What Are You Reading

[Dr Doran]

Robert Garland, Introducing New Gods: The Politics of Athenian Religion, plus Brice Taylor, Thanks for the Memories: The Memoirs of Bob Hope's and Henry Kissinger's Mind-Controlled Slave Used as a Presidential Sex Toy and Personal Computer.

(As Gene Wolfe wrote in The Book of the New Sun, "one must have both the high and the low.")

 

[Smithy]

I'm reading "Murder on the Orient Express." Agatha Christie is fantastic.

I read "The Blue Train" just recently which was great if you're after another Christie train one. I find I'll read two or three of hers every year. If you like classic British crime (although written recently) I recommend Barbara Cleverly's novels, set in 1920s India, very good twisty plots and writing now unlike classsic British crime novels.

 

[Edward]

Really?

Meow!

 

[Harp]

Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Emile.

 

[imoldfashioned]

Louise Dahl-Wolfe, a photography book about the 1940s/50s fashion photographer. I love her work.

 

[Dr Doran]

Meow!

Hee hee (as though I'm one to talk)

 

[Dr Doran]

I'm looking through Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward's Film Noir: An Enycyclopedic Reference to the American Style 3rd edition. I don't think I'll read it cover to cover since most of it is intended for reference.

 

[WideBrimm]

I'm reading "Murder on the Orient Express." Agatha Christie is fantastic.

She's always a good read. As it happens I'm currently reading Miss Marple The Complete Short Stories

 

[DeeDub]

I just finished Sidney Poitier's The Measure of a Man. He offers some useful and thought provoking philosophy on life and work. His (usually) conversational style was very engaging.

Before that, I read Laura Hillenbrand's Seabiscuit while spending time on my cousin's farm in rural Vermont. (He raises Morgan horses, so I thought this book would be appropriate.) I'm not necessarily a horse racing fan, or even a horse fan generally, but I couldn't put this one down, cover to cover. (And my chores down on the farm suffered for it. Sorry, cuz.)

Of course, I may have been influenced by the fact that the story is set in the first half of the 20th century and the guys in the photos are all wearing hats.

 

[Dr Doran]

Of course, I may have been influenced by the fact that the story is set in the first half of the 20th century and the guys in the photos are all wearing hats.

Always gets me too.

 

[Lancealot]

Robert Ludlum's The Prometheus Deception.

 

[carebear]

Re reading Fehrenbach's "This Kind of War".

Probably the best book on the Korean War written and invaluble for understanding the reality of modern international relations vis a vis the US.

Also a primer on the military mindset (and its necessity for national survival here in the real world) versus that of the civilian.

 

[MB5]

H.P. Lovecraft
At the Mountains of Madness (and other Tales of Terror), but I have not gotten to the other tales yet.

I am also looking at some books on Art Deco and Art Nouveau.

 

[HadleyH]

My Cook Book

I'm reading my Cook Book.
I'm sick and tired of eating always the same meals!


We may live without poetry, music and art;
We may live without conscience and live without heart;
We may live without friends;we may live without books;
But civilized man cannot live without food

He may live without books - what is knowledge but grieving?
He may live without hope - what is hope but deceiving?
He may live without love - what is passion but pining?
But where is the man that can live
without dining?


Bulwer Lytton

 

[5thprofession47]

SOAR by John Weisman

 

[Haversack]

I've just finished up Wm. Dalrymple's _The Last Mughal_ about Bahadur Shah Zafar and the city of Delhi just before the 1857 uprising. Good, informative, and Dalrymple makes his standard good use of the large quantity of largely-untouched extent first-hand materials to be found in archives across the former British Empire. His knowledge of Urdu and the various scripts in use in courtly Delhi helped bring that lost city to life. There were also some suprising echos with today in how the Uprising, being initially led by upper-caste Hindus in the East India Company's Army, was gradually taken over by Wahabi Jihadists. Some of their rhetoric could have been written today.

The book I've just started is, _Lions, Donkeys, and Dinosaurs_ by Lewis Page. It is a blackly-humourous analysis of waste and blundering in the modern British military. So far I have not only found it entertaining to read, but also informative about some subjects new to me and reinforcing of my observations in subjects in which I do have some knowledge.

Haversack.

 

[Dr Doran]

Haversack, those both sound very interesting, particularly the former.

 

[Harp]

Kant's Prolegomena To Any Future Metaphysics.

 

[Dr Doran]

Kant's Prolegomena To Any Future Metaphysics.

Little lite summer beach reading, eh wot?

"Mummy, mummy, look at the strangely dressed young man on the beach! He looks out of an old film!"

"Be quiet, darling, he's reading PHILOSOPHY."

 

[Harp]

I'm reading my Cook Book.
I'm sick and tired of eating always the same meals!
We may live without poetry,
He may live without love - what is passion but pining?

Bulwer Lytton

...the heart
Is like a cup athirst for wine of love....

John Boyle O'Reilly, Living