What are you reading?

[VaderDave]

I finished Anathem; now on to Cryptonomicon. I'm about 150 pages in so far.

 

[Infrasonic]

 

[javyn]

Woah, let's not get crazy here and start calling HBO Rome "excellent". "Pretty good, I guess" is more like it, nevertheless, I still salivate over the thought of a feature film focused on Vorenus and Pullo.

On your comment about HBO Rome, which is an excellent historical piece of drama, the following link provides a very nice list of other historical drama films:


David

 

[Matt]

^I thought Rome was excellent. I don't especially care to enter the debate between 'historical drama' vs 'drama set in history'...but I thought Rome was excellent.

 

[Infrasonic]

 

[Aneil4lom]

I just started (for the third time) "Guns, Germs, & Steel" by Jared Diamond. I am really making an effort to read this book, but it is kind of boring.

I started that earlier this year. I think I'll make the effort to finish it.

 

[David Copeland]

THE LITTLE ENGINE THAT COULD

This is a great primer for the book, As a Man Thinketh by James Allen.

The Little Engine That Could should be in everyone's library.

Anything is possible when you think good about yourself.

 

[Geoffrey Firmin]

Actually wasn't it the Little Red Engine that could? My favourite Marxist children's story. Or is it Cartesian? " i think I can I know I can."


Bad News Murdoch's Australian and the Shaping of the Nation, by Robert Manne.

 

[Joffrey]

About to wrap up Sufferings in Africa

He was used to adventure. He was used to the high seas. He was Captain James Riley, American seaman and independent businessman bound for Europe in 1815. He never made it! Instead the young sea captain and his crew were shipwrecked off the coast of Muslim-controlled Morocco. The sea salt was still wet in their hair when the battered survivors were pounced upon by local natives, ensnared, enchained, and marched off into the horrors of African slavery. Riley’s narrative reads like fiction but is based on solid fact. Most of his men died. A few were separated and sold into the interior of the continent, never to be seen again. He was the first American to venture near the legendary Timbuctoo. Yet the conditions were so barbaric, the food so scanty, and the beatings so regular that Riley dropped from 240 down to 90 pounds! After many desperate ordeals, the American sailor and a handful of his men were ransomed by a sympathetic English merchant who had learned of their plight. Upon his return to the United States, Riley penned “Sufferings in Africa”, which went on to become America’s first best-seller, reportedly selling more than a million copies through various editions. Yet “Sufferings in Africa” is much more than just an adventure travel classic. In a time when the United States was grappling with the thorny issue of slavery within her own borders, Riley’s startling book told a tale of “racist term for black people’s Cabin” in reverse. Here was a story of Caucasian Americans under the whip and in the chains that held millions of Black Americans at the same time. Scholars are currently researching clues that this deservedly famous book was read by a young Abraham Lincoln, and thus helped seal his own heart against slavery. A classic story of endurance and bravery then, this important American book remains as fresh today as the day it was first released.

 

[VaderDave]

I just finished Cryptonomicon last night. I started Gravity's Rainbow and am about 50 pages in.

 

[California Dreamer]

Got a few on the boil right now:

1. Demon Fish, by Juliet Halperin. This is a book about sharks, their biology, habitat and cultural impact.
2. The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov.
3. The Infographic History of the World, by Valentina D'Efilipo
4. The Swerve, by Stephen Greenblatt.

 

[Geoffrey Firmin]

Man on the Run Paul McCartney in the 70's by Tom Doyle

 

[aravenel]



I just finished Cryptonomicon last night.

Great book, I read it for the first time a couple of months ago.

 

[i10casual]

My brief history. Stephen Hawking
What a curious man. Actually listen to it on audible. He start a chapter in his distinct voice and then the narrator continues. I really enjoyed it.

 

[i10casual]

Now into Why I left Goldman Sachs. Greg Smith. Very enjoyable if you are into this subject.