Which book are you reading now? Volume XI

[Traitorfish]

Our Dumb Century, by the Onion. My favorite headline so far has to be "Chamberlain Returns from Meeting with Hitler Promising 'London Laid Waste in Our Time'".

"Giant Poster of Chairman Mao Seizes Power in China" tops the list for me.

 

[Antilogic]

No, the author is a current one, I think that the book was written about 4 years ago. The book is about this guy. There is no a particular reason, from a time to now I am reading exclusively historical novels, I like history, but I am awfull with names, dates and things like that, hence there is no too much sense from my side to read essay books or similar, so I read stories about history instead of history

Since I knew about this guy I became interested on him because of being a half brother of Iñigo Arista (considered as the first navarrese king). I was also interested on him because I listened old tales about "El moro Muza" (Musa the moor), that in some areas was considered a kind of bogeyman to scare children

On the other hand I saw the book on amazon in kindle format for a good price so I bought it.

Oh, I completely misunderstood your post for some reason. I had read a few historical fiction novels way back (I think Johnny Tremain is the classic American schoolboy example, although I also read Stonewall's Gold at one point).

 

[Borachio]

And...

 

[ParkCungHee]

"Giant Poster of Chairman Mao Seizes Power in China" tops the list for me.

"World's Largest Metaphor Hits Iceburg"

 

[Masada]

Why Marx Was Right - Terry Eagleton: I'm not sure what to think yet.
Uglies - Scott Westerfeld: Fantastic.
Pretties - Scott Westerfeld: Fantastic.
Specials - Scott Westerfeld: Fantastic.
Empires of the Atlantic - John H. Elliott: Very good.
The Death and Life of the Great American School System - Diane Ravitch: Impressive.
July's People - Nadine Gordimer: Not quite my cup of tea. I think I'll need to read it a secodn time.
Baghdad Without A Map and Other Misadventures - Tony Horwitz: Horwitz is amusing as hell.

 

[Traitorfish]

Why Marx Was Right - Terry Eagleton: I'm not sure what to think yet.

I found it pretty meh. It's neither really an investigation of nor argument for Marx, so it just ends up as a wishy-washy apologetics, like his primary concern is making Marx palatable to Guardian-readers. Which, to be fair, it does as decent a job of as you could hope, but it's not clear to me that this is a very worthwhile project to begin with.

 

[ParkCungHee]

Back to school, lots of reading.

Awkward Dominion: American Political, Economic, and Cultural Relations with Europe, 1919-1933, Frank Costigliola.
The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, William Appleman Williams.
The Dynamics of War and Revolution, Lawrence Dennis.
The Wilsonian Century, Frank Ninkovich.

 

[Traitorfish]

I'm jealous. The prescribed reading for my classes this semester is mostly journal-based, so I don't get to chalk up as much geek-cred as all you other history types.

 

[ParkCungHee]

You get to chalk up super geek cred while citing them though.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

The Universe: Order without Design by Carlos I. Calle. It has been a long time since I've read The Universe in a Nutshellw, and this book is refreshing me on previous concepts I have learned. It seems more accessible than Hawking's book though, having better explanations and examples. Still, I'm disappointed that I'm not understanding the material on a deeper level. Why would a model of spacetime need 26, 10, or 11 dimensions? I guess if I get the time it would be nice to take some courses in mathematics, physics, and cosmology.

 

[Camikaze]

Moderator Action: Discussion of erotic fiction of any persuasion is inappropriate for CFC. Please refrain from posting about such literature, or linking to it. Discussion deleted.

 

[1889]

Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick, just started but can already tell it's going to be very good.

 

[madviking]

i read that for my junior year ap us history class. it was aight.

 

[cybrxkhan]

These past couple of days I've been looking up Michal Biran's The Empire of the Qara Khitai in Eurasian History: Between China and the Islamic World, one of these few texts on the Khitan people, whom I find one of the most interesting and crazy-awesome but underrated and relatively unknown nomadic groups in history. I mean, in exaggerated terms, after they were defeated by the ancestors of the Manchu/Qing in China, a small number of them - led by a literal warrior-poet of a Prince (he was a skilled general and received one of the highest degrees under the Confucian examination system) - fled to the east and had an epic exodus-like journey through Central Asia for almost two decades before settling near Persia, defeated one of the greatest (albeit declining) Empires of the time - the Seljuks - despite being outnumbered, and basically founded a medieval Buddhist Chinese Empire right next to the Middle East and survived despite being surrounded by Muslims by conning their neighbors into worshipping them and thinking they were the real China. That makes for some epic great novel/movie/anime/whatever material.

Unfortunately I am only getting it via google books, and large parts of it is not shown therefore. And even more unfortunately while my university has a copy in its library, someone's already checked it out and it won't be due back until February this year.

 

[Masada]

The Emperor's Soul - Brandon Sanderson

 

[Kozmos]

Fellow book readers, anyone knows good books that deal with crime or criminals, whether from sociological, psychological or economic perspective. I know a few books but they are just criminal biographies and pulp.

 

[Murky]

The Alchemist: Paulo Coelho

 

[JohannaK]

I heard Crime and Punishment is a must.

 

[Antilogic]

Tackling Hobsbawm's third volume, The Age of Empires now. Reading has been slow, though.

 

[Flying Pig]

I heard Crime and Punishment is a must.

It's a good book which has moments of sheer brilliance, although I must admit that at times it feels awfully drawn out: Dostoyevsky uses dramatic irony in such a way that it occasionally feels as if he's making his characters wilfully stupid. The edition I have proclaims it on the blurb as 'one of the most readable novels ever written', which is perhaps one of the most indefensible descriptions ever written.