What Book Are You Reading? Issue.8

[JonathanStrange]

THE MOUNTAIN PEOPLE by C. Turnbull -- In 1965, an anthropologist spent two years with the Ik, a mountain people in northern Uganda, whose society, stressed by famine and drought, appeared to be both functioning and devastated. The people lived in their traditional societies, seemed to retain their traces of dying civilities, but otherwise had become ardent survivalists, all against all. A sad tale of dying elderly being mocked by their grandchildren, husbands hiding their hunting from wives, mothers secretly harvesting and eating a plant within seconds of finding it, children roaming in bands searching for food in a desert land where little grows and hunting is forbidden.

 

[Love]

intresting times by terry pratchett.

 

[Dachs]

Great Power Diplomacy 1814-1914, by one Norman Rich. Has been excellent so far.

 

[Kal'thzar]

Just finished the first two books by Stieg Larsson. Entertaining, not brilliant.

Especially the end of the second book, very dissapointing to be honest, I would have preferred the book to be much more bleak.

 

[Japanrocks12]

Falling Man - Don DeLillo. By the author of White Noise, Libra, and Underworld. Very, very good.

 

[Red Door]

Falling Man - Don DeLillo. By the author of White Noise, Libra, and Underworld. Very, very good.

I doubt that, seeing as White Noise is one of the worst books ever written.

 

[BrendanM]

A Patriot's History of the United States

A not-so-subtle rebuttal towards Howard Zinn that I find rather interesting. There are moments when you can see ideology shine through, but for the most part it is a accurate, though mildly right-tilting, look on American history that doesn't skirt around the issues of slavery, Indian displacement/annihilation, and other issues.

I do plan on reading A People's History one day. Compare and Contrast, oh my!

I'm around 415, which is around the 1890s and so far haven't been displeased with its honesty. I do await to see if the bias begins to shine a little brighter the more modern the time setting becomes.

 

[GoodGame]

How to Build a Dinosaur by Jack Horner and James Gorman

From a well-known professor of paleontology, a nice breezy read on biology/science/fossilized tissue and a dreamy goal of reverse-engineering a chicken in the egg to have some dinosaur adaptions.

 

[thetrooper]

The Appeal by John Grisham.

 

[Mowque]

How to Build a Dinosaur by Jack Horner and James Gorman

Any good? Google Books offers it for free.

 

[Gilder]

I'm currently reading Machiavelli's Discourses.

 

[GoodGame]

Any good? Google Books offers it for free.

I just got it so I'm more in skim read mode. The 'make a dinosaur' is a bit of a misnomer. It's more like 'the modest proposal' that the book ends with----a chickensaurus. If you have some science/biology background and like palentology in a gee, dinosaurs are cool kind of way, I think you'll like it.

Mostly I've been interested in anecdotes about getting useful material out of fossilized bone. I don't think it goes into depth about developmental biology, which is what a their kind of chickenosaur would need, since neither of the authors has that background I think. From what I read, they're not able to get DNA from their fossils, so it's not the same idea of cloning DNA from a frozen mammoth.

It's written ok. Kind of a nerdy beach read.

 

[kuukkeli]

I'm trying to read some Finnish books for a change. First on the menu was...

Marttyyrit (Martyrs) by Tommy Tabermann: A first book I've read by this poet, novelist and (annoying, if you ask me) media person. As one might expect from a poet it wasn't very conventional novel: setting was rather absurd u/dys-topia, characters were practically insane, structuring was odd and the plot was essentially meaningless.

I was expecting richer language and disappointed by what seemed to be almost unfinished text - it read much more like a 1st or 2nd draft than finished book. Proofreading was also hideous: there were typos on almost every page and why on earth didn't they indent the paragraph starts.

Not very good: 2/5

 

[Abaddon]

Gun, Germs & Steel.

Good so far, only a few chapters in, don't have enough time to read anymore

 

[Dachs]

Finished my diplomatic history. It was a fantastic read.

Currently beginning Reed Browning's The War of the Austrian Succession.

 

[King of Town]

man Dachs it seems like you only read History. As a matter of fact that seems to be the main focus of most people in this thread. I guess I'm the outsider, not you

 

[Dachs]

man Dachs it seems like you only read History. As a matter of fact that seems to be the main focus of most people in this thread. I guess I'm the outsider, not you

I don't only read history, as a cursory examination of my avatar and other user information ought to show.

 

[GoodGame]

I don't only read history, as a cursory examination of my avatar and other user information ought to show.

You read Robert E. Howard, too?

Gun, Germs & Steel.

Good so far, only a few chapters in, don't have enough time to read anymore

I liked it, but I don't think I really bought into it. Did you read Collapse yet?

 

[JonathanStrange]

I don't read just History, I read Alt-History too!

 

[Fifty]

Piers the Ploughman by William Langland