What book are you reading, ιf' - Iff you read books

[dusters]

We wanted to gift Momo by Michael Ende in Italian to a friend, but my friend's amazon account crashed. He is author to neverending story as well.

@Kyriakos Can you please recommend a book which is like Alice in Wonderland, like Little Prince, like Winnie Pooh, you know - philosophical book disguised as children's book?

 

[Kyriakos]

We wanted to gift Momo by Michael Ende in Italian to a friend, but my friend's amazon account crashed. He is author to neverending story as well.

@Kyriakos Can you please recommend a book which like Alice in Wonderland, like Little Prince, like Winnie Pooh, you know - philosophical book disguised as children's book?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel,_Escher,_Bach ^^

 

[Smellincoffee]

Monsieuer Hulot's Holiday, Jacques Tati. A proto-Mr. Bean but in French. Enjoyable enough.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Yesterday I finished reading:

The Blighted Stars

by

Megan E O'Keefe

 

[bene_legionary]

Instead of reading The Great Gatsby I'm continuing to read other well-read classics, like The Hobbit. Just stepped foot into the Lonely Mountain.

I found a nice website called Standard Ebooks that republishes public domain books in a stylistic fashion, unlike Gutenberg Press which is a little all over the place. So I have a lot of classics to read now!

 

[Grendeldef]

Keeping it, barely, with a book every month rate this year while learning to books again I've sort of cheated and read a book that I've read before - just wasn't sure about in advance as I've been trying fill the gaps in A.Christie's bibliography so The Secret Adversary and while the book was okayish I couldn't help the feeling that I was reading Enid Blyton instead of Christie - apart from the fact that not everyone were constantly eating. It just didn't feel like Christie though the Tommy & Tuppence stories are different from the rest.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I re-read All Systems Red by Martha Wells. It is quite short and I enjoyed at least as much as the first time. I should read her other books.

 

[Smellincoffee]

The Outlaw Ocean, various journalistic sketches of how the vagaries of maritime law and the lack of enforcement have led to things like overhunting, slavery, etc.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Last Thursday I finished reading:

Ruins Wake

by

Patrick Edwards

Ruin's Wake

A moving and powerful science fiction novel with themes…

www.goodreads.com

Good read, although happy ending too coincidentally unlikely for me.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Imperial Earth (1975) by Arthur C. Clarke isn't what I thought it was going to be. Just from the title, I was expecting some kind of space opera, I guess. My tablet says I'm 2/3rds of the way through, and I still couldn't tell you what the plot of the book is. It's kind of a meandering travelogue of a visitor from Titan in Washington D.C. in 2276 (the former United States is about to celebrate its 500th anniversary). It's a little dull, but I'll probably finish it just for the sense of completion. It is interesting to see how even one of the greats of speculative fiction of the mid-20th Century couldn't anticipate the technology that would develop in his lifetime, nevermind centuries hence. The communications technology of his far future is well behind our own today. Tim Berners-Lee was an undergrad when Clarke was writing this book, so I don't know if something like the Web was even a twinkle in his eye yet. The microprocessor was invented in the early '70s, iirc, so even if Clarke was aware of that technology's earliest forms, it might not have occurred to anyone what impact it would shortly have. I know that Gene Roddenberry & Co had put cell-phones in the hands of their characters in 1968, but to us, today, those Star Trek communicators are just quaint little flip-phones that can't do anything besides make calls. You couldn't even text on them. And again, Trek was set hundreds of the years in the future.

otoh, I am genuinely impressed with how exceptionally tuned-in to climate change and mankind's wrecking of its own environment Clarke was. We saw that in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) of course, but for some reason when I read that, I just saw it as post-apocalyptic fiction. This book reads more like something genuinely cautionary (but hopeful). Reading this made me wonder if Clarke was vegan. It doesn't appear that he was, but I'm not sure when veganism became part of the Western zeitgeist. If he'd been 50 years younger, maybe he would've been. And perhaps being a British man in the '30s-'40s-'50s who preferred his vegetables to those American-style slabs of meat wouldn't have seemed so unusual, even if there wasn't a name for it? I dunno. Just thinking out loud.

 

[tjs282]

We saw that in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) of course, but for some reason when I read that, I just saw it as post-apocalyptic fiction.

It's been a while since I read that one, but IIRC, it's fairly explicit that there had been a nuclear war at some point, with large areas of land irradiated, and Deckard wearing a lead codpiece to protect his genes from mutation. That was also part of the reason why real animals were so rare and valuable.

 

[EgonSpengler]

It's been a while since I read that one, but IIRC, it's fairly explicit that there had been a nuclear war at some point, with large areas of land irradiated, and Deckard wearing a lead codpiece to protect his genes from mutation. That was also part of the reason why real animals were so rare and valuable.

I admit, I'd forgotten entirely about the lead codpiece.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

The Data Detective is a book by Tim Hartford which proposes 10 "easy rules to make sense of statistics". While the author does propose some sensible guidelines such as checking your emotions and being open-minded, a lot of the rules are just redundant and basically boil down to finding the context of a statistic, in addition to having non-indicative titles. This is in addition to complaining about bias in other fields except economics (coincidentally, the author's own field...) and confusing statistical with practical significance. Frankly, there are better books to read for concepts of statistical literacy.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Imperial Earth (1975) by Arthur C. Clarke

It is interesting to see how even one of the greats of speculative fiction of the mid-20th Century couldn't anticipate the technology that would develop in his lifetime, nevermind centuries hence. The communications technology of his far future is well behind our own today.

Purely by coincidence, over the weekend I heard a 1969 audio clip of Clarke talking about the global communications network of the future, and it sounded something like what we would recognize today. I've no idea why he didn't incorporate the idea into Imperial Earth.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Yesterday I finished reading:

Infinity Gate

by the Liverpublian author

M R Carey

copyright 2023.

A good Sci-Fi opera about parallel worlds, imperial bureaucracies, machine intelligences and the perseverance of the (similar to) human spirit.

 

[dusters]

Has anyone read Michael A.Singer, The Surrender Experiment?

I was told it is a decent self-help book today. I don't think it has been translated to my native language so I'm considering ordering it online.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Yesterday I finished reading:

Infinity Gate

by the Liverpublian author

M R Carey

copyright 2023.

A good Sci-Fi opera about parallel worlds, imperial bureaucracies, machine intelligences and the perseverance of the (similar to) human spirit.

I really liked The Girl With All the Gifts (2014), and The Boy On the Bridge (2017) was alright, but I couldn't get into The Book of Koli (2020). I just Googled him, though, and I didn't realize how many books he'd written. He hasn't been publishing for a long time yet, but he's quite prolific.

 

[Smellincoffee]

Just finished the last two James Holland "Sharpe in WW2"-esque books, Hellfire and Devil's Pact. They cover Africa and Sicily, respectively. Both very enjoyable.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

Finished The Complete Brigadier Gérard by Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle has recently been subject to a harsh indictment with regards to his writing skills by a certain poster around here

, but having just freshly come off one of one of his works my appreciation of his craftsmanship has only increased (the certain poster's disparagement notwithstanding).

The quote by Philip Pullman on the cover describes Gérard as 'the most preposterous and delightful of companions' (or words to that effect). He certainly is that. Unlike Doyle's other famous creation Sherlock Holmes, Gérard is lively and spirited and very very French. One of the characters describes him as 'all spurs and moustache, and nothing on his head besides horses and women', though a good overview of his character, undersells him by failing to mention his quick-wittedness in situations of great peril, bravery to the level of reckless, and a thoroughly conceited opinion of himself.

The stories are told by Gérard himself, now an old man in a tavern recounting the glory days of his youth serving in Napoleon's army, usually dealing with military missions entrusted to Gérard, though some are personal side quests. Nearly all of the stories are brilliant, with Doyle's trademark dramatic events (think the river chase in The Sign of Four) and vividly-drawn characters (shout-out to El Cuchillo, the Marshall Millefleurs and Napoleon himself).

Some excerpts:

Spoiler :

When I told you some little time ago how it was that I won the special medal for valour, I finished, as you will doubtless remember, by repeating the saying of the Emperor that I had the stoutest heart in all his armies. In making that remark, Napoleon was showing the insight for which he was so famous. He disfigured his sentence, however, by adding something about the thickness of my head. We will pass that over. It is ungenerous to dwell upon the weaker moments of a great man. I will only say this, that when the Emperor needed an agent he was always very ready to do me the honour of recalling the name of Etienne Gerard, though it occasionally escaped him when rewards were to be distributed.

Spoiler :

My heart glowed with joy as this conviction grew upon me, and I sat down to write to my mother and to tell her that the Emperor was waiting, at that very moment, to have my opinion upon a matter of importance. It made me smile as I wrote it to think that, wonderful as it appeared to me, it would probably only confirm my mother in her opinion of the Emperor's good sense.

Spoiler :

As to bravery, foolish, inexperienced people of every nation always think that their own soldiers are braver than any others. There is no nation in the world which does not entertain this idea. But when one has seen as much as I have done, one understands that there is no very marked difference, and that although nations differ very much in discipline, they are all equally brave – except that the French have rather more courage than the rest.

Spoiler :

No doubt you have heard my name mentioned as being the beau-ideal of a soldier, and that not only by friends and admirers like our fellow-townsfolk, but also by old officers of the great wars who have shared the fortunes of those famous campaigns with me. Truth and modesty compel me to say, however, that this is not so. There are some gifts which I lack – very few, no doubt – but, still, amid the vast armies of the Emperor there may have been some who were free from those blemishes which stood between me and perfection. Of bravery I say nothing. Those who have seen me in the field are best fitted to speak about that. I have often heard the soldiers discussing round the camp-fires as to who was the bravest man in the Grand Army. Some said Murat, and some said Lasalle, and some Ney; but for my own part, when they asked me, I merely shrugged my shoulders and smiled. It would have seemed mere conceit if I had answered that there was no man braver than Brigadier Gerard. At the same time, facts are facts, and a man knows best what his own feelings are.

Spoiler :

He was a tiny fellow, about three inches short of the proper height for a man – he was exactly three inches shorter than myself –

Spoiler :

I was so moved by my own words and by the fine position which I had taken up, that my voice broke, and I could hardly refrain from tears. I should have liked the whole army to have seen me as I stood with my head so proudly erect and my hand upon my heart proclaiming my devotion to the Emperor in his adversity. It was one of the supreme moments of my life.

Spoiler :

She lit up the room with her beauty. She must have read my admiration in my eyes, and it seemed to me that I also could see something of the sort in her own. Ah! my friends, I was no ordinary-looking man when I was in my thirtieth year. In the whole light cavalry it would have been hard to find a finer pair of whiskers. Murat's may have been a shade longer, but the best judges are agreed that Murat's were a shade too long. And then I had a manner. Some women are to be approached in one way and some in another, just as a siege is an affair of fascines and gabions in hard weather and of trenches in soft. But the man who can mix daring with timidity, who can be outrageous with an air of humility and presumptuous with a tone of deference, that is the man whom mothers have to fear. For myself, I felt that I was the guardian of this lonely lady, and knowing what a dangerous man I had to deal with, I kept strict watch upon myself. Still, even a guardian has his privileges, and I did not neglect them.

Spoiler :

You have not been to Venice? No, for it is seldom that the French travel. We were great travellers in those days. From Moscow to Cairo we had travelled everywhere, but we went in larger parties than were convenient to those whom we visited, and we carried our passports in our limbers. It will be a bad day for Europe when the French start travelling again, for they are slow to leave their homes, but when they have done so no one can say how far they will go if they have a guide like our little man to point out the way. But the great days are gone and the great men are dead, and here am I, the last of them, drinking wine of Suresnes and telling old tales in a café.

 

[Josu]

Does exist any Lord of the rings edition adapted to 8-10 years old kids?
If not, do yo know any similar book?