What books are you reading? Tell us here.

For a while this winter I was suffering from reader's block.

Reader's block is even WORSE that writer's block. I love to read, but I was filled with anomie. I would walk into a bookstore and would admire the books that I have already read, but I literally could not think of what to read. I'd pick up a book, read the blurb, and set it back down again.

Recovery from reader's block took a long time. Shyly, I picked up "Big Fat American Baby," a book of short stories that reminded me a little of Ray Bradbury for some reason. But that was only a temporary solution. Then, I stumbled on a review of Daniel Tammet's book Born on a Blue Day, in the New York Times. Daniel has Asperger syndrome. The book was really very interesting, and I decided I wanted to know more. That book led naturally into News from the Border, another book about autism, and then George and Sam, another book about autism, and then . . . whew! Reader's block was over. Now, as usual, I've got several books going at once.

Thank goodness, I've gotten over my reader's block, but please, for my sake and the sakes of any other Kossacks who might be suffering from reader's block now and in the future, tell me what you are reading. In a community of intelligent and like-minded people, these suggestions will no doubt rid the world of this horrible malady for good.

•  Bujold, Lois McMaster: The Curse of Chalion n/t

  by KJC MD on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 07:00:56 AM PDT

•  Books I am currently reading

  Finishing George and Sam, just finished Barbara Ehrenreich's Bait and Switch (that was good, but not as good as Nickle and Dimed); just downloaded Strange Son to my iPod (also about autism).

  Fiction and humor : Just finishing up Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction (funny!) and also Youth in Revolt (less funny but still funny); just started reading My Horizontal Life (the story of one woman's one-night stands).

  Poetry: Just discovered Walt Whitman; where has he been all my life?

  by ChuyHChrist on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 07:01:28 AM PDT

  •  Rec for just discovering Whitman!

    I guess, in a way, it's nice to save some good stuff for later instead of having it all ruined at school.  :)

    by renaissance grrrl on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 07:56:41 AM PDT

    •  Yes, some of my secondary school

      teachers absolutely killed whole reams of literature for me by their dumbass, leaden, beat-you-over-the-head-with-a wooden-mallet exegesis. "Now, what is Robert Frost trying to say here...? Anybody care to explain what the (tramp, little horse, yellow wood) is doing here?"

      by revbludge on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 08:41:50 AM PDT

  •  actually

    walt whitman has most likely been dead all your life (giggle)
    seriously though ...just finished the Elizabeth Edwards book Saving Graces.  Just started 'Quantico" by Greg Bear...some nice fbi thriller junk reading that i adore
    and btw you might want to check out wed. night's bookflurries and friday night's what are you reading weekly diaries...lots of great book suggestions in both!

    by Spedwybabs on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 08:11:28 AM PDT

•  I saw this young man on Jon Stewart one evening

  not too long ago and ordered his book.  I'm lovin' it.  A Long Way Gone:  Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, by Ishmael Beah.  The title says more than I can describe.  It's a must read.

  by blubryeyes on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 07:02:37 AM PDT

  •  Thanks for reminding me

    I heard it was great. I understand that there was a huge spike in purchases of Beah's book after he appeared on the Daily Show.

    by ChuyHChrist on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 07:03:30 AM PDT

  •  I'm planning to get that. Link to article:

    NYT Magazine had him on the cover recently. The Making, and Unmaking, of a Child Soldier

    website for the book: A Long Way Gone

    by subtropolis on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 07:56:11 AM PDT

•  Cool but you should know that there are already

  two series like this:
  My own what are you reading? on Friday mornings, and cfk's Bookflurries on Weds evenings (Times Eastern)

  by plf515 on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 07:02:47 AM PDT

  •  I am ecstatic to hear that and will check!

    Is there a schedule of regularly running Dkos features that we can check somewhere?

    by ChuyHChrist on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 07:04:25 AM PDT

    •  It's in the FAQ

      here but it needs a bit of updating

      by plf515 on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 07:07:49 AM PDT

    •  There are some listed

      here. "Community Diaries" appear toward the end of the post.

      by casperr on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 07:10:26 AM PDT

•  "The House That Trane Built"

  About Impulse! records, the jazz label that's primarily known for its free jazz releases in the 60s, and as the owner of John Coltrane's late-period releases.

  It's by Ashley Kahn, who also wrote "The Making of Kind of Blue" and "The Making of A Love Supreme," articles on the sessions for the two landmark jazz albums by Miles Davis and John Coltrane, respectively.

  by Bush Bites on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 07:05:21 AM PDT

  •  Coltrane was awesome

    but it's so hard to write well about music.....

    One other good book on music: Evening in the palace of reason: Bach meets Frederick the Great in the age of enlightenment

    by plf515 on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 07:10:37 AM PDT

    •  Whitney Balliett

      There was just recently a little piece in the New Yorker about the jazz writer Whitney Balliett--I don't generally read about music but the little snippet's of Balliett's writing that were provided were just astounding.

      by ChuyHChrist on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 07:13:37 AM PDT

      •  Balliett

        Geezus. The guy wrote like an angel.  He was the only critic of ANY media who acutally made me hear and feel what he was talking about.  Pure genius.

        by arion on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 09:52:29 AM PDT

    •  I'm usually more interested in the personalities

      This book is on the record label so, yeah, it's not quite as interesting as a bio on Coltrane or Miles--I've read a couple of those on each of them--or of classical figures like Glenn Gould, John Cage or some of the great conductors.

      I used to read a lot of books on rock, but not so much anymore. Still, I pick up those 33 1/3 book(lets?) on occasion, where they basically disect a classic rock album.

      Some are better than others--it really depends on who the author is. But they're usually good short reads.

      by Bush Bites on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 08:24:14 AM PDT

      •  One sort I like is when the book comes

        with a CD and the book is about the music on the CD

        by plf515 on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 08:26:34 AM PDT

        •  Yeah, liner notes are sort of a lost art

          You pick up old jazz or classical albums or even early rock albums, and there used to be real essays on the backs of the albums, talking about the music inside.

          Usually, in jazz, they had pretty respected jazz writers handling it. In classical, they told the whole story of how, why and when the sympony was written. In rock, there were some interesting ones in the 60s...I guess Dylans from Highway 61 was among the most famous.

          It seemed like they died for awhile, but now they seem to be coming back a little in CDs.

          Here are the 33 1/3 books:

          http://www.amazon.com/...

          by Bush Bites on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 08:32:39 AM PDT

          •  There are still good liner notes in a lot of

            classical music.

            by plf515 on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 03:04:02 PM PDT

•  Some recommends from my recent books

  The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza and the fate of God in the modern world

  Out of the Labyrinth: Setting mathematics free

  Yes, Minister, and Yes, Prime Minister

  Anything by John Varley

  by plf515 on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 07:06:13 AM PDT

  •  Spinoza!

    ...was one smart dude.

    I'm finally getting around to reading Jonathan Israel's Radical Enlightenment, which explains how important Baruch was in his own time(I had assumed that he was something of an undergound cult figure, shunned on account of his "atheism").

    I've also gotten around to reading P.D. James' Children of Men, admittedly only after seeing the movie...

    by angry blue planet on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 07:16:31 AM PDT

    •  What a coincidence!

      I am also three quarters through with the Radical Enlightenment., my current subway reading. It interested me to see how big a part revulsion against witch-burning played in the early enlightenment and the fight against superstition, particuarly in a now nearly forgotten figure such as the Dutch physician Van Dale, whose work was pretty much taken over lock stock and barrel by the great French enlightenment writer Fontenelle.

      It has made me want to go back and re-read The European Witch Craze by Hugh Trevor Roper, one of the books that most influenced me when I was younger.

      I was also interested to learn of the significant Christian influence on Spinoza's thought, in that he  was associated with the Collegiant sect, a sort of discussion group of very liberal Anabaptists and Calvinists of the early seventeenth century. I hadn't realized, also, that he was a prodigy, having developed his ideas while still a teenager.

      The Radical Enlightenment highlights Spinoza as the elephant in the room -- the great unacknowledged influence of the eighteenth century enlightenment -- unacknowledged because considered too dangerous. He favored a democratic republic over a monarchy, developed a theory of human rights, and, as a pantheist, could be considered an important influence on the concept of "Nature's God" of the founding fathers. (Of course in the Romantic period, Spinoza's influence was more overt -- he was championed by Goethe and Coleridge).

      I have to say, though, that The Radical Enlightenment is rather hard going. It seems a little repetitious and the author doesn't provide much background or perspective for the non-specialist, so that I kept losing track of just who were the figures he was writing about and their  significance.

      In a way it could be said to be an 800-page footnote to my favorite bedside book, Paul Hazard's masterpiece, The European Mind , which wears its erudition much more lightly and entertainingly, in the spirit of Voltaire -- with such grace, indeed, that you might not realize it's wisdom and humanity. (Paul Hazard was a quiet hero in life as well.) Too bad The European Mind is no longer in print.

      by john culpepper on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 09:05:58 AM PDT

      •  Don't Forget Pierre Bayle!

            Israel has been accused of exaggerating Spinoza's importance for Enlightenment thought, though Israel is careful to distinguish between the radical and mainstream versions. One prime example (p.265) deals with religious toleration. Locke favored(limited)toleration because it would help more people seek salvation. Spinoza favored complete toleration because for him religious freedom was just one aspect of the intellectual freedom which he valued above everything else.
            Bayle is in a class by himself. Not one-tenth the original thinker that Spinoza was, Bayle was a much better Enlightenment publicist and spin-merchant(he didn't attend a Jesuit school and the Calvinist Academy at Geneva for nothing!). Take Bayle's essay on Spinoza in his Historical & Critical Dictionary. Bayle runs through all the standard yadda-yaddas about Spinoza's "godlessness" and "atheism". But then right in the middle he drops in some lines about what a fine decent guy Spinoza was. That's Bayle's agenda at work--his notion of the Virtuous Pagan. What the hell difference does it make what a person believes provided they're a good person?
            Bayle was a sly dog when it came to promoting the Enlightenment, and it's probably no accident that his Dictionnaire became a best-seller after his death.

        by angry blue planet on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 11:40:19 AM PDT

        •  Bayle--A one-man internet & dialog with the dead

          I have a copy of Bayle's Dictionary -- not exactly subway reading. Still, in Reading Bayle, (1999) Thomas M. Lennon writes that despite its  relative neglect in recent years Bayle's Dictionary "has reached a greater proportion of mankind than any other, not excepting the works of Plato himself. Shelf counts of private libraries from the eighteenth century show the Dictionnaire overwhelming anything from the distant competition of Locke, Newton, Voltaire, and Rousseau" (Reading Bayle, Toronto: U Toronto Press, 1999).

          Pierre Bayle, working in Rotterdam in the 1690s, was able to wander hither and yonder through the world of man's intellectual and moral thought, from the beginning of written history to yesterday's newspapers and cafe gossip, and could portray many of its failings in such sharp relief. One man's portrayal of the ancient sages, the Biblical heroes and heroines, the kings and queens, the courtiers and the courtesans, the theologians, the philosophers, the crackpots of all times, could fascinate such men as Leibniz, Voltaire, Bishop Berkely, David Hume, Thomas Jefferson, and Herman Melville [!!!??]. Bayle had roamed from seductions to perversions to murders to massacres to visions to paradoxes, in dazzling fashion, as he marched from 'Aaron' to 'Zuylichem.' He had provided a wondrous suite of themes and variations, on such problems as cuckodry, and castration fears, and religious intolerance, and historical accuracy, and of finding certitude in philosophy, science, and religion.

          --R. H. Popkin,editor of Bayle's Dictionary  quoted in Thomas M. Lennon op cit.

          In his essay on how to approach Bayle, Lennon cites the critic M. Bahktin's writings on Dostoyevsky's dialoguic method entering wholeheartedly into the mentality of his interlocutors. Lennon also mentions  Rorty's notion of a "Dialog with the dead" in which we seek for truth not to sweep aside opposing viewpoints as erroneous, but to prolong the discussion through the continuous introduction of potentially fruitful new points of view and it seems to me that the open-ended discussions on the internet have something of this quality.

          by john culpepper on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 01:03:43 PM PDT

      •  According to the Courtier and the Heretic

        one of the big problems Spinoza posed for Christians is that, while he was close to being an atheist (depending on definitions) he was living a life of virtue by the Christians' own accounting.  This contradicted their assumption that non-Christians, and especially atheists, would have to be immoral, and that only the threat of hellfire kept people in line

        by plf515 on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 03:07:49 PM PDT

        •  Which was Exactly...

          ...the notion that Bayle spent most his life trashing.

              Spinoza is famous for getting booted out of his Amsterdam synagogue for his unorthodox ideas. But arguably Bayle had things a lot worse in the persecution department.
              First, he lost his job teaching philosophy at a Protestant academy in Sedan when Louis XIV's government closed down all Protestant schools in 1681. Bayle had emigrated to the Netherlands by 1685, when Le Roi Soleil lowered the boom on French Protestants by revoking the Edict of Nantes. But his father and brother were both jailed in France and died of ill-treatment as a result. Then Bayle was denied a teaching job at the University of Rotterdam because a local Protestant pastor didn't like his views(!). Jonathan Swift couldn't have made this life story up, but I suppose Voltaire tried something like it in Candide.

             
             

          by angry blue planet on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 06:59:12 PM PDT

  •  John Varley

    Why is it that nobody i mention Titan, Wizard, and Daemon to seems to have heard of this excellent trilogy? Have you read it?

    by subtropolis on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 08:12:58 AM PDT

    •  Wonderful trilogy

      with lots of cool stuff.  Interesting gender roles, interesting ecology, well-written and paced....

      by plf515 on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 08:19:50 AM PDT

      •  and a 50ft-tall Marilyn Monroe (nt)

        by subtropolis on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 08:49:04 AM PDT

    •  age, dear

      Titan, 1979; Wizard, 1980; Demon, 1984.  So my public library catalog tells me.

      Believe me, readers of a certain age will have read these, but it's really hard, apparently, for younger folks, or folks new to real science fiction, to figure out what's the real deal.  There's SO much fantasy these days, it swamps the older SCIENCE fiction.  

      If you've been reading for (eek) 45 years, you know Varley.  If you stumbled upon SF with Greg Bear, or Cherryh, or Alan Steele, or ... it's hard to think of current hard SF writers, they're such a rare breed these days... then it may take you a while to find the giants of the 80's and earlier.  Your public library is your friend in this regard, they will have so much that is out of print, but even their stocks dwindle over time.

      by chimene on Fri Apr 20, 2007 at 12:51:36 AM PDT

•  What I'm reading

  "See Dick and Jen Run," by Tim Skubick, the "dean of Capitol correspondents" in Michigan. It's his account of the 2006 governor's race, in which Dick DeVos (R-Amway) spent a huge amount of his money and still lost by double digits.

  Just finished "$40 Million Slaves," by William Rhoden, the NY Times sportswriter. He raises, among other arguments, the provocative argument that integration had a downside for African American athletes: almost without exception, they had to play for white owners or, at the college level, at predominately white schools and usually for white coaches.

  by Dump Terry McAuliffe on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 07:08:59 AM PDT

•  The Road by Cormac McCarthy

  Bleak but fascinating. Just finished "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini -- it was awesome.

  by sessal on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 07:09:11 AM PDT

•  Vonnegut...

  His death has made me want to go back & reread all of his works that I've read & read for the first time those I haven't read yet.  It's the best tribute I can think of to show my respect for him.

  by madame defarge on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 07:18:28 AM PDT

  •  There was a whole big display of Vonnegut books

    in Borders yesterday and so I suspect many people are thinking the same thing.

    The first Vonnegut piece I ever read was one I was assigned in sixth grade: a short story called "Harrison Bergeron," written in 1961. I went back and read it--it's on the web--and I was a little disappointed at it. I guess one needs to look at it through Cold War eyes--otherwise it looks a lot like a diatribe against the idea of human equality. And given Vonnegut's later political ideas, it would be hard to believe he was against equality.

    by ChuyHChrist on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 07:35:11 AM PDT

  •  I'm rereading Cat's Cradle...

    and I'd fogotten how pertinent it is to what is going on today.  Mr. Vonnegut will be greatly missed.

    by cometman on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 08:57:25 AM PDT

    •  That's next on my list.

      I'm rereading "A Man Without a Country" now, slowly so I can digest each little essay.  I loved this quote by him:

      All I really wanted to do was give people the relief of laughing.  Humor can be a relief, like an aspirin tablet.  If a hundred years from now people are still laughing, I'd certainly be pleased.

      by madame defarge on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 09:23:44 AM PDT

    •  BTW here's a link to some good stuff by Vonnegut

      In These Times has a compilation page up with many of his art & words that have been published in their newspaper.

      by madame defarge on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 09:35:45 AM PDT

•  Right now I'm reading

  Lisa Jackson's "Fatal Burn".  I didn't used to read crime thrillers, but a trip to the Goodwill store got me reading a wider variety of genres.  Since the books are so cheap, I loaded up with everything that had an interesting title.  Anytime I got hard-up for a book to read, I could tap into my Goodwill books.

  by minerva1157 on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 07:19:36 AM PDT

•  Absurdistan

  by Gary Shteyngart

  by JackAshe on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 07:20:27 AM PDT

  •  Couldn't get past the second chapter

    Cliche' after cliche'? That isn't good literature.

    by Paul Goodman on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 08:41:55 AM PDT

    •  Didnt know there was a rulebook

      on what is good literature is.
      Does this count?

      by JackAshe on Sun Apr 15, 2007 at 09:06:16 AM PDT

•  Chaos: Making of a New Science

  a classic in the sciences

  by Spruce on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 07:21:25 AM PDT

•  Memory Keepers Daughter

  I finished "The Secret Life of Bees" and a book called "The Brothers Bishop" I think, which was not very well written unfortunately because I think the young man who wrote it had some good points to make... not sure.

  I had readers block for several years and it is slowly getting better, but I really think that readers block is about being stressed about other things to the point of not feeling you can relax enough to get lost in a good book.  My readers block also went along with  an inability to sit still in rehersals so that I have a case of singers block too.

  by TeresaInPa on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 07:21:48 AM PDT

  •  I didn't think about that aspect of it

    since it hit me in the winter, I wondered whether the lack of sun was getting to me.

    by ChuyHChrist on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 07:36:46 AM PDT

    •  could be

      I have to be careful in the fall as the days get shorter. I don't love the fall even if I think it is beautiful when the leaves turn.  I feel a real sense of relief as the days start to get longer again.

      by TeresaInPa on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 07:51:21 AM PDT

  •  I have had reader's block for the past year

    I mean, I am a big reader, so I still read some things, very slowly, but I have to force myself to do it.  I have the attention span of a gnat right now, which is why daily kos is about my speed.

    And yet I'm still strangely drawn to these book diaries...

    by renaissance grrrl on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 07:59:37 AM PDT

    •  that's sounds about right to me

      but for me this problem has lasted several years.  I am slowly trying to have such a case of situatonal ADHD, but it's not easy is it?  

      by TeresaInPa on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 08:23:17 AM PDT

      •  Do you think it's the internet's fault?

        no, seriously.  Sometimes I wonder.

        by renaissance grrrl on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 08:28:59 AM PDT

•  "Man Without a Country"

  by Kurt Vonnegut (highly recommended)

  Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. (they've got some ridiculous picks in there, and some horribly glaring omissions.  TWO albums by "No Doubt"  Give me a frickin' break!!)
  
  The Brothers Karamazov (of course)

  The War on Truth

  by AlyoshaKaramazov on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 07:23:06 AM PDT

  •  Brothers Karamazov

    was mind-changing for me in college (I remember staying up till 3 am reading it, night after night--mainly because this was the only time my clingy boyfriend left me alone to get my homework done)-- anyway I always feel a little happy when I see your username.

    by renaissance grrrl on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 08:01:43 AM PDT

•  "Pedro Paramo" by Juan Rulfo

  is a book Garcia Marquez loved and memorized a lot of.  If you read it (it's very short, but extremely wonderful), you can see a little of what brought Marquez to write "A Hundred Years Of Solitude."

  Rulfo only wrote two books.  "Pedro Parama" and "Llnos en Llamas"(English Translation: Burning Plains).  Both are exquisite.  He told everybody for decades he was writing a third book but then said he burned it.

  by davidseth on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 07:35:10 AM PDT

  •  oh really!

    i love Gabriel Garcia Marquez and reread 100 Years of Solitude at least once a year.

    i will definitely check out Rulfo. thanks for the tip!

    by Runs With Scissors on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 07:56:30 AM PDT

    •  Please tell me about this book...

      I have tried at least three times to read it, and could not.

      by mattes on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 08:32:42 AM PDT

      •  i'm not a terribly linear person

        and i've found that people who've been "trained" to write in American Composition programs expect all writing to be very linear and 1-2-3, logical progression, predictable sets of characters, etc.

        Marquez defies all that.

        his paragraphing alone would send any trained American writer into vapors.

        he would be flunked by every Composition teacher i know.

        he's simply brilliant!

        so you have to abandon all expectations of linearity - ? - and 1-2-3ness and logical sequencing - although there is a definite logical sequencing to it - it's just not an American Academic Program logical sequencing.

        another way to look at it - academic papers make me want to lay down on the side of the road and die. linear writing makes my head hurt, makes me want to cry and pull my hair out.

        if, however, extremely linear writing is not your thing, you probably just need to settle in with it.

        by Runs With Scissors on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 08:44:31 AM PDT

        •  Maybe someday I will pick it up again...

          The Temple of My Familiar by a. walker took me a couple tries and now it's one of my favorites.

          by mattes on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 09:13:27 AM PDT

      •  It's magical realism. So things

        tend to be simultaneous or out of order, kind of like how my mind jumps around, and also, supernatural events happen without gestures of surprise.  There's lots of lit like this.  And you can find long lists if you google "magical realism."  My blog has lots of articles about books in the genre, etc.  The main thing is: don't worry about whether you're following a digression or not, just go with the flow.  The it's easily and delightfully readable.

        by davidseth on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 09:18:57 AM PDT

        •  Can you recommend another title in this

          genre?

          by mattes on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 09:22:48 AM PDT

          •  Definitely.

            A favorite, Alejo Carpentier, "The Lost Steps" and "The Kingdom of this World."

            Also, Salmon Rushdie, "Midnight's Children"

            And Carlos Fuentes, "The Old Gringo" (a novel based on the disappearance and presumed death of Ambrose Bierce).

            by davidseth on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 11:44:27 AM PDT

            •  Would these books fit, too?

              The Milagro Beanfield War
              Like Water for Chocolate

              I recently saw a film, Woman on Top, that used magic realism as well, and was very entertaining.

              by Unknown Quantity on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 12:14:05 PM PDT

              •  Yes definitely. n/t

                by davidseth on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 01:52:35 PM PDT

•  "The Fall of Rome" by R. A. Lafferty

  which is a fascinating account of how a master-general named Stilicho, dedicated to preserving the Roman Empire, fought valiantly against seven waves of military attempts to split the empire, only to be beheaded because of the treachery of one of his rival generals. And, BTW, Stilicho did all in the service of an idiot emperor. There seems to be ample lessons to be learned from history here, but I'm struggling to find some parallels to our own time ....

  by jfdunphy on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 07:40:55 AM PDT

•  Violin Dreams

  Violin Dreams, by Arnold Steinhardt (first violin of the Guarneri Quartet).  Fantastic book!  Also comes with a recording, which is also great.

  by coffeeguzzler on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 07:40:59 AM PDT

•  lullabies for little criminals

  Written by my friend, Heather O'Neill (shouts to you, heather!). It's about a very young girl growing up in Montreal with her junk-addicted father.

  lullabies for little criminals

  He didn't have that many good baby stories about me. I think he was drinking too much after my mother died to be able to remember any funny details. His stories always seemed to be about me almost getting hit by a car or falling down the sewer. "You had this crazy thing about always wanting to cross the street by yourself. And when you cried, you sounded like a goddamn alley cat."

  I much preferred stories about my mother.There was this story about how as a little girl she had been jumping up and down on her bed and had fallen and cracked her skull open on the radiator. Nobody even knew that her skull was cracked open until she started writing things backward.

  "She was always getting into little incidents," Jules said.

  I think the activity of the day was charades, which I hated. No matter how you looked at it, it wasn't real theater.

  by subtropolis on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 07:53:16 AM PDT

•  The Golden Bough

  very dated but very fun to read. i find all the theories about mythology and folk tale as evidence of the progression of mind from primitive to civilized extremely amusing - esp. given current events.

  but i also like reading about the stories and myths and etc.

  by Runs With Scissors on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 07:54:48 AM PDT

  •  ray for Golden Bough!

    yup!  and its a shame that so much fabulous anthrpology - like Malinowski, Meade, Boas etc. has fallen out of fashion

    by arion on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 09:55:32 AM PDT

    •  It is a shame!

      May I recommend "Cooperation & Competition in Primitive Society" by Margaret Mead?  Also, Stanley Udy's Work in Traditional and Modern Society about the organization of work.

      by john culpepper on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 10:27:33 AM PDT

•  Chemical Warfare: Secrets Almost Forgotten

  it was written by one of the MD's that was one of the researcher/doctors that took part in the human experimentation of LSD, atropine and other unspecified drugs, he does not get near the chemical weapons that were used there and he claims ignorance to the CIA connection between the Edgewood Arsenal tests.  He takes a lot of "credit" and blames everyone else for what was wrong in the program.  A self serving book I can't recommend it to read  there is to much of the "real facts" missing

  by testvet6778 on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 08:15:19 AM PDT

•  I had "reader's block," too

  so I symathize, ChuyHChrist. What do you think caused it? They say major depression can do that to you.

  My reader's block, aka "chemo brain" came after going through chemothrapy. My brain was so addled, and my memory so bad, that for about a year afterwards I could not understand what I read. Reading anything (history in particular) was like reading some Henry James novel where you read the same paragraph over and over about six times and the tremulous meaning still remains a locked casket so you say "shee-yit" and move on.

  The upside was that I started to re-read children's books I had read as a kid just to occupy my mind - Dr. Doolittle books, (highly recommended, esp. Dr. Doolittle's Post Office, Dr. D. & the Secret Lake, and The Voyages of Dr. Doolittle) The Wind in the Willows (K. Grahame), Laura Ingalls Wilder, Robert Heinlein's juvenile novels such as Farmer in the Sky and Time for the Stars. I didn't actually tackle any contemporary YA fiction...too bad...

  Now reading A Preponderance of Power by Melvin Leffler about the construction of Cold War policy in the Truman years. So far, it reminds me a lot of The Golden Bowl...

  by revbludge on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 08:20:20 AM PDT

  •  Ah, chemo brain.

    I sympathize. I think in my case it was just winter, I think; and maybe homesickness.

    by ChuyHChrist on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 08:48:27 PM PDT

•  Those Barren Leaves, Aldous Huxley

  I have all these books from god knows where, and after a few decades I pick one up and read it--I love this book! He's so effin' witty. It's a book of ideas and great conversation, very sly, and it's not about modern politics (major selling point after 6 years of Bush and daly blog reading). Books like this feel like secret pornographic pleasures--nothing remotely good for the soul, they're just delicious in terms of the writing. I find myself grinning as I dash down into the subway and know I'll have another 30 minute rendez-vous with great writing.

  And I rediscovered Whitman this year too--my god, he's so avant-garde he makes us look like troglodytes. Or maybe plus ca change

  by MmeVoltaire on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 08:30:51 AM PDT

  •  That is a great one....

    If I remember right that is the one that has an art forger as one of the characters who gives a great monologue about forgery at one point.  You might also like 'After many a summer dies the swan'.  

    by cometman on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 09:01:23 AM PDT

    •  Great Zappa quote

      He's sorely missed. I'll check out your rec

      by MmeVoltaire on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 09:07:22 AM PDT

  •  laughter is the best for the soul and

    Crome Yellow is as entertaining as Those Barren Leaves. Point Counterpoint, Huxley's great "serious" novel, is also good, though Gide's The Counterfeiters seems to me more successful as a novel of ideas than Point Counterpoint. Being serious appears to have been a bad move for Huxley and I think he really began to go downhill after he came to America and found God and LSD.

    by john culpepper on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 09:23:31 AM PDT

    •  Thanks for the recommendations

      I read The Counterfeiters and Point/Counterpoint back when I was young, and always meant to make another stab at them. Now I am at a stage of life where I can't remember anything about movies I saw only a few weeks ago, and so I can reapproach every book I've ever read with a clean slate. It's a strange way to be reading. Once, every novel I read seemed to enlarge some core of understanding--now they each feel like unrelated episodes of brief enlightenment.  But I do remember core feelings about books, and find it interesting that things I remember loving feel a bit off, and things I was bored by appeal to me now. But good conversation--different from "good dialogue"--in books is always an extreme pleasure, maybe because it plays so small a role in my daily life now (due as much to my own woolly-headedness as anything else). The first two thirds of Sybille Bedford's A Legacy were also delightful.

      by MmeVoltaire on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 09:45:12 AM PDT

      •  Yes!

        A Legacy -- a favorite of mine.

        I am embarrassed at how few new books I read -- like to go back to the old faves.

        by john culpepper on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 09:51:11 AM PDT

        •  Few new novels seem to satisfy

          Why is that? Maybe the themes aren't as grand--even in Leaves, they're talking abut Art, Love, etc, the characters are interesting but it's less about personal story. I often bail on new novels after 40 pages or so...Maybe part of it is snobbery, though. Read "The Hours," liked it but sniffed at all the Hullabaloo about it; saw the movie, liked it, then gave the book another shot--this time found it extremely deep and devastating. So was there some original filter there the first reading ("This ain't Tolstoy") that made me diminish it even as I read it the first time? Had some great rereads of older stuff the past decade, "As I Lay Dying," "To the Lighthouse." Felt that teenager joy of immersion.

          by MmeVoltaire on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 10:18:11 AM PDT

•  Pardise Lost, Paradise Regained, Milton's God

  Lost is a a classic that suffers only from narrative unevenness and the inconsistency between Milton's Christianity and actual Christianity. Milton is at his creative best when he departs from Orthodoxy. When he is regurgitating the Bible it is a painful, nails-on-chalkboard experience.

  Regained sucks, just read the last two chapters of Lost and you'll get the basic idea.

  Milton's God is a good secular humanist critique, but the author Epstrom engages in the same bullshit that makes me despise Christian-lite Dennis Danielson; he projects his own opinions onto the text; let's just let the words speak for themselves.

  Look for the Paradise Lost movie latter this year or early next; some say Heath Ledger will be Satan... I don't know if I like that. A silver-haired Mel Gibson as God? Now that would be awesome!

  by Paul Goodman on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 08:39:38 AM PDT

  •  Yes, Milton's Heaven is really

    a kind of Hell, don't you think? God sits there in this frigid, stultifying glare, surrounded by deadly (literally) rays of effulgence, doing nothing except soaking up the deafening, nonstop adulation of a nauseatingly sycophantic heavenly host. I am a theist, and believe in Heaven, but Milton's version of it is the opposite of bliss--it's terrifying, it's like North Korea, only without the inflatable hats.

    Not for nothing did Blake say, "Milton is a true poet, and of the Devil's party without knowing it."

    Dick Cheney reminds me a bit of Moloch in Book 2.

    by revbludge on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 08:54:36 AM PDT

•  Teacher Man by Frank McCourt

  but will have to hurry through it as quickly as possible while still reading every word because it's not the kind of book I like to absorb. I'll have to get another Edward Rutherfurd book to wash the bad taste down.

  One good book I can suggest is "The Witch of Cologne" by Tobsha Learner.

  by rossini on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 08:41:22 AM PDT

•  Ivanhoe, believe it or not. Also,

  "The Autumn of the Middle Ages," by Heuzinga, and Botvinnik's recently translated three-volume set of best games.

  by steve davis on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 08:42:53 AM PDT

  •  Sir Walter

    A few years ago I read Old Mortality on the recommendation of my late father in law, an English prof, who made a habit of re-reading all of Scott on a regular basis.

    "Old Mortality" is the name of a character who goes around to cemeteries re-chiselling the names on gravestones so that they will not be forgotten.

    Scott's main characters are admittedly stilted -- like the heroes of Bel Canto operas -- but his portrayal of religious conflicts is still very interesting and timely. He could sympathize with all sides, including the most misguided fanatics, while coming down in favor of tolerance and moderation. It's too bad we have gotten out of the habit of reading him. But if Milton can be revived ...

    by john culpepper on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 09:35:41 AM PDT

    •  I've got to admit, I came to Scott pretty late,

      and so far, he's impressing the hell out of me. I mean, yeah, based on modern standards and style, the plot is unfolding in a way that strongly suggests a 1930's B-level swashbuckler, but then I remind myself that Scott basically created the format, and his research was apparently quite thorough. He has the antagonist wandering around with some black Muslim retainers he picked up on crusade, and while it's probably anachronistic, it's also damned cool. I suddenly see the prototype for John Carter of Mars, Quatermain, and a host of stuff that I realize didn't just fall out of a vaccuum.

      by steve davis on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 03:59:09 PM PDT

  •  Ray for Scott!

    In spite of Twain's comment that Scott set the American South back a century, he wrote of lot of good stuff.  His Border novels; much closer to his own real experience, are the best.  Check REDGAUNTLET, and my favorite, HEART OF MIDLOTHIAN.

    by arion on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 09:58:57 AM PDT

    •  Thanks

      Will do.

      by john culpepper on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 10:17:51 AM PDT

    •  I'll do it. The only reason I picked up what I've

      got is because my local used bookstore apparently discovered some kind of cache of those Heritage Press titles, hidden away in a secret vault under the Smithsonian, and I've been buying them up as fast as they're putting them out. Some of them are worth a little money (they're basically the poor man's editions of the limited edition British book club that did stuff like have Picasso do the illustations for a book, and then only run 1500 copies of the books. These are the knock-offs, but they're still nice bindings, good quality illustrations, and nice type-faces.)

      by steve davis on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 04:04:32 PM PDT

•  Pynchon's "Against the Day"

  Anarchists, electricity, ballooning, mathematics, Tesla, labor politics, subterranean creatures and who know what else...

  Besides just be very interesting and entertaining - it has a very leftward historical view.

  ---------------------

  by HairOnFire on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 08:56:11 AM PDT

•  Passion of the Western Mind

  It is a survey of the ideas that have shaped our world view.  This kind of reading can be so dry, but Tarnas is a wonderful, almost lyrical writer who puts forth profund philosophy in a straigh forward, yet almost poetic manner...it has helped  ground myself and provides a context for the insanity of BushCo.      

  by cognocenza on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 08:56:28 AM PDT

•  Fahrenheit 451

  Currently I am reading Fahrenheit 451.  I hadn't read it since I was a teenager and forgot what a master Ray Bradbury is.  The last several books I have read have been returns to books of my youth:  To Kill a Mocking Bird, 1984, Animal Farm, Of Mice and Men.  I also read a few books given to me that I would not normally have picked up but found intriguing nonetheless:  Named of the Dragon, Flight of the Old Dog, and Undertow (Dixie Browning)These are next on the list:  Way of the Peaceful Warrior, Emotional Intelligence, The Road Less Traveled, Further Along The Road Less Travelled, Hubris, Brave new World.  That is the current stack which will soon be joined by anything Vonnegut has ever written that exists in my fathers extensive library.

  by OCD on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 08:59:37 AM PDT

•  The Denial of Death

  Ernest Becker won a Pulitzer for this book on human mortality, religion, and philosophy.

  From Wikipedia: Becker "came to the recognition that psychological inquiry inevitably comes to a dead end beyond which belief systems must be invoked to satisfy the human psyche."

  by trek100 on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 09:02:38 AM PDT

•  READER'S block

  I get it now and then.  It's probably related to depression.  So what? Lots of people, including Melville and William James were driven to both read and write by depression. Browsing in THE ANTATOMY OF MELANCHOLY can be good for the downcast soul.
      More seriously, Pamuk's SNOW is absolutely fabulous

  by arion on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 10:04:47 AM PDT

•  I would love to have you come

  and discuss Born on a Blue Day and the other titles that you found on a Wed. night at Bookflurries as plf mentioned.  

  We discuss anything and everything!

  I try to be up by 8:00 PM EST and I stay as late as I can.  

  I am glad the block is broken.  

  I like book diaries because I get so many good books to add to my  wish list.  I have over 250, now.  :)

  by cfk on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 04:33:42 PM PDT

  •  I will check out Bookflurries!

    Thanks for the tip. I am glad to see all of the many wonderful recommendations here and look forward to seeing who hangs out on a Wednesday!

    by ChuyHChrist on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 08:49:59 PM PDT

    •  You can click on my initials

      to find the most recent Bookchats.  So many great books...so little time.  :)

      by cfk on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 09:53:07 PM PDT