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I need to read more books, rather than substiting on a diet of The Economist and scientific articles. So I'm bookmarking a few threads here in the Book Barn and I hope to get more serious reading done this year. Skimming this thread I haven't seen many examples of books people didn't like - it's mostly positive recommendations around here (with some exceptions). I posted a negative review to my blog, for War: A Crime Against Humanity by Roberto Vivo. Short version: get a better editor, dude.
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Jan 17, 2016 03:06
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 18:45 |
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A human heart posted:I don't think I would characterise The Economist as non-fiction. Paper With Lines posted:Occasionally I pick up a book based on an Economist review in the back of the mag. They review a wide range of non-fiction, so if you're interested in Economist-esque topics delve into your old copies more and check it out? If you read the economist like me, you're like three or four issues behind.
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Jan 18, 2016 04:50
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Yesterday I finished Of Dice and Men, a story that's about 3/4 the history of Dungeons and Dragons and 1/4 the author's life as it revolves around Dungeons and Dragons. He spends a bit too much effort trying to convince the reader that he's totally a D&D insider - look how nerdy I am but it's a pretty good read anyway. The people involved - especially the co-creators of the game, Gary Gygax and David Arneson - are really well described, you can see that the author did his research and he interviewed a ton of people.
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Mar 28, 2016 22:06
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Pick posted:The Lost City of Z: Everyone and their cat has read this, but you should too! It's another of Grann's books. In this case, he followed the footsteps of a rockstar explorer from the "glory days" of white-guy Amazonian expeditions, both through the library and, yes, literal jungle. The explorer, Percy Fawcett, went searching for a "lost city" deep in the rainforest and never returned. It's the most satisfying book about a real-life mystery I've ever read, since books like this are usually blueballs.txt. Has the right amount of first-person content for a book of this type, it's an excellent example of how travel writing can be, you know, good. I was given this not long ago, and plowed through it. Very good.
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Mar 30, 2016 02:27
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There's a chapter in Freakonomics (published in 2005) built around Sudhir Venkatesh's adventures in gangland. The start of that adventure is described in Freakonomics asSteven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner posted:But his (Venkatesh) graduate advisor, the eminent poverty scholar William Julius Wilson, promptly sent Venkatesh into the field. His assignment: to visit Chicago's poorest black neighborhoods with a clipboard and a seventy-question, multiple-choice survey. EDIT: I just looked at the cover of Gang Leader on Amazon, and apparently the foreword is by Dubner. Is the story of those two books available anywhere? I'm curious about the relationships between those authors. Baka-nin posted:The Warriors by Sol Yurick 
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Apr 7, 2016 03:37
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I just finished Near Death in the Desert, edited by some guy who's written a whole series of these Near Death in the XXX books. Gotta say, not very good. Besides writing godawful intros and extros to each excerpt, Kuhne put together a collection of travels-through-the-desert stories in which nobody comes particularly close to dying, but everybody shows off their selfish-dick side. Hard to relate to the narrator when he's describing how great he thinks these nomads are after they complain about the difficulties of selling slaves in the mid-to-late 20th century.corn in the fridge posted:Currently reading:
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Apr 23, 2016 21:55
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 18:45 |
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I finished I Wouldn't Start From Here. The 21st Century and Where It All Went Wrong by Andrew Mueller this morning. Mueller is an Australian rock journalist who ended up visiting every war-torn shithole he could get himself sent to by various newspapers and magazines, and tells the stories of just walking around talking to people and trying to figure things out. I picked it up because the foreword was written by Robert Young Pelton and I'm a big fan of his work (The World's Most Dangerous Places is his most famous book). Each chapter is a re-worked version of a column or story he wrote for a magazine or newspaper, with pretty seamless transitions between the previously-published parts and his kind-of metacommentary about that experience. The chapters are not arranged in chronological order, and the book jumps around between about 2000 and 2007, with most chapters apparently arranged because of the contrast or link to the previous chapter - chapter endings like "I didn't find that here. But I did know of one such place." are pretty common. I liked the writing a lot, he's cynical and angry about things we should be cynical and angry about (violent warmongering goverments, violent psychopathic terrorists, etc.) but the tone of the book is surprisingly upbeat. He's also got a sense of humor I really appreciate and a talent for making fun metaphors. In contrast to War, What is it Good For?, which was a broad look at centuries-long trends through history and around the world, I Wouldn't Start From Here is one somewhat baffled man wandering into friendly people's homes in horrible places and asking them about their lives while war and other tragedies rage around them. I'm going to have to see if there's a decent book store in this small town I'm in for the next few days, I've run out of non-fiction on this trip and my fiction supply probably won't last long, either.
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May 8, 2016 06:41
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