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What are you reading?

topbroker

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Originally Posted by iammatt
I have to say that my reading list is significantly less sophisticated than what you guys read.

This thread is actually one of the most sophisticated literary forums I have encountered anywhere on the Internet, including sites that are much more dedicated to books as a theme. Many of those boards are filled with drivel. Posters here at SF read excellent books of all types and have interesting things to say about them. It speaks well for the Forum, and this is one of my very favorite threads.
smile.gif
 

dopey

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Having really liked Appointment in Samarra, I am now working on some O'Hara novellas. BTW, here is where the title for Appointment in Samarra originates. I got chills on the first read, but I am a soft touch.
"The Appointment in Samarra" (as retold by W. Somerset Maugham [1933]) The speaker is Death​
There was a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture, now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me. The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threating getsture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.​
On the non-fiction side, finally finished Our Crowd and have moved on to The Rest of Us.
 

Piobaire

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Originally Posted by iammatt
I have to say that my reading list is significantly less sophisticated than what you guys read.

No worries Matt, I'll be here to read plebeian fiction books for mere entertainment with you. I rarely feel the need to read "literature" or "philosophy" anymore and outside of various trade periodicals, the WSJ, etc., just read light fiction for the enjoyment of tuning out for a few minutes each day. Once a year or so, I'll get an urge to read a particular Shakespeare play, or something redeeming, like a volume of Copplestone's History of Philosophy, or the like, but 99 books out of 100 are just pure escapism.
 

Thomas

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Originally Posted by dopey
Having really liked Appointment in Samarra, I am now working on some O'Hara novellas.

BTW, here is where the title for Appointment in Samarra originates. I got chills on the first read, but I am a soft touch.
(...)


I don't know how popular that scene is, but I swear I'd read it somewhere before and was astonished at the deft touch.

As for me, I have made zero progress this week. Work keeps getting in the way.
plain.gif
 

topbroker

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Joshua Ferris, Then We Came to the End

I'm midway through this recent acclaimed novel, set in the advertising world during the layoff cycle around 7-8 years ago, and innovatively written in the first person singular ("we" did this and "we" did that). Despite the acclaim, I am uncertain as yet how much this amounts to as a novel. It has a manner, to be sure, a definite bag of tricks, but I'm already feeling that whatever point that manner can make has been made, and there are still 200 pages to go. The lapses in realism seem purposeless, the "characters" are cardboard, and there is no plotting to speak of, only observation. There are funny bits, to be sure, but those are not hard to come up with in depicting the business world.
 

strazzaque

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Gordon Thomas, Gideon's Spies.

A book about the Mossad, published in 1999. I also have False Flag, by Zeev Avni on my to read list.

The last books I read were 4 Leo Kessler books, about a fictional German SS battalion called Wotan.

After I complete my Mossad readings I'll probably turn to sci-fi, in the form of 2 Alien spin-off novels and a Predator novel.
 

lithium180

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Originally Posted by Fuuma
Homage to Catalonia?

This is a great piece of modern war journalism.

Originally Posted by topbroker
Yevgeny Zamyatin's We. I think it is more a question of influence (I can't recall whether acknowledged or not) than actual rip-off.

I read this when I was backpacking through the Caucasus and really liked it!! Russian literature both past and present is just FILLED with treasures...


I am currently reading Theodore Rex, a bio chronicling TDR's two terms in office.
 

Dedalus

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Finally finished Techno DJ Penis. It really backlogged my queue. At the risk of sounding Jerome-ish, I'm moving on to some Leibniz.
 

gumercindo

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- Just got Confederacy of Dunces to see what all the hoopla was about.
 

lithium180

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Originally Posted by gumercindo
- Just got Confederacy of Dunces to see what all the hoopla was about.

I didn't make it to the finish line on this one.
 
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Originally Posted by mmhollis
Anyone know of any good biographies?
Not much of a biography reader, I admit, but Peter Guralnick's Elvis Presley biographies, Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love, are very readable and compelling. I read them before I had a taste for Elvis' music, and now I am on the other side, a huge fan. I would like to read the books again (its been 7 or so years) now that I am actually familiar with Elvis's work. Peter Guralnick does not try to convert people into Elvis fans, that is just my experience. The man can write! And the story is interesting even if we did not have access to The King's output. It has the drama and scope of Oedipus Rex; we know how it will end, but one cannot help but be swept up in the forces that seemed to conspire to bring our man down. Read it. You must!
 

Saucemaster

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I've been reading what I tend to read for "pure entertainment"--lightweight non-fiction. In this case, Battle of Wits: The Complete Story of Codebreaking in World War II.

So the author just got done giving the dumbed-down version of the various ways that the Poles and the British broke the Enigma machine. Just ended with an explanation of Turing's solution to the machine... and I am going to be honest here, I just zoned. Completely skimmed. I didn't want to think about it. Now I feel guilty, and I think I might need to go back and re-read, and at least give a real go at understanding it. I picked up this book because I didn't WANT to think, dammit.
 

Dedalus

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Originally Posted by Saucemaster
So the author just got done giving the dumbed-down version of the various ways that the Poles and the British broke the Enigma machine. Just ended with an explanation of Turing's solution to the machine...

Alan Turing the Turing machine guy? I didn't realize that he was such an important figure in WWII. Awesome.
 

lawyerdad

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"The Bookman's Promise", by John Dunning.
 

globetrotter

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Originally Posted by Saucemaster
I've been reading what I tend to read for "pure entertainment"--lightweight non-fiction. In this case, Battle of Wits: The Complete Story of Codebreaking in World War II.

So the author just got done giving the dumbed-down version of the various ways that the Poles and the British broke the Enigma machine. Just ended with an explanation of Turing's solution to the machine... and I am going to be honest here, I just zoned. Completely skimmed. I didn't want to think about it. Now I feel guilty, and I think I might need to go back and re-read, and at least give a real go at understanding it. I picked up this book because I didn't WANT to think, dammit.


john keegans latest (?) book, intellegence at war, gives a great acount of this, probrably abridged.
 

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