So, What Are You Reading? v. 2020

Which FP article? I'm a bit behind on what they've published on their site that isn't in the physical edition.

 

My newest co-worker is Turkish, he came to Lubbock to do his PhD work and decided to stay. I'll have to shoot him a copy of this and see what he thinks.

 

Wow! That's amazing.

 

I decided to read more classics this year. So I googled "100 must read books" and this book often came up at the top of several lists. This book is very relevant in this modern era. I do not need to point out about racism against the African Americans as portrayed in the book. The subject is too obvious. The book also talked about the prejudice against the poor white families. Not so long ago, a liberal American friend (an anti-Trump guy) actually told me to see through the eyes of a poor white man and you would understand why Donald Trump is so popular with his supporters. I am not here to discuss politics. So I do not plan to elaborate what he told me. Basically, I finished the last page an hour ago, I thought that I completely understood the book. Then, I kept thinking things over and over.... the book was not what it seemed in the modern context. I preferred to keep my opinions private. However, I started to think about the movie "Green Book" and how and why people had different opinion on the movie. I did ask myself if Atticus Finch was really a racist (if I look at him as a relation with the movie "Green Book"). Actually, I do not think he is a racist, but am I a racist to think liked that? And I started to see the book differently as I wrote this, but I have yet to form a clear opinion of the book. I have no plan to elaborate what I just wrote. I wanted everyone to reread this book and see how it was related to BLM and Trumpism.

PS: I am probably mentally ill.

 

I have an obsession with Ottoman history. I recently watched a Turkish series on Mehmed II and the Fall of Constantinople on Netflex. So I really want to watch this TV series "Magnificent Century" mentioned on the article. About ten years ago, I read this book on Suleiman the Magnificent and his concubine Hurrem. Please do not judge the book by its cover and the book title. Yes, it appeared to be a romance novel, but it was a historical novel with plots behind the scene.

 

I just posted about "To Kill a Mockingbird". Immediately, after I finished that book, I started this book. I began around 5pm on a Saturday and finished book by Sunday night.

 

Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, which might go down as one of my favorite books this year. How good is it? I'm currently reading the end notes and finding new things that weren't in the main text that are pretty interesting, which is a good sign that James Nestor wrote a pretty good book.

 

Read Go Set A Watchman by Harper Lee by for more information on Atticus.

I'm currently reading Suttree by Cormac McCarthy. It's about a man who lives on a houseboat near Knoxville, Tennessee.

 

She really should have called that book Two Kill A Mockingbird.

 

I heard about the book where Atticus "remained" or "became" a racist.

 

Alcoholism, night terrors, gambling, Rick Warren, rats in mazes, obesity, amnesia, and MLK Jr are all the same thing, along with some other things. Fascinating book about the basal ganglia and Duhigg really is a good writer.

I was going to read his other book next, but Ready Player Two showed up today so that's next up

 

Well, remained is probably the better word for it.

Go Set a Watchman is a rough draft. And it's fascinating in a meta sense, but after having read both twice in the past three years, Watchman should not be used to "inform" Mockingbird. It's just a rough draft that Harper Lee wisely kept in a safe deposit box.

 

Dune -- Frank Herbert

I have a raging case of pandemic depression and I was finally able to diagnose myself when I read this book. One of my three favorite books ever, it took me six weeks to finish. Usually it takes me a weekend.

 

I read it as a high school sophomore in 1985. I re-read it again as a 51 years old. Perhaps, it was Holden Caulfield's witty humor and my own naivety. At 15, I did not grasp many things in the book, I just realised. I could easily associate him with several of my classmates lost in High school at the time. At 51, I could clearly see how he was caught between a boy and a man. I can see the dark side of the novel. I spent time in Times Square in the early 1990's before it transformed into a family tourist attraction. I knew nothing of that in 1985. I heard of John Hinckley and his obsession with Jodie Foster in 1985, but I did not know about his association with the book until much later. I can now see how Holden is actually Travis Bickle(Taxi Driver). Holden definitely suffered a form of depression or even an disorder

 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The novel takes on a whole different tone once you figure out the narrator is in a mental hospital. But it's easy to miss the hints in the opening paragraph.

 

Thanks for the tip. I just reread the first paragraph. And i missed the entire thing.

"I'll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me.... had to come out here and take it easy.... that isn't too far from this crumby place, and he (Holden's brother) comes over and visits me practically every week end."

 

I may need to read Catcher again. Hated it in HS and hated it in my early 30s, mostly because I don't like Holden Caulfield as a person. Maybe another decade + of life experience will change my perspective.

 

Mark Twain -- No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger

 

When I teach it to college students, usually half the class would have read it in high school, and about half of those would have loved Holden, and about half hated him. So I always lead with the opening paragraph that gives the setting, but which most people miss. Then I try to get the attention on Salinger's real accomplishment IMO: a first person narrator that is compelling enough that everyone is going to react strongly to the that character, but which is also extremely unself-aware. Once you start catching hints of how unself-aware Holden is, the book starts to look increasingly brilliant. The gap between how he sees himself and how others see him (with good reason) is unsettling, leading most self-aware people to wonder "holy shit! Am I like that, too?"

 

I'm reading two book simultaneously to see if they would work in a first year composition class should they come out in paperback by next fall.



Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents which is significantly better than I expected... in fact, about 90% of Rod Dreher's book is quite good (the part that chronicles the Soviet Bloc's systematic oppression of religion), but the 10% of the subtitle is premised on his assumption that we are on the verge of similar forms of murderous oppression here which... well, I think it's pretty unlikely, but the book is feeding a lot of persecution fantasies on the right, and that's not good. The other book is



Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America, or as the Australian edition would have it, "How Big Money Took Over America," in which Kurt Anderson traces the process by which the U.S. became an oligarchy in which the safety and security of wealth took on primary importance so that the top 2-3% of society is as secure as possible, while the lower tiers are increasingly less secure if not in serious trouble. I don't know... it's just me... but I'm thinking that society is in more danger from the upward mobility of wealth than it is from anti-Christians in government. But if these books are in paperback in the fall, I might assign them.

 

This book is catching a lot of crap from a lot of people. Those people are crap. It's not on part with RP1, but it's a fun ride and an interesting way to get to an argument for life that's more than human. RP1 was an easy 5/5 while this is more of a 4.25/5 for me.