What Are You Reading?

[TJones]

John McPhee - Travels In Georgia

(unknown author) - The Good Earth

I'm in the middle of The Kite Runner right now, and it seems pretty good.

I read The Good Earth back in highschool editor. Good book about rags to riches then back to rags again. You are referring to the Pearl S. Buck novel, correct ?

[editor]

I read The Good Earth back in highschool editor. Good book about rags to riches then back to rags again. You are referring to the Pearl S. Buck novel, correct ?

Yep. That's the one. Thanks for filling in the blank on the author there. I read it in high school, too, and it always stuck with me.

The only other books I remember from high school were Jane Eyre and The Sun Also Rises. I hated Jane Eyre then and I still hate it now. Hemmingway's The Sun Also Rises worked nicely with my dress-in-all-black Depeche Mode-listening high school days. I wonder if it would still make sense now.

[bachanon]

1987, black turtle neck (in may), cloves cigarette, doc martins.....ahhhh, takes me back.

She's dressed in black again

And I'm falling down again

Down to the floor again

I'm begging for more again

But oh what can you do

When she's dressed in black

My mind wanders endlessly

On paths where she's leading me

With games that she likes to play

And words that she doesn't say

Not when we are along

And she is dressed in black

As a picture of herself

She's a picture of the world

A reflection of you

A reflection of me

And it's all there to see

If you only give in

To the fire within

Dressed in black again

Shadows fall on to me

As she stands there over me

And waits to encompass me

I lay here helplessly

But oh what can you do

When she's dressed in black

Dressed in black again...

http://www.last.fm/music/Depeche+Mode/_/Dressed+in+Black

[dgreco]

I would recommend a few authors Klosterman, Kidder, Thompson and Albom.

The book by Kidder is Mountains beyound Moutains... It really is a great book. 2 chuck klosterman books; Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs a low culture manifesto and IV: a decade of curious people and dangerous ideas. I would recommend all of Mitch Albom's book he has some great short quick reads. Last everyone should read ever Hunter S. Thompson book, Gonzo art is so amazing and his gonzo writing is great.

[musicman]

i had hoped for more avid readers on haif. i appreciate the input, so far, but i thought for sure someone would have some classics to suggest.

christian school didn't expose us to many of the classics because they were more "humanistic".

anyone love classic literature? in my mind, i think the classics are dante, homer, not necessarily the romantics. i guess many of these will be fiction, but they shed light on the human condition.

thanks, in advance.

not to get off the subject but what christian school didn't expose you to the classics?

if you want classics i will have to recommend the prince and the pauper, the scarlett letter, fall of the house of usher, house of the seven gables, taming of the shrew, Death comes for the archbishop, old man and the sea, a farewell to arms, of mice and men. grapes of wrath, east of eden. these are some i remember reading in high school.

[editor]

not to get off the subject but what christian school didn't expose you to the classics?

if you want classics i will have to recommend the prince and the pauper, the scarlett letter, fall of the house of usher, house of the seven gables, taming of the shrew, Death comes for the archbishop, old man and the sea, a farewell to arms, of mice and men. grapes of wrath, east of eden. these are some i remember reading in high school.

I went to Catholic school, and we read hardly any of the classics. I think we had one each year during the term, and then one more over Summer. These days I really feel like I missed out on a lot, so I get them free from Project Gutenberg and load them into my phone/PDA. I highly recommend that site to anyone who wants to catch up on the classics.

[musicman]

I went to Catholic school, and we read hardly any of the classics. I think we had one each year during the term, and then one more over Summer.

where did you go to school? i thought we had ot read too much! all i remember was 7 during the summer. and then lots during the school year itself.

[bachanon]

not to get off the subject but what christian school didn't expose you to the classics?

if you want classics i will have to recommend the prince and the pauper, the scarlett letter, fall of the house of usher, house of the seven gables, taming of the shrew, Death comes for the archbishop, old man and the sea, a farewell to arms, of mice and men. grapes of wrath, east of eden. these are some i remember reading in high school.

i think we read excerpts of the scarlet letter and old man and the sea in high school. at north harris i read all of the scarlet letter, the fall of the house of usher and a farewell to arms, but none of the others.

project gutenburg is a great idea.

[nmainguy]

i had hoped for more avid readers on haif. i appreciate the input, so far, but i thought for sure someone would have some classics to suggest.

The Garden of Eden by Hemingway-one of his last published works. It's a tough book to find so if you are really interested I will lend it to you but if you don't return it I'll have to send my Uncle Vito to retieve it.

The Good Earth by Buck-and I know it's been mentioned before but it will never stop being a classic work. It will always make you think.

American poetry: Robert Frost; Walt Whitman for starters.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin.

Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.

And of course Moby Dick by Herman Melville.

Alot of people will scoff at my list and call it old-school. That's not OK because if it wasn't for "old school" you would never had known of Morrison, McCullough, Sontag and Twain,

But it's always hard to make a list if I don't know what your intrest in classics is. I just love descriptive writers like Austin, Hemingway, Twain, Rand, Steinbeck, Morrison, Faulkner, McCullough, Sontag and Williams. It takes a rare skill to draw you into the narritive in a way most writers can't.

[tmariar]

Bachanon, I've got tons of classic fiction I could recommend, if you want those recommendations.

I'll list some non-fiction "classics" I enjoyed (or found important), though, as you seem more interested in that - and, if you tell me which seem along the lines of what you're interested in, I can list more in that area. The Rawls book I listed above is a classic of "modern liberal philosophy" (which doesn't really mean the same thing as liberal political philosophy), and I mentioned some earlier philosophers as well (and can list more classic philosophy, if you want, there's tons to read there that's good beyond what I listed above and below - Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Hume, Kant, Rousseau, Locke, Hobbes, etc., etc., etc.). Then there's also...

Frazer, The Golden Bough ("A monumental study in comparative folklore, magic and religion, The Golden Bough shows parallels between the rites and beliefs, superstitions and taboos of early cultures and those of Christianity. It had a great impact on psychology and literature and remains an early classic anthropological resource.")

Darwin, The Origin of Species

Marx, Communist Manifesto

Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations

Mead, Coming of Age in Samoa

Plato, The Republic

Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Thoreau, Walden

Malcom X, Autobiography of Malcom X

Machiavelli, The Prince

Friedan, The Feminine Mystique

Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams

Carson, Silent Spring

Gibbon, Decline of the Roman Empire

Singer, Animal Liberation

These are just ones that came to mind off the top of my head. Note that I'm not saying that I necessarily agree with the positions taken in any given book listed. If I just read books that told me what I already believe, though, I don't think my beliefs would be as fully formed.

[dgreco]

Bachanon, I've got tons of classic fiction I could recommend, if you want those recommendations.

I'll list some non-fiction "classics" I enjoyed (or found important), though, as you seem more interested in that - and, if you tell me which seem along the lines of what you're interested in, I can list more in that area. The Rawls book I listed above is a classic of "modern liberal philosophy" (which doesn't really mean the same thing as liberal political philosophy), and I mentioned some earlier philosophers as well (and can list more classic philosophy, if you want, there's tons to read there that's good beyond what I listed above and below - Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Hume, Kant, Rousseau, Locke, Hobbes, etc., etc., etc.). Then there's also...

Frazer, The Golden Bough ("A monumental study in comparative folklore, magic and religion, The Golden Bough shows parallels between the rites and beliefs, superstitions and taboos of early cultures and those of Christianity. It had a great impact on psychology and literature and remains an early classic anthropological resource.")

Darwin, The Origin of Species

Marx, Communist Manifesto

Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations

Mead, Coming of Age in Samoa

Plato, The Republic

Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Thoreau, Walden

Malcom X, Autobiography of Malcom X

Machiavelli, The Prince

Friedan, The Feminine Mystique

Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams

Carson, Silent Spring

Gibbon, Decline of the Roman Empire

Singer, Animal Liberation

These are just ones that came to mind off the top of my head. Note that I'm not saying that I necessarily agree with the positions taken in any given book listed. If I just read books that told me what I already believe, though, I don't think my beliefs would be as fully formed.

everyone should read Marx, once you understasnd communism it makes so much more sense than any other system. To bad it would never work. Also for more classic, check out....

Michel Foucault

Emile Durkheim

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

William James

Anna Julia Cooper

John Maynard Keynes

Georg Lukacs

Betty Friedan

Saskia Sassen

Frantz Fanon

Claude Levi-Strauss.

Buit I would also recommend comtemporary readings, the classics are good, but there is some great new books out there Theoriest or not.

[Ralo]

everyone should read Marx, once you understasnd communism it makes so much more sense than any other system. To bad it would never work.

Nice recovery . . . I was gonna ask Jeebus to slap you on principle alone. j/k

[editor]

Nice recovery . . . I was gonna ask Jeebus to slap you on principle alone. j/k

I picked up a little book of Mao's famous quotes when I was in China. Never got around to reading it, though.

[dgreco]

Nice recovery . . . I was gonna ask Jeebus to slap you on principle alone. j/k

lol, honestly if we weren't so rooted in heiracrhial societies and now capitalism, I think if we started out as socialist, and then moved towards communism it could possible work... but we are to embedded with personal gain, socioeconomic status etc... to even see a system liek that working.. To many it just doesn't even sound like it could possible make sense.

[Ralo]

lol, honestly if we weren't so rooted in heiracrhial societies and now capitalism, I think if we started out as socialist, and then moved towards communism it could possible work... but we are to embedded with personal gain, socioeconomic status etc... to even see a system liek that working.. To many it just doesn't even sound like it could possible make sense.

I think it is a hard sell but I will agree that socialism, on paper, can sometimes sounds appealing.

[dgreco]

I think it is a hard sell but I will agree that socialism, on paper, can sometimes sounds appealing.

thats the thing, on paper a lot of things sound great, just sometimes they don't work. I also think we have a hard time to understand things such as communism and socialism, because of our past. With the Red Scare and all the failed attempts of both systems.

[sevfiv]

NPR did a story on this book a couple weeks ago, and it is a great read:

Richard Nickel's Chicago: A Lost City

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.p...ft=1&f=1047

http://cityfilespress.com/

Architecture photographer Richard Nickel spent years with his camera, documenting

Edited April 30, 2007 by sevfiv

[Subdude]

Some recent reads:

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian - Marina Lewycka

A Moveable Feast: Ten Millenia of Food Globalization - Kenneth Kiple

Amsterdam - Ian McEwan (a quick read but worth it)

The Black Swan - Nassim Taleb (the likelihood of statistically unlikely events)

Imperial Life in the Emerald City - Rajiv Chandrasekaran

Rites of Peace - Adam Zamoyski (all about the Congress of Vienna)

[ricco67]

Recently I have just finished reading "740 Park" by Gross (I forgot the first name and gave the book away).

It gives the history of the Luxury apartment Building located in New New York that was built at the beginning of the great depression as well as some of the eccentric (or rather philandering) characters that have lived in that building.

It's a bit of an eye opener, actually.

[Subdude]

Has anyone read this one?

Any thoughts? I figure with all the interest in the transportation topics someone must have picked it up.

[infinite_jim]

After the City by Lars Lerup

[ricco67]

One of the last books that I thought was a good read was "Lone Survivor" by Marcus Luttrell of his survival of a SEAL operation (Operation Redwing) gone bad.

[Subdude]

Just finished: Brideshead Revisited

Current read: Diamonds Are Forever

In the queue: Pompeii, The Life of a Roman Town, Millennium, Tess of the D'Urbervilles

[bachanon]

just started "The Emperor's Handbook: A New Translation of The Meditations" by Marcus Aurelius

[Highrise Tower]

Just ordered this as a gift. Sounds really good.

https://www.amazon.com/Savushun-Novel-Modern-Persian-Classics/dp/0934211310

Savushun (pronounced "sa-voo-shoon") is a folk tradition, surviving in Southern Iran from an undateable pre-islamic past, that conjures hope in spite of everything. The novel chronicles the life of a Persian family during the World War II Allied occupation of Iran.

It is set in Shiraz, a town which evokes images of Persepolis and pre-islamic monuments, the great Persian poets, the shrines, sufis and nomadic tribes all within a historical web of the interests, privilege and influence of foreign powers, corruption, incompetence and arrogance of persons in authority.

The story is seen through the eyes of Zari, a young wife, and mother, who copes with her idealistic husband while struggling with her desire for traditional family life and her need for an individual identity. simin daneshvar lives and continues to write in Iran.