What Book Are You Currently Reading?
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Author Topic: What Book Are You Currently Reading?  (Read 396415 times)
homelycooking
Junior Chimp
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« Reply #525 on: August 18, 2012, 10:01:04 PM »

Anna Karenina in the P/V translation.
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TheDeadFlagBlues
Junior Chimp
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« Reply #526 on: August 18, 2012, 10:23:20 PM »
« Edited: August 18, 2012, 10:25:27 PM by 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.
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patrick1
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« Reply #527 on: August 18, 2012, 10:40:20 PM »
« Edited: August 18, 2012, 10:44:47 PM by 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.....
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anvi
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« Reply #528 on: August 19, 2012, 03:14:40 AM »
« Edited: August 19, 2012, 04:32:00 PM by 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.
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patrick1
Junior Chimp
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« Reply #529 on: August 19, 2012, 06:20:53 PM »

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 Wink

Just started reading some Cavalli-Sforza books on human population genetics.
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anvi
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« Reply #530 on: August 19, 2012, 07:33:18 PM »

"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.
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Beet
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« Reply #531 on: August 19, 2012, 08:09:53 PM »

anvi, have you heard of the book 'Mao's Last Revolution' by Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals?
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anvi
anvikshiki
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« Reply #532 on: August 19, 2012, 09:24:54 PM »

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?
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Beet
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« Reply #533 on: August 20, 2012, 12:10:26 AM »

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.
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anvi
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« Reply #534 on: August 20, 2012, 01:10:09 AM »

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!
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Gustaf
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« Reply #535 on: August 20, 2012, 06:51:22 AM »

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.
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Lief 🗽
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« Reply #536 on: August 20, 2012, 06:17:49 PM »

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.
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Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee
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« Reply #537 on: August 23, 2012, 07:36:15 PM »

Byzantium: The Apogee by John Julius Norwich


Shame I don't have the other two books to cover the entirety of the Empire's existance. I will probably finish this one by tomorrow.
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© tweed
Miamiu1027
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« Reply #538 on: August 23, 2012, 08:12:19 PM »

I picked up a copy of Age of Extremes for $3,

how?
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Lief 🗽
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« Reply #539 on: August 23, 2012, 08:40:06 PM »

Found it in a thrift store on the Upper East Side while I was shopping for cups and plates for my apartment. I also bought The Age of Empire, but they didn't have the other two for whatever reason, even though it looked like this edition of the four books had been printed together as a set.
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Peeperkorn
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« Reply #540 on: August 24, 2012, 12:36:58 PM »


My deepest condolences


---

V. S. Naipaul - Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey
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The Mikado
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« Reply #541 on: August 24, 2012, 03:18:13 PM »

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.

The amazing thing about Heart of Darkness is that Conrad's English really isn't all that good and the book can get a bit tough despite being barely 60 pages long, but it's still one of the most compelling stories you'll ever read.
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Peeperkorn
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« Reply #542 on: August 24, 2012, 04:38:56 PM »

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.

The amazing thing about Heart of Darkness is that Conrad's English really isn't all that good and the book can get a bit tough despite being barely 60 pages long, but it's still one of the most compelling stories you'll ever read.

+1
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World politics is up Schmitt creek
Nathan
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« Reply #543 on: August 24, 2012, 04:50:39 PM »


My deepest condolences.

Still working on my reread of Floating Clouds, and have added a concurrent reread of Kawabata's Snow Country.
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homelycooking
Junior Chimp
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« Reply #544 on: August 24, 2012, 05:03:58 PM »


I'll ignore your opinions on Tolstoy, thank you very much, Mr. "that's the end of North American literature".
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Atlas Has Shrugged
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« Reply #545 on: August 24, 2012, 05:50:59 PM »

I just finished Confessions of an Economic Hitman. Really, really, really good. Thoughts on the book?
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Insula Dei
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« Reply #546 on: August 24, 2012, 06:02:32 PM »
« Edited: August 27, 2012, 09:53:38 AM by Tussen Droom en Daad »


My deepest condolences.

Still working on my reread of Floating Clouds, and have added a concurrent reread of Kawabata's Snow Country.

Have you ever actually read Naipaul?

EDIT: Incidentally am reading Guerrillas right now.
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Donerail
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« Reply #547 on: August 26, 2012, 05:59:28 PM »

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minionofmidas
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« Reply #548 on: August 27, 2012, 11:39:58 AM »

Just finished "Pornography" by Witold Gombrowicz.
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World politics is up Schmitt creek
Nathan
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« Reply #549 on: August 27, 2012, 12:03:58 PM »


My deepest condolences.

Still working on my reread of Floating Clouds, and have added a concurrent reread of Kawabata's Snow Country.

Have you ever actually read Naipaul?

I have.
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