What Book Are You Reading? Volume 9

[Lillefix]

I finally finished Anna Karenina yesterday. Even if the translation was wonky, it was still a pretty good book. Tolstoy, for the most part, knew what he was doing. When he wasn't putting in criticisms of then-contemporary society and symbolism. The book also dragged a bit after the first couple hundred pages, but overall still pretty worthy of its classic status.

I loved that book too, but I didn't like that religious stuff at the end. Imho it looked like a cheap advertisment for for Chrisitanity by a newborn Christian. Very distracting.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

I loved that book too, but I didn't like that religious stuff at the end. Imho it looked like a cheap advertisment for for Chrisitanity by a newborn Christian. Very distracting.

The same frustration can be found in the ending of Crime and Punishment.

 

[Gilder]

I finished Gun, With Occasional Music last night. Overall I really liked it. It was an easy, fairly entertaining read. Conrad Metcalf's narration is easily the best and funniest part of the whole book.

Now I'm on to The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin.

 

[stuge]

Do androids dream of electric sheep -> Nation (T. Pratchett)

 

[GoodGame]

A Theory of Fun for Game Design by Ralph Koster.

Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott Mccloud.

Both are amusing and enlightening books if you like either subjects.

 

[Murky]

 

[Arriaga II]

Just finished With the Old Breed, by Eugene Sledge. I found his description of Peleliu in particular to be especially compelling.

Next up will be Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815 by Gordon Wood.

 

[Smellincoffee]

Just finished With the Old Breed, by Eugene Sledge. I found his description of Peleliu in particular to be especially compelling.

Sledge was a celebrity at my university, since he taught biology there. I read that book back in December, very....visceral.

I'm reading John Reader's Africa: Biography of the Continent. It began with the cooling of the mantle. I've just gotten to pastoral societies and I'm 200 pages in.

 

[Ansar]

Equus by Peter Shaffer

 

[ColdClimate]

I'm reading John Reader's Africa: Biography of the Continent. It began with the cooling of the mantle. I've just gotten to pastoral societies and I'm 200 pages in.

Just finishing Richard Dowden's Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles (really not as hokey as the titles sounds!). I guess the stuff he covers in this book must the the last 5 pages in yours!

 

[Smellincoffee]

Just finishing Richard Dowden's Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles (really not as hokey as the titles sounds!). I guess the stuff he covers in this book must the the last 5 pages in yours!

Well, I still have 500+ more pages.

 

[ColdClimate]

Well, I still have 500+ more pages.

Wow...that must be....thorough (!!!)

I also have another on the go right now Post War (Tony Judt) an ~850 page opus on seemingly everything that happened in europe from 1945-2008. Dense, but really good. I actually picked up the Africa book because I felt I owed it that continent to catch up on its recent history as well. Now I just need a similar one on modern Asia and I'll be up to date on the 'old world'.

Next year's project: a couple book covering the recent history from Patagonia to Baffin Island. THen I'll only be blissfuly ignornant of Australia and the South Pacific...

 

[Gilder]

I finished The Dispossessed. I really liked it, even if some of the characters seemed flat, but Le Guin paints an excellent portrait of several utopias.

Now I'm on to A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens. I don't think I'm going to finish it, I'm not too far in, and the purple prose is extremely thick.

I couldn't stand Dickens' style of writing. His sentences are too winding and run on and his choice of words was often poor.

Dropped Dickens, went on to Going Postal by Terry Pratchett instead.

 

[Babbler]

I am almost finished The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008 by Paul Krugman. It seems nice and short book on the financial crises of the 1990's and the 2000's. Having said that, I do wonder if the crises of the 1990's in Latin America and Asia went exactly as he put -- he is, after all, quite removed from the source. Also, a silly error mars the first chapter or so, where he credits the coining of the phrase "third world" to Jawaharlal Nehru (It was actually a French sociologist).

 

[Masada]

Krugman can't do the Asian Financial Crisis very well -- at all.

 

[Godwynn]

Germania: In Wayward Pursuit of the Germans and Their History - Simon Winder

 

[Gilder]

I finished Going Postal. I rather liked it a lot, it's one of the better Discworld book's Pratchett has written. I enjoyed it a lot more than some of the later Death/Susan novels.

I also read Animal Farm by George Orwell. It was pretty much what I expected from it, nothing more, nothing less.

I'm now reading The Stranger by Albert Camus.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

I am almost finished The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008 by Paul Krugman. It seems nice and short book on the financial crises of the 1990's and the 2000's. Having said that, I do wonder if the crises of the 1990's in Latin America and Asia went exactly as he put -- he is, after all, quite removed from the source. Also, a silly error mars the first chapter or so, where he credits the coining of the phrase "third world" to Jawaharlal Nehru (It was actually a French sociologist).

The girlfriend is reading this and The New Industrial State together. And Stiglitz's new book about the recession as well.

 

[Ulyaoth]

I've been reading my second volume of HP Lovecraft stories, but just the other day I got both the Universe in a nutshell by Stephen Hawking and A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Trying to decide what to read next.

 

[Gilder]

Making Money by Terry Pratchett. I greatly enjoyed Going Postal and hope Moist and the humor is as good as it was in the first one.