Which book are you reading now? Volume XI

[SS-18 ICBM]

Finished Ulysses. I think I can understand why it can be said to have been the greatest English-language novel of the 20th century. A fun, but grueling ride. I suppose the next step up would be Finnegan's Wake, possibly the final boss of English literature.

Anyway, I need some lighter reading material. Geoengineering of the Climate System, vol. 38 of the Royal Society of Chemistry's Issues in Environmental Science and Technology, edited by R.E. Hester and R.M. Harrison. Time to read on the real-life considerations behind carbon capture and sequestration, stratospheric sulfur aerosols, artificial trees, biochar, and other techniques.

 

[Flying Pig]

Finished Ulysses. I think I can understand why it can be said to have been the greatest English-language novel of the 20th century. A fun, but grueling ride. I suppose the next step up would be Finnegan's Wake, possibly the final boss of English literature.

I think there's a line at which the ingredients that steep into great literature stew into pretentious rubbish - and that the line is somewhere between Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake. The former, as you rightly say, is essentially enjoyable: the parts which are difficult to understand actually add to the enjoyment. If you wrote the plot in simple language and using normal literary conventions, it would be absolutely boring. Having found Wake absolutely impenetrable, I suspect that it's only 'fun' to the sort of literature student/enthusiast who enjoys analysing difficult language as a pleasure in itself.

 

[JollyRoger]

Finished Ulysses. I think I can understand why it can be said to have been the greatest English-language novel of the 20th century. A fun, but grueling ride. I suppose the next step up would be Finnegan's Wake, possibly the final boss of English literature.

I read Ulysses back around 2003 or so without annotations. I kind of got it, but obviously missed a lot. Right now, I am taking the long slog through it with the two recommended guides. I slog through a chapter going back and forth between the text and annotations and then read the chapter without annotations. When I make it to the end, I plan on reading the whole thing without annotations. Somehow I think I am still missing about half of what Joyce is getting at, but is has been a kind of fun exercise.

 

[Agent327]

Asterix and the papyrus of Caesar. By Goscinny & Uderzo (not).

 

[Lillefix]

Asterix and the papyrus of Caesar. By Goscinny & Uderzo (not).

Didn't know there was a new one. Is it any good?

 

[Antilogic]

Anti's recent reads:

The Martian by Andy Weir after seeing the movie. Loved both, got me in a KSP mood.

Sugar Salt Fat by Michael Moss, which is a great read. It's about the food scientists, marketing, and corporate decisions that resulted in incredibly unhealthy processed food dominating the shelves of American supermarkets, arranged in three parts around the three elements in the title.

 

[abradley]

{Snip}

More by CLR James https://www.marxists.org/archive/james-clr/ He's a Marxist and saw the world through Marxist's eyes. Have not read the 'Black Jacobin' but from the articles on this site am guessing it's Marxist propaganda, no problem as long as readers know where he's coming from.

My recommendation would be:

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2010

http://thebeakspeaks.blogspot.com/2010/11/kenneth-roberts-lydia-bailey.html

Kenneth Roberts Lydia Bailey

I read this book with trepidation due to some of the comments of previous reviewers about this book being politically incorrect. Having read the book with an open mind the reviewers who stated this were way off base.

The book was written in the 1950's and dealt with two subjects not commonly dealt with in that era in historical fiction the Haitian Revolution and the Barbary War. The author is clearly cognizant of historical paradox of the French Revolution and the subsequent actions of France. The author clearly is sympathetic with the Haitians and portrays one historical figure though competent in Battle lousy as a human. The portrayal of Desalines as a war criminal is largely correct. Any discussion of why Haiti is messed up today largely rests with France, but also includes the misrule of Desalines.

The thrust of the book is how a career boob Tobias Lear acted like a clown and had a nasty impact on events. In real life people like Tobias Lear at the State Department are still messing things up today. In essence the book shows how timeless the bufoonery of the State Department is.

As far as the book the black Sudanese Muslim plays the role of the lead character's
best friend. In Roberts works this spot is usually the most interesting and the hero is less interesting or in some cases a bore. King Dick is almost super heroic and saves the life of his friend the lawyer from Maine on multiple occasions. He is portrayed as strong and mentally sharp. The criticism of his language being broken is unwarranted as readers should not expect an uneducated former slave to talk like William F Buckley or Gore Vidal.

The book is well worth reading even if the ending is not all live happily ever after. I read this book out of sequence as my next book The Lively Lady also has the character King Dick years later in Dartmoor Prison and the Son of the lead character of Arundel in the War of 1812.

Thus far out of Roberts nine works of historical fiction I have read six. After I am finnished with the last three I will write a post about his work and themes.
POSTED BY BEAKERKIN AT 5:16 AM

Read this long ago, not long after it came out.

 

[Agent327]

Didn't know there was a new one. Is it any good?

The drawing style is indiscernible from the original and the story is close enough. It's better than the 'solo' work after the demise of the text writer.

 

[Zkribbler]

Emerald Storm the latest Ethan Gage adventure by William Dietrich.

Wonderful beginning

My intention was to retire.

After learning in 1802 that I had fathered a family, then rescuing mother and son from a tyrant in Tripoli, and finally escaping in a submarine invented by crackpot American inventor Robert Fulton, I was more than ready to trade in heroism for domesticity. My preference was lover, not fighter. No one tries harder to escape adventure than me, Ethan Gage.

So why in April of 1803, was I clinging to the side of a frozen fortress in France's Jura Mountains, sleet in my eyes, a bomb on my back, an hemp rope heavy as a hangman's noose slung round my neck?

 

[Arakhor]

That's an impressive start, I quite agree!

 

[Lillefix]

Emerald Storm the latest Ethan Gage adventure by William Dietrich.

Wonderful beginning

I think I dislike the protagonist already...

 

[JohannaK]

I got to say, he didn't make a good impression on me either.

 

[Zkribbler]

I think I dislike the protagonist already...

I was not expecting that reaction.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Air Mobility by Robert Owen is the history of American military airlift, one of the USA's foremost tools for global power projection, possibly even more important than its carrier strike groups. It demonstrates the relationships between politics (like how Democrats were major figures in American military airlift, more than the Republicans), doctrine, and technology.

 

[abradley]

Black April: The Fall of South Vietnam, 1973-75
by George J Veith
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/capsule-review/black-april-fall-south-vietnam-1973-1975
In this first half of what is to be a two-part inquiry into why North Vietnam was able to defeat the South, Veith examines the military encounters of the last stages of the war. (The second volume will consider the war’s politics and diplomacy.) Veith’s intensive research and interviews, which make use of Vietnamese as well as American sources, yield a level of detail that is a bit overwhelming and likely to deter all but the most enthusiastic readers. The book is nonetheless a service to military history, for no one has produced nearly as thorough an account of these events. Veith argues that the South Vietnamese army was unfairly blamed for its own defeat and demonstrates that its incompetence was overstated. Although he accepts that senior South Vietnamese commanders made mistakes, he believes that the real reasons for the South’s defeat were North Vietnam’s failure to abide by the Paris peace accords and the United States’ failure to provide the South Vietnamese with the material support they deserved.

Vietnam has been mentioned a couple of times recently, am browsing what I read earlier.

 

[Antilogic]

I was not expecting that reaction.

I felt that it had a bit too much first person exposition, name-dropping a famous inventor is not how I introduce myself, it's also weird to introduce yourself as "me, the hero of the story, MY NAME!", and the lover not a fighter line is an old retread.

Air Mobility by Robert Owen is the history of American military airlift, one of the USA's foremost tools for global power projection, possibly even more important than its carrier strike groups. It demonstrates the relationships between politics (like how Democrats were major figures in American military airlift, more than the Republicans), doctrine, and technology.

I've been looking for some works on Cold War power projection. Although Robert Owen is a hard historian to search for.



Anti-Chicken Boo has finished another two books:

The Little Book That Still Beats the Market by Joel Greenblatt on a recommendation for my brother. I felt the writing was geared a bit too much towards a generalized audience so that it felt juvenile and a bit scammy, but the underlying ideas are the core of good value investing.

Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey because I found it at my parents' house. Good stuff although it's missing the voiceover and scrolling text over peaceful background pictures, but it's a book, you know, so it can't have those.

 

[Borachio]

Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts.

In the early 80s, Gregory David Roberts, an armed robber and heroin addict, escaped from an Australian prison to India, where he lived in a Bombay slum. There, he established a free health clinic and also joined the mafia working as money launderer, forger and street soldier. He found time to learn Hindi and Marathi, fall in love, and spend time being worked over in an Indian jail. Then, in case anyone thought he was slacking, he acted in Bollywood and fought with the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan... Amazingly, Roberts wrote Shantaram three times after prison guards trashed the first two versions. It's a profound tribute to his willpower... At once a high-kicking, eye-gouging adventure, a love saga and a savage yet tenderly lyrical fugitive vision.

It's also 900 pages long. And seems to be a somewhat (no one knows how much) fictionalized autobiography.

 

[Cutlass]

Sword of the South by David Weber. I really enjoyed the first couple books in this series. But the last could have just been bad. No other way to put it, really. Just bad.

 

[Agent327]

A history of India I (Thapar) & II (Spear). Seems I need an updated version of this.

Multatuli, Max Havelaar. Second read. Book seems about as disjointed as his Ideas. where the writing style seems to fit better.

 

[Smellincoffee]

Just finished Convoy by Martin Middlebrook, about the "greatest U-boat battle of the war", and following it with The Horse in the City.