I'm going to start with A Few Seconds of Panic, the author of which I heard on NPR. It was an impulse buy, and it's been mocking me from the shelf.

Just finished Polyphemus by Michael Shea. Good collection of creepy, Lovecraftian horror. I'm not really a horror or sci-fi guy, but I enjoyed this. Shea has a wonderful, twisted imagination.

One complaint: His prose tends toward the purple.

"and it's been mocking me from the shelf."

Don't you hate when books do that?! :)

I do hate that, and that's why I switched books after two chapters of A Few Seconds of Panic. I read Alan's War The Memories of G.I. Alan Cope instead, a graphic novel biography of an American GI who stays on in Europe after the war. Wonderful book about a gentle man.

I also read another graphic novel, Burma Chronicles. It's the diary of a Québécoise cartoonist who hung around Rangoon caring for his kid while his doctor wife worked for an NGO. Also really good.

I am currently reading Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?: 23 Questions from Great Philosophers, which is a little chapbook by the intellectual historian Leszek Kolakowski. Each short chapter assigns a question to a different historic philosopher, and Kolakowski explains how that philosopher answered or attempted to answer the question. It's stimulating for a late night dip before tucking in.

Message edited by its author, Jan 13, 2009, 1:29pm.

That Alan's War sounds like a good one. I was never really into graphic novels (well, except Niel Gaiman's Sandman series), but my LibraryThing SantaThing sent me Maus and Maus II (graphic novels about WWII Holocaust). I simply devouered them!

The philosophy book sounds interesting. But, isn't it hard to go to sleep as you find yourself trying to answer the very same questions :P

Just finished Iain Banks's The Wasp Factory this evening on the train home. One of the most disturbing books I've read in a life of reading disturbing books. It has it all! Murder! Gender ambiguity! Animal sacrifice! Scottish dialect!!

To be fair, Banks is a wonderfully evocative writer, and there are real legitimate themes behind the Grand Guignol. That said, I'd be careful recommending to anyone willy-nilly.

Finished Ta-Nehisi Coates's The Beautiful Struggle. A very lovely, lyrical memoir of a black nerd growing up in Baltimore in the 80s.

Speaking of Beautiful Struggles, have jumped back into A Few Seconds of Panic. We have reached a workable solution, the book and I. I'm getting absorbed.

At this rate you'll do "29 books in one month"!!!

You know what my secret is? Having absolutely no retention! I just let the words flood over me!

" I just let the words flood over me!"

There is nothing like that feeling...no TV could ever match that :)

I dunno. Some films and I guess some filmed plays -- even good radio -- have had moments for me that that were no less savory than a good book, albeit those moments are less certain with film than with literature.

David Mamet, Harold Pinter, J. M. Synge, of course Shakespeare, or Wilde, even the Critic's speech in Ratatouille, the language spoken by competent actors as written by these folks certainly can stir as much as a good text.

That's a topic for another board however.

Nearly finished book 1 of 2009 (Science: A History by John Gribbin). It's staggering - I'm exhausted from it. Really looking forward to diving back into some fiction - either The Ministry of Fear or Oscar and Lucinda ...

I have finished the first slog of the year, A few seconds of panic, and I've optimistically have moved on to two books: The Boys on the Bus, a funny, fascinating book about the press pool that followed the McGovern campaign in '72. Young versions of Hunter S. Thompson, David Broder and Robert Novack all make an appearance. The Spiritual Tourist is the other title I'm starting on. Journalist Mick Brown goes on a tour of New Religions. So far so good.

And A Few Seconds of Panic is, in all fairness, a really wonderful book. For some reason I felt thicker than it was. Probably too much football.

Guess that puts me at 7.

Just finished City of Glass The Graphic Novel. I read the novel years ago, and this is a pretty faithful adaptation. Makes me want to reread the novel.

Message edited by its author, Jan 23, 2009, 6:42pm.

A TWOFER!

Understanding Comics and The Spiritual Tourist.

No fair- you have to read slower!

xieouyang -- It's not a contest. Unless I win. Then it is a full fledged competition.

Maybe I'll start looking at thinner books. The two I'm reading now (The Savage Detectives and The Oak and the Calf) are about 500 pages of small type each. Although a Lope de Vega play that I want read in the next few days is, like all plays, a 2-3 hour read.

I finished a book I've been dipping in and out of since just after Christmas: The Politics of Chaos in the Middle East. It's only a couple of hundred pages, but as a book it benefits from putting it back on the shelf and mulling over what Roy is talking about.

Roy's premise is not particularly startling on its surface, that the West is deeply unfamiliar with the complex political landscape in the Mid East. I think ROy's achievement is how thoroughly he tracks the various ideologies and constituencies competing with each other.

Just finished Cults In Our Midst, and while the writing drove me up the wall at times, the content moved me. I'm going through a stint of trying to understand motivations in coercive movements; political, religious, psychological, etc.

I want to know what motivates the followers, but more so the leaders. What happens to a person that they can dismiss another person's humanity so utterly?

That's what I'm trying to understand.

Anyway, this book was more about victims of cults. It is heartbreaking to see the twisted cognitive gymnastics that people can go through in their quest for happiness.

Message edited by its author, Jan 26, 2009, 2:34am.

To cleanse my palate after my dive into cults, I picked a short book: Rum, Sodomy & the Lash (33 1/3) by Jeffrey T. Roesgen.

If you're not familiar with the 33 1/3 series, they are a series of monographs, each one focusing on a particular iconic (usually rock) album, in this case The Pogues' 1985 album "Rum, Sodomy and the Lash".

Each book has different author, so the series is pretty varied in quality and content.

The gimmick here is the story plugged between the critical analysis of the songs. The author pictures himself joining the Pogues on the 1816 cruise of the ill-fated Medusa, the sinking of which inspired Théodore Géricault's painting The Raft of the Medusa.

The Raft of the Medusa was in turned purloined to serve as the cover of this self same album, with the heads of victims switched out for the band members.

Hmm.

Sort of a cockamamie book.

Message edited by its author, Jan 26, 2009, 1:32pm.

Add to the better-than-I-expected-file: The Borscht Belt, a breezy history of the Catskills Jewish resorts of the early to mid twentieth century.

Funny, with one liners that weave between the inspired and the shamelessly corny.

Moving on to, what? I think either Science, Politics and Gnosticism or Myth and Reality.

Are you a speed reader? Or do you live in an area that has 28 hour days?
I am still trying to finish the ones that I have underway-- but you are a good motivator.

I've only read a book yet this year over 210 pages, so that may be my "secret". I've also been slow at work, so, there you are.

Science, Politics and Gnosticism

Another slim volume, all of 102 pages, though this one made my brain hurt a little bit.

Eric Voegelin was a conservative political philosopher who coined the phrase "To immanentize the eschaton", that is, to attempt to create heaven on earth.

Well, he's against it. He traces roots of various secular millenialist philosophies -- communism, nazism, fascism, and uh, liberal democracy (he was a grump) -- back to Gnosticism.

The world/nature is broken and perfectible, says the modern Gnostic, so let's fix it with this handy dandy totalist system I have created.

xieouyang, if you're a W. Buckley fan, you might want to have a peak at this one. His thought influenced a lot of the old school NR writers. Apologies if you already knew that.

I've wanted to read his works for a while- but have never gotten around it. I think your reference about pain in the brain is what's holding me back.
Maybe I should take a look at this volume you mentioned. That may be a good read on one of those long international flights.

Myth and Reality

If you've the Saul Bellow novel Ravelstein, you've encountered Mircea Eliade. He made an appearance as Professor Grielescus, a Romanian professor with rumored past Nazi sympathies.

And Eliade did have some despicable skeletons in his closet, but he did have a brilliant mind for the history of religion. This book is about the blurring of myth and absolute truth in traditional societies. Not a lot of fireworks, but very interesting ideas.

My next book, Every Force Evolves a Form by Guy Davenport more than makes up for Eliade's dry style. This a collection of essays on art by cultural critic, poet, painter, professor Davenport. He's a wonderful writer, and each of the twenty short essays contained herein are jam packed with amazing feats of prose and unexpected linking of ideas.

If you've ever seen any of James Burke's documentaries on the history of science , the effect is similar. Michel de Montaigne's kidney stones make an appearance, as well as W. H. Auden's idiosyncratic hygiene habits and the composer Pergolesi's dog, although it turns out to be someone else's dog entirely, namely Thomas Mann's daughter. If you have any stomach for art criticism, this is a fascinating book.

I may have to take my brain out and drop it in some coolant for a couple of days

I am embarrased to say that I have not read a single Bellow book. I've had Herzog and Adventures of Augie March for a while with the intention of reading them, but other works pull me.
You have a good sense of humor.

Just finished Feet of Clay, which I enjoyed, and I'm now moving on to The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. I think I am subconsciously punishing myself.

The structure of scientific revolutions is done. Not necessarily comprehended entirely, but it's done. This time I did it. I broke something. I hear some rattling around in there.

A slog through what seems like miles of thick ink with diamonds served up at regular intervals.

You do read fast!

I read that book a few years ago and I thought it was interesting. I think that was the book where I ran into the word paradigm for the first time (if I recall correctly).

It IS an interesting, and I think it does a good job of being science down to a human level. I guess it provided a bit of fodder to some ideological segments that have a problem with science's role -- postmodernists on the left, and bible literalists on the right.

I can sort of see how they saw this as an opening, though Kuhn doesn't say anything that invalidate the scientific endeavor.

And, man, he wasn't much of a writer.

Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers by Leonard Koren.

Read last night. A ridiculously slim book about Japanese aesthetics.

Nixonland. The sixties wasn't about Woodstock and the Constitution was a considered list of talking points instead of the law of the land by many, many people who should have known better.

An enlightening, if depressing book.

Gregtmills - I think you're in the wrong section here - that is: 25 books in 2009. Do you not understand the concept? We're talking an average of 2 books per month. As for me, I've added For Whom the Bell Tolls - not as great as I'd hoped - the 'I obscenity in thy milk' type dialogue presented an almost insurmountable barrier to full engagement. Nearly finished Beyond Lies the Wub by Philip K. Dick. Clever guy.

boguscoleman -- Hemingway, he writes as if the wind was a woman. Ah, yes. The amontillado. We spoke and laughed. Spain. We are the same. We eat cheese and dance. How pretty it is to believe it so.

Not a fan of he, El Ernesto. I do not have the aficion.

You are right. I'm also reading more than 2 books a month. My defense for joining this group is that I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to keep it up, even though I've been an avid reader all my life. In the past, I never kept track or counted the books I had read in any given year, I only knew that m library kept expanding and I kept needing more bookshelves.
I just finished two more books the last day or so-- but that's what happens when you take 14 hour flights to China! Plenty of time to read without interruptions.

Just finished Terry Eagleton's The Truth About the Irish. Eagleton can be a) an earnest Marxist b) a cranky academic or c) a pretty funny writer. This book was written by Eagleton "C".

A fun book.

Just started on The Ayatollah Begs to Differ. So far, so good.

The Ayatollah Begs to Differ is a great book. Written by a Iranian American journalist, is a tour of the Iranian republic with an emphasis on how ordinary people actually live, how different constituencies jockey for power, and perhaps most interestingly, how Iranian society is shaped by Shia fatalism and Persian sensibilities and how that make Iran an outsider nation even in the midst of the Islamic world.

It's wonderfully clear, personable, and occasionally funny book. As someone who is woefully ignorant about Iran, this was a great first dip in the pool.

A twofer! Noodling for Flatheads and Moonshine two great books that I read back to back in a frenzy of eyestrain.

Noodling For Flatheads is a quick survey of Southern folk traditions by an interpid German American journalist. Covered are the pleasures of squirrel brains, competitive marbles and noodling, the practice of catching giant rutting male catfish using only the human arm and a meathook. Really good quick read.

Moonshine is an all time classic of long form journalism. Alec Wilkinson (who also wrote a great memoir of being a small town policeman on Cape Cod -- Midnights: A Year With the Wellfleet Police) speads time shadowing a modern day revenue agent, the inimitable Garland Bunting, as he fights moonshine in the South Carolina of the mid-eighties.

It's a stunning book that I finished in one sitting. Really wonderful and funny.

Something Wonderful Right Away is an oral history of the years of the Compass Players and the Second City, the improv troupe that birthed Saturday Night Live, SCTV, and various members of the Christopher Guest universe.

It's interesting to see these brand name comedians and comedic actors talk about the craft of comedy as a subset of theater, rather than a distinct art form. It struck me that in today's comedic landscape, the standup comedian approaches comedy from a different, more pragmatic perspective than the people witnessing in this book.

Pretty good read. Parts are laugh out loud funny.

Here's some more:
catapult: harry and I build a siege weapon
The Devil We Know
Your Name Here

A Childhood: a Biography of Place

I started grumbling but I ended up loving this. I've read Harry Crews novels, and generally like them, and this attempt at autobiography was recommended by a writer friend.

The first few pages read as kudzu-thick Southern Gothic, a genre I don't have much patience for, but it eventually settled into a groove that was gripping. It's filled with the horrors of a mid-century rural life in the pine country of Georgia, a place which by any measure can't support a rural life.

It's amazing that as a country we are only a few generations out from the sort of deprivation depicted here.

I neglected three books mentioned above.

Catapult: Harry and I build a siege weapon is a funny book about two underemployed friends living in San Francisco who set out to build a working catapult. The book is interspersed with historical anecdotes. It's pretty fun.

The Devil We Know is a fairly dry, though well-argued book about the modern state of Iran. The author, an CIA-analyst turned journalist, argues that Iran has successfully transitioned from a chaotic revolutionary state to a modern state, acting on "rational" motives (I'm not a big fan of the idea that states act rationally, but no matter). He furthermore states that for the first time in history Shiism is on the acendency in the greater Gulf region, Iran being the only stable state of consquence in the area. We should deal with them now, rather than later. Makes sense, I say.

Your Name Here
John Ashbery can be difficult to get through. I spent an unsuccesful summer trying to get through his Flowchart: a poem years ago (I learned I was not a fan of poem that require book marks).

This collection was pretty good, however. He seemed more personal and less willfully obscure than I felt his poems I read in the past were. Occasionally very illuminating.

I saw that book The Devil We Know. Do you think the author is defending Iran's current state of affairs? Trying to sugar-coat? Human rights? I want to say a whole lot more, but am refraining.

Poetry - you do like Epic Poetry for example The Iliad? which needs a bookmark. I am thinking of tackling that one soon.

Message edited by its author, Mar 21, 2009, 10:12am.

Well, this book was not about the internal politics of Iran, rather Iran's role in the power structure of the gulf.

The author is most definitely of the realist school.

The Iliad has the benefit of being a story, whereas the book I mentioned above goes hither and yon. Discrete parts of it are wonderful, but I missed the point of the entire package. Maybe if I had finished it.

I just picked a funky edition of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner with illustrations by various high falutin' modern illustrators and I read it with my daughter. We enjoyed it quite a bit.

@ Message 45: Tames, if you're at all interested in the internal politics of Iran, you could do worse than The Ayatollah Begs to Differ.

Hooman Majd holds passports for both the US and Iran, and in fact translates for Ahmejinidad at the UN.

That said, Mr. Majd is fully part of the West; he was raised in the US, he's a movie producer, journalist for Interview Magazine, he lives in New York and enjoys the freedom of that city.

He is not a fan of Ahmejinidad, thinks he's a coniving fraud and an ass.

What was revealing about his book was that it shows how Iran is a country where demographics matters, unlike a truly monolithic state like, say, North Korea.

Ahmejinidad is a populist boob, who has to worry about a pissed off electorate, there is a secular upperclass that generally ignores the mullahs, there are Kurds, Sunni, and Arabs (Iranians, of course, aren't Arab) that have grievences, there are tribal alligiances that warp everything else, and there are influential mullahs in government who really want to get on with joining the world.

To be sure, the Iranian human rights record is terrifying. The REGION'S human rights record is terrifying. And in a lot of ways, Iran is more progressive than say Qatar, or Oman, or especially Saudi Arabia.

Women can work, can drive, can seek education. The Hajib is slowly disappearing (though culturally you'd have a hard time convincing most Iranian women to go out without at least a scarf). And the home is consider inviolable. You can do whatever the hell you want in your garden.

I guess the point is, the Iranian state is a rotten state with the ability to adapt and survive, while the rest of the gulf states are rigid, nasty absolute monarchy and in the case of the Saudis, incompetent monarchy. Shia Iran will be left standing, with a new Shia ruling class rising in its neighbor Iraq. The Sunni states are in disarray, and incapable of change.

Thank you for review of the region and where the book fits in.

I think it quite funny that Mr. Majd translates for Ahmejinidad and does not like or agree with him. It must be quite difficult when Ahmejinidad says something stupid then Mr Majd thinks "Do I really have to say this?". At least we haven't thrown any shoes at him -- yet :)

Wow, Greg....you are simply devouring the books, huh?! I only finished #6!

@49: Kimfdim -- I have indeed been on a tear. I've had a lot of free time at my last job, which led to me being laid off, which freed-up even more time! I've also put myself on an moratorium on Amazon sprees until I make a dent in the book piles I've let stack up, so I guess I'm getting antsy without my regular fix.

I'm really enjoying it, I have to say. Sadly, I've picked a bit freelance and it's cut into my reading.

Dang.

The Wisdom of Doubt

A Sledgehammer.

I looked at the description of The Wisdom of Doubt on L.T. I did not see a rating. How would you rate it? The description makes it seem interesting.

I'd rate it **** over all. The author isn't a wizard of style, but his arguments are creative, exhaustive and interesting. He also avoids unnecessary negative characterizations about believers. This isn't about the church, but about the inconsistencies of belief.

I'd recommend it.

Moral Minority -- A book about how the founding fathers were steeped in Enlightenment values, and as such had deeply ambivalent feeling toward organized faith. It's book that recovers well tread ground, but it still offers up little gems that bring the traits of Jefferson, Adams, Washington, Hamilton, Franklin, et al. down to human scale. These were busy, curious, ambitious men with little time for false piety. I enjoyed it.

You've read several books with atheistic tones and you may find this interesting.

In the editorial section of my local newspaper, a deist (most likely Christian) was hammering the local weather newscasters about calling the earth "Mother Earth" or "Mother Nature". These are pagan, "New Age" terms and she was quite offended and stated that we have a "Heavenly Father" who created this world and oversees all this weather-stuff (paraphrased). It really was quite funny. You could read the ignorance of this poor woman who has never really looked into Christian history which is filled with pagan influences like Christmas and Easter. I wonder if she ever thought why Easter is called "Easter"? I'm sure it is in the bible somewhere.. right? :)

Message edited by its author, Mar 28, 2009, 10:16am.

You must not be very familiar with scripture, specifically the Book of Cottontail?

Cottontail 6:4: There were bunnies in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of rabbits came in unto the lawns of men, and they distributed Peeps unto them.

Ha! I love peeps! ..always bite the heads of first, only way to properly eat them. Hmmm... I think that is in Cottontail 7, and if you don't eat them that way woe to you!

Message edited by its author, Mar 28, 2009, 4:15pm.

Patriotism, and Other Mistakes is a collection of very, very dense essays, usually defending the dignity and realness of the individual against various group identities and imagined communities. I enjoyed the ideas very much. The prose? Meh.

Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century

This is a re-read of a book I read fifteen years ago, and damn if I don't remember it being as bizarre as it seemed this time around. Geil Marcus is a rock critic and musicologist who has whipped together a strange history that intertwines the fates of various European avant garde art movements (especially Dada and Situationalism) and Anglo-Saxon pop culture (Punk, Elvis, Doo-Wop), and claims to find their common roots in apocalyptic Anabaptist communes of the 16th Century.

Like I said, it's bizarre.

But it's also weirdly inspiring in its audacity

Imagined Communities Great book about the causes of the sudden and universal rise of the nation state. His main assertion is that nations are the product of the collective imaginations of the people who perceive themselves as members of any given state.

He traces the causes variously to the rise of vernacular languages, the discrediting of divine dynastic rule and the successful model of the early post-colonial American nations (according to Anderson, the first modern nations).

I've probably made it sound boring, but Anderson can be witty and he frequently wanders off into brief, fascinating asides.

Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage

Crammed full of interesting facts, but light on thesis. Wish it was chewier.

You are winning the prize!
Keep going because your comments give me ideas on possible books, for the somewhere out there future.

Boys on the Bus is an in-depth, often funny, look at the hardened core of political reporters on the road in the campaign bus during the 1972 presidential campaign.

This is during the era of the teletype and correspondents fighting over hotel payphones so they can file their sometime content free observations of the campaign.

They are drunk, they are tired, and they fighting over resources, ideas, and time. It's everything wrong with pack journalism from the early years of the information age.

What's interesting is seeing how grab-ass and quaint the machinations of both the politicians and journalists of those days are compared to the sleek and fatuous haircuts we tolerate these days. These guys where the high cynics of the era, yet they were passionate and artful.

Robert Novak, Haynes Johnson, David Broder, Hunter S. Thompson as well as Richard M. Nixon and George McGovern all make appearances.

Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them)

Full disclosure: I am not a New Atheist, an Old Atheist, or a Middle-Aged Atheist.

I guess you could say I'm a theological non-cognitivist. Arguing theology is largely besides the point. But that's me.

I've been reading some of the recent glut of atheist apologia lately, and I've enjoyed some of it, though I think globally the various authors could benefit from a little detached Humean irony. Less fire and brimstone, you know?

Anyway, this is an interesting about a very specific topic: the incoherence of the bible. Ehrman, a professor of religious studies, makes an interesting point again and again. The historic bible he depicts in his book isn't anything new to biblical scholars. The problems and issues he discusses are known to pastors.

He does a pretty good job of drawing the lay reader into the basics of historic-critical analysis of the bible. I wish the book read a little less forensically.

Either you are drawing people to the bible or away from it. Both take fire and brimstone. People are moved by passion and emotion. Forensic critical-analysis might make some think a little, but a few hours later we are waving our hands in the air with tears streaming down our cheeks saying - "this is real, can you feel it?". It is really interesting to stand back away from it and just observe.

Yes, to peel back to all the weird accreted cultural baggage is always a challenge. A bigger challenge is be aware when it pops back into place.

Being Good: An Introduction to Ethics

This is the third book I've read by Simon Blackburn and I have to say I've enjoyed each one.

Blackburn is an academic philosopher who also writes accessible, conversational books for plebs like me.

This book isn't a hardcore introduction to capital-E ethics, nor is it a history lesson, like a Will Durant (thankfully!). Rather it's a book that designed to get a soul thinking about the basic issues around how we should live and treat each other and ourselves and why.

Blackburn reads like a very, very interesting and engaging conversation you might have with a smart neighbor. He is very clear and precise, and assumes you have a functioning brain that can stand a little flexing.

It's one of those books that makes me want to read MORE books. That's a good kind of book.

Creationists

Perfectly pleasant collection of essays by E.L. Doctorow. I will forget having read this.

TWELVE YEARS An American Boyhood in East Germany

Written by James Agee's son, who's mother took up with a hack East German party scribe and novelist and took him along. This is a lovely memoir of growing up an American kid on the periphery of the East German cultural elite during the Cold War. There isn't a lot of politics here, other than of the interpersonal variety.

Agee recounts being horny, bored in school and ping-ponging around various jobs, familiar enough stuff in memoirs of young manhood, but made alien enough through the refraction of Communism and the rawness of German history to keep the book fresh and slightly disorienting.

I forgot to add Veeps, a very amusing and silly book that I read on the train over the past week.

On Being Certain

A neuralogist argues that feeling of knowing is a mental and physiological state rather than evidence of the state of the world.

Pretty neat little book, crystalizing ideas in Wittgenstein, Lakoff and McGin.

The Devil's Candy

Intermittently interesting behind the scenes look at the production of the film version of The Bonfire of the Vanities.

The Corpse Walker: Real Life Stories: China from the Bottom Up Liao Yiwu is a poet (one who has gotten into no small trouble in China for his pointed writing), though in this book he takes the role of the Studs Terkel of China, interviewing misfits, outsiders and invisible people in China (very moving interview of a father of a student killed in Tiananmen Square). Pretty amazing book, but since I'm not that versed in Chinese history, some of it goes over my head. The eponymous interview is very strange and eerie, and it's stayed with me since I read it. Someone needs to make a movie from it.

The Politics of the Governed by Partha Chatterjee

A collection of essays dealing with how new conceptions of democracy and governmentality are emerging in the post-colonial world. He argues that as new governmental institutions evolve to administer in new democracies, it is often at odds with the democratic aspirations of the governed masses.

The essays vary in technical depth and as my technical depth is roughly that of a puddle of spilt milk on the kitchen floor, I was frequently out of mine.

That said, when I could follow what was being discussed, I enjoyed it.

Message edited by its author, May 15, 2009, 3:03pm.

Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America-and Found Unexpected Peace

A believing L.A. Times religion reporter loses his faith by reporting on... religion.

I am having problems staying focused on one or two books. Anyway, along those same lines, I saw a thread recently on The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan. Yes I started it. Losing My Religion sounds like a good one.

Message edited by its author, May 20, 2009, 8:15pm.

76 -- It's a sad book. The author was on his way from being an evangelical to becoming Catholic when he seriously started to doubt. The combined exposure to the likes Benny Hinn and the Catholic hierarchy's criminal response to child abuse in the Church got to him.

His reportage on the rape of children by priest and the amoral cover-up is pretty disturbing. (Note that this isn't an anti-Catholic book. Evangelical protestants get their share of sunlight.)

Inventing American History

William Hogeland isn't a historian by training. I guess you could say he's the Malcolm Gladwell of history -- a populizer with an occasional axe to grind. He released a book about the Whiskey Rebellion that has generated a little bit of controversy over the author's methodology.

But that's not the book I'm talking about here. Inventing American History is slim little volume, three historical essays that explore the delta between how history is portrayed in popular forms -- museums, PBS-type documentaries and opinion journalism -- and the gritty facts that make historical events noteworthy in the first place.

Pretty okay over all; my favorite essay compares the hagiography of Pete Seeger and Bill Buckley -- two ideological icons who both held and espoused anti-democratic views during their careers, views that were subsequently overlooked in the popular narratives.

The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture

Okay, I sort of ended up with this one in a roundabout way.

At my last on-site freelance assignment, there is a pretty good little bookstore nearby where'd I'd peruse the shelves during my lunch break.

I was poking around in the philosophy section, looking at shelf after shelf of books whose titles I couldn't understand when I came across something called Slavoj Zizek presents Mao: On Practice and Contradiction. I'm a begrudging fan of Zizek, mainly because he can be funny and he's as pragmatic as a crazed Marxist can get, and I'd imagine he'd have an interesting take on Mao.

I pick up the volume, and I see that all Zizek did was write an introductory essay to Mao's On Practice and Contradiction. And who the hell wants to read Mao?

So I note the title of Zizek's essay "Mao Zedong: The Marxist Lord of Misrule" and decide to Google it when I get back to the office. Sure enough, it's there in it's entirety. I print up for the train ride home.

Interesting essay. Lays the foundation for an expensive future visit to Amazon. But one strange little passage sticks with me (Read it. It's long but weird):

"Mao's speculations closely echo the so-called "bio-cosmism," the strange combination of vulgar materialism and Gnostic spirituality which formed occult shadow-ideology, the obscene secret teaching, of the Soviet Marxism. Repressed out of the public sight in the central period of the Soviet state, bio-cosmism was openly propagated only in the first and in the last two decades of the Soviet rule; its main theses are: the goals of religion (collective paradise, overcoming of all suffering, full individual immortality, resurrection of the dead, victory over time and death, conquest of space far beyond the solar system) can be realized in terrestrial life through the development of modern science and technology. In the future, not only will sexual difference be abolished, with the rise of chaste post-humans reproducing themselves through direct bio-technical reproduction; it will also be possible to resurrect all the dead of the past (establishing their biological formula through their remains and then re-engendering them - at that time, DNA was not yet known...), thus even erasing all past injustices, "undoing" past suffering and destruction."

WHAT. THE. FONZI.?

COSMISM! Sound like a worthy candidate for my book buying dollars! Red zombies!

Now, it just so happens about a year ago I went through a Stalinism phase, because who hasn't, right? (Note: I was not an actual Stalinist. I was just interested in that period in Russian history, okay?) One of the books I picked up was a strange, very interesting book called New Myth, New World From Nietzsche to Stalinism, which made that case that Soviet ideology in the twenties and thirties ripped off a lot of ideas from Nietzsche, while at the same time holding him up as reactionary boogie man. (In the same order I also picked up the excellent Everyday Stalinism. If you're interested in Russian or Soviet history, this is a good 'un.)

Amazon very thoughtfully recommended The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture when I was purchasing my crazy Nietzche book (same author!), and the name stuck with me (I didn't buy it at the time because it seemed creepy and I had yet to stumble across the madness that is Cosmicism).

So I Googled The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture and did a search of the index, and yep, you got your dang Cosmicism right 'chair. So I bought it.

And it's good! It's a multi-disciplinary collection of essays by various scholars and it traces different aspects of Soviet ideology, philosophy of science, and aesthetics to different strains of pre-revolutionary Russian folk mysticism, Theosophy, masonry, Mysticism, etc.

Funny how the mind wanders, isn't it?

Message edited by its author, May 21, 2009, 11:48pm.

eeerrr... you really ought to read Foucault's Pendulum. I have a feeling you would really get a kick out of it -- in a creepy sort of way. :)

Message edited by its author, May 22, 2009, 1:31pm.

#80 -- It does sound like it's up my alley. I eat obscurity for breakfast.

Gretmillls: you probably would enjoy it. Although I have not finished Foucalt's yet so I can't fully compare, I think that the Name of the Rose maybe the better of the two.

Message edited by its author, May 24, 2009, 7:51am.

I think I'll pick it up. I tried reading it as a teenager, and it went over my head. I'm sure it'll go over my head now, but at least at this stage of my life can enjoy a little frisson from being intellectually lost.

Cultural Amnesia

Clive James is smarter than me. I learned this over a three month period, nibbling at this doorstop of erudition, a collection of 110 essays about various personalities from (mostly 20th century Western) history. It one of those books everyone should read from time to time, just to allow for some perspective: there are people you and I have never heard of whose legacies are being passionately debated by somebody somewhere in the world.

The questions haven't been answered, they have barely been formulated. That's why it's exciting to be alive. That's why a bookshelf of unread books gives me butterflies.

That's fifty titles for 2009. Now I've six months to get to 75.

#83 - I assume that you are talking about Name of the Rose. It's easier to understand if you are brought up traditional Catholic- latin and all.

Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of its Enemies

The "West" in this case being liberal democracy and Enlightenment values. The authors trace the history of anti-liberalism through Imperial Japan, Germany, Russia, Zionism and various strains of Islamism. Interesting book.

Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years by former Monty Python member Michael Palin.

Thick book, a bit too diary-like for me. (I mean, it says it in the title, right? But I've read two other diaries by other entertainers and quite liked them: With Nails by Richard E. Grant and Year with swollen appendices by Brian Eno.) Lots of details about lunch. Ho-hum.

The Waste Books

The Waste Books is a collection of aphorisms by Georg Lichtenberg, 18th C. German natural philosopher. Sometimes clever, sometimes funny, occasionally profound.

in Praise of Barbarians

Disappointed. Mike Davis wrote the excellent City of Quartz, a Marxist historical, economic, and cultural dissection of Los Angeles, particular around issues of development and landownership. It's a great book of urban sociology.

This book is a collection of inelegant essays on various topic regarding American foreign and labor policy, and his style here is very shrill and screedy. A lot of sentimentality about 20th century Progessivism and socialism that is embarrassing to read. I'm not a knee-jerk anti-Marxist or anti-socialist, but the stuff here is just so bloody polemical. I'd like to hear you ideas, Mr. Davis, but your Wobblie persona wears a little thin.

Who Hates Whom

Cheeky, informative and as breezy as you can be when talking about armed conflict.

Message edited by its author, Jun 9, 2009, 6:44pm.

Fooled by Randomness

The Black Swan is an expansion of the ideas first posited in this volume. Good.

I can't believe that you haven't read a single book for nearly a month!!!

I have, though I have to admit I've slowed down and I've been less driven to catalogue them.

I just finished Raymond Roussel and the Republic of Dreams. He was a very strange man, a loony whose texts fell into the right hands at the right time. Influenced the Surrealists, the Dadaists, Georges Perec and the Oulipo group.

Sort of a Huysmans-like character but wackier.

Here's a few more:

West of the West: West of the West: Dreamers, Believers, Builders, and Killers in the Golden State
The Cathedral and the Bazaar
See No Evil

#92 - OMG I haven't. Just been real busy with summer stuff. I have been dabbling in short stories and magazine articles. Shame on me :(

#94 -- Oh, it's summer. Watch TV, go the movies, fly a kite. Books can wait sometimes.

Tales Designed to Thrizzle: Volume 1 An anthology of Tales Designed to Thrizzle, a bull dada comic book of the first order. It made me laugh out loud in sections, though I'd hesitate to offer an unqualified recommendation. The humor is goony, idiotic, surreal and occasionally mildly scatological. Which is fine for me, because I'm a no-class bum.

The Practice of Everyday Life by Michel de Certeau a tough book sprinkled with little diamonds of genius. Certeau proposes to examine how mass culture filters down to individuals, and how individuals repurpose the representations that institutions deem to impose upon them.

Certeau is not interested in thinking and intent of the people who built the sidewalk, but how other people, the end-users, actually end up using the sidewalk.

Full of brilliant insights, if you're willing to wade through theory jargon (but as far as theory people go, de Certeau has a pretty light touch).

Message edited by its author, Aug 3, 2009, 11:25pm.

Comedy!

I Killed: True Stories of the Road from America's Top Comics
Stop Me If You've Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes
Born Standing Up