To date:
A Few Seconds of PanicPolyphemusAlan's War The Memories of G.I. Alan Cope
Burma ChroniclesWhy Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?: 23 Questions from Great PhilosophersThe Wasp FactoryThe Beautiful StruggleThe Spiritual TouristThe Politics of Chaos in the Middle EastUnderstanding ComicsCity of Glass The Graphic Novel
Cults In Our MidstRum, Sodomy & the Lash (33 1/3)
The Borscht Belt
Science, Politics and Gnosticism
Myth and Reality
Every Force Evolves a Form
Feet of Clay
The structure of scientific revolutions
Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers
Nixonland
The Truth About the Irish
The Ayatollah Begs to Differ
Moonshine
Noodling For Flatheads
Something Wonderful Right Away
catapult: harry and I build a siege weapon
The Devil We Know
Your Name Here
A Childhood: A Biography of Place
The Wisdom of Doubt
Moral Minority
Patriotism and Other Mistakes
Lipstick Traces
Imagined Communities
Marriage, a History
Boys on the Bus
Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them)
Being Good: An Introduction to Ethics
Creationists
TWELVE YEARS An American Boyhood in East Germany
Veeps
On Being Certain
The Devil's Candy
The Corpse Walker: Real Life Stories: China from the Bottom Up
Politics of the Governed
Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America-and Found Unexpected Peace
Inventing American History (Boston Review Books)
The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture
Cultural Amnesia
Occidentalism
Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years
The Waste Books
In Praise of Barbarians
Who Hates Whom
Fooled by RandomnessMessage edited by its author, Jun 16, 2009, 4:42pm.
I... liked it. The ending after the brutal build-up was a bit underwhelming. I do think Banks is a pretty wonderful stylist -- very readable, and the "religion" and lifestyle of the kid were believable. Whatever you think of the book, Banks can't be faulted for his abilities as a writer.
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 for something hideous I did the past.)
Feet of Clay is a survey and analysis of various "gurus" through history, charismatic leaders that provide a non-empirical totalist model of reality. It was quite good, well written, persuasive, humane, etc.
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.
Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers
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.
Just finished a great book:
The Ayatollah Begs to Differ. 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.
Message edited by its author, Mar 5, 2009, 12:11am.
You have such an interesting variety of books. I just love reading your reviews. :)
--BJ
>11 Thanks Billiejean!
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.
A Childhood: a Biography of PlaceI 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 HereJohn 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 poems 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 learned that I am not a fan of poems that require book marks."
Too funny! :) I do read some epics that require books marks, but they do take quite a lot of effort on my part. Still enjoying your reviews. Have a great day!
--BJ
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.
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 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.
Interesting review. I don't think that it sounds boring at all. Thanks! :)
--BJ
#22: Nah, you didn't make it sound boring. Sounds very interesting to me! Am going to see it I can find that one around here somewhere. :)
#23 & #24: Well, I'm glad I could do it some justice, if only accidentally.
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.
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 forensic-y.
Message edited by its author, Apr 20, 2009, 2:32am.
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.
That is indeed a good kind of book! :)
--BJ
CreationistsPerfectly pleasant collection of essays by E.L. Doctorow. I will forget having read this.
Message edited by its author, Apr 26, 2009, 2:39pm.
TWELVE YEARS An American Boyhood in East GermanyWritten 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 CertainA 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.Message edited by its author, May 4, 2009, 11:49pm.
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.
Message edited by its author, May 13, 2009, 1:30pm.
Thanks for your review of this book. I had never heard of it before.
--BJ
The Politics of the Governed by
Partha ChatterjeeA collection of essays dealing with how new conceptions of democracy and governmentality are emerging in the post-colonial. 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, 3:07pm.
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.
Message edited by its author, May 21, 2009, 10:34pm.
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, 11:45pm.
I have never, ever heard of this. It sounds like science fiction. I will have to read this book. Thanks for the review.
--BJ
Cultural AmnesiaClive James is smarter than me. I learned this over a three month period, nibbling at this doorstop of erudition. 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.
'Nibbling at this doorstop of erudition'...
Love it.
@44 -- You've got an interesting collection, NMRM.
Dawn to Decadence is certainly a brother to Cultural Amnesia.
Thanks! Although, sadly, a fair bit of it is wishlist... I imported my book list from Amazon a while back and don't follow the 'You don't list a book until you own it' idea. I am a bit naughty, I know, but I can't be bothered now going back through and deleting a pile of things I know I can never afford!!
Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of its EnemiesThe "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 BooksThe Waste Books is a collection of aphorisms by Georg Lichtenberg, 18th C. German natural philosopher. Sometimes clever, sometimes funny, occasionally profound.
in Praise of BarbariansDisappointed. 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 WhomCheeky, informative and as breezy as you can be when talking about armed conflict.
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