What book are you reading?

[The Evil Genius]

If you like Winslow, his City on Fire was excellent. The sequel to it drops this year. 

[Ball Security]

7 hours ago, The Evil Genius said:

If you like Winslow, his City on Fire was excellent. The sequel to it drops this year. 

Yep.  Read that in January.  It was the first Winslow book I’ve read.

[Spaceman Spiff]

Still reading some Max Allan Collins books about Quarry.  But I think I'm gonna take a break after this one I'm on and check out Don Winslow after.  

[Skinsfan1311]

7 hours ago, Spaceman Spiff said:

Still reading some Max Allan Collins books about Quarry.  But I think I'm gonna take a break after this one I'm on and check out Don Winslow after.  

I suggest starting with "The Force"  

It is powerful.

[Skinsfan1311]

7 hours ago, Spaceman Spiff said:

Still reading some Max Allan Collins books about Quarry.  But I think I'm gonna take a break after this one I'm on and check out Don Winslow after.  

I suggest starting with "The Force"  

It is powerful.

[NickyJ]

After finally finishing Dune, I've started All Creatures Great and Small. It's a breath of fresh air with mostly short, episodic stories. Most of them are happy, a few of them sad, all of them told in such a way that its a perfect book to read a few chapters in one sitting, put it down to read something heavier for a while, and come back to later without feeling like I've lost track of important details.

 

Quote

I opened the door and looked into a round, eager face. Its owner, a plump man in Wellington boots, leaned confidently against the railings.“Hello, ’ello, Mr. Farnon in?” “Not at the moment. Can I help you?” “Aye, give ’im a message when he comes in. Tell ’im Bert Sharpe of Barrow Hills has a cow wot wants borin’ out?” “Boring out?” “That’s right, she’s nobbut going on three cylinders.” “Three cylinders?” “Aye and if we don’t do summat she’ll go wrang in ’er ewer, won’t she?” “Very probably.” “Don’t want felon, do we?” “Certainly not.” “O.K., you’ll tell ’im, then. Ta-ta.” I returned thoughtfully to the sitting-room. It was disconcerting but I had listened to my first case history without understanding a word of it.

---------------

“He’s womitin’, sorr. Womitin’ bad.” I immediately felt on secure ground now and my brain began to seethe with diagnostic procedures. “How long after eating does he vomit?” The hand went to the ear again. “Phwhat’s that?” I leaned close to the side of his head, inflated my lungs and bawled: “When does he womit—I mean vomit?” Comprehension spread slowly across Mr. Mulligan’s face. He gave a gentle smile. “Oh aye, he’s womitin’. Womitin’ bad, sorr.” I didn’t feel up to another effort so I told him I would see to it and asked him to call later.

The author based the book on his career starting in 1937. 84 years and an ocean separate us, but with working in a computer repair shop and trying to talk to people to understand what their problems are, I have never so truly understood an author.

Edited February 7, 2023 by NickyJ

[The 12th Commandment]

1 hour ago, NickyJ said:

After finally finishing Dune, I've started All Creatures Great and Small. It's a breath of fresh air with mostly short, episodic stories. Most of them are happy, a few of them sad, all of them told in such a way that its a perfect book to read a few chapters in one sitting, put it down to read something heavier for a while, and come back to later without feeling like I've lost track of important details.

 

The author based the book on his career starting in 1937. 84 years and an ocean separate us, but with working in a computer repair shop and trying to talk to people to understand what their problems are, I have never so truly understood an author.

We started watching the remake of the tv show (which we love) and I'd been thinking about checking out the book.  Appreciate the review!

[NickyJ]

12 minutes ago, The 12th Commandment said:

We started watching the remake of the tv show (which we love) and I'd been thinking about checking out the book.  Appreciate the review!

I definitely recommend it. I've seen an episode here or there of the new series and it seems fairly close to it. The original series that I saw so much when it was broadcast Saturdays on PBS were extremely faithful, at least for the first few episodes that I've rewatched or remember. Both do an excellent job at capturing the mood of the stories, and the book's are written in good humor.

[Corcaigh]

An Immense World by Ed Young

 

 

 

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

City On Fire was ****ing amazing. 

[Fergasun]

I am reading what I consider one of the original "Conspiracy Pornography" pieces of fiction ever been written.  Not going to name it, but it was written in the mid 90s, allegedly by a deprogrammed ritual sex slave victim and her former-CIA (or CIA familar contractor) rescuing husband.  This is the source material for "the politicians are a cabal of pedopholic, ritualistic sacrificing, baby devouring evil satanic worshippers".  

 

The conspiracy is deep and as far as I got, Gerald Ford, Richard Byrd, Bill Clinton, and Dick Cheney are all part of it. 

 

If anything, I would think a book like this is more a mind-control and brainwashing demonstration from the CIA.  If I was busy toppling governments, conducting foreign government regime changing assasinations and building an internal deep state force,being accused of providing sex slaves to high office holders would be a nice distracting false flag story for people to chase.  

 

This is for sure the Tom Sawyer of QAnon.

[Ball Security]

Demon Copperhead - Barbara Kingsolver

 

It’s a modern day Dickens - David Copperfield story set in southwest VA.  
 

Incredible book.  First Kingsolver book I’ve read.

[Chump Bailey]

On 2/10/2023 at 9:53 PM, Corcaigh said:

An Immense World by Ed Young

 

 

 

 

 

That looks interesting. Those bumps around an alligator's mouth are sensors for detecting motion in the water. That's all they're designed to do. Fascinating stuff.

The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market

[NickyJ]

"The question is one of powers and how they may be used," Scytale said, moving closer to the Guildsman's tank. "We of the Tleilaxu believe that in all the universe there is only the insatiable appetite of matter, that energy is the only true solid. And energy learns. Hear me well, Princess: energy learns. This, we call power."

 

Dune was kind of out there with telepathic abilities and human calculators and stuff, but I'm 6 pages into its sequel and I'm finding the ****tail of politics, metaphysics, and space magics is making it hard for me to understand half of what the book is trying to convey. It's only 170 or so pages long, but I'm having a hard time enjoying something that makes me feel dumb for not understanding.

[gbear]

I just finished The Sum of Us.  It is good in that is goes over some of our racial history in the U.S. of which I was only minimally aware.  For example, I didn't know the history of desegregation where communities paved their pools when facing the prospect of sharing them with Black people.  The other method I was aware of where they sold them for $1 to private clubs who continued to segregate.  I liked the ability to humanize the facts.  The frustrating part of me was the book felt like it was getting repetitive at times hitting me over the head with more examples of the same things.  Maybe that is totally unfair for me to say as I never had to experience it all, and the shear volume of the facts/details pointing to how often racism impacts us is part of the deal.  I am a privileged white guy so maybe making me feel like it is repetitive to keep giving me incidents is needed.  Still there were some shocking incidents of bad behavior that left my mouth open thinking "wow, some people are slime."  I can't believe somebody said to her "What do you call two old black men in the front yard?  Antique farm equipment." Are people really so ignorant?  I guess so.

 

Still, I learns some cool things too.  Did you know unions were favored by a majority of white people until the 1960's?  When the Union of Auto Workers came out in favor of civil rights marked the end of white support for unions. The unions have never been favored by a majority of white people since then even if the unions often result in them getting higher wages and better benefits.  The anti-union campaigns have been bastions of racism, and hearing them was frequently maddening (and I am not even a target). 

 

In any event, the book made for an interesting read.  Now I am on onto reading Cartel after finishing The Power of the Dog.  I will say Don Winslow books are not ones to listen to without ear buds if kids are around.  Their is some highly graphic violence...Heck that took me some getting used to in the first book, but the plots are engaging and the characters all well developed, even the "bad guys."

   

    

[philibusters]

10 minutes ago, gbear said:

I just finished The Sum of Us.  It is good in that is goes over some of our racial history in the U.S. of which I was only minimally aware.  For example, I didn't know the history of desegregation where communities paved their pools when facing the prospect of sharing them with Black people.  The other method I was aware of where they sold them for $1 to private clubs who continued to segregate.  I liked the ability to humanize the facts.  The frustrating part of me was the book felt like it was getting repetitive at times hitting me over the head with more examples of the same things.  Maybe that is totally unfair for me to say as I never had to experience it all, and the shear volume of the facts/details pointing to how often racism impacts us is part of the deal.  I am a privileged white guy so maybe making me feel like it is repetitive to keep giving me incidents is needed.  Still there were some shocking incidents of bad behavior that left my mouth open thinking "wow, some people are slime."  I can't believe somebody said to her "What do you call two old black men in the front yard?  Antique farm equipment." Are people really so ignorant?  I guess so.

 

Still, I learns some cool things too.  Did you know unions were favored by a majority of white people until the 1960's?  When the Union of Auto Workers came out in favor of civil rights marked the end of white support for unions. The unions have never been favored by a majority of white people since then even if the unions often result in them getting higher wages and better benefits.  The anti-union campaigns have been bastions of racism, and hearing them was frequently maddening (and I am not even a target). 

 

In any event, the book made for an interesting read.  Now I am on onto reading Cartel after finishing The Power of the Dog.  I will say Don Winslow books are not ones to listen to without ear buds if kids are around.  Their is some highly graphic violence...Heck that took me some getting used to in the first book, but the plots are engaging and the characters all well developed, even the "bad guys."

   

    

 

Just out of curiosity did the "Sum of Us" cover the progress made since the Civil Rights movement.  Post WWII, things were bad all over the country, but especially in the south.  Don't know the exact numbers, but there were lots of black service members returning after WWII to the south who were more confident and embolden about their rights as American citizens that got lynched.   It was terrible.

 

The said, a lot has changed in the past 70 years.  To me, the title the "sum of us" seems to indicate we are still defined as a society by our terrible history.  Whereas I don't agree with that.  That is not to say the racism of the past doesn't affect modern day society--it certainly does.   But at the same time things have changed a lot and any assessment of current society needs to take that into account.

 

Take the racial wealth gap.  Undoubtedly a large portion of the racial wealth gap is due to past discrimination.  If you have one group of people starting out in a much better place than another group of people, even if you remove impediments for both groups, the first group will end up in a better place.  A lot of the anti-racism literature ends up making it seem like current racism is responsible for things like the racial wealth gap and if we just stopped being racist the wealth gap would disappear.  But the truth is that we have largely (though not completely) stopped being racist and the wealth gap remains.  My view is that is because white people started off in a better position, with access to better education, loans from banks, access to better social networks--which is the result of past discrimination rather than current discrimination.   

 

So I end up disagreeing with a central tenet of the anti-racism movement that present day racism (even if it is called structural racism) is the cause of a lot the root racial inequality.  To me, if the racial wealth gap is going to be addressed it would be through public policy like economic programs and not by changing the hearts and minds of people.

 

In that sense I think the Civil Rights in unfortunately stuck in wave 2.  If wave 1 of the Civil Rights movement  was the legal and economic protests that resulted in the end of legal discrimination that took place in the 1950's and 1960's.   And Wave 2 was the effort to change the hearts and minds of Americans that has run from roughly 1970- to current, then I think we need a Wave 3 that prioritizes smart public policy.   Wave 2 had huge successes in the 1960, 1970's, and 1980's as people genuinely became significantly less racist.  The Anti-racism focus on trying to change individual mind and hearts today however is misguided, its an effort that has largely already been won and further possible gains on that front are fairly limited.

[gbear]

It did go over the post WWII American reaction to Black service men comingback from the war.  It also looked at the GI bill and what it did for education of service members.  It turns out many Black service members came back and were prompted to use their GI Bill to study how to do services Black people were typically hired to do.  It was not their ticket to the middle class as it was intended.  Further more, the red-lining of where they were allowed to purchase houses continued for decades post WWII and that severely limited their prospects for generational wealth accumulation even after desegregation.  The wealth gap is such that even if all the rules are even now, they are unlikely to achieve equal results.  r35

 

However, the book goes into more about how we all lose out as a result of our current racially divided society.  She goes into things like experiments with groups composed of people of one race versus groups of people composed of multiple races.  In those experiments, the multi racial groups showed more original thinking in problem solving, had solutions that appealed to a wider variety of people (think advertising), and were more likely to question input data (think multi-racial juries).  They found the people part of the multi-racial groups reported it took more effort to achieve their results.  The point is we all lose out when we self isolate. 

 

It also went into how we are willing to take a lesser outcome if we can avoid finishing last.  The book points out how we have a willingness to take a lesser social position so long as we can say, "it could be worse. We could have it as bad as them."  She says this with many studies showing it to be true.  She points to this with some of the anti-union ads and their success.  The "we may have it bad, but if we unionize we will be joining the group of the 'lazy' Black workers, and they will treat us all that badly." was very successful many many times.  It is part of why unions have failed to take root in the South.

 

 

[ixcuincle]

[The Evil Genius]

Page 1. Salt the water.

 

End of book. 

[philibusters]

I am reading The Pageant of England which is a four volume series which was originally published between the years 1948 (Volume 1) and 1962 (Volume IV) by Thomas Costain.  It covers the reigns of William the Conqueror to Richard III (basically 1066 to 1483).  Its not a comprehensive history by any means as Costain focuses on some periods way more than others.   The books sold well in their day.  Costain is a great writer and makes the characters come to life though I think some of views are undated.  I like English history and already had  some background with the time period before reading these books.  These books are very high in readability.  The author has strong takes on characters and brings them to life.  If you are looking for balance and comprehensiveness or the latest scholarship these books certainly are not it, but if you like history and want an entertaining read, these books are a solid choice.

[Corcaigh]

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. Loving it.

 

WW II, aliens, time travel, anti-war, mental illness, dark humor.

 

 

[philibusters]

1 hour ago, Corcaigh said:

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. Loving it.

 

WW II, aliens, time travel, anti-war, mental illness, dark humor.

 

 

 

Kurt Vonnegut used his own personal experience for some of the book.  He fought at the Battle of the Bulge and was taken prisoner.  He was a prisoner of war in a camp when Dresden was fire bomb and he saw that destruction first hand.

 

Lots of illusions to Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity which is used a sort of coping mechanism for the death and destruction.   Its been 15 years since I read it, but the book definitely left an impression on me.

[Skinsfan1311]

"The Only Good Indians"

[Mr. Sinister]

Been reading Craig Alanson's sci fi "Expeditionary Force" Saga on Audible for a minute. I'm on book 5 ("Zero Hour") presently.

 

It's good. Reads sort of like a cross between Mass Effect and Lost In Space. Very Gung ho military theme. Also narrated by RC Bray, a very familiar name in the sci fi realm

[Skinsfan1311]

I just started the only Neal Stephenson's novel that I haven't read. "Termination Shock" I was hooked, 10 pages in....