The Orenda and Dangerous River look right up my alleyā¦think I may check them outā¦thanks.
I really recommend them both. Maybe not the Orenda if you are squeamish thoughā¦ its a great read though. There is some controversy with Joseph Boyden but I love his work.
The Dangerous River I read about once every couple years and dream of tripping the Nahanniā¦
I know a couple that did it. She had zero interest in goingā¦and absolutely loved it!
I didnt know there was a book thread. Hereās some good ones iāve read.
Fiction
B. Traven - The Treasure Of Sierra Madre
The Expanse Series
A Song of Ice and Fire series
Cormac Mccarthy - Blood Meridian
Ted Chang - Story of your life and others
Nonfiction
Wade Davis - One River
Will Durant - The Story of Philosophy
Bill Bryson - A Short History of Nearly Everything
Robert C. Clarke - Cannabis: Evolution and Ethnobotany
Carl Sagan - The Demon Haunted World: Science as a candle in the dark
Carl Sagan - The Dragons of Eden
Oliver Sacks - An Anthropologist on Mars
I read One River immediately after reading Magdalena River of Dreams. Davisā life is amazing.
Robert Greene is the man! Iām currently reading The Laws of Human Nature in my spare time at home. Also have his book
The Daily Laws in my workbag, which I read on my lunchbreak.
A friend liked it & sent me a copy & I got about a page or 2 in & said WTF this is horrible ā¦ machine written & just made me resent the future even more.
weird.
A friend liked it & sent me a copy & I got about a page or 2 in & said WTF this is horrible ā¦ machine written & just made me resent the future even more.
Hey Brother,
I sorta resent the future too, but I donāt get the āMachine Writtenā comment. Perhaps you are detecting the Chinese to English translation? Or?
Things must be looking up if you can transition from wounded to crabby! LoL
-Grouchy
.
A couple of good old books I`ve recently reread:
The Second Son - a second son of god doesn`t fit in with religions, politics or business. Great book.
Bloodshift - Cancer is contagious and will soon wipe out all humans on earth. Vampires are the next evolution of humanity. Should be made into a movie.
Baal - very dark book about demons in human form. More or less. Phenominal book, I read it many times.
.
If you like fantasy this is my favorite series. Iāve read the Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan and thatās my top. Robert Jordan worked on WOT for Decades and it was incomplete when he passed. Robert Jordanās wife called upon Brandon Sanderson to finish WOT with Robert Jordanās rough script. Saddening really because although he did a great job we can never really know Mr.Jordanās finish. Brandon Sanderson went on to crate the Stormlight Archives. When I started this series I knew he only release a book every 3-4 years and book 2 had just come out (there will be 10). So I understood it was something like a 24 year commitment. Waiting for November this year for the next one. This is the first book of the series. It is on Reddit as the #1 fantasy book.
I just finished the audiobook of 33 Strategies of War
I have that one downloaded but havenāt listened yet. I love 48 Laws of Power and have re-listened more than once. Itās funny how often people canāt get past the āvibeā of the book and think itās somehow sinister.
Carl Sagan - The Demon Haunted World: Science as a candle in the dark
This has been next to my bed for over a year. I want to read it so badly but never end up carving out the time. I love me some Carl.
A really good read. OK, I love mythology, but this is something more. Myths are a map of the human psyche. They would hardly have been maintained for thousands of years without saying something universal and important to all people. An interesting and not difficult read. In my opinion, it could be something that can help us get through today more easily
I just finished this book, and I feel that it is worthy of an enthusiastic recommendation.
A tasty little novel which provides yummy food for thought.
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
not to be confused with Balsac, the Jaws of Death
Hailed by Ezra Pound as the āAmerican Ovidā and renowned as a linguist and a self-described āamateur anthropologist,ā Jaime de Angulo drew on his forty years among the Pit River tribe of California to create the amalgam of fiction, folklore, tall tales, jokes, ceremonial ritual, and adventure that is Indian Tales. ā¦ True to the playful and imaginative spirit he portrays, de Angulo mischievously recommends to readers: āWhen you find yourself searching for some mechanical explanation, if you donāt know the answer, invent one. When you pick out some inconsistency or marvelous improbability, satisfy your curiosity like the old Indian folk: āWell, thatās the way they tell that story. I didnāt make it up!āā
Kerouakās writing reads smooth as poetry and this story gives a pretty good picture of the Beat Generation living outside the status quo. Easy, fascinating read.
When I was young we used to secretly read his banned Tropics books looking for the sexy parts, missing his search for self. In Big Sur, heās found it and the environment to live life without apology. To me, itās magical in that at times i feel heās there talking, telling stories with such a free, yet strong spirit, I want to hear more. I donāt think Iāll ever be without this book.
Perhaps you are detecting the Chinese to English translation?
Yessir, immediately thought of robotic kids who canāt be creative but excel at calculus
I felt guilty since it was a gift to me from an old friend who liked it & sent me a copyā¦.
OK, I love mythology, but this is something more.
I had joes book assigned as basically curriculum for an English class & dropped the course disputing the whole notion as a non thing (āthe heroās journeyā)!ā¦ ignores most of the worldās literature in favor of that which for his argument/thesisā¦
grumble grumble
A stoner-curated list of books? That is pure gold. Iām bookmarking this.
My initial nomination is The Holographic Universe, a non-fiction work about reality by Michael Talbot.
Itās quite dated (~30 years old) but if youāre just starting to explore things like quantum physics, reality, consciousness, and similar things, this will suit you well. It touches on the work of some pretty seminal figures and experts, and the author attempts to explain a variety of unexplained phenomena with his theory that, well, the universe is a hologram.
Agree or disagree with his thinking, this well-written book will take you on a journey and introduce you to some amazing ideas.
Iām happy to be back here and catch up on what yāall are reading!
I greatly enjoy the company of other book lovers and I wanted to add something of value here. So Iām going to take a leap of faith and review an interesting Author in the context of his work. His books have guided my sense of who he is, when he wrote and what he was trying to convey as a writer. I hope youāll find that interesting.
Iāve lately been reading the english-language fiction, from the late 1800ās to the aftermath of second world war, in the hope of understanding what may be coming next for us. Gertrude Stein coined the term, āLost Generationā for these writers and I think there are lessons to be learned from their work.
The writer in question is Thomas Wolfe, an American who lived from 1900 - 1938. He came to my attention because I believe the early 1900ās may have been an inflection point in human history.
I found the complete collection of Wolfeās novels & short stories as a Kindle book for minor ducats and thus had plenty of material to work with. I read three of Wolfeās four primary novels: āLook Homeward, Angel,ā āOf Time and the River,ā and āYou Canāt Go Home Again.ā After a few more of his short stories, I felt I had a good bead on his work and influences.
This was a period when huge strides were made in physical science, technology and a complete upheaval in philosophy and religion. The machines of industry and war got way ahead of our ability to control them. Social norms were left behind and established religions were beginning their long decline. Everything we knew suddenly seemed to be wrong and humanity flailed and coped as best it could. Perhaps this is analogous in some ways to our precious and fleeting era?
To begin with what I found praiseworthy, Wolfe does an excellent job of capturing the mood of the times in America in the early 1900ās. Everything imaginable was possible, but only for some. The class structure imported from Europe wasnāt yet consolidated and social mobility was possible for anyone with energy and talent. It was an exciting time to live and he conveys that sense like no one else. He also fearlessly portrays the bitter and ugly poverty that was becoming the fate of anyone who didnāt or couldnāt get on the bus labeled āSuccess.ā His descriptions of conditions in the slums and shanties are painful to read, but necessary to understand.
In āYou canāt go home again,ā he presents a theme for all time, the realization that the world we are born into recedes implacably as we mature is cannot be revisited. That sense of tragic nostalgia is as prevalent today as it was then.
Both of those themes make the books worth reading, but I found Wolfe deeply flawed as an author and thatās where Iāll focus this review.
Wolfe is a product of his times, and one canāt help but notice how deeply influenced he was by his contemporary, James Joyce. The stream of consciousness technique Joyce uses successfully in Ulysses, is mirrored frequently and annoyingly in Wolfeās novels. He goes on for page after page of deep detail that becomes meaningless without a plot to move it along.
The critics of his time relished the novelty, making it almost required for success. James Joyce pulls it off, but Wolfe stumbles and falls attempting page after page describing the squalor of NYC slums, or the grandeur of the rich mansions fronting the Hudson River Valley . Seeing the world through the eyes of James Joyce is invigorating, seeing it through Wolfeās quickly becomes tedious.
And that leads to a cascading series of structural flaws. The string of textual āPostcardsā are interspersed with thin and dissonant plot devices as we are led through the haphazard life stories of an enormous and mostly irrelevant plethora of characters.
Two of the primary works, āLook Homeward Angel,ā and āOf time and the river,ā revolve around the Gant family, a large clan inhabiting a fictional city in the mountains east of North Carolina. A handful of the characters populate both books, notably Eugene Gant, who we follow from childhood to the jaded ennui of a failed career as an educator and writer. Dozens of other characters come and go with much discussion but little effect or resolution. Wolfe seems content to create characters simply to spin a colorful but innocuous tale, before moving on to the next disconnected plot point.
Perhaps a saving grace note, is that the prevailing ethos, the gestalt of his times was best expressed by T.S. Elliot in his verse, The Hollow Men." Itās not clear to me that this theme needed yet another authorās attention, everyone from F. Scott Fitzgerald to Ernest Hemingway, had a wack at explaining both the exhilaration of technological innovation, and the nightmare of mass slaughter in the first World War.
Thomas Wolfe takes a turn at the job and does a credible job. He imparts the sense of unreality of parents who lived through the American Civil War, saw the mechanized warfare the first World War, and handed that off to an affluent but dislocated generation, who were soon to witness the world in flames again as Hitler rose to power.
Thatās the overview; Wolfe is a competent writer of his times, and his books are vivid and full of spicy characters and scenes of the times. Very readable, despite the flaws, Wolfeās greatest failing comes in an unexpected area: plot lines!
The same characters appear in 'Look Homeward Angel," and āOf time and the river.ā Similar characters populate āYou canāt go home again,ā to the point you feel like the morose Eugene Gant has been reincarnated! They are all familiar in thought and action and it would be interesting to see Eugene confronted by a cleverly constructed plot twist that pushed the limits of the character. Instead, however, Wolfe takes us on a random walk through time and place, small towns, big cities, America, England, Germany, etc., during a protracted history from the late 1800ās to post war 1940ās. And yet, with all of that scope to work with, nothing ever really happens!
Well, thatās not entirely true, things do happen, sometimes with great potential, but whenever a choice morsel of real life is on offer, our hero politely declines. He lacks the character or self confidence to engage. Eugene is a Hollow Man and, in the end, thereās really nothing much to see. The result is a series of colorful picture postcards addressed to the reader with nothing on the message side.
Another glaring flaw in Wolfeās writing is his cavalier treatment of Race and Class in America. His descriptions of Black America may be technical accurate renditions of the way people spoke but they are difficult to read. He uses the āN-Wordā frequently but without hate or rancor. The language is clearly a reflection of what he sees and hears in his day, but Iāll offer a āTrigger Warningā here for those who cannot tolerate this historical shifting of cultural norms. His treatment of Jews is similarly cringeworthy. I donāt believe his intent was malicious or hateful, but it is sobering to think that his words are an accurate rendition of how people spoke at the time.
I donāt expect this amateur review to inspire any new Wolfe readers, but I do think he provides a glimpse into a period of time that has lessons for today. Our world is exploding with new and powerful technology and I think at least part of the problem we face is a disconnect with a recent past that feels increasingly naive and irrelevant in the rapid pace of events.
And thatās all I have to say about that!
-Grouchy