What are you currently reading?

[Alek Hidell]

^ what is "the myth of the "Chernobyl divers""?

After the accident, firefighters pumped water into the reactor to try to cool it. It flooded the basement with water, which became highly radioactive. It was feared that molten nuclear material was going to melt down through the floors to this water, causing a steam explosion that would have destroyed the entire Chernobyl plant with its three other reactors. One nuclear physicist feared that such a blast could have a force of three to five megatons and would render a large portion of Europe uninhabitable for hundreds of thousands of years.

Anyway, three men volunteered to go down into the water to open some valves to drain it. The myth had it that these three had to submerge themselves in this water, in near-darkness, somehow found the valves even after their flashlight had conked out, and then succumbed to acute radiation poisoning not long afterward. A romantic myth of three brave, selfless heroes.

Well, they were brave indeed, and their finding the valves a near-miracle, but in fact the water was only knee-high (some of it had already been pumped out) and none of the men died shortly thereafter. One died in 2005 of a heart attack and the other two were still alive as of 2015.

[JBS]

Chatty, sometimes superficial, but informative


Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima each get a chapter. He doesn't mention the divers, probably because his emphasis is on the events that caused the meltdown.

[Mandryka]

Read less than half but I'm convinced it's a major major masterpiece!

[ritter]

Read less than half but I'm convinced it's a major major masterpiece!

That's one I still haven't tackled. Our departed fellow GMGer NikF spoke very highly of it IIRC, and the book enjoys a huge reputation. Sometime soon...

[SimonNZ]

Started:

[Mandryka]

That's one I still haven't tackled. Our departed fellow GMGer NikF spoke very highly of it IIRC, and the book enjoys a huge reputation. Sometime soon...

I enjoyed it so much, despite not being at all clear what the point of it is supposed to be, that I'm now on this. I'm normally not interested in war memoirs but this is more an exploration of the idea of memoir, of biographical writing. And that's OK.

[SimonNZ]

For a short read North Korea Confidential was remarkably comprehensive and easily recommended, particularly for dispelling myths and images of the North Korean people as either fanatical leader-worshipers or mindless suffering robots. Particularly good on the cracks in authority opening in black market trading and easy bribery, and in USB and cell phone technology allowing a greater understanding of the outside world and ease in sharing such.


Knocked off a couple of quickies:



Wasn't previously aware PJ O'Rourke had put out a collection of his writings on the 2016 election. Some pieces are among his best work, others especially when he gets into a more general rant on his libertarian worldview are much less so, but then perhaps I'm predisposed to feel that way.

His one-of-a-kind eventual endorsement of Clinton ("She is the second-worst thing that could happen to America.") is worth a read on its own:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/pj-orourke-im-endorsing-hillary-clinton-the-devil-we-know

started both of these:

[Karl Henning]

Re-reading Our Mutual Friend. And alternating it with Geo. MacDonald's Phantastes.

[Mandryka]

Neo Faulknerian prose, long parentheses and no paragraphs for pages and sudden changes of time and place like real thought -  it's remarkable how easy it is to read when you get used to it; French isn't my first language and so how it appears to me may not be how it appears to someone who learnt it at their mothers knee, but to me the language here is so musical, full of rhythms and repeated sounds - rhymes and alliterations - which complement the meaning; extraordinary battle scenes with dying horses and blood and mud, the futility and banality of it all. I'm a great admirer of what I've read of Claude Simon, Acacia and Jardin des Plantes and now this.

[AlberichUndHagen]

Second George Eliot book for me. I enjoyed Silas Marner greatly so I can't wait to read further!

[Brian]

Revisiting some Austen: Mansfield Park

A savage, dense book full of sarcasm, cutting hypocrisies, and dagger-like wit. The point is constantly hammered home that "love" is more or less a feeling which is manufactured after careful consideration of the economics and the class implications. One of the main characters is a slave owner and that reflects in his relationships with other (non-slave) characters. Edmund constantly does things which everyone praises as nice and thoughtful, but he never asks anyone if he should do them, and the intended beneficiaries are always resentful. If anyone out there thinks Jane Austen is nice and fluffy and as light as pastry, full of happy couples falling in love, they should be reading more carefully. Absolutely savage novel, like Tarantino with roses instead of guns.

[AlberichUndHagen]

Revisiting some Austen: Mansfield Park

A savage, dense book full of sarcasm, cutting hypocrisies, and dagger-like wit. The point is constantly hammered home that "love" is more or less a feeling which is manufactured after careful consideration of the economics and the class implications. One of the main characters is a slave owner and that reflects in his relationships with other (non-slave) characters. Edmund constantly does things which everyone praises as nice and thoughtful, but he never asks anyone if he should do them, and the intended beneficiaries are always resentful. If anyone out there thinks Jane Austen is nice and fluffy and as light as pastry, full of happy couples falling in love, they should be reading more carefully. Absolutely savage novel, like Tarantino with roses instead of guns.

I can never remember whether it was Mansfield Park or Northanger abbey that Austen considered her own favorite from her novels. In any case, it wasn't the one/s most people today would name first when talking about Austen. I need to read Austen after I'm finished with Eliot's Daniel Deronda and a few other projects.

[SimonNZ]

I think Persuasion would be my personal favorite.

[Mandryka]

[Brian]

I can never remember whether it was Mansfield Park or Northanger abbey that Austen considered her own favorite from her novels. In any case, it wasn't the one/s most people today would name first when talking about Austen. I need to read Austen after I'm finished with Eliot's Daniel Deronda and a few other projects.

She definitely complained in letters to friends and her publishers that nobody was giving Mansfield Park enough credit.

[DaveF]

Read less than half but I'm convinced it's a major major masterpiece!

Ah, yes, wonderful book - the end is one of the most deeply moving things I know of.  In fact, all of Perec is worth reading, including La disparition (the one without the letter E), Les revenents (the one whose only vowel is E - quite difficult to get hold of, and quite difficult to read for non-native French speakers as the grammar and spelling are so deliberately and necessarily mangled).  And W, ou le souvenir d'enfance (in which Gaspard Winckler once again appears) deserves to be one of the key texts of the 20th century, up there with 1984 and Ivan Denisovich.  David Bellos's biography is also very good.

My favourite fact about Perec, perfect for a man so fascinated by puzzles, anagrams, palindromes, acrostics etc. - he was born on 7th March 1936, which meant that he turned 37 on 7.3.73.  (On the other hand, lots of other people were born on that date too.)

[Karl Henning]

Brian Moynihan's Leningrad: Siege and Symphony

[DaveF]

Brian Moynihan's Leningrad: Siege and Symphony

I read that shortly before playing in a performance of the symphony last year.  Tremendous book, exhaustively researched and written with an immediacy that almost made you feel you were there - the kind of book you put down, look out of the window and feel a mixture of enormous surprise and relief that there aren't people outside scavenging in rubbish heaps for scraps of dead dog.  My only minor criticism is that Moynihan's writing on the actual music could have been better advised or edited - the fact that the symphony calls for 11 different percussion instruments doesn't mean it requires 11 percussionists (for example).

[Mandryka]

Tel qekqe belvédère qe dégénérescence et sénéscence descellent et jettent en terre, tel des D-C-7 qe des tenks descendent, tel des tertres qe des tremblements de terre ébrenlent, l'ensemble se segmente, et s'ébrèche et se relève pêle-mêle.
– C'est le grend denger de tels enchevêtrements, qelqes reneeflements et c'est décédé ! fêt treestement Tencrède.
Serène, Bérengère prend le temps de plézenter et, tel le grend Gégène, décrête :
– C'est vré qe je m'empêtre dens les membres des prêtres.

Eet weed be neece tee heer eet reed aleed.

(Beeny Heel)


The one I'm starting to explore now is Espèces d'espaces.

[DaveF]

Eet weed be neece tee heer eet reed aleed.

(Beeny Heel)


The one I'm starting to explore now is Espèces d'espaces.

Ah, tu l'as trouvé!  Génial, n'est-ce pas?

It would make perfect sense if read aloud, since all vowels sound the same in French anyway.  (Runs for cover, hoping Carlo won't see that comment.)