What Are You Reading? Chapter 2

[Il Anto]

I'm looking to read a biography on FDR. Would anybody have any rec's for me?

[AntManBee]

Yukio Mishima "A Beautiful Star"

[Jesse]

Murray Bookchin: The Spanish Anarchists

Marjane Satrapi: Persepolis

Oscar Wilde: De Profoundis

[Monte Smith]

Persepolis is good, isn't it?

I've got a lot going at once: The Dragons of Expectation by Robert Conquest, Poverty, Love, and War by Hitchens, The Enduring Revolution (about the Contract with America) by Major Garrett, and Miss Ravenel's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty by John W. De Forest, which is an interesting novel about the Civil War written just after the conflict, and also Scott's Ivanhoe. I can't settle down to anyone book right now.

[Tanager]

Originally Posted by Monte Smith

Persepolis is good, isn't it?

That's another to-get in my queue. Heard lotsa good things about it and the follow-up.

[AntManBee]

Originally Posted by Monte Smith

I can't settle down to anyone book right now.

I used to be like that, having several books going at the same time. It got increasingly stressful though, so nowadays I stick to one, on very rare occasions two if they are very different, like one more demanding and the other a lot more easygoing.

[Jesse]

[QUOTE]

Originally Posted by Monte Smith

Persepolis is good, isn't it?

Amazing what's happening in cartoons these days.

I recall my first read of Maus, the furor over it's treatment of Nazism & the Holocaust in a paneled comics format.
Some very sweet & harrowing turns in Persepolis.

I am enamored of the drawing style as well.

Monte, I have struggled with the multiple simultaneous reads thing since a pup. I can't seem to discipline myself to focus on only two at a time. I fear I am getting esotropia from multiple reads with divergent styles/themes.


I have wanted to use esotropia in a post for some time.

[Monte Smith]

I always have multiple books going at once. In fact, you could say I pretty much have the whole library going.

Maus was an accomplished piece of work. Spiegelman's latest is not so good, In the Shadow of No Towers. I perused it at the book store and there is just so little matter in it. Neither the art or the drawing seems particularly compelling, either.

[Monte Smith]

The fine Italian publisher/writer Roberto Calasso has a new one out called K.

Something very strange is involved with Mr. Calasso. His previous works include The Ruin of Kasch, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, and Ka. This new one is on Franz Kafka, it is dedicated to a women called Katherine, and it is published in America by Knopf.

[john williams]

The Motorcycle Diaries : Ernesto "Che" Guevara.

[Gary Sisco]

One of the very few people who ever actually did escape his class roots for life.

[Nate Dorward]

Originally Posted by Monte Smith

Something very strange is involved with Mr. Calasso. His previous works include The Ruin of Kasch, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, and Ka. This new one is on Franz Kafka, it is dedicated to a women called Katherine, and it is published in America by Knopf.

Silent "K"s don't count. Sheesh.

[Monte Smith]

Originally Posted by Nate Dorward

Silent "K"s don't count. Sheesh.

There are no silent "K"s there. It is pronounced "Kuh-nopf."

[Gentle Giant]

At a book sale in a local UU church, I picked up Arthur Miller's After the Fall, a collection TS Eliot poems, and Girl With the Pearl Earring. Finished After the Fall last night. Wow. This morning I read the first four pages of Girl... and was enchanted.

[groover]

Finished these two recently...



Currently reading this...

[Sergio Zamora]

Karen Armstrong - Holy War: The Crusades and their Impact on Today's World.

Not what I was expecting, but not bad. I usually like reading history from a different approach than hers focusing on religious culture, but it's interesting so far. I should probably read more scholarly or 'straight' history of the crusades after this.

Can anyone recommend books on the history and pre-history of the jews based on historical records (as opposed to biblical). I'm also looking for one on the history of Islam and pre-Islamic arabian society.

Also,

Jim Thompson - South of Heaven.
Eric Hobsbawm - Revolutionaries.

[Dr Dave]

I have finally finished this:




Now, on to Volume II....

[Chris D]

Speaking of Jewish comic book artists...

Michael Chabon, "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay." I know, I'm late to the party. But as my old man used to say, "You're better off waiting for the cattle to clear the pond if you want to drink clean water."

[Gary Sisco]

Sergio -- There's quite a lot out there about the ancient Hebrews. As far as the Arabs go, pre-Islam, there is only one book that I managed to find during my couple-year study of things Islamic: Robert Hoyland, *Arabia And The Arabs, From The Bronze Age To The Coming Of Islam* (Routledge). An excellent read that has a little pre-Islam (there isn't much to tell, actually, pre-Islam) and that everyone should read is: Albert Hourani's classic *A History Of The Arab Peoples* (Warner Books).

Still rereading *Beyond Good And Evil* along with other stuff, so's to be able to communicate with our nephew about his current interest(s). The section "Natural History Of Morals" reveals the evil side of his ideas. No confusion possible, there, and no wonder that he was a favorite thinker of many historical scumbags. I hadn't read it in many years and had forgotten much of it.

Still, evil ideas or no, he was a very entertaining writer. Dangerous combination, that, especially for a young and, ideawise, uneducated mind, especially in the present period, when style always trumps content.

[Monte Smith]

How'd you find that one, Groover? I read it a year or so ago and found it very interesting.

[Dr Dave]

Originally Posted by Chris D

Speaking of Jewish comic book artists...

Michael Chabon, "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay." I know, I'm late to the party. But as my old man used to say, "You're better off waiting for the cattle to clear the pond if you want to drink clean water."

Kavalier & Clay was one of those books I almost read straight through. Chabon sure knows how to tell a story! Great book.

[steve(thelil)]

Originally Posted by Dr Dave

Kavalier & Clay was one of those books I almost read straight through. Chabon sure knows how to tell a story! Great book.

I started it and put it down a couple of times for no good reason I can recall. Probably, I put it down for so long that with my lousy memory, it was hard to pick it up from where I left off and i was unwilling to start over. But I will. I loved "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh", which was Chabon's first novel , I think (I could be wrong; it's kind of a hobby). I also read and enjoyed a collection of his short stories. I was gonna read Wonder Boys, but I saw the movie before doing so (I liked it) and lost the motivation.

[Brian Olewnick]

Nabokov's Pnin & Murakami's "Kafka on the Shore". Oddly, I can't find any reproductions of the US cover, but I like the German one better anyway...'

[Gary Sisco]

Sergio -- Here's one that came in the mail today. Haven't read it yet but will get back to you. Finkelstein and Silberman, *The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision Of Ancient Israel and The Origins Of Its Sacred Texts* (Free Press).

[groover]

Originally Posted by Monte Smith

How'd you find that one, Groover? I read it a year or so ago and found it very interesting.

It was an Amazon recommendation, Monte. I also found it very interesting, particularly the background on the influential writings of Islamic scholar Sayyid Qutb and the critique of Naom Chomsky. Extreme leftists are likely to reflexively discredit Berman's sensible observations and conclusions.

[Sergio Zamora]

Originally Posted by Gary Sisco

Sergio -- Here's one that came in the mail today. Haven't read it yet but will get back to you. Finkelstein and Silberman, *The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision Of Ancient Israel and The Origins Of Its Sacred Texts* (Free Press).

Thanks for that and the other recs, G.

[Nate Dorward]

Catherine Wagner, Macular Hole--

"I walk left and abort my future.
Turn right and pow a new world.
The past flew up my crotch and infested my brain.
I birthed a big one."

& Mennyms Under Siege & a new issue of fhole & The Annals of the Charles Olson Society.

[Monte Smith]

Yuck.

[Gary Sisco]

Sergio -- De nada. Incidentally, I didn't mean for my saying that there's not much to talk about pre-Islam in Arabia to sound condescending. It's just that desert nomads don't leave much of a record behind them, for obvious reasons, though there were (are) of course some ancient cities as well. The monotheism of Islam is very much syncretic, though -- Islam being as syncretic as Roman Catholicism -- the Arabs having over many centuries also been exposed to the notions of Zoroastrianism (the source of monotheism, and of what's now northern Afghan origin), Judaism, and less so but still, Christianity. But they also had ancient pagan beliefs, which have also, as in Catholicism, been incorporated (the stone round which the Haj'i do their circling is an ancient pagan place of ritual, far, far older than any monotheism). Ditto the Baha'i, who developed out of Islam most directly but are in the same historical line, reaching back thousands of years, and the most recent monotheistic religion to have appeared (19th C). Also, the most reasonable by far of the monotheistic faith systems, you ask me. At least they admit freely, as a principle, that if religion and science are in conflict, one or the other is wrong, which obviously allows for the opportunity for error on the part of the religious side. I don't know of any other religion that contains such a notion as an integral principle of the religion itself.

The Graham Greene bio, volume III, man, he liked his whores.
plus Greene's ENGLAND MADE ME