What are you reading? (Vanity)

22 nov 2015 | vis a vis

[VR-21]

I just finished re-reading Robert Bork's Slouching Towards Gomorrah. The book was published twenty years ago, and I read it first about 18 years ago. I was absolutely stunned to see how prescient he was about the future of our society. I also very recently read Paul Kengor's Dupes which is about how the Soviet Union manipulated American leftists to ideologically corrupt and subvert our political system. I found both books to be very much worth the time taken to read them.

[SpeakLittle_ThinkMuch]

I’m rereading all the books of John D. MacDonald. All 72 of them.

[binreadin]

The biography of Chesty Puller. He would have been in prison today under the idiot rules that strangle our fighters, but what a leader!

[leaning conservative]

I have gotten books that are pretty new in bookstores at Dollar Tree.
I am amazed at the great books I can pick up there!

[hardspunned]

The Nightmare Years. by William Shirer

[Proud_texan]

Liked them both. Hard for me to pick just one but I did recently read The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and enjoyed it as ever. Androids is another favorite as are Game Players of Titan, Flow My Tears. Dr. Bloodmoney, A Maze of Death...ah, heck, all of 'em. I even liked Confessions of a Crap Artist.

I might add that A Scanner Darkly is my favorite PKD movie. Didn't like it at first, had a hard time getting used to the rotoscope technique but after a couple of viewings I realized it was actually a pretty good way of "showing" the story.

[real saxophonist]

WOW! I remember that being advertised in Soldier of Fortune back in the ‘80s.

[glennaro]

Mark Levin’s “Plunder and Deceit”

[Yaelle]

Just from the reading material here, I’d say we have the smartest commenters in one place on the web.

Me, I am working on providing and caring for four kids by myself after a long time not employed so I have no time to read for interest. ‘Cept FR. But I’m working through Josey Baker’s sourdough bread book to make great natural sourdough that we can actually digest because bread can be a healthy food if made without enriched, bleached, bromated nasty flour. And cheap: ingredients: good fresh flour and spring water.

And I wish I could read any number of the great tomes you all are enjoying.
One day.

[billphx]

Up from the depths - J. R. Jackson

[real saxophonist]

Second in Command, by Edward R. Murphy, JR. He was XO on the USS Pueblo, and it’s his take on what happened.

[laplata]

I’m ordering that book.

[laplata]

The Nightmare Years. by William Shirer

---

Good book.

[davius]

Indian Missionary Reminiscences Principally of the Wyandot Nation in Which is Exhibited the Efficacy of the Gospel in Elevating Ignorant and Savage Men by the Rev. Charles Elliott - written in 1835 about events in 1822.

[central_va]

Basic Plumbing Techniques.

[leaning conservative]

The biography of V. S. Naipaul by Patrick French. I got it for .50 cents at the library. It is inscribed, “ To Catherine, love, mom & dad. My husband inevitably has some Catherine comment.

I’ m controlling myself because I so want to reply to the many great/ interesting things people are reading, but then I would seriously get on people’s nerves! But know I’m thinking it;)!

[Conan the Librarian]

IN the car: The Eagle has Landed.

On Break At work: Blandings Castle by P.G. Wodehouse.

Have a book on Quantum Mechanics here at home that I have been trying to read.

[Conan the Librarian]

OH and the rules to the GMT game “Paths of Glory” WWI in Europe.

[Skooz]

KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps by Nikolaus Wachsmann.

A landmark achievement of scholarship and an engrossing read. Fascinating, horrifying, enlightening, and exhaustively researched, this amazing book will be the one by which all others about the subject will be judged. It's that good.

Wachsmann approaches the subject with a scholarly detachment that is refreshing in books about the Holocaust. He understands that the events need no embellishment or author commentary and lets the horrors speak for themselves.

That said, this is truly a history of the camps, from the first makeshift jails that sprung up in early 1933, immediately following Hitler's assumption of the Chancellorship, through the rapid expansion of the camp complex due to the ever-widening net of those deemed a "threat" to the regime or "undesirable" to those in power, to the madness of mass extermination, and finally to the liberation of the remaining camps in Spring 1945.

For anyone wanting to learn about the subject, it is an indispensable resource.

[cripplecreek]

I really enjoy researching local history. I've found that my neighbor's family were among the first settlers here in the 1830s and were some busy people.



Henry Ahrens would have been a second generation here.