What are you currently reading?

[Florestan]

The Romanian translation of the Polish original title Dzieje grzechu is The Fascination of Sin, the English translations I found on the internet render it as Wages of Sin and Google Translate gives The History of Sin. 

Be it as it may, it's a very good novel written in a sumptuous style.

[Henk]

[Ganondorf]

Started reading Jules Verne's first masterpiece.

[Florestan]

Started reading Jules Verne's first masterpiece.

You surely mean re-reading. 

[vandermolen]

Just finished this - an account of the disastrous 1942 raid on the occupied port of Dieppe:

[vandermolen]

Now reading this short but helpful book for the second time:

[AnotherSpin]

The central ideas of Ramana Maharshi are set out in David Godman's book. The life of Godman, a Briton who has lived most of his life in India, is in itself a remarkable story, which we may learn more fully some day.

[SimonNZ]

Started:

[AnotherSpin]

[AnotherSpin]

[Florestan]

Words about reality? Bah, humbug!

[AnotherSpin]

Words about reality? Bah, humbug!

Words could be a pointer.

[Cato]

The World of the Huns by Professor Otto Maenchen-Helfen, who was a phenomenon in the world of meticulous research.

He learned not only Chinese, but Early and Middle Chinese, to handle any original documents without translations by others.

He will spend several pages on the meaning of a sentence, which others understood in one manner, but in which he found a possible ambiguity, allowing another interpretation.   

Anyway, the archeology and other sources indicate the Huns were not primitive cave men, but rather sophisticated people, who had invented e.g. better bows than the Europeans had.

To be sure, their intelligence did not prevent them from committing horrible atrocities, but we have seen that in modern times.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Started:

Love the book.

[BWV 1080]

The World of the Huns by Professor Otto Maenchen-Helfen, who was a phenomenon in the world of meticulous research.

He learned not only Chinese, but Early and Middle Chinese, to handle any original documents without translations by others.

He will spend several pages on the meaning of a sentence, which others understood in one manner, but in which he found a possible ambiguity, allowing another interpretation.   

Anyway, the archeology and other sources indicate the Huns were not primitive cave men, but rather sophisticated people, who had invented e.g. better bows than the Europeans had.

To be sure, their intelligence did not prevent them from committing horrible atrocities, but we have seen that in modern times.

The question is whether the Xiongnu and the Huns were same group or the Huns were pushed West by Xiongnu migration after being pushed back by the Han?

[BWV 1080]

[Cato]

The question is whether the Xiongnu and the Huns were same group or the Huns were pushed West by Xiongnu migration after being pushed back by the Han?

The author says No, they are not the same.  For the other question...more tomorrow! 

[BWV 1080]

The author says No, they are not the same.  For the other question...more tomorrow! 

However, recent genetic studies support the Xiongnus origin, for example:

Recently, hundreds of ancient genomes were analyzed from Central Asia, Mongolia, and China, from which we aimed to identify putative source populations for the above-mentioned groups. In this study, we have sequenced 9 Hun, 143 Avar, and 113 Hungarian conquest period samples and identified three core populations, representing immigrants from each period with no recent European ancestry. Our results reveal that this "immigrant core" of both Huns and Avars likely originated in present day Mongolia, and their origin can be traced back to Xiongnus (Asian Huns), as suggested by several historians.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982222007321

also the genetic section of the wiki article on the origin of the Huns

[Brian]

Going to England in 5 weeks, so starting a run of historical and classic English literature!

Emma (Jane Austen)
The Long View (Elizabeth Jane Howard)
The Giant O'Brien (Hilary Mantel)
The Corner That Held Them (Sylvia Townsend Warner)
The Slaves of Solitude (Patrick Hamilton)
Adam Bede (George Eliot)
The Go-Between (L.P. Hartley)

If I finish it all, I'll switch to a few eclectic works of English non-fiction:

Hons and Rebels (Jessica Mitford)
James Acaster's Classic Scrapes (James Acaster)
Londoners (Craig Taylor)

[brewski]

From a recent issue of The New Yorker, this eye-opening profile of sci-fi writer Samuel R. Delany, written by Julian Lucas. I recall reading some of his work decades ago, but clearly there is much more to Delany than I knew.

For years, they lived happily in Delany's eight-room corner apartment on Eighty-second Street and Amsterdam Avenue. There were so many thousands of books, Rickett told me, that he made Delany buy fire extinguishers. ("Not to put out any fires," he clarified, "but just so we could fight our way out.")

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/07/10/samuel-r-delany-profile

-Bruce