What book are you currently reading?

[Dell19]

Plus do you not have Amazon or some sort of equivalent? Its not as if its an obscure book.

 

[schlaufuchs]

I've been trying to get my hands on Guns, Germs, and Steel (Jared Diamond) alas I havent been able to...

Ewww, Jared Diamond....

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

I've been trying to get my hands on Guns, Germs, and Steel (Jared Diamond) alas I havent been able to...

In that dire need of fire wood are we?

But I did just finish a book on the adventures of Ibn Battuta, which was very interesting, although reading it also made me think if Battuta perhaps made up a good portion of his adventure...Kinda far-fetched in my mind...

Ibn Battuta is awesome on so many levels. Hold thy tongue!

 

[Dachs]

I finally have Edward Hallett Carr's seminal What is History? on order, along with other books by Jan Glete, Marc Bloch, and Dennis Showalter.

I expect massive amounts of enlightenment as far as historiography goes. Comments on Bloch and Carr?

 

[SuperJay]

Just curious - why all the backlash against Jared Diamond and that particular book? (I've never read it and am not familiar with the title.)

 

[Japanrocks12]

It's basically a work of pop history and is not as rigorous, thorough, true, or meaningful in its analyses as good history books should be.

 

[HistoryFan]

I understand many people dislike the book (Guns, Germs, and Steel) and Jared Diamond himself. However, I wish to read it in order to develop my own thoughts on it. And at the least it could give a different perspetive, even if I decide against it. And I too love Ibn Battuta's story. It's very facsinating and gives good insight. I love how he was able to travel throught the Middle East due to his faith, but his journey to the middle east/India... That's where I get skeptical, he basically hitch hikes his way all over and his great fastings make me skeptical as well. Don't get me wrong, it's a great read. I'm just naturally a skeptical reader.

And as for Amazon, well I'm 17 (as of today) and have no money, gonna have to continue look for it in libraries or something.

 

[Dachs]

It's basically a work of pop history and is not as rigorous, thorough, true, or meaningful in its analyses as good history books should be.

Not even just that. It's anthropology, and not even very good anthropology. And historians and anthropologists love to have their little catfights. It's like when Charles Freeman wrote The Closing of the Western Mind.

 

[Meteor Man]

Bump.
Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks. Perhaps the most depressing book I've read. Not surprising given how it's about the black plague.

 

[_random_]

I went to a book store Thursday and picked up The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, Good Omens, A People's History of the United States, and Superman: Red Son. They've all been good reads so far.

 

[Plotinus]

I read that the series eventually becomes dominated by objectivistic thought and heavily rips off Ayn Rand. Have you noticed any of that? It's the main thing that kept me from picking it up in the past.

Just thought I'd pick up on this again, regarding the Sword of Truth series. I'm on the sixth book now. I don't really know anything about Ayn Rand (who I think is virtually unknown outside America, but I understand she was some kind of extreme right-wing pundit) but in the previous book and especially this one there seem to be some anti-left-wing polemics creeping in, in the form of characters who seem to be right-wing caricatures of left-wingers. I'm finding this annoying not so much because of the political view being expressed (I don't mind right-wing views as long as they're intelligent right-wing views, if that's not a contradiction in terms) but because they're rather clunky and quite unbelievable.

It's still better than Dean Koontz, though, many of whose books I enjoyed but who I eventually found just left too bad a taste in the mouth with his endless succession of libertarian, gun-toting heroes despairing of the liberal destruction of western civilisation.

 

[Cutlass]

You think Dean Koontz is bad at that, try John Ringo. He wrote a scifi novel for no reason other than to make GW Bush look heroic.

 

[GoodGame]

Re-reading the authorized version of The Hobbit.

Also I've discovered the Honor Harrington series.

 

[Plotinus]

You think Dean Koontz is bad at that, try John Ringo. He wrote a scifi novel for no reason other than to make GW Bush look heroic.

Funny you should say that, as just the other day I stumbled across this glorious review of a book by John Ringo (of whom I had never heard) which is intended to make the Nazis look heroic.

(That's a pretty good review site, in fact - I was struck by the fact that his opinion of Robert Jordan is almost exactly the same as my own, as expressed in my post on the topic earlier in this very thread.)

 

[Kyriakos]

Re-reading the short story "The White people" by Arthur Machen.
I had first read it 13 years ago, in a cold university library, in some northern country

 

[SuperJay]

(That's a pretty good review site, in fact - I was struck by the fact that his opinion of Robert Jordan is almost exactly the same as my own, as expressed in my post on the topic earlier in this very thread.)

Wow, just read his (their?) review of Eye of the World... and yeah, he basically feels the same way I do about Jordan's books being just a collection of formulaic fantasy / sci-fi tropes. I feel vindicated!

 

[Scratch]

Book reviews or critiques can be great. I like John Scalzi's blog entry about Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.

I rather enjoy his admission it is a ridiculous book, but that it still had enough of a merit to it that he was able to read it. I know I've got some clunkers of books that I've read in the past, that I enjoyed although I was often bothered or annoyed by something in them. Sometimes it was obvious what it was, sometimes it was something I didn't figure out until late on in life I realized what was so ridiculous about something.

As for what I'm currently reading, I've been working my way through Les Misérables by Victor Hugo in French. It's work, because I'm still far from fluent in French, and sometimes frustrating because I can read very very fast in English.

 

[Cutlass]

Funny you should say that, as just the other day I stumbled across this glorious review of a book by John Ringo (of whom I had never heard) which is intended to make the Nazis look heroic.

(That's a pretty good review site, in fact - I was struck by the fact that his opinion of Robert Jordan is almost exactly the same as my own, as expressed in my post on the topic earlier in this very thread.)

From the review you linked:

Okay — talents like Bujold and Weber aside, Baen Books has, even going back to the Reagan era, long been SF's home for jingoistic, hyper-violent right-wing power fantasies. And in the even more extremist George W. Bush era, I suppose it might follow that said power fantasies would become increasingly paranoid and extremist in a manner consistent with the zeitgeist. But even I never would have thought Baen would go this far. To think that any audience outside of hate groups monitored by the FBI would be attracted to a story in which the Waffen-SS is given a chance to "redeem" themselves borders on dementia. The book's added indulgences involving routine stereotyping and bashing of "liberals" — more accurately, the far right's straw-man image of the antiwar left — are merely the icing on an already stale cake. About the only thing that can be said in defense of Watch on the Rhine is that, early on, it crosses an event horizon beyond which it's just too stupid to be offensive. That doesn't mean, however, that you ought to read it, even in an MST3K mindset. Remember, guys like me take out the trash so you don't have to. You can trust me to do my job, folks.

Ironically, that same publishing house is the home of Eric Flint, of 1632 fame, who is a communist. And publishes a lot of Mercedes Lackey's work, and she's as liberal as they come. And one of their biggest selling authors is David Weber, who is at worst a centrist.

That publisher also has a policy of teaming veteran authors with less experienced ones as a kind of apprenticeship. And has a free online library.

 

[Lillefix]

I bought Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crichton on the airport. Published after his death. It was entertaining but I wasn't impressed. First of all the characters where more cardboard than usual. We're not even allowed to find out by ourselves how the characters are. The traits(two or three for each) of most of the main characters are conveniently explained in the beginning. You see there is a chapter where the captain rounds up the crew for a mission, so that their function and personality is explained for the reader. It's very much like a movie. Too much like a movie. We have even the token black guy(whose defining trait is that he hasn't a tongue and that he is strong) and token woman(whose traits is that she acts like a man and has a good eye sight). The only person I found remotely interesting was Emily Roberts who actually had character development.

The story is very straightforward. They(british privateers with the governor's blessing) find a Spanish treasure ship(And thanks to Sid Meier I know precisely what that is) moored in a harbour guarded by an impregnable fortress and they want to take it. However the captain of the ship has obviously seen "Guns of Navarone" so they know precisely how to get into the fort and how to disable the cannons. They manage to do this in the first third of the book and the rest is about them trying to get home.

But what about the villains? Well, his name is Cazello and he is an evil bastard that loves to torture and kill people and our heroes are appalled by how he behaves(I'll get back to this). And all the Spaniards are undisciplined, drunk or asleep. They're apparently also terrible sailors. Based on his descriptions I find it amazing that it's the spaniards who own the entire Caribbean and not the angelic and highly disciplined British(he has more prejudice against spain than Dan Brown in "Digital fortress"). Anyway, half the crew including the captain has a bone to pick with Cazello because he has killed someone in their close family. But since Cazello dies in the first third(!!!) of the book, all that is simply forgotten. It is actually only implied that he dies, but he never shows up afterwards, so I guess he really died.

So are our heroes likable? No.
They are appalled when Cazello kills one of their crew. They can't understand anyone can be so cruel to kill an innocent privateer. Interestingly they later kill dozens of defenseless Spanish sailors and soldiers who are drunk or asleep without any remorse whatsoever. And believe me. I looked for anything resembling remorse and there was none. So they all involuntarily become hypocrites in my eyes. The book also doesn't seem to know whether it's a dark, close-to-reality kind of book or a lighthearted swashbuckling adventure kind of book.

And what was the point of the kraken? Or the cannibals? He could at least try to weave them into the story in stead of letting them come out of nowhere and disappear out of no where.

And do you know what spanish soldiers say when they ask if everything is all right?
"Questa sta bene?"


edit: I forgot to mention. The prose is at times atrociously bad. I far more recommend On stranger tides if you want a real modern piratebook. Even though it contains a bit too much magic, and at times I find Tim Powers a bit difficult to read.


Other than that I've read "the Jesus Incident"(Recommended by Brian Reynolds) and "Mysterium". Both good books. But mysterium could easily be fleshed out far more. It was an incredibly interesting premise, but it was just to short.

And the chapter in the Jesus incident where Rachel Demarest goes into the scream room still haunts me. And especially when she discovers why Jessup moans. That just creeps me out completely. I couldn't read the books for days after I read that. Winston Smith should consider himself lucky he didn't read that book before he was sent to room 101. Because then he would realise there are things far worse than rats. And then big brother would also know.

And yes, it's far more fun to write about bad books than good.

 

[Supr49er]

I think I'll reread George RR Martin's A Game of Thrones before the HBO miniseries airs next month.