alaska wrote:@guy forget -- that anne hyde book looks rad, i might check it out! i've been on a history kick lately & i feel like i remember a post from u about some of ur favorite history books...would love a rec if u have time! can be about basically anything at all
hey alaska so here's my big post about history books i like. i'll try not to go too hog wild here. i mostly know US history and within that am more well versed on 19th century and earlier (though am slowly reading more 20th century stuff for my dissertation). this isn't comprehensive either, obviously - just stuff that immediately comes to mind in a couple fields. a lot of these are pretty well known too so i apologize in advance if they're redundant to stuff you've already read.
a couple of my favorite history books where the writing just sparkles, the argument is made perfectly, and that attain what i think are the highest aims of the field:
you could make a pretty decent curriculum on the history of the US to the civil war on those 5 books alone, and if i could get another person to read any single history book it'd likely be a choice from those five.
as far as subfields that i'm particularly interested in, here's a bunch
US west
native american history
environmental history
and finally sort of a grab bag of stuff that i love that i think would appeal to anyone interested in thinking about the past
that last book in particular fucking rules and probably belongs on my top list.
also any of the Oxford History of the US series but particularly the most recent one by Richard White or Battle Cry of Freedom
if you want any recs on more modern history or specific stuff i can do my best. messier object and upland trout also can probably make some good suggestions too, i think they both know a lot about environmental history (and likely are better read on the subject than i am). emotional fascism knows a lot too. beyond US history i only know a random smattering really and of that it's mostly european history with some east asian environmental history. i'm just one guy here!
oh my god guy this rules so hard. ty so so so much! i've heard of a small handful of them but haven't actually read any of them
idk how long i'm going to be living by my old college library so i want to take max advantage of the Academic Selection and will probably get cracking on this list ASAPPPPPP
<3
On Hipinion, posters taxed their bonds and brotherhood, pushing themselves to the brink as a board and as buds.
deadbass wrote:Weird - I'm halfway through my reread of Jane Eyre right now! Love it, except for Helen Burns and her robotic Christian dialogue.
Also I read Villette a while ago and thought it was a very fascinating disaster of a novel. Like, you're just watching a very talented novelist self-destruct over the course of the book. It's completely insane. My favourite part is when Lucy Snowe keeps shouting "HAPPINESS IS NOT A POTATO." I think it's a really interesting book that's worth reading for what a bizarre failure of a novel it is.
Well it's my favourite novel ever so I don't really agree with your latter point but I'd be interested in hearing why you think it's a failure. Self-destruct as a person, yes, in a way, she found inspiration for the book in her history of depression, mixed with the recent loss of all her siblings, but as a novelist?
No Good Advice wrote:Well it's my favourite novel ever so I don't really agree with your latter point but I'd be interested in hearing why you think it's a failure. Self-destruct as a person, yes, in a way, she found inspiration for the book in her history of depression, mixed with the recent loss of all her siblings, but as a novelist?
I should definitely point out I read it 12 or 13 years ago when I was 18, so I both don’t trust my memory of it nor do I trust my judgement of it. I remember feeling like there were equal parts powerfully written characters and unrealistic idealogical automatons like Helen Burns. I also remember feeling like the plot just splayed out in so many directions in the second half and never came together. (Also just have a very powerful memory of laughing at the “happiness is not a potato!” Line)
You calling it your favourite novel makes me want to revisit it, especially In light of rereading Jane Eyre. Hope I didn’t offend you - I wasn’t trying to discount liking the book in any way, and, like I say, I was/am speaking from a muddled memory at this point.
I should definitely point out I read it 12 or 13 years ago when I was 18, so I both don’t trust my memory of it nor do I trust my judgement of it. I remember feeling like there were equal parts powerfully written characters and unrealistic idealogical automatons like Helen Burns. I also remember feeling like the plot just splayed out in so many directions in the second half and never came together. (Also just have a very powerful memory of laughing at the “happiness is not a potato!” Line)
You calling it your favourite novel makes me want to revisit it, especially In light of rereading Jane Eyre. Hope I didn’t offend you - I wasn’t trying to discount liking the book in any way, and, like I say, I was/am speaking from a muddled memory at this point.
Absolutely not, I'm basically stoked to engage with anyone who's read it, regardless of their view on it, but I'd def love to talk more specifics if you revisit it. I don't think there are many Helen Burns-likes in the book. You get some characters that are totally unlike the narrator Lucy (who's messy, uncertain, angry, creative), like Polly, whom she praises in superficial terms but is basically the opposite ideal of a woman (together with Ginevra and Lucy herself a nixe juxtaposition with the ideas of women in the art gallery she hates so much) and who Dr John - who's attractive and nice, but intellectually limited - falls for, for reasons Lucy describes in a faux-sympathetic but really quite mocking way. (Her relationship with Ginevra is one of the more light-hearted highlights of the book, even outside the great gender-bending scene they share early on.)
I think the plot is actually pretty focused in the 2nd half, focused on her finding a footing and a place for someone unconventional like herself in this world, very much staying in her head, with her struggles, so hopefully if you read it again some day you can expand on that.
For you, though:
No mockery in this world ever sounds to me so hollow as that of being told to cultivate happiness. What does such advice mean? Happiness is not a potato, to be planted in mould, and tilled with manure.
Really beautiful stuff and I like how the translation makes him seem like a real human but he lived in the 1500s
Just finished this, really really beautiful stuff and I can't believe how well it makes you think that a man alive 500 years ago was a man just like you. This is only a fraction of the whole book, which I would love to get around to reading some day, though I don't know when I'd have the time (It's huge) but I bet it would be great.
[PEACE] [LOVE] [UNITY] [RESPECT] (stay posi)
You are a sacred being of light projected into reality for a purpose. Demand the right to your moment in this holographic gift with no rules, no borders, except for those you choose to accept and live by.
Without Labour there is no Rest; nor without Fighting can the Victory be Won ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ
Joanna Russ - The Female Man This was INCREDIBLE. So smart, powerful and weird. Crazy that it was written in the 70s, both because of its relevancy to the current era and the stylistic explosiveness. She was doing DFW 20 years before DFW. Abs what u reckon?
So my feeling was definitely more wishy-washy than incredible. I was reading some reviews that I think better articulate what wasn't working for me, and I definitely keep coming back to your comment about it being like DFW. Trouble is, that style of writing is so not my speed.I think perhaps an annotated version would be appealing to me.
The relevancy is obviously standout but other parts of it rang false to me.
Going to quote a review I read on GR that articulates more of my issues with the read, spoiler-ing just in case:
But aside from the writing style, I grew bored with the story real quick. I'm sure when it first came out, it was amazing and it rattled cages and whatnot. I also got a lot of the anger Russ was expressing. But I couldn't identify with it. Part of it is the characters. There's no real women or men in here, just cardboard cutouts. Aside from the "J"s, all the women are either asinine or male versions of women, and all the men are chauvinistic sexaholics. It got old real quick.
The whole "get married, then stay at home and be pretty" lifestyle Russ rants about just did not apply to the black women of my childhood. My grandma did laundry for a living, put herself through nursing school and had several kids through different men (she eventually married the last one). She didn't have time to sit around looking pretty. There was this whole educated white woman privilege theme running through the story that grew wearying after a while. There were even a couple of scenes where Russ lapses into black slave "Massah" talk. I know she was trying to show how farcical it was for women to put on a show for men, but to try to compare that with how Black people were treated in that time was very ignorant and stupid on Russ's part.
slow few months of reading for me. started this last night and am flying through it. super informative and highly readable, definitely tickling the history nerd in me.
Started John Hawkes's The Cannibal this morning. The only other Hawkes book I've read is Second Skin, which left me cold. This one is going a bit better! Alas, my edition sports this cover:
It's currently placed on my desk at work, cover-side down. This is going up there with Memoirs of an Anti-Semite and Nazi Literature in the Americas in my canon of potentially embarrassing public reads.
I read Willie Masters' Lonesome Wife entirely at home, given that it consists of several images of a nude woman on the inside and that my particular edition had a photograph of a topless woman on the cover. The book was a quick read at least—I read it in one sitting—so the self-imposed limitations of where I could read it were not much of a hassle.
I recently finished People Who Eat Darkness (finally). Can you recommend me some similar gripping non-fiction? Not necessarily from the true crime shelf.
guy forget wrote:if you want any recs on more modern history or specific stuff i can do my best. messier object and upland trout also can probably make some good suggestions too, i think they both know a lot about environmental history (and likely are better read on the subject than i am). emotional fascism knows a lot too. beyond US history i only know a random smattering really and of that it's mostly european history with some east asian environmental history. i'm just one guy here!
and re: the female man i might have said this somewhere else but yeah, i was pretty into it but couldn't wind up finishing it because of that brutal scene maybe 3/4 of the way through where they go to the planet (?) where the men are "pretending" to be women. i've never felt so like rapidly and completely ejected from a book, and i think, while very different from the problem your quoted reviewer was outlining, speaks in another way to its disappointing & intermittent myopiaToggle Spoiler
On Hipinion, posters taxed their bonds and brotherhood, pushing themselves to the brink as a board and as buds.
Speaking of embarrassing book covers AND de Sade, I picked up the recent translation of The 120 Days of Sodom and there's naked butt on the cover. Thanks, Penguin.
only read the first part so far--really good, but grueling and difficult to carry around
gorgeous, my favorite modiano aside from young once
dug this one too
everyone should read this
now reading too many books at once:
really trying to savor this. know almost nothing about most of the people she writes about but it doesn't matter. want to read some hermann broch now.
only read the first chapter so far, which (the parts i understood anyway--i still don't quite get what he means by "political" and some other words) i found really interesting and insightful
mostly digging this--a good antidote to the antiseptic, abstract way think tank types conceive of war. the stuff on how saddam hussein needs to be brought to heel (written in the mid-90s) is troubling though
got this out of the library because keegan talks about it so much and i couldn't quite follow his references. seems like an important book to have some familiarity with. much more engaging and readable than i was expecting, also really twisted
Haaaaa. The got me. I didn't know it was on Satire! Got it. Peeps got jokes. It's cool!
Really loved the former, a great little introduction of poets with some background info to make their poetry feel more vibrant. Just the sort of thing I've been looking for for a while.
Autumn Journal has been a great before bed read, really pretty stuff,
started today:
My fourth book by Macaulay this year. Just a book of little chapters about things she likes, very poetical or maybe just because I've been reading a lot of poetry lately.
[PEACE] [LOVE] [UNITY] [RESPECT] (stay posi)
You are a sacred being of light projected into reality for a purpose. Demand the right to your moment in this holographic gift with no rules, no borders, except for those you choose to accept and live by.
Without Labour there is no Rest; nor without Fighting can the Victory be Won ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ
I'm close to finishing Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism, and barring some calamitous 180 in the last hundred pages, it's some of the most riveting political theory I've read. It starts slow, and there's a lot of foundations to be laid, but her arguments about statelessness and human rights as an abstraction hit hard. It seems hacky to recommend it as a "must read" in light of current events, but I think it's very useful in interpreting a lot of contemporary political trends
one of the writers profiled died after eating sixty meat dumplings for a dare
baby with giant head and his grandfather reminisce about life in rural china since 1949, the giant head baby is the grandfather's grandfather who was executed by the communists and then spent the following half-century reincarnating into different animals before becoming a baby with a giant head
the whole thing surrounding the '89 protests is fascinating to me, i've a lot of related books lined up, thought i'd start with this one.