Books!

[Opa Opa]

I'm about finished with The Boats of the "Glen Carrig", another Hodgson novel.
Has anyone read Jack London's The Iron Heel? It seems kind of interesting but I've never seen it mentioned anywhere.

[Ack]

I'm about finished with The Boats of the "Glen Carrig", another Hodgson novel.
Has anyone read Jack London's The Iron Heel? It seems kind of interesting but I've never seen it mentioned anywhere.

I have not, though as previously mentioned, I am a fan of The Boats of the "Glen Carrig"!

[Ack]

I just finished Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956, by Anne Applebaum. Applebaum is obviously a strident anti-Soviet, and she lays out the final years of Stalin and the rise of Communism as it pertains to East Germany, Poland, and Hungary, though with occasional references to parallel events in Romania, Czechoslovakia, and even Yugoslavia through Tito's break with Stalin.

The book is broken into two periods: the post-WW2 rise of Soviet influence and communist party powers in the previously mentioned nations, and then the high Stalinist era that lasted from around 1949 until Stalin's death a few years later. Each chapter focuses on events in all three countries: the formation of secret police and prisons and the repurposing of Nazi concentration camps or the building of new facilities, the ethnic cleansing and forced deportation of millions of peoples within the region, the destruction of apolitical organizations, the forced absorption of potential rival left wing organizations and the destruction of opposition groups, the utilization of radio and journalism for propaganda purposes, the hijacking of art and music to promote Soviet Realism only, the reorganization of the university systems to support only Communist thought, etc.

But despite all of the propaganda meant to turn Eastern Europeans into the ideal "Soviet man", the people still find ways to rebel and limit the influence of Communism in their lives. And then Stalin dies, and the countries attempt to liberalize from the rigid Soviet system and confront the problems which are inherent with the system, until the Soviets again reassert dominance through invasion and execution.

[Jagosaurus]

I'm reading The Dresden Files (series) by Jim Butcher & am impressed so far.

Main character is wizard working as a Private Investigator. He gets pulled in by Chicago PD as a "psychic consultant" to work cases that possibly involve the occult.

If you like crime mysteries along with wizards, vampires, werewolves, black mages, etc... check it out. Book 1 is titled Storm Front.

[Pulsar_t]

Currently re-reading through the last book of the Valis trilogy. The books are still as enjoyable when I first read them.

[Stark]

I'm reading The Dresden Files (series) by Jim Butcher & am impressed so far.

Main character is wizard working as a Private Investigator. He gets pulled in by Chicago PD as a "psychic consultant" to work cases that possibly involve the occult.

If you like crime mysteries along with wizards, vampires, werewolves, black mages, etc... check it out. Book 1 is titled Storm Front.

Dresden Files is such a fun series. I think he's up to like 13 books or so.

[Pulsar_t]

You could argue all day that winners get to write history, but the -isms of the 20th century were pretty much evil in every sense of the word, the suffering inflicted and the sacrifices made to defeat them should never be forgotten. Since I usually read before going to bed this stuff has given me nightmares.

[catnip]

Just finished James Joyce's Dubliners last night. Some of the verbiage he used was amazing. Some of the stories were much easier to follow than others, but overall, I had a good time reading it.

[J T]

I just started reading Who Owns The Future recently. Though Jaron Lanier is best known for being one of the pioneers of virtual reality (and the man who coined that term), in this book he talks about the expected future effects of technology on the economy. It's a very enlightening book, which discusses how we are becoming more and more of an information economy, and that if we don't rethink how we value information and distribute pay, that we could enter a very dire economic future where class divides get even wider as the companies that control the information gathering servers gain control of all the money and automate the jobs, while content generators and the people behind the information don't see the financial return on their creativity and value.

I suppose my explanation of this might sound a bit boring, but he does a better job of explaining this than I do and it's really thought provoking to read. It is not a science fiction book, but it has predictions about the future of technology and business that feel science fiction-like, though these events may come to pass in the next few decades.

[prfsnl_gmr]

I recently finished a 500+ page collection of Guy de Maupassant's short stories. Some were better than others, but he was truly a master of the form. If you can get your hands on a large collection of them for a good price, I highly recommend them. (The overwhelming majority of his stories are not horror, but I hihly recommend stories such as The Horla and Diary of a Madman to horror fans.)

I am currently reading A Man Called Spade and Other Stories by Dashiell Hammet. It is a collection of short stories featuring Sam Spade, who was wonderfully portrayed y Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon. It is very pulpy - and Dashiell Hammet's writing really does not compare to Guy de Maupassant - but I am enjoying it for wha it is.