What Are You Reading? Chapter 3

[Brian Olewnick]

Just picked this up; anyone tried it?



Also Ishiguro's 'The Unconsoled'.

[John B]

I just finished this:



Probably not a favorite of the Tourism board in India, given Naipaul's obsession with rampant public excretion.

Up next:

[Doc Martin]

Originally Posted by Brian Olewnick

Just picked this up; anyone tried it?



Also Ishiguro's 'The Unconsoled'.

Yep, my daughter turned me on to Haskell, very nice "road" novel. "I Am Not Jackson Pollock" a book of short stories, is worth picking up as well.

[rollhead]

[groover]

Finished "Generation Kill". Among other interesting revelations, it left me with the conclusion that the FDA ephedra ban is one of the biggest setbacks to the U.S. military. They won't be able to push the soldiers as hard as they did during the invasion again without it.

[frank m]

Monte---Happy to see you are deep into Housman. Somehow the Brits do such a good job of this kind of poetry. In both poetry and acting it seems to be in the blood, Its certainly not in the cooking.

[Brian Olewnick]

rollie, lemme know how the Gleick book is. I'm a big fan of "Chaos" and "Genius". On the face of it, I'd be somewhat less interested in Newton, but who knows.

[Monte Smith]

Originally Posted by frank m

Monte---Happy to see you are deep into Housman. Somehow the Brits do such a good job of this kind of poetry. In both poetry and acting it seems to be in the blood, Its certainly not in the cooking.

Haha. Well now, it could be in the weather, too. You're right, something has to account for a run of excellence from Beowulf thru Chaucer and Shakespeare and Milton to Kipling, Housman, Owen, Sassoon, Betjemen, Larkin and the angry young men, Ted Hughes, etc. Bad cooking is as good a clinical cause as any other.

But--although I lived in England in the late 80s and found the food perfectly atrocious--lately there has been something of an uptick in the quality of island cuisine. It's been much remarked upon. The Michelin Guide's stars have lost their luster on the Continent but the restaurant scene in London is brimming with talent. My favorite recent cookbook is British; Nigel Slater's homey Appetite. My wife likes the more photogenic Nigella. So do I. Yum yum. But your point is taken. No one ever needs spotted dick or a mouthful of bubble and squeak.

Just finished Julian Barnes' Arthur and George last night. It definitely should have won the Booker. It might be the only book on the Booker list that should have made the Booker list (or the list for the Arselicker Prize). George is the son of a vicar in Great Wyrley, outside Birmingham. Nobody could be more English, except that his father is a Parsee born in Bombay. When a puzzling series of livestock mutilations occur, the police turn their inquiry on the "strangers" in town and George is charged. Arthur is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, who rides to George's rescue in this excellent and straight-forward (interesting, for Barnes) tale of Edwardian justice. It's a pity walto isn't with us this year, as he might like it as a prime example of the post-Trollopian social novel. It's based on actual events. Good book.

[Monte Smith]

Here's a book that was well if briefly reviewed in the NYT book section a couple of weeks back, The Bird Is a Raven by Benjamin Lebert, a 23-year-old German kid. A good looking kid, too, judging by his author photo. He looks like a romanticized recruiting poster for the SS (but that was a different era of German) or a member of N'Sync...if one wonders which is preferable, it is certainly the boy band. The kid is a talented writer, good narrative voice, propels a plot along nicely. But you have to hope his career survives its early success (this is his second book to be published in the US by Knopf and Vintage), because this is a really young book. Or as Lebert (or his translator) might say, a, like, young book. "Like" is used in that inalterably adolescent manner eight times in 110 small pages. One review I read said Lebert had produced a book which flawlessly presented the experience of youth in all its passionate immediacy. I think perhaps he has done that, and it reminds me how silly is most of the stuff that preoccupies youth. One of Lebert's characters, a prostitute called Mandy, says it best: "You can't be unhappy at your age. You haven't experienced anything yet, even though you think you might have. You don't know what problems are. The problems you think you have aren't problems at all. They're all little, unimportant things." And what goes for "problems" also goes for the characters and epiphanies in this book. There aren't any real characters yet, just names, and while there are certainly passages of intense observation there are no epiphanies, though there are compelling testaments to hormonal excitement. Plot: boys meet on train, talk about girls as "celestial beings," eventually truths supposedly shocking and dark emerge. I'm glad the book was short because I would not have read it if I couldn't have read it in an evening, and for its many flaws it was worth a look. Especially if, as I did, you read the whole thing with an internal accent of a German boy band member.

[Gary Sisco]

Finished Thucydides and *A War Like No Other* last night. Accurate title, that's for sure. If you adjust for population, they had a KIA rate that can be understood this way: It was high enough so that if the US had had KIAs that high in WW2, it would add up to 44 *million* dead (as opposed to the something over 400,000 KIA the US did have -- and even higher than the USSR's estimated 30 million dead). Absolute madness. And I never knew before how unseaworthy were the famous triremes. They were basically ramming machines more than ships. If a large man (which in those days would have been a very small man by today's standards) walked the wrong way on deck, it could capsize the vessel, just that alone. No, thanks. Not for me! One good feature, though, was that they were so light that, having nearly no ballast or anything like it to add weight, they were virtually unsinkable, so the damaged ones (from either side) could be towed away and repaired. They were terribly expensive to build, on a scale with ships today.

Just in one battle off Sicily, the Athenians lost 50,000 sailors. That would be, by comparison, and not having to adjust for population or anything else, as if the US today were to lose ten aircraft carriers and the whole of their crews -- in one battle.

[Monte Smith]

Originally Posted by Gary Sisco

*A War Like No Other*

Bravo for reading Thucydides. And the V.D. Hanson book, A War Like No Other, is it good? I have to go off on a tangent and say I hate the title. I hear far too much of "______ is a [BLANK] like no other" these days. You might not have noticed it, but its one of those things where if your attention is drawn to it, you'll see it everywhere. Two years ago my boss at an old job handed me three draft press releases for three different books to look over, correct, spruce up, and send out. In each one of these releases, he called the project a "[blank] book like no other." We had a book on Bob Dylan. That was "a Bob Dylan book like no other." We had a book on Vietnam. That was "A Vietnam book like no other." We had a book on the (then upcoming) 2004 election. It was "an election book like no other." Verily, these were press releases that were like every other. Since then, I have grown quite shy of this phrase and have seen it everywhere. Mercedes has a TV advertisement where a Mercedes is "a car like no other." In magazine ads, Parker pens are "pens like no other."

[shrugs]

just finished Orwell's Burmese Days
starting up on the Plato volume from the Great Books again. I've read most of it and will swap it out for another volume soon.

[Monte Smith]

Burmese Days is good. What's his name, James Flory, with the colored spot on his face...learning what life is like for a race with all color on their face. And a bigger novel than that, too, because so human. So English. Interesting early Orwell, though there is better Orwell. I like Coming Up For Air. Keep the Aspidistra Flying is my wife's favorite. And of course Down and Out and Wigan Pier. I wish Flory hadn't a shot the pooch.

I read the first Plato I read from the Great Books volume. Gorgias. It was the required reading for an entrance essay to a school I visited but never applied to, St. Johns in Annapolis.

[Gary Sisco]

Monte, Hanson's books is good. The title is actually a quote from another Greek writer, not Thucydides, describing the war. It's a bit older than any of us .... I liked the book. His purpose was more to describe what the war was like for those who fought it (ie, how it was fought and so forth) than to write a straight history of what happened.

[Monte Smith]

Originally Posted by Gary Sisco

Monte, Hanson's books is good. The title is actually a quote from another Greek writer, not Thucydides, describing the war. It's a bit older than any of us ....

Ah! That's good to know. My "outrage" is silenced. I read Thucydides, but a long time ago. I've retained, oh, nothing. Guess I could use a refresher.

[Salvador Dali Lama]

stuck in the middle of this. i dont like it at all. i like the 8 or so other dick novels i've read, even the divine invasion--which might be my favorite. but valis. man, this one kind of sucks.

[Monte Smith]

A sucky Dick novel?

[Scott Dolan]

Don't fuck with my boy Sal, he's a big dick lover!




Currently reading Freakonomics.

Has anyone here read Confessions Of A Economic Hit Man? I almost picked that one up today. Any good?

[Salvador Dali Lama]

man, if theres anything i cant get enough of, its dick.

scott, if you're into economics right now check this out: http://faculty.roosevelt.edu/Ziliak/

this is a good pal of mine. his book comes out this spring.

[Scott Dolan]

Originally Posted by Sal

man, if theres anything i cant get enough of, its dick.

Hahahaha...........


You know I've been dying for you to come clean about your dick fetish.

[Monte Smith]

Dick is alright, but it often leaves me strangely unsatisfied. There's often a great deal of promise not realized in the follow through.

(I mean the idea or theme with this author is often more interesting than the plot which emerges. Sheesh).

Originally Posted by Scott Dolan

Has anyone here read Confessions Of A Economic Hit Man? I almost picked that one up today. Any good?

There was a piece on the author of that book in today's NYT Sunday business section. Oops, I had a hard copy here but I started the fire with it tonight. Guess I will be reading this link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/19/bu...=1&oref=slogin

I loved the chapter in Freakonomics about the economics/sociology of baby names. That helped in picking out "Fulgencia Maeve Myfanwy" as the most upwardly-mobile, progressive sounding name for our zip code and income level.

[Scott Dolan]

That's obviously one in the "agin" category.

[Scott Dolan]

C'mon Monte, no free rides.

What did you find reprehensible about it?

[Gary Sisco]

Monte -- the parts I liked best of Thucydides were the speeches and his occasional commentary on the perennial tragedy of it all. The speeches were all brilliant, laying out the reasons to go to war, logically, well-argued, in public (literally), and also making no bones whatsoever about simple self-interest (a thing that always gets buried today beneath a blizzard of rationale and claptrap).

[Monte Smith]

Originally Posted by Scott Dolan

C'mon Monte, no free rides.

What did you find reprehensible about it?

I meant that as no comment on the book--haven't read it. It's just it was cold last night and I did, in fact, use the front of the business section to light a fire. I wasn't thinking that there was an article there I wanted to read.

Gary--I'm going to locate my Thucydides and look at those speeches. Is there a passage you can particularly cite?

[Douglas]

Originally Posted by Salvador Dali Lama

scott, if you're into economics right now check this out: http://faculty.roosevelt.edu/Ziliak/

this is a good pal of mine. his book comes out this spring.

I don't think I've read your pal's work, but his collaboration with McClosky is certainly something that has made its impact. I'll look out for his book.

I like Levitt's (careful) academic output, but from what I've heard about Freakanomics perhaps I'll pass. No idea about the Hitman but the blurb guarantees a no sale.

nr. Michio Kaku's Einstein's Cosmos and Alan Warner's Morvern Callar.

[Root Doctor]

A brutal crime novel set in and around South Boston. More George V. Higgins than Dennis Lehane in the telling, which suits me just fine.

[groover]

Gee, he talks about global dominance as if it's a bad thing!

According to Noam, the NYT has been a right-wing foreign policy shill since at least 1990.

[Gary Sisco]

Longer than that. First, they even came out and apologized for having shilled for the Bushists in the run up to Iraq. More recently, they got busted again for having sat on the domestic surveillance issue which they knew about *before* the last election but sat on it anyway -- even after having been burned already by the same people. They behave as if they are an arm of the state as opposed to journalists who are supposed to shine a cold, bright light on its various doings, especially those wrapped in the "national security" crap, which has been the excuse for every bad action since WW2, and they know it, because their own paper has written about all of them -- after the fact.

They also knew about the various illegal and murderous dealings of the Reaganists in Central America for many years but didn't make any effort to bust them until after the Iran-Contra business had already become public, and even then, they were most concerned about the Iran part than the contra part, because they'd been sitting on the contra part (not to mention the air war in El Salvador which was five or six years old by the time they decided to publish anything about it) for years already.

for those who weren't around or don't remember, for much of the contra war in Nicaragua, the US under the Reaganists denied having anything at all to do with it. It was merely a conflict among Nicaraguans. They prefered the ex-National Guard of course but they weren't funding or arming them, since it was illegal and of course they wouldn't do anything illegal. That was the official line for most of Reagan's first time, towed in particular by the career liar John Negroponte, who was then the ambassador to Honduras and of course knew all along what was happening and that he was lying through his teeth.

[frank m]

Among other things, I'm reading or rather listening to a cd of this book. Its about what you probably surmise, and your attitude toward it probably depends on your politics. BUT, and this is a big BUT- toward the end of the book he gets into details of the corruption in Iraq after the "victory speech" by Bush on the carrier. Like you, probably, I thouoght I knew about this but I had no idea of the financial waste, the lack of sensible foresight exercised there. And the amount of money involved is staggering.

Its worth it to get hold of this book, regardless of your attitude toward Franken, if only to read the last third of it. Wowie. What a bunch of baby ignoramuses this administration is.