What book r u reading?

[Shadow Wolf]

I'm currently (finally) reading American Gods byy Neil Gaiman.

That's on my list to get to.

Have you read Good Omens, by Pratchett & Gaiman? Excellent IMO. Lost Gods, by Brom is another great read and more related to American Gods I think.

That is a good one. I especially love Dog.

 

[Spice]

That's on my list to get to.

I enjoyed the sequel to American Gods, better: The Anansi Boys. My son preferred AG.

 

[Spice]

Ever wonder what it would have turned out to be if Jesus had been born a girl?
Read _The Way_, by Kristen Wolf
Only for the curious and open-minded.;-)

 

[jbg]

I just finished reading First Strike: The Exclusive Story of How Israel Foiled Iraq's Attempt to Get the Bomb by Shlomo Nakdimon. First Strike was not well-reviewed on Goodreads. There was criticism that it "dragged" and of the translation from Hebrew. I am giving the book "Five Stars" regardless. I am giving the book "Five Stars" regardless. I consider it a thrillin page-turner.
The author well makes the point without saying so directly that "diplomatic efforts" are useless against a determined enemy. Iraq was bound and determined to get "the bomb" and obliterate Israel. In the prevailing atmosphere of the late 1970's and early 1980's, oil could buy anything, notwithstanding the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the International Atomic Energy Agency of the U.N.

Nakdimon well makes the case that should not need making; Israel and similarly advanced countries must defend themselves. Words are not enough.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

Have you read Good Omens, by Pratchett & Gaiman? Excellent IMO. Lost Gods, by Brom is another great read and more related to American Gods I think.

No, although I've read pretty much everything Pratchett wrote individually, including Small Gods, which is an interesting (comedic) take on a similar theme line to American Gods.

 

[Wu Wei]

Not reading it yet, but it came by mail and it is next on my list

A Handbook for New Stoics: How to Thrive in a World Out of Your Control―52 Week-by-Week Lessons​

 

[JustGeorge]

Not reading it yet, but it came by mail and it is next on my list

A Handbook for New Stoics: How to Thrive in a World Out of Your Control―52 Week-by-Week Lessons​

Sounds interesting.

 

[Spice]

If you like reading heavy fantasy and would be interested in seeing the Bible written in full novel form, check this series out.
It was too much for me, as I'm not into heavy, warring fantasy fiction, but the premise made me give it a try.

 

[Mock Turtle]

Now reading - Livewired: The Inside Story of the Ever-Changing Brain (2020) by the neuroscientist, David Eagleman.

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews//livewired/

About a third through this and I have found it quite interesting - perhaps more as to future possibilities - such that, apart from AI being the major aspect of the future, advanced technology (especially as to brain-interfacing but also other such) will likely be able to solve so many issues where individuals have some deficiency as to sensing - lacking eyesight, hearing, touch, etc. - and as to expanding the range of such things. Given that the brain is not so source-dependent upon any inputs, and where it soon adapts to whatever source of stimulus that we can devise and that provides meaningful information.

Some things I didn't know - with the first possibly happening to me in the future - that when a cornea is replaced after cataract surgery, UV vision is enabled to some extent because the normal cornea filters this out.

Also, babies have been born with no nose, no eyeballs (so no sight obviously), and no ears - not all as to one individual of course.

Neuroprosthetics - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

So I can recommend this book, even if four years out of date - and that is a long time in such technologies.

 

[Starlight]

The four insights, wisdom, power and grace of the earthkeepers by Alberto Villoldo PH.D

 

[osgart]

I'm reading Logic A Very Short Introduction by Graham Priest.

Also reading Metaphysics A Very Short Introduction by Stephen Mumford.

On the flip side of that, I'm reading a Christian book called The Quest for Character by John MacArthur. I have Christians in my family and they enjoy giving me material to read.

 

[Spice]

I'm still dabbling through the works of Edward Reaugh Smith, and still on _The Burning Bush, An Anthroposophical Commentary on the Bible, Terms and Phrases: Volume 1_

For lighter reading I've just started S.G. MacLean's 17th century historical crime series _The Seeker_: spies, exiles, assassins in Oliver Cromwell's London.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

I'm working on the Childe Cycle by Gordon R Dickson. I'm on book 7 "The Final Encyclopedia".

It started off as military science fiction and has progressed to historical, philosophical and faithful speculation on the future of humanity in a fictional future reality.

It is a break from more technical material that I should be reading.

 

[EinGeheimkonto]

I recently saw Villenueve's adaptation of Dune in the theatres and thought it would be a good time to re-visit the novels.

 

[bobhikes]

I just finished Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros. It is an epic Fantasy with Magic and Dragons. It starts off slow but builds into a great story. It has some wild adult romance in the middle and an epic romance in the final. Out of 10, I would give it a 7 because of the slow start but the ending a 10 out of 10.

The Story is about a woman who is forced by her mother to become a Dragon rider which only 25% of the candidates make it the rest die. She overcomes the odds and falls in love and then out of love along the way. Story 7 out of 10 Slow start, Romance 10 out of 10 once it gets going, Fantasy element 7 out of 10, the world is more like ours with some fantasy elements.

 

[jbg]

I just finished reading A Conservative History of the American Left by Daniel J. Flynn. Daniel Flynn convincingly draws a more or less straight line between the Utopian colonies of post colonial New England to the climate change panic of the 21st century. The book explains that utopianism is often attractive, particularly to people who want to believe it and want to believe in it. Perhaps four words, from the description of the belief in the New Deal, sum it up best: "Action, not outcomes, mattered."
But I digress. The book starts with the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock: "\

The Pilgrims, like America's secular communists of the nineteenth century, hoped to build a city upon a hill. And like other sectarian groups that later found refuge in America, the Pilgrims attempted to build their utopia upon communist principles****Under communism, which reigned in Plymouth colony from 1620 to 1623, Pilgrim bellies and investor wallets starved, Historians look back and ascribe myriad causes for these lean years. But the man whom the Plymouth colonists elected as their governor more than thirty times emphasized the role communism played in the colony's early woes. In Of Plymouth Plantation, William Bradford wrote:

"For the young men, that were most able and fit for labour and service, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children without any recompense."

The author makes the case that the more things change, the more things stay the same. The New Harmony commune in Indiana collapsed in ruins in the 1820's and 1830's. Some similar colonies fared marginally better, some worse. Some became sexual playgrounds for their leaders. Certain exploits, including those of the famous researching Alfred Kinsey, are unprintable.
The author traverses the 1960's and the self-immolation of a prosperous, promising era on college campuses. Shades of what is happening now.
In the early 2000's, the "climate change" hysteria has taken over:

Hysteria over global warming combined the worst of the primitive and the modern. Global warming emerged as the Armageddon for people who ridicule people who believe in Armageddon. The disturbing omens that primitives divined from mysterious eclipses, crippling droughts, and foreboding skies, urban sophisticates saw in ever-so-slight changes in the weather-save they had the nerve to call their auguries science. From the climate-controlled, indoor world where man presses a button to make it hot or cold, breezy or not, man hubristically imagined himself the master of the outdoor weather, too. Not the sun, not volcanoes, not the wind currents, but man was exclusively responsible for global warming a theory more heavily steeped in narcissism than pre-Copernican notions of a geocentric universe. And if gluttonous man could destroy the world, enlightened man could save it. Global warming allowed true believers to cast enemies as evil destroyers and themselves as noble redeemers.
Mankind stood on the brink of the end times. Sacrifices to the gods-offerings of recycled cans, forbearance from flushing the toilet, holocausts of SUVs-might appease Mother Nature. Failure to make the proper oblations certainly would unleash her righteous wrath.

Quoting Al Gore:

“Nobody is interested in solutions if they don’t think there’s a problem…Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis."

…. (T)he solutions curiously antedated, and are endorsed independent of, the problem. Public restrictions on use of private property, state punishment of large corporations, international bodies dictating national laws, and other long-standing dreams of the Left somehow reemerged as curatives to environmental woes. Alas, if the problem disappeared, the true believers would urge enactment of these suspect solutions as enthusiastically as ever.

A Conservative History of the American Left is clearly a tour d'force and worth the read (though it is a slog because so much information is new and unfamiliar). Then why am I giving it a "four?" The author does indulge in some demonization of the Left. While I am no fan of FDR, he comes close to calling him a Communist. Like many books of this genre, for example The Rise of the New Puritans: Fighting Back Against Progressives' War on Fun by Noah Rothman, The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America by Victor Davis Hanson and others, the books do not concede any redeeming value to other beliefs. Put simply, they are strident.

I personally am not a conservative, though I am open to their ideas. This book doesn't help inch me to the right.

 

[Spice]

I'm currently reading The Misunderstood Jew, by Amy-Jill Levine. It's a great perspective read.

My current fiction is by Sébastien Barry, The Secret Scripture; a fictional memoir of an old woman in a mental institution who lived The Irish Troubles.

 

[Mock Turtle]

Finished the Livewired book, and which shows how malleable and adaptable the brain is, as to input and output. Now reading, The Infernal Library: On Dictators, the Books They Wrote, and Other Catastrophes of Literacy (2018) by Daniel Kalder. Have read the first part, covering the Russian lot, and they don't come across that well at all, so my suspicions about Communism were not so far off. I haven't read much about any of the others in particular either - as to biographical information.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/the-deadliest-books-the-world-has-ever-known/2018/03/07/9abac55a-2076-11e8-86f6-54bfff693d2b_story.html

Also have started reading, Island Stories: An Unconventional History of Britain (2019) by David Reynolds.

Island Stories by David Reynolds review – how British history is shaping Brexit

Dreams of empire, blitz spirit, a country in decline … this crisp and concise book shows that competing visions of the past are driving the Brexit project

www.theguardian.com

 

[ChristineM]

Le guide de la nationalité français.

Translation... The French nationality guide.

 

[Secret Chief]

Stolen Focus : Why You Can't Pay Attention
by Johann Hari.

Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention— and How to T…

A sort of follow on from The Chaos Machine by Max Fisher.