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Syd
Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2014 10:14 pm Reply with quote
Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12887 Location: Norman, Oklahoma
I'm currently reading Francis Fukuyama's Political Order and Political Decay, which is the sequel to The Origins of Political Order, which was a major best-seller and which I liked a lot. This one ostensibly starts with the Industrial and French Revolutions and takes us to the modern day, but he necessarily has to go back in time. For example, he's currently going through the modernization of the Prussian state, which actually began under Frederick William, the Great Elector of Brandenburg in the 1640s, a necessity for a state which had no natural boundaries at all until Frederick the Great annexed Silesia. The modernization of the US takes place a lot later than you might think. I'd say the establishment of the Civil Service in the 1880s, but he has it even later.

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carrobin
Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2014 10:29 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 7795 Location: NYC
That's the kind of thing I'd like to proofread, which is about the only way I'd get around to reading it, especially in hardcover. It sounds like something my late friend Peter McGovern would have gone for--I used to tease him about the books he carried around, which always had dates in the titles--e.g., "The Spanish Civil War, 1933-1936." He died of diabetes complications before Dubya got elected, which is sad, because he would have been fascinated and appalled by the post-2000 politics.
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carrobin
Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2014 10:35 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 7795 Location: NYC
Just finished "Gone Girl," which was fairly riveting. I had to go back and read the first few chapters of the book again because of the new perspective after the story has been told. Jolly good murder mystery. And now I might see the movie--though I'll probably wait till it's on TV or online. I don't see how it could measure up to the novel.
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bartist
Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2015 11:29 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6941 Location: Black Hills
"Our Mathematical Universe" by MaxTegmark.

Mind. Blown.

Lucidly written, the intellectual journey of one of the great minds in modern cosmology...ok, I am sounding like a blurb here, so enough.

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carrobin
Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2015 10:48 am Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 7795 Location: NYC
Checked out the Tegmark on Amazon--it looks interesting, but too mathematical for me. I'll stick with more mainstream mind-blowers like "The Holographic Universe."

Meanwhile, yesterday I had an e-mail from Barnes & Noble with hundreds of under-$5 ebooks, and ended up buying seven, stopping only when my computer started acting wonky. A batch of King Arthur classics starting with Morte D'Arthur in one $3 volume, three classic British mysteries in one book for $4, a 99-cent "Ivanhoe" (I always wanted to read that), and some more modern but equally inexpensive stuff. Now if I just had the time...
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gromit
Posted: Sun Apr 12, 2015 12:21 am Reply with quote
Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9005 Location: Shanghai
I started reading The Memory Keeper's Daughter. I am amazed at how poorly written it is. As though a high school student wrote it. The sentences are very basic and mechanical, and then when the writer tries a metaphor or other little flourish, it comes off risible.

I assume it must be a helluva tale, because the writing certainly isn't the selling point. One other clunky early features is that some of the same events get retold from different characters' perspective. But the writer isn't up to making this interesting, so it's more like repetition while filling in some extra details.

I'm not sure I'm going to keep with it, but it is a quick read, so it serves its purpose as my bathroom/subway book.

Maybe I'll post a few terrible sentences for amusement. They're easy to find as they turn up on every page.


Last edited by gromit on Thu Oct 29, 2015 12:40 pm; edited 1 time in total

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carrobin
Posted: Sun Apr 12, 2015 2:05 am Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 7795 Location: NYC
My latest fascination is Angela Thirkell. I had a very old paperback i decided to read and recycle (old paperbacks are so much lighter for carrying in my tote), and it turned out to be so interesting and amusing and so full of delightful characters that I ordered two more from Amazon (and one for my mother, knowing she'd love the small-town English gentry setting and blithe style). It looks as if all her 1930s novels are being reissued, luckily for those of us who just encountered her. She's been compared to Austen and Pym, in a Norman Rockwell - to - Gainsborough way, and is just as much fun to read.
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mitty
Posted: Fri May 08, 2015 7:10 am Reply with quote
Joined: 02 Aug 2004 Posts: 1359 Location: Way Down Yonder.......
carrobin wrote:
Just finished "Gone Girl," which was fairly riveting. I had to go back and read the first few chapters of the book again because of the new perspective after the story has been told. Jolly good murder mystery. And now I might see the movie--though I'll probably wait till it's on TV or online. I don't see how it could measure up to the novel.


It was. Smile Did you ever see the film? We waited till it was rentable, streamable on Amazon. I thought it hewed fairly close to the book, although there was a period of several months between reading and seeing.

You might like The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. While the main character is annoying, the twistiness of the tale is rather worth it. Also another one with an unfortunately similar title, Girl On A Train by A. J. Waines is a good story as well.

I was in pretty much a fallow period of reading for about 6 months, but have almost finished the wonderfully trashy The Adventures by Harold Robbins. Yikes! Very Happy
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mitty
Posted: Fri May 08, 2015 7:11 am Reply with quote
Joined: 02 Aug 2004 Posts: 1359 Location: Way Down Yonder.......
bartist wrote:
"Our Mathematical Universe" by MaxTegmark.

Mind. Blown.

Lucidly written, the intellectual journey of one of the great minds in modern cosmology...ok, I am sounding like a blurb here, so enough.


thanks for mentioning, Charles just bought it. Laughing
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carrobin
Posted: Fri May 08, 2015 8:33 am Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 7795 Location: NYC
I thought i was going to do so much reading while at home recovering from my knee replacement surgery, but mostly i've been trying to clear away the stacks of magazines in my apartment. Still, i'm halfway through Larson's "In the Garden of Beasts" on my Nook, and just finished my third Angela Thirkell--recently discovered her newly reissued paperbacks, and can't get enough.
Mitty: I did see the "Gone Girl" film and thought it was well done.
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bartist
Posted: Tue Jul 28, 2015 11:03 am Reply with quote
Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6941 Location: Black Hills
For present, former, or recovering Star Trek buffs, I want to strongly recommend "Redshirts," a novel by John Scalzi which is to Star Trek as "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" is to "Hamlet."

For me, it succeeds as metanarrative as well as classics like Stoppard's play or Nabokov's "Pale Fire." Scalzi doesn't break the Fourth Wall, he demolishes it with Semtek and blows off the roof of the theater while he's at it. Anyone who has suffered through badly and implausibly constructed tv sci-fi, not just Trekkies, will find Redshirts intensely satisfying and belly laugh inducing. (so, pretty much everyone who has watched sci-fi in a video format) Indeed, you don't really need to be much of a sci-fi person at all, and can enjoy it for its witty exploration of surreal meta-problems in being a fictional character. Trekkies will, of course, find many Easter Eggs as they make their way through the book.

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gromit
Posted: Thu Oct 29, 2015 11:49 am Reply with quote
Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9005 Location: Shanghai
I was just putting away a box of unread books, and right near the top spotted Hillary Clinton's book, Her Way. So I think I'll read it next, or maybe wait until at least the primary voting commences.

Currently reading My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk. Divided into many short chapters each of just a few pages, with each in a different character's voice. Some even from the "voice" of a gold coin or a drawing of a dog, etc. I like some of the chapters and the details about Ottoman/Persian painting, but less impressed by the earthy bawdy elements. Only maybe 1/4 of the way in, so hard to know how this will cohere. Ostensibly it's a murder mystery set among the miniaturists and gilders of the 17th C Sultan's court. So somewhat of a Turkish version of Name of the Rose, with a trickier narrative structure.

I read Pamuk's Istanbul/childhood memoir earlier this year, and enjoyed his writing style. Though part of the enjoyment was that I spent a week plus in Istanbul a few years back, and it's really an intriguing city. Quite impressive.

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carrobin
Posted: Thu Oct 29, 2015 12:51 pm Reply with quote
Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 7795 Location: NYC
Among the $1.99 Nook specials in the Barnes & Noble e-mails I get every day, I recently ran across "The Art of Racing in the Rain" and took a chance on it, although the description of its being "narrated by a dog" made me wonder if it was worth it--but the comments by other readers and reviewers were all raves. It's terrific--the dog is an old fellow who anticipates being reincarnated as a human, hopefully as a racing-car driver like his master, whose family problems and difficulties he observes and ponders upon. All I can say is that it was unexpected and lovely and made me cry. Highly recommended.
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Syd
Posted: Fri Jan 22, 2016 10:18 pm Reply with quote
Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12887 Location: Norman, Oklahoma
We ought to do another book forum. May I suggest The Three Body Problem trilogy by Liu Cixin?

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Syd
Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2016 8:35 pm Reply with quote
Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12887 Location: Norman, Oklahoma
I've just finished The Dark Forest, the second volume in a trilogy by Cixin Liu, the first of which is the brilliant The Three-Body Problem and this is nearly as good.

It's a first contact novel where the aliens are in a star system close to Earth, and the effects of first contact are catastrophic, with some on Earth hoping the aliens will save us from out misdeeds, and others hoping the aliens will destroy us, and some in the second group are quite happy to help them do it. In other words, mankind doesn't handle the situation very well to say the least. Furthermore, the aliens are in a star system with three suns, and the chaotic orbital mechanics cause rapid rises and falls of civilization. The aliens are capable of being dehydrated and later being rehydrated, but some disasters put that method of survival to to the test. And they are more scientifically advanced than us, this chaos means that we are capable of advancing right past them so we are a powerful threat. The aliens' best hope is keeping us from advancing beyond a point where we pose a danger, and there are humans happy to assist them in this.

Cixin Liu is China's most popular science fiction writer, and on the evidence of these, one of the best in the world. Volume three comes out this summer. (If you can read Chinese, it's been out for several years.)

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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament
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