This is Your Brain on Music, by a record producer/engineer turned neuroscientist called Daniel Levetin. I'd thoroughly recommend it to anyone who likes that sort of thing.
Also started The Count of Monte Cristo, having polished off The Man in the Iron Mask quicker than I expected.
EDIT: Pun (such as it is) unintentional.
There used to be a real Dumas enthusiast around these parts, but he doesn't show up much anymore. :(
Finished: Ghost Story by Jim Butcher.
Just started: Heartless by Gail Carriger.
Working my way through Battle, in Michelle West's House Wars series. Set in the world of the Sun Sword series and continuing from that point.
Finished Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, almost done with Planning for the Planet: How Socialism Could Save the Environment by Pete Dickenson.
Vive le Galt!
Empire of the Sun by J.G. Ballard.
Empire of the Sun by J.G. Ballard.
I stumbled across Ballard in my early teens, and was just aghast at his nihilist tone; any book of his that wasn't about the end of the world was so dystopian that you could barely tell the difference.
Then I stumbled across Empire of the Sun (I'd love to tell you it was the book, but it could well have been the movie) and I was all, "So that's not fiction? Well, that explains that!"
As for my reading lately, prompted by the civilization thread's discussion of global warming and few others trying to split hairs between what's sci-fi and what's fantasy, I've been re-reading Barbara Hambly's Darwath Trilogy and its two follow up books. It's always nice to read fantasy by someone with a degree in medieval history.
Of course, Downton Abbey is back on, so reading's for suckers.
The Female Man, by Joanna Russ.
The Female Man, by Joanna Russ.
You read any of her other stuff, Sis? I've babbled about it all across the Paizo boards, and probably on this very thread at some point, but Picnic on Paradise is one of my desert island picks. It's just a terrific read.
Thanks. :)
Just finished Heartless by Gail Carriger (a comedy of manners dealing with parasols, pregnancy, vampires, werewolves, giant steampunk octomatons, and parasols).
Gonna begin Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon, the third book in the Burton & Swinburne steampunk trilogy by Mark Hodder.
Finished Red Mars. The ending was much more better than start and the middle.
Started Darkly Dreaming Dexter and probably finish it before going to sleep because it's disappointingly short.
Finished The Impending Crisis after nearly a month, but I did take a break in the middle and read two other books. I don't know what went wrong with it. The book is quality history and the prose decent, but somewhere around the halfway point it just started to feel much heavier. I know the original author died at some point in the process and one of his students finished it off. Maybe I was picking up on the work of a less talented writer. A fact was certainly that the book insistently uses the word Negro in narration. The original author was a conservative who died in '71 so I'm not sure on the sociology there, but I know it started to feel a bit like a bludgeon.
Definitely in the mood for some fiction next, but not sure what.
Damn, Dexter finished as predicted.
Anybody read Saladin Ahmed's Throne of the Crescent Moon? I really like the basic idea behind it (Hey, why can't we have some Arabian-themed fantasy too?) but the sample didn't give me much of a feel for the book when I read it a while back.
Alas, no.
I got 3 books for Christmas:
"Benteen's Scout-To-The-Left, the Route from the Divide to the Morass\June 25, 1876 (Custer Trails Series, Vol 1)"
Roger Darling
"The Mystery of E Troop: Custer's Gray Horse Company at the Little Bighorn"
Gregory Michno
"To the Edge of Darkness: A Chronicle of the 1876 Indian War"
Willert, James; Hardcover
Some might pity my poor players and say they are in for a massacre!
Anybody read Saladin Ahmed's Throne of the Crescent Moon? I really like the basic idea behind it (Hey, why can't we have some Arabian-themed fantasy too?) but the sample didn't give me much of a feel for the book when I read it a while back.
I haven't, but that sounds right up my street :)
Did TSR ever release any Al Quadim novels, I wonder?
I'm reading Head On/Repossessed by Julian Cope at the moment, which I'm not enjoying much. Perhaps it'll pick up when he starts getting into acid and Paganism...
Did TSR ever release any Al Quadim novels, I wonder?
Does an Endless Quest book count? There was one called Secret of the Djinn by Jean Rabe.
Also, non-D&D TSR book that has stayed with me all of these years: Red Sands by Paul B. Thompson and Tonya R. Carter
Anybody read Saladin Ahmed's Throne of the Crescent Moon? I really like the basic idea behind it (Hey, why can't we have some Arabian-themed fantasy too?) but the sample didn't give me much of a feel for the book when I read it a while back.
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Tore through Kage Baker's The Women of Nell Gwynne's, and am now diving into Tent Life in Siberia, which turns out to be unexpectedly hilarious in the manner of a Mark Twain travelogue. I am particularly looking forward to CHAPTER XXII: FIRST ATTEMPT AT DOG-DRIVING—UNPREMEDITATED PROFANITY...
Quarantine by Greg Egan.
I made the mistake yesterday of finishing the first section of Empire of the Sun and glancing at The Sword of Rhiannon by Leigh Brackett. I've only put it down to go to work and politroll.
No shiznit, this book rawks!!
Bought Throne of the Crescent Moon today. Opted not to listen to the prequel first just in case it has implicit spoilers, but will after I'm done. (So thanks, Kajehase. :) )
After that I think I'll dive into This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War. I had a chance to buy it on clearance when my local bookstore closed, but at the time I thought it was mostly about American religion and gave it a pass. (I've actually read a fair bit more than I care to about Christian responses to death and suffering. Kind of comes with the territory.) I've since learned it's a much broader work and so look forward to it.
But not until after the fiction. Many non-fiction works are very good but written in a very dry voice, or worse outright terribly. I found last time I alternated that it really helped, especially after a book where I kept having to reread passages two or three times to get what the author was saying. (800+ pages and he couldn't find space to give a basic explanation of the key problems he referred to constantly. Oy. Great history, but damn.)
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I made the mistake yesterday of finishing the first section of Empire of the Sun and glancing at The Sword of Rhiannon by Leigh Brackett. I've only put it down to go to work and politroll.
No shiznit, this book rawks!!
But does it have Stevie Nicks in a floaty dress?
Maybe it doesn't need it.
Got fed up with Julian Cope's autobiography - reading about other people's LSD experiences isn't really all that interesting, which will come as a revelation to no-one. Swopped it for a History of the USA by Hugh Brogan - shaping up to be pretty good...
I made the mistake yesterday of finishing the first section of Empire of the Sun and glancing at The Sword of Rhiannon by Leigh Brackett. I've only put it down to go to work and politroll.
No shiznit, this book rawks!!
But does it have Stevie Nicks in a floaty dress?
Maybe it doesn't need it.
Got fed up with Julian Cope's autobiography - reading about other people's LSD experiences isn't really all that interesting, which will come as a revelation to no-one. Swopped it for a History of the USA by Hugh Brogan - shaping up to be pretty good...
I don't even like reading about my own LSD experiences; those journal entries make no sense whatsoever at this late date, and I can't remember why it was that important to write them down to begin with.
I finally got Icefalcon's Quest in the mail, so that's what I'm currently reading. It cost me $1 with free shipping, don't tell me Kindle is cheaper than a hardcopy. :P
I've been ninja'ed on the Fleetwood Mac, but I do still want to read Cope's book on Krautrock. Also, if I could only score some acid...
Samnell, have you ever read Uncle Tom's Cabin? You probably wouldn't like it, but it always makes me cry.
Anyone posts the Warrant song and I'll come through the internet and throttle you.
I've been ninja'ed on the Fleetwood Mac, but I do still want to read Cope's book on Krautrock. Also, if I could only score some acid...
Samnell, have you ever read Uncle Tom's Cabin? You probably wouldn't like it, but it always makes me cry.
Anyone posts the Warrant song and I'll come through the internet and throttle you.
I've been glad to avoid it, actually. Everything I've read about it focuses on how desperately sentimental it is and Victorian era sentimentality is my least favorite style of writing. I suppose I'll gut it out someday, but I'm in no rush. I suspect I'll get nothing from it that I couldn't get from Douglass' memoirs, which are on my list.
You know, I've been wondering about this comment for three months.
Still got a few chapters to go in The Hounds of Skaith and, for some reason, I enjoyed this one more.
Have you figured out why you enjoyed this one more? (Or can anyone else guess?)
I ask because I read The Secret of Sinharat, People of the Talisman, and The Ginger Star. By the time I finished that last one, I got bored of it, and never continued from there. And yesterday, D.A. described the Skaith books as "awesome".
I've been glad to avoid it, actually. Everything I've read about it focuses on how desperately sentimental it is and Victorian era sentimentality is my least favorite style of writing. I suppose I'll gut it out someday, but I'm in no rush. I suspect I'll get nothing from it that I couldn't get from Douglass' memoirs, which are on my list.
Yeah, like I said, knowing what I do about your tastes, I doubt you'd like it.
Still, it is, probably, the most successful piece of propaganda that has ever been written. At least in the Top 5.
If you are interested in a perspective that might change your mind, there's a chapter on it in Edmund Wilson's Patriotic Gore, which is an invaluable study of the literature around slavery and the Civil War, and an essay about it in McPherson's Drawn with the Sword. They're both fans.
But it is desperately sentimental. What's the Oscar Wilde quote about Dickens? "It's impossible to read the death of Little Nell without laughing"? Hee hee!
But, yeah, a toss-up between Douglass and Stowe, I'd go with the former.
You know, I've been wondering about this comment for three months.
Still got a few chapters to go in The Hounds of Skaith and, for some reason, I enjoyed this one more.Have you figured out why you enjoyed this one more? (Or can anyone else guess?)
I ask because I read The Secret of Sinharat, People of the Talisman, and The Ginger Star. By the time I finished that last one, I got bored of it, and never continued from there. And yesterday, D.A. described the Skaith books as "awesome".
Well, I am reluctant to say anything more about these books because I keep finding that everything I say about them has already been said either on the Paizo product pages or the introduction to Hounds that I received for Xmas and I don't want to seem unoriginal.
But when I first started The Ginger Star I compared it unfavorably to ERB and Jack Vance, two writers whom I had first read since I've been posting on this website so they were fresh in my mind. About halfway through, I realized that she was a much better storyteller than the former and, although not as accomplished a stylist as the latter, really, who (at least in the field of fantasy/sci-fi) is?
By the time I finished the series, I had completely reversed my initial appraisal of the books and would now rank them as highly as, say, Moorcock's Hawkmoon books.
I haven't read either Sinharat or Talisman so I can't say, but I found that the three Skaith books themselves start at about middling to above average and just keep getting better as the books go along. I would recommend giving them another go. Even if there is a credible argument to be made that the Lords Protector are some kind of stand-in for Marxist dictators. (F. Paul Wilson, sleep lightly! The Anklebiter Stinking Buzzard Suicide Squad is watching you! Vive le Galt!)
Also, I am 2/3rds or so through The Sword of Rhiannon and I am finding that to be quite awesome as well. Might even be enjoying it more than Skaith because of the amoral, Sancho Panza-esque, comic relief sidekick, Boghaz.
--EDIT: Maybe that's not really an answer to your question, Aaron. If not, try this: starting around where Stark
If you are interested in a perspective that might change your mind, there's a chapter on it in Edmund Wilson's Patriotic Gore, which is an invaluable study of the literature around slavery and the Civil War, and an essay about it in McPherson's Drawn with the Sword. They're both fans.
Sure, add to my list. Dammit. :)
Right now I think it's going to be:
This Republic of Suffering
Fiction TBD
Fateful Lightning by Allen C. Guelzo
Fiction TBD
Slavery by Another Name by Douglas A. Blackmon
Fiction TBD
The Road to Disunion: Secessionists Triumphant by William W. Freehling
Fiction TBD
Survey of slavery TBD (Not sure if I want Eugene Genovese, David Brion Davis, or Isiah Berlin. Pretty sure I want something more recent than Stampp.)
Fiction TBD
American Slavery, American Freedom by Edmund S. Morgan
Fiction TBD
American Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas by Sally E. Hadden
I'm going to need a cup for the last one Freehling writes good history, but does not write it well. I thought it was just me, but I mentioned losing the plot on a historian's blog and he came back that he had similar problems. Hopefully in the twenty years between volumes he got a better style editor or cleaned up his craft a bit. But he's also an old dude and Road to Disunion is the project of decades.
Primary source documents or monographs shorter than about 200 pages don't count, though. I read those as the fancy strikes or they become relevant to the blog. And I need to work David Blight's book on historical memory (Race and Reunion) in there too. At some point I really want to read Joseph Glatthaar's two books of statistical analysis of the Army of Northern Virginia too.
Incidentally, I really need to figure out what it is with American historical figures and academics using their middle initial all the time. So far as I can tell, the rest of the anglophone world of letters doesn't give a crap about a middle name unless it's being used as a given name but almost every American 19th century figure that has a middle name is known in part by it. Lincoln had none, but it's William H. Seward, William T. Sherman, Robert E. Lee, Hiram Ulysses Grant (He changed it because of the initials.) Margaret MacMillan's great, if a bit disjointed, history of the Paris peace conferences, is Paris, 1919 in the US and The Peacemakers elsewhere. On CSPAN she told one of those charmless interviewers that nobody but the Americans cared about middle names, which I guess she included in the original and then stripped out for the international version at her editor's suggestion.
"The mold that cast the mind of C. Wright Mills was not broken at his flesh's departure. Another such mind was promptly cast and labeled G. William Domhoff (those first initials and middle names are reminiscent of a generation of three-named Episcopalian clergymen)."
--Eugene Luther Gore Vidal, "Homage to Daniel Shays"
Which is amusing because I have tried to read and given up on both Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau in the past couple of months.
Which is amusing because I have tried to read and given up on both Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau in the past couple of months.
I once liked Emerson a fair bit, but Thoreau is always lost on me. He comes across as a prissy suburbanite that fancied himself a gentleman of leisure to everyone else's lives of quiet desperation. Shame how the rest of them didn't get born well and have sugar daddies.
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Yeah, exactly what I thought was going to happen: the same as with Emerson.
I read half of the first chapter of Walden, put it down, listened to three lectures on tape, finished the first chapter and put it down again.
Interestingly, that "American dream" as arrested adolescence theme came up again.
---
Also, just finished The Sword of Rhiannon.
On it's own, I liked it just as much as any of the Skaith books, but there's only one! No sequel, no follow-up! Which is terrible, because the Lady Ywain gave me a boner twice.
Just started James P. Blaylock's new Langdon St. Ives novel, The Aylesford Skull. I'm also reading select stories from Manly Wade Wellman's The Complete John Thunstone.
Finished Empire of the Sun. It was pretty sad and nihilistic, but compared to other child-adrift-in-WWII books that I've read (The Painted Bird, anyone?) it was a breeze. Two thumbs up.
Not sure if I'm going to go back to Allen Ginsberg or The Bible or more communist propaganda...I think I'll go roll on Tensor's list again, too.
Alistair Horne - The Fall of Paris. It's every bit as nice and gossipy as I remembered.
Alistair Horne - The Fall of Paris.
Vive le Galt!
I started the Books of Samuel. I didn't get very far into it before I got very confused by the golden emerods and mice. WTF?!? I called up my friend who was raised hardcore Christian and has since gotten into Eric van Daniken. Big mistake...
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I started the Books of Samuel. I didn't get very far into it before I got very confused by the golden emerods and mice. WTF?!? I called up my friend who was raised hardcore Christian and has since gotten into Eric van Daniken. Big mistake...
I was just thinking last night about the connections between the alien astronauts invented stuff school of pseudohistory (so von Daniken, but also Graham Hancock, et al) and the anti-stratfordians. Both are a kind of snobbery. The case against Shakespeare authoring his plays is essentially that he was a bumpkin with not a lot of formal education. Von Daniken and company proceed from the assumption that a bunch of dirty primitives could never make such impressive monumental architecture.
I'll be the first in line to call the dead ignorant, as someone will call us down the line. We have the privilege of being born later. But being ignorant is not the same as being stupid and while their educated classes might have believed many things we know to be false, and were certainly smaller than our educated classes, the dead were no more inclined to idiocy than we are. It would take a lot of time to get them up to speed, but if you gave the ancients the same knowledge and tools we have, there's no reason to think they would prove any less capable than we do.
Of course there's also no reason to think they'd prove any more capable than we do, a fact generally missed by a different sort of snob.
Yeah, I've never gotten into that stuff. But, man oh man does my friend love that shiznit.
Either way, I think it was the "rod" in "emerod" that sent him down that line of thinking. It turns out that "emerods" are like pustules or boils or something. (EDIT: Actually, I guess they're ye olde English for hemorrhoids.) Makes you wonder exactly how the Philistines made them out of gold... (EDIT: Doubly so.)
'Golden vein' (gildeneh ooder) is a Yiddish term for haemmorhoids, too... Wonders never cease, eh?
A History of the USA is just getting up to the Revolution. What with that and The Wonder That Was India, my reading's been a bit massacre-heavy so far this year. Time for a rest - a couple of weeks of P.G. Wodehouse ought to do it.
I just had a thought: maybe aliens wrote Shakespeare.
'Golden vein'
The Musical Interlude