What are you currently reading?

Started by facehugger, April 07, 2007, 12:36:10 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

ritter and 11 Guests are viewing this topic.

M forever

It's a royal seal from the era of Jeroboam II, king of Israel ca. 788-747 BCE. Why do you ask?

Mozart

Quote from: M forever on June 27, 2007, 07:59:58 AM
It's a royal seal from the era of Jeroboam II, king of Israel ca. 788-747 BCE. Why do you ask?
My brother used to have that as his wallpaper, and wanted me to try and do some things with it in photoshop. I never really asked what it was.

SonicMan46

Quote from: Bogey on June 27, 2007, 06:29:27 AM
A short bio on Washington as we are going to make Mt. Vernon one of our stops while visiting the east coast:



Bill - excellent book - read that earlier in the year, but can't remember if I posted?  ::)  I need to get back to Mt. Vernon soon - like to see that new museum that has opened there - BTW, not sure 'which' route you are taking through Virginia, but I just returned from the Charlottesville area and left a few comments on the Vacation Advisory Thread - have a great time - Dave  :)

bwv 1080

Great book - very well written on another group of founding fathers I know very little about


karlhenning

Some mighty tempting reading, I see here.

Bogey

Quote from: karlhenning on June 27, 2007, 09:37:07 AM
Some mighty tempting reading, I see here.

Karl,
The Washington biography is a concise read of only about 270 pages....I am only 30 pages or so in, but am enjoying it and impressed with the detail that still is retained in the text.  Not the mammoth read you get from say Flexner's effort, of which I still need to read 2 volumes of, but one worth taking in IMO based on my start.
There will never be another era like the Golden Age of Hollywood.  We didn't know how to blow up buildings then so we had no choice but to tell great stories with great characters.-Ben Mankiewicz

Novi



A friend gave me this as a surprise ... great bloke, great gift 0:). I've been reading it a little at a time which isn't doing justice to the book. 15 minutes or so a night breaks any narrative momentum and I can never remember the characters in all that Pynchonesque complexity. So now that I'm on a break, I'm going to finish it in one go.

So far, I'm enjoying it: the encyclopaedic scope, a Sue-reading dog, the odd song-and-dance routine, the crazy merging of history and anachronism. I remember a discussion on the old board when it first came out and I think there were some pretty negative reviews (not by GMGers, but published ones). I'm only about 1/5 of the way through, but aside from a couple of iffy moments - and these are only a sentence or so - I think it's great. I do, however, think the analogy to contemporary affairs (terror, paranoia, that kind of thing) is a little heavy-handed, but I'll reserve judgement until I finish the book.

Anyone else read this yet? 
Durch alle Töne tönet
Im bunten Erdentraum
Ein leiser Ton gezogen
Für den der heimlich lauschet.

Kullervo

Finally getting around to reading this...



Not only did he change the course of history, but he was a brilliant writer as well. What a remarkable man!

PSmith08

Treadgold, Warren. A history of the Byzantine state and society. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1997.

I like it well-enough and think it's pretty good, but I am almost graduated with my A.B. in Classics, having been steeped in such page-turners as Andrew Wallace-Hadrill's Houses and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum and Sir Ronald Syme's The Roman Revolution.

I'd say, though, for a general-interest reading, that you'd be better off shelling out for Lord Norwich's three-volume set. He tells the story in a more narrative and episodic way. Treadgold (and, for that matter, Ostrogorsky) doesn't fool around with neat stories. Of course, Treadgold is trying to get about 1200 years into about a thousand pages with an eye toward completeness - relative to both state structure and cultural issues.

Justin Ignaz Franz Bieber

Quote from: Novitiate on June 30, 2007, 08:01:06 PMSo far, I'm enjoying it: the encyclopaedic scope, a Sue-reading dog, the odd song-and-dance routine, the crazy merging of history and anachronism. I remember a discussion on the old board when it first came out and I think there were some pretty negative reviews (not by GMGers, but published ones). I'm only about 1/5 of the way through, but aside from a couple of iffy moments - and these are only a sentence or so - I think it's great. I do, however, think the analogy to contemporary affairs (terror, paranoia, that kind of thing) is a little heavy-handed, but I'll reserve judgement until I finish the book.

Anyone else read this yet? 

i'm reading gravity's rainbow which is supposed to be pynchon's masterpiece. i haven't read anything else by him though.
"I am, therefore I think." -- Nietzsche

btpaul674



An okay read.

As far as this vein of literature,



is far superior IMO.

M forever

Quote from: Kullervo on July 13, 2007, 06:14:43 PM
Finally getting around to reading this...



Not only did he change the course of history, but he was a brilliant writer as well. What a remarkable man!

A great book. He didn't really change the course of history, though. He led the Arabs in their fight against the Turks, but the Ottoman Empire would have crumbled anyway, and the Arabs were screwed afterwards just as much as they had been before.

But still a great story, although a lot of what's in the book is fairly fictional or rather, he "elaborated" a bit...but a great read nevertheless, and the basis for one of the greatest movies ever made.

Kullervo

Quote from: btpaul674 on July 13, 2007, 09:52:43 PM


An okay read.

As far as this vein of literature,



is far superior IMO.


I really like Anthony Storr's "Music and the Mind"

E d o

Just finished Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach. A great quick read. Recommended.

rubio

I just finished Carlos Ruiz Zafon's "The Shadow of the Wind". It's not a book with a very deep content, but the story is magical and it is very well-written and poetic. Highly recommended! I'm going to Barcelona in one week, and it's often nice to read literature associated with the place you're visiting.

"One good thing about music, when it hits- you feel no pain" Bob Marley

btpaul674

Quote from: Kullervo on July 14, 2007, 05:13:22 AM
I really like Anthony Storr's "Music and the Mind"

I read that one in high school. Very informative, and I would also recommend the benchmark "Emotion and Meaning in Music" by Leonard B. Meyer.

Storr's book isn't really along the cognitive vein in comparison to the two I mentioned, but worthwhile.

Huron has a new book in the works dealing with emotion and memory centered around the functions of the amygdala. Fascinating.

Kiddiarni

#356
Yes, There's lot of those "What are you listening to", "Last movie you watched" etc.

I wanted one about literature, so I decided to start it :D

Currently I'm reading Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.  I like it, quite interesting.

So, what are you reading? Or have recently read?

EDIT:

Embarrassing.
Quote from: Oscar WildeThere is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.


Kiddiarni



Yeah, I know, extremely mainstream.
Quote from: Oscar WildeThere is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

Kullervo

Quote from: Kiddiarni on July 16, 2007, 10:58:59 AM


Yeah, I know, extremely mainstream.

Not mainstream, just popular - and with good reason. It's a great book. I recently bought a collection of his short stories but I haven't picked it up yet.