Grand unified books thread

[Josephus]

That sounds intriguing Malthus. I'll look for it.

[Malthus]

That sounds intriguing Malthus. I'll look for it.

Needless to say, it's not a barrel of laughs; but it is a stunning portrait of the life of ordinary Germans living under the Nazi regime, and the way the totalitarian regime manages to corrupt and compromise almost everyone. It out-does Orwell's 1984, if only because the author experienced that corruption first-hand, was tainted himself by it, and evidently wrote the novel in a sort of frenzy (in 24 days !!) and then almost immediately killed himself by overdosing on drugs. In short, the book is a real cry of moral dispair, and I think a masterpiece of 20th century literature.

This is the first English translation and, intriguingly, comes complete with an appendix that includes exerpts from the Gestapo files re the true story on which it is based.   

[garbon]

About 400 pages into War & Peace. I like that Tolstoy included Napoleon as a speaking character. Cute.

[Malthus]

Intrestingly, the author Hans Fallada only survived incarceration in a Nazi insane asylum by promising to write an anti-semitic novel for Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels. During his incarceration, he actually wrote another novel, THE DRINKER, in a code so clever that for many years after his death it could not be broken.

[Kleves]

Anyone read any good fantasy or sci-fi recently? I tried looking on Amazon, but all I can seem to find is garbage (though there is a lot of that).

[Scipio]

Anyone read any good fantasy or sci-fi recently? I tried looking on Amazon, but all I can seem to find is garbage (though there is a lot of that).

Anathem by Neal Stephenson, if you haven't read it yet.  Actually, all of Neal Stephenson, if you haven't read it yet.

[Savonarola]

The Cyborg Manifesto by Donna Haraway.  It brought to mind this quote by George Orwell:

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.

[Admiral Yi]

Picked up 3 books at B&N.  "My Korean Deli;" memoir of a white preppie who marries a Korean chick and they decide to use their savings to buy her mom a Deli.  Read a positive review in the NYT, bought it for my mom to read on the plane trip to Korea.  I'll read it when she's done.

Also "The Fall of the Roman Empire" by Peter Heath.  Anyone read this?  It's filling in massive gaps in my knowledge of the era but I can't wholeheartedly endorse the writing style.

Finallly some book on the Yom Kippur War.

[Slargos]

Anyone read any good fantasy or sci-fi recently? I tried looking on Amazon, but all I can seem to find is garbage (though there is a lot of that).

If you haven't already, I strongly urge you to check out Steven Erikson. He just finished his Epic.

Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn is also a pretty good showing.

[jimmy olsen]

Reading "Theodore Rex" for the 2nd time, been almost ten years I think. Even more awesome than I remember!

[Gups]

Just finished reading Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada, only recently translated into English; a drama about a couple living in wartime Nazi Germany who, inspired by the death of their son in battle, engage in a campaign of dropping post-cards critical of the regime around Berlin (inspired by a true story, and written immediately after the war by a German writer who survived incarceration in a Nazi insane asylum - and who died almost immediately after writing the novel, in fact before it was published).

I was initially kinda meh about it, but as I read more of it I found it increasingly gripping, and moving.

I don't think I've ever read a novel that made me sadder for the authour. It is obvious that he loathed the Nazi regime with every fibre of his being, and that he above all respected the sort of hopeless, quiet dignity and courage that his heroes in his novel display - willingly dying rather than be compromised by evil. A courage that, quite obviously, he personally did not display ...

I read this recently and thought it was excellent, a classic. It's called Alone in Berlin in the UK. Amazingly it was out of print until last year in English

[Savonarola]

I fiished the John Woods translation of Thomas Mann's "The Magic Mountain."  Througout the book I kept thinking:





Seriously I'm glad that no one calls me "My good engineer," the way Settembrini addresses Hans Castorp. 

[Syt]

If you want a good insight into the German psyche I highly suggest his brother Heinrich's Man of Straw.

[Norgy]

Hans Fallada was a welcome and positive surprise. 

[jimmy olsen]

I just saw that Brian Jacques passed away in Febrary.