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I'm reading Ernie's War, which is a collection of Ernie Pyle's articles form the Second World War. He loves the dogfaces, but by today's standards would be considered a thoroughgoing racist for his depictions of Arabs, Sicilians and Italians.
I just finished Revolutionary Road, which delves into the tragedy of suburbia, as shown in the recent film by the same name (which reunited Kate and Leo). Since then I've moved on to another book by Jessica Valenti called He's a Stud, She's a Slut and 49 Other Double Standards Every Woman Should Know About.
The latter is a quick read, but sadly I'm kind of bored of it. It's a well-written worthwhile read, but having read all of Jessica Valenti's books, I find it repetitive. Plus, being a young woman myself, I've come face to face with the majority of these double standards ("He's a bachelor/She's a Spinster; He's an Activist/She's a Pain in the Ass; He's Childless; She's Selfish).
It's a quick, concise read revealing all the different forms of sexism women face daily.
Through Black Spruce by Joseph Boyden.
A Case of Exploding Mangos
I'm ashamed to say I'm reading New Moon by Stephenie Meyer.
I gave the Twilight series a try, 500 Apples, but I gave up on the first book, about forty pages in. Everyone at work told me to keep going, it gets better from there, but my effort was less than valiant. It's not that I didn't enjoy it, there were just so many other things I wanted to read, so I put it aside.
Oh, and what's with people being "ashamed" of what they read, especially when it comes to Twilight?
One peer of mine actually had one book he would read at home (Twilight) and another to read on the train, so not to be judged.
I just finoished Foul Play by Joe Humphreys
http://threemonkeysonline.com/boston_to_berlin/2009/the-foul-play-that-h...
Re-reading Not Wanted on the Voyage, by Timothy Findley. I'm hot and cold on Findley (love some, indifferent to some) but this is a great feminist pro-LGBT anti-God retelling of the story of Noah's ark.
I'm thinking of re-reading Genesis next. Might as well go back to the drawing board and see what went wrong...
I've been meaning to read that book Unionist. I'll probably pull it off the shelve now. You might like the Humphreys book. Many of the issues you raised in the rugby manslaughter case are echoed in the book.
Just finished Wilfrid Thesiger's 'The Marsh Arabs', close on the heels of the equally brilliant 'Arabian Sands', pageturners both, read each in a single gulp. Writing in the 1930s, an erudite and sympathetic observer of non-western cultures, Thesiger immersed himself in the last traces of ancient nomads and pastoralists fast disappearing before modernity and his accounts put a great deal of flesh on the bones of our generally poor understanding of Arab culture and values. His work and observation display just that humanity so absent in for example our government's fucking about in Afghanistan. He was quite the opposite of the modern feet on the ground Canadian soldier so often pictured in the press, who look like they have just stepped out of a suburban backyard and might be going for a Sunday walk in fancy dress. This man lived and felt as the people he describes, as near as anyone can and his observations are sometimes profound.
I'm reading "Sea Sick", by Alanna Mitchell. Having already read "Under a Green Sky" by Peter Ward (on mass extinctions), I'm not particularly optimistic for the future of higher life forms on Earth (I question whether there is truly intelligent life, based on the lack of action on climate change and the slowness to appreciate the changes in the oceans).
It's the lowest form of chick lit, teenage chick lit.
It's good, not great, I'm curious what happens to the characters. I like that she respects the werewolves. In the recent vampire craze werewolves are often just an afterthought, here they get almost as much attention as vampires.
That sounds interesting.
The idea anyway, a few years ago I read The Wars and it was boring.
Yeah, Not Wanted on the Voyage is one I've always meant to check out too. I liked The Wars though. As far as WW1 novels go, it had the most impact on me. I just finished Waiting for the Barbarians, the first I've read by Coetzee, I'm going to have to try another. I'm now reading Mason and Dixon by Pynchon.
How'd you like it? I was on a Pynchon binge last year, after I finish M & D I'll have read all his novels except for V. I really enjoyed the Chums of Chance sections but if I was recommending Pynchon novels to friends(haven't been too sucessful with this as it is) it would probably be last on my list.
After sitting on my bookshelf for too long, I finally pulled down the first volume of The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell. A brilliant man. Troubled but brilliant.
So far, so good. I'm looking forward to many good nights of reading.
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Eleutherophobics of the World...Unite!!!
World War One was boring.
The best Timothy Findley book really is Famous Last Words, which is about a strange autobiography and suicide note found written on the walls of a chateau at Hitler's Eagles nest, which outlines the trials and tribulations Hugh Selwyn Mauberly, a fictious characher invented by Ezra Pound for his poetry who Findley brings again to fictional life to shadow the twisted dealings of the Duke and Dutchess of Windsor and Rudolph Hess.... if you like that kind of thing.
Eric Hobsbawm, On the Edge of the New Century. Intersting to see what he says about the financial crisis of 1998 and how it appears the US did not learn any lessons from it.
Just getting into Gwynne Dyer's Climate Wars. Took some time in opening it because his monotonal rendering of it on CBCs Ideas, recently, left one in less than optimistic mood. And I had heard the guy at a public lecture at U of W about three years back in whiich he told us how his military connections around the world had made him privy to ...well, pretty much what he says in Climate Wars.
The p;ublic lecture was more fun, because he did not let us down in presenting his persona, walking casually to the lecturn, dressed in the same brown leather jacket that TV viewers had recognized as trademark a couple of decades back. The voice was also the worse for wear, but the polished verbal performace, the careful timing in releasing statistics and confidential chats with unidentified military figures who had told such and such to government ministers and which explained..i.e. Britain's retention of the Trident program. The starving millions to the south will want to come aboard the island nation where the surrounding sea has made agriculture possible, longer.
Like others, he is in long-time debt to James Lovelock, who, it seems, is listened to by social and military planners elsewhere.
Just a tiny bit more optimistic than Lovelock the scientist, perhaps, Dwyer ends with the thought: "How fortunate that we should be set such a test (of carbon emission and population controls) at a point in our history where we have at least some chance of passing it. And how interesting the long future that stretches out beyond it will be, if we do pass."
Lovelock would call that a bit anthropocentric, but we can't all chuck our opiates and our deniers and just go cold turkey overnight.
(And someone had left a "happy uncle's day" bookmark from A&W between the pages of this library book, offering a "FREE regular fries and regular A&W Root Beer if you bought an Uncle Burget at the regular price, by May 3, 2009. An ironic reminder emblematic of the difficulty of cultural transition that we face .)
sick of reading books about politics, so I'm working on biographies right now. I'm in the middle of Big Bill Haywood, and have William Z. Foster lined up.
I'm re-reading Patrick O'Brian's The Mauritius Command. Wonderful sense of the language, manners, customs and scientific knowledge in his sea-farin' yarns set in the time of Jane Austen, but dependent for action scenes on the war she and her characters largely ignored. O'Brian did a deep six in '99, unfortunately for his readers. ( Edited to correct spelling of the author's name. And I'm also sick of politics, religion, apocalyptic environmental stuff.)
I'm now reading Terror Dreams by Susan Faludi, she discusses how gender terminology and portrayal was pumped up in the media after 9/11. I didn't notice many John Wayne references at the time but apparently they were there in great number.
I just finished working my way through an essay by Christopher Michael Langan, a bouncer who apparently has the highest IQ in the United States (between 195 and 210). Here's the essay:
http://www.megafoundation.org/CTMU/Articles/Langan_CTMU_092902.pdf
And here's a link that will take you to the primer for the theory (it's at the bottom of the page). For god's sake, if you're going to read the essay, read this first:
http://www.ctmu.org/
Spectrum, I have a suspicion you might enjoy this. Unionist, not so much.
I think we can agree that he was a great writer and it is a great series. I recall that many of the novels in the series take place around 1812 or so and I find these to be logistically challenging (too much voyaging in a short period of time) though, but this is a minor quibble. The first book in the series (Master and Commander) is largely based on the exploits of Lord Cochrane in the Royal Navy (as opposed to his later career).
I've just started reading Volume 1 of Capital by Karl Marx, well just part of the introduction by the translator thus far. It's 1000 pages. Since it's translated from German it'll probably feel like 4000 pages. There are three volumes so that makes 10,000 pages. I should be done by 2015.
I read Che's Motorcycle Diaries on the weekend. Good travelogue withglimpses into the Che's nascent class consciousness.
After watching Paper Moon recently, I became interested in whatever happened to Tatum O'Neal, so I read her autobiography, Paper Life. What a mess. Hollywood is a sewer, by her description.
Speaking of Tinseltown, I'm reading Frank Zappa's autobiography again. I saw his son Dweezil perform Zappa's music a week ago and am hence renewing my Zappa zealotry these days.
Last week I finished "The Gargoyle" by Andrew Davidson.
A nice summer read. I'd never heard of it until Rebecca West recomended it to me, but apparently it's been all the rage.
Canadian fellow, Andrew Davidson, and a damn good story teller.
It's a great love story (love stories) but not, I dunno, so mushy a guy couldn't, um, burn through this page turner.
I am almost finished Margaret Atwood's "Oryx and Crake" which I am reading for the second time. I wanted to re-read it because I have heard that her new fiction, "After The Flood" Is another futuristic speculative fiction.
O&C is about genetic engineering, personal alienation, and a new world in which humans and other animals are replaced by strange new genetically- engineered living beings. The title refers to Oryx, the child prostitute who becomes a creatrix-goddess to the strange new humanoids of the future, and Crake is the young genetic engineer who designs the new life forms and posthumously becomes the 'creator-god' to those beings.
I have heard that "After The Flood" is about a world devastated by floods and climate change. It's being released next month and I have reserved a copy for myself at the Toronto Public Library.