Welcome - you've got a great list here.
FYI (from personal experience): you might want to split your list into multiple posts before you get too many comments in between. I wish I had split mine into more sections earlier on :)
10/94
700 Arts and Recreation
709 Historical, areas, persons treatment
Off the Wall: Robert Rauschenberg and the Art World of Our Time - Calvin Tomkins
741 Drawing & drawings
Amphigorey Also - Edward Gorey
759 Historical, areas, persons treatment
Egon Schiele Drawings and Watercolors - Jane Kallir
760 Graphic arts; Printmaking & prints
The Artful Dodger: Images and Reflections - Nick Bantock
770 Photography & photographs
Carny: Americana on the Midway - Virginia Lee Hunter
779 Photographs
The Bone House Joel-Peter Witkin
782 Vocal music
The Rose & the Briar: Death, Love and Liberty in the American Ballad - Sean Wilentz
791 Public performances
If Chins Could Kill - Bruce Campbell
796 Athletic & outdoor sports & games
The Tracker - Tom Brown
799 Fishing, hunting, shooting
The Man Eaters of Tsavo J. H. Patterson
The Rose & the Briar was really painful reading. Not recommended.
Message edited by its author, Oct 15, 2009, 12:16am.
7/89
900 History, Geography and Biography
904 Collected accounts of events
Great Ship Disasters - Kit Bonner
910 Geography & travel
A Night to Remember - Sir Walter Lord
921 No longer used -- Formerly biographies of Philosophy
Ernie Pyle's War - James Tobin
922 No longer used -- Formerly biographies of Religion
923 No longer used -- Formerly biographies of Sociology
924 No longer used -- Formerly biographies of Philology
925 No longer used -- Formerly biographies of Science
926 No longer used -- Formerly biographies of Useful Arts
927 No longer used -- Formerly biographies of Fine Arts
928 No longer used -- Formerly biographies of Literature
949 History of Europe; Other parts of Europe
Anne Frank: the diary of a young girl - Anne Frank
973 History of North America; USA
Aaron Burr: Conspiracy to Treason - Buckner F. Melton Jr.
975 History of North America; Southeastern USA
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil - John Berendt
979 History of North America; Great Basin & Pacific Slope
Mysterious California - Mike Marinacci
Message edited by its author, Oct 23, 2009, 10:19pm.
4>
070 is the journalism section, so it's not that odd of a place -- it's certainly a fairly clear consensus among copies on LT.
Oh, and welcome!
Thank you :)
I had been under the impression that it was more of a slightly fictionalized memoir than journalism, but I guess these things aren't so clear cut.
15>
But it's a memoir
of a journalist, and memoirs and biographies are often classified based on what their subject is known for, rather than in a biography section (so, for instance,
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman is in the 530s, for physics.)
16> well that explains how I managed to kill the 'applied physics' section of my challenge with a biography.
I've finished
Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 (363)which was very interesting and pretty easy to read, though at first the narrative style made me a bit weary. It makes me suspicious when non-fiction books unfold with the narrative detail of fiction. 'How could the author possibly know what so-and-so was thinking as he walked the streets of Boston at 3am?' I wonder. It makes my suspect the author is filling in gaps with his own imagination. But then I got to the part where they mention the tens of thousands of pages of text the trial generated with over 100 witnesses...and then the level of detail makes sense.
I also added
All Creatures Great and Small (636) which I had forgotten about.
I finished
Demon-Haunted World which seemed overly fatty relative to the complexity of content. There was definitely some interesting reading, and the thesis was strong and well supported, but he went off track a bit on some contemporary issues, and I really didn't need to hear so much about aliens.
I also added
The World Beard and Moustache Championships (391)which is a fun little book that was given to me by a friend after we attended the World Beard and Moustache Championships. Both the book and the event are delightful, but it is most fun in person.
Message edited by its author, Jun 15, 2009, 12:31am.
I added two I just remembered:
The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2003 (810) and
Mysterious California (979).
Mysterious California feels kinda dated, and I'm pretty sure some of the information isn't accurate, but it is an interesting read. It collects accounts of interesting and places and surrounding events of California's past. I was particularly entertained by the chapters about Joaquin Murietta and the Salton Sink. Other chapters mentions things like the ghost town of a real estate scam and what may have be the home of Napoleon's exiled widow.
Overall it's a good read and not too sensational, I feel pretty confident that what inaccuracies exist are a result of its age and not an attempt to create "mystery" or sensation.
The other is a collection of short writing assembled by Dave Eggers of McSweeney's. there's a definite attempt to keep the writing diverse which keeps things fresh if a little uneven.
Message edited by its author, Jun 24, 2009, 8:01pm.
I've finished a bunch of books in the past couple of weeks.
171
Ethics: the Road to Inner Freedom This is the first philosophy book I've ever read (though I have read manifestos and such before) and as far as old school philosophy goes it was very understandable, though overly verbose. I was impressed with Spinoza's intensive analysis of human emotion but not so much by his pantheistic ramblings.
200
God is Not Great I listened to this one on disc, (which I've decided isn't cheating). It has a lot of interesting and diverse stories both historical and contemporary. I found it more engaging than
Demon-Haunted World and occasionally funny.
760
The Artful Dodger This is far from comprehensive survey of Nick Bantock's art career, particularly his books. A lot of the images are stunning, sometimes printed full bleed and his stories very honestly represent the fears, insecurities and victories of a developing artist.
394
Gentlemen's Blood This is a light, almost overly so, history of dueling from it's roots in early tribal justice til its final death knell around World War I. It turns out once a generation of young men have thrown themselves in the trenches they don't have anything else to prove. There are a lot of details and interesting stories but I would have liked more context establishing the sort of cultural and historical elements that drive dueling. As it is the sense the honor that drove dueling is still hard for me to understand.
759
Egon Schiele: Drawings and Watercolors An extensive and absolutely beautiful survey of Schiele's drawings and watercolor. I had a lot of fun browsing his erotic pictures. The text is fittingly brief, as it should be in an art book, but provides a decent amount of insight into the artist, his method and his art. My only complaint is that on the occasion images were printed as two page spreads the crease ate a lot of the image.
Message edited by its author, Jul 20, 2009, 8:38pm.
779 -
The Bone House is a well executed photography book by the artist Joel-Peter Witkin. Witkin's photos mesh classical compositions and framing in his elaborate and macabre still lifes. Witkin frequently uses cadavers and body parts borrowed from the police and morgue to create his very disturbing, but oddly graceful images.
591 -
Swift as a Shadow:Extinct and Endangered Animals is part science book part art book. It is the result of photographer Rosamond Purcell's invitation to photograph the extensive taxidermy collection of a Scandinavian natural history museum. Purcell chose to only include extinct and endangered animals in the book which makes the fact that her images are of stuffed animals rather than living creatures more significant. Especially for creatures extinct so long and preserved so awkwardly that it is clear the it's only remaining likeness is a poor representation of the original creature.
Each photo is accompanied by a brief description of the animal, where it lived and how its existence was cut short or is at risk. There a lot of interesting details, like the Laughing Owl's fatal affinity for accordion music and the Bush Wren's extinction being single-handedly orchestrated by a cat named Tibbles.
Message edited by its author, Aug 6, 2009, 7:12pm.
I like how you've annotated these as you've gone along - nice job!
Also, sounds like Dark Tide: the great Boston Molassas Flood was somewhat slow going at times. Perhaps appropriate for that sticky stuff ;-) Quirky book, nonetheless.
It's wasn't slow for me, I just get suspicious when non fiction books have an overly narrative voice. I start thinking that the author is filling in holes for the sake of a good story rather than giving me the facts. The bit about the trial alleviated my suspicions, but it would have been nice if I had known about the richness of the source material earlier.
I'm definitely glad I read it, it was every bit as bizarre and terrifying as I had hoped.
Message edited by its author, Aug 26, 2009, 6:06pm.
Yeah, I hear you about the sources - I always wonder about the book if they're not there in some form or other - in at least an abbreviated form.
Story of Chicago May was kinda like that, where the author did inject imagination about scenes or thoughts or motivations etc, but was honest and upfront that she was doing so throughout in her analyses.
That would drive me nuts. I'm so twitchy about history I've pretty much given up on historical fiction--I was more interested in the footnotes than the plot.
I can be 'twitchy' too, I guess. The Chicago May book was interesting because the author used the biography to conduct analysis from a feminine perspective - which different from most of the biographies I've read. Most have the attitude that the author is primarily an objective observer without bias, voice, or selectivity (within the stated scope). But at some level, it's impossible to be completely objective, even about historical matters or biography.
I guess it lends itself to the question of which is more honest: statement of perspective/bias upfront, or pretending to be objective.
ETA: P.S. while I came to appreciate the different perspective and voice, I don't know that I'll read other books by Nuala O'Faolain
Message edited by its author, Aug 27, 2009, 3:08pm.
I only finished one this month,
Unpopluar Essays (192) by Bertrand Russell. I found it quite enjoyable. Bertrand didn't hide his distain for some philosophers' (Hegel's) tendency to hide the actual content of their theories in writing so complex that no one could figure out what they were actually saying. Bertrand is straight forward. He wants you to understand him, he wants particularly stupid 10-year-olds to understand him.
As far as the content goes it is split fairly evenly between what Bertrand thinks of philosophy, other philosophers and their impact on the world and his own ruminations. He has a cheeky sense of humor and it often shows up without warning as he's pointing out the errors and shortcomingd of past thinkers and persistent but flawed views. He insists twice that Aristotle could have easily dropped his assertion that men had more teeth than women if he would have just asked Mrs. Aristotle to open her mouth rather than clinging to his own baseless beliefs.
I'd recommend this to anyone interested in modern philosophy and I plan to read more of his books in the future.
817
Letters From the Earth - This collection was published long after Twain's death and includes a fair amount of acerbic prose directed at Christianity. Much of it is laugh out loud funny, or at least snort worthy. I loved that Twain wrote an entire essay dedicated to why Fenimore Cooper (the author of Last of the Mohicans) was a bad writer and how Twain thought he could improve Coopers excessively pedantic prose. There's also a delightful piece outlining the proper way to rescue people from burning buildings and answering questions like whether or not it is appropriate to propose marriage to a woman as you carry her out of a burning building (it isn't). Some of the pieces are bit lacking, however these are invariably bits of writing that Twain did not finish before he died and are included for the most diehard Twain fans.
069
Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder - This turned out to be better than I expected. Quite good actually. It attempts to share a taste of the Museum of Jurassic Technology with the reader. I've been to the Museum (located in Los Angeles) which is not like any other museum I've been to. The book does a good job reproducing the seamless blending a fact with fantasy that happens in the museum even as the author retells his attempt to sort the truth from the fiction in the museum's exhibits and history. I can't imagine a more perfect approach to a book about a contemporary wunderkammen.
098
Reforging Shakespeare : the Story of a Theatrical Scandal Apparently back in the 18th century everyone was convinced the only plays worth anything at all had already been written. They judged works based on their authors and era of creation rather than the actual play. They only liked Shakespeare and Classical plays. So a 19 year old boy forged Shakespeare. He wrote all manner of documents and a new play stuffed with Shakespearean motifs. With his artistic skills he managed to convince almost everyone of their authenticity...for a time.
The story here is interesting. No question. Unfortunately The writing is pretty blah. If someone else had written about the forgery I would have ditched this one and taken my chances on the other.
425 -
Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog I found this one a fun read. Its a whimsical look at the history and impact of sentence diagramming. The author has fond memories of diagramming and loves the challenge and art of creating a sentence diagram. But as much as this is a labor of love it is not one sided, she concludes early that sentence diagramming is essentially useless in teaching grammar since you can diagram a bad sentence as well as a good one and consequently one must already know grammar
before one can diagram a sentence.
The author talks about the impact diagramming did or didn't have on famous writers and provides lovingly crafted diagrams of their sentences. Ultimately she says that diagramming has absolutely no effect on a person's ability to write well. Of the writers she mentions only Gertrude Stein devotes any breath to her love of diagramming. Keep in mind Stein doesn't believe in commas or question marks.
Message edited by its author, Oct 24, 2009, 5:59pm.
I'm going to have to check out the Twain book--the Fenimore Cooper essay sounds hilarious.
The Cooper essay was one of my favorites. Apparently his writing bothered Twain enough that he wrote two essays about how terrible his writing was. I'm going to have to track down the other one myself one of these days.
13> I am excited to see these classifications- I've never seen what they used to be used for...I now understand why
Cheaper by the Dozen is a 926; efficiency is a very useful art :-)
33> Some of the no longer used sections are pretty vague, as far as I can tell the 921 I read has nothing to do with philosophy. But I like to see what they used to be too.
320 - I picked up
American Government (Cliffs Quick Review) as a refresher. I thought I'd forgotten enough from high school too make diving into a more involved government book foolhardy (especially with stuff by Thomas Paine and John Locke on my list). In the end It doesn't seem like I needed something so basic.
This covers the exact stuff my old textbook did (it was published in 1997) and though it covers a wide range the extreme brevity of it's coverage means some of the explanations are misleading and a few were down right wrong. It did give me a few good ideas about what else I'd be interested in reading in the 320's and there were a few neat nugats. I hadn't known Jews and Catholics weren't allowed to vote until the mid 1800's.
355 -
The Men Who Stare At Goats This was a page turner, though I do think it should be read with a giant grain of salt, primarily because the book is almost entirely based on interviews with crazy people with little or no substantiating content or critical evaluation. Certainly a lot of this stuff probably happened, but none of the interviewees had anything even approaching an objective viewpoint.
It's interesting, entertaining, humorous and kinda depressing. Definitely apply occam's razor while reading since the author is essentially documenting crazy people that work for the government, he isn't investigating their claims.
198 - Well I can now say that Kierkegaard deserves his reputation. The guy is hard to read. I might try him again in the future, but it will be a while and it definitely won't be his religious stuff.
Fear and Trembling had its moments. Some of them are really good. It deals with the question of whether or not God's command that Abraham kill Isaac was immoral (as it would be under every moral tenant known to man) or moral by virtue of being God's will. Kierkegaard clearly understands the problem. He understands it so well his presentation of why Abraham's actions are reprehensible are air tight. The problem is then he tries to argue against them and sincere as he is, the arguments in defense of Abraham are very hallow and sometimes just irrelevant. And I tend to get bored when philosophers argue points a clear-headed five year old could overturn. I'm not a fan of the "make something up and try to make reality fit it" brand of philosophy.
On the flip side he did have some really good thoughts in the book. His analysis of faith was impeccable, and one I hadn't heard before and some of his tangents were brilliant, just not the main push of the book.
Of those three, Fear and Trembling seems the most worthwhile - thanks for the posting!
Good luck with it if you decide to read it. It's slim but decidedly dense.
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