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What are you reading?

Started reading The Riyria Revelations series after I recently finished The Riyria Chronicles, by Michael J. Sullivan. Very entertaining reads.
 
The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective by Crawford Young, for which he won a Luebbert Book Award.

This is one of few books I have on hand right now that I have some interest in reading, went through about one hundred pages of it yesterday, and it's very, very good so far. I've read pretty much everything Young has put out, and this is one of his later books. You can definitely tell his expertise and awareness as a writer had grown exponentially since some of his earlier work. Very good book on colonialism, interest in Africa or not.

I also have his title called Politics in the Congo: Decolonization and Independence checked out, which he wrote thirty years earlier. His first book. I've read enough about the topic that I likely won't go through it in it's entirety, but it's fun to browse through. Also a pretty good forward to his advisor, Rupert Emerson, in it.
 
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I am so happy.

Thought i should reread Good Omens, since they're making a series of it.

Found I hadn't actually read it. :joy:
 
Network Effect the fifth book in the Murderbot Diaries series by Martha Wells.

Murderbot is a rogue SecUnit, who has hacked its own programming to break free of its enslavement. This is somewhat problematic, as it is highly intelligent, extremely capable in the field of killing humans, and thoroughly irritated by humanity. But all it really wants is to be left alone to watch soap operas.
 
A Red Carpet for the Sun - a compilation of Irving Layton's early poetry.

I enjoyed some of it, and some of Layton's later work is pretty good, but much of what's contained in this book is what gives poetry it's bad reputation. Writers who are purposely obtuse, verbose, and who come across as a bit arrogant and condescending. That feeling permeates much of Layton's work, but at least some of his later poetry is coherent and interesting.

That's a big part of what distinguishes Cohen from many for me. He managed to write in a human way that included everyone, under every circumstance, even other poets who are a bit arrogant.
 
I remembered a book I once loved and mentioned it to my wife tonight. She promptly found me an ebook version of it and now I'm happily once again reading Legends of the Ferengi. Such a fun book!
 
For Civil War fans, I read and recommend two books by Elizabeth Brown Pryor.

One about RE Lee, Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through His Private Letters and the other about Lincoln: Six Encounters with Lincoln: A President Confronts Democracy and Its Demons.

Both books deal with the complete person, which is I guess another way of saying their weaknesses are explored more than their strengths. Lee was a rigid, authoritarian, moralizing white supremacist who sometimes left his friends in the lurch. He was nevertheless highly regarded for his camaraderie and appearance. Besides of course being a brilliant tactician (I'm not as sure he was as able a strategist).

Lincoln's glaring fault in managing the war was his undermining of the chain of command. Lincoln was not a military man, and the military outlook was alien to him. He therefore preferred to deal with individuals regardless of their rank. The General of the Army Winfield Scott and others deplored and attempted to halt the practice, but since Lincoln tolerated it, nothing was accomplished. This enabled flatterers like Pope and Hooker to worm their way into commands they weren't equal to.
 
Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke.

Rilke was a famous German poet from the early twentieth century. This book compiled some correspondence from him to an 18 year old aspiring poet. Enjoying it quite a bit so far when I get the time and energy to read it. So far I've read the first two letters. In the initial one where Rilke is asked for his criticism, he tells the young man to look inward, at his desires, his sorrows, and to understand if he must write, to stop looking outward for validation. That writing should be something he needs to do for himself, not others.
 
With the university library's closure and my non-fiction interests drying up a bit I've been diving into the poetry and music of Leonard Cohen since starting my paternity leave. A few years ago I bought the compilation of his early poetry, Selected Poems: 1956 - 1968, and didn't get too far into it. The first book of his 'Let Us Compare Mythologies' was released early enough in his life, and unrealized enough that it caused me to write off the brunt of his early poetry (I've already read his later work).

But a few weeks ago the title of his 1978 release - Death of a Lady's Man - caught my eye so I picked it up. Noticing that it was a marked departure from what I read in the selection of his early work, I moved past my biases and bought the remaining 5 titles. My opinion on them works out something like this:

Let us Compare Mythologies (1956) - Well crafted poetry, but obviously the work of an early twenty-something
The Spice-Box of Earth (1961) - Surprising departure from the former book, and decent
Flowers for Hitler (1964) - Cohen gets a sense of humor, gets a bit darker, and is becoming a pretty strong poet
Parasites of Heaven (1966) - If I understand correctly he was doing plenty of drugs while writing this. Interesting book in that light, but seems odd, and experimental
The Energy of Slaves (1972) - Written after he started his music career, enjoyed this one quite a lot
Death of a Lady's Man (1978) - Hard to describe, but absolutely phenomenal writing

To boot I picked up a biography of Cohen's life titled 'I'm Your Man', which is very good so far. And to push my credit card bill even higher I have the collected works of Federico Garcia Lorca on the way today, who was the initial poet that inspired Cohen, and who he named his daughter after (Lorca).
 
Thanks to Kindle and the quarantine, I am reading several books right now, two by  Burton_L._Mack: The Rise and Fall of the Christian Myth and Who Wrote the New Testament?.

Christian Myth is Mack’s response to 9/11. He includes a ten page summary of his career in the Introduction, and man, he has the chops. His main interests have become ethnography – the social construction of myth and ritual, starting from Rene Girard’s work, of whom I am guessing Poli has heard.

New Testament is I think Mack’s most popular work. I read it years ago when it first came out, and had forgotten most of it. He sees a definite evolution in the mythic constructions of the New Testament as different Christian communities evolved socially and politically. The different layers in the story that eventually became the Christ Myth explain how different readers can have such different interpretations of what that myth is all about. He has been criticized for claiming that Jesus was a Cynic, but I think that overstates what he actually says.

I am also reading Allen Brent, at Poli’s recommendation. I selected A Political History of Early Christianity which is very interesting. I’ll have more to comment later.

My bedside reading is The Art of Statistics by David Spiegelhalter. I only get 3-5 pages read each night before it puts me to sleep, which is the point. Not that I don’t find it interesting, but it’s rather dense.
 
Jaco, the biography of Jaco Pastorius by Bill Milkowski. I don't listen to a lot of Jaco's music and don't care much for the fusion scene, but the book is so well-written and well-considered that I'm in for the whole story. I'm not quite halfway through, so I'm still reading about the happier, healthier part of Jaco's life. He was as much a crash-and-burn figure as Billie, Bird, Chet, and probably a couple hundred celebrity musicians. The amount of waste and destruction in jazz history is appalling, and the rockers of the 60's certainly didn't learn from it. Milkowski knows enough about jazz instrumentation to give a convincing case for Jaco's greatness in playing and composing.
 
I finished 'I'm Your Man', Cohen's biography a few days ago. It was hard to put down once I got started, he had an absolutely fascinating life. I also gained far more perspective about who he was, and the path he took to becoming such a big name later in his life. From what I can gather he was a kind of 'Jeff Bezos' of poetry, the world conspired in just the right way, including family wealth, to get his career off the ground. Of course coupled with real talent and persistence.

I've also realized that one of the reasons I have such a hard time finding poetry I like more than Cohen, is because I have a very similar world-view to him. He was open-minded and very forward-thinking, but still a bit of a traditionalist with a healthy respect for the divine - a centrist in a way. Where most poets seem to be firmly encamped in some kind of pole that colors everything they write. Cohen was a shape-shifter, and deliberately ambiguous.
 
This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald's first novel, on its centenary. If his career had ended with this, he and the book would be forgotten. It's the classic first novel, the one where the writer must tell you who he is, and how he went from a tumultuous adolescence to young manhood. The characters are superficial and the allure and status they aspire to is trivial. (That's actually Fitzgerald's point, to some extent, but callow youth isn't much on which to hang a book-length narrative.) The writing is on the lumpy side; FSF's mid-career use of supple, sinuous language isn't in view. I'm at the halfway point and will finish it, but it's disappointing so far.
 
Peter Longerich's biography of Goebbels. The author's also done biographies of Himmler and Hitler. They are all excellent, detailed works.

Rob
 
I've started The Princess Bride again, the best read-aloud book in the world.
 
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