fiction or biography?Quote:
Originally Posted by amberskyi
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fiction or biography?Quote:
Originally Posted by amberskyi
Read an interesting -- and fairly short -- book by John Bellamy Foster called What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism. He's a professor of sociology. (Capitalism is a misnomer. Capitalism, pure capitalism, means no state/government intervention. We radically violate free market principles all the time by building roads, highways, schools, employing cops, firefighters etc., etc.) But it focuses on the vast destruction of the natural world by state capitalism.... And what we have to do to live in harmony, as it were, with nature. Our economic system treats the natural world as an externality. Something we can exploit and not concern ourselves with. And, too, future generations have no bearing in our economic calculations.
fictional biography is what i guess you can call itQuote:
Originally Posted by runningdownthatdream
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Now playing: Mudvayne - Cradle
via FoxyTunes
Author and name of book?Quote:
Originally Posted by amberskyi
Guns,Germs,and Steel
Sounds epic!Quote:
Originally Posted by doctor screw
Me, now reading "Octonauts and the Ghost Reef". It's a long story :)
Before that, finished "I Don't Know How She Does It."
WITHOUT WARNING=JOHN bIRMINGHAM a fictional series about a world nuclear war
The Newspaper
LIFETIME FAVES-
Glass Bead Game - Hesse
Picasso-A Life - Richardson
The Bible -Asst authors
I wish I could say I understand Shakespeare.
The Classics are all classics.
Lately I've been using my...wait for it....LIBRARY CARD. Biography Section
Lincoln by Sandburg. best by far:geek:
this guy is an Aussie and one of the best writers i have read =no shit sherlock:Bowdown::Bowdown::Bowdown::Bowdown::Bowdo wn::Bowdown::Bowdown:Quote:
Originally Posted by russtafa
Interesting thread.
I'm reading a book called A Language Older than Words by Derrick Jensen. It's about the natural world. Deeply philosophical.
I'm reading This Republic of Suffering by Drew Gilpin Faust, a historical exploration of how US society at every level tried to come to terms with the carnage of the Civil War and how that response resonates in every war up to modern times.
1. Collapse by Jared Diamond,
2. Is That a Fish in Your Ear by David Bellos,
3. American Nietschze by Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen and
4. Playing with Planets by Gerard't Hooft.
(reading chapter at time in rotation on my new touch screen kindle)
Highly recommend the Diamond. He's a freak for detail but never gets boring. I'm just about half-way through (reading about the Viking colonies in Greenland). The Bellos is a quirky book with loads of insight on the nature and influence of translations. I'm also about halfway through it and so far it gets a thumbs up. The Rosenhagen, not so much. Only read two chapters of the Gerard't Hooft so it's a little early to judge, but it's has my attention.
I'm reading this thread.
Welcome back, Trish. How was the break?
I see you're another one that reads books three or four at a time, Trish!Quote:
Originally Posted by trish
I'm also re-reading Dickens, currently Our Mutual Friend, Cannery Row by Steinbeck and The Guns of August by Barbara W Tuchman.
I read the Jared Diamond book when it came out. Twas brilliant. Easter island. What a object lesson that is.
Just finished reading Christ Stopped At Eboli by Carlo Levi. Wonderful look at 1930s peasant society in Italy. Beautfully written. Levi was an internal exile sent to the Abruzzi by Mussolini. Also just read 1Q84 - a trilogy by Harumi Murakami. The best living Japanese novelist. Fantastically inventive and also The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht - a fantasy on the Balkans conflict by a very young but clearly gifted writer.
Gerard't Hooft. that is a challenge. I am trying to read a book on parallel universes at present. Fascinating stuff.
Like all breaks...way too short. Hi hippiefried ;)Quote:
Welcome back, Trish. How was the break?
I'm like a little girl with a ten dollar bill in an ice-cream shop. I gotta have all the flavors I can afford. Too bad a person has to work for a living. If I could just sit outside and read all day (and have an espresso and a gelato every once in a while) it would be heavenly bliss. Some time ago I read Tuchman's Distant Mirror, but for some reason never got back to her.Quote:
I see you're another one that reads books three or four at a time, Trish!
A friend of mine is reading Tiger's Wife right now for her book club. I'm wondering if it would spoil the book if I quietly attended the discussion.
Have a great Sunday afternoon all.
I think you could safely attend the discussion. it's not like its a triller with a suspenseful outcome. Just a charmingly written book.
Reading Watership Down by Richard Adams and The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane by Robert E. Howard.
Up next will be Bleak House by Dickens and probably some re-reads in the Malazan Series by Steven Erikson.
The Art Of Fielding by Chad Harbach. It's setting is the world of baseball - so much of the technical jargon is lost on this Brit - but it's a darn good read.
the primarchs from the horus heresy series :)
I'm currently reading To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis, a fun time travel romp. Been on an SF jag lately, reading or re-reading classic 40s and 50s short SF by Asimov, Heinlein and others. Fascinating to see what they got right and what they got wrong 50-60 years ago.
If time travel really worked you could visit tour future self and find out what books and films etc were a waste of time and then not read or watch them. (Except of course......)
Shadow Warriors by Tom Clancy
Just back from the bookshop with my copy of Satantango by Laszlo Krasznahorkai...
Started on the Hunger Games - I'm about 1/4 of the way through so far... digging it.
Um... paradox much?Quote:
Originally Posted by Prospero
I've been reading crime/noir lately. Jim Thompson, Richard Stark (Westlake), Elroy, Leonard . . .light stuff to help me get to sleep at night.
Any suggestions?
Satantango, by Laszlo Krasznahorkai.
First published in 1984 this has just been translated into English. I have seen the film of the book by Bela Tarr (twice), and the author collaborated with Tarr on the 7 hour film and in the process there are some changes, for example in the book the charismatic figure Irimiaz wears yellow shoes, but not in the film. The book is concentrated and an easy read, taking less than 7 hours, whereas the film employs the static camera and long takes associated with Tarr (and directors like Antonioni, Angelopoulos and Tarkovsky); but I prefer the film which succeeds in displaying the mind-numbing experience of living on a remote communal farm in the extended and deeply miserable winters that Hungary seems to experience. This is neither light nor popular entertainment, but worth the effort.
Sátántango: Amazon.co.uk: László Krasznahorkai, George Szirtes: Books@@AMEPARAM@@http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51vedjrcy%2BL.@@AMEPARAM@@51vedjrcy%2BL
Two very different things.
Winter Ghosts by Kate Mosse (the intelligent one, not the model). It's a ghost story novella about her primary subject, southern France in the time of the Cathars. The pace is breathless and I read it in a sitting.
Jubilee Lines, a poetry anthology edited by Carole Anne Duffy, the poet Laureate, featuring specially commissioned poems by different British and Commonwealth poets for each year of the present Queen's reign. It's thankfully free of any knee-bending royal crap, and if you've lived your life while Liz has been on the throne, it's an entertaining and occasionally provocative as well as sideways look at her reign. And of course, as with most poetry, each poem is worth reading again and again.
What I usually read crime novels and mysteries. Jonathan Kellerman, Donald Goines, Stuart Woods, Tim Dorsey.
Lately been catching up on music history mostly hip hop. The Big Payback, The Anthology of Rap, The plot against hip hop...
Just finishing The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach and about to read The New Religious Intolerance by Martha Nussbaum.
just ordered some more horus heresy novels ... :) cant wait for the one about the blood angels to come out :)
Waiting for Max Hastings' one volume history of WW2 to arrive - All Hell Let Loose.
Just finished reading Fast Food Nation.
is that an easy book to digest, biberkopf?
lolz.Quote:
Originally Posted by Prospero
Just finished Hunger Games a few days ago... trying to find a good deal on the other two books
The Dark Tower: The Wind Through The Keyhole
"Consciousness Explained" by Daniel Dennett
There is always time for Charles Bukowski!
Lovecox - the trouble with that book is that it doesn't really explain consciousness - any more than dozens of other books on the same topic. Many scientists - in neuroscience and in physics - believe that we may never really be able to explain consciousness. There are, of course, many reductionists who see it simply as a function of our brains. More interesting thinkers connect the world of quantum physics to consciousness in some intriguing ways eg Sir Roger Penrose. But then here is a great chllenge to his notions.
http://www.sustainedaction.org/Explo...ind_theory.htm
Francis Crick and Christof Koch (with whom he worked for many years) also did a lot of work w on consciousness which broke the consensus. Koch's new book is good.
Consciousness eBook: Christof Koch: Amazon.co.uk: Books@@AMEPARAM@@http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51kn6WNs3fL.@@AMEPARAM@@51kn6WNs3fL