Which book are you reading now? Volume XI

[Kozmos]

I've read Crime and Punishment but it still struck me as a simplified tale on crime with a rather laughable moral justification. (for its time it was probably very good though) I was looking for a little bit more analytical.

 

[Flying Pig]

I saw it as more of a tragedy: Rodya isn't a misunderstood hero, he is a villain, but his humanity is redeemed as the reader sees him fall apart.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Having finished Hobsbawm, I move on to something more topical: Georg Lukacs - Lenin: A Study on the Unity of His Thought.

 

[JohannaK]

Oh, the first great Marxist critic! we just talked about this in Literature class.

Talking of literature, I finished this wonderful book: Literary Theory, A Very Short Introduction, by Jonathan Culler. Extremely recommendable. Professor recommended it, my new book on Literary Theory recommends it...

 

[Verarde]

Today I finished Knowledge of the Holy by A.W. Tozer. I had to borrow a copy from my roommate because I lost my copy, and now I really want to find my copy so I can reread it over and over.

I'll be starting Walden by Thoreau pretty soon. That promises to be interesting.

 

[madviking]

i found walden pretty bad. really rambly

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Clear and Present Danger shall be my commemoration of Tom Clancy. The start isn't doing too well in hooking me in, lingering a little too much on the Coast Guard incident.

 

[Arakhor]

I've just picked up the Assassin's Creed tie-in novels by Oliver Bowden (a pen name of Anton Gill). They're better than I thought they would be.

 

[caketastydelish]

Reading 'What in God's name' by Simon Rich. Pretty funny so far.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

First paper is due in a few weeks. Guess the topic:

Redefining Stalinism - Ed. by Harold Shukman
Practicing Stalinism - J Arch Getty
Stalin: A Biography - Robert Service
Hammer and Rifle: The Militarization of the Soviet Union, 1926-1933 - David R. Stone
The Revolution Betrayed - Leon Trotsky
In Defense of Lost Causes - Slavoj Zizek

 

[JohannaK]

The blessing that capitalism is for mankind? A biography of Adam Smith?

 

[Masada]

Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why it Matters for Global Capitalism - George Akerlof and Robert Shiller
Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All - Paul Offit
Redshirts: A novel With Three Codas - John Scalzi
Abaddon's Gate - John Corey
Caliban's War - John Corey
Your Inner Fish - Neil Shubin
Average Is Over - Tyler Cowen
Why Evolution Is True - Jerry A. Coyne

 

[Cutlass]

I read Redshirts a few months ago. That was fun.

 

[1889]

How the States Got Their Shapes by Mark Stein. The TV show was pretty interesting but I missed a few episodes and I am trying to get my elementary students ready for the National Geography Bee. Hopefully I'll find some fun anecdotes I can share with them.

 

[Smellincoffee]

I'm about to finish Just the Two of Us, which is a fairly average cycling-across-America book. It's hard to top Hey Mom, Can I Ride my Bike Across America?, I think. I'm also trying to get into Lewis Mumford's The City in History, which is more difficult than I thought it would be. It's also stranger..in the beginning he maintains that cities have their origins in the need for alpha males to acquire power through religion. I'd expected more economic considerations.

In recent weeks I've read Misquoting Jesus, The Origin of Satan AND Zealot. The Temple is burned in every single one of `em.

 

[Paul in Saudi]

Edison's Conquest of Mars, written in 1898 or so as a follow-up to War of the Worlds. It is like natural, free-range cyber-punk.

Also, I just read the poem The Man from Snow River for the first time. Wonderful, reminiscent of Robert Service.

 

[Masada]

Do You Believe in Magic: The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine - Paul A. Offit

 

[Mouthwash]

Someone please recommend me some diamond-hard sci-fi. I'm in the mood.

 

[Borachio]

Do you mean hard-science fiction? I've always had a thirst for it. But sadly there really doesn't seem to be much, if any, of it around.

------
Rise and Fall of the Third Reich William Shirer. He writes well, I think. I don't know how reliable he is, though.

 

[Ajidica]

Someone please recommend me some diamond-hard sci-fi. I'm in the mood.

My interest in hard sci-fi sort of ended after Larry Niven (of which, I can heartily recommend the first Ringworld novel and most of his short stories. If you can track down the compilation Neutron Star you can't really go wrong. One of Niven's most interesting short stories is On the Theory and Practice of Teleportation where he establishes various parameters for a teleportation device, and looks at how that might impact society.)
Beyond that, I've heard good things about Eon by Greg Bear and pretty much anything by James P. Hogan.

I tend to prefer the less science-y authors, like Keith Laumer, Poul Anderson, John Varley, and Frank Herbert.