What are you currently reading?

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

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Kiddiarni

Quote from: Kullervo on July 16, 2007, 11:28:11 AM
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.

One of those mustreads.  Interesting, he did write other things... I always thought he was a one-hit wonder.
Quote from: Oscar WildeThere is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

bwv 1080

Reading this to my 7 year old at night:


SonicMan46

The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West (2006) by Niall Ferguson - 650+ pages of text (not including a LONG intro & ending sections); just getting started (up to the start of WWI) - has received an overall 4* review on Amazon (CLICK on image) w/ several low comments that seem to reflect religious & philosophic differences & opinions - certainly is stimulating, but will be a long read (if I make it!  I'm always reading 4-5 books @ any given time & don't finish all of them) -  :o 8)


Kullervo

Quote from: bwv 1080 on July 16, 2007, 12:07:02 PM
Reading this to my 7 year old at night:



Charles Wuorinen make that into an opera, didn't he?

grandma

#364
Sonic Man,

I did reply to your post but am wondering if you missed it,
1) because you went out of town or
2) because I made an error posting the reply and my post went inside the box where only the quote from you should have been.

In any event, here is that post again.
-----------------------------------------------------

Anne - where are you?    Can't believe I was the last one to leave a post here - 


Hi!
Thank you for shedding some light on plasmids.  This second book I'm reading, Plague by Wendy Orent is more technical regarding the incredible adjustments that the plague bacterium uses to defeat man's immune system.

Before I'm finished, I'll have to draw a picture for myself.  I like the comparison of a plane coming in under the radar.  No wonder the deaths occur so swiftly!  A person is almost dead before the immune system knows there's an enemy even on the horizon!

Yops, the V antigen, Lipid A.  These plus other things have to go into the picture.  It is fascinating how Y. pestis has so many methods at its disposal for killing other cells.  It really is a professional killing machine.

I was reading the book and that's why I had not replied.

Vladimir Motin says, "Yersinia pestis is the yardstick.  It is the deadliest of all disease agents, the one by which all other germs are measured."

I am reading a different book now:

The Great Influenza (The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History) with an afterword on Avian Flu written by John M. Berry author of Rising Tide.

The book begins around 1900 and talks about the fact that medicine had advanced very little in the past 2,000 years.  It talks about Wm. Henry Welch, Simon Flexner, John D. Rockefeller, Oswald T. Avery, Wm. Park and Anna Wessel Williams, Rufus Cole, Paul A. Lewis, Richard Shope.  It devotes the first 150 out of 461 pages to the early development of medicine and the scientific method in the United States.  It also discusses the early competition with France and Germany, the fact that the early US doctors had go to Europe to learn anything useful to medicine as US requirements to be met before attending med school were so lax and pitiful.

From there it begins to talk about the flu and the way it killed so many peoply around the entire world, the fact that it came in waves (first in a milder form), and later in violent form, and the role that our own immune systems played in all this.

Excellent book!  I would encourage everyone to read it.

BTW Anne is grandma while I am helping my daughter and family move to a new job.  When I return home, I will be Anne again.

bwv 1080

Quote from: Kullervo on July 16, 2007, 04:42:13 PM
Charles Wuorinen make that into an opera, didn't he?

Yes, although perhaps it would make a better Tim Burton movie

bwv 1080

Quote from: SonicMan on July 16, 2007, 02:04:41 PM
The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West (2006) by Niall Ferguson - 650+ pages of text (not including a LONG intro & ending sections); just getting started (up to the start of WWI) - has received an overall 4* review on Amazon (CLICK on image) w/ several low comments that seem to reflect religious & philosophic differences & opinions - certainly is stimulating, but will be a long read (if I make it!  I'm always reading 4-5 books @ any given time & don't finish all of them) -  :o 8)



Another book on my to read list.  Ferguson is brilliant IMO - I think his real talent is combining a deep knowledge of economics with the systems approach of a Braudel and using that to shed new perspectives on seemingly familiar topics. 

SonicMan46

Quote from: grandma on July 16, 2007, 05:54:05 PM
Sonic Man,

I did reply to your post but am wondering if you missed it,
1) because you went out of town or
2) because I made an error posting the reply and my post went inside the box where only the quote from you should have been.


Grandma - please explain yourself - you (or her) have only 6 posts - I'm usually up on responding to posts but can't remember one from you - please 'reference' the post & I'll be glad to review & respond - thanks.  :)

bwv 1080

I just finished another good WW2 book - Max Hasting's Armageddon.  He does an admiral job of discussing the last year of the war in Europe (from the end of Bagration and Normandy to the fall of Berlin) from both the Eastern and Western sides.   Gives the Russians the credit they deserve for destroying the German army - he convincingly illustrates how the Russians by 1944 had the most effective ground army in the war, contrasted to the politically motivated and timid maneuvers of the Western allies after the breakout from Normandy.  Spotlights little known areas of the West, such as Holland's Hunger Winter and the fighting to clear out the estuaries into Antwerp.  Balances the reality of Russian atrocities in Germany, notably East Prussia with those committed in Russia by the Germans. 

rockerreds


karlhenning


rockerreds

Quote from: karlhenning on July 17, 2007, 08:21:15 AM
And . . . is it any good?
Yes,she really captures the tenor of the times that Bernstein was trying to establish himself in.

grandma

Quote from: SonicMan on July 16, 2007, 06:23:28 PM
Grandma - please explain yourself - you (or her) have only 6 posts - I'm usually up on responding to posts but can't remember one from you - please 'reference' the post & I'll be glad to review & respond - thanks.  :)


Sonic Man,

Anne and grandma are one and the same person.  I am helping my daughter and her family by babysitting (4-yr-old and 14-month-old) while the family relocates from Wilmington, NC to O'Fallon Il.

Before I left home to come to O'Fallon, I should have signed out of gmg but I forgot.  Consequently the only way I am able to post is by becoming a new persona.  The new persona is named "grandma."  I will be using that name until I go home July 28th.  After that date, at home with my own computer, I will again post under the name "Anne."

The reason "grandma" has only 6 posts is because she just came into existence this week while I have been in O'Fallon.

If you look at reply # 324 on June 24, 2007 at 10:42:41 am on this thread you will see that it is the reply I mentioned in my last last post as grandma (on July 17, 2007 11:54:05).

SonicMan46

Quote from: grandma on July 17, 2007, 02:08:51 PM
Anne and grandma are one and the same person.  I am helping my daughter and her family by babysitting (4-yr-old and 14-month-old) while the family relocates from Wilmington, NC to O'Fallon Il.

......If you look at reply # 324 on June 24, 2007 at 10:42:41 am on this thread you will see that it is the reply I mentioned in my last last post as grandma (on July 17, 2007 11:54:05).

Anne, a.k.a. Grandma, thanks for the explanation - my fault for not reading the other posts closely - looking forward to your return under your 'old name' - good luck in you role as 'babysitter' - I'm sure that it is hectic but enjoyable - Dave  :D

Tancata

#374


Collected Steven J Gould - "The Richness of Life"

Reading this because I'm supposed to be reviewing it for a low-grade Dublin paper  :P. Not really digging it that much, to be honest.

Gould seems to have been much more of an institution in the States than 'round these parts. Perhaps that justifies the third of the book dedicated to his homely yarns about baseball and history. Great pieces here and there though. And a nice chunky extract from The Structure of Evolutionary Theory - conveys the impenetrability of the full work admirably  >:D.

Also, annoying introductions to each section by Steven Rose, setting up Gould as someone rather different to who he actually was.

Solitary Wanderer

Currently reading this for the 3rd time. Its nasty and paints the blackest portrait possible but its still entertaining :P

'I lingered round them, under that benign sky: watched the moths fluttering among the heath and harebells, listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass, and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.' ~ Emily Bronte

George

Quote from: Solitary Wanderer on July 17, 2007, 04:05:12 PM
Currently reading this for the 3rd time. Its nasty and paints the blackest portrait possible but its still entertaining :P



According to my calculations, all you need now is the pajamas and you'll have all things Frank.  ;D

grandma

Quote from: SonicMan on July 17, 2007, 02:17:03 PM
Anne, a.k.a. Grandma, thanks for the explanation - my fault for not reading the other posts closely - looking forward to your return under your 'old name' - good luck in you role as 'babysitter' - I'm sure that it is hectic but enjoyable - Dave  :D

Dave,

I am glad we are communicating again.  I do blame myself for not correcting my post earlier.  Any more good books to recommend?

Solitary Wanderer

Quote from: George on July 17, 2007, 06:27:37 PM
According to my calculations, all you need now is the pajamas and you'll have all things Frank.  ;D

;D


Well, I've resisted buying these :P





Just the music and books for me ;)
'I lingered round them, under that benign sky: watched the moths fluttering among the heath and harebells, listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass, and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.' ~ Emily Bronte