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What books are we reading now?
- Thread starter Oatley1
- Start date
Joseph DeMartino
Moderator
I just looked it up at Amazon.com and "The Algebraist" is listed as having not been released yet.
indeed. I just looked it up on Amazon.com and it says, "Ships in 1 to 2 business days" First somebody says they show Space: Above & Beyond as not released when it is, now hyp sees the same thing regarding a book. Are you guys connecting to some bizzaro world version of Amazon or do you not have your browser set to update pages on every visit?
(Because if you dont, you could be looking at old, cached, data from your hard drive.) Having finished off a couple of the books on my previous list - and being innudated with Ancient Rome Stuff between the HBO series and all the tie-ins airing on the History Channel - I've recently started Tom Holland's Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic (available in a handsome trade paperback edition for about $15 from Amazon.com - who really should be paying me a commission given how often I link to their site.) Those of you who watched the Life and Death in Rome stuff on The History Channel will recognize Holland as one of the talking heads in that series. The book is quite enjoyable so far, and Holland makes a good case for his conclusions, even the ones I disagree with.
For all its roughly 400 pages the book is relatively short when measured against its subject., so the book skims the surface more than it plumbs the depths. (Marius's early career, which revolutionized the Roman military and was really the thing that changed the relationship between the legions and their generals, gets short shrift, for instance. And Marcus Livius Drusus's extraordinary bid to grant the Roman citizenship to all the inhabitants of Italy gets a scant half page in which his murder is mentioned but not his name.) After sketching early Roman history beginning with the overthrow of the last king and jumping almost immediately to the brothers Gracchus, Holland really begins his narrative with the career of Lucius Cornelius Sulla, who in many ways prefigured Caesar. (Although I doubt either man would have welcomed the comparison.) Now there's a man who deserves a mini-series.
I've just started the Sulla stuff myself, and I'm having a good time. (And I can see that inevitably I'm going to start on McCullough's The First Man in Rome again soon and then straight through the set again. I have tons of other books I really should be reading, but I doubt I'll be able to resist. Already I can see McCullough's Sulla with the pale white skin and the red-gold hair stalking the streets of the Suburba after committing some hideous outrage and muttering to himself, "Oh, I feel better!"
) Anyone interested in HBO's Rome should seriously consider reading this book, because it presents much of the tangled backstory to the events depicted in the series, and helps put them in their proper context not as something strange and novel but as the culmination of a long chain of events that began nearly a century before. One of the oddities of Rome is that it acquired an empire, almost inadvertently, before it became one, and long before it acquired an empire. But it was the reality of empire that subjected the government of the Republic - designed for a city-state and only with difficulty stretched to cover Sicily and most of Italy south of the Po - to stresses it couldn't handle. The Gracchi, Marius, Sulla, Cinna and Caesar in their turn were all symptoms of a systemic problem with which the Republic could not cope - not without the kind of radical reform that was anathema to the Romans. None of them found a solution to the problem, or even really grasped what the problem was. Antony would have simply imposed an Eastern monarchy in order to save his own skin and power, and ruled Rome as a sattelite of Alexandria. Only Octavian was shrewd enough to reintroduce the strong centralized government of a monarchy while keeping the form of the Republic intact, to reinvent monarchy under a new name while leaving the Senate in place and the mos maiorum, the old ways, seemingly intact. He destroyed the substance of the Republic while leaving the shell, and thus kept the Roman people (except for some, like Cicero) from realizing what had happened until it was too late.
Regards,
Joe
Joseph DeMartino
Moderator
I didn't read the fine print, since I plan to pick it up at Best Buy tomorrow. (If you buy Firefly there's a $20 off coupon good towards The X-Files or SA&B) so I missed that.
Here's the reason for the confusion:
It is a BB exclusive like Battlestar Galactica was, so some people have it because they got it at Best Buy, but the rest of the country has to wait a couple of weeks.
Regards,
Joe
Here's the reason for the confusion:
It is a BB exclusive like Battlestar Galactica was, so some people have it because they got it at Best Buy, but the rest of the country has to wait a couple of weeks.
Regards,
Joe
Oatley1
Beyond the rim
Hi Joe,
Glad to see your enjoying Holland's excellent book - after a period of 10 years where I hadn't even picked up a Roman history book, this was an excellent reintroduction back into the world of Rome, and fired my enthusiasm so that I got to tackle the Masters of Rome series.
Of course, it helped that by the time Octavian achieved supreme power, the ancient and vigerous families of the Great Republic had virtually been driven into oblivion, what with the Civil Wars and proscriptions of the preceeding 50 years.
All that were left were mediocrities, which Octavian then made sure stayed that way by expanding the Senate to include a host of new subjects from the meanest familes and areas of the regions that Rome occupied, who were most grateful to their generous benefactor.
In essence, while his subtle nature was wise enough to retain the forms but not the essence of the Great Republic, it was the lack of any opposition that ensured the victory of the Emperors.
To quote Gibbon:
"The tender respect of Augustus for a free constitution which he had destroyed, can only be explained by an attentive consideration of the character of that subtle tyrant. A cool head, an unfeeling heart, and a cowardly disposition, prompted him at the age of nineteen to assume the mask of hypocrisy, which he never afterwards laid aside. With the same hand, and probably with the same temper, he signed the proscription of Cicero, and the pardon of Cinna. His virtues, and even his vices, were artificial; and according to the various dictates of his interest, he was at first the enemy, and at last the father, of the Roman world. When he framed the artful system of the Imperial authority, his moderation was inspired by his fears. He wished to deceive the people by an image of civil liberty, and the armies by an image of civil government."
Love Gibbon - such a turn of phrase.
Speaking of Gibbon, I am at the moment enjoying an audio book of the abridged 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire', read by Philip Madoc - and it is an excellent way to sit back and enjoy an hour or so.
Glad to see your enjoying Holland's excellent book - after a period of 10 years where I hadn't even picked up a Roman history book, this was an excellent reintroduction back into the world of Rome, and fired my enthusiasm so that I got to tackle the Masters of Rome series.
Of course, it helped that by the time Octavian achieved supreme power, the ancient and vigerous families of the Great Republic had virtually been driven into oblivion, what with the Civil Wars and proscriptions of the preceeding 50 years.
All that were left were mediocrities, which Octavian then made sure stayed that way by expanding the Senate to include a host of new subjects from the meanest familes and areas of the regions that Rome occupied, who were most grateful to their generous benefactor.
In essence, while his subtle nature was wise enough to retain the forms but not the essence of the Great Republic, it was the lack of any opposition that ensured the victory of the Emperors.
To quote Gibbon:
"The tender respect of Augustus for a free constitution which he had destroyed, can only be explained by an attentive consideration of the character of that subtle tyrant. A cool head, an unfeeling heart, and a cowardly disposition, prompted him at the age of nineteen to assume the mask of hypocrisy, which he never afterwards laid aside. With the same hand, and probably with the same temper, he signed the proscription of Cicero, and the pardon of Cinna. His virtues, and even his vices, were artificial; and according to the various dictates of his interest, he was at first the enemy, and at last the father, of the Roman world. When he framed the artful system of the Imperial authority, his moderation was inspired by his fears. He wished to deceive the people by an image of civil liberty, and the armies by an image of civil government."
Love Gibbon - such a turn of phrase.
Speaking of Gibbon, I am at the moment enjoying an audio book of the abridged 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire', read by Philip Madoc - and it is an excellent way to sit back and enjoy an hour or so.
MeadDrinker
Regular
Sorry to bring up a quiescent thread, but a certain character made into the Unspeakable Vault I thought some here would appreciate:
http://www.macguff.fr/goomi/unspeakable/home.html
http://www.macguff.fr/goomi/unspeakable/home.html
Hmm...
Well, I'm working my way through two right now for work:
- Agile Web Development with Ruby on Rails - Dave Thomas, David Heinemeier Hansson
- Ruby In A Nutshell - Yukihiro Matsumoto
And for pleasure...
- Talisman - by Robin Wayne Bailey - Book 2 of his "Dragonkin" series, which is probably the best fantasy series I've read in a long time.
I also just finished To Dream in the City of Sorrows - finally got a chance to read that.
Next up on the list (while waiting for book 3 of "Dragonkin" to come out in paperback) is Denise Giardina's Unquiet Earth, the sequal to her earlier novel, Storming Heaven which is a historical fiction about the early days of the coal mining industry in KY/WV, the struggle to get the union organized/recognized, and the Battle of Bialr Mountain, which, BTW, is fascinating and if you're not familliar with it, you should read up on it. I'm amazed at how such a huge and bloody piece of American history is virtually ignored in every general classroom history text I've ever seen. I went all through school having never heard of it.
Well, I'm working my way through two right now for work:
- Agile Web Development with Ruby on Rails - Dave Thomas, David Heinemeier Hansson
- Ruby In A Nutshell - Yukihiro Matsumoto
And for pleasure...
- Talisman - by Robin Wayne Bailey - Book 2 of his "Dragonkin" series, which is probably the best fantasy series I've read in a long time.
I also just finished To Dream in the City of Sorrows - finally got a chance to read that.
Next up on the list (while waiting for book 3 of "Dragonkin" to come out in paperback) is Denise Giardina's Unquiet Earth, the sequal to her earlier novel, Storming Heaven which is a historical fiction about the early days of the coal mining industry in KY/WV, the struggle to get the union organized/recognized, and the Battle of Bialr Mountain, which, BTW, is fascinating and if you're not familliar with it, you should read up on it. I'm amazed at how such a huge and bloody piece of American history is virtually ignored in every general classroom history text I've ever seen. I went all through school having never heard of it.
Alluveal
Regular
Oatley, if you like historical fiction, you should try some of Penman's work: When Christ and his Saints Slept
I've heard wonderful things about the Rome series you're reading. I may pick it up. As for now, I've been reading The Time Traveller's Wife. Pretty good love story.
I've heard wonderful things about the Rome series you're reading. I may pick it up. As for now, I've been reading The Time Traveller's Wife. Pretty good love story.
Oatley1
Beyond the rim
That sounds like a very good read - I have just finished watching 'The Lion in Winter' (with Patrick Stewart), and am ready to tackle early Norman history, especially as the Civil War led into the reign of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquataine.
I am growing more and more enthusiastic about McCullough's 'Masters Of Rome' series. I am up to 'Ceasar's Women', and her portrayal of Julius Caesar is both masterful and memorable. Her version of Caesar is one that is closest to the version in my own mind about who he was, and how absolutely magnificent and powerful he must have been.
I am growing more and more enthusiastic about McCullough's 'Masters Of Rome' series. I am up to 'Ceasar's Women', and her portrayal of Julius Caesar is both masterful and memorable. Her version of Caesar is one that is closest to the version in my own mind about who he was, and how absolutely magnificent and powerful he must have been.
The Juche Warrior
Regular
I did something today I haven't done in a good while. I finished a book in one sitting. The book was The Devil In The White City I can't recommend it enough. It's about the building of the 1893 Columbian exposition in Chicago and a serial killer who used it to his advantage.
Enlightened_GKar
Beyond the rim
Devil in the White City has an alluring title. I will give it that.
I am trying to get through For Whom the Bell Tolls, but I know I never will. College is a time menace!
Just finished The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Catcher in the Rye (2nd time), and The Great Gatsby (2nd time).
I am trying to get through For Whom the Bell Tolls, but I know I never will. College is a time menace!
Just finished The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Catcher in the Rye (2nd time), and The Great Gatsby (2nd time).
KoshFan
Regular
Re-reading "The Curse of Chalion." Not everyone's favorite by any means, but it's a fascinatingly theological fantasy novel by Lois McMaster Bujold, more renowned for her Miles Vorkosigan books. Not necessarily a fun read, but I find it a strong one.
For school I've been hacking my way through "Gulag," by Anne Applebaum and various ancient Greek writings.
For school I've been hacking my way through "Gulag," by Anne Applebaum and various ancient Greek writings.
GKarsEye
Regular
On Friday I actually bought a book (I usually just borrow from the library) because I knew I'd want to go back to this one frequently.
"The Assassin's Gate" is the result of a liberal hawk journalist's study of the Iraq war. The book is both a study of the stuggle of ideas and the political machinery that led to the war and a study of its effects. It is the former topic that makes this volume indispensable and necessary reading for anyone who truly wants to answer American foreign policy of the past 15 years. It dispassionately connects PNAC, neoconservatism, Reagonism, communism, American liberalism and the personalities of key players. Though I knew much of this before, this connects it in a narrative and connects the missing dots.
"The Assassin's Gate" is the result of a liberal hawk journalist's study of the Iraq war. The book is both a study of the stuggle of ideas and the political machinery that led to the war and a study of its effects. It is the former topic that makes this volume indispensable and necessary reading for anyone who truly wants to answer American foreign policy of the past 15 years. It dispassionately connects PNAC, neoconservatism, Reagonism, communism, American liberalism and the personalities of key players. Though I knew much of this before, this connects it in a narrative and connects the missing dots.
Jade Jaguar
Regular
I was hoping more of those dots would go missing, the sooner the better...
Sinclair
Moderator
I haven't started reading it yet, but I just purchased 1776. Hopefully I'll start reading it in the next week or so. The only books I really read anymore are just about anything to do with any aspect of history. I don't have as much time for reading as I used to, but I try to read when I can.
darth_librarian
Regular
Kingdom of Fear by the late King of Gonzo himself, HST.
Mad as a box of frogs, but great fun. The Rum Diary is still one of my favourite novels ever.
For my Geek side, George R R Martins' A Feast of Crows get released on Monday in the UK, i'm hoping to attend a signing in London that week...
Mad as a box of frogs, but great fun. The Rum Diary is still one of my favourite novels ever.
For my Geek side, George R R Martins' A Feast of Crows get released on Monday in the UK, i'm hoping to attend a signing in London that week...
The Juche Warrior
Regular
That's on my list of books to read. I mean really, how can you go wrong with David McCullough.
Joseph DeMartino
Moderator
I leant my copy of McCullough's 1776 to my brother-in-law to read on the plane when he and my sister went to Italy last month. He finished reading it while over there and swapped it for a book my cousin's husband had brought with him. My sister is now in New York and has strict orders to get my damned book back. (Honestly, don't they sell books at the airports in Italy? ) I hadn't had a chance to read it myself before they left, though I lied to my brother-in-law and said I had so he'd feel less guilty about borrowing it. Now I'm starting to regret it.
In the meantime I'm reading Thomas Sowell's The Search for Cosmic Justice, which is brilliant (as Sowell usually is) and would make the heads of about 3/4 of the folks around here to explode. (Another nice thing about Sowell. )
Regards,
Joe
) I hadn't had a chance to read it myself before they left, though I lied to my brother-in-law and said I had so he'd feel less guilty about borrowing it. Now I'm starting to regret it. In the meantime I'm reading Thomas Sowell's The Search for Cosmic Justice, which is brilliant (as Sowell usually is) and would make the heads of about 3/4 of the folks around here to explode.
(Another nice thing about Sowell. ) Regards,
Joe
I've recently finished Harry Potter 4 through 6 (wanted to read the book before seeing the flick (Goblet of Fire) and ended getting the last three, which I hadn't read before), fun series, with a definite end in sight! Closure can be a good thing!!
Also read Pratt's "Thud", a worthy addition to Discworld.
And back to closure, just got Jordan's "Knife of Dreams", #12 in the World of Time series, from the library (had it on hold). I'm not through the prologue yet, 84 pages!?! and it's a little tough slogging and trying to recall who's who, but I'm glad it's finally out. I've heard "RUMOURS" that there will be only one more book. I hope so and I hope it's good.
I also have George RR Martin's new "Feast of Crows" on hold and waiting for its availability soon. I'm hoping that the original 4th book was to be the last and that it was too long for publication as a single book that the story is essentially complete and the final book willl soon be forthcoming.
Also read Pratt's "Thud", a worthy addition to Discworld.
And back to closure, just got Jordan's "Knife of Dreams", #12 in the World of Time series, from the library (had it on hold). I'm not through the prologue yet, 84 pages!?! and it's a little tough slogging and trying to recall who's who, but I'm glad it's finally out. I've heard "RUMOURS" that there will be only one more book. I hope so and I hope it's good.
I also have George RR Martin's new "Feast of Crows" on hold and waiting for its availability soon. I'm hoping that the original 4th book was to be the last and that it was too long for publication as a single book that the story is essentially complete and the final book willl soon be forthcoming.
Currently I'm not reading anything ( a rare occurence, occuring due to having finished a massive amount of coursework, and not having had a chance to find something yet). However recently I have enjoyed reading player of games (Iain M Banks) and plan on reading more of the Culture novels. Homeward Bound, which is the finale of the world was and colonisation novels by Harry Turtledove, well worth reading. I, along with most of the board in my estimation, have recently read Thud! by Terry Pratchett. I also re-read through the Uplift Novels, by David Brin (my favourite contemporary auther) last month. The uplift novels(although incredible books) were mainly read as something to destract me from work when I got home in the evening.
