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Current Non-Fiction reads

Plato; The Republic (college course text)
Why Penguins Feet Don't Freeze (New Scientists Q&A)

And I am about to tackle Charles Darwin's On The Origin Of Species (first version).
 
I'm reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, though I haven't picked it up in about a week. I also started Louis Theroux's The Call Of The Weird last night.

My problem with reading non-fiction (well, and fiction sometimes :p ), is that my memory is atrocious about the details. There will be things that I'll be utterly fascinated by, but a few weeks later I won't be able to remember anything about them. :mad:
 
I am reading Shinsengumi: The Shogun's Last Samurai Corps by Romulus Hillsborough, and I have to admit that I find it informative. I have a passing knowledge of Japanese history from the beginning of the Tokugawa regime to the present day so it is wonderful to be able to understand part of this time frame in a greater detail.
 
"Down the Great Unknown" by Edward Dolnick - account of a group of mainly American Civil War veterans who rowed the Grand Canyon river system in 1869 - the last unexplored area in the southwest.
Incongruously, the leader of the expedition was one armed! (John Wesley Powell, an interesting character)
A fairly interesting book, with details taken from the men's journals. Though by the nature of the journey, I found the account to be a bit repetitious in places, so for me, not exactly 'impossible to put down'.
 
I'm reading Noam Chomsky's Failed States: so far it's living up to Hegemoy or Survival; it's a good thing Chomsky has abandoned his impenetrable studies in linguistics (which more laymen-friendly guys like Steven Pinker can write about) to tackle politics with clarity and grace. This man's IQ must be huge and he must read hundreds of newspapers every day just to keep up with what's going on in the world because nothing, nothing!, escapes his attention. Reading this book is understanding what's wrong with the world and why.
 
angerball said:
I'm reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, though I haven't picked it up in about a week.
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I couldn't put it down!
I also started Louis Theroux's The Call Of The Weird last night.
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I don't like that guy, he just looks for eccentrics and tries to turn them into a freak show. The show he did (or tried to do) with Jimmy Savile was telling. Savile saw him coming a mile off, and wiped the floor with him. :D
My problem with reading non-fiction (well, and fiction sometimes :p ), is that my memory is atrocious about the details.
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Me too. I find it helps to make notes as I read, but the paradox is that the better the book, the harder it is to put it down and pick up a pencil...
 
Current working thorugh The World's Religions

by Huston Smith. Each religion gets a chapter - now I'm in mid Buddhism. After each chapter I take a break and read some fiction so as to let the completed religion sink in and not get confused with the next one.

Before that I read Gandhi: A Life by Yogesh Chadha for a course I am teaching in the fall. The Gandhi book reminded me now much I did not know about Hinduism, which led to Huston Smith.
 
Notes and strips

text_maniac said:
I couldn't put it down!

II find it helps to make notes as I read, but the paradox is that the better the book, the harder it is to put it down and pick up a pencil...
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When I was young :)) I made lots of marginal notes in books. The problem is, going back later, I am often struck by the obviousness or don't understand what I meant. Now I keep a pile of little paper strips (like stickies without the glue) and put them in the pages with important information or ideas.
 
I'm reading Teenage: The Creation of Youth Culture by Jon Savage. It is a little dense right now, I'm hoping that I'll get into it more soon...
 
silverseason said:
When I was young :)) The problem is, going back later, I am often struck by the obviousness or don't understand what I meant.
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Me too, but the other problem is that most of what I read is from the library, so I'm dependent on notes. Debating what you've read helps alot with memory, but the difficulty is finding someone else who has read (or is willing to read) the book, especially if you're an eccentric like me who prefers something technical or educational to a novel. Trying to debate a book with someone who hasn't read it quickly grows frustrating. It feels like transcribing the book one paragraph at a time in the attempt to answer arguments that the author has already dealt with.

I'm just itching to debate Risk by John Adams because it runs so counter to the received wisdom, but I've never found anyone else who's read it. It's difficult to know how far to go with a summary of the book in the attempt to interest people, for fear that it will end up prejudicing them against reading it.
 
I'm currently reading Greed & Glory on Wall Street by Ken Aulette. It's about the Lehmann investment house that was torn apart in the mid-80s due to their co-CEOs having it out. It's a fascinating read up to this point, gotta love a good book about the foibles of human vice.:cool:
 
Advanced beings from "elsewhere"

Currently reading Gods, Genes & Consciousness: Nonhuman intervention in human history - by Paul Von Ward.

I've read other books on this theme and I tend to agree with the basic premise. It seems quite likely (in my opinion) that the "gods" of old were actually visitors from other worlds.

Knowing that I've been a UFO buff for many years, a friend asked me, "Do you really think there are other intelligent beings out there?"

My answer was, "Yup."

My friend just shook his head. Clearly he needed more than just "Yup". So I gave him this to chew on:

Perhaps as soon as 100 years from now we will send an expedition to a planet outside our solar system. When we get there we will find some equivalent of earth's early Neanderthal creatures. Using our highly developed science of cloning and genetic engineering, we will turn these creatures into something closely resembling ourselves. These new creatures will eventually learn the art of writing and will record their creation with words such as, "...and God created us in His own image. In His own image He created us."

Some of the "Gods" (that's us, remember) will want to use these new creatures as slaves to mine the riches from that planet. Another faction of the Gods will not agree with that policy. A battle between the two factions will take place and in time the creatures will write about the Battle in Heaven.

At some point we (the Gods) will see that these creatures are not behaving in ways that we think they should. So we pick one creature and lure him up to a mountain top where we take a laser device and inscribe into a slab of stone a list of "Shalts" and "Shalt Nots" and send the befuddled creature back down the mountain with the message to the rest of the creatures.

Oh - and lest I forget - some of the Gods (we human men folk) will come down from the sky and seeing that the daughters of the new creatures are fair... well, suffice to say it will be recorded that "they took wives of them, all of which they chose".

Tens of thousands of years will pass on that planet and in that time knowledge will increase, science and philosophy will branch out in a hundred directions; great cities will rise and fall and religions will flourish - all claiming they know the Truth. And before you know it some of the creatures will be spouting rediculous theories about ancient astronauts coming to their planet tens of thousands of years ago bringing the seeds of what finally became the sophisticated beings they are today.

This scenario may quite possibly be happening somewhere, on some planet - maybe on hundreds of planets, thousands of planets - out there in the vast reaches of this endless Universe... this very moment.
 
Collapse by Jared Diamond but it is on hold until I finish the new/last Harry Potter and Children of Hurin.
 
Booknotes - the Life Stories volume.
The series is really outstanding. You can cover huge spans of history and pick up tons of things you didn't know, while finding what you want to zero in on -- which is often the same thing. ;)
 
Stewart said:
I'm now on Istanbul, memoirs by Orhan Pamuk.
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I would like to hear your reactions to this book. I have it on my shelf but haven't started it yet. Snow was difficult in places, but interesting.

Currently I'm struggling with a biography of Proust, trying to clarify what goes on in Remembrance of Things Past, but I'm not aware that it is helping much.
 
Rachel said:
Booknotes - the Life Stories volume.
The series is really outstanding. You can cover huge spans of history and pick up tons of things you didn't know, while finding what you want to zero in on -- which is often the same thing. ;)
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Sounds like a winner. I will add it to "The List".
 
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