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Grand unified books thread

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

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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.  :D
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane—Marcus Aurelius

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=
"If you think this has a happy ending, then you haven't been paying attention."

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The Brain

Quote from: Berkut on May 25, 2016, 12:50:46 PM
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.
Women want me. Men want to be with me.

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...
"Come grow old with me
The Best is yet to be
The last of life for which the first was made."

Sheilbh

Let's bomb Russia!

crazy canuck

Quote from: Berkut on May 25, 2016, 12:50:46 PM
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.
"there's a long tradition of insulting people we disagree with here, and I'll be damned if I listen to your entreaties otherwise."-OVB

"Obviously not a Berkut-commanded armored column.  They're not all brewing."- CdM

"We've reached one of our phase lines after the firefight and it smells bad—meaning it's a little bit suspicious... Could be an amb—".

Valmy

Quote from: 11B4V on June 01, 2016, 09:00:44 PM
Going to start

A Savage War of Peace; Algeria 1954-1962.

Frenchies and Ragheads, OH MY.

Vive de Gaulle! Oh right he is dead.
Quote"This is a Russian warship. I propose you lay down arms and surrender to avoid bloodshed & unnecessary victims. Otherwise, you'll be bombed."

Zmiinyi defenders: "Russian warship, go fuck yourself."

11B4V

Next on the list. One for Seedy.

"there's a long tradition of insulting people we disagree with here, and I'll be damned if I listen to your entreaties otherwise."-OVB

"Obviously not a Berkut-commanded armored column.  They're not all brewing."- CdM

"We've reached one of our phase lines after the firefight and it smells bad—meaning it's a little bit suspicious... Could be an amb—".

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.
"The internet's completely over. [...] The internet's like MTV. At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated. Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can't be good for you."
-- Prince, 2010. (R.I.P.)

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.
"The internet's completely over. [...] The internet's like MTV. At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated. Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can't be good for you."
-- Prince, 2010. (R.I.P.)

Sheilbh

Quote from: 11B4V on June 01, 2016, 09:00:44 PM
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.
Let's bomb Russia!

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.
"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.