Karl Schroeder, Virga: Cities of the Air A purchase inspired by the "best new science fiction stories" anthology I posted a ways up thread. There is a lot of fun world building about what is essentially a giant gas bag in space filled with artificial suns, a free floating biosphere and what is mostly an 18th century culture and technology. For me at least, the space opera aspects were well compensated by the careful scientific extrapolation about what such an environment might be like.
I'm glad you specified which one. Although he's too good looking.... and smiling. An informal history of the English Language in the US. He definitely cherry picks his "Facts" for his opinions..
i guess it's fair to assume by your statement that you have read the book and have vetted his research? he offers lots of footnotes and a very comprehensive bibliography.
At Swim-Two-Birds -- Flann O’Brien “The novel, in the hands of an unscrupulous writer, could be despotic. In reply to an inquiry, it was explained that a satisfactory novel should be a self-evident sham to which the reader could regulate at will his degree of his credulity.”
Just finished: You are One of Them, a debut novel from Elliott Holt. It took awhile to get going - maybe it wouldn't were she more experienced as a writer - but the story of a childhood friendship between two girls, one of whom is killed in a plane crash after visiting Cold War Russia (or didn't), and the one left to pick up the pieces as a young adult, gets going about 50 pages in, and is pretty interesting.
Eats, Shoots and Leaves -- Lynn Truss Meh. Maybe the book should not read in one sitting, as I did this afternoon while waiting for my kids to be done with a birthday party. Truss is well aware that she's kvetching, and she revels in it, and makes perfectly clear that this book is for fellow kvetchers sticklers, but most of her complaints revolve around signs and various headlines. Really annoying.
Anna Beer, John Milton: Poet, Pamphleteer, Patriot, a biographer of the author of Paradise Lost. Actually, given that there aren't really a lot of documents, it's more of a "life and times" of a poet, with an emphasis on the times. Since said times involved the English civil war and the beheading of the king, a long with a subsequent restoration of the monarchy, the times were pretty damn busy. Pretty well written, with an emphasis on a lot of Milton's political writings. Given that this was the dawn of cheap printing, it's remarkably similar to our own era: Lots of vitriolic trolling, some of which Milton engaged in. He famously referred to one of his opponents as being so unwholesome he "gives God a vomit." A critic of Milton maintains he paid for a trip to Italy by, to translate the Latin, "renting out his butt cheeks."
I read this some years back, when it was on the best seller list. On this same subject. What do you find annoying, her complaints or the signs and headlines? When I lived in New Zealand the standing joke of a dinner date was "The Kiwi eats, roots, shoots and leaves." If you know the downunder word for f*ck is root, then it makes more sense.
Have you read The Great Fire? Sounds like a somewhat similar idea and concept, if the plot lines are different.
Finished the Milton book: coincidentally, the book is framed with chapter called "The City," the first being dated "1608" for the year of Milton's birth, and the last being "1674" for the year of Milton's death. I picked up this book yesterday, a 15 year old book on American cities... Hail, Babylon: In Search of the American City at the End of the Millenium by poet, essayist, NPR commentator (and my former professor) Andrei Codrescu. The jump from Milton's London of the 1670s to Andrei's New Orleans of the 1980s and '90s wasn't that big of a leap.
Take the All-Mart! (Reprobates of the Wasteland #1) by J.I. Greco (2011) From the Amazon.com book description:
I read two on vacation this week. Both very good. Recommended. Julian Barnes -- The Sense of an Ending Jim Crace -- Harvest On the 2013 Man Booker longlist announced last month.
How Soccer Explains the World -- Franklin Foer Meh. Lots of nice anecdotes about soccer, and it's various fans and interlopers. But hardly a theory of globalization.
yeah, but it's tonnes better than that stupid string theory! and what do you expect from The New Republic literary editor?
I don't know why, but this makes me wish now that Malcolm Cowley or Edmund Wilson had written a soccer book. No market for it in their day, but a book by either of them would hold up better than Foer's is holding up. For a class I'm starting next week... Michel Foucault: History of Madness. Read the earlier shortened version that appeared in English in the 70s. This is a better translation, and the fact that transitions (such as they are) haven't been edited out makes it a better book.
i guess i can understand Wilson's slagging of Tolkien, but since i enjoyed the trilogy and The Hobbit, EW ends up not being a critic i appreciate that much, though ya gotta respect his mind. also, i think i grew out of being a socialist a little earlier in my development than some of my peers, so not that much political sympathy for him. but then i'm quite a bit younger. my Literary Criticism prof in college was an academic sort, pointed us toward Susanne Langer and I.A. Richards.
A Pair of Blue Eyes - Thomas Hardy Not one of his better novels. Most of it is a romance that drags along. But the dilemma is well-done and the ending is excellent.
Finished George R.R. Martin's A Feast for Crows I suppose I'll have to get and read A Dance with Dragons, but honestly I'm a little tired of his writing style.
I finally got through "The Guns at Last Light" The last year of WWII in Europe. Makes you realize how brutal it all really was. The logistics are really staggering, the US really was the "arsenal of democracy" the amount of equipment shipped is still mind staggering as well as the amount of good men who never came back. A war of real attrition and hatred (well aren't they all?) Worth the read, depressing at times but a reminder of how life is so, so much different today. Kids that came out of the Great Depression, went straight to war. The mall brats have a lot to be thankful for. Warning, another old fart story. I worked with "Willy" in LA. Wilhelm Wolfgang Rudat. A German... yeh really.. One time driving from work he told me about how when he was 14 they gave him a uniform, a rifle that was taller than him and put a squad of similar guys under a Hitler youth officer into a farmhouse, with the order "hold until your last man." Some Ausies came trundling along with a tank and put a shell through the house. One of the 'kids' shouts we don't stand a chance we'd better surrender. The officer, all of 18 pulls, his Luger and says "we will never give up while we're alive....." Someone smacked him over the head with the butt of a rifle, they hung a sheet out of the window and Willy got to live in LA. He was a lousy tennis player though and cheated a lot.