What are you reading?

[rousseau]

It feels like I'm just about through with Sociology, and am ready to move into lighter fare.

I found the second edition of Jazz: The Rough Guide by Ian Carr at a local bookshop yesterday. It's essentially an encyclopedia of Jazz up until the year 2000, listing every artist with any type of relationship to the genre. Perfect for what I'm interested in right now, which is exploring unknown artists.

Ian Carr also authored The Definitive Biography of Miles Davis, which I coincidentally also found at the bookshop. But I didn't pick it up.

 

[Politesse]

On a Norse kick, I guess... working my way through Neil Price's Children of Ash and Elm and Diana Paxson's Essential Asatru.

 

[rousseau]

On a Norse kick, I guess... working my way through Neil Price's Children of Ash and Elm and Diana Paxson's Essential Asatru.

How did you end up liking Brad DeLong's book?

 

[Politesse]

On a Norse kick, I guess... working my way through Neil Price's Children of Ash and Elm and Diana Paxson's Essential Asatru.

How did you end up liking Brad DeLong's book?

Same as usual: he's a fun guy to disagree with.

 

[rousseau]

On a Norse kick, I guess... working my way through Neil Price's Children of Ash and Elm and Diana Paxson's Essential Asatru.

How did you end up liking Brad DeLong's book?

Same as usual: he's a fun guy to disagree with.

One of the critiques I heard was that he didn't really discuss climate much. Which seems.. relevant.

I likely know enough about modern history to skip it.

 

[Politesse]

On a Norse kick, I guess... working my way through Neil Price's Children of Ash and Elm and Diana Paxson's Essential Asatru.

How did you end up liking Brad DeLong's book?

Same as usual: he's a fun guy to disagree with.

One of the critiques I heard was that he didn't really discuss climate much. Which seems.. relevant.

I likely know enough about modern history to skip it.

He certainly has... an economist's lens on things.

 

[Politesse]

Speaking of historians, I had similar criticisms of Thomas Picketty's best seller, but have ordered this special issue of History Compass https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/14780542 as its editors were interviewed on a podcast I listen to, and it seemed worth the perusal.

 

[WAB]

I've been reading Shelley's prose works. I read "The Necessity of Atheism" in my youth, and have always thought it excellent, but in my recent reading I see that he was excellent on most subjects.

I've always loved him as a poet, but I think his true genius shows in his prose works. He should be read more in that capacity.

 

[Toni]

Just finished Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. I have never been a huge fan of Dickens, with a couple of exceptions, because he always feels like he's beating you over the head with whatever point he's trying to make. Aside from getting paid by page. Demon Copperhead, though, a modern re-telling of David Copperfield: I hear the narrator's voice in my head with every word. I'll hear that voice all night tonight. And likely, I'll start the book all over again in the morning....

That aside, extremely good telling of the opiate crisis and how it takes hold in tiny corners of rural America, and towards the end, gives you a taste at the political manifesto of land economy vs money economy and just how many people got robbed blind and left behind.

 

[spikepipsqueak]

Just finished Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamander Ngozi Adichie. Well written and explains the political background behind those starving Biafran children who were used to sell newspapers when I was 9 or 10.

In the middle of A Man Called Ove, Fredrik Backman. Saw the film a while ago. As is usual, the book has insights they can't easily explore on film, though they did a good job.

 

[Swammerdami]

I visited bookstores a few days ago and picked up several books (most of which I have yet to read); listing them may show my wide-ranging, eclectic interests:

• Fifth Miracle: The Search for the Origin of Life by Paul Davies -- I love Nick Lane's books and think the origin theory he espouses is likely to obsolete much of the speculation in this 1998 book. But the topic intrigues me, and the book probably still has much to teach.
• Our Final Invention -- a pessimistic (dystopian) take on the future of AI.
• Fiction by Elmore Leonard, Anne Michaels, Nicci French, Joyce Carol Oates and Stuart Kaminsky.
• Political Fictions by Joan Didion.

No, I am NOT a particularly fast reader and these books will keep me occupied for quite a while!

I avoid books on American politics but the name Joan Didion seemed very familiar. (I haven't Googled to learn why I recognize the name, though my sister tells me she's her personal acquaintance.) This book is dated 2001 so won't depict the most recent 22 years of political dysfunction, but just the accounts from the 1980's and 90's are harrowing. Didion indicts but doesn't prescribe. Just as well: remedies elude. Was it wrong for Clinton to focus on the tiny number of "Reagan Democrats" and ignore the hugely larger group of citizens who do not vote? Not really: The latter group ... doesn't vote.

Didion especially berates liars and hypocrites like Oliver North and Newt Gingrich, but she finds fault with plenty of other people. She has a chapter devoted to Bob Woodward titled "Political Pornography."

Mr. Woodward's aversion to engaging the ramifications of what people say to him has been generally understood as an admirable quality ...
... these are books in which measurable cerebral activity is virtually absent.

I find her writing interesting and sometimes delicious. One complaint: Sometimes there will be a parenthetical of almost paragraph length in the middle of a sentence. When I finally come to the right-paren I have to scan back several lines to find the left-paren and remember what the sentence was even about!

 

[spikepipsqueak]

I am re-reading A Canticle for Leibowitz (for maybe the 10th time)

Has anyone read the sequel?

Do I want to?

 

[Toni]

I am re-reading A Canticle for Leibowitz (for maybe the 10th time)

Has anyone read the sequel?

Do I want to?

I did not know there was a sequel. Actually I'm not sure I still have that particular book. Read it in high school and a couple of times since. If it's still around, it's likely in a box of old books that haven't been unpacked.

 

[spikepipsqueak]

I've decided to get it, and I'll let you know. Most of it was written by Walter Miller so I'm hoping it'll be as good. (He died in the clean up phase of the book, but chose the person to finish the job.)

I'm nearly at the end and have been literally weeping with frustration and fury that the Catholic church hasn't changed in the 60 years since it was written.

All dogma, no human compassion.