What Are You Reading Right Now?

[Quag]

Im reading This hHallowed Ground
By Bruce Catton about the civil war

 

[PoS]

The Dispossessed by Ursula K LeGuin- I like to read the old classic sci-fi versus the recent stuff coming out, and this one was highly touted since it won the Hugo and Nebula awards back then. However, I found it hard to get into and keep my short attention span going.

Its about two planets in the same system, and theyre inhabited by humans or beings that resembles them. One planet is anarchistic, while the other one is dominated by two superpowers which are analogous to the US-Soviet Cold War of the mid to late 20th century. Shevek is a scientist from this anarchist world who has a brilliant idea and since he cant get any funding in his planet to build his invention, decides to go to the other world to try and convince them to fund it, but then ends up in a political quagmire.

The issue here is that theres not much that happens in the story. Its more of a long-winded tale of Shevek's upbringing and relationships with others that forms the core of the plot. When it comes to reading sci-fi I usually hope to be either dazzled with a new idea, or discover something profound about the human condition. The problem is I failed to find anything in this book. Maybe if I find the time and patience to reread it sometime in the future my thoughts about it might change, but for now, this is a rare miss. Rating: 4/10

 

[JBG]

I am in the middle of reading Judah P. Benjamin by Pierce Butler. I will have to interrupt myself to read Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance, which I had on hold in the library. Suddenly, there is a huge demand. I wonder why.

 

[NewfieMom]

I just finished Lessons in Chemistry which I learned about in this thread (author: Bonnie Garmus). @Decypher wrote about it, but other people, including @Josie, had read it, too. I liked it, but I didn't find it as joyful as it was billed as being. In the meantime I realized that I had already read The Deserter, so I just picked up at the most exciting part and read from there. I am one of the many Nelson DeMille fans who appreciated his earlier books. I am now reading Last Dance by Sheldon Siegel. I like him very much. I like his politics. A year or so ago I wrote to him and he wrote back, sending me a story of his to read.

 

[Threegoofs]

I am in the middle of reading Judah P. Benjamin by Pierce Butler. I will have to interrupt myself to read Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance, which I had on hold in the library. Suddenly, there is a huge demand. I wonder why.

I wish I had it on hold.

Theres no way I'm giving that POS my money, so I guess I wont be reading it anytime soon.

 

[JBG]

I wish I had it on hold.

Theres no way I'm giving that POS my money, so I guess I wont be reading it anytime soon.

You should put it on hold. My small system has 25 copies and I got it in three days.

 

[Loulit01]

I am in the middle of reading Judah P. Benjamin by Pierce Butler. I will have to interrupt myself to read Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance, which I had on hold in the library. Suddenly, there is a huge demand. I wonder why.

I don't know. Vance is from southern Ohio and educated at Yale. Why people think he has insight into Appalachia is beyond me.

 

[JBG]

I don't know. Vance is from southern Ohio and educated at Yale. Why people think he has insight into Appalachia is beyond me.

The opening chapter of the book explains that part of southern Ohio is dominated by Appalachian refugees.

 

[Loulit01]

The opening chapter of the book explains that part of southern Ohio is dominated by Appalachian refugees.

So he knows Appalachia second hand.

 

[JBG]

The next day at school, I felt nervous and hoped that the bully would take a day off. But in the predictable chaos as the class lined up for lunch, the bully— his name was Chris asked my little charge whether he planned on crying that day. "Shut up" I said. "Just leave him alone" Chris approached me, pushed me, and asked what I planned to do about it. I walked right up to him, pivoted my right hip, and sucker-punched him right in the stomach. He immediately— and terrifyingly-dropped to his knees, seemingly unable to breathe. By the time I realized that I'd really injured him, he was alternately coughing and trying to catch his breath. He even spit up a small amount of blood.

Chris went to the school nurse, and after I confirmed that 1 hadn't killed him and would avoid the police, my thoughts immediately turned to the school justice system whether I'd be suspended or expelled and for how long. While the other kids played at recess and Chris recovered with the nurse, the teacher brought me into the classroom. I thought she was going to tell me that she'd called my parents and I'd be kicked out of school. Instead, she gave me a lecture about fighting and made me practice my handwriting instead of playing outside. I detected a hint of approval from the teacher, and I sometimes wonder whether there were school politics at work in her inability to appropriately discipline the class bully. At any rate, Mamaw found out about the fight directly from me and praised me for doing something really good. It was the last time I ever got in a fistfight.

No, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance is not primarily about school bullying, but it, as well as other forms of raw physical and mental aggression, as well as redemption, feature heavily in Hillbilly Elegy. The adjective "searing" is overused in reviews of Hillbilly Elegy but it is unavoidable. JD Vance has been exposed to and participated in life on both sides, Ivy League elite and downtrodden Appalachian culture. He observes "that working class boys like me do much worse in school because they view schoolwork as a feminine endeavor. Can you change that with a new law or problem? Probably not." Yet, the book shows incredible compassion, and attempts at understanding, of the people he's inevitably left behind in his journey from a lower-class boy in danger of failure to Yale Law School Graduate and finally to VP candidate.
Personally, I have not settled my vote. What I will say is that the available copies in the Westchester library system went from 25 to 0 overnight. I am giving this book five stars, no matter which way I vote.

 

[NewfieMom]

I don't know. Vance is from southern Ohio and educated at Yale. Why people think he has insight into Appalachia is beyond me.

I heard Governor Andy Beshear of Kentucky denigrating J.D. Vance. Apparently he has since gone on to apologize for some of his remarks.

Soda Pop Wars: Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear apologizes for barb, but not to Sen. JD Vance

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear has apologized for a comment about Ohio Sen. JD Vance earlier this week — but not to Vance.

apnews.com

 

[NewfieMom]

I am reading Outwitting History by Aaron Lansky. It is a memoir about how he came to value Yiddish as a very young college student and went on to save Yiddish books as they were about to be disposed of, leaving the future of the language in jeopardy.

Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who…

“Incredible . . . Inspiring . . . Important.” — Library…

www.goodreads.com

 

[Loulit01]

I'm reading Freddy and Frederica by Mark Helprin. I've read several of his works including Winter's Tale, that was made into a movie.

I consider Mark Helprin among the finest two or three novelists alive today. Winter's Tale is a tour de force in how to write a novel. The prose soars, the imagination leaps and bounds through snowdrifts and cities and orphanages and the seasons and the past and future and the swamps of Jersey. A snow white horse and a master thief and the gangs of New York and a beautiful dying girl....

The book is erudite, the language lives, the images are vivid and moving, the word play is stunning, the characters inspire myriad emotions, the scenery is dangerous and beautiful.

Winter's Tale is a masterpiece.

I've also read Memoir from Antproof Case, A Soldier of the Great War, In Sunlight and in Shadow, and Refiner's Fire. All great works of literature.

Mark Helprin is gifted.

 

[JBG]

I just finished reading Miracle of Deliverance by Stephen Harper. I came upon this book entirely by accident. I was looking for a book by an author with the same name, a former Prime Minister of Canada. The description of the book looked intriguing and I decided to put it on the hold list at the library.

The book makes the case, and a very strong case, that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved a lot more lives than they cost. The book explores a little known aspect of this argument. The British were gearing up for a D-Day style invasion of the Malay Peninsula and Singapore. Of course that invasion never happened. The Japanese surrender after the nuclear bombings ensured as much. The military was fully geared up for the invasion. The probability is that invasion, rather than being the spectacular success that the invasion of Normandy was, would have been a bloody fiasco. The author also makes the case that Britain, France and the Netherlands failed in their endeavor, in World War ii, to recapture their old colonial empires.

It is always easier to read and review books with which you agree. That is why I resisted the temptation to give the book five stars. How about 4 1/2?

 

[JBG]

I just finished reading (or skimming) The Rediscovery of North America (Paperback) by Barry Lopez.Very poetically and persuasively written polemic. It's bottom line; successful white explorers bad, primitive savages good. Also, horribly misleading. I like Barry Lopez, b ut this book was a propaganda tract for a student union, not a serious essay or piece of work. No comparison with works of his that I've loved, to wit, Arctic Dreams by Barry López. Also this book does not take into account modern scholarship such as War before civilization by Lawrence H. Keeley. Spoiler alert; the natives were not peaceful with each other and did not live in harmony with the land.

A definite "one star."

 

[NewfieMom]

I finished Outwitting History tonight. I had not planned on writing about it but I saw this thread was active and decided to do so. I almost never read non-fiction, but this book was a gift so I felt obliged to read it. It also looked interesting. It is a memoir by a man, Adam Lansky, who at age 23 starts to rescue Yiddish books that are being thrown out because on one can read them anymore and everyone has decided that Yiddish is a dead language. He recounts the story of his saving many Yiddish books and building a home for them, but he does so as he recounts his own life and adventures. The reader gets an inside look at the world of the European Jews who survived the Holocaust and many who didn't and the culture they shared. It is written with great charm, empathy, and humor. It really made me think about what the value of a language is and why a specific language exists when it does.

I also learned more about Stalin's atrocities towards the Jews in the Soviet Union as he turned on them in an effort to extinguish Yiddish literature and language, executing people who had written in Yiddish simply for that reason, not for political reasons. (And not for "racial" reasons like Hitler, since some Jews had been prominent in the Bolshevik revolution.) It was about the Yiddish language.

 

[JBG]

An excerpt:

Being contemptuously referred to by an opponent in debate (some place the scene in the Senate, some on the hustings in Louisiana) as "that Jew from Louisiana," Benjamin retorted: "It is true that I am a Jew, and when my ancestors were receiving their Ten Commandments from the immediate hand of Deity, amidst the thunderings and lightnings of Mt. Sinai, the ancestors of the distinguished gentleman who is opposed to me were herding swine in the forests of Scandinavia."

This was Judah P. Benjamin's reaction to the disparagement of his birth religion. Judah P. Benjamin was a remarkable historical figure, having been a successful Louisiana lawyer, a U.S. Senator, a Confederate Attorney General, Secretary of War and eventually Secretary of State. He thereafter fled to Great Britain and France, in part to reunite with his wife and daughter and in larger part to avoid he imprisonment and ignominy of being imprisoned or executed by the victorious Union.

I just finished reading Judah P. Benjamin by Pierce Butler. I picked this up at random in my synagogue library. I had always been curious about the subject individual. The inside cover gives copyright dates of 1883 and 1910. I doubt the former since the book describes his death. The book was, no doubt, a hagiography. That being said, I'll still give it "five stars." It is definitely written in an older style, and unashamedly gives sanction to the anti-black bigotry of the age. That being said, it is a thrilling tale of the Civil War from a Southern point of view. It is a splendid biography of a man, who but for his taking the "wrong side" of the Civil War, would have been recognized as one of America's greats, perhaps in the same sentence as Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Benjamin Rush. He was by all accounts a brilliant orator and advocate. Perhaps, ameliorating his negative side, a lawyer advocates for who hires them; full stop!

 

[Mr Person]

Finally got around to starting a four-part sci-fi series: Hyperion, Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, Rise of Endymion. I'm towards the end of the third.

It's certainly got me turning pages. But it lacks the kind of sociological/philisophical speculations of Cixin Liu and the deep philisophical ponderings of Stanislaw Lem (Fiasco, Solaris, His Master's Voice, Memoirs Found in a Bathtub, etc). So, I don't put the author (Dan Simmons) at quite the same tier. But it's certainly engaging.



Next up: Son of Hamas (Mosab Hassan Yousef) and From Hamas to America (same). He's the son of one of Hamas's founders who later turned on them and worked for Israel. Judging by what he has said when he's speaking, I suspect these books will contain a whole lot of the kind of facts Israel's biggest haters/critics would prefer to avoid knowing, since injection of those facts into the situation makes it a shitload harder to insist that this is some black and white situation.

And then The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (Shirer ). Covers ground I've covered many times before, but my friend said it was excellently done so I might as well have a refresher course.s

 

[ModernDiogenes]

I wanted comedy so…

Amy Schumer’s book: “The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo”

Before that it was a run of autobiographies by various 70, 80 and 90’s rock bands.

I haven’t been in the mood for serious reading for a bit now.

 

[NewfieMom]

I wanted comedy so…

Amy Schumer’s book: “The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo”

Before that it was a run of autobiographies by various 70, 80 and 90’s rock bands.

I haven’t been in the mood for serious reading for a bit now.

Can you tell me more about it? I get much of my reading list from this thread. I am not too lazy to look it up on Amazon and/or Goodreads; it is just nice to get an opinion from a known person here when I can. If you're not in the mood to write, please ignore the request.

I am reading something I found on my own and if it is crazy, it's my fault alone. So far I like it. I suspect that Amazon put some kind of ad up that included it based on what they think are my reading choices to make me find it, but what I buy there are really mostly my gift choices. Often gifts to people quite different from me like 4 year-old girls and 7-year-old boys. They just assume I'll keep giving the same people gifts, I guess.

At any rate, it is Baking Bad by Kim M. Watt and it bears some resemblance to a quartet of books about the Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman. It is not totally derivative, though. It also has dragons in the plot. Of course it is silly, but it is enjoyable silly, at least to me. The last book I read, though fiction, was gruesome. (Not Outwitting History; that was non-fiction.) This is an English village with a vicar and ladies of a certain age who bake...plus the dragons.

 

[ModernDiogenes]

Can you tell me more about it? I get much of my reading list from this thread. I am not too lazy to look it up on Amazon and/or Goodreads; it is just nice to get an opinion from a known person here when I can. If you're not in the mood to write, please ignore the request.

I am reading something I found on my own and if it is crazy, it's my fault alone. So far I like it. I suspect that Amazon put some kind of ad up that included it based on what they think are my reading choices to make me find it, but what I buy there are really mostly my gift choices. Often gifts to people quite different from me like 4 year-old girls and 7-year-old boys. They just assume I'll keep giving the same people gifts, I guess.

At any rate, it is Baking Bad by Kim M. Watt and it bears some resemblance to a quartet of books about the Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman. It is not totally derivative, though. It also has dragons in the plot. Of course it is silly, but it is enjoyable silly, at least to me. The last book I read, though fiction, was gruesome. (Not Outwitting History; that was non-fiction.) This is an English village with a vicar and ladies of a certain age who bake...plus the dragons.

If yiu mean the Amy Schumer book, she is a stand up comedian, movie and television actor. She’s had a few TV shows, specials on streaming sites like HBO and Netflix. A couple of big movies. It’s less an autobiography, more a string of multiple essays as chapters on events in her life.

It’s OK. A 7 on a scale of 10.

The band biographies are Motley Crew and Roger Daltry of The Who. Another autobiography by Seth Rogan. That I enjoyed.

 

[Along Came Jones]

This is next up on my reading list. A surprise appearance, actually.

Last week my son and his family visited the Texas Ranger Museum at Ft Fisher in Waco. Evidently the rangers like the way they are portrayed in Grann's account. The book is abundantly stocked in their shop. Aside from hosting a museum Fort Fisher is also headquarters for the Texas Rangers' Company F which serves Waco, San Antonio and the Northwest section of Austin.

 

[Loulit01]

Finally got around to starting a four-part sci-fi series: Hyperion, Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, Rise of Endymion. I'm towards the end of the third.

It's certainly got me turning pages. But it lacks the kind of sociological/philisophical speculations of Cixin Liu and the deep philisophical ponderings of Stanislaw Lem (Fiasco, Solaris, His Master's Voice, Memoirs Found in a Bathtub, etc). So, I don't put the author (Dan Simmons) at quite the same tier. But it's certainly engaging.

It's not that kind of book. It's based on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. They were more light-hearted.

Next up: Son of Hamas (Mosab Hassan Yousef) and From Hamas to America (same). He's the son of one of Hamas's founders who later turned on them and worked for Israel. Judging by what he has said when he's speaking, I suspect these books will contain a whole lot of the kind of facts Israel's biggest haters/critics would prefer to avoid knowing, since injection of those facts into the situation makes it a shitload harder to insist that this is some black and white situation.

And then The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (Shirer ). Covers ground I've covered many times before, but my friend said it was excellently done so I might as well have a refresher course.s

I read it many years ago and am glad I did. I found information in it I've seen nowhere else.

 

[JBG]

I just finished reading 𝐹𝑖𝑒𝑟𝑦 𝐵𝑢𝑡 𝑀𝑜𝑠𝑡𝑙𝑦 𝑃𝑒𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑓𝑢𝑙: 𝑇ℎ𝑒 2020 𝑅𝑖𝑜𝑡𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐺𝑎𝑠𝑙𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑜𝑓 𝐴𝑚𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑎 by Julio Rosas. I picked up the recommendation to read the book from another user of Goodreads. It was a good recommend. To my mind, the book focuses on misleading reporting by the major news outlets concerning the events following George Floyd murder in 2020. During this time, suddenly, covid was no longer a concern as far as locking people up in their apartments. It was more important for people to be allowed to riot.

The book zooms in on the "abject failure of authorities to maintain order and ensure public safety-creating a power vacuum that existed for days" and "what happens when those entrusted to enforce the laws and protect the populace refuse to do so." One of the dramatic results, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, was the eruption of vigilante justice. The author concludes that "that having a significant police presence and showing a willingness to act to protect civil order—would go a long way toward keeping the entire community safe."

This is a subject that most authors are afraid to cover, at risk of banishment from polite, educated society. This does not deter him. In his words: "But what do I know? I'm just a college dropout." The book reads surprisingly well given his limited education. I am giving the book a "four" since I reserve "fives" for a select few; I would give it a 4 1/2.

 

[Decypher]

Just finished The Fraud by Zadie Smith, her first foray into historical fiction. Good in parts, but didn’t work overall I thought. There was a decent novel in there but it didn’t come out. Nowhere near as good as White Teeth or NW.

Next up is The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles. A Gentleman in Moscow and Rules of Civility were both excellent so I’m looking forward to this.