What are you reading today?
Bookworm on Mar 06 2011 at 11:04 am | Filed under: Books
I got the latest Commentary Magazine in the mail yesterday, so that’s what I’m reading today. What are you reading today?
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I just got my new Commentary, too. Although the magzine has a conservative bent that vexes my wife—how can Jews not be uber liberals?—I’ve addicted her to the monthly joke, which I read to her aloud.
“What am you reading today?”
Why, Bookworm Room, of course. What else!
Seriously, though, I am just taking a break from finishing up the last couple of chapters of The Next Decade by George Friedman. The book is basically predictions on what the coming decade will bring for the US and advice on what the US should do.
While I’m not sure I agree with all of his analysis (some of his predictions and advice seem too simplistic to me) I think it is quite a fascinating read on geopolitics. He does a quite remarkable job on covering every region of the globe.
I plan on reading his The Next 100 Years next. Has anyone read that? Any feedback on The Next 100 Years?
Dogs of God by James Reston. History of the Confluence of events in 1492 Spain… Final defeat of the Muslims, expulsion of Jews, opening of the New World, and the rise of the Spanish Inquisition to ensure the purity of Spanish Catholic blood in the newly united Spain.
Amazing to think that Spain, at was the de facto capital of the Jewish diaspora and cradle of Jewish culture, while almost simultaneously it was the center of the Muslim world after the Mongols sacked Baghdad. So many parallels to the current situation and that in so many ways, nothing has changed in 450 years.
Oceanguy, that sounds fascinating. I’m putting it on my list.
I have nothing new to report other than my dog is showing exemplary taste. Somehow, and I think it was curiosity more than a real desire to read, I had a copy of Sex and the City in my house. The book, not the TV show. I read one chapter of it and put it aside and it never made it into a Goodwill bag. Anyway, I don’t know if one of the cats knocked it in the floor or if Sophie pulled it off the bureau, but I woke up this morning to Sex and the City ripped to shreds. Good Sophie! Good dog!
I’m reading Beezlebub. It’s about a high school gang fighter that happens to become the parent of a toddler. And he goes around school with it on his head due to special circumstances detailed in the story. Amidst simply beating the hell out of the local high school hoodies, there’s a couple of moral lessons on how to become attuned with manly virtues. Such as not crying because you got scared of a half dead cicada. Answering the expectations of the women that love you, by not showing weakness, giving up, or failing to protect them.
It’s amazingly funny, despite the almost crazy premise.
Lol Tones.
Tones, did you finish reading Ghost yet? What did you think if you did.
When I read Way of Kings, I expected some high spun yarn about grand politics and great battles. For the most part, it did the job, but the taste was only a beginner. Compared to Mistborn or Elantris, only a few cool things happened. It was more of a setup for the political scene, the characters, the dynamics, the human suffering of fighting as slaves destined to die as cannon fodder, and so forth. The ending was great though, as expected of Sanderson. Mistborn is still my favorite trilogy, and Alcatraz my second favorite. Alcatraz is for pre teens or teens, but I actually find it very entertaining as a sort of modern contextual comment on society by Sanderson. There’s a lot of growing pains that adults would find very familiar.
Not yet, Ymar. I’m spending too much time on the internet and not enough time reading. Ghost is still next in line.
I can’t find “Beezlebub” at the library or at Amazon. Who’s the author?
It’s this one.
http://www.mangareader.net/222/beelzebub.html
The tv spin off is where most of the funny part comes from.
I started a Dean Koontz marathon in early December; I decided I wanted to read him in order from 1984-on. Fascinating to see him develop his themes over the decades, especially to more freely express his strong Christian spirituality, along with his classic plot lines and the heroic qualities of personal responsibility, and the importance of love, faith and commitment, in the midst of the social and moral decay of a collapsing civilization. I’m up to 2003-2004; it’s interesting as a side note that Koontz immediately noted, in each of the three books he wrote after 9-11 that I’ve read so far, the importance of the terrorist attacks, and he instantly and consistently labelled them as Evil. With a capital E.
One of the small things that I deeply enjoy is that his villians, for all their formidable villainy as characters, are pitiful and often laughable as well. They are thoroughly unreliable narrators of their own condition. It usually takes another character penetrating into the villian’s “lair”, and describing it, for you to realize how totally deluded the villain is to his or her own true nature.
I just finished his ‘The Face’. which I’d never read. His understated cosmology in that one was deeply disturbing to me. The sheer sneakiness of ‘deals with the Devil’ was stunning, as was his depiction of the true nature of mercy.
I’m going in the opposite direction from some of you folks. Looking to better understand the travails at the beginning of our country, I’m reading ‘Mayflower’ by Nathaniel Philbrick.
Mike, sounds interesting. Any particular one you think I’ll like?
I’m reading COMMENTARY, also!!!!!