Posted on 01/08/2008 7:59:25 AM PST by MplsSteve
It's time again for my quarterly "What Are You Reading Now?" inquiry.
I'm always curious as to what Freepers are reading and what they're recommending to others.
It can be anything...a classic novel, a scientific journal, a magazine, a cheap pulp novel...anything.
Do not deface this thread with a smart-ass answer like "I'm Reading this Thread". It became very un-original a long time ago.
I'll start. I'm reading "The Great Deluge: Hurrican Katrina, New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast" by Douglas Brinkley.
This is a full account of Katrina striking the Gulf Coast. The book starts 48 hours before landfall and finishes one week after landfall. It a very good book.
Trust me, no one comes out of this looking good. Ray Nagin doesn't. FEMA doesn't, etc.
Well, what are YOU reading now?
I just finished that and found the constant jumping around and lack of plot too distracting. A real eye-opener though.
The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World, 1788-1800 by Jay Winik
After reading a review on National Review, I picked up this book at B&N. It details the American Revolution and its participants and their affect on France, Russia, Poland and other parts of the world the next 12 years. Very interesting history....
My Grandfather's Son
World Without End
Currently reading Shadow in the Wind
Last Chance Millionaire, Douglas Andrew
A BriefER History of Time - Steven Hawkings and some other guy... it’s a condensed version of his longer “A Brief History of Time”
I have WEB Griffith's new one that I will start when I can sit down long enough to read a hardback.
I just fininshed Stuart Woods - Shoot Him If He Runs - CD. I always have one going in the van. Right now, I am listening to one of the Jack Reacher novels.
I have read enough of Chomsky (Imperial Ambitions) Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel) and most recently Rajiv Chandrasekaran (in a book given to my by my liberal mother-in-law, Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone)to understand their point of view.
I simply do not have the bandwidth for that crap.
One of the basic qualities of liberalism that I really like is that they cannot hide or couch their beliefs and prejudices, no matter how careful or circumspect they try to be. It often comes out in the very first sentence of whatever they write.
If I add up all the time in my life I have saved (by trusting my instincts when reading and going no further once I know the point they are going to make) I am a rich man. I am occasionally (and, occasionally, embarrassingly) wrong, but I am right 95-100% of the time.
Ann Coulter is equally to the point in her conservative books (First two sentences in “Treason” which I have to paraphrase from memory: “Everyone says liberals love their country too. No they don’t.”) which also betrays her bias, but she has the advantage of being right, in my opinion.
I have read enough of Chomsky (Imperial Ambitions) Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel) and most recently Rajiv Chandrasekaran (in a book given to my by my liberal mother-in-law, Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone)to understand their point of view.
I simply do not have the bandwidth for that crap.
One of the basic qualities of liberalism that I really like is that they cannot hide or couch their beliefs and prejudices, no matter how careful or circumspect they try to be. It often comes out in the very first sentence of whatever they write.
If I add up all the time in my life I have saved (by trusting my instincts when reading and going no further once I know the point they are going to make) I am a rich man. I am occasionally (and, occasionally, embarrassingly) wrong, but I am right 95-100% of the time.
Ann Coulter is equally to the point in her conservative books (First two sentences in “Treason” which I have to paraphrase from memory: “Everyone says liberals love their country too. No they don’t.”) which also betrays her bias, but she has the advantage of being right, in my opinion.
“The War of the Worlds” a fabulous book by Niall Ferguson, “Madame Bovary” by Gustave Flaubert (read it again- it’s a great book), “Triumph Forsaken” by Mark Moyar (best book yet about Viet Nam and the mis-steps of the RATs who lost the war), “World Without End” and “Pillars of the Earth” (interesting, fictional looks at old England) by Ken Follette, “An Inconvenient Book” by Glenn Beck, “Power to the People” Laura Ingraham, and everything on FR as well as other political sites. My eyes are tiring!
“The World Without Us”, Alan Weisman; wouldn’t recommend it. Short on facts, long on blame humans first. Way too much political nonsense. A few good parts, but not enough to justify the price of admission.
I subscribe to Dell’s Math & Logic Puzzles. Sudoku and Kakuro have been in them for years, but called something else. I can’t remember the name for Sudoku, but Kakuro was/is Cross Sums.
The Slave Ship by Marcus Rediker
What am I reading now ...
“Life on the Mississippi” by Mark Twain. Free download.
Ann
Sharon Shinn's 12 Houses series which is just ok.
"Mystic and Rider"
"The 13th House"
"Dark Moon"
"Reader and Raelynx"
A few weeks after the NY Daily News started running them in the Sunday comics I got hooked, after realizing that they were logic puzzles and not just a bunch of guess and check problems.
Will Shortz has a good history of Cross Sums in the intro of his Kakuro book.
Also Dostoevsky's Devils.
If you’ve read Euclid’s Elements, the Almagest isn’t too bad. If not, then there are better ways to get an overview of Ancient Astronomy.”
So Euclid first, then Ptolemy?
The guy comes across as someone playing Renfield to a divine Dracula. :)”
Very witty, for sure.
I think, though, that this shows that if you don’t have Romans as background that you actually accept (personally), then, you are quite right, something like Confessions comes across as a bit heavy-handed, if not a bit creepy.
This makes me wonder if Confessions should ever be part of a traditional humanities curriculum in a post-Christian culture?
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