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What are you reading?

 
 
 
The Kindly Ones. Jonathan Littell. Had to advise a friend, who can be a bit sensitive, not to go there.

10 Steps to Nanette. Hannah Gadsby. Not the light relief I was hoping for, but well worth a read.

The Sisters Mao. Gavin McCrea. Also interesting. But not funny :)
 
A biography of Ed Sullivan. I will follow this up with an omnibus of the Dorsai novels.

Rob
 
I took another Politesse recommendation and checked out The Elementary Forms of the Religious LIfe by Durkheim a few weeks ago.

Now I'm re-reading Buddhism: A History by Reat, but going through it in it's entirety this time. IIRC, a few years ago I checked it out of the library to get the history of Zen. Now I'm wanting the full picture.
 
I just finished The Sympathizer, by Viet Thanh Nguyen. The author, born in Vietnam but raised in the U.S., is fully literate in Western culture and the novel is a tour de force. There is biting satire of American culture, such as the chapters in which the narrator acts as a consultant to the shooting of a Vietnam War movie, but Nguyen goes after the Vietnamese-American diaspora as wel, not to mention South Vietnamese society during the War, and the North after they took over. I highly recommend it for those who like literary novels. One caveat: at 380 plus pages it can seem daunting, but it moves fast with plenty of action.
 
I picked up a few more this week. The aforementioned history of Buddhism led me to the Shobogenzo which was a famous Zen text written in the thirteenth century. As I already own quite a bit of writing on Zen, I thought it'd be interesting to take a look at someone's approach from the thick of the religion, way back when.

I also picked up a title called The Word of the Buddha which is a compilation of what the original Buddha supposedly said, from the Pali Canon.

All of this reminds me of a few passages from the Buddhist History I'm reading, where it mentioned that in good times the people of China had time for philosophy, poetry, and the like. Clearly I have way too much time on my hands these days.

Most of this is pleasure reading, treating myself to cure the doldrums. But with how challenging my life has been since the pandemic started, I might actually be.. turning to religion.. as it were.
 
Three Roads to the Alamo, basically a triple biography of Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, and William B Travis. Just started it.

Rob
 
I just finished reading, "'Allow me to Retort: A Black guys Guide to the Constitution" by Elie Mystal

This author makes some excellent points about how racist and sexist the American Constitution really is, and even the better parts are often not interpreted to protect minorities. He also discusses how strange it is for any country to keep the same constitution for so long, as most countries rewrite their constitutions on a regular basis. Aside from that, Mystal's writing is often humorous and he has no problem using lost of fucks and shits as he rants. I really enjoyed this book.

I've also been reading "South to America" by Imani Perry

While her writing style is interesting, she often gets carried away with minutia, so I've only read about half of it. Not sure if I'll finish this one or not. I don't finish books unless I find them very interesting.

I agree with Crazyfingers about reading dead tree books. The font is usually too small for my aging eyes and I find them a bit awkward to hold and read, so I've only read on my kindle for years. Plus, lots of older books are available for free or just a few dollars for the kindle.

I've donated most of my dead tree books to the local library although I still have a small collection, and I haven't parted with my large collection of gardening books yet, despite not really doing any gardening for several years.
 
I just finished Luke Smitherd's The Stone Man, and an now reading the sequel, The Empty Men.

Smitherd does an excellent job of adding a layer of surreal terror to the most boring of English regional settings, kind of like Sean of the Dead, but not played for laughs. He captures the English culture - that strange mix of politeness and drunken hooliganism - so well, that it reminds me of why I left.

Also, there's a mysterious Stone man marching in a straight line across the country, smashing through buildings and apparently impervious to any attempts to stop it...
 
How's this for a library?



Thom Hartmann's home. Submitted by Joy Reid to RateMySkypeRoom.
 
I’m reading the epic Miles Davis The Definitive Biography (1999) by the late Ian Carr, who happened to be a Scotsman.*

It looks challenging, at 600 pages plus appendices, but I’m taking it slow and enjoying it.

I’m making it a multi-media experience. I have a lot of Miles uploaded, and what I don’t have is readily available on YouTube, so as I read about different compositions and recordings and how they were put together, I listen to the actual recording.

*Interestingly, one of the true experts on Texas Swing music is also a Scotsman – Duncan McLean - who never left Scotland until he came to Texas to find the roots of the music. Must be something in the water there, that Scotsmen become experts in American music.
 
Joanna Russ's excellent How to Suppress Women's Writing, which, written in the late 70s, is an account -- more of a quick overview than a thorough analysis -- of the many wasys women's writing has been suppressed (She diidn't wrtie it; and if she did she wrote about the wrong thing;; someone helped her; it was a fluke . . . etc.) She makes clear this applies to the writings of other non-white-male figures, as well, though her survey largely deals with women. I learned a bit, even though I was broadly aware of the issues.

Rob
 
rousseau said:
I picked up a few more this week. The aforementioned history of Buddhism led me to the Shobogenzo which was a famous Zen text written in the thirteenth century. As I already own quite a bit of writing on Zen, I thought it'd be interesting to take a look at someone's approach from the thick of the religion, way back when.
Click to expand...

I've been enjoying this quite a bit, and including some research on Soto Zen as well (the author of the book founded this sect in Japan). Apparently up until the 18th century the original Shobogenzo was a secret text prized by Zen monks. The original contained 60 chapters, but around that time it was extended and now sits at 96.

I've been learning some of the history, and apparently the Shobogenzo comes from a time when Zen was in it's element. Later, after it was popularized, Zen schools and monasteries became a training ground for young kids from elite families, rather than a place for serious spiritual seekers. This mixed up the practice of Zen with proper etiquette in Japan at the time, which is now the form that exists today.

And to keep up my way too serious reading habits, I've also been reading end-to-end through the bible while taking breaks at work, rather than staring into the void of social media. At the moment I'm taking my time with the Book of Psalms, after speeding through the Torah and Deuteronomistic history.
 
I got a little worn out on Buddhism and put those books back on the shelf. These days I'm trying to read titles in my collection, rather than buying more, so picked a few back off:

A History of the Italian People by Giuliano Procacci
A History of Islamic Societies by Ira Lapidus

This is mainly pleasure reading, picking through them when I get some time. There are a few others that made their way to our bedroom, but I'll save listing them all out.
 
I'm looking forward to starting a new one when it is published tomorrow, J. Bradford DeLong's Slouching Toward Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century. With the start of term last Monday I don't really have the time to take on such a massive work of course, but when I heard that DeLong had published what he clearly considers a bit of a finial work for his career, I couldn't resist digging in. One of the very few economists left who are capable of both possessing and inspiring original thought, or of analyzing a social system meaningfully.
 
I decided to forego the Miles Davis biography and picked up Serge Bramly's biography of Leonardo da Vinci instead. I did some research on related titles and found a few recommendations for this biography over Walter Isaacson's version. I also picked up a collection of da Vinci's complete paintings and drawings.

I'm also taking another lap on European history, and have picked up a number of titles on the medieval and early modern periods, I already owned a few on the renaissance that I need to go through. Among them are The Shorter Cambridge Medieval History, a two volume set which I'm enjoying quite a bit. Another Short Oxford History of Europe: The Early Middle Ages takes a more modern, and concise approach which I'm looking forward to contrasting with the Cambridge set, published in 1952.

Stocking up for winter.
 
I read Nine Princes in Amber at some point. Long ago. I liked it well enough, but not so well that bothered to read the second novel in the series.

Recently I picked up a free copy of the "triumphant conclusion" to the series in a caravanserai (RV park). I couldn't make sense of it, didn't know the people or background. So I got book one from Audible and was astounded by its wonderfulness.

By the end of the book, I had lost that sense of wonderfulness. But the story was still okay enough that I started book two. (The author of Lord of Light and Creatures of Light and Darkness can have as many chances as he wants at anything.)

Then, wanting to share with my wife and get her opinion, I restarted book one with my wife. The wonderfulness of the first half is absolutely still there. And there's nothing wrong with the second half except by contrast; the author's playfulness is still in evidence, just less so.

I intend to listen to the whole series.
 
Just finished The Great Stewardess Rebellion, about the fight for flight attendants in the 1960s and 1970s to form their own union, and to fight the idea that it was somehow a legitimate job requirement that stewardesses had to be young (forcibly retired at 32), sexy, thin, and not violate the image of a stewardess (one of the main folks in it gets reprimanded for owning a motorcycle, which isn't seen as ladylike). An excellent book, well told, with multiple heroines. Recommended.

Rob
 
I visited Western's library last weekend to pick up The Advaita Worldview by Anantanand Rambachan. It was a good, albeit short, book that I got through pretty quickly. This weekend I also bought The Early History of the Ancient Near East: 9000 - 2000 B.C. by Hans Nissen (Mesopotamia).

I read a few lectures by Nissen from the library a couple years ago, and enjoyed them quite a bit, then discovered this book a few months ago.
 
The Wandering Inn, mostly because it's going to keep me busy for at least 8 more days worth of reading, and it's free.
 
I keep re-reading the Harry Potters. Kinda stuck on them. But some are so huge that I don't remember them all the 2nd or 3rd time.

At some point I'll probably download some of the classics that are out of copyright like Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. Both are out of copyright and I'll see about downloading them. I don't read paper books any more. Too much a pain in the ass to hold to the light. I read from my Android tablet.
 
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