Current Reading - Books best thread

[JtS]

Current Reading - Books best thread

I'm currently reading Dashiel Hammet's The Maltese Falcon, and heaving heard it's supposed to be fantastic I'm not that impressed. Some of the turns of phrase a very good however some of it is atrocius.

[Brandenburger Toro]

Current Reading - Books best thread

I'm reading the complete major works of St. Anselm, and a very large anthology of C20 English-language poetry.

About 1200 pages between them, don't expect updates on this thread any time soon...

[Tubby Isaacs]

Current Reading - Books best thread

I've read a bit of Herodotus, AG, if that's any good. In Greek too.

I always get St Anselm and St Augustine muddled up, so some updates would be good.

As for King Lear, Gloucester has just tried to throw himself off a non-existent cliff.

[Anton Gramscescu]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Tubby Isaacs wrote:

As for King Lear, Gloucester has just tried to throw himself off a non-existent cliff.

Is he practising for a real jump later, or is he just a safety-first kind of guy, looking to minimize injuries in the whole cliff-jumping experience?

[Anton Gramscescu]

Current Reading - Books best thread

I take back the bitchy stuff about the Weisman book - it's pretty good overall. An interesting way to think about our species' impact on the enviroment.

Also ploughed through mathematician/playwright John Mighton's book The End of Ignorance, which is a reasonably engaing book on math education (no, really). Although I recognise that one of the reasons I liked it was because it reinforced my existing prejudices about the ways curricular decisions are made.

Now I have a real dillemma. I was going to read Sebastan Moffett's Japanese Rules , but I got quite depressed last night after a fight with the wife and so went out for a really serious dose of retail therapy and came home with 19 books. Which was overdoing it, really - it'll take at least 2 months to shift these. But still, what to read? Misha Glenny's McMafia? J-P chretien's The Great Lakes of Africa? Some Coetzee? Chinua Achebe? One of the three books on development in Africa?

So...what say you?

[ursus arctos]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Hah.

I read the Glenny book two weeks ago and have Travels with Herodotus on my bedside table (though I have a feeling I may wait to start it until after I finish the Landmark Herodotus, which hasn't arrived yet). As you know, I am a big fan of Kapuscinski, and actually think that The Soccer War may be his weakest book.

McMafia is worthwhile (and depressing), but not as good as some of the reviews, especially if one already knows something about the millieux he is writing about.

[Anton Gramscescu]

Current Reading - Books best thread

You may be right about The Soccer War (although I never really enjoyed Shah of Shahs); I used it as a comparison because it is his only other book which is a collection of short essays on various places rather than a prolonged essay on a particular place/time (Angola, Ethiopia, etc.).

I feel I owe Glenny for inspiring the NPS concept if nothing else (although I did enjoy his book on the Balkans in the early 90s).

Having now stared at this pile of books for awhile, I've narrowed it down to The Great Lakes of Africa (it has over a dozen references to the Kingdom of Toro, which must be worth something) and The Trouble with Africa on the non-fiction side. Fiction I think I'm definitely starting with Achebe's Anthills of the Savannah.

[ursus arctos]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Do you mean The Fall of Yugoslavia or The Rebirth of History? I thought the first was very good, but haven't read the second.

His later book trying to put the Balkans in a broader historical context seemed to me to be a step too far for someone who is a terrific reporter, but not really a historian.

[Anton Gramscescu]

Current Reading - Books best thread

The Fall of Yugoslavia. I've never heard of the other one, to be honest.

[ursus arctos]

Current Reading - Books best thread

It came out earlier than "The Fall" and is supposed to be less focused on the Balkans then on the Velvet Revolution (he worked closely with Havel) and developments in what is now (again) called Central Europe.

Glenny would have done a much better job with a "New Europe" television series than Michael Palin did.

[Anton Gramscescu]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Having now looked up the second book on Amazon I realize that not only have I heard of it, but I have actually read it. An eminently forgettable book, apparently.

[ursus arctos]

Current Reading - Books best thread

The Herodotus is relatively new, and is by the same guy who did the Thucydides (which I also have).

Every now and then I like to get back to my roots as a historian (though I never did ancient history seriously), and ursus minor is going through a bit of a classical phase at the moment.

[ursus arctos]

Current Reading - Books best thread

He just turned 10; he's a somewhat unusual child.

[Brandenburger Toro]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Having now stared at this pile of books for awhile, I've narrowed it down to The Great Lakes of Africa (it has over a dozen references to the Kingdom of Toro, which must be worth something)

I'm putting it on my list right now...

[ursus arctos]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Bruno, have you encountered D'Aulaires Book of Greek Myths?

It was my favorite book as an 8 year old, and ursus minor loves it too, though he has now moved on to the Stephanides Brothers' series from Greece, which is really terrific. Their versions of the Iliad and Odyssey weigh in at about 400 pages each, and provided him with sufficient detail to take on the fanciful "Ljubljana variant" of the Argonauts story during our recent visit. "Papa", he said, "that just didn't happen."

[ursus arctos]

Current Reading - Books best thread

It's really a great book (so much so that it has been adopted by The New York Review of Books as one of their childrens' book reprints). The same couple also have one on the Norse gods.

One of ursus minor's other favourite pastimes is making his father look like an idiot with a cricket bat. He even decided we needed to put on an exhibition of this form of parental humiliation for our visiting relatives. We only play baseball in North America (where he ruthlessly exploits my disappearing ability to run).

[Anton Gramscescu]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Toro De France wrote:

Having now stared at this pile of books for awhile, I've narrowed it down to The Great Lakes of Africa (it has over a dozen references to the Kingdom of Toro, which must be worth something)

I'm putting it on my list right now...

You might want to hold off - it's pretty heavy slogging. This is history for peoples with no written language, so it's a mix of linguistics, agriculture, archaeology and interpretations of mythology up until 1850 or so, mixed in with a large dose of historiography of works I've never heard of. Plus the guy's French, and either French academic works need better translators, or they're written like ass in the first place.

Oh, and there's no mention of Toro through the first 130 pages. So a slow start all around.

I took a break to read Sebastian Moffett's Japanese Rules, which all around is a much better book on football in Japan than the earlier Ultra Nippon, I reckon.

(I am, btw, actually going to be in the Kingdom of Toro in about five weeks, provided by clients stop changing their damn mind every two seconds. Send me your address so I can post you something appropriate.)

I forget if we did this in the children's books thread or not, but there is an illustrated Gilgamesh trilogy for children that is quite fantastic for kids about 5-7 years old. Though, admittedly, I tended to spice up the stories for my son by making Ishtar and Enkidu incredibly flatulent.

[JtS]

Current Reading - Books best thread

I finished The Maltese Falcon in the early hours of this morning when I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep. The ending is the best bit of the book, he deals with it all quite nicely.

[Gerontophile]

Current Reading - Books best thread

I finished 'Stranger in a Strange Land' for the 3rd or 4th time, and what a fantastic book.

Very surprised that no-one has tried to make a film of it. Admittedly, it would have to miss out a lot of the verbal interaction between the characters, which can get very deep, and probably it would end up something like 'Starship Troopers' (ie: good book, tacky film)

[meltdowngraphics]

Current Reading - Books best thread

I'm currently reading "Nowhere Man" by Aleksandar Hemon. His wonderfully descriptive writing style makes me want to explore more of his writing.

[Sam]

Current Reading - Books best thread

The Travels having finally been finished on Saturday - interesting but by God, they're repetitive, and that didn't lend itself to being read quickly - I'm now halfway through Jonathan Wilson's Inverting The Pyramid.

It's absolutely fucking brilliant.

[Guest]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Current book is The Discovery of France, by Graham Robb, a very entertaining and informative jaunt through the obscure byways of French social history. No, it's good, really.

Next up: The Rotters Club. 1970s adolescence listening to prog rock? That'll have been me, then.

[Brandenburger Toro]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Finished the Anselm - it was pretty good in places, but dragged a bit in the (justly) less famous parts. I'm coming around to the view that (a) Norman Malcolm interpreted the Ontological Argument correctly, and that (b) that version of it is, more or less, valid.

I've now got Elizabeth Potter's book on Feminism and Philosophy of Science going, as well as the poetry anthology and various stuff for prepping lectures.

[Anton Gramscescu]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Are lecturing, Toro? Where?

Just re-read Kapuscinksi's Another Day of Life. It really is sheer genius. Also finished Chinua Achebe's Anthills of the Savannah. I may be horribly culturally insensitive, but I don't see the fuss about Achebe. Small good bits, mostly kind of tedious. Nowehere near as interesting as, say, na Thiongo's The Wizard of the Crow.

Now to resume my quest to read all of Ian Banks' sci-fi in a single year (up next: the Algebraist), plus a new football book has arrived - When Friday Comes, about football in the middle east. So this should supply some sustenance on my flight tonight.

[Brandenburger Toro]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Back in Leeds - they've given me a year's posting, doing Philosophy of Science stuff.

And I've been *totally* remiss in not replying to you, after you sent those ads! Thanks a million, it was massively appreciated.