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What are you reading?

Picked up a few new titles in the past week.

Moneyball by Michael Lewis. It tells the story of how the Oakland Athletics ushered in a new era of statistics in Major League Baseball by starting to use them heavily to draft players. When they did this they ended up out-performing every other team in the league on the metric of money spent per win.

Also picked up Birth of the Modern and Modern Times by Paul Johnson. After reading his History of Christianity I've become a big fan of his style and so usually pick up his titles when I see them.

Mostly reading Moneyball right now, to get ready for the upcoming season.
 
Reading and enjoying (if that's the word for it) The Girl With All The Gifts. by M.R. Carey.

I've been reading a lot of Margaret Atwood, and keep think of this as one of hers. It has a very Oryx and Crake feel to it.

I really hate to put it down, not least because I've reached a point where I can confidently predict nightmares tonight.
 
Currently reading Frankenstein and surprised to find a preface by Shelley which implies, in more than one place, that he is the author.
 
I'm reading Testament by Alis Hawkins. I'm finding it a little thin. I thought I might enjoy it because its broadly in the same genre as C J Sansom who I really enjoy. Admittedly I may have set it up a little in my mind and had unreasonable expectations.
 
This morning I've been doing more catching up on my subscription of Foreign Affairs. I just got a new one yesterday, which means I'm only two full issues behind. Just completely forget about my subscription to Canadian Art.

Outside of that I've been putting more focus on my investment reading again, finished The Intelligent Asset Allocator earlier this week. I also purchased and started reading The Mental Game of Baseball. Still working my way through Moneyball too.
 
I seem to buy books faster than I read them.

In addition to not-reading Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi, I'm also not finishing the Ta-Nehisi Coates run on Black Panther.
 
DBT said:
Bought a couple of books by author and economist Satyajit Das on the strength of an ABC program, big ideas.

Extreme Money;
''The human race created money and finance: then, our inventions recreated us. In Extreme Money, best-selling author and global finance expert Satyajit Das tells how this happened and what it means. Das reveals the spectacular, dangerous money games that are generating increasingly massive bubbles of fake growth, prosperity, and wealth--while endangering the jobs, possessions, and futures of virtually everyone outside finance.''

A Banquet of Consequences

''Essential reading for anyone interested in the future of the global economy and their own prospects, A Banquet of Consequences incisively explains the problems confronting us, how we're making those problems worse, and what the real solutions are.

For ordinary individuals, the goal of a steady job, a home or one's own, a comfortable retirement and a good life for our children is receding. In this brilliantly clear-eyed account, Satyajit Das links past, present and future to show that it's not just unrealistic expectations, but the poor performance of those governing us that are to blame.

The strategies and policies deployed to promote economic growth after the Great Recession have failed, not least because such growth cannot continue indefinitely. The solution – structural change – is electorally unpopular and therefore ignored. A Banquet of Consequences explains why the ultimate adjustment, whether stretched out over time or in the form of another sudden crash, will be life-changing.''
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Just finished Extreme Money and I have to say that the book paints an ugly picture of the Elites of World Finance, the greed, conceit, arrogance and self serving narcissism, GFC, etc, (nothing much has changed since), probably as ugly a picture as it is possible to paint.
 
DBT said:
Just finished Extreme Money and I have to say that the book paints an ugly picture of the Elites of World Finance, the greed, conceit, arrogance and self serving narcissism, GFC, etc, (nothing much has changed since), probably as ugly a picture as it is possible to paint.
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I haven't tried that one yet.

You could try this, if you haven't already read it. I enjoyed it. Readable, not overly long, etc..

growth-fetish.jpg

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Growth-Fetish-Clive-Hamilton/dp/0745322506
 
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The Cambridge History of Russia Volume I, From Early Rus' to 1689

Hoping to parse through the above and Volume II on Imperial Russia this weekend. Over the past few days I honed in on a chapter in Volume I on the Russian peasantry in the late medieval period, so much detail that it's quite a good read.
 
Made a new trip to the campus library today and picked up a few books:

- The Cambridge History of Ancient China
- Early China: A Social and Cultural History
- Native Religions and Cultures of Central and South America

I was geeked out to find that they had 'Early China', since it was published in 2013 and written as a more accessible version of the Cambridge History.
 
Ah ha! It took me a while to find this thread because I expected the word "book" to be in the title.

Anyway, reading Stamped From the Beginning (by Ibram X. Kendi) is incredibly slow going because every other paragraph, I get lost in thought wandering down this or that tangent. At least one American intellectual from the late 1600s supported the witch trials because the trials reinforced social hierarchies (white vs black, rich vs poor, etc.). Cross-racial egalitarianism was already seen as subversive by the elites and a threat to their wealth/power.
 
The last of the wine by Mary Renault

''In The Last of the Wine, two young Athenians, Alexias and Lysis, compete in the palaestra, journey to the Olympic games, fight in the wars against Sparta, and study under Socrates. As their relationship develops, Renault expertly conveys Greek culture, showing the impact of this supreme philosopher whose influence spans epochs.
 
For some light reading, I started taking a look at The Postcolonial State in Africa today, after a recommendation from another thread.

Had it transferred between libraries on campus yesterday and picked it up today. Looks like it might be a rare title that I actually make it all the way through. Extremely well written so far.
 
News of the World. Post civil war Texas, an old man transports an unwilling girl through dangerous territory.
It's lovely. An involving story, beautifully written. At times I was reminded of O'Brian's Master and Commander series. Tom hanks will play the old man in the movie. (I suppose it could be the young girl, but I'm guessing it will be the old man.) Fiction.

Without Vodka. Reads well. I'm about a third of the way thru. A very young man tries to escape from Soviet-occupied Poland. Bad things happen, but the tone is always personal, cheerful. Informative and interesting. Nonfiction.
 
Wiploc said:
Without Vodka. Reads well. I'm about a third of the way thru. A very young man tries to escape from Soviet-occupied Poland. Bad things happen, but the tone is always personal, cheerful. Informative and interesting. Nonfiction.
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A good read. At the time I only had a small idea of how poorly the Polish people fared being caught between two totalitarian powers. The author told me in an email that he planned on writing a sequel called Without a Roof but that was about 17 years ago and I'm guessing he's no longer with us.
 
rousseau said:
For some light reading, I started taking a look at The Postcolonial State in Africa today, after a recommendation from another thread.

Had it transferred between libraries on campus yesterday and picked it up today. Looks like it might be a rare title that I actually make it all the way through. Extremely well written so far.
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Why it didn't occur to me before I dunno, but "The Blue Nile" and "The White Nile" by Alan Moorehead are excellent.

BTW they available at archive.org.
 
Reading the Stephen Baxter sequel to The War of the Worlds.. Loving it. I have decided this author can do no wrong.
 
The Lions of Al-Rassan

I recently acquired most of a dozen Kindle samples of stories of similar type. One after another, I read the sample and deleted it, or started to read the sample and deleted it. But this one grabbed me, and my wife too. (She does most of the cooking, but I read to her while she does). So instead of deleting the sample, we bought the book.

We were also rereading The More than Complete Hitchhikers Guide (Absolutely the best version, because it includes the first four books, which are great, and doesn't include the fifth book, which sucked--not that I have an opinion--plus the short story "Young Zaphod plays it safe") and Dave Berry Is Not Making This Up, but this book has seduced us away from those. They lie idle and unregarded.

Here's a bit, from memory, and therefore wrong:

That afternoon she lost her urine flask, and before evening she lost a bit of her heart. Because it was a family heirloom, the urine flask was important.
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I just love that playful reversal, the violation of our expectations about which thing would be important.
 
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