An excellent book; I read the book this past autumn and found it exceedingly interesting.
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An excellent book; I read the book this past autumn and found it exceedingly interesting.
Started "Mecha Samurai Empire" by Peter Tieryas. It's his 2nd book about the Japanese and Nazi's winning ww2 (it's essentially set in a world very much like "Man In The High Castle", but in the Japanese empire). His first book, "United States of Japan" was a great read and this one is looking like it will continue the streak. He's a really talented writer and knows his craft.
That looks interesting. I love alternative history. Will download a sample of the first book to my Kindle tonight.
Started "Mecha Samurai Empire" by Peter Tieryas. It's his 2nd book about the Japanese and Nazi's winning ww2 (it's essentially set in a world very much like "Man In The High Castle", but in the Japanese empire). His first book, "United States of Japan" was a great read and this one is looking like it will continue the streak. He's a really talented writer and knows his craft.
Dang it... Just added this one and the United States of Japan to my reading queue. I really have to stop coming to the thread for a while!!!
So many books, so little time!
I read it in bed over two mornings, so, yes, agreed, a quick read.
But, a book that contains more than a little food for thought, and there were some startling (and very insightful) perspectives that I had not considered or been made aware of.
Agree: An excellent and thought-provoking read.
I know the feeling. I'm in a couple of SF books related Facebooks groups and my reading lists are getting longer all the time.
Reading Richard Powers’ novel Orfeo. Truths at the nexus of music, science and the soul. Can’t put it down... I confess to losing track of plot threads sometimes over revisiting the music whose dissection in detail serves to underwrite and expand the tapestry of the novel.
Reviewers who suggest one could end up dropping a bundle on CDs related to the music Powers explores as underpinnings of his tale are right, unless one has a subscription to a streaming service or a pretty good classical collection.
I could read this book a dozen times and learn more about who we are as humans: the threads of his writing shimmer, and something moves in new light and something else read or heard earlier makes sense in a different way -- just as in “real life” with music as backdrop to and support of the whole array of our human experiences.
Powers drops in such ambiguously comical lines from time to time, amid such grave discoveries: “Fifty minutes on the net and he wanted to arrest himself...”
The book’s a keeper; I’m happy I didn’t just file for a hold on a library copy.
Reviewers who suggest one could end up dropping a bundle on CDs related to the music Powers explores as underpinnings of his tale are right, unless one has a subscription to a streaming service or a pretty good classical collection.
I could read this book a dozen times and learn more about who we are as humans: the threads of his writing shimmer, and something moves in new light and something else read or heard earlier makes sense in a different way -- just as in “real life” with music as backdrop to and support of the whole array of our human experiences.
Powers drops in such ambiguously comical lines from time to time, amid such grave discoveries: “Fifty minutes on the net and he wanted to arrest himself...”
The book’s a keeper; I’m happy I didn’t just file for a hold on a library copy.
I am currently reading On Desperate Ground: The Marines at the Reservoir, the Korean War's Greatest Battle on my Kindle.
Just started it, so really haven't read enough to give my opinion.
https://www.amazon.com/Desperate-Gr...teway&sprefix=On+deep,aps,163&sr=8-1-fkmrnull
Just started it, so really haven't read enough to give my opinion.
https://www.amazon.com/Desperate-Gr...teway&sprefix=On+deep,aps,163&sr=8-1-fkmrnull
Reading The Terminal List by Jack Carr on my Kindle.
During my commute I'm currently listening to "Can't Hurt Me" by David Goggins.
During my commute I'm currently listening to "Can't Hurt Me" by David Goggins.
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
This is an odd one, no doubt. But I'm already very intrigued. Just finished the poem. Interesting to see where this "commentary" goes.
This is an odd one, no doubt. But I'm already very intrigued. Just finished the poem. Interesting to see where this "commentary" goes.
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. Interesting and recommended.
That is a terrific book, very interesting, and one that is well worth reading.
A great book indeed, and one that keeps on giving even after multiple readings. Or maybe that's just me.
Another one of his that I quite enjoyed was The Selfish Gene. Having only a rudimentary understanding of evolutionary biology it was a relatively "easy" read despite the, at least for me, complex subject matter. Another book that I need to revisit sometime soon.
I quite liked The Selfish Gene, which had some excellent ideas, but thought that it paid too little attention to the female perspective in genetics, focussed as it was, on a (possibly unconscious) male evolutionary mindset, which would have been viewed as the default setting for what passed as human at the time the book was written.
However, given that the book was published in the mid 1970s, that is probably a reflection of the thinking of the time.
Personally, I'd like to see the book revised to include modern scholarship and perspectives on these matters, which would make it more balanced - and relevant, to readers of a later era.
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You know what, that's something I didn't really consider while reading the book many years ago. A great example of why a repeat reading is in order, so thanks for bringing it up!
Initially, I didn't consider it either; but, as an adult - middle aged woman - reading the book, the lack of a female perspective (which meant no awareness that female autonomy existed at all, or that females could also choose to make biological, and genetic evolutionary choices) did strike me rather forcibly.
Actually, it is most interesting to read later - subsequent - editions of classics published in the 60s and 70s.
Both Eric Hobsbawm (a historian I have enormous respect for) referring to his outstanding 'quartet' on 19th and 20th century history (The Age Of...series) and Edward Said (likewise, his work Orientalism was what is rightly classed as 'a seminal work' in that field) - both very much considered to have been "politically progressive" - later admitted (in light of feminist scholarship from the 60s, 70s and 80s onwards) that neither of the works they had penned in the 60s and 70s (works rightly regarded as classics) even noticed or mentioned women (except from the standard male perspective) and both stressed that had they penned their works at a later time, they would have taken this into account and included it.
At least, Edward Said, in a later work, Culture & Imperialism (published in the early 1990s) did attempt to address these deficiencies to some extent.
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Have just finished reading a book I got from the library and think I might buy and read a few more times, Matthew Desmond's ethnographic study Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. It combines extraordinary research and accounts of time spent living among eight families experiencing eviction and the search for new shelter. They are people in and near Milwaukee, people of color and white as well. Their cases -- including some each of working poor, disabled, drug addicted and people on welfare-- serve to humanize bleak statistics around the fact that homelessness is a major driver of prospects for "getting stuck" in poverty in the USA.
Desmond's effort has both stats and anecdote in a readable book. It's one that sheds light on a lot of things at the very messy juncture of law enforcement, public welfare, private real estate investment and human resilience. One is brought face to face with almost unimaginable complexities foisted in a single day or week on people least likely to have the energy to unravel any of them, and yet they mostly manage to muddle through, and fairly often by nothing more than transactional generosity with each other as people who understand yesterday it was their turn in the barrel, today it's the guy across the hall, and what goes around may or may not come around but can prove worth making an offer of (or ask for) help.
If you saw the movie Winter's Bone and were impressed by the protagonist's admonition to her younger siblings "Never ask for what should be offered" then you're nearly on track to getting how it works when it works, whether the setting is rural or urban in a life where a grasp of shelter and food is tenuous. It's not that hard to offer a bit of help when you know how hard it gets to have to ask again for any. In the book even a landlord seals one deal with a bag of groceries gratis on the day the keys are handed over. Was it a handout or just insurance against getting a call about the leaky sink? You decide.
Among other things we get to see how welfare is actually administered, the real reason that urban domestic violence frequently goes unreported (two such calls a month can get you evicted in some jurisdictions and getting evicted can make it doubly difficult to get another rental, so you decide how much abuse is worth taking or dodging to keep a roof overhead tonight), why someone on food stamps might buy two lobster tails and eat them both on a Tuesday night, why someone with no home and on workfare may own an iPhone or a gold necklace in preference to having dime one in a savings account -- or owning a couch for a living room that's often out of reach for less than 80% of disposable monthly income.
Don't plan on speed reading it, even if it's hard to put down sometimes. It's worth pondering, chapter by chapter. The author of Evicted argues that more funding of housing vouchers and legal aid for civil cases (90% of eviction cases are not defended) would make a stabilizing difference that's worth finding something else to cut in the federal budget. That of course is food for some thread in PRSI. In the meantime it's indisputable that there is plenty of profit in renting substandard housing to the poor.
Desmond's effort has both stats and anecdote in a readable book. It's one that sheds light on a lot of things at the very messy juncture of law enforcement, public welfare, private real estate investment and human resilience. One is brought face to face with almost unimaginable complexities foisted in a single day or week on people least likely to have the energy to unravel any of them, and yet they mostly manage to muddle through, and fairly often by nothing more than transactional generosity with each other as people who understand yesterday it was their turn in the barrel, today it's the guy across the hall, and what goes around may or may not come around but can prove worth making an offer of (or ask for) help.
If you saw the movie Winter's Bone and were impressed by the protagonist's admonition to her younger siblings "Never ask for what should be offered" then you're nearly on track to getting how it works when it works, whether the setting is rural or urban in a life where a grasp of shelter and food is tenuous. It's not that hard to offer a bit of help when you know how hard it gets to have to ask again for any. In the book even a landlord seals one deal with a bag of groceries gratis on the day the keys are handed over. Was it a handout or just insurance against getting a call about the leaky sink? You decide.
Among other things we get to see how welfare is actually administered, the real reason that urban domestic violence frequently goes unreported (two such calls a month can get you evicted in some jurisdictions and getting evicted can make it doubly difficult to get another rental, so you decide how much abuse is worth taking or dodging to keep a roof overhead tonight), why someone on food stamps might buy two lobster tails and eat them both on a Tuesday night, why someone with no home and on workfare may own an iPhone or a gold necklace in preference to having dime one in a savings account -- or owning a couch for a living room that's often out of reach for less than 80% of disposable monthly income.
Don't plan on speed reading it, even if it's hard to put down sometimes. It's worth pondering, chapter by chapter. The author of Evicted argues that more funding of housing vouchers and legal aid for civil cases (90% of eviction cases are not defended) would make a stabilizing difference that's worth finding something else to cut in the federal budget. That of course is food for some thread in PRSI. In the meantime it's indisputable that there is plenty of profit in renting substandard housing to the poor.
Ah! Calvino! Had to read him for school. Marcovaldo, Il Visconte Dimezzato, Se una Notte d'Inverno un Viaggiatore... good memories!