What Are You Reading?

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  • After walking to work in the rain this morning, I was looking at raincoats on amazon when I happened across this review.
  • 18/26 found that review helpful. People are awesome.

    Craig
  • How about one like this?
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  • edited June 2013
    I held out for a long time, but I have to say joining Goodreads has really helped me pick up the pace on my reading again after a spell in which other things were crowding it out. 13 books since I joined in April! I wish the iPad app were a little better designed, but overall I like the service a lot, despite not really paying much attention to the social aspect of it. Just being able to track what books I started/should read has helped a lot.

    Getting back into this (by Christopher's brother) now, which I started quite a while back after it was a Kindle deal:
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    So far I'd say it deserves its mixed reviews - the 'England was a better place when it didn't have paper money and modern poetry and people had a stiff upper lip' shtick grates on me a bit, but some parts are quite interesting.
  • 'England was a better place when it didn't have paper money and modern poetry and people had a stiff upper lip' shtick grates on me a bit

    Me too GP - it was alright for those that had the wealth and power but not for the rest!
  • Finished the Zhukov book last night. It was good, but written for a wider audience than I would have liked. Admittedly I know more about the history of the USSR than 95% of the population, but I wanted the book to be more in depth.

    Heading back to fiction tonight when I start:

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    It's post apocalyptic so I'm very hopeful it'll be my cup o' tea.

    Craig
  • Craig, have you heard of this book:

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    I hope to get to it sooner or later.

    My undergrad school had a fantastic eastern European history professor that I only managed to take two of his classes. It's made me quite fascinated with the area. Well that and having a few ancestors from there.
  • Heard of it, yes. Applebaum is a very well respected Soviet history writer. I should probably read more of her stuff. I haven't even read her Gulag book, but read the entirety of Solzhenitzyn's Gulag Archipelago in nearly one stretch, which was so depressing I nearly wanted to kill myself after finishing, so perhaps I should stay away from the Gulag for awhile.

    Craig
  • edited June 2013
    Having finished Hitchens (not a big fan of it in the end), I dashed off Wool, Part 1 (very enjoyable, thanks someone for pointing that out - was it amc2?), got 100 pages into Bonhoeffer's letters and papers from 1937-1940:
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    and when I was too tired for serious stuff, picked up this again:
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    I picked it up quite a while back as a kindle daily deal, read the first chapter and only got mildly into it before getting sidetracked. Read another hundred pages and am really enjoying it now.
  • edited June 2013
    Looking at that Bonhoeffer title on Amazon I see there are something like 15 volumes in the series, at $35-$54, except volumes available in paperback, which are still $18-$19. That's both a lot of reading and a lot of money. Seminaries might spring for the whole thing, unless they're seminaries for whom Bonhoeffer would be anathema, but I doubt that anyone else would. The one that really piques my curiosity is the volume of fiction. I wonder what that's like.

    I bought The Lovely Bones and started into it, then realized I've already read it, years ago. I may drop it, or I may read it again. It is pretty good.
    I was in a book shop earlier today and saw a special offer on a complete boxed set of Game of Thrones.
    I saw the same thing, or something similar. It was at Barnes & Noble, on the "Last chance" cart, and it had a very high quality cover, gilt edges and a slipcase for $5 or so. I considered it, knowing how many of you like it.
  • @ Denver, I have two of the volumes in hardcover so far for an average price of $20 each, by keeping an eye on Amazon Marketplace. I'm hoping to gradually accumulate a couple more by the same means.
  • I wonder what is his German like--turgid/succinct, clumsy/graceful, etc. Have you read any of it?
  • edited June 2013
    I teach Life Together/Gemeinsames Leben in German (in fact the immediate reason I am reading his works from that period, the mid to late 30s, in English is because I am working on a public lecture about teaching that work, to be delivered to English speakers in Vancouver). In that one, a mature work addressed to a church audience, his writing is by and large graceful and precise and I would say pretty succinct - not the kind of easy reading of today's inspirational stuff, not populist, but elegant, clear and penetrating. In fact I generally find him an incisive writer - whether I end up agreeing or not, his thoughts often arrest me and force me to go away and think. I have not really delved into his earlier, more straightforwardly academic, work like Sanctorum Communio and Act and Being in either language - I am guessing they are denser. I am seeing some variation of style in the letters (in translation) - when he is sending circulars to his students it's more the voice of the better known, church-directed works. When he is arguing with church officials about polity, the style in places becomes dense, stilted, and bureaucratic, more like the stereotype of German officialese, and I sometimes find myself wondering if the German is any clearer. It would be nice to have the collected works in both languages, but that would really be a lot of money and shelf-space!
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    I was reading this at the gym, but about halfway through decided to give up on it. The protagonist's annoying voice, overused American pop culture references, and some clunky writing killed it for me.

    Just started (after reading the first part for free, thanks to many people on here rec'ing it)

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  • I just finished:

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    I had never heard of it until it was mentioned in my Russian Revolution book, but I'm not sure how I'd missed it. It is credited as the first dystopia book ever written and was apparently a big influence on both Orwell and Huxley. In fact, much of the story in 1984 could have been cribbed from We.

    It's particularly interesting because it was written in 1920s Soviet Union, and Zamyatin basically didn't even try to hide the fact he was writing about the USSR.

    It was a remarkably good book for one that essentially created a genre, and I can't recommend it more highly.

    Now starting:

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    Written by the husband of my wife's friend. So hopefully I like it!

    Craig
  • @Craig Glad someone else read We! I took an excellent Russian Lit in translation that went until about the 1940's as an ungrad and We was on the reading list.
  • I'm completely flabbergasted that I'd never heard of it. Two of my favorite things to read are Russian/Soviet literature and dystopia fiction, and I missed one combining the two!?!

    Oh, well. Corrected now.

    Craig
  • Curse it, Craig, I don't need any more on my reading list. That sounds interesting. Also wondering that I hadn't heard about it.
    I'm near the middle of Infinite Jest.
  • I read that Darwin book a few years ago Craig, and really enjoyed it. Cool that there's a connection.
  • edited July 2013
    I am part way through (and enjoying) Kingdom Come by J. G. Ballard - Craig, it's a modern British dystopia!
    I am also trying to muster the will to finish the last 300 pages of the Prince of Nothing series by R.Scott Bakker.
    And I just finished The Idiot by Dostoevsky.
    And I completed The Futurological Congress by Stanislav Lem on trains and in Airports on Friday.
    All of which basically indicates that my reading is a bit ADD at the moment.
  • Dr. Mutex - Sorry! It's worth adding it to the list, though.

    amclark2 - I guess I misspoke. It was written by the brother of my wife's friend. Hopefully you can forgive me!

    Craig
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    Embarked on this. First time I've read a Wallender book, so I don't know the character - is he meant to be kind of slow on the uptake? (The way he goes about reacting to finding a person missing in the early chapters stretches credulity - I won't say more for fear of spoilers.)
  • @GP - yes, it is a bit slow to start with, but (no spoiler as you'd probably expect this) it all eventually comes together. IMO not one of the stronger Wallander novels - from memory it was one of the last Wallander stories that Mankell wrote, and I feel that last two or three were weaker than earlier stories. Mankell stopped wring Wallander books for several years after the actress who played Wallander's daughter in the Swedish TV series committed suicide. This one was on TV here this weekend in Swedish version - I'm still to watch as sub-titles take more concentration and I was ironing last night whilst watching TV!
  • @greg, I am not too worried about the pace of the writing - I am quite enjoying that - but the pace of the central detective's cognition was a bit annoying In the early going. If I can phrase this spoilerlessly, given the concern regarding the elderly gentleman in the isolated farm, could it really not occur to him for, what, two or three days to look *outside* the house despite repeatd visits?? I think it has got better as it goes along and there are more strands to investigate. It does seem as if at times he is set up as a kind of anti-Sherlock Holmes, who keeps making mistaken deductions from the evidence.
  • That last comment is certainly true GP! it is a while since I read it, I can remember the basic story line, but not the detail. I hope you enjoy the rest!
  • edited July 2013
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    Finished this on planes at the weekend. Rather enjoyable collection of quite philosophical short stories with a strong focus on language play. Some I liked more than others; there were times when for me I found myself watching the author do creative writing rather than climbing inside the story, leaving me thinking the wordplay had become perhaps a shade too precious. But the ones I most enjoyed (and of course everyone else's mileage will vary) were really excellent. I'd recommend the book, and suspect it would bear re-reading.
  • Interesting NYTimes article from a few months ago; This is What Happens When You Cast Lindsay Lohan in Your Movie

    Currently reading:

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    And almost done with:

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    Which I enjoyed very much.

    Also: Neil Stephenson's Reamde and Chuck Klosterman's IV are each currently on sale as kindle books for $2.99.
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