What Book Are You Reading? Volume 9
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Fifty
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thomas Friedman is like a perfect case study on why I don't trust anything journalists say other than reporting of micro-events.
Merkinball
Deity
Democracy in America - Alexis De Tocqueville - But it's currently a ways away at my folks house, so I'm starting:
Fifty's favorite - The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevski
As an aside, Anna Karenina is arguably the greatest piece of literature ever written. Strong cases can certainly be made. It is only slow in sections to people who read lazily and with an untrained eye. By and large it's a superfluous masterpiece from start to finish. People who jeer at the social criticism really fail to understand the entire point of Tolstoy. He certainly wasn't writing for pure entertainment, and everything he ever wrote is layered and wrapped in deep political discourse.
Fifty's favorite - The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevski
As an aside, Anna Karenina is arguably the greatest piece of literature ever written. Strong cases can certainly be made. It is only slow in sections to people who read lazily and with an untrained eye. By and large it's a superfluous masterpiece from start to finish. People who jeer at the social criticism really fail to understand the entire point of Tolstoy. He certainly wasn't writing for pure entertainment, and everything he ever wrote is layered and wrapped in deep political discourse.
BTW, I'm reading China: A History by John Keay. Exactly what it says on the tin. I'm halfway through it, just getting to the beginning of the Ming dynasty (The Rites of Ming, as the chapter is so entitled). I'm really enjoying it; it does what any good popular general history should do - lays out the major milestones of a big, long and complex stretch of time and space, and doing to so entertainingly.
madviking
north american scum
It's the required reading for our environmental science course...
Why? Is it a climate-change denying course, or they just want expose you to "different arguments", or what?
madviking
north american scum
Don't ask me! 
Spidernova
Warlord
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Crime and Punishment for English next year.
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
Who laid upon you this dreadful burden? I would rather read the entire Ayn Rand Collection.
madviking
north american scum
I'm taking a humanities course called "Topics in Globalization" next year. If it sounds kinda loaded it probably is...
I remember taking a humanity course like that - "Our Global Neighborhood".
It was a god-awful course.
madviking
north american scum
Thanks for the link. If I ever need to deliver a contrarian paper, I'll be sure to look there.
But this has reminded me another of another book I've read for leisure, Niall Ferguson's The Ascent of Money, which I would recommend for more historical, rather than financial, reasons. But, just keep in mind, I read the entire book on a plane fight from Frankfurt to DC.
Ulyaoth
Emperor
You don't like Brave New World? I've yet to read it but I do hope I like it. Anyway, it wouldn't be a required reading if most of it didn't suck.
madviking
north american scum
Hack-job? How so?
Compared to many other books, it thought it was rather firm on details. Covering the history of gold, banking, bonds, bubbles, insurance, risk etc I found it pretty interesting, and I learned a lot. (Though, this may be to due to the fact it was the only book within reach on my flight...)
Thorvald of Lym
A Little Sketchy
I read Colossus, also by Ferguson. The facts are straight; it's the posturing he does with them that's the liability.
I've read Empire and parts of Colossus. The former seemed okay, although there are probably better histories of the British Empire out there. Here's a good review of Colossus (and the End of Poverty):
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