Grand unified books thread

[crazy canuck]

Finnegans Wake. Lots of fun.

Worth the time.

Welcome Back!!!!!

[Malthus]

Currently reading Guy Gavriel Kay's latest semi-historical fiction Children of Earth and Sky. I'm enjoying it, though it starts off slow. Never has the question "LOL Can I be Ottoman Empire?" been more apt. 

[Berkut]

I am thinking about trying to dive into Peter Hamilton's Reality Dysfunction series. I've heard really mixed reviews on it - some saying it is great, others saying it is a bloated whale of crap.

Any Languishites familiar with the series?

http://www.amazon.com/Reality-Dysfunction-Nights-Dawn/dp/0316021806/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

[The Brain]

I am thinking about trying to dive into Peter Hamilton's Reality Dysfunction series. I've heard really mixed reviews on it - some saying it is great, others saying it is a bloated whale of crap.

Any Languishites familiar with the series?

http://www.amazon.com/Reality-Dysfunction-Nights-Dawn/dp/0316021806/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

FWIW I really enjoyed it.

[Agelastus]

It's not as enjoyable as his "Commonwealth" duology in my opinion, but I found them to be a good read; good enough that I have the third volume of the trilogy in hardback on my shelf.

Before the Kindle, that was...

[Sheilbh]

Finnegans Wake. Lots of fun.

Worth the time.

Welcome Back!!!!!

Ta

[crazy canuck]

I am thinking about trying to dive into Peter Hamilton's Reality Dysfunction series. I've heard really mixed reviews on it - some saying it is great, others saying it is a bloated whale of crap.

Any Languishites familiar with the series?

http://www.amazon.com/Reality-Dysfunction-Nights-Dawn/dp/0316021806/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

I hadn't heard about it before reading about it here.  I like how it starts, not that far in though.  But he is a good writer.

[11B4V]

Going to start

A Savage War of Peace; Algeria 1954-1962.

Frenchies and Ragheads, OH MY.

[Valmy]

Going to start

A Savage War of Peace; Algeria 1954-1962.

Frenchies and Ragheads, OH MY.

Vive de Gaulle! Oh right he is dead.

[11B4V]

Next on the list. One for Seedy.

[Capetan Mihali]

Slavery and Social Death by Orlando Patterson.  This is kind of an oldie (1982) and I know comparative history is considered pretty gauche these days (though I'm a sucker for it; Peter Kolchin's Unfree Labor, also from the 80s, comparing American slavery and Russian serfdom, was a great read).  I'm sure specialists have taken exception with a lot of his characterizations of various historical slave societies in the decades since this came out. 

But as an amateur, I do enjoy the breadth: from Athens to Delphi to Rome to the Abbasids to the Tuareg to the Northwest Pacific Coast Indians to the Somali to the Vikings to the Ottomans to the Dutch East Indies to the US South, and back. 

It's kind of hard to distill the thrust of the book, but he does have a basic thesis that slavery, in whatever form, has always involved the dominion over "natally alienated" (and thus socially dead) people, whether made that way by birth, debt, or capture.

[Admiral Yi]

Sounds a little tautologically circular.

[Capetan Mihali]

I wouldn't say it's the strongest-argued book I've ever read, but the scope makes it worthwhile.  For instance, I learned that the NW Pacific Coast Natives had one of the bloodiest slave societies in history.  If a loved one's relative died, it was typical to kill a few of your own slaves as an expression of condolences; it actually does make sense tied in with potlach. 

Not much time is spent on the post-1500 trans-Atlantic slave trade, probably for the best as it's the most familiar and in some ways the most unrepresentative.  Quite a bit of time is spent on antiquity; the legal problems manumission caused, and the way the Romans got around it, for instance, I found very interesting. 

The rules Islam imposed upon the practice of slavery, and the extent they were obeyed, takes up a good amount of space, considering the various regimes and empires (al-Andalus slavery vs. Visigoth slavery, Ottoman devşirme, Barbary pirate state practices, Abbasid ghilman, the Zanj rebellion, etc.). 

And another tidbit: I really didn't know that the Venetians owned large numbers of slaves working sugar plantations on Crete and other islands well into the early modern period (essentially up until the rise of sugar imports from the Western Hemisphere), having thought intra-European slavery was well over by that point.

[Sheilbh]

Going to start

A Savage War of Peace; Algeria 1954-1962.

Frenchies and Ragheads, OH MY.

Excellent book.

On slavery I've been reading Hugh Thomas' books on the Spanish empire and I had no idea how widespread slavery was in peninsular Spain before then, or how recently conquered and colonised the Canaries were - the first sugar mills in Spain and somewhere the colonisers of the Americas took a lot of ideas from, as in the Caribbean the native population more or less went into permanent decline very rapidly.

[garbon]

Was randomly at Waterstones and picked up Bill Bryson's The Road to Little Dribbling: More Notes From a Small Island. I'd forgotten how much I love him.