What are you reading?

[Patooka]

Fair enough. I'm just passionate about the book/show because I told a bunch of 20-somethings to watch it.
Where I work, I mean. I don't yell at trains if that's what you think..

: D

I know how you feel, I've just given the 6 Foundation books to the woman who loaned me The Expanse.

It feels like you're expanding someone's horizons.

I've given up having expectations, though. I loaned someone my copy of Children of Time and she didn't like it. I'm trying hard not to think less of her.

We do change with what we read.
I gave a kid very recently a copy of "The Belgariad" by David Eddings that I owned. Then learnt some things.
I read that book. I hope the kid is also OK. But different.

 

[bilby]

I feel as if I've missed my aim but still won a prize.

What I've been reading is not closely related to what I saw in 3 eps of the series but a book of short stories I am very glad not to have missed.

Memory's Legion. The complete Expanse story collection.

What are the books that the series is based on called?

The last episode of each season is named after a book.

When you say 3 episodes do you mean the first 3 episodes or 3 just out of sequence? Also, the first season of the show suffers the same issue a lot of sci-fi/fantasy shows do - they've got to do a lot of world building whereas books can do an exposition dump.

What happened was, a friend loaned me The Expanse on DVD. 3 eps in I went "I have to read this in book form." The library had only one book by this "author" and I loved it. Short stories, good ones, which seem to be peripheral to the main story arc.

Turns out the library doesn't have Leviathan Wakes, I'll have to haunt the second hand book stores.

There are other sails to sail.
Netflix used to be able to play it in Aus. Same as FOXTEL

I saw SBS are advertising it; You can stream it free on their On Demand app. Not sure if it's only season 1 or whether they have more than that available (I saw it when setting up to watch a World Cup match).

 

[bilby]

Fair enough. I'm just passionate about the book/show because I told a bunch of 20-somethings to watch it.
Where I work, I mean. I don't yell at trains if that's what you think..

: D

I know how you feel, I've just given the 6 Foundation books to the woman who loaned me The Expanse.

It feels like you're expanding someone's horizons.

I've given up having expectations, though. I loaned someone my copy of Children of Time and she didn't like it. I'm trying hard not to think less of her.

Bloody arachnophobes.

 

[spikepipsqueak]

We do change with what we read.
I gave a kid very recently a copy of "The Belgariad" by David Eddings that I owned. Then learnt some things.
I read that book. I hope the kid is also OK. But different.

My son put me on to David Eddings when he was about 14. This reminds me to reread those as well.

I don't remember anything particularly controversial. Did you have some fears for that kid?

 

[Patooka]

We do change with what we read.
I gave a kid very recently a copy of "The Belgariad" by David Eddings that I owned. Then learnt some things.
I read that book. I hope the kid is also OK. But different.

My son put me on to David Eddings when he was about 14. This reminds me to reread those as well.

I don't remember anything particularly controversial. Did you have some fears for that kid?

Yeah, Eddings had a really dark history. He abused his kids for starters.

I understand "separate the art from the artist" argument. Sometimes it has merit (Elvis). I'm not sure about Eddings though.

 

[ideologyhunter]

I read a lot of stuff on the fringe, and Mississippi Yesterday and Today (1964), by John K. Bettersworth, is way out there. It's the state history textbook for Mississippi's junior high students of 60 years ago. My copy is worn from being in book bags, and has the names of two students (Devell Young and Tony Stizul) written in the registration square on the inside cover. This book was in the schools during the turbulent climax to the civil rights era.
I read it to see if it would actually address slavery, the later disfranchisement of "the Negroes", and if Jim Crow would be discussed. And yes, all of that is in there, with a whole lot more, although the term Jim Crow never shows up. Early in the book, Bettersworth discusses the "Indian cessions", which means the successive ceding of huge chunks of land to the whites by the Choctaws and Chickasaws, who were promised a new homeland west of the Mississippi River. He celebrates these treaties as the opening of the state to the white man: "The Indian cessions had an electric effect upon the state. In just two years Mississippians had managed to secure for white settlement a tremendous expanse of desirable land..." (Note how the word Mississippians has a very specific meaning -- you're a Mississippian if you're white.)
In the Reconstruction chapter, Bettersworth openly discusses the 1890 state constitution rewrite, which addressed the big issue of the day for the Mississippians: "Uppermost in the minds of the revisers of the Constitution was the desire to curtail Negro voting. This was desired because the Negroes had become pawns in politics."
Two or three 'Negroes' are mentioned by name in the text; just about every governor of the state gets a writeup, along with many a plantation owner and mayor.
Of course, it's dull stuff for the most part. and who ever had a state history course that wasn't a snooze, usually taught by one of the coaches? It amuses to me to imagine horny Mississippi eighth graders, in the grip of puberty, confronting a textbook that yammers on about things like dairy farms, sweet potato starch production, and regional banking. Try this deadly passage, from chapter one:
"It is the soil, then, that has been Mississippi's greatest resource. It has molded both the planter and the small farmer in its image. For this reason we must examine carefully the individual soil areas of the state."
Okay. So young Harold ('Bud') Hopper, a typical teen, is sitting in class, thinking he can see the outline of Debbi Jo Statler's bra through her blouse. But he shakes this nonsense out of his head. "I better stop thinking about that and examine carefully the individual soil areas of this state." And for the next 13 pages, that's exactly what Bettersworth helps him to accomplish.

 

[Politesse]

I've never met anyone who wasn't a surveyor, environmental activist, geologist, or farmer, who had meaningful input on the question of local soil science.

 

[ideologyhunter]

I can't resist quoting Bettersworth once more, from his final chapter. He has spent many of his pages trying to get the reader excited about cotton. Now he is ready for a summation on the crop:

"In the new day that at last dawned in Mississippi, cotton had hardly been dethroned; for King Cotton was succeeded by Prince Cotton. <i.e., it was no longer the #1 money crop> Mississippians could never forget the one product that had accounted for most of the prosperity they had ever known, as well as for many of the heartaches...The whole story of Mississippi's valiant struggle for survival during nearly two centuries lay in the story of what cotton did to Mississippians and what they did with it. And despite everything, cotton had been kind to Mississippians, and they had been kind to it. The two would always be friends, for as long as there were cottonfields on this earth, Mississippi earth would have its proper share of them."

Whew -- that's pretty steamy for youngsters to be reading. King Cotton is your ex, so you're taking up with the son, apparently, being kind to each other on the hot Mississippi soil, on a humid evening with the sweet smell of wisteria and...I'll stop, I'm getting too excited.

 

[spikepipsqueak]

We do change with what we read.
I gave a kid very recently a copy of "The Belgariad" by David Eddings that I owned. Then learnt some things.
I read that book. I hope the kid is also OK. But different.

My son put me on to David Eddings when he was about 14. This reminds me to reread those as well.

I don't remember anything particularly controversial. Did you have some fears for that kid?

Yeah, Eddings had a really dark history. He abused his kids for starters.

I understand "separate the art from the artist" argument. Sometimes it has merit (Elvis). I'm not sure about Eddings though.

Now I'll reread it with considerably more discernment.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

The Story of Earth in 25 Rocks by Donald R. Prothero

 

[spikepipsqueak]

Sounds interesting

 

[GenesisNemesis]

Sounds interesting

He has a bunch of other books too, many of them focused on debunking Creationism, but has a lot of great science in them.

 

[southernhybrid]

I'm trying to finish some of the many books I've started, and F*cking History 111 Things you should have learned in school is keeping me entertained currently.

Here's a summary:

History that doesn't suck: Smart, crude, and hilariously relevant to modern life.

Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it. Too bad it's usually boring as sh*t. Enter The Captain, the ultimate storyteller who brings history to life (and to your life) in this hilarious, intelligent, brutally honest, and crude compendium to events that happened before any of us were born.

The entries in this compulsively readable book bridge past and present with topics like getting ghosted, handling haters, and why dog owners rule (sorry, cat people). Along the way you'll get a glimpse of Edith Wharton's sex life, dating rituals in Ancient Greece, catfishing in 500 BC, medieval flirting techniques, and squad goals from Catherine the Great.

You'll learn why losing yourself in a relationship will make you crazy--like Joanna of Castile, who went from accomplished badass to Joanna the Mad after obsessing over a guy known as Philip the Handsome. You'll discover how Resting Bitch Face has been embraced throughout history (so wear it proudly). And you'll see why it's never a good idea to f*ck with powerful women--from pirate queens to diehard suffragettes to Cleo-f*cking-patra.

People in the past were just like us--so learn from life's losers and emulate the badasses. The Captain shows you how.

It's very funny and who knew that Mark Twain invented the bra strap! If you need a good laugh, as most of us do these days, read it. Of course, it's on my kindle with all the other books I may never finish reading, but at least I've made it halfway through this one.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

Another one I've started reading is Seductive Poison: A Jonestown Survivor's Story of Life and Death in the Peoples Temple. Highly recommended if you're interested in cults/cult psychology or memoirs in general.

 

[laughing dog]

Just finished Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose. I really like the HBO series of the same title and wanted to see if the series was true to the book. It definitely was. Of course, some of the dialogue was new, but the stories are pretty much the same in the book with some dramatic expansion. The author knows how to tell a story. The attrition and action, the bravery and cowardness, and brilliance and stupidity of strategy are portrayed. What shines throughout the story is the title - these soldiers stuck together through terrible circumstances.

Up next is Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders (fiction) and History on Trial by Deborah Lipstad (nonfiction).

 

[DBT]

Ben Kane's novel Tru......uhm, Nero.

 

[bilby]

The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI, by Cory Doctorow.

Doctorow suggests ways to avoid being crushed under the inflating AI bubble, and provides a humorous but also serious view of the pros and cons of AI, and of the corporate interests that are pumping it up.

These fears (or hopes) of a nascent superintelligence that will spontaneously arise if we just give enough computing power and training data to large language models are absurd on their face. They make sense only if you believe that “being conscious” is a matter of being really good at guessing which word is statistically most likely to come after the previous one.

It’s true that there is no consensus about what consciousness is, but it’s also true that advocates for the idea that consciousness is a matter of guessing words really well haven’t offered any evidence for their assertion.

 

[Politesse]

I've been reading Maggie O'Farrell's Land. It is a Michener-esque story of generational trauma and continuity surrounding a sacred copse in Ireland's eastern shores, and she clearly put a lot of herself into it. At times it gets a little maudlin for me, and her historical sense of Ireland is a tad too pat, with clearly drawn victims and villains. But her characters are so well written, that she keeps drawing me back in anyway, and makes me want to keep reading.

I've also been doing a lot of re-reading of the various versions of The Odyssey, and have been working on creating a translation of my own. Those who are arguing about whether Nolan, Konchalovsky, or Camerini made a more "authentic" movie adaptation of this poem are, in my opinion, off their rockers. This poem is simply not filmable. If it were filmable, it would be unwatchable. But it is a pretty good poem, and I am enjoying my little project.

 

[Tharmas]

I've also been doing a lot of re-reading of the various versions of The Odyssey, and have been working on creating a translation of my own. Those who are arguing about whether Nolan, Konchalovsky, or Camerini made a more "authentic" movie adaptation of this poem are, in my opinion, off their rockers. This poem is simply not filmable. If it were filmable, it would be unwatchable. But it is a pretty good poem, and I am enjoying my little project.

Apropos of nothing...

To Helen​

Edgar Allan Poe

Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore,
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, way-worn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece.
And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand!
The agate lamp within thy hand,
Ah! Psyche from the regions which
Are Holy Land!

Otherwise, I'm still working on "Regime Change." Everything you thought about the workings of Trump's governing is true, but only the tip of the iceberg. For instance, in the debate among Trump and his advisors about who should be Secretary of Defense, in the end Trump's nod went to Hegseth because "he looks good on television."

OK, back to discussing books.

 

[Toni]

Have started re-reading Emily Wilson's version of The Odyssey. I've read the Illiad more recently than the last time I read any version of The Odyssey and more translations of the Iliad I think but I always enjoyed The Odyssey more.