What book(s) are you reading?

[chronovore]

Jesus wept.
(Image removed from quote.)

I'll save the second of your spoilers for when I'm finished, but did you read the other D'Amour novel? (I didn't realize it featured him, so I haven't read it yet.)

I read the short story that he was in from Books of Blood (the one Barker made into Lord of Illusions).

That connection is pretty tenuous; I meant the novel, Everville, which featured him.

[studyguy]

Read The Magicians.
Fuck that book. It's like I read a Dave Eggers book where he decided to take a fantasy spin on his depressed fucking narcissistic characters hell bent on ruining their own lives and then bitching about it the entire way while going to hogwarts. I can't emphasize enough how completely rotten the people in this book are seemingly without rhyme or reason. The main dude actively fucks up his own life just because. He's called out on it a ton and it's not like he has a past that would warrant the behavior, but he just does and it's grating. So fucking grating. The tail end of the book is just some depressing ass shit that whips into a lead into the next fantasy book out of nowhere.

Fuck this series, it's being made into a TV show.


Dudes in this look nothing like what I'd imagine.
They're supposed to be awkward ass highschool seniors and shit.

[I'm a Puppy!]

I decided to read Brahm Stoker's Dracula after Frankenstein. I'm sorta surprised at how little actually happens.

[Mr Gilhaney]

how do i become a better reader? i used to be really good about reading for hours and even staying up all night to finish a good book. now i can't do more than read for a few minutes while i shit.

My solution was to eat food that made me poop more.


Finished transparent things a few weeks back and havent really started anything after that. Read a little of some Calcio book, it's a good run down on italian football but a bit dry

[Joe Molotov]

Jesus wept.
(Image removed from quote.)

I'll save the second of your spoilers for when I'm finished, but did you read the other D'Amour novel? (I didn't realize it featured him, so I haven't read it yet.)

I read the short story that he was in from Books of Blood (the one Barker made into Lord of Illusions).

That connection is pretty tenuous; I meant the novel, Everville, which featured him.

Nah, I haven't read any of Barker's novels except the Abarat books.

[tiesto]

Finished Ready Player One, about to start on The Windup Girl.

[chronovore]

Jesus wept.
(Image removed from quote.)

I'll save the second of your spoilers for when I'm finished, but did you read the other D'Amour novel? (I didn't realize it featured him, so I haven't read it yet.)

I read the short story that he was in from Books of Blood (the one Barker made into Lord of Illusions).

That connection is pretty tenuous; I meant the novel, Everville, which featured him.

Nah, I haven't read any of Barker's novels except the Abarat books.

I just finished the book; read your second spoiler: your version is better. And funnier. Which I wouldn't think would be a thing, because t Barker was actually going for some humor in this, so it's doubly sad to me that you've identified where he was unintentionally funny.

This book was almost as much of a disappointment as that HANNIBAL book Harris wrote when rent was due.

There were a number of good ideas and a heap of well turned phrases, but the overall work is a train wreck.

[VomKriege]

Started A Canticle for Leibowitz, and I'm surprised at how much of a slog the first few pages are. I had some trouble. Hopefully it picks up.

I decided to read Brahm Stoker's Dracula after Frankenstein. I'm sorta surprised at how little actually happens.

Yeah, the first section in Dracula's castle is great, and it gets going again towards the end, but you have a solid 200 pages in the middle that are really slow.

The Dracula's castle section though

I love everything about that ~100 pages.

It's a really long book, indeed.

[Steve Contra]

about to start on The Windup Girl.

I just want to re-iterate the fact that this is one of the best sci-fi novels in years (RPO sounds fucking painful though)

[I'm a Puppy!]

Started A Canticle for Leibowitz, and I'm surprised at how much of a slog the first few pages are. I had some trouble. Hopefully it picks up.

I decided to read Brahm Stoker's Dracula after Frankenstein. I'm sorta surprised at how little actually happens.

Yeah, the first section in Dracula's castle is great, and it gets going again towards the end, but you have a solid 200 pages in the middle that are really slow.

The Dracula's castle section though

I love everything about that ~100 pages.

Yeah the castle part is really incredible but then it's like "mehhhhhhh"

So I finished it. Now I'm onto Moneyball I'm not a baseball fan but I am a data/stats fan.
So I keep going between  to

[VomKriege]

Haven't read the book but the Moneyball movie is pretty great if you wonder.

Finished the Fall of Paris and that was yet another engrossing read. Expected the book to delve more on the Commune however, as it stands it "only" is covered in 2/5 of the book (the rest being the Siege of Paris). It's probably not the most in-depth book on the subject but Horne is really a master storyteller, provided you can get over some of his old fashioned manners (Like to speak of "Gallic race" "Latin race wooed by glitter" and to convey the character of a man by describing his facial features. All this written post-WWII). Nevertheless Horne gives a rather fair shake to the Commune and even to The Marx-Lenin Bros interpretation of it, something I am not certain I would have found in a French book on the matter (Hope I will have the time to find one down the road).

If you have an interest on the matter, you can go ahead.

[chronovore]

Journey to the Center of the Earth, read by Tim Curry. This is one of the best audiobooks I have ever heard.

[Cerveza mas fina]

Started reading the Witcher in Polish.

[VomKriege]

So Kipling prose it is, and it's good. The language is pretty challenging, but Kipling is a to the point writer. Surprised at how short some of those stories are (I'm only in the early writing so far). Also his staunch imperialist and racist views (of course blended with his actual first hand knowledge and fondness for the place) actually often underlines rather than sugar coat how bad British India could be, notably the horrible double standard in love relationships.

“There is no law whereby you can account for the vagaries of the heathen,” said the Chaplain’s wife, “and I believe that Lispeth was always at heart an infidel.” Seeing she had been taken into the Church of England at the mature age of five weeks, this statement does not do credit to the Chaplain’s wife.

Also this epitaph he wrote for the graves of WW1 soldiers :

If any question why we died,
Tell them, because our fathers lied.

 

[Olivia Wilde Homo]

I read Byron Crawford's No Country for Black Men.  This is book #7 for him in the past three years (although one of his books was a partial compilation of the articles he wrote at XXL).  Admittedly, I thought his previous book, Kanye West Superstar, was getting repetitive.  However a lot has happened in the past year since KWS came out, which gave him a lot of good material to work with.  Only Byron Crawford can come with a general connection between Elliot Rodger, Damon Dash, Mike Brown, and Eric Garner.  The downside for new readers is that he is asking for more money for his books.  In the past, it was 99 cents or $1.99.  Now he's asking for $5.99 for this book.  Still worth it of course.

I read Stephen Witt's How Music Got Free.  I saw a positive review on Vice.  Naturally, I was hesitant about the book because it was reviewed so positively on Vice so I expected a bunch of stupid bullshit that would appeal to the average Vice reader (aka, a dumbass who thinks he is cool only because he reads articles from supposedly cool people and lives vicariously through them).  However this book is really good.  It approaches the issue from several facets: the Germans who were responsible for creating the MP3, the guy who was responsible for most of the leaks in the early mid 2000s (a guy working at the CD pressing factory who bought CDs from other workers who hid CDs behind giant belt buckles), the hardcore nerds on IRC who ran a network of leakers, the rise and fall of Oink, one of the most powerful music executives and how he dealt with the crisis, a public who 15 years ago was perfectly willing to pay $20 for a CD with two good songs on it and how they now refuse to pay any more than a nominal fee for services like Spotify, and much more.  It was really well put together.  It seems like a few chance coincidences resulted in dramatic shifts in one of the biggest entertainment industries ever; you really get the feeling if it wasn't for a series of lucky breaks, we'd still be paying $25 for what amounts to two good songs.

[jakefromstatefarm]

while perusing amazon, came across this reviewer

"With the possible exception of the Ku Klux Klan," Bryan Burrough tells us on page 26, "the US had never spawned a true underground movement committed to terrorist acts." In this myopic perspective lies the book's distortion of its subject. The terrorism running throughout American history has been so successfully expunged from public record that one can almost forgive a Wall Street Journal writer for knowing nothing of the Molly Maguires, the "Black Patch" nightriders of the Kentucky tobacco country, the Chicago anarchists. (But surely he's heard of John Brown?) Depending upon one's definition of terrorism, the Boston Tea Party was certainly viewed as such by the good burghers of Wall Street in their day. And considering that so much of US terrorism has been localized - like night riders of Reelfoot Lake, Tennessee, or Bald Knobbers of Missouri - it would take a committed historian to do it justice.

I say almost, but in the end Burrough is not a committed historian.

I give it two stars for effort, as a thorough exposition of hard-right premises and thinking. Of course, I believe it's mistaken to the core philosophically. But I'll confine my critique to the specific issues Horowitz raises.

His main thesis is that the Right is too soft, too rational, too understanding, uninclined to play black/white, zero-sum politics. This is totally false, and makes his argument one big victim's whine of being bullied and misunderstood: a position supposedly despised by conservative "winners." From the Tea Party to Fox News to Congress, I see the Right as consumed by knee-jerk reactions, irrational prejudices (Sharia Law, Obama's birth certificate): as being on the attack with destruction and obstruction the only objectives.

As for the Left's strategy of "government dependence for all", this seems to be evil only when it embraces the "losers." When corporations and banks are subsidized this is, of course, facilitating the free market. Dependence on law ("corporations are people") and on the military are somehow not part of "government," analagous to saying arms and legs are not really part of human anatomy. Dependence on private wealth is thus a "positive good." We should embrace our billionaires as "job creators" as they slash wages and are "forced" to export those jobs to tax-free non-American zones. Why import cheap labor to bust unions when you can just export the jobs to those truly grateful for them?

If the Liberal fight for contraception is really about women's liberation, then most surely is the Conservative anti-abortion movement about preserving male property in the form of heirship "rights." (God being always on the side of those who have.) Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, "food stamps" and welfare are all false entitlements for the undeserving, of course. We know true entitlement comes with a property deed, duly inherited under law, and thus a sign of Divine favor.

The real problem with the Conservative position is that it has always based itself on privilege. Protecting its followers' sense of "exceptionalism" under various twists of philosophy and politics has been its central task. Historically it positioned itself against racial equality, votes for women, the rights of labor, and religious tolerance. Attempts to create a populist base for its policies of privilege by appealing to minorities, women, struggling working families, or siding with Israel are made possible only by the Left's struggle to integrate this demographic majority into American society against the Right. The Right can "win" its anti-Left crusade only if it could truly marshal these groups on its side. Yet being welded to privilege, the gated side of the social divide, it can't bridge the moat it must have to keep the hordes at bay. No need to take prisoners when an entire society is behind bars.

David Horowitz' advice comprise the tactics of the Russian Right of a century ago, which did as much as Lenin to usher in Bolshevism. As a former "Red" himself, Horowitz should know this. Perhaps that remains his goal: by kicking the legs from under the center, playing the politics of extremist aggression, he trusts to emerge on the winning side regardless.

S-tier invective brehs, like Zinn if Zinn was coherent and well read

[benjipwns]

The thing that stands out more to me in that first quote is calling the KKK an "underground movement" historically.

Major complaint I have is his overuse of "blinkered" especially in titles of the reviews. Good list of stuff I'd probably like to read though.

His Captain America review. 

Those of us ancient enough to remember the original superhero incarnations always look at these "resurrections" with a jaundiced eye. Joe Johnston, Kevin Feige, and writers Markus and McFeely put more than a little heart and effort into this one. The result is not only proverbial "action-adventure entertainment" but deepwater exploration into the nature of human good and evil.

The premise is that a 4-F with a good heart is transformed by science into the man he ought to be: an ubermensch whose capabilities match his conscience. Thus armored in soul and body he sallies forth to battle pure evil - the Red Skull of Hydra, who seems ready to outdo Hitler and take over the Evil Empire for himself. The reconstruction of time, place and culture is superb, especially as contrasted to his end-film resurrection in the 21st century. The humility of his transition from circus performer to action hero is also poignant, and necessary: a modern audience tends to mock men in tights who wrap themselves in the flag, just as the frontline soldiers who initially reject the CA shtick. It takes a crisis to make Captain America more than a clown image.

That said, there are a few rather absurdist premises in the film. Blacks or Native Americans of the period might have a problem with a white man in flag-drag symbolizing a force for good throughout the world, when experience at home teaches differently. The defected German scientist would, in reality, have been as Nazi as the bad one allied with Red Skull, turning a new leaf only through the losing course of war. And CA's stint as a USO performer would have been unnecessary - the whole operation in "real life" would have been conducted under the OSS, the CIA's predecessor. There'd have been no qualms about using a natural bully for genetic guinea pig.

As a good if old-fashioned gung-ho war film, and a probe into the human psyche, this effort is one of the better recreations of the comic-book genre: not a satire, not self-righteous, and not "dark." I haven't yet seen the sequel. I hope it doesn't trash this original effort too badly.

[benjipwns]

   Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama
by Ann Coulter
Edition: Hardcover
Price: $23.98
120 used & new from $0.01

9 of 44 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars
Sheets Calling Pillowcases White, March 10, 2013
There is such a thing as reverse discrimination - preferencing A will disadvantage B, with or without malevolence, as a basic law of physics. But this author is not the one to be making said point, as she is as provocative, demagogic, and one-dimensional as she accuses her adversaries. Her advocates seem to endorse a new twist on Orwell's epigram: "Slavery was freedom, if only the dumb b-s had the sense to know it."

[benjipwns]

http://www.amazon.com/review/R2OJU92ZQP5CP5/ref=cm_aya_cmt?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0385515693

In Applebaum's pages the postwar world has indeed shifted its axis: the sun rises in the West and has set in the East. There is no inkling of the postwar satellite regimes on the other side of the curtain, established under Western occupation in Greece, South Korea, or South Vietnam; or the retro colonial wars of Kenya or Algeria. While totalitarianism was shedding its jagged edges in east-central Europe after 1956, it was just beginning in Latin America, where it would reach zenith in the national security states of the South American cone. This "oversight" of broader context is understandable: her husband, Polish expat and Oxford scholar Radek Sikorski, was the National Review's Angola point man, broker for Poland's entry into NATO, and now its foreign minister who has lauded Germany as Europe's "indispensable nation." Amazing how even Oxford scholars and Polish patriots can also twist historical memory to serve expedient ends.

Applebaum has focused on three states of the Western periphery of the old Soviet bloc: the German Democratic Republic, Poland, and Hungary. Despite her disclaimer she concentrated on these three precisely *because* of their similarities. They were the most Westernized, industrialized, and middle class nations of the bloc which seamlessly entered the Communist period under direct postwar Soviet occupation. Even in the rawest period of regime consolidation they were never cookie-cutter imitations of Moscow, nor was Poland ever equivalent to Albania. They were not "destroyed," as she writes; and she admits as much by later conceding it's "not an accident" that "the most successful postcommunist states are those that managed to preserve some elements of civil society throughout the communist period" (p. 468).

But Applebaum is likely right in disagreeing with the revisionists over Stalin's agenda in the region. Rather than a mere reaction to the Marshall Plan, Stalin set out to establish postwar Soviet-friendly regimes with longterm strategic interests in mind. When American journalist Edgar Snow asked a Romanian woman official in 1945 how long before the Communists are "running things," he was told, "Two years", with a "sweet smile." Stalin informed the Yugoslav Communist Milovan Djilas that victors must impose their own ideology and social systems "as far as their armies can reach." Scholars like Applebaum and NATO-adviser husband have worked hard to fulfill this dictum.

tee hee

[benjipwns]

I've lost all faith in R.L. Huff as a reviewer.

http://www.amazon.com/review/R3U3RWTKF8HNPD/ref=cm_aya_cmt?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1932360077

17 of 68 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars
Basically sound history, December 16, 2009
By R. L. Huff

This review is from: Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture (Paperback)

The five stars are to give the work a much-deserved boost. My true rating wiuld be a four, however. In the second edition by SoftSkull Press the publisher and author state the book was victim to a well-organized trashing campaign by the gun lobby, and to judge by the reviews on this site it seems ongoing still: the Tea Partiers' bash-in before Obama.

Bellesiles is an iconoclastic contrarian of '60's mold, and at times - only a few - he may swerve too far in stating his case. But his premise is sound: that early America was not the home of universal firearm ownership, and that its "public liberties" did not flow from the barrel of a privately-owned, unregistered gun.

In a rural, non-manufacturing society like America, colonial and Federal, gun ownsership was equivalent to owning a wagon or horse: an ideal not realized by all, and possessed in modest quantities. The gun as a "consumer item" was not possible until the rise of mass production under the necessity of arming Federal troops for the Civil War.

My own grandfathers' arms history is proof: one lived in Pennsylvania and New England, and never owned a gun. The other, however, grew up in frontier Louisiana, and his "stockpile" consisted of an elderly shotgun and one "Spanish revolver." These were his only firearms, all dating from the 1890s, which he kept his entire life. As a boy in the 1880s he could remember men who still used muzzle-loading rifles, which had been passed on from father to son, and made their own bullets. Thus gun ownership, while more common among American farmers than Europeans, was low-caliber, varied from region to region, and was limited by general poverty.

It's no accident that the "frontier" we see portrayed in TV and film is nearly always confined to the post-Civil War era, the time of Colt "peacemakers" and Winchesters. Whole movies were devoted to "guns that won the West." If a "Western" were (ever) to be made on the Great Lakes Indian wars, or the outlaw gangs of the Old Southwest, its writers would be at a loss. Few of the symbols and weapons they associate with the "frontier" would have been availiable. One must wonder how much the NRA has influenced the scripting of the very frontier history Bellesiles justifiably took to task.

[jakefromstatefarm]

Major complaint I have is his overuse of "blinkered" especially in titles of the reviews.

it stands out so painfully, "_____ but blinkered" is def entering my lexicon

Good list of stuff I'd probably like to read though.

for sure, all the early soviet stuff on there is p much gospel. the Kurzman book on Iran is good, would recommend

[jakefromstatefarm]

I'm sorry I keep coming back to this but this one is absolute fuego

One of the recurrent themes of Western historiography on the Russian Revolution has been how it could have turned out better for the West. Likely it could not have; nor could it really have done so for Russians. In the period under Professor Smith's review, Russian society was already too polarized for the center-left solution of parliamentary democracy; hence the ease with which the Constituent Assembly was swept aside after Russia's first free elections. If the Bolsheviks had not done so, the "White" army officers surely would have, as witness the fate of the PSR-led Constituent Assembly in Exile of Siberia, overthrown by Admiral Kolchak with British blessings. The Eastern Front policy of the "Komuch" was only a rehash of the Provisional Government's duplicitous pro-war program, already decisively repudiated by the country's majority.

The dilemma of the Party of Socialist Revolutionaries echoed that of the peasants to whom it most appealed. The poor ones split to the left, aligning with the Bolsheviks against land capitalism; the wealthier aligned with the right in favor of property; while the mass played the middle in benevolent neutrality. In this was captured - to use Smith's excellent term - the fate not only of the PSR but of the peasants, the Revolution, and Russia itself. Its fate was not unlike that of the Ukrainian nationalists of the 1940s, caught in a two-front war. Victory would go to those forces who knew who they were, what they wanted, could maintain themselves in the field the longest - and lucked out on the chessboard of global politics.

But it's hard to see how Smith can call the Bolshevik linkage of the PSR to "capitalist imperialism" a "trope," when the PSR leadership actively sought such linkage and was disappointed at its limited offering - even when betrayed by these Allies in favor of the White armies and their commissioned officers. As Smith says, no civil war is a neat either-or split. One can point to America's own, with anti-Lincoln draft rioters in New York or Unionist guerrillas in East Tennessee. But while these backcurrents complicate facts on the ground, they never overcome the central protagonists or replace the main dividing lines of conflict. Neither could the Russian PSR.

The Constituent Assembly-in-Exile failed for the same reason as the Provisional Government: obsession with legality over the nuts and bolts of power. The Bolsheviks were not mere democratic phrasemongers and coup-plotters like the adventurist PSRs; but embedded themselves in the social authority of the soviets, through which they gained access to the state, its treasury, and its transportation/communication systems. In the end the Red Army prevailed in 1920 for the same reasons it did in 1944: an atrocious enemy and the lack of a viable alternative. This ambiguity would haunt Soviet Power throughout its existence.

The fate of the PSR did symbolize the lost hope of any plurality in the Soviet state. When faced with suggestions in 1921 of legalizing the PSR as a Soviet party, allowing it freely-elected participation - or, as the Cheka's Feliks Dzherzhinsky advocated, "We must condemn the SR idea to languish in darkness" - Lenin unhesitatingly chose the latter. Dzherzhinsky's warnings prophesied the self-fulfilling pitfalls of glasnost: ideological regeneration of opponents was not in the Bolshevik interest, for doing so would only "unify and regenerate" the opposition within a "year and a half or so," changing the regime's single-party nature and creating the conditions for "counter-revolutionary restoration." Lenin's solution - the New Economic Policy - was to address the social grievances fueling SR support while outlawing the party and tightening his own. A lean-and-mean Communist Party would have to travel a long road before reaching the senile corpulence that, finally, allowed power to be stripped from its feebled grip.

http://www.amazon.com/Captives-Revolution-Socialist-Revolutionaries-Dictatorship/dp/0822962829

[Kara]

Bro do you even Maria Spiridonova.

[chronovore]

Enjoying the Laird Barron short story collection, The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All. These shorts are surprisingly varied in style. I am looking forward to reading more work by him. Three years younger than I am, makes me weep for my own meandering creative life.

[Joe Molotov]

Enjoying the Laird Barron short story collection, The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All. These shorts are surprisingly varied in style. I am looking forward to reading more work by him. Three years younger than I am, makes me weep for my own meandering creative life.

Laird Barron is pretty good and he has an eye patch. I've been meaning to check out this collection.

[chronovore]

Enjoying the Laird Barron short story collection, The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All. These shorts are surprisingly varied in style. I am looking forward to reading more work by him. Three years younger than I am, makes me weep for my own meandering creative life.

Laird Barron is pretty good and he has an eye patch. I've been meaning to check out this collection.

One of his other collections, The Imago Sequence, was on a recommended reading list for people who liked True Detective s1. Some of the stories are subtle enough that the incidents they contain could easily be explain by natural causes, or madness.

[benjipwns]

Done:
The Intel trinity : how Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, and Andy Grove built the world's most important company / Michael S. Malone.  - Didn't like how this book effectively stopped at the 486, but still went on for a hundred pages rehashing the same things about people as they were dying off.
Denialism : how irrational thinking hinders scientific progress, harms the planet, and threatens our lives / Michael Specter.  - Another one that went off the rails with the last chapter, went from being in that debunking/skeptic mold to advocating for some fad theory about genetics.
The S word : a short history of an American tradition-- socialism / John Nichols.  - This was on here before but I never got around to it. Did you know that everyone in American history was actually a Socialist? Thomas Payne? George Washington? Abraham Lincoln? Benjamin Franklin? FDR? Thomas Jefferson? Barack Obama? All Socialists! Walt Whitman? THE ULTIMATE SOCIALIST! Also, there was this guy named Eugene Debs who once ran for President as a Socialist, but anyway, Theodore Roosevelt? Socialist too! I should have just read JFK: CONSERVATIVE if I knew that's what this was going to be.
The great derangement : a terrifying true story of war, politics, and religion at the twilight of the American empire / Matt Taibbi. - This one and the one below from Taibbi have the same structure and I loved it. They're split between multiple narratives. In this case, it's between Taibbi entering into the world of fundamental christianity, 9/11 trutherism (where a guy threatens to kill him for telling the CIA about the meeting that he wasn't invited to but came to in order to make the threat), while also his standard observances of Congress/Washington.

One thing I didn't like, is that after he leaves the Christians, he doesn't follow up on what happened to any of them leaving all kinds of loose threads. I know, it seems like, who cares, but he integrates himself into their world so much they dominate the narrative to where you want to know about some of the stuff post-his bailing on the fake identity.

Also, it has my favorite part of the book, where he shames all the fundamentalists at a Chinese buffett for eagerly opening their fortune cookies. Dat's master level trollin.
The divide : American injustice in the age of the wealth gap / Matt Taibbi  - Similar to the above, only is limited to two divide narratives, focused on criminal justice. Namely how the standard for the poor/minority is to be thrown in jail over and over, and the standard for the wealthy/important is to get their company fined. Talks to public defenders and prosecutors and former regulators regarding how it's essentially a rigged game, so leniency is being somewhat intentionally granted, not some factor of the system. The public defender parts reminded me of Benched, which was a good show with a great cast and probably should have been on FX or something and gone more cynical.

Has a chapter about a guy in Brooklyn which chronicles his every arrest over like two years, he gets arrested like 15 times, like half of them are arrests for "obstructing sidewalk traffic" and he gets so fed up that he decides to fight the last one since he and a friend were standing where it'd be literally impossible to obstruct traffic by standing. The public defender tries to get him to accept just a $25 fine (originally $100), but he fights it on principle, judge calls the cop an idiot and dismisses the case. Then the public defenders refuse to talk to Taibbi.

Bailed Out On:
By the people : rebuilding liberty without permission / Charles Murray.  - One decent chapter, I didn't even realize it was a Charles Murray book until he started babbling about races and their projected economic performances and I was like...wait. And looked at the inside back cover.
The demographic cliff : how to survive and prosper during the great deflation of 2014-2019 / Harry S. Dent, Jr.  - Deflation has a meaning! It's not how you used it! I hope you get acid thrown on half of your face!

Ohhh that's Harvey? My mistake.

Onward:
The seven sins of Wall Street : big banks, their Washington lackeys, and the next financial crisis / Bob Ivry.  - Each of the chapters are named after a sin, that's bold and inventive, has anyone done this kind of thing before?!? Can't wait.
Lords of finance : the bankers who broke the world / Liaquat Ahamed.  - About the 1920s. Also, I like that name. Liaquat Ahamed.
Flash boys : a Wall Street revolt / Michael Lewis.  - "but in the end, Flash boys is an uplifting read. here are people who have somehow preserved a moral sense in an environment where you don't get paid for that"

I think I actually hate Michael Lewis' writing thinking back to Moneyball, the No Stats All-Star, etc.
Bailout : an inside account of how Washington abandoned Main Street while rescuing Wall Street / Neil Barofsky. - I opened it up and did a little scan and it was him bitching about people stonewalling him and I'm like I love these types of books where everyone hates the author! The one about FOIA I read was nothing but that bureaucratic stonewalling and that was great.
America's fiscal constitution : its triumph and collapse / Bill White.  - I mean, we know what this has to be about. And I was going to skip it but then I saw on the back Ross Perot commanding "every citizen" needs to read it and I can't disobey legally, can I? I'm unsure on Ross Perot's legal authority.
Suicide pact : the radical expansion of presidential powers and the lethal threat to American liberty / Judge Andrew P. Napolitano. - Finally, the Judge stops writing the "yearly political/current events screed" and gets back to writing about history and court cases, etc. leading to the current state of things.
The last empire : the final days of the Soviet Union / Serhii Plokhy.  - As in fairly literally, not like say 1987-1993 or something, but 1991-ish. However, the author claims despite all factual evidence to the contrary that Ronald Reagan's speeches did not bring down the Soviet Union and that American foreign policy has been misled ever since for believing it played a role in the demise of the workers state. Yeah, right, it's like the guy never heard of "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"
Operation Shakespeare : the true story of an elite international sting / John Shiffman.  - Bunch of dudes go after stolen military technology, and I assume kill all the brown people involved. I liked this guys other book about art heists or something.

[chronovore]

Read through Donald E. Westlake's Bank Shot -- 2nd of the Dortmunder books. Still wonderful and seemingly timeless. Man, I love heist/caper stuff.

I'm reading Zahn's Star Wars: Scoundrels, which is also a heist book which features Han, Lando, and a few other expanded universe characters in a heist job. It's pretty great; my second time listening to it, and the narrator does a great job with all the voices. The dialog's not on par with Dortmund, but it's based on George Lucas characters, so that's to be expected. I'm on a Star Wars kick right now, with the movie coming out in two months (!!!), only really avoiding video games of it.

Stealth edit:

spoiler (click to show/hide)

[close]

[jakefromstatefarm]

found another winner: http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/AV1ITXWQ13PN6/ref=pdp_new_read_full_review_link?ie=UTF8&page=3&sort_by=MostRecentReview#R1CHLWM3056ZF

Obvious Proof of the Unarguable Muslim Hatred of Jews

This material should especially interest academics familiar with the frenzied activities in recent years on behalf of the rights of Palestinian scholars by such ostensibly academic groups as the American Studies Association or the Middle East Studies Association. Israeli shows how these institutions are in reality close in spirit and intention to the German universities of Freiburg and Gottingen of the 1930s as described in Max Weinreich's Hitler's Professors: The Part of Scholarship in Germany's Crimes against the Jewish People.[1] Today, most Islamist academicians, like their Nazi predecessors, ably demonstrate the truth of Gandhi's saying that "the greatest deceivers are the self-deceivers."

A Much Needed Feminist Foreign Policy

Just as Suzanne Gershowitz, of the American Enterprise Institute, said Chesler, a psychologist by training and a self-identified feminist, sets out to explain how and why the movement she once associated with has gone awry. Those most commonly identified as feminists today have, she argues, become "marginalized" and "irrelevant" due to their obsession with multiculturalism and isolationism. Chesler at once condemns women's studies in the academy and leftist protestations against U.S. democratization efforts in the Muslim world. At times, Chesler's passionate defense of both the United States and Israel--a defense of democracy and denunciation of Islamism--overwhelms her core arguments about feminism. But she clearly establishes the relationship between U.S. foreign policy and the feminism with which she identifies. Her ultimate goal, she says, is to create a feminist foreign policy.

The first chapters document the crises that feminism faces today: the liberal feminist hijacking of the academy, the lack of independent thinking among women, and the stifling of dissident feminist views. Using a mix of personal anecdotes, statistics, and excerpts from other sources, Chesler documents the closed-mindedness among feminists--and their hypocrisy: "the chilling of free speech has been unilaterally imposed by those who claim to act on its behalf," she argues. She also provides psychological explanations for this situation.

Chesler identifies the turning point of feminism, when it finally became "suicidally intolerant," as "the reaction and non-reaction of Western academics and intellectuals to the 2000 intifada against Israel--and to 9/11." Indeed, Chesler's main complaint against today's feminism is its reflexive anti-Zionism and anti-Americanism. She shares personal anecdotes about conversations on feminist Internet listservs she is a part of, where irrelevant rants condemning the "person who believes in the development and protection of a Jewish nation occupation" and "America's support for it" become commonplace. She, also, discusses consequences she has faced as a result of feminist's single-mindedness in politics, such as the time prominent feminist Muriel Fox, cofounder of NOW, warned her not to vote for President Bush in 2004. Chesler argues that a "suicidal" result of these tendencies is its failure to speak out against the crimes committed against women around the world in the name of Islam. Chesler's final chapters focus largely on Islamism and why it should be the foremost concern for feminists today.

on K-man:

End This Nonsense Now!

As David Gordon stated in Mises.org, supporters of Keynesian economics sometimes claim it to be a crude caricature of the Master that he thought the government has only to spend more money to get us out of a depression and that getting us into debt doesn't matter because we owe it to ourselves. Keynes, it is alleged, was a vastly more sophisticated thinker than this caricature portrays him to be. These defenders may find End This Depression Now! disconcerting. Krugman, who whatever his faults certainly is not lacking in technical sophistication, defends pretty much the cartoon version of Keynesianism that we are told is oversimplified.

He makes unmistakably clear the lesson he intends to convey: the government needs to spend a great deal of money to extricate us from our depressed economic conditions.

[TVC15]

I snagged a first edition copy of Burroughs' The Wild Boys today, with the awesome cover art. Also on the slab is Kobo Abe's The Woman in the Dunes, by courtesy of Steve Contra.

I'm hyped for The Wild Boys. From wiki:

"The Wild Boys: A Book of the Dead is a novel by Beat Generation author William S. Burroughs. It was first published in 1971 by Grove Press. It depicts a homosexual youth movement whose objective is the downfall of western civilization, set in an apocalyptic late twentieth century.

In 1972, Burroughs wrote a screenplay based on the novel, with the intent of having it produced as a low-budget hardcore pornographic film, and entered into negotiations with gay porn producer Fred Halsted before abandoning the idea at the end of 1972."

[Kara]

I'll never really get why super pro-Israeli peeps get so about the Second Intifada. It ended the two-state solution for the foreseeable future and it's not like any of them give a crap about a just conclusion to the situation or an end to the killing.

[Madrun Badrun]

Norman Davies Europe: A History.  Pretty sparse and uninteresting now. 

[jakefromstatefarm]

I'll never really get why super pro-Israeli peeps get so about the Second Intifada. It ended the two-state solution for the foreseeable future and it's not like any of them give a crap about a just conclusion to the situation or an end to the killing.

you'll notice our friend opens each of their reviews with something from mises.org or the Daniel Pipes founded Middle East Quarterly (in the exact same template no less). Some in the field are way more interested in drawing normative conclusions about the fanatical brown other than producing actually interesting scholarship. Thankfully, I haven't met any of them.

Norman Davies Europe: A History.  Pretty sparse and uninteresting now.

I see God's Playground brought up a lot wrt general histories of Poland, not sure where Davies slots in with the rest of Western Cold War historiography.

[Kara]

"As David Gordon stated in Mises.org, " had me dead on the floor. In terms of dependent clauses, it doesn't get much better.

[Bebpo]

Finished Sanderson's Mistborn, the third fantasy series I've ever read after reading Dune as a kid, and then recently Song of Ice & Fire which got me back into the genre of political fantasy.  Liked it a lot.  Read quickly, very likeable characters, kind of a politics x oceans eleven mix with some solid world lore building.  My main complaints are that a couple of the story beats were fairly predictable and my biggest complaint is that the last 25% of the book has the fastest rushed pacing I've read in ages.  The book moves at a nice speed for 75% of it, and then tons of stuff happens in the last 150 pages or so and it definitely could've used double the pages for the finale. 



Hopefully the remaining two books in the trilogy are as good.  Definitely will check them out in the next year.

Although ENDING SPOILERS

spoiler (click to show/hide)

killing the best character in the series kind of makes it seem like the other books won't be as enjoyable.  Kelsier's chapters were the best parts of this book.

[close]

[Raban]

I just finished reading this

and it was a goddamn page turner. I've never really read Bill Burroughs, but I've always had a passing interest in heroin use and this book is all about that and Burroughs' various other vices like propositioning men, drinking himself half to death, selling heroin to keep his habit, fleeing to Mexico to dodge a bid, it's really all in here. What I love the most about this book is how unflinchingly Burroughs portrays his own spiral out of control. He'll have introspective moments about his drug abuse and then the next sentence will describe him slapping his wife around because he suspected her of hiding his stash. In all honesty, I miss authors like this. Burroughs simply doesn't give two shits what you think about him as the narrator, he's just trying to tell you what's what and he does a damn fine job of it.

[benjipwns]

Flash boys : a Wall Street revolt / Michael Lewis.  - "but in the end, Flash boys is an uplifting read. here are people who have somehow preserved a moral sense in an environment where you don't get paid for that"

....
Operation Shakespeare : the true story of an elite international sting / John Shiffman.  - Bunch of dudes go after stolen military technology, and I assume kill all the brown people involved. I liked this guys other book about art heists or something.

These two were really interesting. I was wrong about Shakespeare, it's a more of fake identities, false purchases and working with "retired" arms dealers to chase up the food chain. The government may still have killed all the brown people involved, but the book didn't say.

Flash Boys has too much promotion of certain people, lots of "they stood looking out the window...this cannot stand!" which reminded me what I hate about Michael Lewis books. But all the stuff about people paying millions to literally have their server moved inches closer to the wall is hilarious and frightening. Ghost Exchange is a decent companion documentary to this.

Just finished:
No one would listen : a true financial thriller / Harry Markopolos with Frank Casey - much better than the Chasing Madoff movie as it actually gets into the details, but is probably way too long and spends too much time rehashing how scared for his life Markopolos was. I mean, we get it, you thought Madoff was going to have you killed even though he never knew you existed.

Reading:
The man in the Rockefeller suit : the astonishing rise and spectacular fall of a serial imposter / Mark Seal. - This is really good so far. German kid heads to America on the back of a bunch of lies, instantly marries some random chick to get residency and bolts to create more fake identities and scams until he's posing as a member of the Rockefeller family and kidnapping his kid.

Best scam: Meets a cardiologist in Las Vegas, tells him "hey! I'm a cardiologist too!" and gets $1500 from the dude before instantly bailing town.

[fistfulofmetal]

This month I've been reading this through book called Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson. I found it by quite literally googling some sci-fi terms I like and stumbled on it. It's about a generation ship that is en-route to a planet in the Tau Ceti star system - a journey that has taken over 160 years - and the story picks up right when they are very nearly to the destination.

I always find it difficult to know if I like a book because of how slow I tend to read, so I'll be halfway through and realize I'm not really feeling something. This however I am loving. It reminds me of The Martian a bit in how it goes into fairly detailed description of the science aspects of the journey, the issues that the spacefarers being on a closed ship for as long as they have. They talk about the concept of a closed loop ecosystem, the lost of required resources through chemical reactions.

It even goes further in a way I hadn't seen before in that the ship has entire biomes dedicated to wild animal life and the people aboard the ship don't really know if the are actually relevant to the ecosystem. They just know they have to leave them along just in case.

There's even aspects early on where a ship-AI having a monologue about how to create a narrative account of the history of the ship up to current time. The ship's AI struggles with the concept of choices opening up more choices infinitely.

I find the whole thing fascinating. It's also given me a bunch of inspiration regarding some of the sci-fi stories I've been wanting to tell.

[Fifstar]

Finished up the first Game of Thrones book, which is actually split into two books in the german version. Really fun to read. Haven't seen the tv show either.

[Rufus]

What does the german version do with Martin's little ideosyncracies like Ser instead if Sir and such?

[Fifstar]

Ser is still Ser, no idea about other ones.

I'm reading a new translation that translates all "english tongue" names (Aptronyms?) into german names. Jon Snow becomes Jon Schnee and King's Landing Königsmund. While Königsmund is a bit silly I generally like it this way as english names/words would feel out of place in a foreign fantasy land. Caused quite the uproar among german fans though, especially since the new books only get the new translation.

[chronovore]

Read The Expanse first novel, Leviathan Wakes. I've been off hard SF for a while, and this has been good fun in the old "what is happening here?" vibe that old Larry Niven used to provide for me in childhood, which Kim Stanley Robinson has filled for me in adulthood. Add to that a private detective side to the story, and it has hit just about every note that I find enjoyable in prose.

I'm moving into Peter Watts' Echopraxia, the follow-up to the nihilistic and frightening Blindsight. I suppose this should also count as hard SF, but I'm inclined to put it into existential horror instead.

[Cerveza mas fina]

Haven't finished the Witcher yet, but moved on to Fever Pitch

Nick Hornby has been a football fan since the moment he was conceived. Call it predestiny. Or call it preschool. Fever Pitch is his tribute to a lifelong obsession. Part autobiography, part comedy, part incisive analysis of insanity, Hornby’s award-winning memoir captures the fever pitch of fandom—its agony and ecstasy, its community, its defining role in thousands of young men’s coming-of-age stories. Fever Pitch is one for the home team. But above all, it is one for everyone who knows what it really means to have a losing season.

Norman Davies Europe: A History.  Pretty sparse and uninteresting now.

Man I studied that whole book at Uni 

[fistfulofmetal]

Read The Expanse first novel, Leviathan Wakes. I've been off hard SF for a while, and this has been good fun in the old "what is happening here?" vibe that old Larry Niven used to provide for me in childhood, which Kim Stanley Robinson has filled for me in adulthood. Add to that a private detective side to the story, and it has hit just about every note that I find enjoyable in prose.

I need to check that out. I enjoyed the first few episodes of the SciFi show but I feel I would enjoy it more in book form.

And once I'm finished with Aurora I'm gonna burn through all of Kim Stanley Robinson other stuff. The Mars Trilogy sounds super cool.

[chronovore]

Read The Expanse first novel, Leviathan Wakes. I've been off hard SF for a while, and this has been good fun in the old "what is happening here?" vibe that old Larry Niven used to provide for me in childhood, which Kim Stanley Robinson has filled for me in adulthood. Add to that a private detective side to the story, and it has hit just about every note that I find enjoyable in prose.

I need to check that out. I enjoyed the first few episodes of the SciFi show but I feel I would enjoy it more in book form.

And once I'm finished with Aurora I'm gonna burn through all of Kim Stanley Robinson other stuff. The Mars Trilogy sounds super cool.

It was your post that encouraged me to write that.

The TV show is different than the novel, but still reasonably faithful. The most surprising thing for me is how so few of the characters are likable in the show. It increases the "DRAMA" level, but doesn't improve the story. It /does/ help get the character interaction out of their heads and into dialog.

If you have any interest in identity/consciousness and neuroscience, you should give Blindsight a spin as well. Bleak though.

[I'm a Puppy!]

I want to read a few good murder mysteries. Any good recommendations?

[Vizzys]

Read The Expanse first novel, Leviathan Wakes. I've been off hard SF for a while, and this has been good fun in the old "what is happening here?" vibe that old Larry Niven used to provide for me in childhood, which Kim Stanley Robinson has filled for me in adulthood. Add to that a private detective side to the story, and it has hit just about every note that I find enjoyable in prose.

I need to check that out. I enjoyed the first few episodes of the SciFi show but I feel I would enjoy it more in book form.

And once I'm finished with Aurora I'm gonna burn through all of Kim Stanley Robinson other stuff. The Mars Trilogy sounds super cool.

It was your post that encouraged me to write that.

The TV show is different than the novel, but still reasonably faithful. The most surprising thing for me is how so few of the characters are likable in the show. It increases the "DRAMA" level, but doesn't improve the story. It /does/ help get the character interaction out of their heads and into dialog.

If you have any interest in identity/consciousness and neuroscience, you should give Blindsight a spin as well. Bleak though.

I second this Blindsight recommendation
the "sequel" Echopraxia aint bad either, but its a bit meandering and even more depressing.

[chronovore]

I want to read a few good murder mysteries. Any good recommendations?

T. Jefferson Parker's The Blue Hour was very solid.

If you want to stretch your definition of murder to include a single victim in a larger mass killing, coupled with existential angst, Word Made Flesh by Jack O'Connell was remarkably moving.

I second this Blindsight recommendation
the "sequel" Echopraxia aint bad either, but its a bit meandering and even more depressing.

Yeah, Watts himself said something in the afterword to that effect. Echopraxia is an impressive work, but Blindsight is a tour de force. I was also enamored of the Rifters series, but I was less fond of the final reveal, and felt like it lost a little steam. Still, an impressive body of work.

[benjipwns]

It's framed around Dukakis in the Tank but covers every Presidential campaign since. Bush at the scanner, Dole falling off the stage, Dean's scream, Romney's bad singing, etc.

[fistfulofmetal]

Picked up Masters of Doom. Not even a 10 minutes into the book and there's violent child abuse. Geeze.

[TVC15]

In my bag now:



I have a bunch of Graham Greene shit coming my way.

[jakefromstatefarm]

I found a guy on amazon who gets real mad when you fuck up something about Keynes: https://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A1UI9T8WKJPZN5/ref=cm_cr_rdp_pdp

In order to engage me in a civil discussion on Amazon you will need to be able to work out and understand all of the problems solved by George Boole in chapters 16-21 of his "The Laws of Thought" (1854).Demonstrate such a capability and I will be most happy to discusss my work on Keynes's " A Treatise on Probability " with you.Thanks for your comment.

Impressing the way Keynsians unabated contnue their love-fest for this sharlatan..

I agree with you that Murray Rothbard was a charlatan.Thanks for your comment

These are the best books I've read since October, the last time I posted here:


https://www.amazon.com/Rule-Experts-Egypt-Techno-Politics-Modernity/dp/0520232623/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1465952991&sr=1-1&keywords=rule+of+experts

Simmel's "character of calculability" (Mitchell's terms) + Foucault's governmentality + a little bit of Latour's ANT. An empirical expansion of Mitchell's previous work of the process of creating a bounded national economy, in this case Egypt. Pairs really well with Seeing Like a State which I mentioned in here two Aprils ago.


https://www.amazon.com/Economists-Societies-Discipline-Profession-Princeton/dp/0691148031/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1465954270&sr=1-1&keywords=economists+and+society

Different national institutions create different economists. That's Fourcade's starting point to this monograph, a fleshed out revision of her dissertation. I think the blurb from Tyler Cowen on the back of the book actually summarizes things nicely: "skips exegetical analysis and looks at what the economics profession actually did." Have you ever wondered why French economics is historically intertwined with public engineering? Or how the LSE carved out a space for itself in opposition to Oxbridge? Or how the formalist, etatist Cowles Commission came to be housed in the same building as the Chicago School? If yes, then you'll probably like this book. I did. A lot; it's probably the most useful thing I've read this year.


https://www.amazon.com/Road-Mont-P%C3%A8lerin-Neoliberal-Collective/dp/0674088344/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1465956051&sr=1-1&keywords=the+road+from+mont+p%C3%A8lerin

I posted a chapter from this a while back. The Colloque Walter Lippmann was convened in Paris by a wide array of European intellectuals in the wake of the depression to address the crisis of liberalism and the answers to both laissez-faire capitalism and socialism. This was 1938. For a variety of reasons, the attendees couldn't meet again for another 9 years. When they did, in 1947 at a resort next to Mont Pelerin in Switzerland, they formally established their aims and opposition to the above dogmas, as well as, now, Nazism. Mirowski, Plehwe and their contributing authors in this volume take the Mont Pelerin Society as their heuristic for indexing "neoliberalism," that elusive doctrine whose degree of permeation in the modern world depends primarily on who's talking. The first 4 chapters deal with MPS members in 4 different national contexts, including the German ordoliberals. The later chapters aren't as good, but Mirowski's conclusion is great.

[fistfulofmetal]

Masters of Doom was a great read. Almost would have wanted to get a more pointed look at the development of Doom that goes into minute detail about all the challenges of the technology and design.

Following that up, I saw this pop up in Amazon and decided I had to read it:

Empires of EVE: A History of the Great Wars of EVE Online

Empires of EVE: A History of the Great Wars of EVE Online is the incredible true story of the dictators and governments that have risen to power within the real virtual world of EVE Online.

Since 2003, this sci-fi virtual world has been ruled by player-led governments commanding tens of thousands of real people. The conflict and struggle for power between these diverse governments has led to wars, espionage, and battles fought by thousands of people from nations all over the world. There have been climactic last stands, wars for honor and revenge, and spies who caused more damage than a fleet of warships.

Empires of EVE is the history of how political ideas first began to take hold in EVE Online, how that led to the creation of the first governments and political icons, and how those governments eventually collapsed into a state of total war from 2007-2009.

[TVC15]

Read and loved Brighton Rock this week.  'Twas awesome. There will be more Graham Greene. 

Bought a copy of this in Berkeley today, based on its rep. I'm expecting a hoot.

[Olivia Wilde Homo]

The first volume of Mike Duncan's The History of Rome is available: https://www.amazon.com/History-Rome-Republic-1/dp/0692681663?ie=UTF8&ref_=asap_bc

I really enjoy his podcasts so while this is a cleaned up version of his transcripts, it's still worth reading.

[chronovore]

Read and loved Brighton Rock this week.  'Twas awesome. There will be more Graham Greene. 

Bought a copy of this in Berkeley today, based on its rep. I'm expecting a hoot.

(Image removed from quote.)

Bloom said he'd like to remove every copy of the book from every library, everywhere.

[Crash Dummy]

he probably says that about anything not by shakespeare though

[fistfulofmetal]

btw dis EVE Online book seems pretty rad so far. It started by retelling a skirmish between a Russian player alliance and a Coalition of multiple corps. The Russians were outgunned 6 to 1 and managed to fight off the attackers with superior tactics.

ONE DAY I WILL RETURN TO EVE ONLINE.

[Madrun Badrun]

I've read like 4 Malazan books in a month and a half. 

[ZephyrFate]

^^^ I'm sorry.


Just got The Familiar Vol. 3 (of 27) by Mark Z. Danielewski. He's pumping out novels faster than any author I know of. Can't wait to sink my teeth in further.