Hey!! Let's get some action going! What are we reading?

[SeaBookGuy]

Great to see another non-fiction reader here - I was beginning to think I was the only one who doesn't read much sci-fi/fantasy/horror.
I read A Voyage Long and Strange earlier this year, and found it dragged. Read his Blue Latitudes not long ago, which was better. Confederates in the Attic is on my Overdrive ebook download TBR pile.
I'm taking a break from Diarmaid MacCullough's Christianity: the first three thousand years at present.

[MrPLD]

I enjoy reading a few of James Gleick's books, things like "Faster", "Chaos" and "Genius" (though "Faster" was a bit weak compared to the other two). I love reading books where you learn things at the same time - but that's probably the inner geek/engineer in me.

Right now I'm rereading "Code Book" by Simon Singh - another great informative non-fiction book.

[thinkpad]

This is great news I just stumbled upon a new historical fiction novel by Ken Follett: Fall of Giants, http://www.ken-follett.com/home/index.html. I will definitely put this on my read list. I loved Pillars of the earth (one of my absolute favourites) and the sequel World Without End. The book is released simultaneously to 16 countries.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by jgaiser

I started to read another history non-fiction "Lies My Teacher Told Me" by James W. Loewen when ...

I thoroughly enjoyed Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me. Here are a couple of quotes from the book:

.....College teachers in most disciplines are happy when their students have had significant exposure to the subject before college. Not teachers in history. History professors in college routinely put down high school history courses. A colleague of mine calls his survey of American history “Iconoclasm I and II,” because he sees his job as disabusing his charges of what they learned in high school. In no other field does this happen. Mathematics professors, for instance, know that non-Euclidean geometry is rarely taught in high school, but they don’t assume that Euclidean geometry was mistaught. Professors of English literature don’t presume that Romeo and Juliet was misunderstood in high school. Indeed, history is the only field in which the more courses students take, the stupider they become.
..........— James W. Loewen. Lies My Teacher Told Me (1995).

.....There is no other country in the world where there is such a large gap between the sophisticated understanding of some professional historians and the basic education given by teachers.
..........— Marc Ferro. The Use and Abuse of History. Quoted in Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen.

[WT Sharpe]

Just finished reading Third World America: How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream by Arianna Huffington. The book does an excellent job of showing how we got into our present difficulties, and offers several solutions to help get us out. One of the hardest parts of writing this post is deciding what not to quote from this book, as I took 15 pages of notes. Here are a few juicy tidbits:

• Forty years ago, top executives at S&P 500 companies made an average of thirty times what their workers did—now they make three hundred times what their workers make.

• From 1945 to the 1970s, a period characterized by widespread economic prosperity, the wealthiest Americans grew richer at a rate almost identical to that of America’s lower and middle classes. From factory employees to chief executives, Americans experienced a doubling of income. By the end of the 1980s, however, things had changed drastically, with the income of the wealthy skyrocketing while the rest of the country lagged far behind. What happened? Did middle-class Americans lose their mojo? Or had rich Americans unexpectedly come upon the economic equivalent of the Fountain of Youth—a Fountain of Wealth? They had, but rather than Ponce de León, it was Ronald Reagan who led the income-boosting expedition, marching into Washington under the banner of lowering the taxes of America’s moneyed elite.

• Perhaps no company exemplifies the corporate class/middle class double standard more than KBR/Halliburton. The company got billions from U.S. taxpayers, then turned around and used a Cayman Islands address to reduce its expenses.

• America has more people living behind bars than any other country. …Time after time, when the choice has come down to books versus bars, our political leaders have chosen to build bigger prisons rather than figure out how to send fewer kids to them.

• That’s something else that the mining, oil, and financial industries share: the revolving door between regulators and those they’re supposed to be regulating. The names of the Wall Streeters who have moved into positions of power in Washington are familiar: Hank Paulson, Robert Rubin, Josh Bolten, Neel Kashkari, Mark Patterson—and that’s just from Goldman Sachs.

• Bush v. Gore ushered in the CEO president and his CEO VP. They promptly threw open the White House doors to their corporate cronies from Enron and Halliburton and declared open season on the interests of the average American. The Enronization of our economy was under way.

• Right after President Obama’s election, Rahm Emanuel famously declared, “Rule one: Never allow a crisis to go to waste. They are opportunities for big things.” But since the financial meltdown, it is actually the very people who created the crisis who have taken advantage of it and achieved “big things”—especially big profits and bonuses.

[poohbear_nc]

Originally Posted by MrPLD

I enjoy reading a few of James Gleick's books, things like "Faster", "Chaos" and "Genius" (though "Faster" was a bit weak compared to the other two). I love reading books where you learn things at the same time - but that's probably the inner geek/engineer in me.

Right now I'm rereading "Code Book" by Simon Singh - another great informative non-fiction book.

I thoroughly enjoyed "Code Book" too!

Now reading "The Perfect Storm" - Sebastian Junger - it's a bit of a mish-mash -- given he tries to imagine what happened on a boat that went down at sea with no survivors, and no radio contact. I get really bothered when authors writing non-fiction refer to people by their first names (a pet peeve of mine), but Junger persists in speculating what "Billy" was doing while the boat was sinking. Just jars on my sensibilities.
The rest of the book is padded with brief historical notes and really unnecessary and overly fanciful descriptions of the people involved in the rescues (I felt he was already casting the movie version)

Think I'll move on to Linda Greenlaw's fishing books if I want more information on New England fishing.

[Libby Cone]

I just finished "Absurdistan" by Gary Shteyngart. It was great, and I'll probably read more of his books. He's very funny and perceptive, and his sendup of Eastern Europeans is priceless.

Like an addict trying to recreate her first high, I started reading William Vollmann's "You Bright and Risen Angels," hoping it would induce the same intensity of pleasure that "Infinite Jest" did. I wish it were available for the Kindle; I think the PB is in eight-point font. The mere fact that the font is bugging me is already telling me that it's not grabbing me, at least not yet. I've got DeLillo's "Ratner's Star" and more Wallace in reserve so I don't go cold turkey.

[MacEachaidh]

Originally Posted by poohbear_nc

Now reading "The Perfect Storm" - Sebastian Junger - it's a bit of a mish-mash -- given he tries to imagine what happened on a boat that went down at sea with no survivors, and no radio contact. I get really bothered when authors writing non-fiction refer to people by their first names (a pet peeve of mine), but Junger persists in speculating what "Billy" was doing while the boat was sinking. Just jars on my sensibilities.
The rest of the book is padded with brief historical notes and really unnecessary and overly fanciful descriptions of the people involved in the rescues (I felt he was already casting the movie version)

I got a lot out of reading that book, poohbear -- more than sheer terror of the open ocean, anyway. (Plus a lingering fascination+dread of the concept of "rogue waves"!)

I had a different perception from yours of Junger's writing. It was my sense that he dealt with the whole thing very sensitively, and made it fairly clear he wasn't making up a narrative out of thin air; his character sketches of the men lost in the storm were drawn from the real people's families and friends, and he was at pains to point out that we don't know the specifics of what happened to them, but gave examples of the kinds of things that can happen in these situations drawn, again, from real-life experiences.

The movie got a bit ridiculous, but I thought the book did a good job of being factual, impartial and respectful.

[poohbear_nc]

Originally Posted by MacEachaidh

I got a lot out of reading that book, poohbear -- more than sheer terror of the open ocean, anyway. (Plus a lingering fascination+dread of the concept of "rogue waves"!)

I had a different perception from yours of Junger's writing. It was my sense that he dealt with the whole thing very sensitively, and made it fairly clear he wasn't making up a narrative out of thin air; his character sketches of the men lost in the storm were drawn from the real people's families and friends, and he was at pains to point out that we don't know the specifics of what happened to them, but gave examples of the kinds of things that can happen in these situations drawn, again, from real-life experiences.

The movie got a bit ridiculous, but I thought the book did a good job of being factual, impartial and respectful.

I'll continue reading - and see if my perception changes (I'm about 60% through). And I agree - the movie was "Hollywood" not fact.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

Just finished reading Third World America: How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream by Arianna Huffington. The book does an excellent job of showing how we got into our present difficulties, and offers several solutions to help get us out. .....

• Forty years ago, top executives at S&P 500 companies made an average of thirty times what their workers did—now they make three hundred times what their workers make.

.......

Here you go, straight from today's headlines:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...ocId=D9IGP99G1

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Now onto some classic SF: The Green Hills of Earth and The Menace from Earth by Robert Heinlein. This is an omnibus edition of two books of short stories. Fun stuff, I seem to remember, and I think I'll enjoy the re-read.

I'm halfway though. I'd forgotten how excellent these stories were. Highly recommended.

[Georgiegirl2012]

Originally Posted by thinkpadx

This is great news I just stumbled upon a new historical fiction novel by Ken Follett: Fall of Giants, http://www.ken-follett.com/home/index.html. I will definitely put this on my read list. I loved Pillars of the earth (one of my absolute favourites) and the sequel World Without End. The book is released simultaneously to 16 countries.

And it's the first of a trilogy - I am very tempted to purchase the hard back book, and I never buy hardback books.

[woodpile3]

One of my favorite books by Jonathan Carroll is on sale at Amazon (Kindle edition). Just $0.99.

From the Teeth of Angels

[basilsands]

Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes

[Latinandgreek]

Originally Posted by thinkpadx

This is great news I just stumbled upon a new historical fiction novel by Ken Follett: Fall of Giants, http://www.ken-follett.com/home/index.html. I will definitely put this on my read list. I loved Pillars of the earth (one of my absolute favourites) and the sequel World Without End. The book is released simultaneously to 16 countries.

I will put this on my TBR list, as well. Thanks for pointing it out!