What Book Are You Currently Reading?

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Non-Fiction: The Making of the English Working Class by E.P Thompson. Needless to say I am interested in the views of one particular forummer this book. I´m about half way through

Fiction: The Man Who Was Yesterday by G.K Chesterton. Strange combination with Thompson I know. Oddly all the English sections of Spanish public libraries (not very large sections I´ll add) have Chesterton in them - Catholics!

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Non-Fiction: The Making of the English Working Class by E.P Thompson. Needless to say I am interested in the views of one particular forummer this book. I´m about half way through

In what respect?

Who said I was talking about you? ,)

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That has been pretty my perspective on it so far as well (Though I can´t claim I know the period too well and I wish I had more foreground knowledge before diving into the minutae of the London Corresponding Society but oh well...). Regardless of probably the worst argued pieces of the book, I enjoyed the takes on Methodism (even if clearly wrong and/or dubious) simply because I went to a Methodist school. I´m rather enjoying it.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Non-Fiction: The Making of the English Working Class by E.P Thompson. Needless to say I am interested in the views of one particular forummer this book. I´m about half way through

Fiction: The Man Who Was Yesterday by G.K Chesterton. Strange combination with Thompson I know. Oddly all the English sections of Spanish public libraries (not very large sections I´ll add) have Chesterton in them - Catholics!

Chesterton is great. But surely you meant to say The man who was Thursday??

Ugh. Yes. Brain Fart on my part. Great book btw despite all the reactionary Catholic nonsense it contains at times. I´m still a bit miffed on the ending, mind.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Well, I guess I'm not the only person that recently read E. P. Thompson. 

Fantastic book.  It took me two months. 

Yeah. Fantastic Book. But it took me TEN DAYS BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA etc, et cetera....

Will provide thoughts when I have more time. Now reading: A History of the Arab Peoples.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

France its Empire since 1870

When does the description stop?  I wouldn't really categorize France as an empire, even in a broad sense of the word, since the mid-1960's.

Then you haven´t been paying sufficient attention.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

I'm now reading Hunger by Knud Hamsun, the Norwegian author. It's the current book of the Literary Society of my university.

Despite being over a century old, it is ridiculous how accurate to the experience it describes the book is in places. Pity about the author, you know, being a Nazi and all that.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Franco - Paul Preston.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Trying to read it at the advice of a more philosophically inclined friend... we'll see if end up finishing.

Don´t bother... MacIntyre is the very definition of self-important indulgent nonsense.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

'A Confederacy of Dunces' by John Kennedy Toole

Approve

Greatly Approve. Obvious influence on Opebo there.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

'A Confederacy of Dunces' by John Kennedy Toole

Approve

Greatly Approve. Obvious influence on Opebo there.

Who of us hasn't been influenced by it?

None of us of course. Just felt like giving the obvious shout out. Actually I was a bit surprised that Tweed hadn't already read it.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

In the Garden of Beasts- Erik Larson

Highly recommended book with insight from the perspective of Ambassador Dodd and his family into the early Third Reich...

I had that book recommended to me elsewhere recently, will consider checking that out.

I've read many, many, many books lately, but at the moment I'm almost done with Tim Blanning's 700-page The Pursuit of Glory, a history of Europe 1648-1815.  It's...amazingly detailed, to the point of having a 30 page chapter on changes in gardening and hunting.

Great book. Ages since I read it though.

I'm currently reading Homosexuality and Civilization by Louis Crompton.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Joanna Bourke: What it means to be human: Reflections since 1791. Excellent even if a bit too poststructuralist for my liking. But very readable.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Books? This is some other obscure internet term for "Journal articles", correct?

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Titus Groan

I have read it before, but that was ages ago.

I have to say I didn't quite 'get' it. There were bits, especially at the beginning, which were brilliant (The Scene where the library is burnt down is almost cinematically placed in my mind). But the book as a whole... meh..

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Does nobody else ever read for pleasure? I reckon about 80% of the books in here are academic, intellectual, or technical. What's so bad about sayng you're reading Twilight?

Well, OK, bad example. But maybe some Tom Clancy? Bridget Jones' Diary? Jeffrey Archer?

Too busy to do so right now. But do often.

As for what I'm reading - a variety of books for papers but at the moment: Transatlantic Encounters: Americans Indians in Britain, 1500-1776 by Alden Vaughan.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

... and terrible non-fiction at that.

Anyway,

Richard Eaton, The Social History of the Deccan 1300-1761: Eight Indian Lives (2008)
John Eliot, A Further Accompt of the progresse of the Gospel amongst the Indians in New England (1659)
John Eliot, A Further Account of the progress of the Gospel amongst the Indians in New England (1660)
Daniel Gookin, Historical Collections of the Indians in New England (1674)
Colin Calloway and Neil Salisbury (ed), Reinterpreting New England Indians and the colonial experience (2003)
Sidney Rooy, The Theology of Missions in the Puritan Tradition (1965)

All but the first are thesis stuff of course. I currently have 36 books out of my Uni library. I haven't finished any of them - and haven't started the majority of them.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Followed up with To Kill A Mockingbird. I sense that one ought to disapprove of it but I'm a sappy romantic so I just loved it.

Would you be surprised if I told you that I don't like To Kill A Mockingbird?

It's a very long time now since I read fiction.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

It's a very long time now since I read fiction.

You should do something to rectify this sorry state of affairs as soon as theoretically possible.

Yes but Thesis, etc.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

1491 by Charles Mann

So good. Can't recommend it enough, even if you don't really care about pre-Columbian American history.

It's a bit too sensationalist at times... but hey, pop history.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

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Great book. Don't expect explanations though. It's Murakami (spoiler?).

[Tetro Kornbluth]

If it's any consolation Thompson, at least, is a good read. Weird book: in some respects not just ahead of its time, but ahead of what is written now; but he also repeats some arguments and theories that were pretty much discredited by the 1960s, even going out of his way to defend one of them. But then that's Thompson for you.

One of my professors mentioned that social history/marxist approaches has gone the way of the dodo in favor of more cultural/anthropological approaches since the 80s, is this true? If so, my tiny interest in having History as a fallback major is out of the question.

Basically, yes (not so basically, it's more complicated)... and no bad thing too.

Thompson's book is still great although it's greatness is partly due to its obvious bias and at times ranting nature.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Just finished



Highly recommended. The CIA in the 50s and 60s was even crazier than I had thought, and that's impressive.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

I still think the USSR should have made constructivism, instead of socialist 'realism', its official art style... just think of the possibilities, never mind its effect on Communism's low aesthetic reputation.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

I've just completed Vanished Kingdoms by Norman Davies - a very interesting work, if overly detailed at times (my eyes - not to mention concentration - glaze over at long contextless discussions of kings, battles and genealogies... Too much information, unfortunately that is too common in Medieval history, if admittedly in part by necessity) and rather uneven work. Some of the chapters - those on the Kingdom of Strathclyde, Aragon (when he doesn't spend endless time on discussing monarchial successions), Savoy, Montenegro - are excellent while others just serve to overdo his personal obsessions: the neglect of Eastern Europe by historians and the role of royal families. Two chapters - those on Saxe Coburg-Gotha and, strangely, Ireland - basically only to exist for trolling purposes on the House of Windsor's origins and the imminent (in his view) breakup of the UK. On chapters on Poland-Lithuania, Prussia and Burgundy he goes too far into political detail and this work would have served better with much more cultural history and less political stuff. However, He's particularly good at relating these vanished kingdoms to their present day surroundings and reflecting on the roles of memory and forgetting these old states exist in modern states and the role historians have played in distorting the record in the name of presentist and nationalist biases. Recommended.

I'm about to start Mary Tregear's Chinese Art followed with China: A new Cultural History by Cho-Yun Hsu and What Have God Wrought by Daniel Walker Howe. I have an extensive - and rather sinocentric - reading list for the next two months or so. Any recommendations for books on China? Tibet and Central Asia would also do.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Gully, are you looking for books on Chinese history or contemporary China?  

Both.