What are you currently reading?

[Mandryka]

McClellan is who I think of whenever I hear someone talk of the modern Republican Party as "the party of Lincoln". Every single current person saying that would have been a staunch McClellan voter in 1864. Especially the current leader, who also likes to use that phrase.

The reason I said he was interesting is that the documentary presents him as a brilliant trainer of armies and an inspiration to soldiers, and a thoroughly modest and appealing chap  . . . who kind of had little appetite for battle.

Ah - I see that @JBS has said much the same.

[Mandryka]

Re: West Virginia
Prior to 1860, it was simply the westernmost part of Virginia, but heavily dominated by Unionists. When Virginia seceded, this group of counties objected, and with help from the Federals organized their own state and remained in the Union. IOW they seceded from Virginia with support from the anti-secessionists.  For further details, best look on the Internet. Nowadays, WVa is the Trumpiest of Trump states.

But there would have been some slaves there. I'd ascribe Sutpen's naivete to authorial design.


Re: McClellan
He was excellent at organization and logistics, but highly risk averse. So he got the Army of the Potomac into great shape to fight battles, but was so scared of losing battles he never wanted to fight them.

Re: Canada
As British territory it was neutral, and the Confederacy liked to base spies there. At least once Confederates used it as a base to stage a major raid on St Alban's, Vermont.

Re Sutpen - in fact he comes across the slavery system in West Virginia when he goes on a long journey with his family when he's 10. But as a child he appears to have lived in a real rural backwater, where the land wasn't divided up into owned plots. In fact, Faulkner makes a point of stressing that West Virginia wasn't a separate state at the time of the war - one of the characters mentions it when Sutpen's story is being recounted - so it may have some significance.

Re Canada and Britain - it's something that's coming up now in the documentaries I'm watching - I'm up to 1863 - Britain's involvement seems complex because they needed cotton.

[Mandryka]

Thanks to all Americans who have been so helpful!

(And Kiwis. And Romanians . . .)

[SimonNZ]

Starting:



Story of a Death Foretold: The Coup Against Salvador Allende, September 11, 1973

[vers la flamme]

Why we get sick, Randolph M. Nesse. The authors explain that we have some sickness because it enhances (or enhanced) human survival and reproduction.

Haven't read that, but I read a book last year called Survival of the Sickest by Sharon Moanem which explores a similar premise.

[Spotted Horses]

You can also see that in Lincoln's Gettysburg Address

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

https://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/gettysburg.htm

[Ganondorf]

"Not bloody likely." Quite a bold thing for a woman to say in 1914.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Haven't read that, but I read a book last year called Survival of the Sickest by Sharon Moanem which explores a similar premise.

I read that book years ago. I will revisit it soon. I'm in the middle of Nesse et al., but they don't precisely explain what diseases enhanced human reproduction and survival through what mechanism. The authors focus on survival and reproduction, but I think some diseases could have increased genetic mutations. Survival is beneficial to human species only if it increases reproduction. And high reproduction is beneficial only if it increases diversification of species because the environment periodically changes.

[Irons]

One of my weekly joys is tucked away on BBC2, Between the Covers where the delectable Sara Cox  with four guests discuss books they are currently reading.

 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000n7sl

[Iota]

I finished the above a while ago, of which one Sunday Times reviewer says in the cover's promo quotes, 'Everything seems effortless and breezy, despite Lerner's unbridled intellect', which I think just about sums it up. The book's energetic candour and head-turningly good prose seems to come out so naturally, it's really a special gift.
Some lingering on certain episodes meant the narrative had a bit of wonkiness at times for me, where maybe obsessiveness chased its own tail a bit too long, but I had a feeling I may have missed some wider general points being adumbrated throughout the book, while I was caught up in more local moments of the narrative, so perhaps a re-read would rectify that.

[vers la flamme]

Finished my second read of Pale Fire. This book is genius, and so funny. Much better the second time around. I hope there are Nabokov fans here who can tell me what to read next. I've also read and enjoyed greatly Pnin and Lolita.

[AnotherSpin]

There are still free ideas / politically "incorrect" views in modern literature. Telling something like that on social networks or in a TV interview would get the author cancelled in no time.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

The Lost Amazon: The Pioneering Expeditions of Richard Evans Schultes. Wade Davis.

[AnotherSpin]

[Florestan]

A lovely book from which Dittersdorf comes out as a decent, hard-working and cheerful, ie extremely likeable, person, bent on enjoying, and making the most out of, what life had in stock for him and all the while preserving his dignity and self-respect, rather than on constantly whining and complaining about the world's not revolving around him and his wishes. Very much like Haydn, actually. Highly recommended, even if only as an antidote to the egomania of later such works (Berlioz, I'm looking at you!).

[vers la flamme]

Despair, my fourth Nabokov in a short span. So far so good. Feels like VVN was channeling Dostoevsky a bit here.

[Spotted Horses]

Akin, by Emma Donoghue



I've read a lot of Donoghue in the past, starting with LGBT themed novels and historical fiction. This one takes place in the present time, but involves an exploration of the past.

An 80 year old man is planning a trip to Nice, France, where he lived as a child before fleeing WWII. Two events unsettle his plans. He found a packet of photographs left behind by his mother which seem to have been taken in Nice during the war. His grandnephew is left without a guardian after the child's grandmother dies. The child had been living with her because his father died of a drug overdose and his mother is in prison on drug charges. In the course of his trip the old man learns about his Mother's activities during the war, and he develops his relationship with his grandnephew. The story is convincing, though a bit contrived, but my main problem is that so much of the book consists of an 80 year old bickering with an 11 year old.

[Ganondorf]

About time I read this. The Great Race of Yith is such an intriguing creation.

[SimonNZ]

Starting:

[AnotherSpin]

Starting:

I have it line. Please share your impressions.