What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by abuss368 »

We are going to start reading "The E Myth Accountant". This is a breakout book from the original "The E Myth".
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by VictoriaF »

I became interested in John Coates' work from Bogleheads' thread The Biology of Risk and the article linked by bobcat2. And so I moved "The Hour Between Dog and Wolf" to the top of my reading queue. The book was worth it. Coates, a former trader, has quit when he had enough and went to pursue a doctorate in neuroscience. He returned to University of Cambridge, from which he already had a doctorate in economics. Thus, his book is full of insights in economics, behavioral economics, psychology, and neuroscience--together with practical experience of trading.

The main thesis of the book is that financial successes and failures cause substantial physiological changes in traders' bodies. Successes lead to the increase in testosterone that enhances confidence and appetite for risk. Failures, on the other hand, cause a dramatic drop in testosterone and excessive risk aversion. Cortisol is another steroid contributing to irrational pessimism. Most traders are subjected to rises and falls of their fortunes and bodily steroids at the same time. Bull markets promote their increased risk-taking and bear markets have the opposite effect. Thus, the markets overshoot in both directions and market momenta are not imaginary.

Coates provides a good description of the operation of various trading desks in a hypothetical investment bank and creates scenarios of what is actually happening on the trading floor in response to the Fed's actions and market changes. For me, this part was also highly informative.

The book challenges some conventional truths. For example, experienced traders develop subconscious pattern recognition that enables them to perform better than the market average. And "hot hand" is not a naive statistical mistake. The "winner effect" is manifested in the testosterone increase in the winner and decrease in the loser; and so the winner is more likely to win again.

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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by nisiprius »

LadyGeek wrote:The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert A. Heinlein.

I finally got to the book that everyone says is his best. My initial impression was that it was a bit of light reading. After a while, it got interesting. Now, I can't put it down. The spoken dialect is brilliant.

Valuethinker - I'm using your previous post here for reference, along with a few suggestions elsewhere.
I should re-read it. Not everybody agrees, but personally my very favorite Heinlein novel of all is Double Star. And his best short story (or is it long enough to qualify as a novela?) is Universe.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by LadyGeek »

^^^ My favorite line in the book (so far): "Let's throw rocks."

You've got to understand it in context.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by jginseattle »

Rational Expectations, by William J. Bernstein.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by linuxology »

Howard Hughes: His Life and Madness
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by ruralavalon »

Ship of Ghosts: the story of the USS Houston . . . , by James D. Hornfischer. Tells the story of naval battles in the Dutch East Indies, principally around Java, during the opening days of the World War Two in the Far East, and then the fate of the American and Australian sailors who survived while prisoners of war over the next 3 1/2 years. Truly remarkable courage and perseverance, enduring hardships that are difficult to imagine.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by 4nursebee »

I've just finished Ben Horowitz The Hard Thing about Hard THings and Scott Adams How to Fail at everything.

The Dilbert author should be required reading for many disciplines.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by chaz »

"Heat" by Stuart Woods.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by chaz »

chaz wrote:"Heat" by Stuart Woods.
A quick read. Very nice.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by chaz »

"Short Straw" by Stuart Woods. Another nice easy read.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by Valuethinker »

nisiprius wrote:
LadyGeek wrote:The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert A. Heinlein.

I finally got to the book that everyone says is his best. My initial impression was that it was a bit of light reading. After a while, it got interesting. Now, I can't put it down. The spoken dialect is brilliant.

Valuethinker - I'm using your previous post here for reference, along with a few suggestions elsewhere.
I should re-read it. Not everybody agrees, but personally my very favorite Heinlein novel of all is Double Star. And his best short story (or is it long enough to qualify as a novela?) is Universe.
Double Star deserved its Hugo.

The story has some of the best of Heinlein:

- it doesn't explain or tell, it just sucks you into it world. Someone says 'after the Second Martian War' and as a reader you are left to figure out what that might imply, the characters know more than you do. Heinlein's classic 'He stormed out and the door dilated shut behind him'-- you are half a sentence along before you remember that doors don't dilate-- but they do in the world Heinlein creates. The strangeness is just assumed, you as the reader have to deal with it. Science Fiction generally suffers from too much explication 'he remembered the fourth world war, when Israel-Russia allied against China-America, and the crucial battle was fought with hover-scooters over the Hindu Kush...'. Heinlein in his early novels avoids that

(in 'Space Cadet' the hero is learning to be an officer in the Space Patrol, and as they orbit the Earth the pilot says 'That's the Des Moines crater'. It's never explained why there is a (presumably nuclear) crater in Des Moines, but apparently in the original plot outline the main character calls down a nuclear strike on his own home town- Des Moines, Iowa).

- the narrative voice is extremely strong BUT Heinlein hints, in the afterwords, at its unreliability

- Heinlein's core values (eg hatred of alien species as a proxy for human prejudice) come through-- given the date of the novel (1956?) he appears to be making a point about non-white Americans, but using the context of 'Martians'

- his understanding of politics (he had real life experience in local politics) really aids the story. And of Public Relations. The whole novel made me wonder if its events were possible in the present day

'Universe' I shall have to reread. I found 'The Roads must Roll' and 'The Menace from Earth' and 'Solution Unsatisfactory' (an early one about nuclear arms control) to be the most memorable-- which does not say they are the best.

'Lifeline' I would argue is, along with Isaac Asimov's 'Nightfall' one of the best science fiction stories ever written.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by Valuethinker »

linenfort wrote:'The Dogs of Riga', Book 2 in the Wallander series by Swedish novelist Henning Mankell.
One of the ones I really liked, and the Kenneth Branagh adaptation wasn't bad (that's the BBC serial. The Swedish serial, which many say is much better, has just ended).

If you have ever been to Riga you can just imagine it-- the main hotel (the Palace?) when Latvia became independent they found an entire hidden floor for the phone tappers. And there is the monument to the Latvians who were killed by KGB snipers during the human chain protest, when they created a chain across the whole Baltic Republics.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by Valuethinker »

LadyGeek wrote:The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert A. Heinlein.

I finally got to the book that everyone says is his best. My initial impression was that it was a bit of light reading. After a while, it got interesting. Now, I can't put it down. The spoken dialect is brilliant.

Valuethinker - I'm using your previous post here for reference, along with a few suggestions elsewhere.
When you finish it, your reaction will be 'what? There has to be more'.

And there is not. It's like when Roger Zelazny died- there is just this sense of loss. Or when you finish Raymond Chandler's novels (I would exclude 'Playback' in that, and his short fiction is more interesting for what it fed into the novels, than in its own right).

In 'To Sail Beyond the Sunset' Heinlein (RAH to his fans) apparently resurrected the story, but I wouldn't go there.

The Rolling Stones is sort of a sequel (only in that one of the characters carries over).

The 'canon' of Heinlein has to include The Puppet Masters, Double Star, Moon IAHM, Starship Troopers. Most (not me) would add Stranger in a Strange Land and I Will Fear No Evil. I would (as previous) add most of the juveniles and many of the stories in The Past Through Tomorrow.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by nisiprius »

I'd forgotten how The Moon is a Harsh Mistress ends--haven't read it in a looong time. I feel the same way about the ending of Double Star. Indeed, quite a lot of science fiction has a problem with endings, because so much of the charm is in the statement and working out of an interesting premise. Most of what I remember from science fiction novels is the premise--and the sense of being an interesting time and place. It's about ideas, not so much about characters (which is why mainstream literary criticism still disdains it), and the plot development is more of a necessary evil than the main point of interest.

I think science fiction tends to be at its best in short stories or novelas, not full-length novels.

Agree on the juveniles, and--not sure if it's a juvenile or not--I've always liked Have Space Suit, Will Travel, both for its treatment of how the narrator gets and refurbishes the space suit, and the interplay between him and "Peewee." Haven't read it recently. I sort of wonder how it would strike someone like LadyGeek. For his time, Heinlein was notable for his use of strong and intelligent female characters, but that was a long time ago and I suspect it would read as condescending today.

When I first read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, I couldn't suspend disbelief about the idea of a computer generating a real-time raster-scan video image of a convincingly human, talking head. Impossible :)
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by Valuethinker »

nisiprius wrote:I'd forgotten how The Moon is a Harsh Mistress ends--haven't read it in a looong time. I feel the same way about the ending of Double Star. Indeed, quite a lot of science fiction has a problem with endings, because so much of the charm is in the statement and working out of an interesting premise. Most of what I remember from science fiction novels is the premise--and the sense of being an interesting time and place. It's about ideas, not so much about characters (which is why mainstream literary criticism still disdains it), and the plot development is more of a necessary evil than the main point of interest.

I think science fiction tends to be at its best in short stories or novelas, not full-length novels.

Agree on the juveniles, and--not sure if it's a juvenile or not--I've always liked Have Space Suit, Will Travel, both for its treatment of how the narrator gets and refurbishes the space suit, and the interplay between him and "Peewee." Haven't read it recently. I sort of wonder how it would strike someone like LadyGeek. For his time, Heinlein was notable for his use of strong and intelligent female characters, but that was a long time ago and I suspect it would read as condescending today.

When I first read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, I couldn't suspend disbelief about the idea of a computer generating a real-time raster-scan video image of a convincingly human, talking head. Impossible :)
Which leads me to regrets about 'Max Headroom'. Also a raster-generated computer personality.

There are about 3 different versions of MH: a movie, a one off TV show, an 8 part TV show (cancelled). This was before the days of HBO when a show could be 'nurtured'.

The 8 part series (with Matt Frewer as both the reporter and Max Headroom) was brilliant-- particularly their jealous love rivalry for news reporter Theora (Amanda Pays). It got itself into political hot water (a line about a 'Star Wars' satellite accidentally destroying a Belgian village--- that was probably an allusion to a Space 1999 episode in fact). But it was for network TV (science fiction) at the time quite promising.

For example one MH episode was about stealing TV signals for children who did not have access to the education network by which all children are educated. Doesn't this sound like access to the internet debates now?

(Even with a series like 'Logan's Run' with a risible premise, the use of writers like Harlan Ellison created some fine episodes: and Donald Moffett (the corrupt police captain in LA Confidential) is just endlessly watchable on screen. Some of the best writing of on screen SF was 'Land of the Lost' a 'children's' Saturday morning TV show, but David Gerrold was in charge of scripts for the first season, and brought in writers like Larry Niven-- there is some great writing, and the show had a cult status, there was even a band 'Beware of Sleestax'. The recent movie was awful).

On Heinlein and female characters he is highly controversial. He has strong female characters (almost impossibly talented, although apparently his (3rd?) wife, a redhead, was that multi-talented). It's a tradition in SF since (Poul Anderson) to throw in such a redheaded character. For example re women in Starship Troopers the warship captains are *all* women. On the other hand women=breeder is a strong theme in most of his novels. For reasons of propriety I can't discuss I Will Fear No Evil in much detail (man is reborn in a woman's body via personality transfer) but it's controversial. RAH was (at least in theory) a polyamorist, and (apparently in fact) a believer in nudism so in his later 'adult' novels there's a lot about s-x and coupled with his 'traditional' views on other matters, it is an awkward mix. He was certainly not what we would call a 'feminist' but, conversely, he did believe in writing about highly capable, independent and assertive women.

I think for the time, and a genre which was basically selling to teenaged boys, he did pretty well. It would take people like Joanna Russ and Ursula K Leguin to really advance SF in this direction (I question whether Philip Jose Farmer was an 'advancement'. Harlan Ellison I have never really been able to read).

Another 'Golden Age' writer who did well with female characters (Trigger Argee, Telzey Amberdon, The Demon Breed) was James H Schmitz (without any of the complexities of considering Heinlein).
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by Fallible »

jginseattle wrote:American Sucker, by David Denby. The author got caught up in the tech boom and bust. Here's a New York Times review...
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/25/books ... money.html
Thanks for mentioning this book, which I just read. It's almost just another story of a big-time loser in a market crash, complete with pending divorce and midlife crisis. But being a longtime writer and drama critic, now for "The New Yorker," Denby can describe his experience with eloquence and deeper insight than most, plus he had uncommon access to CEOs, big-name brokers, and financial gurus (including his co-worker and financial author John Cassidy, who warned him about losses). His addiction to CNBC, watching it at home for hours at a time, then wanting to talk about nothing else wherever he went, was so complete that it can be funny at times, although I think that may be seeing it from a been-there-done-that Boglehead perspective. Also somewhat humorous was his anger at Robert Shiller, not for being wrong but for being so right about a bubble. When it's finally over, Denby writes: “The market, it turns out, is the quintessence of instability in the Information Age, the perfect paradigm of life as ceaseless change. That is why it is so mesmerizing, so defeating, and, again, so mesmerizing.”

BTW, the NYT review by Walter Kirn is especially well written and witty: Americans "adding their hot breath to the mammoth bubble in equities"; Wall Street "hucksters who played on his heady hopes about the market while suavely anesthetizing his intestinal doubts"; the "mental gyrations that allow a deep thinker to become a shallow speculator." And writing about the pending divorce Denby didn't expect or want, Kirn notes Denby's newly-acquired obsession, which "starts late at night at a computer, as so many obsessions do these days, and occasions much moving writing on loneliness in the age of interconnectivity. While searching the Internet for investment news, Denby also finds himself sampling its porn sites, and in no time he's doubly addicted, buffeted by greed and lust at once. Greed's hold is surer, though, which ought to tell us something about the nature of sin these days."

And, this having been written January 2004, the nature of many more sins to come.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by Trurl Klapaucius »

nisiprius wrote: ... so much of the charm is in the statement and working out of an interesting premise. Most of what I remember from science fiction novels is the premise--and the sense of being an interesting time and place. It's about ideas, not so much about characters (which is why mainstream literary criticism still disdains it), and the plot development is more of a necessary evil than the main point of interest.

I think science fiction tends to be at its best in short stories or novelas, not full-length novels.
I’ve recently been exploring graphic narratives, trying to acquaint myself with this literary format.

Here is an example of a fascinating premise: What if infant superman’s ship had crash landed on a collective in Soviet-era Siberia instead of on a family farm in Kansas? To see this premise developed in short story (comic book) format, check out: Superman: Red Son by Mark Miller (http://www.amazon.com/Superman-Red-Son- ... n+superman)

On the other hand, I have found that sometimes graphic narratives can provide interesting character development. As an example, I recommend: The Property by Rutu Modan (http://www.amazon.com/Property-Rutu-Mod ... e+property) The story of a grandmother and granddaughter traveling from Israel to Poland to investigate property owned by their family prior to World War II.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by chaz »

"Believing the Lie" by Elizabeth George.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by Chan_va »

Just read the Code Book - http://www.amazon.com/Code-Book-Science ... imon+singh

Great read - enough math to make it intellectually stimulating, but not so deep that you can't read it on the beach.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

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Valuethinker wrote: There are about 3 different versions of MH: a movie, a one off TV show, an 8 part TV show (cancelled). This was before the days of HBO when a show could be 'nurtured'.

The 8 part series (with Matt Frewer as both the reporter and Max Headroom) was brilliant-- particularly their jealous love rivalry for news reporter Theora (Amanda Pays). It got itself into political hot water (a line about a 'Star Wars' satellite accidentally destroying a Belgian village--- that was probably an allusion to a Space 1999 episode in fact). But it was for network TV (science fiction) at the time quite promising.
I actually liked the made for TV movie better than the TV series. However it's hard to track down a copy on disk. I eventually found a company that had licensed it for the Japanese rental market and was able to order a copy from Japan. This is one of my cold dead hands disks.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by Bungo »

Chan_va wrote:Just read the Code Book - http://www.amazon.com/Code-Book-Science ... imon+singh

Great read - enough math to make it intellectually stimulating, but not so deep that you can't read it on the beach.
Agree, outstanding book.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by Cortez »

Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness by Nicolas Nassim Taleb. Audio book versions.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by Valuethinker »

Ged wrote:
Valuethinker wrote: There are about 3 different versions of MH: a movie, a one off TV show, an 8 part TV show (cancelled). This was before the days of HBO when a show could be 'nurtured'.

The 8 part series (with Matt Frewer as both the reporter and Max Headroom) was brilliant-- particularly their jealous love rivalry for news reporter Theora (Amanda Pays). It got itself into political hot water (a line about a 'Star Wars' satellite accidentally destroying a Belgian village--- that was probably an allusion to a Space 1999 episode in fact). But it was for network TV (science fiction) at the time quite promising.
I actually liked the made for TV movie better than the TV series. However it's hard to track down a copy on disk. I eventually found a company that had licensed it for the Japanese rental market and was able to order a copy from Japan. This is one of my cold dead hands disks.
A true connisseur! I vaguely remember the UK movie (in which the Frewer character dies)-- but I am not sure if I've ever even seen it. I only saw the North American network TV version.

I had a crush on Amanda Pays (she also starred in 'Leviathan' a ripoff of 'The Abyss') and she disappeared from my TV screen, sadly. The interesting love tension in the series (Frewer and Max Headroom as love rivals and her disinterest) was an added feature. I also really liked the program producer character (as the boss beset by crazy subordinates).

If you like this sort of stuff there was a French-Canadian (but English voice) production called 'The Delta State' (animated in rotoscope) about 4 young psychics and a mysterious government agent named Brodie, whose job is to protect the subconscious of the human race from attack by a race of alien psychics. I have only seen a few episodes (and I am not sure the second series was ever collected on DVD) but the effect of the thing was way more sophisticated than most animated series I have ever seen: sort of Manga without the obligatory robots, gore etc.-- it was genuinely quite eerie to watch-- the heroes have no memory of how they got to where they are and the show is partly about them trying to discover that, and discover who Brodie is.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by Valuethinker »

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/j ... ter-review

Junkyard Planet - Travels in the Billion Dollar Trash Trade by Adam Minter

Endlessly fascinating in its anecdotes and descriptions. But insufficiently analytical: I wanted some sidebars on the big picture. Minter throws numbers around (and admits all data is suspect in this industry) but somehow doesn't pull it together. I was wanting something closer to the masterful 'The Box' about the history of the world container trade, and I wasn't getting it.

Minter is a journalist in the industry and son of a scrap dealer. I did learn so much to the question 'where does all my garbage go?' (actually mostly about metal scrap). Salient facts:

- where your garbage goes depends on the container flow into your country because shipping the containers back is virtually free: it costs 4x as much to send a container China-USA as back, and it's cheaper to send a container to China than to move it inland in the USA. So China-USA and India-Middle East

- the US had a problem with c. 40m abandoned cars in 1970- -they were literally choking the nation. It took until the 2008 scrap metal prices boom for that backlog to be finally consumed (in addition to the 14m or so cars pa the US scraps). The key was the invention of the car eating machine, a process which took a long time and had a lot of starts and stops

The metals price boom post 2000 due to Chinese demand (China consumes one half of the world's copper supply every year) was a great step forward for recycling (here in the UK they steal manhole covers and electricity and phone cables to meet that demand, causing endless disruption of critical infrastructure; the worst case a gang of thieves stole some electricity cable from a rail line, 2 of their number were electrocuted *and they just took the cable and *left them*).

- the scrap metal trade in the US tended to be dominated by Jewish-owned firms. The reason being that in the second great migration of Jews into America (1890s-1921 from what was then the Russian Empire during and post the last pogroms, via Odessa largely) these new arrivals found many professions and business areas blocked to them by anti-semitic prejudice. But no one wanted to touch scrap-- garbage-- a problem which grew rapidly with all the new consumer durables (fridges, cars etc). So Jewish entrepreneurs filled a gap.

This fits with things I had observed in family connections and movies especially the incomparable 'The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz' with Richard Dreyfuss (set in 1930s Montreal in part).

- certain small regions in China dominate the recycling of various things: one tiny part of one province for plastics, another for scrap metal, another for electronics parts

- Minter makes an excellent case re the environmental impact of recycling. The mantra 'Repair, Reuse, Recycle' (and only in that order) is well defended. But it's not a simple story of 'rich people dumping their waste on poor people'. Human beings (cheap labour) make better recyclers than machines in most cases, so if you want truly comprehensive recycling shipping your waste to the Third World can be the best answer

- we don't design products (he notes particular problems with Apple products) to be easily recycled or repaired. A major issue. He doesn't talk about the fridge recycling problem (CFCs) but that's a story in and of itself.

If you are interested in how the world *really* works, the plumbing of the world economy, and the *true* challenges of 'The Green Economy' then this is a book I highly recommend.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by Fallible »

Trurl Klapaucius wrote:...I’ve recently been exploring graphic narratives, trying to acquaint myself with this literary format.

Here is an example of a fascinating premise: What if infant superman’s ship had crash landed on a collective in Soviet-era Siberia instead of on a family farm in Kansas? To see this premise developed in short story (comic book) format, check out: Superman: Red Son by Mark Miller (http://www.amazon.com/Superman-Red-Son- ... n+superman)

On the other hand, I have found that sometimes graphic narratives can provide interesting character development. As an example, I recommend: The Property by Rutu Modan (http://www.amazon.com/Property-Rutu-Mod ... e+property) The story of a grandmother and granddaughter traveling from Israel to Poland to investigate property owned by their family prior to World War II.
I've also been sampling this genre, which still doesn't seem to quite know what it is or can be. I've read only two such novels, mainly because I liked the previous work of the cartoonists. The books were as different, in a similar way, as the two you've mentioned. The first was Dan Thompson's fun adventure, "Rip Haywire and the Curse of Tangaroa," and the second was Roz Chast's tragically funny "Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?", about her unhappy childhood and caring for her aging and incredibly difficult parents. I liked both, but notice that, at least for now, another graphic novel is not on my reading list.
"Yes, investing is simple. But it is not easy, for it requires discipline, patience, steadfastness, and that most uncommon of all gifts, common sense." ~Jack Bogle
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by heartwood »

Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey. I'm about half way through. The protagonist is an 82 year old British woman with Alzheimer's and her much younger self in flashbacks. The Alzheimer's aspect makes it very different from the usual fiction narrative.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by chaz »

While reading a short story by Agatha Christie titled "The Rajah's Emerald", the protagonist is named James Bond. Published in 1926 ( way before 007)!
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by gkaplan »

I have just begun Rise: a Novel of Contemporary Israel by Yosef Gotlieb. An internationally known photo essayist returns to Israel after having lived and worked since 1979 in New England. She seeks to reconcile with her estranged husband, an opposition leader, and their son, an officer in an elite unit of the IDF.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by nisiprius »

Fallible wrote:
jginseattle wrote:American Sucker, by David Denby. The author got caught up in the tech boom and bust. Here's a New York Times review...
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/25/books ... money.html
Thanks for mentioning this book, which I just read.
Thanks to both of you, I'm halfway through and can't put it down. It is a real shocker to me in making it clear just what does go on inside the heads of people who buy into the culture of speculation. To be sure, as a skillful writer telling a colorful story, he may be exaggerating, and, some of the sick intensity of his obsessive behavior might be reaction--displacement activity--distraction--from other things going on in his personal life.

But even more than Michael Lewis, he makes it clear just how addiction-like speculation can be, and how much it resembles gambling addiction. Gotta believe that he was addicted to endorphins released by winning.

I'm fascinated by the way he expressed such intense. bitter, anger to a) Greenspan, for trying to put on the reins, and b) Shiller, for public expressions of negativity. It's not that he thinks they are wrong and that the bubble could go on forever, but he can't forgive them for bad timing--"wait, don't pop it now, too soon, no need to do it now, and I need for it to go on a while longer."

I don't think I could turn into a Denby, but it's pretty scary, because he didn't start out that way. I have to keep the possibility in mind, especially as I age. Why do I find his story so fascinating unless I recognize a streak of Denby in myself?
In 'The Way of All Flesh', Samuel Butler wrote:How often do I not hear middle-aged women and quiet family men say that they have no speculative tendency; they never had touched, and never would touch, any but the very soundest, best reputed investments....

Whenever a person is heard to talk thus he may be recognised as the easy prey of the first adventurer who comes across him; he will commonly, indeed, wind up his discourse by saying that in spite of all his natural caution, and his well knowing how foolish speculation is, yet there are some investments which are called speculative but in reality are not so, and he will pull out of his pocket the prospectus of a Cornish gold mine.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by letsgobobby »

Earth abides by George stewart. Inspiration for Stephen king's The Stand. Better than the stand. Good for its genre but as literature only fair.

Also just read American Pastoral, my first Phillip Roth novel. Thought it was excellent. He really understands the human male psyche or at least the American male psyche. The women characters were less thoughtful and more one dimensional, but the narrator and protagonist were both men so I allowed for some artistic license. There are some side splittingly hilarious scenes in the novel, as between Dawn and the Swede ' s dad.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by LadyGeek »

Valuethinker wrote:
LadyGeek wrote:The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert A. Heinlein.

I finally got to the book that everyone says is his best. My initial impression was that it was a bit of light reading. After a while, it got interesting. Now, I can't put it down. The spoken dialect is brilliant.

Valuethinker - I'm using your previous post here for reference, along with a few suggestions elsewhere.
When you finish it, your reaction will be 'what? There has to be more'.

And there is not. It's like when Roger Zelazny died- there is just this sense of loss. Or when you finish Raymond Chandler's novels (I would exclude 'Playback' in that, and his short fiction is more interesting for what it fed into the novels, than in its own right).

In 'To Sail Beyond the Sunset' Heinlein (RAH to his fans) apparently resurrected the story, but I wouldn't go there.

The Rolling Stones is sort of a sequel (only in that one of the characters carries over).

The 'canon' of Heinlein has to include The Puppet Masters, Double Star, Moon IAHM, Starship Troopers. Most (not me) would add Stranger in a Strange Land and I Will Fear No Evil. I would (as previous) add most of the juveniles and many of the stories in The Past Through Tomorrow.
I thought that the conclusion to The Moon is a Harsh Mistress seemed appropriate. It was the fascinating approach to the end-game which kept my interest. Once that happened, the rest was more or less a clean-up.

I'm currently reading The Puppet Masters, by Robert A. Heinlein. The writing style has reverted to what I saw in The Past Through Tomorrow, which reflects that it was written in 1951. I certainly agree that this book should be on your reading list. It's keeping me in suspense, I can't put it down.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by Valuethinker »

LadyGeek wrote:
Valuethinker wrote:
LadyGeek wrote:The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert A. Heinlein.

I finally got to the book that everyone says is his best. My initial impression was that it was a bit of light reading. After a while, it got interesting. Now, I can't put it down. The spoken dialect is brilliant.

Valuethinker - I'm using your previous post here for reference, along with a few suggestions elsewhere.
When you finish it, your reaction will be 'what? There has to be more'.

And there is not. It's like when Roger Zelazny died- there is just this sense of loss. Or when you finish Raymond Chandler's novels (I would exclude 'Playback' in that, and his short fiction is more interesting for what it fed into the novels, than in its own right).

In 'To Sail Beyond the Sunset' Heinlein (RAH to his fans) apparently resurrected the story, but I wouldn't go there.

The Rolling Stones is sort of a sequel (only in that one of the characters carries over).

The 'canon' of Heinlein has to include The Puppet Masters, Double Star, Moon IAHM, Starship Troopers. Most (not me) would add Stranger in a Strange Land and I Will Fear No Evil. I would (as previous) add most of the juveniles and many of the stories in The Past Through Tomorrow.
I thought that the conclusion to The Moon is a Harsh Mistress seemed appropriate. It was the fascinating approach to the end-game which kept my interest. Once that happened, the rest was more or less a clean-up.

I'm currently reading The Puppet Masters, by Robert A. Heinlein. The writing style has reverted to what I saw in The Past Through Tomorrow, which reflects that it was written in 1951. I certainly agree that this book should be on your reading list. It's keeping me in suspense, I can't put it down.
MIAHM wraps up nicely but the fate of the characters is hard (I am leaving it at that for the benefit of anyone who hasn't read it (I expect the subset of those who might conceivably read MIAHM and yet never have, is quite small). And the feeling that there is a greater story to go on with, and RAH is no longer alive to write it.

The Puppet Masters is very much of its time- -early 1950s, Red Scare etc. You can read it as a warning against totalitarian communism (Heinlein actually later visited Soviet Russia with his wife, in the late 50s I think) but as is often the case with Heinlein, he seems to add more to it than that. I agree it is un-putdownable (if that's a word).

Even with a Science Fiction cliche, Heinlein does it better than anyone else*. The paranoia about an unseen alien invasion carries on in classic movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Thing (the John Campbell story and the *second* movie version ie the John Carpenter one), a host of B movies, and shows like the X Files (and in the 1960s, the Invaders-- Keith Laumer wrote a pretty good novelization of that). Indeed in the secret government organization and the man-woman duo investigating the alien incursion, you can see The X Files writ large, or for that matter Fringe.

* alien invasion we have TPM
Post nuclear war we have Farnham's Freehold (one of his most controversial novels, and one of his worst)
Swords & Sorcery/ parallel universes we have Glory Road (again not my cup of tea)
Telepathy we have Between Planets
US under religious dictatorship we have If This Goes On (which to my mind has never been bettered)
Space war we have Starship Troopers
Waldo & Magic Inc kicked off a whole genre of 'modern day fantasy' eg Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden Files (see also Poul Anderson's wonderful Operation Chaos)
etc.

Heinlein can lay claim to at least 2 inventions: the waterbed and the waldo (the remote teleoperated hands).

when we hit these common SF cliches we have to remember that Heinlein was often one of the first to write about them.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by HardKnocker »

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http://www.npr.org/2014/01/28/264525600 ... rkling-sea

"A Darkling Sea, James Cambias' first novel, is the perfect action romp for people who miss old-fashioned stories of planetary colonization. It has all the gee-whiz wonder of a classic space opera tale, complete with weird aliens. But it also reflects contemporary concerns like environmental contamination, and the political problems that can arise from first contact between very different civilizations."
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by Fallible »

nisiprius wrote:
Fallible wrote:
jginseattle wrote:American Sucker, by David Denby. The author got caught up in the tech boom and bust. Here's a New York Times review...
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/25/books ... money.html
Thanks for mentioning this book, which I just read.
Thanks to both of you, I'm halfway through and can't put it down. It is a real shocker to me in making it clear just what does go on inside the heads of people who buy into the culture of speculation. To be sure, as a skillful writer telling a colorful story, he may be exaggerating, and, some of the sick intensity of his obsessive behavior might be reaction--displacement activity--distraction--from other things going on in his personal life.
...
Yes, at first I thought it was the pending divorce and midlife crisis that led him to such disastrous speculation, but the more I read and thought about it, the more it seemed, well, something more, or at least more than just those triggers. Except that I don't know what it was that caused such total addiction and I wasn't convinced that he had it all down either. He wrote the book in '03, fairly soon after these events and he may have a broader understanding now.

I loved the Samuel Butler quotes.
"Yes, investing is simple. But it is not easy, for it requires discipline, patience, steadfastness, and that most uncommon of all gifts, common sense." ~Jack Bogle
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by d0gerz »

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway. This is the first book by him that I'm reading. It's a novel set in Italy during WWI, somewhat based on his own experiences on the Italian front.

A few sentences that I really liked:

"I have noticed that doctors who fail in the practice of medicine have a tendency to seek one another's company and aid in consultation. A doctor who cannot take out your appendix properly will recommend you to a doctor who will be unable to remove your tonsils with success."

And on war:

"War is not won by victory. One side must stop fighting."

"What's the use of not being wounded if they scare you to death?"
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by Valuethinker »

d0gerz wrote:A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway. This is the first book by him that I'm reading. It's a novel set in Italy during WWI, somewhat based on his own experiences on the Italian front.

A few sentences that I really liked:

"I have noticed that doctors who fail in the practice of medicine have a tendency to seek one another's company and aid in consultation. A doctor who cannot take out your appendix properly will recommend you to a doctor who will be unable to remove your tonsils with success."

And on war:

"War is not won by victory. One side must stop fighting."

"What's the use of not being wounded if they scare you to death?"
That war being amongst the most fruitless of a fruitless conflict.

The Italians were bribed to go to war by being offered the Tirol by France and England. The parliament wasn't even allowed to vote on it.

The war turned into a nightmare of bloody battles in Tirolia and Slovenia/ Trieste area, with Italy nearly losing the war at Caporetto. The Austro-Hungarian army was generally hapless, but the Austrian regiments almost inevitably fought well, particularly in defending their homelands.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-White-War-I ... lian+front

The Italians managed to be on the winning side of WW1, and lose. In WW2 they managed to be on the losing side, then the winning side, and, arguably, still lose. (Trieste is an Italian city not a Yugoslavian one, arguably they won something).

If you go to Sud-Tirol in Italy it's abundantly clear the locals still think of themselves as Austrian (or Tirolean in fact) and wish they weren't part of Italy. You can see the machine gun nests Mussolini had built in the 1930s because he thought he was going to go to war with Hitler over the area.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by letsgobobby »

The Lowland, Jhumpa Lahiri (also author of Interpreter of Maladies, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2000).

This is a family drama over 3-4 generations, with the protagonist an Indian brother who eventually immigrates to the United States to continue his studies. I had mixed feelings about this book. The author is talented and evokes feeling in scene very well, but at the same time even the protagonist felt remote. Several of the other major characters was entirely unsympathetic; I felt there was a hazy layer between the reader and most of the characters in the story which made it hard to feel as deeply as the facts of their lives probably demanded. Nevertheless the arc of the family's experience was well told and I enjoyed the book enough to recommend it.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by chaz »

"The Reapers" by John Connolly.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by jebmke »

"A Plague of Secrets" by John Lescroart
Don't trust me, look it up. https://www.irs.gov/forms-instructions-and-publications
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by VictoriaF »

"10% Happier" by Dan Harris. As an ABC News correspondent specializing in religious and spiritual movements, Harris came across Buddhism and meditation. Initially, he was skeptical about mindfulness and challenged every interviewee. But little by little, he has discovered that meditation actually worked for him.

The book is presented as Harris's autobiography, with the practical information about meditation appearing in the second half of the book. Harris does not proselytize and keeps the Buddhist terminology to the minimum. He suggests that many people are turned off by the jargon and touchy-feely attitude of traditional teachers of meditation. Modern meditation is much more practical and is used by major corporation, Marine Corps, and others.

There are many books about the benefits of meditation and the practical aspects of meditation. This one stands apart as a well-presented "use case."

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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by Trurl Klapaucius »

Fallible wrote:
Trurl Klapaucius wrote:...I’ve recently been exploring graphic narratives, trying to acquaint myself with this literary format.
I've also been sampling this genre, which still doesn't seem to quite know what it is or can be. I've read only two such novels, mainly because I liked the previous work of the cartoonists. The books were as different, in a similar way, as the two you've mentioned. The first was Dan Thompson's fun adventure, "Rip Haywire and the Curse of Tangaroa," and the second was Roz Chast's tragically funny "Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?", about her unhappy childhood and caring for her aging and incredibly difficult parents. I liked both, but notice that, at least for now, another graphic novel is not on my reading list.
Yes, graphic novels can be all over the map. Thanks for the recommendations. Chast’s book is on my must read list, as I help care for an elderly (96 y.o.) parent, and encounter outlandish/amusing/poignant situations on a daily basis at the nursing home.

Should you fall off the graphic novel abstinence wagon (and thereby demonstrate that you are Fallable as well as Fallible?) there are several others I would recommend, including:

Daytripper by Gabriel Ba & Fabio Moon. A story about learning the meaning of life by dying, repeatedly. (http://www.amazon.com/Daytripper-Gabrie ... daytripper)

Big Questions by Anders Nilsen. Existentialism and finches. (http://www.amazon.com/Big-Questions-And ... +questions)

Boxers/Saints by Gene Luen Yang. A history of the Boxer Rebellion, as seen from opposing points of view. (http://www.amazon.com/Boxers-Saints-Box ... nts&dpPl=1)
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by Ged »

Valuethinker wrote: I had a crush on Amanda Pays
Everyone does. I think she was even more attractive in the movie.
Valuethinker wrote: If you like this sort of stuff there was a French-Canadian (but English voice) production called 'The Delta State' (animated in rotoscope) about 4 young psychics and a mysterious government agent named Brodie, whose job is to protect the subconscious of the human race from attack by a race of alien psychics. I have only seen a few episodes (and I am not sure the second series was ever collected on DVD) but the effect of the thing was way more sophisticated than most animated series I have ever seen: sort of Manga without the obligatory robots, gore etc.-- it was genuinely quite eerie to watch-- the heroes have no memory of how they got to where they are and the show is partly about them trying to discover that, and discover who Brodie is.
I'm giving it a shot. It's inexpensive on Amazon marketplace.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by Fallible »

Trurl Klapaucius wrote:
Fallible wrote:
Trurl Klapaucius wrote:...I’ve recently been exploring graphic narratives, trying to acquaint myself with this literary format.
I've also been sampling this genre, which still doesn't seem to quite know what it is or can be. I've read only two such novels, mainly because I liked the previous work of the cartoonists. The books were as different, in a similar way, as the two you've mentioned. The first was Dan Thompson's fun adventure, "Rip Haywire and the Curse of Tangaroa," and the second was Roz Chast's tragically funny "Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?", about her unhappy childhood and caring for her aging and incredibly difficult parents. I liked both, but notice that, at least for now, another graphic novel is not on my reading list.
Yes, graphic novels can be all over the map. Thanks for the recommendations. Chast’s book is on my must read list, as I help care for an elderly (96 y.o.) parent, and encounter outlandish/amusing/poignant situations on a daily basis at the nursing home.

Should you fall off the graphic novel abstinence wagon (and thereby demonstrate that you are Fallable as well as Fallible?) there are several others I would recommend, including:

Daytripper by Gabriel Ba & Fabio Moon. A story about learning the meaning of life by dying, repeatedly. (http://www.amazon.com/Daytripper-Gabrie ... daytripper)

Big Questions by Anders Nilsen. Existentialism and finches. (http://www.amazon.com/Big-Questions-And ... +questions)

Boxers/Saints by Gene Luen Yang. A history of the Boxer Rebellion, as seen from opposing points of view. (http://www.amazon.com/Boxers-Saints-Box ... nts&dpPl=1)
Hi,

You have already proven Fallible fallable as I had looked over the novel you mentioned in your earlier post and put it on my library list. Thanks for mentioning it and for recommending the others. As for Chast's book, your caregiving experience will help you to understand it more fully and if you're familiar with her cartoons, I think you'll begin to see where she's been coming from all these years.

Fallable Fallible
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by d0gerz »

Valuethinker wrote:That war being amongst the most fruitless of a fruitless conflict.

The Italians were bribed to go to war by being offered the Tirol by France and England. The parliament wasn't even allowed to vote on it.

The war turned into a nightmare of bloody battles in Tirolia and Slovenia/ Trieste area, with Italy nearly losing the war at Caporetto. The Austro-Hungarian army was generally hapless, but the Austrian regiments almost inevitably fought well, particularly in defending their homelands.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-White-War-I ... lian+front

The Italians managed to be on the winning side of WW1, and lose. In WW2 they managed to be on the losing side, then the winning side, and, arguably, still lose. (Trieste is an Italian city not a Yugoslavian one, arguably they won something).

If you go to Sud-Tirol in Italy it's abundantly clear the locals still think of themselves as Austrian (or Tirolean in fact) and wish they weren't part of Italy. You can see the machine gun nests Mussolini had built in the 1930s because he thought he was going to go to war with Hitler over the area.
Thank you for this note. Whatever little I know of WWI has been through reading books not directly related to the war itself but events shaped by it. Fruitless conflict is definitely the feeling Hemingway conveys here. Never really talks about the big picture of the war, it's just something that's there, sort of an inevitability about it, and the mundane details of everyday life at the front. The foot soldiers also seem quite aware of the futility of it all.

Spent a good deal of time on Google Maps looking up the places mentioned. I would like to go there some day. Only thing I know about South Tyrol is that one of the greatest mountaineers of all time, Reinhold Messner, hails from there. Have always been fascinated by how "un-Italian" that name is.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by gkaplan »

I'm a little over one hundred pages into The Doll: a Novel by Taylor Stevens. This is the third in her Vanessa Michael Munroe series.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by Valuethinker »

d0gerz wrote:
Valuethinker wrote:That war being amongst the most fruitless of a fruitless conflict.

The Italians were bribed to go to war by being offered the Tirol by France and England. The parliament wasn't even allowed to vote on it.

The war turned into a nightmare of bloody battles in Tirolia and Slovenia/ Trieste area, with Italy nearly losing the war at Caporetto. The Austro-Hungarian army was generally hapless, but the Austrian regiments almost inevitably fought well, particularly in defending their homelands.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-White-War-I ... lian+front

The Italians managed to be on the winning side of WW1, and lose. In WW2 they managed to be on the losing side, then the winning side, and, arguably, still lose. (Trieste is an Italian city not a Yugoslavian one, arguably they won something).

If you go to Sud-Tirol in Italy it's abundantly clear the locals still think of themselves as Austrian (or Tirolean in fact) and wish they weren't part of Italy. You can see the machine gun nests Mussolini had built in the 1930s because he thought he was going to go to war with Hitler over the area.
Thank you for this note. Whatever little I know of WWI has been through reading books not directly related to the war itself but events shaped by it. Fruitless conflict is definitely the feeling Hemingway conveys here. Never really talks about the big picture of the war, it's just something that's there, sort of an inevitability about it, and the mundane details of everyday life at the front. The foot soldiers also seem quite aware of the futility of it all.

Spent a good deal of time on Google Maps looking up the places mentioned. I would like to go there some day. Only thing I know about South Tyrol is that one of the greatest mountaineers of all time, Reinhold Messner, hails from there. Have always been fascinated by how "un-Italian" that name is.
I am a little vague on the history (despite having visited both Tirol and Sud Tirol) but basically they both belonged to the Hapsburgs. When the Italians threw the Hapsburg Austro-Hungarian Empire out in the late 19th century, Tirolia stayed Austrian. But the Italians felt vulnerable on the border, not controlling the highest mountain passes.

And that led ultra nationalist Italians, in the run up to WW1 (when at that time the country was actually allied with Germany and Austro-Hungary) to plot to get it, as well as Trieste.

Incredible stories, where one side occupied the top of a mountain and abseiled down to attack the other side dug *into* the mountain.

The cost of the 'victory' set the stage for Mussolini, the first fascist ruler before Hitler, Franco and General Tojo. Mussolini had been a special assault trooper (stormtrooper) during the war.

The Italian Modernist movement in art and architecture had aligned itself with the 'purifying' force of war.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurism

And after WW1 many were disillusioned, but Marinetti in particular supported Mussolini. I think they then found fascists boorish, uninterested in art, and if you look at say the architecture Albert Speer did for Hitler, totally lacking in taste in architecture-- boorish pastiches harking back to the imperial days.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by placeholder »

Just started Raising Steam the latest Discworld novel by Terry Pratchett and under the circumstances who knows how many more there will be.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

Post by Valuethinker »

placeholder wrote:Just started Raising Steam the latest Discworld novel by Terry Pratchett and under the circumstances who knows how many more there will be.
He is slipping fast. It will depend on his co-writers.

The UK lost JG Ballard (a science fiction writer so valued by the literary world that his obituaries were keen to stress that what he wrote 'wasn't really science fiction', or didn't even mention the dreaded words 'Science Fiction' ;-)), Ian M Banks (ditto- -same reaction) and we are losing Terry Pratchett.

The tendency of the literary criticism world to dismiss Science Fiction as not really serious literature, and rebrand any writer who writes 'seriously' about the future or about the impact of new technology on life as 'not writing SF' is one of the things that makes me sceptical of it.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

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