What are you currently reading?

[CD]

Just started:

[Scarpia]

Just started:

A great book.

[Bogey]

I missed part of the discussion, so it was only when you got to the over-repetition of and so it goes that I knew what book you are talking about, Bill.  In large agreement, on all counts (strong start; and so it goes doesn't work as so heavily-rotated a ritornello; thins off disappointingly after so strong a start.)  I want to like Vonnegut better than I do; but it's not enough to have the occasional bright idea.  It's all about execution.

Nails it for me.  I will be more specific after Greg finishes.  About 30 to 40 pages to go.

[val]

SYLVIE VAUCLAIR:      "La Terre, l'Espace et au-delà"  (2009)

A nice presentation of the most recent discoveries about the structure of the universe. The most interesting part is the statement that, after all, our universe is an euclidean universe.

[jlaurson]

Apart from having Oblomov on my nightstand (which doubles as an amplifier), I'm beginning "Financial Fiasco" [Cato Publishing] by the impeccably bright Johan Norberg. Finally a take-down of the economic crisis by someone other than those armchair-socialists whose 'cures' would have been ten times worse than any crisis ever could have been.



Johan Norberg, Financial Fiasco

How America's infatuation with
homeownership and easy money
created the economic crisis

[Brahmsian]

The Whisperers - Private Life in Stalin's Russia

by Orlando Figes

http://www.amazon.com/Whisperers-Private-Life-Stalins-Russia/dp/0312428030/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1268916929&sr=8-1

[greg]

Nails it for me.  I will be more specific after Greg finishes.  About 30 to 40 pages to go.

Don't wait for me, though. It might be a while until I start reading it.

[Bogey]

That is alright, Greg.  On to the next novel:

[drogulus]

Apart from having Oblomov on my nightstand (which doubles as an amplifier), I'm beginning "Financial Fiasco" [Cato Publishing] by the impeccably bright Johan Norberg. Finally a take-down of the economic crisis by someone other than those armchair-socialists whose 'cures' would have been ten times worse than any crisis ever could have been.



Johan Norberg, Financial Fiasco

How America's infatuation with
homeownership and easy money
created the economic crisis

     It had nothing to do with socialism. The crisis hit the U.S. and then everywhere else, no matter what the size of gov't. The cause is not over-regulation. From the '40s to the '80s we had no such crises because the New Deal era regs were in place. The Reagan era campaign against the regs succeeded, and one by one the protections were removed. How good an idea was it to remove the Glass-Steagall protection against bank speculation? We now know, don't we?

     Big government and big business are not alternate plans for the economy the way libertarians and socialists (real socialists, that is) think. They work together, because if they don't you get the environment we've had since the deregulation frenzy took hold. Bubble after bubble, bailout after bailout, and no one able to fix it. Instead they offer solutions that consist entirely of a hair of the dog. More deregulation, bailouts without reforms to prevent the next round, tepid reregs that have to pass muster with the regulated.

     Do you remember the S & L crisis? The Dot Com bust? The Great Recession of 2008 was more of the same. Easy money, loose regs and no one acting to spoil the party. You can't get the government out of that any more because the government is too invested in the economy in countless ways that it wasn't in the 19th century, when incidently, in the libertarian paradise of the day every panic pauperized a huge chunk of the population.

     You can't understand how all the pieces fit together according to a Tinker Toy model like the CATO people use. They are static thinkers with a feeble grasp of how real-world effects proceed from complex causes. The problem is not the existence of a control system, it's that some of its parts no longer function because dogmatists help the self-interested to neuter them. The solution isn't no control system. That would be more of the same, only worse. Self-regulation must include government, not lock it out. It's a catastrophic conceptual error to imagine government as inimical to self-regulation instead of essential, as the record shows.

      Modern liberal economics is the domain of empiricists because it is complex, and only anti-dogmatists who will try things can cope. We are stuck with government as the control system, probably forever, because systems that terminate at the business level are headless beasts that will run into walls at top speed, looking good right up to the big smack. Of course, weak regulation has a tendency to resemble no regulation, so you could say that 2008 was a return to the evils of 19th century economics, the first full-fledged Panic in a century or more, the Great Depression excepted, complete with the kind of pauperization post-Depression regs had cured until mass amnesia intervened.

     I'm reading, finally, Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach, An Eternal Golden Braid. It's about* the behavior of complex systems. Recursive systems that loop back and jump levels are smart enough to become self-regulating and self-representing, IOW conscious.

      _{* I think it's about that. Actually, it's about 750 pages, and many other things as well.}

[Bogey]

Finished The Catcher in the Rye this morning (I give it a so-so when I am in a good mood), so moving on to:

[greg]

Another one I plan on reading eventually. (Obviously trying to focus on "important" books first).
Have you read Atlas Shrugged?

[SonicMan46]

Finished The Catcher in the Rye this morning (I give it a so-so when I am in a good mood), so moving on to:

Bill - LOL!    Read that book as a teenager (and had my son also read it at the same age) - we both loved the book (i.e. me nearly 50 yrs ago!) - not sure that an Old Fart like me (not referring to you, of course) would enjoy a re-read of that book now (despite the author's recent demise) , but much enjoyment at the time!  Dave 

[Bogey]

Another one I plan on reading eventually. (Obviously trying to focus on "important" books first).
Have you read Atlas Shrugged?

Nope.  I may get to it down the road though.

[Bogey]

Bill - LOL!    Read that book as a teenager (and had my son also read it at the same age) - we both loved the book (i.e. me nearly 50 yrs ago!) - not sure that an Old Fart like me (not referring to you, of course) would enjoy a re-read of that book now (despite the author's recent demise) , but much enjoyment at the time!  Dave 

For as highly touted as it is though, Dave, I believe it should hold up for any age of the reader.  Maybe it gets its kickback from folks looking back on it when they read it at a younger age as opposed to a fresh read at an older age. 

[Renfield]

I sense the presence of Ayn Rand in this page.

You are free to imagine the sound of a lightsaber igniting, in the context. One of those mean, hissing Sith lightsabers.

[Bogey]

I sense the presence of Ayn Rand in this page.

You are free to imagine the sound of a lightsaber igniting, in the context. One of those mean, hissing Sith lightsabers.

As I posted to a close friend who rec. this book to me:
I am a bit over 50 pages in.  I know her objectivist views somewhat and that they tie into her books.  Considering myself a spiritual man and a practicing Catholic, I am sure my lens will be an interesting one, at least  for myself.  However, I have to say, that she can write.  Her descriptions of settings are wonderful, especially Katie's (who I find the most intriguing figure so far) uncle's living room and the development of characters is top-shelf IMO.  I believe that she needs to be careful with Francon and Cameron a bit as they could turn into caricatures of themselves very easily if overplayed.  In short, I am enjoying the read up to this point at a considerable level.  One of those books I could get lost in and find out it is 3 a.m. if I am not careful tonight.

[Renfield]

As I posted to a close friend who rec. this book to me:
I am a bit over 50 pages in. I know her objectivist views somewhat and that they tie into her books.

My problem with Rand is that alas, I know them too.

I would be more than happy to read a well-written novel of Rand's not built around, and promoting, this 'objectivism' of hers. Unfortunately, I am unsure if such an object exists; pun mildly intended.

[Bogey]

My problem with Rand is that alas, I know them too.

I would be more than happy to read a well-written novel of Rand's not built around, and promoting, this 'objectivism' of hers. Unfortunately, I am unsure if such an object exists; pun mildly intended.

I am actually enjoying it for just its "novel" sake alone.  Reads well in my opinion.

[MN Dave]

THE GOODNIGHT TRAIL by Ralph Compton. Fine so far.

[Franco]

Finished The Catcher in the Rye this morning (I give it a so-so when I am in a good mood), so moving on to:

I read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged last year, for the first time - I never read them when all my friends did back in high school - but I enjoyed TF much more than AS - mainly because her ideologiy was so much more prominent in a heavy-handed way in AS.

They are regular best-sellers, and sales have spiked in the last couple of years, no doubt aside from the 50th anniversary of publication of AS in 2007, many people notice that the headlines/talking points these days echo those in the book (AS).

Afterwards I read Goddess of the Market, a pretty good biography, and found Rand to be a real nut but with some decent ideas that while falling short of a full blown philosophy, she did get a few things right.