So in the next few days I am off to visit the family.
I was going to get Lance Armstrong's book, but I guess everyone is getting it for xmas instead.
So any good recomendations of books I could pick up for the day I travel?
Thanks everyone.
Og.
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Oh! I read that too. Fantastic book! I also read In the Heart of the Sea, a true story about a whale sinking a Nantucket Whaler. It was the story that inspired Moby Dick. I learned a lot and it was a good read....
I like all of the above mentioned book (except haven't read Heart of the Sea). But to this list I'd like to add "Zero Game" by Brad Meltzer. Very quick paced book I read it in two sittings which is pretty rare for me.
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"So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable."
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I asked for two books for Christmas. The first is "Fight Club" (like the movie). I was told the book was just fantastic, so thought I'd give it a read.
The second is "Moneyball", by Michael Lewis. It talks about the new GM strategies in MLB. I'm a baseball nut, so this is a must-read for me.
"The DaVinci Code" and "Angels and Demons" are both quite good. I just finished reading "Digital Fortress" by Dan Brown - it was okay. I'm nerdy enough to understand that the whole premise of the book (the undecipherable code) is essentially impossible. It was pretty cookie-cutter, but not bad.
I'm really looking forward to the next Harry Potter novel. It's not due out for another year or so, I think. [img]smile.gif[/img]
I'm reading "What Went Wrong? The Conflict Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East" by Bernard Lewis. An interesting read that tells how the Middle East became as it is today. If you like war books, I'd recommend Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried" (about Vietnam). It's one of my favorites, and I have four of his other books on my dresser, waiting to be read after I finish Lewis.
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"If it felt good, you didn't push hard enough. It's supposed to hurt like hell." - Dean Karnazes' track coach, Ultramarathon Man
"My baby's soft and sweet, somewhere between a flower and a gun" - fiction family
In paperback, Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, is fascinating.I read it straight through on the Acela from Boston to Philadelphia. Here's the flap copy description.
"Winner of the Pulitzer Prize. In this "artful, informative, and delightful" (William H. McNeill, New York Review of Books) book, Jared Diamond convincingly argues that geographical and environmental factors shaped the modern world. Societies that had had a head start in food production advanced beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, and then developed religion --as well as nasty germs and potent weapons of war --and adventured on sea and land to conquer and decimate preliterate cultures. A major advance in our understanding of human societies, Guns, Germs, and Steel chronicles the way that the modern world came to be and stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science, the Rhone-Poulenc Prize, and the Commonwealth club of California's Gold Medal."
Also, in hard cover a new book on the flu epidemic of 1918 is great, if scary in revising death toll to 100,000,000. Title may be just "Flu." ? Amazon.
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"It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in an argument." William Gibbs McAdoo. US Vice-President under Woodrow Wilson.
Heh, excellent book, unfortunately I have read that one [img]smile.gif[/img]
Og.
__________________ 2009: No races, No times. Slow year. So, now you're 96 cals short. You're now in starvation mode. Doomed. - LostDog
Blog entry: November 1, 2009, Pancakes LiveSTRONG daily plate log
I just finished The Librarian, by Larry Beinhart. His main claim to fame is his previous novel, American Hero, which was made into the movie Wag the Dog.
It's the fictional story of the 2004 election, published in October, and probably written even before the Iowa caucuses.
But it feels as if Beinhart wrote it minutes before the election -- it's that eery and immediate.
If you like Bush, Cheney, Scalia, Scaife, and the others in their circle, you definitely don't want to read this book.
But if you, like me, distrust this group so completely that sometimes you wonder if America is even a democracy anymore, this is the book that speaks to all your fears and anxieties ... and actually makes them worse.
Originally posted by Lou Schuler: But if you, like me, distrust this group so completely that sometimes you wonder if America is even a democracy anymore, this is the book that speaks to all your fears and anxieties ... and actually makes them worse.
Funny thing is that America is actually becoming MORE democratic--not less--a trend that caused the downfall of other major societies in history. People in large groups are inherently stupid. True democracy means "one person, one vote" (look what's happened to California). Granted, the current administration is leaning toward an autocratic regime (and is so far left that either Roosevelt would look at this bunch of yahoos and go "damn"), but republican (small "r") government is still the best political balance of liberty and security that humanity has seen so far.
*steps down from his news-talk radio soapbox* [img]smile.gif[/img]
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Are you talking about the initiative process in CA?
If so, I agree that it's a disaster. For one thing, it lets the legislature avoid its main purpose, which is making tough decisions in the course of creating laws.
However, I'm not sure that's a failure of democracy so much as the triumph of special interests posing as civic-minded organizations. You come up with an idea that helps a small number of people, often at the expense of many others, and convince people it's the best thing for everyone.
If you're a libertarian I'm sure you'll disagree with me on this, but Prop 13, the anti-tax initiative, managed to separate California's education system from its wealth. So you have this wealthy state that, if it were a nation, would have one of the 10 biggest economies in the world, with crumbling school systems.
Also, I wouldn't describe what they're doing in Washington as "far left." They're behaving as totalitarian states always behave in the early stages, by lavishly rewarding the faithful and choking off the opposition.
The redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the richest Americans is more suggestive of a Third World banana republic, where the leaders wear big hats and pin medals on the chests of those who failed the most spectacularly.
If these guys were socialists, they might be just as shortsighted and corrupt, but at least they'd give the people some healthcare and invest in education.
Somewhere in the middle of the extremes lies a decent and workable system of government.
I just finished my first James Baldwin book (I'm almost ashamed to say I never heard of the guy until my girlfriend lent me one of his books), 'If Beale Street Could Talk'. I really have never read anything like this before. In fact, I just picked up 'A Very Long Engagement', and I started it but I can't bring myself to keep reading it. After reading Baldwin, I just can't go back to more traditionally written books (eh, I'm sure I'll finish it sometime or another).
Anyway - if you haven't read his stuff before, do yourself a favor a check it out.
Originally posted by Phaedrus49er: People in large groups are inherently stupid.
To some degree, I think that holds true...
... but a quote from Churchill comes to mind (and I'm going from memory here so that's always dangerous):
"Democracy is the second worst form of government. All the rest are first."
We certainly make our share of mistakes but we at least retain the ability to try to "fix" things even if it winds up meaning that we just made new mistakes. Since this thread is about books and I don't want to hijack it too much, there was a good book about Prop 13 that I read in grad school but I've long since tossed it and don't remember the author.
Originally posted by Q.: Since this thread is about books and I don't want to hijack it too much, there was a good book about Prop 13 that I read in grad school but I've long since tossed it and don't remember the author.
Good call. I started a new thread.
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