Books

Alright, it's time for another thread on books. Yes, books. Let's take a look at what people have been reading this year and see what interesting titles they've selected. Thanks to goodreads.com I have a nice list of books I've read this year. And here they are:

1. The Elite Consensus: When Corporations Wield The Constitution
-George Draffan
2. Hutterite Beginnings: Communitarian Experiments during the Reformation
-Werner O. Packull
3. Life's Pleasures: The Ashcan Artists' Brush With Leisure, 1895-1925
-James Tottis
4. Pandora's Seed: The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization
-Spencer T. Wells
5. The Articles of Confederation: An Interpretation of the Social-Constitutional History of the American Revolution, 1774-1781
-Merrill Jensen
6. Thomas Müntzer: A Tragedy of Errors
-Eric W. Gritsch
7. The Ultimate Guide to Permaculture
-Nicole Faires
8. What Technology Wants
-Kevin Kelly
9. Too Smart for Our Own Good: The Ecological Predicament of Humankind
-Craig Dilworth
10. The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories
-Ernest Hemingway
11. Green Mars (Mars Trilogy, #2)
-Kim Stanley Robinson
12. Painting Life: The Art of Pieter Bruegel, the Elder
-Robert L. Bonn
13. The Bird: The Life and Legacy of Mark Fidrych
-Doug Wilson
14. The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945
-Rick Atkinson
15. Gilbert and George: Obsessions and Compulsions
-Robin Dutt
16. Post-Scarcity Anarchism
-Murray Bookchin
17. Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda
-Noam Chomsky
18. The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality
-Richard Heinberg
19. What Matters?: Economics for a Renewed Commonwealth
-Wendell Berry

So what sort of stuff have you read?

Originally posted by rwingett
Alright, it's time for another thread on books. Yes, books. Let's take a look at what people have been reading this year and see what interesting titles they've selected. Thanks to goodreads.com I have a nice list of books I've read this year. And here they are:

1. The Elite Consensus: When Corporations Wield The Constitution
-George Draffan
2. Hutter ...[text shortened]... or a Renewed Commonwealth
-Wendell Berry

So what sort of stuff have you read?

Little Women
-Louisa May Alcott
Shrapnel
-William Wharton
Flying Visits
-Clive James
two collections of P.G. Wodehouse short stories
The Martian Chronicles
- Ray Bradbury
selections from Britain's 100 Favourite Poems and the Oxford Anthology of English Poetry
The Xenophobe's Guide to the English
The Grass is Singing
-Doris Lessing
Gulliver's Travels
-Jonathan Swift
Heart of Darkness
-Joseph Conrad
Unreliable Memoirs
-Clive James

Various others abandoned or unfinished.

Originally posted by NoEarthlyReason
Little Women
-Louisa May Alcott
Shrapnel
-William Wharton
Flying Visits
-Clive James
two collections of P.G. Wodehouse short stories
The Martian Chronicles
- Ray Bradbury
selections from Britain's 100 Favourite Poems and the Oxford Anthology of English Poetry
The Xenophobe's Guide to the English
The Grass is Singing
-Doris Lessing
Gulliv ...[text shortened]...
-Joseph Conrad
Unreliable Memoirs
-Clive James

Various others abandoned or unfinished.

How did you like Gulliver's Travels? I've never gotten around to reading that one yet.

Originally posted by rwingett
How did you like Gulliver's Travels? I've never gotten around to reading that one yet.

I found it quite hard going. It was interesting for its status than for the story itself. I couldn't imagine myself as a contemporary reader, partly because I don't know much at all about the author's time period. It's hard not to judge it by today's standards – by which it seemed extremely stuffy and stodgy. It felt as if there were about a hundred commas in each sentence, which broke up the narrator's voice into very unnatural sounding English. I found it hard to like Swift, too, although he wrote some quite funny passages here and there. He is painfully scatological much of the time, and seems to have a high opinion of himself. I suppose I just about liked it overall because I gave it 3 stars, but I'm in no hurry to reread it.

Originally posted by rwingett
How did you like Gulliver's Travels? I've never gotten around to reading that one yet.

Scabrous, uncompromising satire of the Voice of Reason. Like Sade without the boring orgies. Crack of the wit in every sentence.

His contemporary Laurence Sterne's well worth reading. Tristram Shandy. It's unputdownable because it never ends ...

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
Scabrous, uncompromising satire of the Voice of Reason. Like Sade without the boring orgies. Crack of the wit in every sentence.

His contemporary Laurence Sterne's well worth reading. Tristram Shandy. It's unputdownable because it never ends ...

That's the general impression I've gotten. I'll have to put it on my short list.

Currently reading Aesop's Fables and As We Know It by Marek Kohn. And 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in French. Difficult as I am not a French speaker, but at least some of the words are the same in English so I have a fighting chance.

Originally posted by NoEarthlyReason
Currently reading Aesop's Fables and As We Know It by Marek Kohn. And 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in French. Difficult as I am not a French speaker, but at least some of the words are the same in English so I have a fighting chance.

I checked out a German language edition of Kafka's stories earlier this year in an attempt to strengthen my German. It didn't work out so well.

Originally posted by rwingett
I checked out a German language edition of Kafka's stories earlier this year in an attempt to strengthen my German. It didn't work out so well.

Well, from what I remember, Kafka is hard to follow in English, but rewarding if you can. I have Le Petit Prince as a fallback.

Anyone else? Are the rest of you a bunch of illiterate hillbillies?

Originally posted by rwingett
Anyone else? Are the rest of you a bunch of illiterate hillbillies?

I'm currently reading The Luzhin Defence by Nabokov after reading some of his short stories, and so will pose the question whether anyone has any chess orientated literature they would recommend. I prefer Nabokov's short stories to the Luzhin Defence but I would recommend Chess, a short story by Stefan Zweig which is superb.

I recently read Penguins Stopped Play by Harry Thompson which was very good, and funny, and bought a collection of Ernest Hemmingway's short stories but haven't got round to reading any yet.

I've read all Kafka's works and am a big fan, and my favourite author is Knut Hamsun (just in case anyone wants to know).

Steinbeck's Cannery Row

Originally posted by NoEarthlyReason
I found it quite hard going. It was interesting for its status than for the story itself. I couldn't imagine myself as a contemporary reader, partly because I don't know much at all about the author's time period. It's hard not to judge it by today's standards – by which it seemed extremely stuffy and stodgy. It felt as if there were about a hundred ...[text shortened]... ppose I just about liked it overall because I gave it 3 stars, but I'm in no hurry to reread it.

Personally I found Gulliver's Travels one of the most accessible and engaging of eighteenth-century novels. Swift's fantasy is still suggestive and satirically acute. The prose style is somewhat alien to modern conventions, but one just needs to accept that.

I've never managed to read Tristram Shandy, but enjoyed the much shorter Sentimental Journey. Of other eighteenth-century novelists, Defoe is a mixed bag; Robinson Crusoe is ponderous and plodding, but the two novels about villainous women, Moll Flanders and Roxana, are impressive in psychological perception and sophisticated in narration. Richardson is slightly hard-going, at least to judge by Pamela (I've not tried Clarissa), although the first half of Pamela, with the heroine held captive by her master, is quite eerie and perverse in theme, like a kind of early horror film.

Fielding is a delight. Tom Jones and Joseph Andrews are both superb, robust comic works, still funny and charming after more than 250 years.

Originally posted by rwingett
Alright, it's time for another thread on books. Yes, books. Let's take a look at what people have been reading this year and see what interesting titles they've selected. Thanks to goodreads.com I have a nice list of books I've read this year. And here they are:

1. The Elite Consensus: When Corporations Wield The Constitution
-George Draffan
2. Hutter ...[text shortened]... omics for a Renewed Commonwealth
-Wendell Berry

So what sort of stuff have you read?

Have you read, "Watership down"?
Kelly

Originally posted by KellyJay
Have you read, "Watership down"?
Kelly

No, I haven't. I probably should one of these days, though.