What Books Are You Currently Reading?

[Tobias Funke]

Currently reading Mark Twain, Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, & Essays, 1891-1910. He didn't just write about little boys' adventures in Missouri; his sarcasm cut pretty deep. Check out King Leopold's Soliloquy or The War Prayer.

Also Army Life in a Black Regiment. The first black regiment in the Civil War, but (I think) less well-known than Shaw's regiment among the general public. Shaw's was made of free men from the North, Higginson's from escaped or liberated (mostly by force) slaves from the South.

 

[nevere]

neuroscience: exploring the brain
back to eden by jethro kloss
secrets of vodoo by milo rigaud
tropical fish hobiest magizine
introduction to genetic principles by david hyde

 

[zoobyshoe]

The Litigators by John Grisham. A fairly recent one of his (2011) but up there with his best. It's kinds like Cannery Row, if all the characters in Cannery Row were practicing lawyers.

 

[Monsterboy]

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

 

[Ryan_m_b]

After capitalism by David Schweickart. An interesting exploration of economic democracy.

 

[lisab]

I want a book that is very uplifting, positive, and hopeful, but does not paint overly-rosey portraits of its characters. I like characters to have flaws and warts, just like real people!

Any suggestions?

 

[Enigman]

Have you read Erich Segal? (Except Jane Austen, that's the only name I can think of)
Love Story, Doctors, The Class are all great books which more or less fit the criteria...
(I stick with the classics when recommending books...my personal taste is a bit too morbid)

 

[AnTiFreeze3]

I want a book that is very uplifting, positive, and hopeful, but does not paint overly-rosey portraits of its characters. I like characters to have flaws and warts, just like real people!

Any suggestions?

For some reason, the book The Art of Racing in the Rain is coming to my mind. It's certainly a unique book, and I thought it was certainly positive, yet the characters still possessed your desired flaws.

 

[Hornbein]

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. It' the Great American Novel. They don't make 'em like they used to.

 

[AnTiFreeze3]

I almost forgot how enjoyable of a person Mark Twain was, and how enjoyable his writing continues to be. I'm nearly done with the first of his two-volumed Following the Equator, in which he travels around the British Empire of 1895, and essentially includes his diary from his journey, along with anecdotes, and a few satirical looks at racism, colonialism, and other social behaviors.

Imagine traveling the world like he did (well, Wikipedia tells me he was forced to do so, since he was in debt and needed the money he would gain from lecturing around the English-speaking world). His descriptions of Hawaii, Tasmania (this one sounded particularly amazing), Australia, and New Zealand have only strengthened my desire to travel the world, although I'm wary of the fact that their descriptions are more than a century outdated.

 

[MrTheBard]

I am currently reading Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss. It is an excellent fiction novel and I highly recommend it to anyone and everyone who is into fantasy books. It is part of a trilogy called "The KingKiller Chronicles", and the first book in the series is The Name of The Wind.

 

[dkotschessaa]

The Ellery Queen mystery series. Right now-'The Dutch Shoe mystery'- Ellery Queen.
After this 'The Cuckoo's Calling'- Robert Galbraith.

Ok, this is too weird.

I thought "I wonder if there's a thread in general about what people are reading now."

(Found the thread. Hi.)

And you're reading the exact same Ellery Queen novel that my wife is reading, and which I Just read over the summer. Freaky!

We are really into the Ellery queen thing now. You can watch the episodes on Hulu... They have the same idea of an intermission where he tells you "by now you should be able to solve this."

So far we haven't been successful.

When I got to page 177 in that book (the intermission) I reread the first half.

I wasn't successful.

I'd like to get more of those books though. Good luck!

-Dave K

 

[dkotschessaa]

Currently reading Mark Twain, Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, & Essays, 1891-1910. He didn't just write about little boys' adventures in Missouri; his sarcasm cut pretty deep. Check out King Leopold's Soliloquy or The War Prayer.

I read such a compilation of twain's not too long ago. It was called "The complete Essays and short stories" or somesuch, but I don't think it was really complete. Still, I took a good 3 years to read it. I would just pick it up here and again. Since then I've read Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, and just finished Connecticut yankee.

All and all I think I prefer his short works and essays over Sawyer/Finn. But Connecticut yankee was actually more in line with those short satirical pieces, I thought. It's also considered one of the first sci-fi stories, since it involves time travel.

 

[dkotschessaa]

Oh, can you tell I'm so happy to have found this thread?

I just finished "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley and I'm watching the 3 hour movie version now. Having been brought up with dystopic sci-fi I didn't find the ideas very novel, though the writing was excellent. I kind of found it melodramatic. Like "yes yes, I get your point, we're all turning into brain dead zombies."

Delightful switch up - I'm reading Dumas now - the Three Musketeers. I'm only 12 pages in or so and I can't recall having so much fun reading something. It was originally serialized, so each chapter is kind of a cliffhanger, leading you on to the next, but you don't have to wait a week. I don't think I'll have any trouble getting through all 600 pages. (But damn, how long did the serialization take?)

-Dave K

 

[Tobias Funke]

I read such a compilation of twain's not too long ago. It was called "The complete Essays and short stories" or somesuch, but I don't think it was really complete. Still, I took a good 3 years to read it. I would just pick it up here and again. Since then I've read Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, and just finished Connecticut yankee.

All and all I think I prefer his short works and essays over Sawyer/Finn. But Connecticut yankee was actually more in line with those short satirical pieces, I thought. It's also considered one of the first sci-fi stories, since it involves time travel.

I think I have that, and I agree that it's a little strange to call it "complete", but I've somehow managed to collect a lot of incomplete collections that don't overlap too much, so I'm happy. Even when I bought the hardcover of "The Mysterious Stranger" because that complete essays book is a little paperback, it turned out to be a different version (he wrote three different versions, although it sounds like two of them are pretty similar).

His essays are generally very good and he's not given enough credit for that. A big reason is undoubtedly a kind of historical censorship by omission, considering his later anti-war, anti-imperialist, pro-union views and his brutally effective takedown of Christian hypocrisy. It's all well and good to denounce slavery after the fact in Huckleberry Finn, but speak out against systemic current issues and there's a problem. That's the reason why Martin Luther King Jr. is now synonymous with "I Have a Dream" and not his opposition to the Vietnam war and wealth inequality.

Speaking of essays and Huxley, he was also a fantastic essayist, writing on everything from art critics, to LSD and fasting as paths to the "antipodes of the mind", to the never-mentioned aspects of Pavlov's experiments, e.g. finding the breaking points of dogs subjected to physical and mental torture. He was also an upper-class, early 20th century white Englishman, so he occasionally says some pretty questionable things about eugenics and race, but I guess that's how things were then. Now we're enlightened and post-racial, or course...

 

[dkotschessaa]

I think I have that, and I agree that it's a little strange to call it "complete", but I've somehow managed to collect a lot of incomplete collections that don't overlap too much, so I'm happy. Even when I bought the hardcover of "The Mysterious Stranger" because that complete essays book is a little paperback, it turned out to be a different version (he wrote three different versions, although it sounds like two of them are pretty similar).

His essays are generally very good and he's not given enough credit for that. A big reason is undoubtedly a kind of historical censorship by omission, considering his later anti-war, anti-imperialist, pro-union views and his brutally effective takedown of Christian hypocrisy. It's all well and good to denounce slavery after the fact in Huckleberry Finn, but speak out against systemic current issues and there's a problem. That's the reason why Martin Luther King Jr. is now synonymous with "I Have a Dream" and not his opposition to the Vietnam war and wealth inequality.

Speaking of essays and Huxley, he was also a fantastic essayist, writing on everything from art critics, to LSD and fasting as paths to the "antipodes of the mind", to the never-mentioned aspects of Pavlov's experiments, e.g. finding the breaking points of dogs subjected to physical and mental torture. He was also an upper-class, early 20th century white Englishman, so he occasionally says some pretty questionable things about eugenics and race, but I guess that's how things were then. Now we're enlightened and post-racial, or course...

I read a little bit of "Brave New World Revisited" which is an essay written some time later. In it he says that he thinks the world is going in the direction of "Brave New World" faster than he thought, (and towards an Orwellian future also). I find it a bit on the alarmist side, though I agree in general principal. (It's mostly that I think it's even more complicated than he's saying). So far I haven't resonated much with him. Though I'll probably check out "Island" to see how his views evolved.

-Dave K

 

[Tobias Funke]

Yeah, something about Huxley seems like he might not be the most pleasant person to be around, but I find a lot of his insights and observations pretty interesting. Enough for me to keep going back to his essays at least.

Back to general recommendations, although I'm not currently reading them, I really enjoyed Studs Terkel's oral histories. So far I've read Hard Times, "The Good War", and Working.

 

[Enigman]

Started Cuckoo's Calling and it seems Rowling's going to make a mess of this one too...

 

[dkotschessaa]

Started Cuckoo's Calling and it seems Rowling's going to make a mess of this one too...

How'd Ellery go? Did you solve it? (I had the murderer as a top suspect, but couldn't settle on one)

 

[AnTiFreeze3]

About Huxley: Brave New World was novel and very prophetic, but the book --the plot, essentially-- was very, very bad. It's still worth reading to see that what we are witnessing today was predicted so long ago, but as for the plots of dystopian books, Orwell's 1984, in my opinion, wins, despite his foresight being less accurate.

Huxley's The Doors of Perception is a must read (the book about LSD that Tobias mentioned). Those are the only two works of his which I've read, although I do have a copy of Island sitting around. Reviews tell me that the plot of this book is more tolerable, and I think his idea of a utopian society is interesting: Western science coupled with Eastern philosophy.

Apparently a few of the anecdotes and stories and folklore that Twain wrote about in his Following the Equator, which he claims to have heard from natives of certain lands, or from a passerby on a train, or from a shipmate, etc., were included in his collections of short stories, since Twain was purportedly the first to have transitioned these stories from orations to writing. He, of course, added his own wit and style to the stories, anyway, so I have no quarrel with his rehashing of these stories being considered his original work.

 

[AnTiFreeze3]

I've picked up again Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death. My second browsing of his first chapter has helped me to understand it some more, and I think I'll continue with it, this time. Especially since my English class is dealing with the Romantic poets like the Williams, Blake and Wordsworth, who, especially with Wordsworth, are adamantly opposed to industrialization, and adamantly in favor of the serenity of nature and the importance of solitude. For this reason, my class read the work of yet another William, this time Deresiewicz, a Yale Professor, who wrote about The End of Solitude.

 

[Enigman]

How'd Ellery go? Did you solve it? (I had the murderer as a top suspect, but couldn't settle on one)

Got completely blind sided by this one ...did get the previous one though (The french powder mystery).

 

[dkotschessaa]

Got completely blind sided by this one ...did get the previous one though (The french powder mystery).

It was tricky, almost annoyingly so. The http://www.hulu.com/ellery-queen is tricky too, but fun. Apparently it was the predecessor for "Murder, She Wrote."

I take it you like mysteries then. This is the first I've read, aside from perhaps a short Holmes story or two. I'd like to explore the genre more. There's an Ellery Queen mystery Magazine, a sister publication of Analog (which I read religiously).

Still haven't found an Analog reader on the forums...

 

[Enigman]

http://people.maths.ox.ac.uk/macdonald/errh/101_analysis_bedtime_stories_(epsilon_red_riding_hood).pdf

 

[dkotschessaa]

http://people.maths.ox.ac.uk/macdonald/errh/101_analysis_bedtime_stories_(epsilon_red_riding_hood).pdf

This is awesome.

 

[lisab]

http://people.maths.ox.ac.uk/macdonald/errh/101_analysis_bedtime_stories_(epsilon_red_riding_hood).pdf

Chapters 2 - 101 are left as an exercise for the reader . . .

 

[Borg]

Chapters 2 - 101 are left as an exercise for the reader . . .

That same joke was in all of my textbooks.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Killing Lincoln by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard. Not being a Civil War buff, I learned about a thousand things about the end of the war and the assassination I didn't know, bizarre ironies, like the fact that, when they finally got Lincoln out of the theater and into a bed in a boarding house, they found out later Booth had rented the same room and slept in the same bed many times before. These were definitely "interesting times" in the dark, Chinese sense of the term.

 

[Superposed_Cat]

One flew over the cukoo's nest is a good book.

 

[Julio R]

The Divine Comedy (The Inferno to be exact) by Dante Alighieri.

 

[WWGD]

The Revenge of Geography, by Robert Kaplan. Kaplan counters ( or at least tries-to; pretty effectively I thought) Thomas Friedman's claims that the world is flat -- Geography does matter. Kaplan argues that geography contributes to shape cultures ( he is careful to use 'shape' instead of 'determine' ); e.g., the U.S has been able to develop a model of its own, having the advantage of being separated from potential enemies by two major oceans. Contrary to the case of the U.S, many European countries cultures and views were shaped by not having defenses from enemies. The geography of the U.S is also enviable in many other ways, having major navigable rivers, temperate climate, good-quality harbors and sea- and lake- ports; on the flip side, Africa has major deserts that make travel difficult, and a horrible climate.
Another example: cultures or people living in mountainous areas tend to be more independent and assimilate less, since it is harder for outsiders to travel to these areas and interact with the natives.

There was a nice presentation of this in C-Span's Book TV.

 

[Integral]

I am currently reading the memoirs of U.S. Grant. I was pleasantly surprised to find them a good read. He provides pretty good order of battles with some copies of orders he wrote. Recommended for anyone interested in the US Civil War.

 

[dkotschessaa]

The Divine Comedy (The Inferno to be exact) by Dante Alighieri.

I had a (great) challenge reading that years ago, back when I had more time to self-educate. I had gotten a version of the Comedy (all three books) that had no footnotes whatsoever. So I had to do all my own research to see what all was being referenced. I plan to revisit it again someday. There are people who spend years researching that book.

 

[dkotschessaa]

Taking a break from Dumas "The Three Musketeers" to read Enders game before I go see the movie. I was expecting something a lot more mind blowing, based on many years of hype. But it's a good read and good distraction right now.

 

[Julio R]

I had a (great) challenge reading that years ago, back when I had more time to self-educate. I had gotten a version of the Comedy (all three books) that had no footnotes whatsoever. So I had to do all my own research to see what all was being referenced. I plan to revisit it again someday. There are people who spend years researching that book.

Footnotes and endnotes for me please. It just saved a lot of time.

 

[dkotschessaa]

Footnotes and endnotes for me please. It just saved a lot of time.

Yeah, I wouldn't recommend what I did to anyone, unless they are really committed. I just took it more like a project.

 

[zoobyshoe]

11/22/63 by Stephen King.

It's conceivable people here might be put off by the fact King makes no attempt whatever to plausibly explain the existence of a time portal between 2011 and 1958, it's just there, in the back store room of a diner in Maine, but if you can get beyond that you might enjoy this book. I was continually impressed by his depiction of daily life in the late 50's/early 60's. The plot was good, but what really carries the book is the protagonist's ongoing discovery of what life was like 50 years ago. He finds he fits into that time well, participates as if he belongs there, and is almost sucked into becoming diverted from his reason for going back: to stop the assassination of JFK on 11/22/63.

 

[danago]

I've just started reading Daniel Yergin's The Prize. I'm not far into it, but am so far enjoying it a lot.

 

[Enigman]

Another reason to learn japanese:
http://www.ams.org/notices/201207/rtx120700956p.pdf
(I need to get the translation...)

 

[AnTiFreeze3]

11/22/63 by Stephen King.

It's conceivable people here might be put off by the fact King makes no attempt whatever to plausibly explain the existence of a time portal between 2011 and 1958, it's just there, in the back store room of a diner in Maine, but if you can get beyond that you might enjoy this book. I was continually impressed by his depiction of daily life in the late 50's/early 60's. The plot was good, but what really carries the book is the protagonist's ongoing discovery of what life was like 50 years ago. He finds he fits into that time well, participates as if he belongs there, and is almost sucked into becoming diverted from his reason for going back: to stop the assassination of JFK on 11/22/63.

I started his Dark Tower series, and similarly am enjoying it. His own description of the series is a combination of Lord of the Rings and the wild-west. His writing is also incredibly quick and easy to read, which is enjoyable; I almost forgot that there was once a time where I could read a 200-paged book in a day, and King renewed that experience for me.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I started his Dark Tower series, and similarly am enjoying it. His own description of the series is a combination of Lord of the Rings and the wild-west. His writing is also incredibly quick and easy to read, which is enjoyable; I almost forgot that there was once a time where I could read a 200-paged book in a day, and King renewed that experience for me.

11/22/63 was over 800 pages, and, yes, it took me about 4 days.

Now I am reading a very interesting novel called 12.21., a title which is also a calendar date. The lead character is a doctor trying to contain an ominous disease outbreak, back in the year 2012. The author, Dustin Thomason, does a wonderful job of re-creating every day life back in those days. (It's as if he went back in time and lived it himself.) Apparently some of the primitives back then were laboring under the delusion the world was to end on December 21st of that year, and it's looking like the outbreak will be seen as the agent of that ending. Can't tell for sure, I'm only a quarter of the way into it. Very readable writing, anyway.

 

[member 392791]

Steve-O: Professional Idiot, a Memoir

 

[djh101]

Man, Economy, and State by Murray Rothbard. Also learning a bit about abstract algebra while on break with McWeeny, Tinkham, and Pinter.

 

[Enigman]

The Name of The Rose
- Umberto Eco
Watson once said that if Holmes was born a few centuries back he would be burnt at stake for witchcraft. Eco's convincing me that he would rather be the inquisitor. The Baskerville reference doesn't do much to hide the inspiration behind the protagonist. Hate the narrator, though.
As of now, it shows promise.
Ed- just googled the protagonist to see if my suspicions were correct, they were- William of Baskerville is indeed a reference to Holmes and the first name apparently is a reference to William of Ockham of Occam's razor fame. And add the fact that the story's going to come with minimal historical distortion which I so despise because Eco's a historian (semiotician).

 

[lendav_rott]

Mitchell's "Cloud Atlas" ..the movie left too many questions, thought it good to consult the book :P

 

[jim hardy]

"Answer to Job" by Carl Jung


Jung suggests that God suffered a mid-life crisis over His (mis)treatment of Job and sent Christ as atonement.
His description of God is reminiscent of Susan Forward's "toxic parent", a half century before she made that phrase part of pop-psychology jargon.

The book is unsettling in that it reminds me of my imperfect parenting.
Makes one think of Mark Twain's "Mysterious Stranger". And it's causing strange dreams.

Almost finished, ten pages to go.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Final Theory by Mark Alpert. Elderly physicists are being interrogated and murdered. It turns out they were all students of Einstein at Princeton in his last year. What deadly secret did Albert impart to them before he died, a secret now sought by power hungry terrorists?

Not good enough to recommend. Not quite bad enough to stop reading.

 

[AnTiFreeze3]

History of Rome by Michael Grant. That Rome was capable of coupling brutality and complacent subservience has always intrigued me, as well as the obviously rich mythology and culture.

 

[jmeps]

The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. It slipped by me many years ago so I thought I would give a look..not a bad read.

 

[Jilang]

Time enough for love by Robert Heinlein (6th or 7th time probably!)