Hadn’t seen this topic for a while so what the heck.
I’m reading a fascinating history of the Taiping Rebellion called God’s Heavenly Son. The rebellion was a millenarian Christian movement in China in the mid 19th century. It apparently cost 20 million lives but no one has ever heard about it. I myself was ignant until I encountered it in the course of teaching world history this past year.
It’s a well-written book that reads like an adventure novel in some respects, even though the scholarship appears to be solid. The author does a wonderful job of not imposing Western prejudices on the subject matter. Good stuff.
The other one on the nightstand is a Gene Wolfe sci-fi novel.
I’m currently re-reading the Mitford series, by Jan Karon. In preparation for our trip to England, I’m also reading “A Winter’s Tale,” which is what we’ll be seeing at the Globe.
I’ve got about eight books on autism and asperger’s syndrome in a pile on my desk at the moment; I’m through about half of them. I also occasionally nick one of Martin’s books when he’s left it lying around, a historical study on the evolutionary, geographical, social etc factors that made the world the way it is today. Think it’s called “Guns, Germs and Steel” but I forget the subtitle and author at the moment.
Guns, Germs, and Steel is by Jared Diamond. I thought that was a really interesting book which I hope will make up for the fact that I am currently reading a murder mystery my dad sent me by Martha Grimes called The Five Bells and Bladebone. I am never reading anything the least bit edifying when someone asks this question.
Collapse, Jared Diamond
Blink: The power of thinking without thinking; Malcolm Gladwell
Lessons in Terror; Caleb Carr
Wisdom of Crowds; James Surowiecki
World is Flat
I’m halfway through; Paris 1919: Six months that changed the world by Margaret Owen MacMillan. Also a few books on the coming freshwater shortage in the world and the trouble it will bring.
That’s funny, a friend of mine gave it to me when it first came out some years ago, and I never sat down to start reading it until last week.
Recently read Haruki Murakami’s latest (well, the most recently translated of his novels), “Kafka on the Shore.” Even more surreal in some respects than The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and equally unforgettable.
I loved the Wind-Up Bird - not sure if that was the name of the book itself, or just one of the stories in a book of short stories that I read a few years ago. The whole book was quite bizarre, but I couldn’t put it down at the time.
I’m working on reading this book on Gödel, Escher and Bach by Hofstadter called The Eternal Braid. I haven’t picked it up in the last two weeks, but what I’ve read so far is quite fascinating to me. Gödel is a mathematician, Bach is (of course) a composer, and Escher (also of course) is an artist. Hofstadter combines all of their points of view on life, and their contributions, and comes up with something that has interested me forever. Imagine, someone else has actually considered the links between music, art and mathematics, and has written extensively on this concept!! I just knew there was a mathematical way of looking at everything. I need to get back to this book and see what other mind teasers are waiting for me. Teasers, because my mind loves this kind of stuff…
I’m re-reading Sense and Sensibility. I loved it the first time, which was 20 years ago, and remember it being very amusing. However, now I’m finding it one of the most hilarious books I’ve ever read. It helps being a little older and more up on the 200-year-old language and customs.
In five days I’ll be on vacation, at which point I might try to attack something a little more challenging, or at least longer.
I got about 1/5th of the way into that. What I could decode was great, but it was definitely a trudge for my liberal-arts non-mathy mind.
If you see a book called “Einstein’s Violin,” which purports to be about the relationship between physics and music, don’t bother. It’s really a self-congratulatory memoir by a symphony conductor. Very long on pontification and very short on substance.
Oh, and of course my wife and I will both be reading the new Harry Potter book when it comes out in July. (And, of course, She Who Must Not Be Named gets to read it first.)
Ah, is that the one with the three-lettered block on the front? I’ve seen that. Haven’t read it yet, but I want too, and I want to make one of those blocks because those are my initials.
Like jsluder and his boss ( ), I will be reading the new HP book when it hits the shelves in July… but to prepare for that event, I have dusted off the previous books in the series to warm up for the event.
How the U.S. Uses Globalization to Cheat Poor Countries Out of Trillions
John Perkins, a former respected member of the international banking community, describes how as a highly paid professional, he helped the U.S. cheat poor countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars by lending them more money than they could possibly repay and then take over their economies.
“Well, the company I worked for was a company named Chas. T. Main in Boston, Massachusetts. We were about 2,000 employees, and I became its chief economist. I ended up having fifty people working for me. But my real job was deal-making. It was giving loans to other countries, huge loans, much bigger than they could possibly repay. One of the conditions of the loan–let’s say a $1 billion to a country like Indonesia or Ecuador–and this country would then have to give ninety percent of that loan back to a U.S. company, or U.S. companies, to build the infrastructure–a Halliburton or a Bechtel. These were big ones. Those companies would then go in and build an electrical system or ports or highways, and these would basically serve just a few of the very wealthiest families in those countries. The poor people in those countries would be stuck ultimately with this amazing debt that they couldn’t possibly repay. A country today like Ecuador owes over fifty percent of its national budget just to pay down its debt. And it really can’t do it. So, we literally have them over a barrel. So, when we want more oil, we go to Ecuador and say, “Look, you’re not able to repay your debts, therefore give our oil companies your Amazon rain forest, which are filled with oil.” And today we’re going in and destroying Amazonian rain forests, forcing Ecuador to give them to us because they’ve accumulated all this debt. So we make this big loan, most of it comes back to the United States, the country is left with the debt plus lots of interest, and they basically become our servants, our slaves. It’s an empire. There’s no two ways about it. It’s a huge empire. It’s been extremely successful.”- John Perkins, Democracy Now
It has everything for exciting summer reading: exotic locations, sexual intrigue, and world domination.
