📚 The book lovers thread
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I read almost exclusively history books.
TSPE (TooShortPleaseExpand)
Like Weng my commute lends itself to enormous consumption of Audio books.
Can recommend "Born to Battle" re Gen.s U.S. Grant and Forrest (CSA). Set in the Western Theater of the US Civil War.
Listening to "Ike's Bluff" re Eisenhower presidency. Apparently more to that dude than he ever gets credit for, but the book jumps around a lot - would recommend the subject matter, but not this book.
In queue - Tuchman's "Guns of August" (and, fiction) "All Quiet on the Western Front")
Also: Agatha Christie, PD James.
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Also, does anybody read anything besides sci-fi/fantasy books?
Yes, but that stuff is the most fun. This is a book that's probably about as believable as most SF, but is actual history:
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I've recently enjoyed Michael Flynn's Spiral Arm series and Eifelheim. There is a lot of serious research behind his stuff and if you read carefully it really shows. His Firestar stuff is on my to read list.
Everyone should read Vernor Vinge, especially Deepness in the Sky and Fire Upon the Deep, if only to make blakey angry at how much you'll enjoy these.
I've read Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon / Baroque Cycle multiple times and like his other stuff too. Anathem is probably his most challenging, but if you can make it through it all it's definitely worth it IMO.
The last few years, I've been going back and reading the sorts of books that get assigned in school. Canons of Western Culture, if you will. Off the top of my head, I've recently (in the last year or so) read Don Quixote, Tale of Two Cities and For Whom the Bell Tolls.
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TSPE (TooShortPleaseExpand)
I read almost exclusively history books. I'm not sure what kind of expansion you're looking for.
This is a book that's probably about as believable as most SF, but is actual history:
Did you know a small force of US troops fought together with Nazi prison guards to defend a Austrian castle full of VIP prisoners from retreating SS, which had orders to kill or relocate all of the prisoners?
The truth is always stranger than fiction, and so much, SO MUCH, more interesting specifically because it is true.
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I read almost exclusively history books. I'm not sure what kind of expansion you're looking for.
History is a rather broad subject...
Any special era, culture, political vs. economic vs. military vs. biographical... or do you dabble?
I was inviting you to say more...
http://www.amazon.com/The-Last-Battle-German-Soldiers/dp/0306822083
The truth is always stranger than fiction, and so much, SO MUCH, more interesting specifically because it is true.
Yes, like that
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History is a rather broad subject...
Yeah.
Any special era, culture, political vs. economic vs. military vs. biographical... or do you dabble?
Not really?
I have a few "hot" areas I really like to read about:
- Pre-Columbia Americas (sadly, extremely rare to find any material about this-- although this book:
is excellent, and the last chapter brought tears to my eyes. It's incredible to think of what we lost without even knowing we lost it, Fawcett knew it and gave his life in search of it, and Grann does an excellent job of describing it.
(Did you know that Tenochtitlan, in 1491, was likely the most populous city in the world?)
- Technology and vehicles. This book:
Is incredible. And, BTW, the most powerful idea in the world is the self-acting machine... that was the invention that opened the floodgates to everything. (Why are Von Neumann computers dominating the industry? Because unlike previous computers, they are entirely self-acting.) But the book doesn't just trace the first steam engines, it traces all the technologies that had to exist before we could build and improve them, the hundreds of years of development.
Watt was an amazing genius. Just amazing. He invented this little widget to regulate steam flow:
He didn't even note the thing down. He was such a genius he just thought it was an "obvious" idea not worthy of patent or even documentation. Blows me away.
(Interesting trivia: Douglas Self seems to have tracked-down a self-acting steam engine from 1688, which predates Newcomen by decades. It's possible this book is already out-of-date.)
Here's another one, about the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, amazing:
- War stories, but not boring ones. By which I mean, unique or extremely under-reported things, not Yet Another Battle of the Bulge Book. Like this:
(A war memoir from the guy most famous for staying behind and risking his life to scuttle U-505 after it was captured by the US Navy. He was also an unrepentant Nazi.)
Or this:
Harmsen makes an extremely, extremely good case that all history books are wrong, and WWII started in 1937. A good enough case that I've started to repeat it where applicable.
It's also a great war story, the under-trained, under-equipped Chinese regular army (with frankly incompetent leadership) against the efficient, brutal Japanese battling over the largest city in Asia at the time.
Then I go through binges sometimes. About a year ago, I started reading memoirs of people who escaped North Korea. Then a bit later, I started reading memoirs of people who escaped the Scientology's Sea Org. Not sure which environment is worse.
I did a medieval Europe thing for awhile, but got pissed that none of the books were about the average Joe, they were just about the "nobility" of the time. Some books tried, but there's just no source material. You get shit like, "this knight teamed up with a few others to put down a rebellion in the city of Blah", but why were they rebelling? Who led it? How did the nobility reconcile their "duty" as protectors of the realm with the fact that their own subjects had killed their noble and demanded self-determination? None of that shit was recorded.
I love early American history, our Founding Fathers were all amazing. I used to think that the stuff we were taught in school was just nationalist jingoism crap, but man, you read some biographies of these guys and they were really, really, really goddamned smart, goddamned on-the-ball, and wanting to change the world for the better. They deserve the propaganda.
I especially like Washington and his idolization of Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus. Two like-minds, thousands of years apart.
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+1 Internets. Would read again.
Multiples "yes" 's, but I have been delegated "things to do"
"I shall return".
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I did a medieval Europe thing for awhile, but got pissed that none of the books were about the average Joe,
A few years ago I read this (pretty sure it was this book):
Not at all a narrative history. Really a bit dry, but there's a ton of interesting stuff there about how the medieval village / manor worked. In fact, a lot of similar information was included in my previously noted book, Eifelheim.
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The book I was thinking of when I typed that was this one:
It's a really good, well-written book. I didn't mean to slam on it at all. The author even admits it's virtually impossible to write about anything other than the nobility in this particular period of history, so it's not like I wasn't warned going-in.
It's just not the stuff I wanna read about.
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It's just not the stuff I wanna read about.
No, I understand what you mean. But Life on the English Manor will give you a good look into how the typical serf / villein / peasant lived.
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Maybe I'll give that a read if I get into the mood to read about that period again.
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This book is not well-loved: http://www.amazon.com/review/R19QF104W0V9SM/ref=cm_cr_pr_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0062300083
546 one-star reviews. 22 5-stars. Many reviews pass the @ben_lubar metric of "how many upvotes does this review have" too.
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(Did you know that Tenochtitlan, in 1491, was likely the most populous city in the world?)
I'd second the recommendation for 1491, though his next book (1493) wasn't as good.
Edit: $deity, Discourse is being difficult at the moment. Someone needs to kick the hamsters or whatever's powering the servers this thing runs on.
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It's a really good, well-written book. I didn't mean to slam on it at all. The author even admits it's virtually impossible to write about anything other than the nobility in this particular period of history, so it's not like I wasn't warned going-in.
It's just not the stuff I wanna read about.
I listened about a half of it. Yeah, she tried, but it just misses something. Too many empty spaces and she's too much of a stodgy historian to fill them up with believable fiction.
IMO the best history can possibly get isn't any book but the Hardcore History podcast. For example, if A Distant Mirror left you wanting, try this one. But they are all great. Pretty much the best historical programming of any kind ever produced. All books, movies, TV shows and lectures included.
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This book is not well-loved:
...did we discuss the book you linked?
I don't know the guy, but the reviews are somewhat amusing (though probably not telling you shit about quality of the writing).
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...did we discuss the book you linked?
No. I saw a link to a particular review on twitter and thought it was funny. Then I looked at the ratings graph and thought it was interesting. And then I remembered Ben had made a comment previously about some book or something not getting a lot of ratings on the reviews themselves, so I went to see what other people thought of the reviews.
Lots of one-star reviews with nobody finding them helpful means "someone with a fairly-wide blog who hates this guy got his readers to all post one-star reviews," probably, or something similar. When the one-star reviews outrank the five-stars by 50 to 1, and the first several pages of reviews have hundreds of people checking "i found this helpful" maybe that means it's actually a bad book.
And the author is a very polarizing figure.
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When the one-star reviews outrank the five-stars by 50 to 1, and the first several pages of reviews have hundreds of people checking "i found this helpful" maybe that means it's actually a bad book.
Or that the guy with the blog also had his readers upvote others' reviews. Also, it seems nobody actually read that book legitimately.
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Or that the guy with the blog also had his readers upvote others' reviews.
That's possible but I think would be unusual.
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That's possible but I think would be unusual.
I don't think so. Especially if the readers do it for their own amusement, they'll post their snarky comment, then go read others' attempts at humor and give them a virtual chuckle.
And as far as I can tell, the guy has mostly pissed off extreme gun nuts. I say good for him.
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IMO the best history can possibly get isn't any book but the Hardcore History podcast. For example, if A Distant Mirror left you wanting, try this one. But they are all great. Pretty much the best historical programming of any kind ever produced. All books, movies, TV shows and lectures included.
Well thanks for the links, but if it ain't in text form (and preferably on my Kindle) it ain't no good for me.
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Well thanks for the links, but if it ain't in text form (and preferably on my Kindle) it ain't no good for me.
Shame. You're missing out.
A book-form consolation prize
This is probably my favorite historical book ever. Ostensibly about the West vs East divide, but actually tries to offer a holistic look at the entire human history. Some mindblowing stuff at the end.
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@boomzilla: new William Gibson novel out yesterday, The Peripheral. (Your profile page excerpt got me to see what he's been up to lately.)
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Yes, I have it on my list. And a pre-emptive hold at my library. Looks like they got 8 copies. I'm currently #17 on the list.
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Oh, looks like there is something I need to add to my amazon list then.
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Looks like my library system is getting six copies, I'm 10th in line.
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Mine came in and just picked it up! I'll be starting reading tonight...
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Cool! Mine's in too, gotta go pick it up.
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And then I remembered Ben had made a comment previously about some book or something
http://what.thedailywtf.com/t/counter-strike-nexon-zombies/4384/7?u=ben_lubar
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Yup. You'll see the opposite too
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It wasn't a book, but it was something.
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It wasn't a book, but it was something.
I bet it still applies. Just gotta find something for sale that's either wildly stupid or polarizing somehow.
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Just gotta find something for sale that's either wildly stupid or polarizing somehow.
Try these: polarizing and stupid.
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On the other hand, they'll probably go well at the Devo concert next week.
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On the other hand, they'll probably go well at the Devo concert next week.
Thanks to Yo Gabba Gabba we have 2- and 3-year old Devo fans in our house
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Thanks to Yo Gabba Gabba the Brothers Chaps stopped working on the best part of the internet.
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Thanks to Yo Gabba Gabba we have 2- and 3-year old Devo fans in our house
Super Martian Robot Girl!
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This is our eldest boy's favourite Super Music Friends Show
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDcouGIvDi4
Filed Under: Listening and dancing to music is AWESOME
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So I started in on Harry Turtledove's Worldwar series. Which is the one where WW2 gets interrupted by an alien invasion.
I am in love.
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I just finished World War Z it's very good. Really recommend it. Now I'm reading this book "The target" which seems to be about an old guy in death row.
World War Z is a great book, but don't go into the movie expecting it to have anything to do with the novel whatsoever. (Actually, don't go into the move expecting to do anything other than point and laugh; "that's stupid!"; etc...)
I read the Zombie Survival Guide almost immediately after World War Z, and it functioned mostly for me as backstory and exposition, although some of the diagrams are fun.
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+1 Internets. Would read again.
Multiples "yes" 's, but I have been delegated "things to do"
"I shall return".
I remember finding this an interesting read, although that was a few (ten? fifteen?) years ago. Looks like it got second-editioned last year though.
(The book puts forward the argument that the telegraph had, if anything, more impact on society than the internet did 100 years later. It also goes into a borderline-unhealthy amount of detail on the telegraph itself and its development, lives of telegraph operators, etc...)
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I read a book one time. It was nice. I think.
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(The book puts forward the argument that the telegraph had, if anything, more impact on society than the internet did 100 years later. It also goes into a borderline-unhealthy amount of detail on the telegraph itself and its development, lives of telegraph operators, etc...)
Not sure I entirely agree with that thesis — it's probably better to view both as being part of the same revolution, along with the telephone and the television and a bunch of other things — but whatever. It's not your argument but the book's.
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well. it's the first technology that makes posible to send information somewhere without actually going to the place. it is something
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it's the first technology that makes posible to send information somewhere without actually going to the place.
I'd view the whole thing as a revolution; the telegraph was just the vanguard. It had an impact, but only really for a fairly small group of people in very select situations. Compare that with the point we're at now, with widespread adoption and very wide access; they're very different points on the telecoms continuum, and where we're at was not even conceivable from where we started.
I wonder what comes next.
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This was a fun read about the stupidity that went into the decipherment of Maya script, such as how the importance of the calendar got blown out of proportion (that was the only thing they'd deciphered, so they read too much into it), and why it took so long to produce a translation.
Basically:
- Archaeologists didn't bother studying modern mesoamerican languages, or historical records of Maya language (which weren't great to begin with). Non-archaeologists didn't have much of a corpus to work with.
- Maya experts were hung up on the idea of ideographic script—they wanted to believe that Maya was an emoji-only language, when actually it's phonetic. Coe does a good job of showing why this is obvious in retrospect.
- One particular character seemed to be doing everything he could to prevent anyone from producing a reasonable translation.
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One particular character seemed to be doing everything he could to prevent anyone from producing a reasonable translation.
Was he management? Or a customer?
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...or a member of the clergy? *scare chord*
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Harry Turtledove's Worldwar
Yeah, that's pretty good. Unfortunately he has finished the series with a cliffhanger.
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Actually, don't go into the move expecting to do anything other than point and laugh
The movie did have some highlights. Pitt's using magazines and duct tape as improvised armor early on was brilliant. So many people have died in zombie movies due to inadequate protection it's amazing nobody's every thought of it.
Hell, just two weeks ago on The Walking Dead, someone died because a zombie bit him on the bare arm. If I were in a zombie apocalypse one of the first things I'd do is get a jean or leather jacket and put on a nice pair of jeans.
Amazon.com
The Lost City of Z (book) - Wikipedia
