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Grand unified books thread

Started by Syt, March 16, 2009, 01:52:42 AM

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garbon

Just purchased The Ethical Slut and Alison Weir's new bio of Anne Boleyn.
"I've never been quite sure what the point of a eunuch is, if truth be told. It seems to me they're only men with the useful bits cut off."

I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.

MadImmortalMan

Now even the Federated Suns are tainted.  :lol:
"Stability is destabilizing." --Hyman Minsky

"Complacency can be a self-denying prophecy."
"We have nothing to fear but lack of fear itself." --Larry Summers

crazy canuck

Quote from: Agelastus on February 17, 2010, 08:30:48 AM
Quote from: FunkMonk on February 16, 2010, 06:34:21 PM
Goldsworthy's Caesar: Life of a Colossus. Just started it a few days ago, but great so far. I should have been born two thousand years ago. :patton:

Good book. Good historian.

I'm expecting his latest work, on the fall of the Roman Empire, any day now.

I just picked that up.  :)

I am just finishing Hollands' Millenium.  I really like the period he covers but I was disappointed in his writing this time.  I am a huge fan of Rubicon and Persian Fire but this book doesnt have the same kind of gripping genius the other books had.

jimmy olsen

Quote from: MadImmortalMan on March 09, 2010, 07:45:00 PM
Now even the Federated Suns are tainted.  :lol:
When did I reference them? :unsure:
It is far better for the truth to tear my flesh to pieces, then for my soul to wander through darkness in eternal damnation.

Jet: So what kind of woman is she? What's Julia like?
Faye: Ordinary. The kind of beautiful, dangerous ordinary that you just can't leave alone.
Jet: I see.
Faye: Like an angel from the underworld. Or a devil from Paradise.
--------------------------------------------
1 Karma Chameleon point

Sheilbh

Got the Everyman Library (:mmm:) Flashman collection (Flashman, Flash for Freedom! and Flashman in the Great Game).  I recently finished the first one and am half-way through the second.  Very funny.  I know grumbler's been a Flashman proselytiser for a while but I should have listened earlier.
Let's bomb Russia!

Agelastus

Quote from: crazy canuck on March 09, 2010, 10:01:23 PM
I just picked that up.  :)

I am just finishing Hollands' Millenium.  I really like the period he covers but I was disappointed in his writing this time.  I am a huge fan of Rubicon and Persian Fire but this book doesnt have the same kind of gripping genius the other books had.

Millennium as a subject didn't grab my attention for some reason, so I didn't pick it up although I have in my collection both Rubicon and Persian Fire. It appears that this was a wise choice from your comments.
"Come grow old with me
The Best is yet to be
The last of life for which the first was made."

Barrister

Quote from: Sheilbh on March 20, 2010, 12:26:05 PM
Got the Everyman Library (:mmm:) Flashman collection (Flashman, Flash for Freedom! and Flashman in the Great Game).  I recently finished the first one and am half-way through the second.  Very funny.  I know grumbler's been a Flashman proselytiser for a while but I should have listened earlier.

I've been reading the odd Flashman book the last few months.  Enjoyable.
Posts here are my own private opinions.  I do not speak for my employer.

Agelastus

As for me, the books I have most enjoyed over the last year have been the "Shadows of the Apt" series by Adrian Tchaikovsky.

http://shadowsoftheapt.com/

Even for fantasy they require at least one unusually large suspension of disbelief, but they are fluently written, have likable characters, and possess a solid plotline. The world in the books also has an impressive sense of history about it, without the weight feeling too oppressive. The fifth book is out in the summer, and it will be picked up as rapidly as possible at that point.

I especially admired the way several important characters ended up at a key confrontation in the fourth book without it feeling too contrived, when at the end of the third book you would have felt it was the last place in the world they would be at that point in time.

I haven't recommended these before, have I? :unsure:
"Come grow old with me
The Best is yet to be
The last of life for which the first was made."

Agelastus

Quote from: Barrister on March 20, 2010, 12:46:56 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 20, 2010, 12:26:05 PM
Got the Everyman Library (:mmm:) Flashman collection (Flashman, Flash for Freedom! and Flashman in the Great Game).  I recently finished the first one and am half-way through the second.  Very funny.  I know grumbler's been a Flashman proselytiser for a while but I should have listened earlier.

I've been reading the odd Flashman book the last few months.  Enjoyable.

Flashman's one of the things Grumbler and I agree on. Everyone should read them. :yes:
"Come grow old with me
The Best is yet to be
The last of life for which the first was made."

Syt

I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
—Stephen Jay Gould

Proud owner of 42 Zoupa Points.

crazy canuck

Quote from: Agelastus on March 20, 2010, 12:54:27 PM
Quote from: Barrister on March 20, 2010, 12:46:56 PM
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 20, 2010, 12:26:05 PM
Got the Everyman Library (:mmm:) Flashman collection (Flashman, Flash for Freedom! and Flashman in the Great Game).  I recently finished the first one and am half-way through the second.  Very funny.  I know grumbler's been a Flashman proselytiser for a while but I should have listened earlier.

I've been reading the odd Flashman book the last few months.  Enjoyable.

Flashman's one of the things Grumbler and I agree on. Everyone should read them. :yes:

I keep forgetting to pick this series up.

After I finish Downfall of the West I will do that.  Btw I am not liking Downfall as much as I thought I would.  So far it has only amounted to a brief description of the various Emperors and co-Emperors since the second century with a bit more time spent on Constantine. I feel like I am getting the encyclopedia brittanica version of the fall of the Roman Empire in the West.

Admiral Yi

Currently rereading Postwar.  New factoids keep popping up at me, such as the one that in 1950 there were only 32,000 high school graduates in France.

Sheilbh

Quote from: Admiral Yi on March 20, 2010, 02:08:56 PM
Currently rereading Postwar.  New factoids keep popping up at me, such as the one that in 1950 there were only 32,000 high school graduates in France.
I'm currently reading Judt's cri de couer for Social Democracy - very good, I'll post it shortly.

I also recommend his lecture on living with Lou Gehrig's disease, it's an amazing piece.  I think it's in the New Yorker.
Let's bomb Russia!

Alatriste

Quote from: Admiral Yi on March 20, 2010, 02:08:56 PM
Currently rereading Postwar.  New factoids keep popping up at me, such as the one that in 1950 there were only 32,000 high school graduates in France.

:bleeding: or  :lol: or  :wacko:

In French, High School = Lycée

A 'Haute École', i.e. a 'high school', is for doctorates, MBA's and other post graduate courses. The most famous is probably the 'Haute Ecole de Gestion de Genève' (in francophone Switzerland)

Admiral Yi

Quote from: Alatriste on March 20, 2010, 03:33:42 PM
:bleeding: or  :lol: or  :wacko:

In French, High School = Lycée

A 'Haute École', i.e. a 'high school', is for doctorates, MBA's and other post graduate courses. The most famous is probably the 'Haute Ecole de Gestion de Genève' (in francophone Switzerland)
Judt uses the term bachelier.