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

[Josu]

Ended A column of fire, by Ken Follet
IMHO best book of Kingsbridge series. Maybe too long, but really good book

Starting The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia by Ursula K. Le Guin

 

[Bestbank Tiger]

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (August Wilson)

 

[AvalancheMaster]

The Medieval Balkans by Hristo Matanov, mostly out of curiosity. I am no trained historian, and this is a big academic work that's actually a required reading for some university courses over here.

I'm also rereading August by John Williams. One of the greatest tragedies is that he only ever wrote three books (well, four, but he doesn't want us to talk about his debut).

 

[dusters]

The man who knew infinity about one of the most famous 20th century mathematicians Ramanujan.

He kinda died due to starving himself and tuberculosis. A story about genius and a friend of British mathematician Hardy who helped him tremendously, it is a sad tale.

Those books from 1990s USA are so huge and in such small print. Book has like 450 pages, but font seems to be like 8-10 points high.
So accounting that I felt like I had read about 700 of pages in normal 12 pts print comparatively.

Our math department has many books from USA from 90s and it is expected - I have heard that in USA they reprint math books for
the sake of new edition every 10 years even if there is little to add.

I am reading a journal Vita Mathematica, also from US and 90s and there are some great essays on history of mathematics.
I learned of Isaac Barrow's theorem of calculus and how Barrow was the mentor of another Isaac - Newton and then calculus got wheels, figuratively speaking.

 

[JollyRoger]

 

[Smellincoffee]

Camino Ghosts, John Grisham. Something light after a month of nonfiction. An island cursed by voodoo is about to be developed; enter the lawyers and black magic.

 

[Bestbank Tiger]

Is it any good? His early work was great. More recently he's developed a reputation for low effort hackery.

 

[JollyRoger]

Even in his early work, I thought he was good for about 100 pages before the low effort hackery kicked in.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Camino Ghosts, John Grisham. Something light after a month of nonfiction. An island cursed by voodoo is about to be developed; enter the lawyers and black magic.

Perhaps the zombies will defeat the lawyers.

 

[Bestbank Tiger]

Even in his early work, I thought he was good for about 100 pages before the low effort hackery kicked in.

The Pelican Brief, The Firm, A Time To Kill, and The Client were all good. Especially The Pelican Brief - it was suspenseful the whole way.

 

[Smellincoffee]

Is it any good? His early work was great. More recently he's developed a reputation for low effort hackery.

It's....in keeping with that reputation. Not particularly impressive so far, but readable.

The Pelican Brief, The Firm, A Time To Kill, and The Client were all good. Especially The Pelican Brief - it was suspenseful the whole way.

The Chamber should be mentioned. It really made me think about the death penalty as a teenager.

 

[Kyriakos]

Roughly at 2/5ths of the Karamazovs. Just past the Great Inquisitor story. I don't like the idea of believing in god but being against him out of humanism - it presupposes way too specific a personality.

 

[JollyRoger]

The Pelican Brief, The Firm, A Time To Kill, and The Client were all good. Especially The Pelican Brief - it was suspenseful the whole way.

I agree. I guess I'm a bit jaded by the next ten books or so that I read before I gave up on Grisham

 

[Bestbank Tiger]

I agree. I guess I'm a bit jaded by the next ten books or so that I read before I gave up on Grisham

I haven't read the more recent books. One big reason is I've heard exactly that complaint from a large number of ex-fans.

 

[Godwynn]

The Anglo-Saxons: A History of the Beginnings of England 400-1066 by Marc Morris

 

[danjuno]

Hey now, there's a face I haven't seen in a while!

Getting back on topic:
The Secret History of the CIA by Joseph J. Trento

 

[Wiz4rd]

I got my library card a few weeks ago and got some books to read where I'm staying. I finished "The Mongols" about a week ago which is a catalogue of Mongol history and culture compiled by an author in the late 80's. I found the section about Mongol "tolerance" towards religion interesting, where the author describes Mongol tolerance towards religion was not necessarily out of benelovence, but more out of an opportunity for Mongol leadership to pacify local populations and consolidate control. In addition, I read the Chinese government in the north of the region we consider northern China and Inner Mongolia had a long standing strategy pre-Genghis where they took advantage of feuding between Mongolian warlords and funneled money to a weaker player in a power struggle in the Mongol homelands so as to keep them fighting each other. Genghis Khan was able to overcome the feuding to eventually piece by piece take control of large parts of present day China. Throughout the book, there is ample ornate Persian art of Mongol ceremonies and major events, along with photographs of places where they exerted major control.

My current reads are another catalogue on Mesoamerican civilization and a mystery novel about an Asian-American crime ring's actions in the Northeastern USA. The latter is new type of genre to read for me and seems really interesting. I'm thinking about getting more books at some point in the future from the library

 

[Josu]

Ended NEXUS: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI by Yuval Noha Harari
There is no doubt that Harari knows how to propose clean and legit debates, which I always appreciate.
However, IMHO Nexus has been Harari's most disappointing book. There are pages and pages speaking about west's enemies such as Stalin, Putin, Iran, Marxists, Stalin again... Just to state that western democracies have self-correcting mechanisms that would not allow a surveillance AI and it only could happen in totalitaritarian countries. Well, as far as I know, Echellon, Prism or Pegasus where developed in western countries. I do not see Mr. Harari having the will to comment about this countries, so this parts of the book are biased.

Started Jonathan Haidt's The anxious generation

 

[JollyRoger]

So far the philosophy to flagellation ratio is heavy on flagellating me with philosophy

 

[JollyRoger]