What Book Are You Currently Reading?

[Dallasfan65]

[Vosem]

Survival of the Sickest, a popular science book written Sharon Moalem of the University of Toronto, who has a Ph.D. in neurogenetics, and Jonathan Prince, who worked for the Clinton Administration.

[© Tweed the Younger]

Augustine's Confessions

I think I tried to do that, didn't work

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

The Odyssey for college. I had all summer to read it and with six days left I've read about 60 pages.

[patrick1]

The Odyssey for college. I had all summer to read it and with six days left I've read about 60 pages.

Wait, what?  You have summer reading in college?

[© Tweed the Younger]

The Odyssey for college. I had all summer to read it and with six days left I've read about 60 pages.

if it's for orientation or whatever it's totally ok not to do it.

[J. J.]

[Gustaf]

The Captain and The Enemy by Graham Greene.

[asexual trans victimologist]

The Captain and The Enemy by Graham Greene.

How is it? I'm rather fond of Greene but I've not read that one.

[Tricky Dickie]

The Presidents Club.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

The Odyssey for college. I had all summer to read it and with six days left I've read about 60 pages.

Wait, what?  You have summer reading in college?

I'm about to attend one of the most difficult colleges in the country where it is mandatory to write a thorough and original thesis for you undergrad. I can't believe I used to be proud of myself for receiving an acceptance letter from this den of academic sadism...

@Tweed it's for a class (which is basically Reed's signature as an institution) that all freshman are required to take so I can't get out of it. I'd much rather be reading Crime and Punishment or the latest Yanis Varoufakis book.

[Sibboleth]

I'm about to attend one of the most difficult colleges in the country where it is mandatory to write a thorough and original thesis for you undergrad.

Are undergrad dissertations that rare in the U.S?

[Ѕenator Αverroës]

I'm about to attend one of the most difficult colleges in the country where it is mandatory to write a thorough and original thesis for you undergrad.

Are undergrad dissertations that rare in the U.S?

They're typically reserved for students in "honors" programs.

[homelycooking]

Anna Karenina in the P/V translation.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

I'm about to attend one of the most difficult colleges in the country where it is mandatory to write a thorough and original thesis for you undergrad.

Are undergrad dissertations that rare in the U.S?

I think Princeton and Bates are the only other two schools that require an undergrad dissertation for graduation but I could be missing a few.

Based off what I've heard, the undergraduate education at most public universities and a large percentage of liberal arts schools is a joke for the average student. The caveat is that I've heard this from people who would be characterized as elitists.

[patrick1]

The Odyssey for college. I had all summer to read it and with six days left I've read about 60 pages.

Wait, what?  You have summer reading in college?

I'm about to attend one of the most difficult colleges in the country where it is mandatory to write a thorough and original thesis for you undergrad. I can't believe I used to be proud of myself for receiving an acceptance letter from this den of academic sadism...

@Tweed it's for a class (which is basically Reed's signature as an institution) that all freshman are required to take so I can't get out of it. I'd much rather be reading Crime and Punishment or the latest Yanis Varoufakis book.

Interesting.  I had a mandatory 20 credits of Development of Western Civ. They had us read Iliad and Odyssey and C&P but it was more of read this by X date when they gave you the syllabus.

Best of luck and enjoy yourself.  It does seem stressful at the time but looking back you will likely miss it immensely.

Oh, I dusted off an old collection of the Harvard Classics.  Jumped into The Imitation of Christ. I don't think its working.....

[anvi]

The Red Scarf Girl by Ji-Li Jiang, a memoir of a child growing up during China's Cultural Revolution between 1966-76.

EDIT:  I finished this book today.  I read it because I am going to teach a contemporary Chinese culture course soon, and am starting my coverage in the Cultural Revolution.  The book is mostly representative of the "scar literature" gene of the period.  But for those who have not read personal memoirs of the CR, I would highly recommend this book.  It is terribly depressing, especially because it comes from the perspective of someone who was a child at the time, but it has very, very valuable lessons.  It's not a hard read, but it's a difficult one; you will not want to find out what happens at the beginning of the next chapter as you make your way through it, but, if interested in 20th century China, please read it.  It puts a lot about China today, and our own blown-out-of-purportion political experience, very much in perspective.

[patrick1]

The Red Scarf Girl by Ji-Li Jiang, a memoir of a child growing up during China's Cultural Revolution between 1966-76.

EDIT:  I finished this book today.  I read it because I am going to teach a contemporary Chinese culture course soon, and am starting my coverage in the Cultural Revolution.  The book is mostly representative of the "scar literature" gene of the period.  But for those who have not read personal memoirs of the CR, I would highly recommend this book.  It is terribly depressing, especially because it comes from the perspective of someone who was a child at the time, but it has very, very valuable lessons.  It's not a hard read, but it's a difficult one; you will not want to find out what happens at the beginning of the next chapter as you make your way through it, but, if interested in 20th century China, please read it.  It puts a lot about China today, and our own blown-out-of-purportion political experience, very much in perspective.

Thanks for the recommendation.  For such an important event, I realize that I know almost nothing about the cultural revolution.  My only real exposure is from the incredibly depressing Xiu Xiu: The Sent down girl and the snippets from The Red Violin.   Maybe I'll audit your class

Just started reading some Cavalli-Sforza books on human population genetics.

[anvi]

"Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl" is pretty depressing but a good film to watch for that period, as is "The Blue Kite," which is perhaps even more unnerving.  (It's pretty hard to find anything remotely realistic about the Cultural Revolution that's not thoroughly depressing, though).  Another film worth checking out might be Zhang Yimou's "To Live" (Huo Zhe, which follows a small family's fortunes and misfortunes through a greater scope of 20th century China but has a lot of interesting depictions from the Cultural Revolution.  That ten years in Chinese history has to have been one of the most tragic decades in their entire forty-five hundred some years of civilization, entirely self-inflicted, entirely unnecessary and unbelievably redolent of the perils of both political society and human nature.  It all grew out of internal party power struggles between Mao and his perceived (often not even actual) enemies, and resulting in a coercion of the population to completely turn on one another over and over again, and shows what an almost indescribably inept, aimless and cruel leader Mao became after the mid '50's.  Living in China in the late '60's compared to what it's like to live there now was almost like being entirely on another world--the current one is far from perfect, surely, but the former one was so much more horrible.

[Beet]

anvi, have you heard of the book 'Mao's Last Revolution' by Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals?

[anvi]

I haven't read that one yet, Beet, but the authors are fine scholars and critics, as far as I understand it, praise it even though they find the authors' conclusions a little elusive.  I will read it when I get the chance.  Have you?

[Beet]

It's rather long and detailed, but I've found it to be the definitive account of what happened, with a good mix of gut-wrenching personal stories as well as the national politics / personalities that drove everything. The biggest mysteries to me were 'why did Mao have to start this when he was already the paramount leader- what was his motivation?' and 'why did people blindly worship this man so much?' and 'didn't they realize what was happening?' and this book helped me answer these questions and more. At the end it is self-evident why China turned away from communism already immediately after Mao's death. As a supplement I have 'Liu Shaoqi and the Chinese Cultural Revolution' by Lowell Dittmer.

[anvi]

I'll definitely check it out, Beet, thanks!  I have lots of friends who were Cultural Revolution survivors, and my ex-wife was one as well, who was briefly "sent-down" for not being from a "red-enough" background and so on...and they say to a person that, while Mao was certainly at fault, the citizenry was too, for falling so easily for it all.  But, yeah, Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping both knew very well what the "Great Leap Forward" policies were doing to the countryside even in the early '60's, and Deng wasted no time completely reversing everything when he finally came to power in the late '70's.  When I visited Tiananmen Square in Beijing for the first time, the words of one of my above-mentioned friends rang in my ear: "If it were up to me, we'd take Mao's picture down from that square and put Deng's picture in his place, because he is the reason people can have hope in a 'new China.'"  My friend said this, mind you, having also been an eye-witness to the events in Tiananmen in 1989, so even considering that, he was prepared to pay much greater reverence to Deng in view of what Mao did to China for two decades.  How anyone could possibly think that the way to build up his country was to have its entire citizenry brutally torment one another just so he could target his perceived enemies is, even when all the political pieces are found on their proper squares, still dumbfounding to me, really.  Anyway, thanks for the recommendation!

[Gustaf]

I just read The Captain and the Enemy by Graham Greene as well as Of Mice and Men by Steinbeck.

Now I'm going to do Heart of Darkness.

[Lіef]

I picked up a copy of Age of Extremes for $3, having enjoyed his long 19th century trilogy already. I will hopefully fit it in between my Legal Methods textbook readings.