You Are So Reading What? v. 2019

Discussion in 'Books' started by Ismitje, Jan 1, 2019.

  1. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    So it's our first full day at the ocean and it's raining, so instead of starting the morning with a walk along the coast we went to our favorite local coffeeshop, only to discover it was no more. So we went to the other one which is now our favorite local coffeeshop. We got our coffee and I read this very apt (and short) book

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    Rain: Four Walks in English Weather, which is quite good, though not so inspiring that I blew off two refills and headed out into the juggin' sea fret, to use two descriptive terms from the list of 100 words for rain that the author Melissa Harrison appended to the back of the book.
     
  2. Val1

    Val1 Member+

    Arsenal
    Mar 12, 2004
    MD's Eastern Shore
    Club:
    Arsenal FC
    Which beach you at? I'm at Nags Head right now, and it was supposed to be cloudy yesterday and rainy today and we've had two very lovely days.
     
  3. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    Not really a beach: Bass Rocks, Gloucester MA. Lots of rocks.
     
  4. Q*bert Jones III

    Q*bert Jones III The People's Poet

    Feb 12, 2005
    Woodstock, NY
    Club:
    DC United
    #154 Q*bert Jones III, Jul 23, 2019
    Last edited: Jul 24, 2019
    Ha, you SHOULD be reading "Vacationland."

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  5. Atouk

    Atouk BigSoccer Supporter

    DC United
    Apr 16, 2001
    Arlington, VA
    Club:
    Queens Park Rangers FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
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    Isabel Allende -- The House of the Spirits

    This one has been on my "to read" list for too long. My wife and son are off visiting my in-laws and, while I hate to have them out of town, the upside is some extra reading time. I've also been polishing off this collection of Shakespeare's comedies (The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love's Labor's Lost, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet) -- two left to read.

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  6. Q*bert Jones III

    Q*bert Jones III The People's Poet

    Feb 12, 2005
    Woodstock, NY
    Club:
    DC United
    Romeo and Juliet is a comedy? :eek:
     
  7. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
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    Stories of Your Life and Others a collection of some philosophically dense science fiction stories that are more intersted in the mind, perception, and comprehension than in the usual more pulpy subjects by Ted Chiang. With the possible exception of some early Vonnegut in high school, I don't think I've ever read a single-author collection of SF short stories. But I'm in line for his new book at the library.
     
  8. TheJoeGreene

    TheJoeGreene Member+

    Aug 19, 2012
    The Lubbock Texas
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    Germany
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    Good Faith: It's actually possible to be a Christian without being a politically motivated asshole. Several good examples in the book, including an overview of the debate on homosexuality in the church between Gabe Lyons and Gene Robinson.
     
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  9. Quango

    Quango BigSoccer Supporter

    Jul 25, 2003
    Colorado
    Club:
    Colorado Rapids
    A dark one.
     
  10. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
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    Vivian Maier: A Photographer's Life and Afterlife, a new-ish biographer about the reclusive photographer whose work made money for many people who bought her storage lockers and sold her phots on E-Bay etc by Northwestern University art historian Pamela Bannos.
     
  11. G-boot

    G-boot Member

    Manchester United
    Nov 6, 2004
    Club:
    Manchester United FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Reading Stephen King's Dark Tower series, just started book II. (2 of 8) Trippy.

    Also, I got another one going: Neal Stephenson's Fall, or, Dodge in Hell. The details are described in this one.
     
  12. TheJoeGreene

    TheJoeGreene Member+

    Aug 19, 2012
    The Lubbock Texas
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    Germany
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    Vicki Robin's update for the modern Financial Independence world. She's still a nutjob about the modern food world, but the underlying principles are still good and the addition of a much more robust set of investing options was worth reading this again.

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    Mlodinow is a genius, and his discussion of elastic thinking is a fantastic counter to much of the fearmongering around AI. Essentially, he breaks thought down into three categories in order of complexity:

    1. Scripted (instinct)
    2. Analytical (top down)
    3. Elastic (bottom up)

    Mlodinow's argument is that even the most advanced computer can only accomplish analytical thinking and there's no indication they've even scratched the surface of elastic thought, thus aren't capable of freely creating associations and new ideas without prior human input.
     
  13. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
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    African American Philosophers : 17 Conversations, a series of interviews with, unsurprisingly, 17 African American philosophers, only a few of whom I'm familiar with (Angela Davis and Cornel West, and while I actually quoted Adrian Piper in a grad seminar involving aesthetics and Kant, I had no idea she was black) edited and conducted by George Yancy, who makes it interesting by seeing this project not as an example of the conventional interview, but more as something in the tradition of the Socratic dialogue... Though as I type that, it occurs to me that most of those documents had multiple participants, and weren't one-on-one like these were.
     
  14. Ismitje

    Ismitje Super Moderator

    Dec 30, 2000
    The Palouse
    Club:
    Real Salt Lake
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I've been reading Louise Erdrich novels for a few weeks; somehow I had never read any of her books. I started with a dystopian book called Future Home of the Living God just because I saw it on the end of a row at the library, and then went looking for everything else they had from her, and also looked up her bio. At almost the same time, two friends from quite different backgrounds and ages posted lists of their ten favorite/most influential books on social media, and I was pleasantly surprised to see a pair of Erdrich books which I had already checked out on the lists. So I started with those.

    First up was her debut novel Love Medicine (revised and expanded version). I rarely read up on books - or even dust jackets - when I get them at the library and I didn't with this one either. I figured subsequent books would have Native American themes and also some of the sci-fi from the first book I read, but there's nothing like that in here. It's a remarkable series of vignettes about three generations of intertwined family on an Ojibwe reservation - some humor, lots of tragedy, ample poignancy.

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    Next I read The Round House, which won the National Book Award a few years ago and which blew me away. It is set on an Ojibwe reservation - perhaps the same one - and is both a coming of age story and a mystery set against a terrible attack perpetrated on the protagonist's mother. I loved it; wished it ended ten pages earlier. There were some delightful passages, especially a scene where the core four boys pester the local priest and an epic chase begins.

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    I have a couple more to go, but this is a great, belated discovery of an author who has been publishing since I was in high school 30+ years ago.
     
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  15. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
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    The Cornel West Reader by, unsurprisingly, Cornel West, consisting of essays and interviews from the 1980s and '90s which hold up pretty well, which mainly indicates 1) quality on his part and 2) not as much progress in American society as I wish there had been.
     
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  16. TheJoeGreene

    TheJoeGreene Member+

    Aug 19, 2012
    The Lubbock Texas
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    Germany
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    A couple of books on the financial independence movement. YNAB focuses on a lot of the philosophy behind the software, and is interspersed with testimonials. Since I've listened to all the podcast episodes and use the software, it only made sense to read the book. Meet the Frugalwoods is the story of a couple who adopted a lifestyle of extreme frugality that allowed them the opportunity to retire in their early 30s while buying a rural home in Vermont and working only when they feel like it. Both are quick, easy reads that will simultaneously make you think these folks are nuts and that they're onto something even if you don't go as extreme as they have. I also bought both on sale on Kindle, as that seemed the best choice since my library didn't have either one.
     
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  17. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
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    The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, a book that is probably the oldest book in my collection that I have yet to read all the way through (I have vague memories of a recollection of buying it in my college bookstore, and I found a letterhead from a college I worked at in the late 80s marking my progress stopping at around p. 180) by Frederick Douglass
     
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  18. BalanceUT

    BalanceUT RSL and THFC!

    Oct 8, 2006
    Appalachia
    Club:
    Real Salt Lake
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    #168 BalanceUT, Aug 16, 2019
    Last edited: Aug 16, 2019
    Currently:
    Indentured: The Battle to End the Exploitation of College Athletes. Filled with simply shocking stories. NCAA investigators not interested in facts, acting with no proper due process, a compliant US judicial system that had true believers in amateurism (and Byron White's aside in a ruling to justify it).

    For those of us interested in soccer and aware of how African youngsters and families are exploited by people who take money to 'get their child into top European football' and actually owns the kid's rights and turns the kid over to ruinous conditions. Turns out the same thing happens to kids in other sports in Africa who dream of NCAA play. One such kid was, essentially, an indentured servant in Russia before finally getting a visa to Canada, coming to the US only to have the NCAA rule him ineligible because of the 'pay' he was given in Russia (pay that immediately went back into the pockets of the Russian team for expenses) and the 'bodyguards' (actually hired goons intended to keep the players in line and not walking away from their horrid conditions) were 'impermissible benefits'. No amount of appeals could fix it. The NCAA even ruled the kid's prior academic work made him ineligible, even though he was managing a 3.5 in Economics at University of Louisville. Eventually, Rick Pittino (certainly no saint) comes in to Louisville and makes the kid a teaching assistant for the team so he can get benefits towards graduation and kid graduates and is now a financial analysis in the DC area.

    Makes me want to puke that I bought into NCAA BS for most of my life. I want it to be what it was supposed to be so much that I never looked to see what it really was.
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  19. Q*bert Jones III

    Q*bert Jones III The People's Poet

    Feb 12, 2005
    Woodstock, NY
    Club:
    DC United
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    I read it from start to finish. Terrible, terrible book if you seek guidance in the modern world but some interesting stories. 2.5 stars.
     
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  20. song219

    song219 BigSoccer Supporter

    Apr 5, 2004
    La Norte
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    Vanuatu
    My condolences. Everyone talks about the Bible but no one actually reads it.
     
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  21. BalanceUT

    BalanceUT RSL and THFC!

    Oct 8, 2006
    Appalachia
    Club:
    Real Salt Lake
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I read it back in high school... left a bad taste in my mouth that took a few years to rinse out. Less humorously, I couldn't get over all the direct contradictions and vindictive and murderous nature advocated. All the things I was taught to be were barely to be found.
     
  22. chaski

    chaski Moderator
    Staff Member

    Mar 20, 2000
    redacted
    Club:
    Lisburn Distillery FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Turks and Caicos Islands
    Absalom, Absalom! - William Faulkner

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    “The story of a man who wanted a son and got too many, got so many that they destroyed him.”
     
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  23. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
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    Of Farming and Classics: a Memoir, which I picked up at the library because I know the author's work through his translations of Greek drama, but I had no idea he grew up poor in Ireland, attended Trinity in Dublin on scholarship and wound up at the University of Chicago, where he started the Committee of Social Thought. Well played, David Grene
     
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  24. Chesco United

    Chesco United Member+

    DC United
    Jun 24, 2001
    Chester County, PA
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    Argentina
    Reading Enemies: A History of the FBI by Weiner. Just started. Seems good so far. Just finished Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee. A poor shade of To Kill A Mockingbird.
     
  25. Atouk

    Atouk BigSoccer Supporter

    DC United
    Apr 16, 2001
    Arlington, VA
    Club:
    Queens Park Rangers FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Just back from vacation. I rarely get as much reading done on vacation as I think I will, but still get much more time to read than usual. Finished these:

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    Graham Greene -- Brighton Rock

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    P.G. Wodehouse -- The Best of Wodehouse
    (I previously read the two novels contained in this volume; on vacation, I read all the short stories and selections from his autobiography)

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    Booth Tarkington -- Novels & Stories
    (Read The Magnificent Ambersons on vacation; finished Alice Adams and In The Arena just before vacation)

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    Michael Ondaatje -- The English Patient
     

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