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What are you reading?

 
 
 
WAB said:
I hate to confess, and no doubt I've been negligent, but I have not read Cohen, and know only one song. :(
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If you ever do decide to check him out his catalogue is pretty varied. His first two poetry books are the most traditional and likely the closest to your writing style. The next two were from his time on Hydra and a little weirder. The two after that after he became a songwriter (Energy of Slaves and Death of a Lady's Man) which are my favorite of his early titles. Then there's Book of Mercy, a kind of religious work

Book of Longing was his last major work, and really the best one, imo. Lots of poems written when he was in a Zen Monastery in the 90s. If you were ever to buy something, this is likely the one. The Flame was published posthumously more as a money grab, but it's an interesting book.

To date he's the most interesting published poet I've come across topic wise, which is why I still like him so much. There are other great writers out there, but he was one of the more interesting personalities.
 
Ah, Cohen! The Canadian Cavafy.

I've just started making my way through two new titles, Lynn Olsen's Empress of the Nile (a biography of pioneering Egyptologist Christianne Desroches) and Jeniffer Raff's Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas. I guess I'm in a fringe archaeology mood!
 
Am I the only one, who doesn't finish about half of the books I start to read? Here's a few that I'm reading or have tried reading or might finish reading eventually. If I really like a book, I might read it twice.

"And there was Light" by Jon Meacham....I might finish most of this one as it gives an interesting take on the life of Abe Lincoln. He's been criticized lately, but a lot of that is because people don't really understand how hard he worked to end slavery, and how much he was against starting in childhood. It also helps one understand why politicians sometimes compromise because they realize that getting at least part or most of what you want, is better than not getting anything that you want.

"Gender through. the eyes of a Primatologist" by Frans De Waal. I've read most of this one and Frans is one of my favorite writers on primatology. So far, he hasn't concentrated much on minority gender IDs, although he's very accepting of them. I think his purpose for writing this book is to give countless examples of how human gender traits are very similar to our closest primate relatives. Yes. Males do tend to be far more aggressive than females and females are far more nurturing, likely due to hormones and brain matter. It's an interesting read but I do think De Waal does get a bit carried away giving so many examples of his research that after awhile, it gets a bit tedious. If you're not familiar with him, he teaches and does research at Emory U and has primarily studied Bonobos for most of his long career.

Another book by De Waal is "Good Natured, the Origins of Right and Wrong". I'm not sure why I haven't read much of that one. Maybe I should give it another try.

"Behave" by Robert Sapolsky. I've only read about 25%. It's about how are brains influence our behavior and although it's an interesting read, it is rather lengthy so I don't know if I'll find the time and interest to finish it.

"South to America" by Imani Perry. I've read about half of this one. It's a Black woman's view of the American South. It's okay but as one who has lived in the South for about 2/3rds of my life, I'm not sure I or many of my local Black friends would agree with her vision of things. I got bored about half way through.

There are several more that I'm reading on and off and I also noticed that there are actually quite a few that I finished last year. It's just hard to find the time and I see no point in finishing a book that starts to get boring. I can't stand to read fiction anymore and I don't know why. So confess. Do the rest of you finish most of the books you start reading?
 
Half? I'd say most of the books in my house have only been read in a intro-and-conclusion fashion. I wouldn't have time to read everything I pick up to completion, there aren't enough hours in the week.
 
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SOHY, to confess (although I've done it before, on this board): I have started countless books only to abandon them. And no, I don't think I finish "most" of the books I start.
 
I completed my Crawford Young collection recently with his first title, Politics in the Congo. I didn't pay much attention when I was buying it, but it turned out to be in mint condition, and not a former library copy. Even the dust jacket was in near perfect condition after 60 years:

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Six hundred pages on the decolonization of the Congo, it's a great read so far.

I also picked up a number of Rupert Emerson titles, who was Crawford Young's PhD advisor at Harvard, and quite famous himself. From Empire to Nation: The Rise to Self Assertion of Asian and African Peoples, The Political Awakening of Africa, which he edited, and Africa and United States Policy. Similar subject and style as Young, but Emerson was earlier. Plenty of writing about the international environment around the era of the world wars, and how that led to the wide-scale independence of colonies.
 
Finished Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” Wednesday night; started feeling a bit paranoid pushing the shopping cart around the grocery store Thursday.
 
I am a firm believer that books find you when you need them.

Been wanting to read A Gentleman in Moscow since I heard about it on the radio several years ago. It came up in conversation last Thursday and the next day I found a copy in the op-shop for $3. :joy:

Started Nothing if not Critical by Robert Hughes a few weeks ago out of curiosity, not realising he has a way with words that is hard to better and that he is conducting discussions of artists and history that will add immensely to my enjoyment of my upcoming flit through Europe.

Need to think of a book that is engrossing enough to shorten a long plane journey but won't break my heart to give away when I finish it.
Do they have the equivalent of street libraries in airports?
 
I am trying to read Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment again - but I remember what stopped me last time: endless and rambling and needless conversations that seem to have no bearing on the story, and tons of needless distractions! :(
 
WAB said:
I am trying to read Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment again - but I remember what stopped me last time: endless and rambling and needless conversations that seem to have no bearing on the story, and tons of needless distractions! :(
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You've just inspired to take it off the shelf. Many years since I tried to read it but I seem to recall a similar experience.

Some of the Russian authors do those diversions so well.

Do you intend to persevere, WAB?
 
The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women (2017) by Kate Moore.
Around 1920, in the town of Orange, New Jersey, dentists began treating young women who came in with loose, rotten teeth. When the teeth were extracted, the resulting abscesses wouldn't heal, and worse, the dentists soon realized that the women's jawbones were brittle and would sometimes snap into pieces in the middle of dental work. The women worked as dial painters at a local workshop, painting the dials with radium paint and -- unbelievably -- pressing the brush tips between their lips to preserve the brush points. Within a few years, the women were dying with grotesque sarcomas, uncontrolled bleeding into the throat, or simply wasting away. Early in the 1920s, a second workshop for luminous dials started in the village of Ottawa, Illinois, and the cycle repeated itself.
This grim history follows the short lives of a couple dozen of the dial painters and the efforts of some of them to sue the companies for damages and criminal negligence. It is a tough read. The writing style is inconsistent -- there are places where Moore is overwrought, and her word choice is occasionally jarring and flippant. But she did a solid job of reconstructing the era and the main players in the tragedy: the company brass, the doctors (some of them clueless), the lawyers, and most of all, the radium 'girls' themselves, many of whom perished in their twenties. Worth reading.
 
Beyond State Crisis: Postcolonial Africa and Post-Soviet Eurasia in Comparative Perspective - edited by Crawford Young and Mark Beissinger.

Pretty good so far, I was mainly hoping for some quality reading on the Soviet region, and the book delivers. There are some good points I'd never heard before about the genesis of the state system, where it's argued that states came about as a result of political conflict rather than an intentional project. Only when the monopoly on the use of force became so great that these states ended up actually peaceful, did economic specialization and growth happen.

We can get a lot done when we're not killing each other, apparently.
 
Neuromancer, William Gibson’s cyberpunk classic. Written in 1984, but still gives the feeling that he’s five steps ahead in seeing the future.
 
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