What are you reading now?

[DrJay]

17,000 seems unbelievably low.

[DrJay]

I'm partway through Blind Man's Bluff, by Sontag and Drew, the story of American submarine espionage during the Cold War. Well-written and interesting.

[bambam]

I have to cop to committing a cardinal sin as I've always understood the rules of bibliophiling. It's worse than walking out of a movie: I put a book down without finishing it!

Very (very-very) well written: The Black Swan ("The Impact Of The Highly Improbable") by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

At this point in my life my brain just can't stay wrapped around deep philosophical concepts. I wanna be a sponge and swim around in hard facts, not have to actually analyze every sentence.

I agree - I finished it but did not like it very much either.

Interesting. I also read it; thought it was worthwhile, but that the author made the same (valid) point repeatedly...

I think I was expecting it to be as good as some of Malcolm Gladwell's stuff and it wasn't. Still waiting now for another Gladwell book - been a few years.

[Conor Dary]

Interesting review of Job's bio:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archive ... teve-jobs/


While it may be convenient to suppose that Apple is no different than any other company doing business in China—which is as fine a textbook example of a logical fallacy as there is—in reality, it is worse. According to a study reported by Bloomberg News last January, Apple ranked at the very bottom of twenty-nine global tech firms “in terms of responsiveness and transparency to health and environmental concerns in China.” Yet walking into the Foxconn factory, where people routinely work six days a week, from early in the morning till late at night standing in enforced silence, Steve Jobs might have entered his biggest reality distortion field of all. “You go into this place and it’s a factory but, my gosh, they’ve got restaurants and movie theaters and hospitals and swimming pools,” he said after being queried by reporters about working conditions there shortly after a spate of suicides. “For a factory, it’s pretty nice.”

Steve Jobs cried a lot. This is one of the salient facts about his subject that Isaacson reveals, and it is salient not because it shows Jobs’s emotional depth, but because it is an example of his stunted character. Steve Jobs cried when he didn’t get his own way. He was a bully, a dissembler, a cheapskate, a deadbeat dad, a manipulator, and sometimes he was very nice. Isaacson does not shy away from any of this, and the trouble is that Jobs comes across as such a repellent man, cruel even to his best friend Steve Wozniak, derisive of almost everyone, ruthless to people who thought they were his friends, indifferent to his daughters, that the book is often hard to read. Friends and former friends speculate that his bad behavior was a consequence of being put up for adoption at birth. A former girlfriend, who went on to work in the mental health field, thought he had Narcissistic Personality Disorder. John Sculley, who orchestrated Jobs’s expulsion from Apple, wondered if he was bipolar. Jobs himself dismissed his excesses with a single word: artist. Artists, he seemed to believe, got a pass on bad behavior. Isaacson seems to think so, too, proving that it is possible to write a hagiography even while exposing the worst in a person.

[gh]

....
I hope you're right about World at War 1939-45 because I got it for my iPad 2 days ago

You into it? I'm about 40% done and absolutely blown away. Surprisingly, it's my first exposure to Hastings and if his other stuff is half as good as this I'll devour it. The most compelling historical read I can recall.

The sequence on the Eastern Front left me shivering, and now that I'm in the fall of Singapore and Burma,I wonder how some of the old Colonial Brits (and to lesser extent, Aussies) could look themselves in the mirror at the way they treated the "subjects" of their Empire.

[kuha]

For a particular writing project, I'm reading Thomas Wolfe's "You Can't Go Home Again." Interesting in many respects (while not truly my thing), but not a book I've EVER heard from friends that they've actually read. Has Wolfe fallen completely out of the 20th century canon?

[Per Andersen]

For a particular writing project, I'm reading Thomas Wolfe's "You Can't Go Home Again." Interesting in many respects (while not truly my thing), but not a book I've EVER heard from friends that they've actually read. Has Wolfe fallen completely out of the 20th century canon?

Yes, he's pretty much gone it seems. He's nor even mentioned in Harold Bloom's "The Western Canon"
I once attempted " Of Time and the River" but I was way too young and quit and never tried him again. My dad liked him.

I don't think many read Dos Passos and Sinclair Lewis anymore either. They were both favorites of mine.

[bambam]

....
I hope you're right about World at War 1939-45 because I got it for my iPad 2 days ago

You into it? I'm about 40% done and absolutely blown away. Surprisingly, it's my first exposure to Hastings and if his other stuff is half as good as this I'll devour it. The most compelling historical read I can recall.

The sequence on the Eastern Front left me shivering, and now that I'm in the fall of Singapore and Burma,I wonder how some of the old Colonial Brits (and to lesser extent, Aussies) could look themselves in the mirror at the way they treated the "subjects" of their Empire.

Yeah, almost finished with it. This book is great. I also had the same reaction about the Eastern Front. No idea how a people could suffer like that. The entire description of some of the brutality of various peoples is shocking to know that people can act like that. I knew about some of it but the book really brings it home.

[DrJay]

For a particular writing project, I'm reading Thomas Wolfe's "You Can't Go Home Again." Interesting in many respects (while not truly my thing), but not a book I've EVER heard from friends that they've actually read. Has Wolfe fallen completely out of the 20th century canon?

As a UNC alum, same as Wolfe, I felt compelled to try. I read "Look Homeward Angel" and later "Of Time and the River" but couldn't take it any more so never picked up his other two novels, "The Web and the Rock" and the one you're reading. Prose too wandering and ornate for my taste.

[DrJay]

Just finished "Kentucky Colonels of the American Basketball Association: The Real Story of a Team Left Behind" (Gary P. West and Lloyd "Pink" Gardner.) Lot of interesting triva and stories about the history of the Colonels (my first sports obsession as a youth) but one of the worst-written books I have ever read. Terry Pluto's "Loose Balls" is a much better read for former ABA fans.

[bambam]

DrJay put me onto Loose Balls this summer, book about the ABA, and I read it. Pretty good read, lots of fun.

[Pego]

The ABA ball drove me crazy.

[mike renfro]

Protect and Defend. A Richard North Paterson novel. He is a pretty good genre writer.

[bambam]

Just finished Iron War - the story of the 1989 Ironman Hawaii race between Dave Scott and Mark Allen, supposedly the greatest triathlon race ever. Very well written and fun read. Also easy to get through. Recommend it for most people on this board.

[26mi235]

....
I hope you're right about World at War 1939-45 because I got it for my iPad 2 days ago

You into it? I'm about 40% done and absolutely blown away. Surprisingly, it's my first exposure to Hastings and if his other stuff is half as good as this I'll devour it. The most compelling historical read I can recall.

The sequence on the Eastern Front left me shivering, and now that I'm in the fall of Singapore and Burma,I wonder how some of the old Colonial Brits (and to lesser extent, Aussies) could look themselves in the mirror at the way they treated the "subjects" of their Empire.

Yeah, almost finished with it. This book is great. I also had the same reaction about the Eastern Front. No idea how a people could suffer like that. The entire description of some of the brutality of various peoples is shocking to know that people can act like that. I knew about some of it but the book really brings it home.

I finished it yesterday and found it interesting but somewhat tedious. A more balanced view than you get most places is probably the biggest advantage of the book, but he keeps hammering and hammering at those points and that got tedious. Basically, the western countries/democracies were not able to sustain the sort of 'all-in' war that the Nazi, Soviets, and Japan practiced. On the other hand, especially the Japanese and the Nazi's had some virtually fatal flaws for prosecuting the war in light of the nature of the world. One element was the size of the Soviet Union, combined with the Nazi's nature of devastation in occupied regions and the Stalin's willingness to through in millions of 'cannon fodder'. The second being the vast resources of the US, combined with its technical sophistication (enhanced, ironically enough, with scientists fleeing the Nazi regime).

I got a newish book on D-Day (have not read one on the topic since reading (multiple) The Longest Day close to 50 years ago.

I also finished the one-volume biography FDR that I read at the same time, making a good match with The World at War.

[gh]

Now on my to-get list is Vanished Kingdoms (The Rise & Fall Of States & Nations) by Norman Davies. It's about 15 European cities/countries that have come and gone. Was the basis for my geography trivia quiz question.

From a new book review, a "modern" country of which I had never heard!

<<... Some of the states in "Vanished Kingdoms" were short-lived, such as Etruria, in central Italy, which lasted but 14 years in the 19th century. Others spanned centuries, such as Byzantium, an empire that survived nearly 1,400 years. Some of Davies' subjects were weak. The Republic of Carpatho-Ukraine lasted all of one day in March 1939 before being occupied by Hungary, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, respectively....

... Most histories of World War II overlook Carpatho-Ukraine, for instance, even though it was a suppressed democratic government, an illegally invaded member state of the League of Nations and was the site of military action and a considerable death toll. Davies is not exaggerating when he says it "might well qualify as a prelude to the Second World war II...">>



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... z1jqbkvl3M

[Avante]

Once the football season is over, I plan on delving into...yep in order.

The Boxing Register....Official Record Book
Tishomingo Blues...Elmore Leonard (that title an old 1926 Blues tune by Pegleg Howell)
The Haunted Mesa...Louis L' Amour
The Reluctant Fundamentalist...Moshin Hamid
So You Wanna Be A Rock & Roll Star...Jacob Slichter
Rumble Tumble....Joe R.Lansdale
The Last Jihad...Joel C. Rosenberg
61 Hours....Lee Child

[bambam]

Now on my to-get list is Vanished Kingdoms (The Rise & Fall Of States & Nations) by Norman Davies. It's about 15 European cities/countries that have come and gone. Was the basis for my geography trivia quiz question.

Amazing, E Garry, I just bought that for my iPad a few days ago and started it last nite.

[dukehjsteve]

I just started reading the Louie Zamperini book, " Unbroken." It's great reading. I'm past the track part, and happily, it appears the author did not make any factual errors that I could discern.

[KDFINE]

I just finished the first of the Dortmunder novels by the late Donald Westlake, "The Hot Rock," the only one made into movie. I've read and enjoyed them all, especially when in need of a page turner with humor. There are some deviations from the film, but the main plot elements are consistent.

[mike renfro]

I just finished J Patterson's Private Games. He changes the names of athletes, but not totally ridiculous. The previous novel I read was P D James' "Death Come to Pemberley". It is a continuation of Austin's Pride and Prejudice. James tried to write in the style of Austin, and I found it a hard slog at first, but got into it. Dame James can write a little. After she finished off the Dalgleish series, I assumed she would retire. It was a few years, but I guess she got bored. I hope she doesn't channel Hawthorne next

[gh]

After a couple of months of brain candy from Elmore Leonard and Sue Grafton, I finally picked up a copy of The Hunger Games last night (have not seen the movie). If the Regionals TNs don't show up on time it's because I decided to play hooky and keep reading

I'm totally enthralled.

[kuha]

For the current writing project: Richard Manning's "Grassland: The History, Biology, Politics, and Promise of the American Prairie" (1995) [brilliant]; and William Least Heat Moon's "PrairyErth" (1991) [shaggy, baggy, and too long, but so far worth the effort].

[gm]

"Buried Prey" by John Sandford

Another thrilling Lucas Davenport book.

[gh]

LOVE Sandiford! And now I see that not only do I not have Buried in my collection, a new one came out a couple of weeks ago.

[Daisy]

I've been working my way through 'The Eighth Day of Creation: Makers of the Revolution in Biology' by Horace Judson.

This is not a recent book but it is timeless in laying out the players and discoveries that kick started molecular genetics. It really brings out the character of the scientists involved as well as a genuine behind the scenes look at the work that goes into producing the polished papers that end up being published.

[TN1965]

Just finished Salazar's "14 minutes."

Interesting read on how his career went wrong, and how that experience is helping him as a coach.

[Anthony Treacher]

Coincidentally "Brighton Rock" by Grahame Greene. The peripheral character Ida Arnold has an implacable belief in Right and Wrong that I recognize. She will not let a cover-up pass either.

[gh]

After a couple of months of brain candy from Elmore Leonard and Sue Grafton, I finally picked up a copy of The Hunger Games last night (have not seen the movie). If the Regionals TNs don't show up on time it's because I decided to play hooky and keep reading

I'm totally enthralled.

And now I pounded my way through the second one, getting up at 04:00 in Des Moines to finish off the last 20 pages because I feel asleep after a late post-meet dinner.

[catson52]

....
I hope you're right about World at War 1939-45 because I got it for my iPad 2 days ago

You into it? I'm about 40% done and absolutely blown away. Surprisingly, it's my first exposure to Hastings and if his other stuff is half as good as this I'll devour it. The most compelling historical read I can recall.

The sequence on the Eastern Front left me shivering, and now that I'm in the fall of Singapore and Burma,I wonder how some of the old Colonial Brits (and to lesser extent, Aussies) could look themselves in the mirror at the way they treated the "subjects" of their Empire.

Good points raised by GH and others re the WWII and the Eastern Front. The Western Press has done a dandy job in generally not pointing out what happened following the launching of Operation Barbarossa. Some simple stats. (1) German loss of material and men from 6/22/41 through DDay. Over 90% of all losses on the Eastern Front. (2) On DDay only ~15% of German Forces were on the Western Front (not including those helping the Italians on the south), whereas ~70% was tied up on the Eastern Front.

A good look at the history of the British Empire shows it basically running down from about 1850 onwards. The Crimean War (what an idiotic poem by Tennyson - one of my favorite poets - "The Charge of the Light Brigade"), the Mahdi in Sudan, the Boer War, and then the total loss of sensible leadership in the trench warfare of WWI as well as places like Gallipoli.

As far as the Aussies are concerned, the less said the better. Having lived in Australia during the "Whites Only" days, first hand experience suggests many followed up their convict based heritage.

[Conor Dary]

Speaking of WW! and the trenches and complete lunacy, I remember reading this awhile back.

http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/20 ... r_4th_time

[Conor Dary]

I just finished Robert Harris's latest novel The Fear Index about a mathematical hedge fund manager. Great read. I am a big fan of his novels.

[gh]

After a couple of months of brain candy from Elmore Leonard and Sue Grafton, I finally picked up a copy of The Hunger Games last night (have not seen the movie). If the Regionals TNs don't show up on time it's because I decided to play hooky and keep reading

I'm totally enthralled.

And now I pounded my way through the second one, getting up at 04:00 in Des Moines to finish off the last 20 pages because I feel asleep after a late post-meet dinner.

And the last couple of nights at the NCAA and on the ride home I finished book III. Even though that meant that I was soooo close to finishing when we landed that I actually got off the plane and sat in the departure area for 15 minutes before heading off to get my car so I could wrap it all up. Eager to see the movie now!

[gh]

What, did we all give up reading over the summer?!

With so much time in hotel rooms/on planes I steered clear of my normal dose of "intellectual" reading and instead went for visceral pleasures that could be grabbed in tiny doses. Spent lots of time catching up on the Elmore Leonard canon. I think I've now read 40 of his 44 books. Came across a great character in The Cool Kid who is a U.S. marshall chasing bank robbers in depression-era Oklahoma. Not sure it wasn't originally sketched out as a Raylan Givens project. Everything fits (which also means it was a great read if you're into that kind of stuff).

[Cooter Brown]

We, the Drowned by Carsten Jensen is about a 100 years or so of seafaring by sailors from Marstal, Denmark. It's about 2/3rds a classic. In the last third, the tone of the book shifts so jarringly it's like another author wrote it. Regardless, I still recommend it highly.