Current Reading - Books best thread

[Brandenburger Toro]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Read Nabokov's Bend Sinister, which was fantastic. Now back in the poetry anthology and the Nussbaum, which is okay but dragging and very, er, womanly...

[Anton Gramscescu]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Have you read any other Nussbaum, Toro? I have this copy of Cultivating Humanity that's been staring at me from my bookshelf for a couple of years and am wondering whether or not to pull it down. I'm thinking not, but if you've had good experiences with her, I'll give it a go.

[Brandenburger Toro]

Current Reading - Books best thread

I haven't, no. I enjoyed that, though it was pretty frothy and... the philosophical equivalent of chicklit, if that makes any sense. It couldn't possibly have been written by a man.

Now reading Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle and Herve This' Kitchen Mysteries, sort of a popular version of Molecular Gastronomy, which I'll have to get around to before too long. Also Alex Rosenberg's Darwinian Reductionism, Or How To Stop Worrying And Love Molecular Biology. Publishers have slightly garbled the subtitle there. Rosenberg is brilliant, perhaps my fave PhiBiGuy, but the position he wants to defend here, insofar as its clear at all, seems wrong to me.

[Anton Gramscescu]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Just finished Misha Glenny's McMafia. The first third of the book - the stuff involving Russia and the Balkans - is fucking superb. Really great stuff. The rest has some good material but is quite uneven and occasionally reads like Glenny has ADD.

The chapter on cybercrime, for instance, starts realy promisingly, but after six pages and for no apparent reason suddenly becomes a chapter on criminal gangs in Brazil's favelas. Then it ends with a bit on how Chinese triads are infiltrating Brazil, which leads Glenny to say something along the lines of "I knew that to really get at the heart of this, I would need to go to China". Which, you'd think, is a pretty obvious segue.

Bafflingly, the following chapter is about the Japanese yakuza.

[Brandenburger Toro]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Finished the This and Vonnegut - loved the second, graetly enjoyed the first, although it's a bit too beginner-ish, and I'll have to read the "proper" book. Am now on the home stretch of that poetry anthology, and also re-reading Bernard Williams' Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy

[Anton Gramscescu]

Current Reading - Books best thread

This weekend I was in bed much of the time, mostly despondent about a potential case of osteo-arthritis, but this allowed me to polish off David Bergen's The Time In Between (Bergen teaches at my old high school and this book won the Giller prize, which is Canada's equivalent of the Booker), and also, more prosaically, The Political Economy of Saudi Arabia, which was not bad as these things go (which is setting the bar quite low).

Have now started Neal Stephenson's new door-stopper Anathem, which, I can confidently state after 70 pages, is aces.

[Brandenburger Toro]

Current Reading - Books best thread

I've started a reader on Theories of Memory, and Don DeLillo's Libra.

[San Bernardhinault]

Current Reading - Books best thread

I've just finished the excellent Hokkaido Highway Blues, and have started the Murukami memoir on running.

[Anton Gramscescu]

Current Reading - Books best thread

I just finished Anathem and my head hurts. I think the two are related. Great read, though.

Now I'm off to conquer Saskia's Sassen's Territory, Authority, Rights. She is a genius, so I expect fireworks.

[EIM]

Current Reading - Books best thread

I'm reading The Gangs of Manchester, a look at the roving gangs of lads, or scuttlers, who used to get all dressed up to kick the shit out of each other in Victorian times.

[noj]

Current Reading - Books best thread

I'm reading 'Pies and Prejudice' - In search of the North' by Stuart Maconie.

It's alright with some interesting bits in it, but should really be subtitled 'In search of the North West'. After whole chapters on Manchester, Liverpool, Blackpool, and the Lakes along with and chunky bits on Wigan and Warrington, there's been about a page on Sheffield, a page on Bradford and about five on Leeds. I think there might be a bit on Newcastle, but I haven't got there yet.

[matt j]

Current Reading - Books best thread

I just finished Kafka on the Shore. Didn't particularly care for it. Did make me want to hear the Archduke Trio though.

[Toby Gymshorts]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Currently reading "The Vesuvius Club / The Devil In Amber" by Mark Gatiss. It's pretty good, with some genuine laugh-out-loud turns of phrase. Recommended to anyone as behind the times as I am.

[loose cannon]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Just finished 'Europe: the State of the Union' by Anand Menon, recommended if you have an interest in how the EU is working (or not), good analysis of what it is doing compared to what it is made out to be doing.
V readable especially considering the soporific subject

[Anton Gramscescu]

Current Reading - Books best thread

back from vacation and read number of good books:

Restless - William Boyd
The Dante Club - Matthew Pearl
Buddha - Karen Armstrong
Buddhism: A concise introduction - Huston smith & Phillip Novak
The Elusive Quest for Growth - William Easterly
A Short History of Laos - Grant Evans

The Easterly book is quite sensible and excellent as an overview of what went wrong in development economics over the past 50 years. Neither the Armstrong nor the Huston books are brilliant on thier own as an introduction to the subject of Buddhism, but together they are quite good. I am certainly glad I read them - I felt much less clueless about SE Asia and its culture after doing so.

[Brandenburger Toro]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Read a bunch of stuff, since I last posted here, won't try and make a list...

Currently Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook and Roger White, The Structure of Metaphor. Enjoying the first, though it's yet to get to Nobel-winner's-masterpiece territory. The second, by an eminent colleague, is superb. Very accessible, yet deals with very technical stuff at a level of sophistication that hadn't been done before. The stuff professional reputations are made of.

[Felicity, I guess so]

Current Reading - Books best thread

I've just finished Trezza Azzopardi's The Hiding Place.

I guess it may have been discussed before since it was Booker nominated in 2000. Ms Felicity loved it and has frequently pestered me to read it, now I have and it was really impressive.

[San Bernardhinault]

Current Reading - Books best thread

I'm reading Three Men On The Bummel, the sequel I never knew existed to Three Men On A Boat. It's very fun and gentle and warm, and, even better, is about cycling round the Black Forest.

[Anton Gramscescu]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Two books on development which, along with the Easterly book I mentioned earlier, seem to give a very interesting and nuanced description of the value of aid in Africa:

The Bottom Billion, by Paul Collier. He's got some brilliant empirical work in here, and rightly suggests that aid is being spread too thinkly across Aisa and Latin America (which are no longer really poor) and not heavily enough in Africa (which in most respects is essentially fucked). Tough medicine recommended here, though.

The Trouble with Africa by Robert Calderisi. Treads similar ground, but with a lot more on-the-ground stories as opposed to empirical economic work. Comes to most of the same conclusions, but with less rigour.

If you are interested in African economies and aid and development, you could do a lot worse than these two books, and the one by Easterly.

[Brandenburger Toro]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Finished the Roger White, now on Lucy O'Brien's SheBop II, which is a history of women in rock. 'sokay so far, which isn't very far.

[mafu]

Current Reading - Books best thread

La Lanterne Rouge, if you enjoy that, can i recommend Mark Twain's travel books to you (assuming you havent read them already). Particularly A Tramp Abroad, which covers a lot of similar ground to the Jerome book but precedes it by some years. Then there's The Innocents Abroad which covers a pleasure cruise around Europe and the Middle East, and his American books Roughing It (memoirs of his time in the wild west) and Life on the Mississippi (self explanatory). They are all wonderful.

[Guest]

Current Reading - Books best thread

LLR - that is one of my favourite books filled with laugh out loud moments. Its on my list of books that I'm taking to the boat with me. I've only got room for 20.

[San Bernardhinault]

Current Reading - Books best thread

I'm taking it slowly, wallowing in it, but it's wonderful. I really never knew that it existed. It might quickly be joining the ranks of my desert island books, too, Fritz.

And, Mafu, I read the glorious Baden-Baden chapter of A Tramp Abroad when I went to Baden-Baden, but, just through having too much else to read, I never got round to the rest. Thanks for reminding me that I must.

[Jon]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Is it as good as (and in the same style as) Three men in a Boat? I knew that the sequel existed but I just figured that, because it wasn't really well known, it probably wasn't worth bothering with.

[Brandenburger Toro]

Current Reading - Books best thread

4/5 of the way through She Bop II, and it's irritatingly shallow. No sense of a main thesis, or even local theses for each chapter/theme - just a list of briefly discussed woman musicians with no significant parallels or similarites other than that they are women. I mean, Dusty Springfield is discussed under the head of her music, why she was more American in outlook than Petula Clark or Sandie Shaw. Then, about a hundred pages later, there's a paaage or two talking about her in the context of lesbianism/bisexuality/gender ambiguity. And there is no attempt *at all* to make the fairly obvious connection between her music and aesthetic and her orientation - or even to debunk it. It just doesn't seem to *occur* to O'Brien to talk about it.

On the other hand, there was a story about someone I know, which was nice. Even if it was about her getting beaten up in Derby.

The Lessing is cracking along. It's pretty good.