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Almost finished with the Napoleon book. I just preordered this for when I'm done

I'm more interested about the life of Charles V than I am of Cortes and the other conquistadors the book goes into. It'll still be interesting to learn about the period right before Pax Hispanica though.

Long shot, but...

I've seen these in book stores and online before, but the publisher escapes me completely.. I had a feeling is was Harper Perennial, but I can't find them on their site.

It's a collection of banned books - paper backs, black base colour, gold lettering down the spine. Can't even give you any titles, didn't have a chance to give it a proper look. Sold individually.

Any ideas?

Sounds like a good read.

Bought Homer's The Odyssey and The Iliad. Also bought The old man and the sea.
I wanted to buy some literature, but I'm a sucker for greek mythology and stories.

Finished the old man and the sea yesterday.
It was just the right amount of pages for a one session read. Brilliantly written, for such a short story he really made every word count. I love how, to break the loneliness later on, the old man more or less splits up into 2 characters, his clear minded thoughts and his more deed driven voice talking and arguing.

Which one shall i read next, The Odyssey or The Iliad?
I guess the Iliad would make more sense, as it follows Achilles before and during Troy and the odyssey follows Oddyeus after Troy.

Spark wrote:

Out of interest I had a look at the US inflation numbers, just because everything that seems to be going on must surely be starting to push it...

CPI-U, US City Average, All Items:

NSA
+0.1% in Jul 2011 Historical Data

SA
+0.5% in Jul 2011 Historical Data

NSA
+3.6% since Jul 2010

If 3.6% was the figure here then the RBA would start to be getting very jumpy - it looks a bit high. Is it a bit high for the US? Stagflation could be kind of painful.

Wow how the fuck did this post end up here? Fuck I'm a moron.

Kampframmer wrote:

Finished the old man and the sea yesterday.

Just started that myself. I had ask what Hemingway book is the best to start with, and the concensus by a long margin was The Old Man and the Sea.

AussieReaper wrote:

Kampframmer wrote:

Finished the old man and the sea yesterday.

Just started that myself. I had ask what Hemingway book is the best to start with, and the concensus by a long margin was The Old Man and the Sea.

Thats because is such an easy read.
So short and well written, 99 pages without a dull moment.

13urnzz "reading it electronically"

I ordered this today among a few others

My second DFW book and his first novel. It's a bit less than half the size of Infinite Jest so it won't be a job like that book was.

I was also going to try Orientalism by Said but backed off and decided to try something a little lighter and easier though in the same vein so I picked up "Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes". Plus it's less of a diversion from my typical history regiment.

We in the west share a common narrative of world history. But our story largely omits a whole civilization whose citizens shared an entirely different narrative for a thousand years.

In Destiny Disrupted, Tamim Ansary tells the rich story of world history as the Islamic world saw it, from the time of Mohammed to the fall of the Ottoman Empire and beyond. He clarifies why our civilizations grew up oblivious to each other, what happened when they intersected, and how the Islamic world was affected by its slow recognition that Europe—a place it long perceived as primitive and disorganized—had somehow hijacked destiny.

If I like it I'm going to peel off from European history for a while and dig more into Middle Eastern. We'll see how it goes.

In b4 "Your thoughts, insights, and musings on this matter intrigue me"

Last edited by Macbeth (2011-11-20 18:07:07)

Macbeth wrote:

I ordered this today among a few others

Sweet cover.

Macbeth wrote:

I was also going to try Orientalism by Said

'tis on my to-read list.. Too much work to do nowadays to read anything though.. *sigh*

Broom of the system is no infinite jest.

I am a bit over 50 pages in and it hasn't trapped me yet. IJ trapped me in the first section/date/year of the book.

I feel a bit letdown.

I don't want to read the Pale King since it's unfinished. From what I have read of DFW, IJ and Broom, I understand that a lot of his stuff is about the 'journey' rather than the story itself. Despite that I won't be able to get into PK if I know that much of it isn't going anywhere or be explained/resolved. After I finish my other reading I'm going to pick up Conversation with Hideous men. I have a big to read pile right now so that could take awhile...

IJ is in there for size reference

I knew Gravity's Rainbow was going to be a big one and I was planning on getting through Parallel Lives after exams next week. I bought God's war and thirty years war after seeing them in Harvard press's European history section and ordered it through BnN without looking at the page count. I try to do at least 75 pages a day (which isn't much I know) and usually have a cut off at 500ish depending on the subject. I've done books larger than them obviously but just seeing so many big ones stacked like that is a bit intimidating. I guess I will be able to claim to be an expert on 17th century Germany and the Crusdes afterward.

Why am I the only posting one still posting in this thread? I feel like I'm writing soliloquies.