The coolest part of the back story is that her husband was poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and their friend was Lord Byron but we don’t care about what they wrote.
This film was allegedly the most faithful adaptation.
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Just starting Master and Commander
Master and Commander (Book 1): Patrick O’Brian: 9780393307054: Amazon.com: Books
Master and Commander (Book 1): Patrick O'Brian: 9780393307054: Amazon.com: Books
Need my dictionary, lexcon and Google to help me sail through dense litterature, exquisitely written by an egnimatic auto didactic
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I read “The Nineties” By Chuck Klosterman. As always it was great commentary and made me remember and think about the era. Also nice to remember things I had forgotten about.
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I recently finished “The Alexandria Quartet” by Lawrence Durrell. This is a series of short novels about British and French diplomats and writers and their women and Egyptian Jews and Copts in Alexandria, Egypt set in the 1930s and WWII. They were wildly popular in the 50s-70s and still have a cult following. The Modern Library ranked the Quartet as a whole the 70th best novel in the 20th century. Durrell was repeatedly speculated as Nobel Prize recipient.
The best non-fiction book I read last year was “The Free World, Art and Thought in the Cold War” by the New Yorker essayist Louis Manand. Since I was a kid, one of the few books that I dreaded ending I loved it so much.
I belong to twitter book clubs and you can read my comments on some of the books I read (the ones I read in the book clubs) in my twitter account. (My general rules for social media posts: facebook, sunsets; twitter, literature. No politics.) (I’m only rude to LA Ute, and only here.)
For fiction, generally I favor literary fiction originally published outside the US, mostly translated from other languages.
For non-fiction, I prefer books that cover a lot of ground and focus on culture, war, science and ideas for better or worse. For example, I love “Sapiens” and “Homo Deus” by Harari. I’d rather read about European civilization as a whole and its various pathologies during WWII than military strategy per se, though I love fiction and memoirs that focus on individual soldiers and victims of war and totalitarianism like “Life and Fate” by Grossman.
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My best most recent read is “The Storm Before the Storm” by Mike Duncan. I recommend his History of Rome podcast too. His book talks about my favorite period of Roman history, the transition of Rome from the Republic to the beginning of Augustus’ Roman Empire.
I also reread “The Goal” by Eliyahu M. Goldratt. He discusses continuous process improvement. The book primarily refers to a manufacturing setting, but can be applied to any system, because all systems can be improved. Funny, this was required reading in my Production Management class way back in the day. Back when Toyota and other Japanese companies were running circles around US companies in efficiencies and lowering costs; thusly were more profitable that most US companies at the time. I was working with a local company, and I was frustrated with its corporate culture and built in inefficiencies. It reminded me of the book. I may have to send a copy to the engineer in charge of the manufacturing area of said business.
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I have some advice for you. Eschew obfuscation.
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Just finished Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr. His Book All the Light We Cannot See is one of my favorites, so I was looking forward to this.
I really enjoyed it. It weaves 5 stories across different times and characters, all tied together by a fictional Ancient Greek story. Doerr’s writing is fantastic, and the stories kept my interest throughout. It was one of those books I looked forward to getting time to listen to.
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The best book I have ever read is Ken Follette’s “Pillars of the Earth”. I would never have thought that a book about a man who wanted to build a cathedral would be so riveting.
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I just read Ann Applebaum’s “Twilight of Democracy.” I’m a big fan of Applebaum, but I usually eschew alarmist narratives about the end of democracy. I decided to read this after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Trump’s comment that it was “genius.”
She shows that the term “centrist” is actually a misnomer. There is alt-right, alt-left, and liberal humanist. “Liberalism” in the context is not political in terms of democrat or Republican, say. It simply refers to the tradition that embraces democracy, debate, and meritocracy in government and private sector. The distinction is that the two alts believe that anyone who disagrees with them should be silenced and denied access to power or wealth because what their opponents believe is so lacking in merit the opponents don’t deserve even to be heard or to have a chance to gain power or property.
I think a revelatory part of her narrative is how easy it is for a liberal humanist to slide into one of the alts, out of sheer disgust for the other kind of illiberalism. Those who celebrate the deaths of the unvaxxed are halfway there. It is a strong temptation. Or, how many times have I myself been tempted to think, Government, just get rid of the street junkies and homeless, I don’t care where you take them.
The way Applebaum puts it, those who fall prey to alt ideology are unable to tolerate complexity or diversity.
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Interesting. I just started The Sleepwalkers in response to Russia/Ukraine. I’ll read it then The Guns of August. I’ve curious about how and why WWI started. I suspect that I’ll get more of the how than the why between the 2 of them.
One of the issues of my undertaking is the sheer volume of resources. You can get many 1st hand accounts as well as many interpretations. How do you sift through it all to make a logical conclusion. FWIW, it seems that the bureaucracies of the various parties kept the ball rolling toward war, with no off ramp to prevent it. Just my very early, off the cuff view from 100 years after the end of the War.
Just finished an excellent book, The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois, by Honoree Fannone Jeffers. 800 pages, and I didn’t want it to end. Never was bored with it. It draws a picture of slavery, the treatment of Native Americans, and growing up black in the 1980’s. It wasn’t at all preachy. Well worth the long read.
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I just read Project Hail Mary by the guy who wrote The Martian. I don’t really like fiction and REALLY did not like this book. It was super corny. Lots of people seem to have loved it but I wasn’t one of them.
I finished Big Rock Candy Mountain by Wallace Stegner about a month ago. One of those books where I’m still thinking about it. Lots of Salt Lake in the story as well.
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Thank you for this post.
I really dig Stegner. Haven’t read this one. I’ll pick up a copy today.
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I just finished Astoria by Peter Stark. It was super interesting to me since I lived in Astoria for a short period, but it’s also a fascinating look into the early exploration of the west. Also well written and kept me interested throughout, which my ADHD mind struggles with when reading longer books.
Next up is some more Stegner - Beyond the 100th Meridian - other Stegner works have kept me captivated, so I hope for the same on this one.
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I watched this documentary several years ago. Stegner was one of the greatest Utah alumni (so far).
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Just finished Legacy of Ashes - The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner. If you are interested in historical views of what the CIA and our government has been up to over the past 50 years.
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As a companion text, I would recommend Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies by Noam Chomsky.
On book 11 of the Aubrey/Maturin series most famously known by the movie Master and Commander which was in fact a collection of several of the books, not the first book by the same name.
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