What have you been reading lately?

[3.14159]

I've thought about starting a "what are you reading thread" oh, several times!
But I figured if I want to see something sink like a stone I'd tell a George Bush joke at a liberal fundraiser!

I read Slaughter house 5 and Cats cradle when I was younger than David. Both good reads but I remember thinking Slapstick was the best of the lot. I can't remember why I thought it's better, the idea of the world choking on miniture chinese people appealed to my sense of the ridiculous maybe.
Oh well, here goes.
Right now I'm reading, Country by Tim Flannery.
Planet word by J.D Davidson (forward by Steven Fry)
Forest trees of Australia..Forest and Timber bureau, Department of the Interior 1952....It is the original, much smaller and user friendly version of the standard forestry textbook.
And a novel...
Complicity, Iain Banks.

I read Dark Stuff a few years ago and enjoyed it, but the lives of tragic rock stars don't move me the way they used to.
That said, Poison Heart by Dee-Dee Ramone was a fabulous read.

[David]

As I just posted on Facebook, I've read a pitiful total of 8 novels in the last 6 and a half years (i.e. my adult life):

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence
How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff
Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell
A259 Multiplex Bomb "Outrage" by Simon Strong
Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut

Something needs to be done about this. I need recommendations!

[HAL]

Why do you need it so badly?

[3.14159]

Try William Gibson's Necromancer or Count Zero.
The vision of Neuromancer has inspired technologists from Silicon valley to Wall st and a global network of hackers who have committed countless nefarious deeed in the books honour.
(quote from The Sunday Times.^^^)

..or Iain (M) Banks The Crow Road, Complicity or Consider Phlebus and Excession.

Right now I'm reading "Zen and the art of reprogramming your robot with a chainsaw".
I'm down with the theory, now all I need is the practical experience.

[HAL]

I am not sure if I would do it that often.

[Funkadelic]

Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance is a good novel. At the moment I'm reading Jock-the story of collingwoods greatest coach, by Glen McFArlane. Only about 1/4 of the way though it but really enjoying it.

[Tannin]

Re-reading (yet again!) the peerless Dorothy Sayers. Right now, her much-loved tour de force The Nine Tailors, probably her best-known work and, among several of particular merit, I think the very best of all, though Five Red Herrings is excellent and notwithstanding a major flaw or two, Murder Must Advertise is certainly not to be missed.

[partypie]

[stui magpie]

^

The ones I keep and re read are Matthew Reilly and Wilbur Smith.

OneI haven't read for a while but might have to find and read again is Catch 22. Brilliant book.

[Tannin]

The fascinating story of the first post-war atom bomb tests, Operation Crossroads. You will need several hours to fully absorb the excellent Wikipedia entry on this - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Crossroads - by the time you chase down some cross-references and examine the quite extraordinary pictures. Some of them are truly breathtaking.

Several things made Crossroads different. These were the very first real tests. The two war shots in Japan were quite different, designed to finish a war, not for R&D; the original Trinity explosion in Nevada before them was a small, hurried, ultra-secret affair designed simply to show that the bomb would go off; the two Crossroads tests in 1946 were huge affairs, with thousands and thousands of sailors, 80-odd ships used as targets, newsreel cameras, Army-Navy infighting, the whole schmozzle. The newsreel footage (in that same article) is quite awesome. Attitudes to the bomb were just plain weird. See for yourself.

Then there was the matter of the native people who lived on Bikini Atoll - they were just moved off their home to another island "while the tests went on". The new island didn't have the fishing and farming resources they needed to live, and the very nearly starved to death. Almost 70 years later, their grandchildren still cannot go home because of the radioactivity poisioning the ground and water.

And the horribly cruel animal experiments.

And fallout, that was new too. They had no clue about fallout. All of the previous explosions - Trinity, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and even the first of the two Crossroads tests - had been air-bursts, where most of the fission products are injected into the upper atmosphere and circulated right around the globe in tiny, almost indetectable amounts. But Crossroads Baker was set off underwater, and the explosion wave washed over all the target ships, covering them with short-lived, very deadly fission products, and long-lived, insidiously deadly plutonium which was indetectable with their equipment. Sailors in shorts washing the decks down with (contaminated!) lagoon water and soap and buckets, hoping to decontaminate a battleship full of plutonium waste so they could sail it home! Madness! But at the time, it was all they knew. It must have seemed like just good common sense.

Anyway, Operation Crossroads - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Crossroads Quite a story.

(EDIT: fixed broken link. Sorry about that.)

[think positive]

Gees that all sounds so depressing.

Man is such a stupid beast.

If only he, or we, spent the time trying to save lives, instead of planning mass killing, what could this world be?

And I don't mean overcrowded!

[David]

I've been going on a philosophy/science book binge of late. Some of my purchases have included John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism, Sam Harris's Free Will, Peter Singer's Practical Ethics and Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene. I was also tempted by some books by Kant, Zizek and Michael Sandel that I found at Readings the other night. It led me to think that I really need to read more stuff from female writers. Can anyone think of any great female philosophers? I'm not necessarily talking about feminist theory (although obviously that has a place too). Does anyone have any favourite female writers they'd like to recommend?

[Tannin]

Andrea Dworkin has an interesting point of view. But you probably know her work, certainly at second hand. Perhaps there is not much value there.

I'm actually struggling to think of any to recommend, less because I don't have any good stuff written by women and more because I don't mentally divide my collection up into male vs female writers. I don't have a sort of ready-made list to bring to mind, I'd have to trawl through (for example) the history shelves looking for good ones with female authors, then the sociology shelves, the biology, and so on. That sounds like work!

[David]

Haha. Thanks Tannin. I asked Lola (who's far more widely read than I am) to name some of her favourite female writers, and she struggled to think of any. I suppose there's always de Beauvoir, Sontag, Germaine Greer et al (none of whom, I have to confess, I'm overly familiar with). But yeah, I don't think Dworkin would be quite my thing.

[Morrigu]

Anyone ever read Mitchell's Cloud Atlas?


Interested - I really enjoyed it