any Holiday reading ----?

[72gmc]

Extending the holidays, reading style: I would like a good book on Alexander the Great. Recommendations?

[SpeedyChix]

Been working my way through Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning (Timothy Synder) and Becoming Earth (Eva Saulitis).

The current global and political situation had me go back to a NYT review of a year or so ago and track down Black Earth.

The second one is a final memoir. I'd read some of Eva's pieces in Orion, she transitioned from rigid scientific writing (a biologist) to writing essays and poems. Continued to follow her via the Alaskan Dispatch News. Becoming Earth is a reflection on life and death.

[BBB]

I lived it. I rode the Hibiya line and got off at Kamiyacho. I was lucky because I went to work much earlier. The computer shop the cult had on 7-chome Minami Aoyama was on my morning jogging route. The cult had press conferences there until I think the spokesman was stabbed in an attack.... It was so long ago. There was a lot more than just the one attack. There was a second failed attack in Shinjuku with Cyanide in a burning bag in the big underground walkway near the station.
It was a scary spring

Very scary stuff.

[BBB]

I know it's trite to recommend the Booker prize winner but they've been on a roll lately:

Paul Beatty "Sellout" (2016) and Marlon James "A Brief History of Seven Killings" (2015) were both wonderful.

I also loved Richard Flanagan "The Narrow Road to the Deep North" (2014) but I love Flanagan generally, his "Gould's Book of Fish (a novel in twelve fish)" is the best thing I've read in a decade or more.

On a lighter note (though they're set during the troubles, so they're not that light), Adrian McKinty's Duffy books eg "In the Morning I'll be Gone".

A Brief History of Seven Killings and The Narrow Road to Deep North are both terrific books, but in very different ways. I should really get around to reading Gould's Book of Fish at some stage as Flanagan is a wonderful writer.

[jclay]

Blowback by Chalmers Johnson.

Nothing new re the larger schemes to anyone who's a little bit circumspect and paying attention but interesting to get a glimpse of the historical & social mechanics.

Assuming we don't render the planet uninhabitable to mamals I wonder if will we ever learn? On second thought, if we don't accomplish the latter we will surely accomplish the former, it's just a question of when.

[jclay]

Capital in the Twenty First Century, Thomas Piketty.

It's an enlightening slog.

[guido]

I have Phillip Pullman's "La Belle Sauvage" queued up but I just haven't had the time for it.

[Scott G.]

"The House of Government", Yuri Slezkine

It is cold dark winter, time for some Russian history,
Bolshevekii as millennial cultists who take power.

[hampco]

I'm slowly working my way through John McPhee's "Annals of the Former World" - 650 pages on geology. But it's surprisingly fascinatin'... I hope to finish by the end of next year.

[colker]

i recommend Machado de Assis. 19th century brazilian genius. HIs novels are witty, ironic accounts of bourgeois living in the newly founded brazilian empire. Unpretentious and very smart.

[monadnocky]

Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939 by Volker Ullrich. Somewhat more of a slog compared to Kershaw's biography, but a good read. Eagerly anticipating the next volume as I'm about halfway through.
Really chilling to witness the slow creep of autocracy fully supported by the vast majority of the citizenry; while I think modern parallels are limited, human nature certainly hasn't changed over the course of 75-100 years.


... Maybe not Christmas reading.

[stlhenrys]

Slezkine's book is great. I still cannot wrap my head around how he writes so beautifully in his third (?!) language.

If y'all like history, I highly recommend 'Barbed Wire: An Ecology of Modernity' by Reviel Netz. It follows barbed wire around the world, from its invention for cattle ranching in the American Great Plains in the early 1870s, through its use in colonial warfare, and ultimately the concentration camp. His point is that barbed wire enables a method of controlling space in which military and ecological change can't be distinguished, and both include humans and animals (esp. cows) equally. Powerful read!

[robin3mj]

I'm slowly working my way through John McPhee's "Annals of the Former World" - 650 pages on geology. But it's surprisingly fascinatin'... I hope to finish by the end of next year.

That's on my list to tackle at some point. His one on the Pine Barrens was good.

I'm reading Winter Fortress by Neil Bascomb, about Norwegian resistance to the Nazis in WW2. Lots of skiing, sabotage, and action. True and tremendous story.

[rwsaunders]

I recently finished reading The Boys in the Boat...excellent reading if you are interested in crew, the Great Depression era, Seattle, the 1936 Olympics, the University of Washington, class wars, true grit and boat building. Not in that particular order but you get the picture. I'd be surprised if there wasn't a film version in the works.

The Boys in the Boat | Daniel James Brown

[davids]

I just bought both volumes of Simon Schama's "The Story of the Jews". They should keep me occupied for a while.

I really liked "The Boys in the Boat" - the family coxswain recommended it to me. Quite a story.

[JoB]

I just got Walter Isaacson's biography of Leonardo da Vinci yesterday. Can't put it down.

[Vancouverdave]

Reading some pure nostalgic escapism--Richard Lloyd's "Everything is Combustible." Just started it last night.

[Octave]

I've been a Don DeLillo fan since reading White Noise as a freshman in college, but never quite got around to wrapping my eyes and hands around Underworld - until this month. It's been a long journey, but it was worth every moment. His words bleed character like hardly any other writer I've ever known.

On that note, also recently finished Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon, which though it will never take the place of Gravity's Rainbow or V in my heart, is a beautiful read.

Heading out on vacation for the next week or so, and after a couple of years living outside of the US I've decided it's time to reread Atlas Shrugged. Having spent much of this year watching socialist and antifa rallies in my neighborhood, and having a stock broker for a new brother in law who'll be on the trip, it should make for a really fun holiday..

[vertical_doug]

Heading out on vacation for the next week or so, and after a couple of years living outside of the US I've decided it's time to reread Atlas Shrugged. Having spent much of this year watching socialist and antifa rallies in my neighborhood, and having a stock broker for a new brother in law who'll be on the trip, it should make for a really fun holiday..

If your brother-in-law is a stockbroker, you should get the 1967 The Money Game by Adam Smith. It is hilarious. Both for how quaint the market was back then, but how some things never really change.

I've always thought Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead were massively overrated.

[monadnocky]

I've always thought Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead were massively overrated.

There is a reason why nobody outside of members of the College Young Republicans Club reads them. Garbage, imo.