What are you reading now?

[anna09]

Just bought this!

I hope to get around to The Language Instinct this year. Someone once gifted me a book by Pinker but I was so turned off by the sloppiness in his thinking that I have to this day avoided the greater body of his work. The Language Instinct, however, by all accounts is a classic. Please let me know what you think of this one.

I'm only a few chapters in so far but I love it!

Oh, and The Blank Slate is my favorite.

[Jason]

Esoteric texts on electronic engineering. Not exactly fun.

[apophenia]

The Cat in the Hat

I have kids....

Sometime, they know best what we need, even if we don't know it ourselves.

[Svartalf]

The Cat in the Hat

I have kids....

Sometime, they know best what we need, even if we don't know it ourselves.

How old is he already? isn't it a bit early even for that yet?

[apophenia]

I'm freed of the tyranny of book club obligations for a time, except Anne Hecht's "doubt" a history, which I have two months to read, to lull myself into a dull sense of complacency. In the meantime, I am freed to splay myself across a litany of disconnected themes, from Asian horror cinema to the notion of things which are both true AND false at the same time, to reconceptualizing the meaning of Chinese philosophers in the hundred schools period. I feel liberated. I may even burn a bra, as symbolic victory. Who knows? Who can say? My mind is set free. And it has been chomping at the bit for far too long. Lookout! Beware! I am loose again!

[klr]

Just bought this!

I hope to get around to The Language Instinct this year. Someone once gifted me a book by Pinker but I was so turned off by the sloppiness in his thinking that I have to this day avoided the greater body of his work. The Language Instinct, however, by all accounts is a classic. Please let me know what you think of this one.

I'm only a few chapters in so far but I love it!

Oh, and The Blank Slate is my favorite.

Got this as well recently, and have been skipping through bits of it. I also have at least four of his other books, including the The Blank Slate and The Language Instinct.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Long Day's Journey Into War, by Stanley Weintraub. Basically, he looks at the 48 hours that constituted "Dec. 7th, 1941" around the world, vignettes and snippets of what major, minor, and totally inconsequential people were doing that day. A "big picture" book for me. Not sure if he is trying to get into a little conspiracy theory yet.

[anna09]

So I just finished A Tale of Two Cities and fucking cried even though I knew what was going to happen!

It was beautiful!

[Gawdzilla Sama]

[img]Pearl%20Harbor%20as%20History:%20Japanese-American%20Relations,%201911-1941[/img] Edited by Dorothy Borg ( ) and Shumpei Okamoto (who died in 1994, sadly).

Interesting set of essay focusing on various aspects of this multi-dimensional puzzle.

[John_fi_Skye]

I'm reading an interesting book about the mutiny on the Bounty just now. Contrary to the received stereotypes, Bligh was actually enlightened, relatively liberal and well-liked, and Christian and his co-conspirators seem really just to have enjoyed sunshine, indolence and the women of the south sea islands.

Fair enough, I suppose.

[Exi5tentialist]

I'm reading an interesting book about the mutiny on the Bounty just now. Contrary to the received stereotypes, Bligh was actually enlightened, relatively liberal and well-liked, and Christian and his co-conspirators seem really just to have enjoyed sunshine, indolence and the women of the south sea islands.

Fair enough, I suppose.

You mean neo-liberal, surely.

[charlou]

I've taken up The Fatal Shore for another read ... It's brutally stark in it's description of the voyage and treatment of convicts ... and a fascinating and insightful rendering of part of Australian history by the author, Robert Hughes.

The Fatal Shore. The epic of Australia's founding, by Robert Hughes, published 1987 by Harvill Press, is a historical account of the United Kingdom's settlement of Australia as a penal colony with convicts. The book details the period 1770 onwards through white settlement to the 1840s, when Australia was established as a European outpost. The book explains many of the origins of the Australian character and being, such as the Australian support for Bushrangers, the underdog and the dislike between the English and Irish and their religions. It won the WH Smith Literary Award in 1988.

[Svartalf]

Close to finishing Dark Moon by David Gemmell... I expect to finish this 400 page book by tonight or tomorrow, meaning this will be the first book that size, let alone new book, that I have finished so fast in possibly a decade, and certainly in the last 5 or 7 years.

[FBM]

Rereading The Apology right now.

philosophicclassics.jpg (35 KiB) Viewed 1234 times

[John_fi_Skye]

I'm reading an interesting book about the mutiny on the Bounty just now. Contrary to the received stereotypes, Bligh was actually enlightened, relatively liberal and well-liked, and Christian and his co-conspirators seem really just to have enjoyed sunshine, indolence and the women of the south sea islands.

Fair enough, I suppose.

You mean neo-liberal, surely.

Surely. For his time. If by the "neo" bit you mean not as long ago as Aristotle. Still plenty of flogging, but at least - unlike many of his contemporaries - he wished he didn't have to do it.