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Spoilers What Book Are You Reading?
- Thread starter Huntn
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That is easily my favourite RAH novel, ( and that of most Heinlein fans). It is nice to get to see Mike rescued in "The Cat Who Walks Through Walls).Just finished The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1966) by Robert Heinlein. First read, it’s not great, but I enjoyed it. Written in first person, easy reading, but reads more like a documentary. The author puts much effort into describing the Moon Colony, how it functions, it’s social order, which includes plural marriage by necessity, multiple husbands and wives in single family clusters. A most interesting aspect of the story is a computer who achieves self awareness and a catapult which is used to send goods from the Moon to the Earth, oh and there is a revolution.
I am interested in reading this one also... Let us all know what you think of it!
While I am not reading traditional books at the moment, I am catching up on some of my back issues of my graphic novels:
Currently reading the following, depending on which room I am in...
Usagi Yojimbo Saga Volume 2 - Love his art and story telling, not to mention, I am a sucker for anything that is related to Samurai warriors and ancient Japan.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - the movie Balderunner is based on this book...
and soon to start, again: Watchman's DC Classic Version... Should be here this week!!!
Taking the Stand, A. Dershowitz.
@SandboxGeneral - I enjoyed Why Terrorism Works. I respect his views and opinions on any topic very much.
@SandboxGeneral - I enjoyed Why Terrorism Works. I respect his views and opinions on any topic very much.
Fiction: Star Trek: Vanguard - "What Judgements Come" (that whole series has been a perennial favorite of mine for quite a while)
Non Fiction: Asia's Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific
Non Fiction: Asia's Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific
I've been plugging through Samuel Pepys - surprisingly readable and amusing (but you're sort of laughing at him rather than with him at times.). It's one of those ones you can pick up and put down too. Goes to prove that people stay the same and it's just technology that changes. If you do try it go for a decent edition as footnotes (on each page) really help. I struggled and gave up with the free Kindle ones - they 'vexed me' as they seem to edit a lot of stuff out so as not to offend, I mean really? I'm reading this one as an actual book which is decent and too expensive.
If you like Samuel Pepys, (and his times), I can also recommend that you take a look at Daniel Defoe's "A Journal of the Plague Year" which I thought excellent.
This is the same Daniel Defoe who wrote "Robinson Crusoe".
"A Journal Of The Plague Year" is considered to be one of the first classic "works" of modern journalism, which is simultaneously both serious and accessible, for it is a exceptionally well-researched and well-written work.
I suspect that the success (and fame) of Robinson Crusoe has overshadowed the fact that Defoe was also a very fine chronicler of his times and a formidable writer (and journalist).
“One technology doesn’t replace another, it complements. Books are no more threatened by Kindle than stairs by elevators.” Stephen Fry.
Or radios by TV.
All of these media can exist simultaneously, and, as you say, can complement one another.
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On Albania, by itself, no, but I can recommend a few books on the Balkans (which include Albania) and on the former Yugoslavia (again, with sections on Albania).
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I enjoyed the Alan Clark diaries.
Alan Clark: A Life in his Own Words: The Complete Diaries 1972 - 1999 https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0753826739/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_nSoaEb9ED24QP
Recently ordered Heroes of History: A Brief History of Civilization from Ancient Times to the Dawn of the Modern Age, Will Durant.
Started this last night:
![2019-trick-mirror-pdf-reflections-on-selfdelusion-by-jia-tolentino-random-house-1-638.jpg]()
I always enjoy Tolentino's contributions to the New Yorker, so I figured I would enjoy this.
I always enjoy Tolentino's contributions to the New Yorker, so I figured I would enjoy this.
The Last Lion (Vol. 2) - Alone, by William Manchester. Second volume (of 3) of Manchester's bio of Churchill. This covers the time up to Churchill's appointment as Prime Minister. Another volume that reminds me how difficult it is to read current events, current moods, and where they are going to lead us. I was very (negatively) impressed by Chamberlain's stubbornness (he even lied to his own entire Cabinet).
Nothing fancy but I recently purchased a few that I have not read for many many years so looking forward to them again:
Lord of the Flies
The War of the Worlds
Catch 22
The Sun Also Rises
Lord of the Flies
The War of the Worlds
Catch 22
The Sun Also Rises
So, over the last two days I have finished up Mark Millar's original "American Jesus" graphic novel and the DC Black Label series "Harleen". Both extremely good reads!
Re-visited a classic last night: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.
Reading the 750+ page account by David Halberstam of The Fifties.
![Halberstam The Fifties cover art.jpg]( "Halberstam The Fifties cover art.jpg")
Impossible to summarize it, except to say that it seems in retrospect also impossible that so much stuff happened in the couple decades of my childhood and teen years. Hah, I can remember more than a few times thinking in the 50s in particular, "gee nothing ever happens any more." I was not bored, nor was that reference personal really, nor regretful. It was just a middle school kid's assessment of what seemed like a somewhat calmer world in the times after the end of WWII, at least after our dads and uncles were home again and trying to make or resume an adult life in the USA. But then kids are singleminded about their own interests and whatever lies outside that tends to get short shrift in passing. Now I find it all pretty interesting. The politics were a fair bit harsher than I had remembered, and I was actually pretty interested in that from time to time, even back then.
Anyway rather than try to summarize I'll quote the Amazon blurb that attempted to give readers something of a sense of the range of things Halberstam looks at in this fascinating book:
Impossible to summarize it, except to say that it seems in retrospect also impossible that so much stuff happened in the couple decades of my childhood and teen years. Hah, I can remember more than a few times thinking in the 50s in particular, "gee nothing ever happens any more." I was not bored, nor was that reference personal really, nor regretful. It was just a middle school kid's assessment of what seemed like a somewhat calmer world in the times after the end of WWII, at least after our dads and uncles were home again and trying to make or resume an adult life in the USA. But then kids are singleminded about their own interests and whatever lies outside that tends to get short shrift in passing. Now I find it all pretty interesting. The politics were a fair bit harsher than I had remembered, and I was actually pretty interested in that from time to time, even back then.
Anyway rather than try to summarize I'll quote the Amazon blurb that attempted to give readers something of a sense of the range of things Halberstam looks at in this fascinating book:
"The Fifties is a sweeping social, political, economic, and cultural history of the ten years that Halberstam regards as seminal in determining what our nation is today. Halberstam offers portraits of not only the titans of the age: Eisenhower, Dulles, Oppenheimer, MacArthur, Hoover, and Nixon, but also of Harley Earl, who put fins on cars; Dick and Mac McDonald and Ray Kroc, who mass-produced the American hamburger; Kemmons Wilson, who placed his Holiday Inns along the nation's roadsides; U-2 pilot Gary Francis Powers; Grace Metalious, who wrote Peyton Place; and "Goody" Pincus, who led the team that invented the Pill."
I'm having fun with it. In the time of a childhood up to young adulthood, there can be surprising lacunae in the later recollection of events that one lived through without really having synthesized some overall sense of those couple of decades.
Funny you should say that; my mother - who lived through the 50s as a young adult, thought it a suffocating, conformist, stagnant decade, intellectually, socially and culturally (apart from Elvis, whom she detested, pointing out that, "he put me off the dance floor"); she far preferred the 60s and 70s, not least in terms of women's rights and civil rights and the opening up of education, society, social mobility and opportunity, in general.
However, I do remember thinking that the seventies felt the same - i.e. sort of "boring", (especially after what had seemed to have been the excitement of the 60s, although people who lived through it, and were not at the epicentres of the various excitements, told me that it was nothing like as exciting as it may have seemed).
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