What Book(s) are you currently reading?

[Riggo-toni]

Inspired by the movie and the TV series threads. I suspect (hope) this may get interesting, given the intellectual depth and diversity of our beloved board.

I'm the world's slowest reader, but I'm fairly persistent. I'm about halfway through 3 different books right now.

 

Anatomy of Terror by Ali Soufan - Bought this from Amazon and haven't been able to put it down. Easy, engaging read about the rise and fall of Al Quaeda and the rise of ISIL.  Lots of details on Zarqawi and his tense relationship with OBL that I was unaware of. I may bury myself in this one over the weekend and finish it off.

 

The Crusades Vol 3 - The Kingdom of Acre and Later Crusades by Steven Runciman.  I read volume 1 years ago, and struggled to get about halfway through vol 2. Over Memorial Day weekend I decided to skip ahead to Vol 3. Not an easy read as it gets tough separating all the Bohemonds, Ibelins, et al, but the parts about Frederick II and Louis were quite informative. Runciman's 3 volume set is probably considered the definitive work on the Crusades, but if you want a more enjoyable read, Geoffrey Regan's book Lionhearts is my favorite on the subject.

 

From Manet to Manhattan - Been struggling for months to get through this. It's a history of the modern art market. I was curious because my father is an art dealer, and he wrote about several people featured in this book when he was doing a blog. Parts of the book are indeed quite interesting (to me, at least), but it often goes into too many details for me to keep everything straight.

[Mooka]

The Accusation - short stories from North Korea   (had to be smuggled out of there, writer still lives in NK) 

 

https://www.amazon.com/Accusation-Forbidden-Stories-Inside-North/dp/0802126200/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

 

 

Absolutely bizarre country. Happy for the author that his stories were able to get out of there, wonder if he'll ever be able to collect any of the money from the book sales in his lifetime. 

[Renegade7]

CEHv9 Study Guide, good 600 pages with some labs in them

[FanboyOf91]

Epistulae Morales ("Letters from a Stoic") by Seneca the Younger - 120 letters of advice on how and why to decomplexify your daily life the Stoic Way. Still good after 2000 years, though I can't help but notice how awfully rich he is for a philosopher who espouses simple living.

 

The Spirit of the Laws by Montesquieu - Yes, this was the one read by the Founding Fathers while devising the Constitution. Painfully brilliant book on political theory: I still haven't go past the first part about the differences between republican, monarchical, and despotic governments because I have to set down the book and ruminate for an hour after each page.

 

The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931 by Adam Tooze - The story of the attempted founding of the (First) American Empire by President Woodrow Wilson in the closing stages of World War I and how he ****ed it up. Not only because he was an elitist liberal professor whose theoretical vision of the world was blatantly out of sync with its actuality, but because he was an insular Southern segregationist who believed he was preserving 'white civiliation' by dismantling the old European empires. His fumbling of the Republic of China and the Japanese Empire is sadly familiar. Also, how the Entente nearly beat the Bolsheviks until they broke their ties with the Kaiser (they stopped caring afterwards and...well...) and why the French and the British became such steady allies of the Americans (to balance against the Germans). Fun fact: by 1916, the GDP of the United States was equivalent to the GDP of the entire British Empire.

[Zguy28]

Besides my daily study of the bible, I continually graze on the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes.

[Riggo-toni]

It might come as a shock to most people, but Montesquieu and others studied by the Founding Fathers drew much of their theories from Machiavelli. Machiavelli has been horribly misunderstood because most people equate him with The Prince and with despots, but his greatest work was Discourses on Livy in which he reasoned that a Republic was preferable to a monarchy, that it was better to have an open contentious society than one in which differing opinions were suppressed, that there needed to be an independent judiciary along with checks and balances on power, and that to protect a republic, the citizens needed the right to bare arms.

[Dan T.]

I just finished Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History by Erik Larson.  It tells the story of the devastating hurricane that ravaged Galveston, Texas, on September 8, 1900, killing as many as 12,000 people, still the single deadliest day in U.S. history.  For a number of reasons, the United States essentially lost track of this storm, so it struck the Gulf Coast with little to no warning.  Larson weaves a minute-by-minute account of the storm's approach and the destruction it caused with an account of the early history of the fledgling U.S. Weather Bureau, of weather forecasting in general, and of Galveston's doomed hopes of being THE major Gulf U.S. port instead of Houston, which it was primed to do before this storm destroyed the city.  Much is told through the eyes of Isaac Cline, a Galveston doctor who was also a Weather Bureau station chief in Galveston.

 

Isaac's Storm is the third book I've read from Erik Larson , and they've all been really good.  I would recommend any and all three:

 

Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America is a weird amalgam.  It combines an interesting account of the planning and staging of the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, which was essentially The U.S.A.'s coming out party as a world power, along with a detailed account of a bizarre serial murderer who had created a real life chamber of horrors near the fair site and was luring fair goers as some of his victims. 

 

In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin tells the story of William Dodd and his family living in Berlin right on the cusp of Adolph Hitler's Nazi Party terrifying rise to power.

 

 

 

[Corcaigh]

I don't read as much as I should outside of work, so the following are the best examples of what I'm currently working through that aren't entirely work-related.

 

Envisioning Information by Edward Tufte.  Just a beautiful combination of art, science, and design, and how we present and consume information. He has three other great books on a similar vein, but this one might be the best.

https://www.amazon.com/Envisioning-Information-Edward-R-Tufte/dp/0961392118/

 

 

The most human, human by Brian Christian. 'What artificial intelligence teaches us about being alive.'

https://www.amazon.com/Most-Human-Artificial-Intelligence-Teaches/dp/0307476707

 

[Riggo-toni]

1 hour ago, Dan T. said:

Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America is a weird amalgam.  It combines an interesting account of the planning and staging of the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, which was essentially The U.S.A.'s coming out party as a world power, along with a detailed account of a bizarre serial murderer who had created a real life chamber of horrors near the fair site and was luring fair goers as some of his victims. 

I bought my wife this book for Christmas a couple years back, and she said she loved it.

[Dan T.]

47 minutes ago, Corcaigh said:

I don't read as much as I should outside of work, so the following are the best examples of what I'm currently working through that aren't entirely work-related.

 

Envisioning Information by Edward Tufte.  Just a beautiful combination of art, science, and design, and how we present and consume information. He has three other great books on a similar vein, but this one might be the best.

https://www.amazon.com/Envisioning-Information-Edward-R-Tufte/dp/0961392118/

 

 

 

I actually attended, wow, a long while back,  a seminar by Edward Tufte on presenting information visually.  That book and two others were part of the package attendees received.  The books themselves are just visually beautiful works of art.

 

One part of his presentation concerned the Challenger shuttle disaster, and how the engineers who designed the rocket boosters failed to adequately communicate their concerns about the vulnerability of the O-rings.  He broke down the charts the engineers used to make their argument and showed how poorly they communicated important information.  He then showed alternative visual aids that much more clearly and dramatically laid out the problem.  Obviously too late for those astronauts who lost their lives when the engineers' concerns fell on deaf ears/uncomprehending eyes.

 

Another thing I remember is a chart he called perhaps the best statistical graphic ever created, depicting losses suffered by Napoleon's army during his 1812 Russian campaign.

[Corcaigh]

2 hours ago, Dan T. said:

 

I actually attended, wow, a long while back,  a seminar by Edward Tufte on presenting information visually.  That book and two others were part of the package attendees received.  The books themselves are just visually beautiful works of art.

 

One part of his presentation concerned the Challenger shuttle disaster, and how the engineers who designed the rocket boosters failed to adequately communicate their concerns about the vulnerability of the O-rings.  He broke down the charts the engineers used to make their argument and showed how poorly they communicated important information.  He then showed alternative visual aids that much more clearly and dramatically laid out the problem.  Obviously too late for those astronauts who lost their lives when the engineers' concerns fell on deaf ears/uncomprehending eyes.

 

Another thing I remember is a chart he called perhaps the best statistical graphic ever created, depicting losses suffered by Napoleon's army during his 1812 Russian campaign.

 

He still does these seminars. He did three in the DC metro area last week, in fact.

 

His big theme is ... don't dumb it down. People can understand complex stuff if it's presented well, and to be deeply skeptical when information is poorly and simplistically presented.

 

Here's Minard's chart on the cost of war.

 

 

and a translated, more legible version:

 

[Destino]

Assassin's Fate by Robin Hobb (Margaret Astrid Lindholm).  I was a teenager when the first book in this series was published.     

[JCB]

Making my way through three work books:

 

Mark Lilla, The Shipwrecked Mind: On Reaction

Juergensmeyer, Kitts, and Jerryson, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Violence

Gerard Jones and Will Jacobs, The Comic Book Heroes

 

And for fun, I took the plunge and began Garth Risk Hallberg's City on Fire. Meaty but very satisfying so far.

[Going Commando]

Thanks for starting this thread.  GACOLB wanted to start a book club a while back, maybe we can have those kinds of discussions in here.

 

I'm not really reading anything worth talking about right now.  I've been tired at the end of the day lately, so I will just watch TV until I fall asleep.  I'll start something this weekend.

[StillUnknown]

reading I Am Not A Serial Killer by Dan Wells, quick, easy, and very entertaining read. There's a movie for it on Netflix, which also got good reviews

 

listening to the Graphic Audio for Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson. Its the 2nd of his planned 10 book epic. The next book comes out in November so I'm going through the first 2 & half now.

[BornaSkinsFan83]

"Sh?gun" (Asian Saga, #1) by James Clavell

 

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/402093.Sh_gun

 

Just started it but from what I can tell so far it's basically Game of Thrones-type politics and war in 16th Century feudal Japan. 

 

 

Two comic books I'm reading right now are Alan Moore's "Swamp Thing" run (almost done) and Brian Vaughan's "Saga" (probably the best comic going right now) 

1 hour ago, stevemcqueen1 said:

Thanks for starting this thread.  GACOLB wanted to start a book club a while back, maybe we can have those kinds of discussions in here.

 

 

I'm still down

[JCB]

BASF, my wife and I *love* Saga! Couldn't agree with you more.

 

And that Moore run on Swamp Thing is a stone-cold classic.

[Skinsfan1311]

Great idea for a thread.

We have the good fortune of living a couple of blocks from the library. 

I'm in the midst of an historical fiction jag, so I'm revisiting Neal Stephensons  "The System of the World" which takes place in early modern Europe,  in the 1600's

This one was special, given  our recent trip to London. We visited places where the story took.place, (The Tower of London, London Bridge, St Pauls Cathedral ) 

I literally got goosebumps,  at St Pauls Cathedral,  when I saw the final resting places where some of the central characters are interred.  At the Tower of London, we took the Yeoman Warders tour, and many of the stops on the tour, and stores that he told, are in the novel.  It was easy to envision parts of the story taking place, right in front of me. 

If you're into history,  and Europe, I can highly recommend Stephensons "Baroque Cycle" of books.

[TD_washingtonredskins]

The Templar Legacy, by Steve Berry. Apparently these are similar to the Dan Brown series of books. 

[Burgold]

City of Stairs by Robert Bennett

[thebluefood]

Bumpin' this because I'm finally getting back in the habit of reading at night.

 

Rediscovered my copies of "All the President's Men" and "Here I Stand" (biography of Martin Luther) so I'm starting there. Here's hoping a new start means new and better habits (especially because I'm too cheap to spring for cable or a Netflix subscription).

[Bang]

Citizen Soldiers, Stephen A. Ambrose.

Re-reading it, actually..  if you want to see how this country won world war 2, and how this country CAN be when we work together, this is a terrific book.

Histories can tend to be dull because they focus so much on the intricacies of planning and the political backdrops of what happened, without much actual description of the actions that take place beyond statistical analysis.

This book.. well, first off, Ambrose was one of the greatest WWII European theater historians we've ever had. He spent thousands of hours with vets (from both sides).. his books are collections of anecdotes threaded together chronologically so as to get the widest view of the action from many different perspectives.

Citizen Soldiers concentrates on the GI, from landing in Normandy, on through to the surrender of Germany.

How they handled combat, how they handled tactics through improvisation, how they overcame obstacles and achieved their goals.

it's one thing to say the 1st Army achieved it's objective, but to get the story of the battle that achieved the objective from the perspective of the private, of a lieutenant, a medic, a mechanic who repaired battle vehicles, a German tank commander, or a grenadier on the other side of the hedgerow.. this tell the story of what happens better than any stats and dates.

If you enjoy WWII histories, this is an outstanding book.

 

that and the Ed Brubaker run on Captain America.

Awesome!

 

~Bang

[Skinsfan1311]

Great idea for a thread.

We have the good fortune of living a couple of blocks from the library. 

I'm in the midst of an historical fiction jag, so I'm revisiting Neal Stephensons  "The System of the World"    it takes place in early modern Europe,  in the 1600's

This one was special,  especially given  our recent trip to London, when we visited places where the story took.place, (The Tower of London, London Bridge, St Pauls Cathedral ) 

I literally got goosebumps,  at St Pauls Cathedral,  when I saw where.some of the central characters are interred.  While visiting the Tower,  I envisioned where a lot of the story took place. 

If you're into history,  and Europe, I can highly recommend Stephensons "Baroque Cycle" of books.

I just finished "The Name of the Wind" by Patrick Rothfuss.  It's his debut

novel. It's a fantasy novel, that satisfied my inner-Tolkien. He's a great stor teller and I look forward to his next one.

[Kilmer17]

I read Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign over my trip.  It was a wonkish, but interesting read.  If you are a political nerd I recommend it.  Robby Mook gets eviscerated.  

[LadySkinsFan]

I'm taking a break from reading non-fiction, so a couple of lesbian romances.