What Are You Reading

[AmateisGal]

Which - according to an email from Amazon - will get one book longer today when AmateisGirl's "Nebraska POW Camps: A History of WWII Prisoners in the Heartland" arrives. And being a Fedora Lounger's book, it will jump to the top of the queue and will be read once I finish "Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood," which, so far, is a better book than the somewhat salacious title would lead you to believe.

Awww, thanks! Hope you enjoy.

 

[cw3pa]

Just finished "Black Star" by Johnston McCulley. First appeared in "Detective Story Magazine" on 5 March 1916. Good detective story. On to "The Spider".

 

[DNO]

Just completed David Grann's "The Lost City of Z". Quite the descriptions of the perils of exploring the Amazon! Good read.

Still working through White Devil about Roger's raid on St. Francis.

 

[DNO]

Robert Leckie's Helmet for my Pillow. Just makes me feel like watching the Pacific miniseries again.

 

[AmateisGal]

Robert Leckie's Helmet for my Pillow. Just makes me feel like watching the Pacific miniseries again.

I just borrowed The Pacific from my brother. I've never seen it, so I'm anxious to watch it.

 

[LizzieMaine]

"Witch Hunt: The Revival of Heresy -- The Modern Inquisition in the United States," by Carey McWilliams. This is a psychosocial study of the postwar activities of the House Un-American Activities Committee, published in 1950, just before Joseph R. McCarthy came to national prominence with his own crusade. It's invaluable contemporaneous documentation of the panic-driven atmosphere in postwar America, and of the environment which allowed McCarthyism to take full root. The most interesting section compares the psychological factors at work in the fear-driven political persecutions of the late 1940s with those preciptating the original "witch hunt" in Colonial Massachusetts, and finds disturbing parallels.

McWilliams was one of the most prominent "public intellectuals" of the 1940s, and is best known for his books on various minority groups of the time. His work is well worth exploring for those who really want to know how people in the Era actually viewed the difficult issues of their time -- and what led them to the beliefs they held.

 

[Hercule]

Just completed David Grann's "The Lost City of Z". Quite the descriptions of the perils of exploring the Amazon! Good read.

I tried reading that several years ago and didn't get very far. I just didn't speak to me at the time. Perhaps I'll try again.

What I find very interesting and particularly sad at the same time, about that story is that while it's a tale about Percy Fawcett slogging through the remote Amazon jungle in the mid '20s in search of an ancient lost city, the modern attempt to trace his steps by his son, Jack Fawcett (a PBS Secrets of the Dead episode), was done largely by SUV.

 

[AmateisGal]

With the Old Breed by E.B. Sledge

 

[LizzieMaine]

"Cheap -- The High Cost of Discount Culture," by Ellen Ruppel Shell. Brought to my attention by a thread in the PR, this is an unflinching look at the world The Boys From Marketing hath wrought, a world in which we know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Shell is a worthy successor to Vance Packard in this sort of muckraking sociological investigation.

 

[jamespowers]

"Cheap -- The High Cost of Discount Culture," by Ellen Ruppel Shell. Brought to my attention by a thread in the PR, this is an unflinching look at the world The Boys From Marketing hath wrought, a world in which we know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Shell is a worthy successor to Vance Packard in this sort of muckraking sociological investigation.

Hmmmm..... No agenda there. :rofl:

 

[LizzieMaine]

Hmmmm..... No agenda there. :rofl:

Oh those Methodists, always foisting their unwholesome worldview on a gullible public.

 

[jamespowers]

Oh those Methodists, always foisting their unwholesome worldview on a gullible public.

When she quotes Karl Marx to bolster her point of view in her recent discussion group on her book it is rather funny---considering her book costs $25 and isn't free to all.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Nothing wrong with quoting Karl Marx, I don't believe there's a single writer on economic issues over the last hundred years or so who hasn't done so once or twice. She also quotes Hayek in the book, but that doesn't make her a devotee of the Austrian School.

I got my copy for $3.95 on a remainder table.

Her thesis is actually something most of the people who scream and wail around here about the shoddy quality of cheap Chinese goods would be likely to support. She contends that Americans have only themselves to blame for the fact that they're drowning in shoddy junk -- because they insist on shopping price over quality. And she indicts the Boys, as I have for years, for providing an environment in which the shoddiness of most products has turned what used to be "everyday quality" into a new level of luxury goods. Nothing particularly Marxist about that, unless one considers any critique of the rapacious side of modern capitalism to be "Marxist."

 

[jamespowers]

Nothing wrong with quoting Karl Marx, I don't believe there's a single writer on economic issues over the last hundred years or so who hasn't done so once or twice. She also quotes Hayek in the book, but that doesn't make her a devotee of the Austrian School.

I got my copy for $3.95 on a remainder table.

Her thesis is actually something most of the people who scream and wail around here about the shoddy quality of cheap Chinese goods would be likely to support. She contends that Americans have only themselves to blame for the fact that they're drowning in shoddy junk -- because they insist on shopping price over quality. And she indicts the Boys, as I have for years, for providing an environment in which the shoddiness of most products has turned what used to be "everyday quality" into a new level of luxury goods. Nothing particularly Marxist about that, unless one considers any critique of the rapacious side of modern capitalism to be "Marxist."

Well that depends. Whenever you are telling people they are stupid for spending their own money in an unacceptable way then you run into a lot of problems. We all vote with our wallets and the people who make products make what will sell. Being cheap isn't necessarily wrong---it is just that, largely, you get what you pay for. This at least allows people who could not afford these products years ago to afford them today----for however long they last.

 

[LizzieMaine]

She makes the point, though, that we really *can't* afford these goods -- with the onslaught of cheap junk has come an overwhelming expansion in personal debt as people continue to cycle thru things they don't need simply for the sake of having them. She is candid enough that she uses her own personal experience as an example.

She also points out that a lot of these goods aren't even what they purport to be. She uses the example of shrimp -- which, for people who didn't live on the immediate coast of an ocean, were considered a luxury food up until the '70s or '80s. Now, Americans eat more shrimp than they do canned tuna fish -- but what they're eating isn't really "shrimp" in the sense that people who buy it fresh off a truck know it, or in the sense that it was known forty or fifty years ago. It's a mass-produced, antibiotic-ridden product grown in slurry-filled pools in Thailand, and shipped here frozen in giant blocks. It might be called shrimp, and it might be sold as shrimp, but it isn't, except in the broadest biological sense of the word, shrimp. That's what The Culture of Cheap has done for that one product -- all the while taking money out of the pockets of actual American shrimp fishermen who had long made a living catching real shrimp in the wild.

She, and I, don't think that's a particularly beneficial deal for anyone -- not for the consumers, who are eating God-knows-what, not for the American fishermen who are being priced out of their livings, not for the Thai serfs who grow the foreign "shrimp," and not even for the shrimp themselves, which are being mutated into something freakish for the sake of the almighty buck.

She doesn't propose any particular solution to the problem -- but she does point out that the sort of "growth" that's built on such a fraudulent foundation is liable to crash down at any moment.

She defines herself, philosophically, as a "frugalist", which is a philosophy which I myself have always supported, and points out that what you think you "want" is often something you want because you've been conditioned to want it, not because you actually need it or even have any practical use for it. That's a phenomenon that's only gotten worse over the course of the postwar era, and it can't go on forever. Infinite growth is impossible on a finite planet.

 

[jamespowers]

She makes the point, though, that we really *can't* afford these goods -- with the onslaught of cheap junk has come an overwhelming expansion in personal debt as people continue to cycle thru things they don't need simply for the sake of having them. She is candid enough that she uses her own personal experience as an example.

She also points out that a lot of these goods aren't even what they purport to be. She uses the example of shrimp -- which, for people who didn't live on the immediate coast of an ocean, were considered a luxury food up until the '70s or '80s. Now, Americans eat more shrimp than they do canned tuna fish -- but what they're eating isn't really "shrimp" in the sense that people who buy it fresh off a truck know it, or in the sense that it was known forty or fifty years ago. It's a mass-produced, antibiotic-ridden product grown in slurry-filled pools in Thailand, and shipped here frozen in giant blocks. It might be called shrimp, and it might be sold as shrimp, but it isn't, except in the broadest biological sense of the word, shrimp. That's what The Culture of Cheap has done for that one product -- all the while taking money out of the pockets of actual American shrimp fishermen who had long made a living catching real shrimp in the wild.

She, and I, don't think that's a particularly beneficial deal for anyone -- not for the consumers, who are eating God-knows-what, not for the American fishermen who are being priced out of their livings, not for the Thai serfs who grow the foreign "shrimp," and not even for the shrimp themselves, which are being mutated into something freakish for the sake of the almighty buck.

She doesn't propose any particular solution to the problem -- but she does point out that the sort of "growth" that's built on such a fraudulent foundation is liable to crash down at any moment.

She defines herself, philosophically, as a "frugalist", which is a philosophy which I myself have always supported, and points out that what you think you "want" is often something you want because you've been conditioned to want it, not because you actually need it or even have any practical use for it. That's a phenomenon that's only gotten worse over the course of the postwar era, and it can't go on forever. Infinite growth is impossible on a finite planet.

That is to say that tastes won't change and something else won't come along. Growth is possible in all different directions. Not just in one.
I have a respect for the individual and his/her choices. I am sure they aren't all that many stupid people out there as the situation would have crashed down years ago if consumer debt went crazy. Then again, as grandpa used to say: "stupid people shouldn't be allowed to walk around with money in their pockets." And they don't---not for long anyway.
One thing I have learned from over 20 years in the wholesale business---if you cheat your customers then you won't be around for very long. Crooks are not dealt with. They get a bad reputation and they end up blowing away. I have seen it plenty of times---especially now with all the media that didn't exist even ten years ago. You can't get away.
Oh and she is a J school professor. Talk about ivory tower. lol lol

 

[LizzieMaine]

Yeah, but she teaches at BU. That tower isn't ivory, it's more like a stack of empty beer cans.

 

[fashion frank]

Reading King Kull by Robert E. Howard and Introduction to Buddhism by Geshe Kelsang Gyatso

All the Best ,Fashion Frank

 

[pawineguy]

The Thin Red Line. Having just finished From Here to Eternity I figured I should just keep going.

 

[TimeWarpWife]

Lizzie's detailed description of what passes for "shrimp" now days makes me thankful for my shellfish allergy. I'm re-reading the delightful series of Getting Old books by Rita Lakin. The series is about a group of elderly women living in a Florida retirement community who form their own detective agency. Not of the 40s or 50s era, but still enjoyable.