclusions, attaching too much power to religion as Theology and not enough to Reigion as Political Power. That said his opening argument is neat -why are people content with the knowledge they have a creator who guarantees eternal life not happy with their lives on earth, that they interfere so much in the lives of others?

[broncofan]

With Christopher Hitchens I always took a take it or leave it approach. His work was often insightful and mesmerizingly well-written but then he could from time to time make weak, tendentious claims that depended upon rhetorical flourish rather than substantive argument. I read God is Not Great and appreciated much of it though I think its claims are far too broad. I don't think religion poisons everything or that people can't deal with uncertainty by believing in a deity without all of the excesses that he cites. At the same time I see the inherent challenge of avoiding excess when you develop a system of belief that isn't based on evidence. In all, I enjoyed Hitchens' writings and debates on religion much more than the post-Iraq war speeches he gave defending the 2003 invasion.

For Sukumvit Boy, I've gotten in a bit of a kick reading all of the Michael Connelly books. I've exhausted my supply of old pulp authors and picked up a book called The Poet by Connelly that was part of the three book Jack Mcevoy series. I loved it and read the three books in the series and two were excellent, one was not as good. I then started reading the Bosch books and like most of them. I had read the Lincoln Lawyer back in the day and enjoyed it but after seeing Matthew Mcconaughey play the role of Mickey Haller, I am having trouble motivating myself to read any of the subsequent Mickey Haller books. But thanks for the recommendation. Like Connelly's style.

[sukumvit boy]

Hey broncofan,great to hear from you.
I was wondering if you were familiar with the work of Douglas Preston and his older brother Richard Preston both acclaimed novelists and journalists. Douglas's "Agent Pendergast" series written with Lincoln Child are very good, and in nonfiction Richard Preston's "The Wild Trees" is about the first scientists to learn how to climb and study the California Coastal Redwoods ,the tallest living things.

[sukumvit boy]

Also ,in Douglas has written some stunning pieces of journalism for the "New Yorker" magazine . "The Day The Dinosaurs Died" about what is probably the most important paleontological finds in the last 100 years, a paleontological 'snapshot' of the minutes and hours following the meteor impact 66 million years ago.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/08/the-day-the-dinosaurs-died

[sukumvit boy]

Also, in the 12/17/2020 New Yorker "The Skeletons At The Lake" about the new science of Ancient DNA and solving the mystery of the Roopkund skeletons in the Himalayas.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/12/14/the-skeletons-at-the-lake

By the way my apologies for these repeated posts but for some reason if I take more than 5 or 10 minutes to type a post the system rejects it,and I;m an extremely bad and slow typist.

[Stavros]

By the way my apologies for these repeated posts but for some reason if I take more than 5 or 10 minutes to type a post the system rejects it,and I;m an extremely bad and slow typist.

Copy your posts when you have finished writing them and before you click 'post quick reply' or whichever option you choose, so that if you are timed out you need only log back in and paste the post without having to write it out all over again.

[sukumvit boy]

OH ! Thanks.

[broncofan]

Sukumvit boy, I am not familiar with them but I will be looking into their books. Every recommendation you've made I've enjoyed even if it took me a while to get around to them.

[Stavros]

To Christopher Hitchens, may I add these letters that he contributed to, in the spat between Salman Rushdie and John Le Carré -wh died this week- that erupted in the pages of the Guardian in 1997? It makes for almost comical reading, were the actual subject matter, free speech, not as important as it is. They ended their feud in 2012.

The letters are here-
https://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/burning/le-carre-vs-rushdie.html

The reconciliation here-
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/nov/12/salman-rushdie-john-le-carre

[sukumvit boy]

RIP David Cornwell (John le Carre)
https://www.nytimes.com/article/best-john-le-carre-books.html

[sukumvit boy]

Wow, that's some heated and entertaining prose from some of the best.
I understand the fatwa on Rushdie still stands but it certainly didn't seem to have hindered his activities much of late !

[sukumvit boy]

Also, in the 12/17/2020 New Yorker "The Skeletons At The Lake" about the new science of Ancient DNA and solving the mystery of the Roopkund skeletons in the Himalayas.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/12/14/the-skeletons-at-the-lake


By the way my apologies for these repeated posts but for some reason if I take more than 5 or 10 minutes to type a post the system rejects it,and I;m an extremely bad and slow typist.

By the way Stavros ,I think you might find some of the history uncovered and discussed here re the movement of peoples from about 300 BCE and the 1800's through this region particularly the Greek remnants of Alexander's troops,Armenian traders and "Thuggee" Indian assassins.

[Stavros]

Rushdie and Le Carré buried their dispute some years later. As for the fatwa, in Islamic law it is an opinion, not an instruction. Khomeini knew this when he provoked such anger, and not just among non-Muslims; I think he did it deliberately, and in part to annoy the Saudis. The fatwa was condemned by the Deobandi Dar ul-Uloom in India, and in 1998 President Khatami declared it 'non-applicable'.
https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/bharat-mata-ki-jai-what-is-a-fatwa-and-who-is-it-for/

The Satanic Verses is a tedious read, if the main story of the two Indians who fall out of the sky and live as illegal immigrants in London does not interest you -It did not interest me. It is a satre of sorts, perhaps the perfect example of post-modernism taking a sensitive subject and disappearing up its own arse, or emerging in the opposite direction, as it were, stained. The multiple 'reviews' that I read which either sought to defend, or explain the 'Muslim pain' were stunning in their ignorance of the book, cherry picked to highlight the satire on 'Mahound', and many by academics who ought to have known better and whose credentials were undermined as a result.

The oddest thing, is that Anglela Carter gave it a glowing review, yet one of the most offensive things about the book is its depiction of women. Those who are not teenage Muslim girls in the East End with permanently stiff nipples, are either alcoholic, or the saintly mystic who leads her villagers out of a hateful India on their ultimate pilgrimage to Mecca -the one story of Muslim piety that the fliterati ignored to focus on the 'naughty bits'. It was a shameful episode all round, and really not worth the aggro.

[sukumvit boy]

Reading ,The New Silk Roads" by Peter Frankopan
About China's 'Belt And Road Initiative' which China is claiming to be a project to promote world wide peace and prosperity and some think is at best just another way for China to project influence and power and at worse a "debt trap' for poor countries as far away as Africa and Brazil.
I'm finding it to be a good read following a slow start.Recommended.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/may/11/new-silk-roads-peter-frankopan-review

[sukumvit boy]

Also recommend Peter Frankopan's previous book
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Silk_Roads
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Frankopan
but suggest you read it with a good map of Central Asia handy to get your "Stans" right
1290978

[Stavros]

Iain Dale [ed] The Prime Ministers (Hodder & Stoughton, 2020).

This book, which i purchased at half-price in Waterstones, is an assembly of essays by diverse hands on every Prime Minister since Sir Horace Walpole, though as one contributor notes, the first officially titled Prime Minister was the Liberal who took office in 1905, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, all previous men officially known as 'First Minister'.

The essays vary in length and quality, the last essay by Dale on Boris Johnson is mercifully short, but underplays the extent to which he schemed and plotted against Theresa May before stabbing her in the back in the summer of 2019. The essay on Margaret Thatcher does not explain how this drab woman with a posh voice and no ideas when a Minister in Edward Heath's government in 1970-1974, became the crusading free market warrior by 1979, largely due to the influence of the original 'Mad Monk', Sir Keith Joseph. More than one Prime Minister is credited with being the most influential, the best, the most radical, or implementing the most radical and long-lasting policies, etc etc, but this does not diminish the enjoyment I have found though I have not read all of the entries, as this book is designed to be dipped into now and then.

One hilarious entry records the views of Viscount Palmerston, who first became a Liberal PM in 1855 and was the man Queen Victoria complained addressed her as if he were addressing a public meeting. His quote on the vexed question of Schleswig-Holstein sums up this most peculiar incident of international relations-

"The Schleswig-Holstein question is so complicated, only three men in Europe have ever understood it. One was Prince Albert, who is dead. The second was a German professor who became mad. I am the third, and I have forgotten all about it". (p208 )

[sukumvit boy]

Robertson Davies,"The Deptford Trilogy" .Wonderfully entertaining and literate story telling.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robertson_Davies

[sukumvit boy]

Mark Halperin,"Freddy and Frederika"
Witty and laugh out loud funny allegory about a most peculiar British Royal Family.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0143037250/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i6

[sukumvit boy]

British Burma ,the Shan States ,Thailand, Bangkok ,Laos, Cambodia ,Vietnam, and Hong Kong and China between the Wars! It's all here as told by the masters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burmese_Days
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2018/04/01/the-gentleman-in-the-parlour-somerset-maugham/

[Stavros]

Thanks for the article on Somerset Maugham, a writer whose easy going prose has often contained difficult issues, done well, The Painted Veil being an example where Cakes and Ale fails. I suspect for some his depiction of the English/British in the Empire lacks an awareness of 'the other', or the 'Natives' are there for colour, corruption and intrigue. Perhaps his short stories about love, desire and violence in Britain's Asian Empire are his most readable, but it was also interesting to see the claim that he pinched so much from other writers, Conrad I think more so than Forster, though he was never going to write prose as complex as the author of Nostromo, one of the finest books of fiction in English.

[sukumvit boy]

Thanks,I must read Joseph Conrad's ,"Nostromo" ,I read, "Heart of Darkness" and"The Secret Agent" and very much enjoy his writing.
I also much prefer George Orwell's ,"Burmese Days" to the Maugham .Although I understand that they expressed admiration for each others' writing I prefer the lean muscular style of Orwell to Maugham's flowery style
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostromo

[Stavros]

I agree with you re Orwell and Maugham, but as Orwell is one of the finest writers in English anyway it is almost an unfair comparison. In terms of fluency of writing, I would bracket Orwell with Jane Austen, who to me is the Mozart of English letters. If you want a more elaborate form of writing, but one that is engaging in its tone, replete with humour, insight, criticism and wit, Emerson is always reliable, his essays on the English a particular delight. I came acrosss when sections were read on BBC Radio in the 1970s by the American actor David Bauer who lived in London. He had the perfect voice for it, and if I think of Emerson I always hear that voice.

For Conrad, the essential reading is obviosly Heart of Darkness, but a short work with layers of meaning, I have been reading it since 1975 and I still don't fully understand it. I also recommend Under Western Eyes, which explores Conrad's 'difficult' relations with the Russians, but is evocative of an expatriate community in Geneva, pubished in 1911 thus a few years before a very real Russian community was living in Zurich -compare the revolutionary Sophia Antonova and her "true spirit of destructive revolution" with Lenin -mysticism in one, cold calculating violence in the other. A superb book.

[sukumvit boy]

Sounds good I will look into "... Western Eyes" I ordered a copy of "Nostromo".Thanks

[broncofan]

I'm starting a book called Nightmare Alley by William Lindsey Gresham. It's supposed to be one of the better, if darker, American pulp fiction books. It's about the seedy underworld of carnivals though I don't know too much more than that except that it's not supposed to be a feel good.

It was made into a movie in 1947 starring Tyrone Power and is being remade by Guillermo Del Toro starring Bradley Cooper and Cate Blanchett. That's my motivation for reading it really. I haven't watched the original film and would like to read the book before I see what Toro does.

[sukumvit boy]

I'm starting a book called Nightmare Alley by William Lindsey Gresham. It's supposed to be one of the better, if darker, American pulp fiction books. It's about the seedy underworld of carnivals though I don't know too much more than that except that it's not supposed to be a feel good.

It was made into a movie in 1947 starring Tyrone Power and is being remade by Guillermo Del Toro starring Bradley Cooper and Cate Blanchett. That's my motivation for reading it really. I haven't watched the original film and would like to read the book before I see what Toro does.
Yes, both the book and the upcoming movie look very interesting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightmare_Alley_(novel)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightmare_Alley_(2021_film)

[GroobySteven]

seedy underworld of carnivals

You had me at this. Buying it now.

[broncofan]

You had me at this. Buying it now.
Books these days are competing with netflix, porn, and sports highlights so there often has to be a murder in the first twenty pages to keep me glued. I have one of those attention spans that maybe gives the author fifty pages to hook me. Just like I tend to want songs to have vocals within the first minute though I might wait longer if it's an iconic song. But carnivals and sex and amoral grifters also works as a hook:tongue:

Plus we get a good movie out of it with an all star cast come December.

[broncofan]

But carnivals and sex and amoral grifters also works as a hook:tongue:

The other good thing is that Gresham seems to be a pretty good writer. I'm enjoying it so far.

[killingmrwatson]

I'm starting a book called Nightmare Alley by William Lindsey Gresham. It's supposed to be one of the better, if darker, American pulp fiction books. It's about the seedy underworld of carnivals though I don't know too much more than that except that it's not supposed to be a feel good.


I don't usually post here, but I read Nightmare Alley about a year ago and it is really good.

[Stavros]

I am awaiting

perpetually and forever

a renaissance of wonder


Lawrence Ferlinghetti, 1919-2021

In October 1971 I was on my own in a friend's house north west of Chicago -the family had moved there from London. I went for his wedding, but as he was at work and I was on my own, I rifled through his books to discover Lawrence Ferlinghetti for the first time, reading A Coney Island of the Mind, and Her. He became a favourite as soon as I read him, and though for reasons I cannot explain I did not go to the City Lights bookstore on my first trip to San Francisco in 1983, I made a point of going in 2003, and even bought a book (at that time not available in the UK)- Franz Werfel, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh. He was giving a talk too, but the tickets cost $25 and I decided it was too much, but have regretted it ever since.

I would go so far as to rank the poem Autobiography has one of the finest American poems ever written, and were I to compile an anthology of great American poems, it would be the without question.