What are you reading?

[deepthroat]

I'll pray for him.

No, I actually know NOTHING about him, and knew nothing about him before the book title caught my eye in the Barnes and Noble clearance bin.

Outside of beginning the book, your two comments are the only info I have on him.

[guydesavoy]

He's an interesting chap so I'm sure you'll enjoy the read DT.

[Tomcat]

Just finished Stephen Hawkings + Leonard Midlinov ( cant spell it sorry)

,,The Grand Design,,

( how the Universe came about)

According to him Philosphy is now dead and M Theory rules on the why and how we are all here. . A poor book and i read books 10 years ago that were more in depth than this. And also a trifle arrogant i must say. Its popular Science but really dumbed down for idiots and covers no new ground and many books already have this subject well covered to the extent that there are more recent discoveries that are not mentioned

Quite a few contradictions. bascially it ends up stating that M theory is just many theories cobbled together and he hasnt really got one Grand Theory at all.

By his standards this is very poor and anyone interested in all thing Cosmology is better off waiting for another author to come along with the latest on Astro physics and the big bang.

forget it , dont waste your money. Nothing knew here

[guydesavoy]

(Tomcat @ Oct. 16 2010,18:13) Just finished Stephen Hawkings + Leonard Midlinov ( cant spell it sorry)

,,The Grand Design,,

( how the Universe came about)

According to him Philosphy is now dead ...

Strangely enough, I think Mathematics holds more answers to these kinds of questions than Physics.

I wish I could remember the references, but some time ago I studied Numbers, going through the gamut of the more 'New Agey' texts to the purely mathematical approaches.

Extremely thought-provoking on the mathematical side as regards Creation... (Also consider that this medium, i.e computers, runs on only 2 numbers..  )

I saw less arrogance in that approach cf the Physics camp.

I'm off to the Lowlands...maybe see Anita somewhere there, albeit sans number  

[Tomcat]

im trying for the number. when i can get to AOL main ill get it over, maybe tomorrow. How long are you there for

Where i am now i have to use a proxy to access any pics as well. shit

[strocube]

I'm up to my neck in Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, and about ten or eleven critical essays dealing with same. I've read it three times and each of the essays about twice.

Also, Aristotle's Poetics, Wordsworth's Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, Freud, The interpretation of Dreams, Edward Said's Culture and Imperialism, Lacan's "The Mirror Stage . . ." and the "Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious," Anzaldua's Borderlands, Marx's The German Ideology and Commodity Fetishism and Toni Morrison's "PLaying in the Dark."

Then once I've got somewhat of a handle on all that, I get to go back and review pretty much everything of importance in the English canon fromBeowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green knight up to Eliot's Wasteland. Yea me!

Bastards are making me work for this MA.

[Ivor Biggun]

My travelling book has been 1421- a weighty tome about how China discovered the world and the Portugues/Spanish used their maps later and took all the credit

[Torurot]

Bacigalupi, Paolo - The Windup Girl
Details here
http://nightshadebooks.com/cart.php?...t_detail&p=145


This was a really great Sci-fi book set in Bangkok some time in the distant future. The writer has obviously been to Thailand. Great read! Now I have to hunt up his other books and see if they are as good.

[Torurot]

Baen Free Library
http://www.baen.com/library/

Introducing the Baen Free Library
by Eric Flint

Baen Books is now making available €” for free €” a number of its titles in electronic format. We're calling it the Baen Free Library. Anyone who wishes can read these titles online €” no conditions, no strings attached. (Later we may ask for an extremely simple, name & email only, registration. ) Or, if you prefer, you can download the books in one of several formats. Again, with no conditions or strings attached. (URLs to sites which offer the readers for these format are also listed. )

Why are we doing this? Well, for two reasons. etc etc

[Torurot]

I've "heard" a lot of things about Al Gore. First thing I've read from him.

Not a bad book

Our Choice A Plan to solve the climate crisis
Al Gore 2009 363.73874 Gor ISBN-978-0-7475-90989

[strocube]

Currently reading The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, by David Mitchell. This is a great read. It's set in late 18th century Japan when the Dutch were trading with the Japanese on the Island of Dejima.
Highly recommended.

Also, it's really great to be able to read for fun now that I've got my Master's and don't have to study.

[Torurot]

Congrats on your Masters. It is great to be able to read for sheer pleasure rather than for business.

[strocube]

Thanks, Torurot.

[thegame925]

Just finished the latest two in the series about a Bangkok-based writer

Breathing Water (Poke Rafferty Thrillers) by Timothy Hallinan

and


The Queen of Patpong by Timothy Hallinan

both Poke Rafferty Thrillers, sequals to The Fourth Watcher and A Nail Through the Heart.


Good light reading and if you are into the Bangkok Scene, interesting insights

[thegame925]

Now I start my journey in distinguished company so I need to pretend to be both intelligent, studious etc, so for my travels I have with me:

A World on Fire: An Epic History of Two Nations Divided by Amanda Foreman

I was thinking of just reading the review and not bothering with the book, but I have a few long nights ahead..........................

A World on Fire: An Epic History of Two Nations Divided by Amanda Foreman

Dominic Sandbrook admires A World on Fire: An Epic History of Two Nations Divided by Amanda Foreman, a sweeping history of the American Civil War.


At the end of November 1861, Britain and the United States stood on the brink of war. A few weeks earlier, the USS San Jacinto had pursued and intercepted a British mail steamer, the Trent, just off the Bahamas. On board were two envoys from the Southern slave states, James Mason and John Slidell, who had been dispatched to Europe to obtain diplomatic recognition for the secessionist Confederacy.

Carried off as prisoners to Boston, Mason and Slidell found themselves right at the centre of one of the biggest international storms of the century.

In London, the Cabinet prepared for battle, mobilising British troops along the Canadian border. How dare the Americans €œwith their dwarf fleet and shapeless mass of incoherent squads which they call an army €¦ fancy themselves the equal of France by land and Great Britain by sea?€ asked one London paper. And across the Atlantic, tempers ran equally high. €œWhile the British government has been playing the villain, we have been playing the fool. Let her now do something beyond drivelling €“ let her fight €¦ if she is not as cowardly as she is treacherous,€ replied a Philadelphia newspaper.

If the Trent Affair had worked out differently, it might have changed the shape of world history. Had Britain and the Northern states gone to war, it is likely that the Confederacy would have survived. Perhaps even now African-American slaves would be toiling in the plantations of South Carolina. For as Amanda Foreman€™s gigantic narrative shows, the American Civil War was not merely the world€™s first genuinely modern warfare, complete with slaughter on a horrifyingly industrial scale; it was also a potentially global conflagration.

Almost all of Britain€™s cotton imports came from the Southern slave states; in Lancashire, the livelihoods of five million people depended on it. And although anti-slavery sentiment was strong, not all Englishmen felt a natural sympathy with Abraham Lincoln€™s Union armies.

€œDamn the Federals. Damn the Confederates. Damn you both. Kill you damned selves for the next 10 years if you like; so much the better for the world and for England. Thus thinks every Englishman with any brains,€ wrote an anonymous correspondent to Charles Francis Adams, Washington€™s man in London, in 1863. €œNB PS We€™ll cut your throats fast enough afterwards for you if you ain€™t tired of blood, you devils.€

Although the British government sensibly stayed out of the American conflict €“ thanks partly to Prince Albert, who subtly softened an inflammatory message to Washington at the height of the Trent Affair €“ Foreman€™s book shows that thousands of ordinary Britons were deeply involved. Some were journalists, like the Times war correspondent William Henry Russell or the intrepid battlefield artist Frank Vizetelly. Some were tourists kidnapped in America and forced to enlist.

Others joined up voluntarily, such as James Horrocks, who fled across the Atlantic to avoid marrying the mother of his baby son. But he did not have much respect for his American comrades. General Benjamin Butler, he thought, was a €œbloated-looking bladder of lard€, resembling €œa sack full of mud€ with €œfour enormous German sausages€ for arms.

€œIf I was in England or the English service, I should consider that it was a shame and a sin to desert,€ Horrocks said. But €œin the land of the Yankee Doodle€, desertion was €œregarded universally as a smart thing and the person who does it a dem€™d smart fellow€.

As Horrocks€™s experience might suggest, Foreman€™s sprawling narrative is a long way from the romantic fantasies of Gone with the Wind. Like all civil wars, this was a dirty, savage conflict.

At the battle of Shiloh in 1862, the Welsh volunteer and future explorer Henry Morton Stanley spotted a young boy picking violets and sticking them in his cap. €œThey are a sign of peace,€ the boy said. €œPerhaps they won€™t shoot me if they see me wearing such flowers.€ Impulsively, Stanley stuck some in his cap, too. A little later, he heard the boy calling out. €œOh stop, please stop a bit.€ He was €œstanding on one leg, staring at the remains of his foot€.

With her last book, a biography of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, Foreman encountered fame, fortune and not a little criticism from rival writers unimpressed by her publicity stunts. Like Georgiana, this book deserves to be a huge popular success.

True, the narrative sometimes moves painfully slowly, while academic scholars of the American Civil War will learn little they did not know already. But there is something undeniably impressive about an author with the courage to attempt something so ambitious, a global history of a seismic conflict, spanning two continents and encompassing a massive cast of characters. This is a very long book, admittedly. But as a feat of sheer storytelling, it is also a very fine one.