Sometimes you just need a good book to escape the brutal summer heat, humidity, mosquitoes plaguing America thanks to global warming (or the slushy mosquito filled taiga and bitter cold of Canadia).
SugarFree
Connie Willis’ The Doomsday Book, 1992 winner of the Hugo and the Nebula. Historians time travel to the past in order to record an accurate view of history, perfectly inevitable complications ensue. Not a completely new idea or anything, but Willis does a good job here, even if the novel itself could have used an editor with a strong hand. The book gets bogged down in the scenes set in the current time frame which runs as a comedy of manners set among the bumbling and back-biting academics of Oxford overseeing the project. The scenes in the past also have some repetition in the narrative which should have been caught.
I’ve also been re-reading the Matt Helm books by Donald Hamilton for the first time since I was a teenager. They are satisfying little plot machines that chug along supported by Hamilton’s terse prose.
I read quite a bit of the men’s adventure genre when I was in high school, like the first 80 or so Remo Williams the Destroyer novels by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir, the Proto-Punisher The Executioner series by Don Pendleton, Jerry Ahern’s The Survivalist, the Casca books by Barry Sadler (the artist behind “The Ballard of the Green Beret”) and even a smattering of the further regions of the genre as it overlapped with science fiction in C.A.D.S. (post-apocalypse man-rape Red Dawn) and T.N.T. (nuclear-powered superman acid trip.) It’s strange to think that the men’s adventure genre is almost completely dead. Not surprising, though, given the plunging reading rates for teenage and college-age males.
jesse.in.mb
Rhys Bowen’s In Farleigh Field: A Novel of World War II. If historical fiction about Britain in WWII and ladies working at Bletchley Park is your thing, this book’s for you.
A little more frivolous is Shirtless Bear Fighter from Image Comics. I appreciate Image’s willingness to get weird, and weird is how they get with SBF. Imagine a world where a kickass and pretty frequently naked (and always shirtless) man raised by bears goes on a bear punching spree. It’s absolutely ridiculous and I’m looking forward to future issues.
JW
Playboy, but just for the pictures. He promises.
Old Man With Candy
It’s been a bad month for reading- work crunches, jesus-is-it-Tuesday-already? website demands, and trying to catch up on the writing I get paid for… shitty excuses. But I still did manage to pile through Robert Silverberg’s The Alien Years, which I had somehow skipped when it came out. In a sense, it’s The Aristocrats of science fiction, a story that’s been done a million times, but it’s still fun to watch someone masterful riff on it. There’s a lot of Niven-Pournelle influence on the story, and that’s not a bad thing. But at its core, it’s still pure Silverberg.
Riven
After reading the entire Hollows series last month, I’ve really slowed down. You know when you finish a book series and it feels like you lost a good friend? Yeah. SugarFree recommended to me–you’ll notice I read a lot of SF recs–the Sandman Slim series to help fill the void. The first book was pretty enjoyable, but I’ve yet to pick up the second. It definitely had a pulpy, noir feel to go with the detective atmosphere. While it dealt with supernatural topics–demons, angels, vamps, etc.–it was firmly set in present-day Hollywood, but it managed not to pit these elements against each other. I liked the nuance in the characters: angels aren’t necessarily “good,” demons aren’t always 100% a dick, some characters are flawed and others are biased. I was also pleased that there wasn’t a big, sappy romance in the middle of what was essentially a story about revenge, and a rather gory one, at that. I’m sure ‘Slim’ will eventually meet and settle down with some seriously broken-inside femme fatale (and they’ll magically fix/complete each other), but I’m glad that it’s a story for another book in the series. It’s likely that I will pick up the next book next month, unless I’m still stuck on the Hollows, which I’ve debated rereading in its entirety.
Brett L.
Mark Lawrence’s latest work Red Sister, which I started pimping last month is totally worth your money. Yes, yes, it has the person-equivalent of a nuclear weapon living in a village far from anywhere who just happens to fall into the hands of someone who can train them to be great, but his ability to add some subtle twists and turns to the genre stable is what makes Lawrence a standout writer.
In a disappointing moment, Charlie Stross’ latest Laundry novel Delirium Brief was like re-reading the 5th book of the Dark Tower series all over again. Watching a beloved series just fucking shred itself in front of your eyes is really sad. I will say that the action moves right along, but there are some ginormous fucking plot holes. Somehow this [SPOILER-LADEN RANT REDACTED]. Anyhow, I am disappoint.
Additionally, I found the femlit equivalent to dudelit “harem building”. If you’re not familiar with the trope, somehow the brave male hero manages to attract not one but usually three or more women who should be a match for him and they are all willing to share him. It seems to run rampant in the Amazon Unlimited universe. In the Curse of the Gods series, a young woman of the serving race (yes, race) is taken to be a servant to a school of (basically) demigods, and what do you know the four most powerful brother who are outright demigods basically adopt her, demand that she be schooled with them, and make a pact to not have sex with her, even though they want to (and she seems pretty down), because being demigods they might literally kill her. I will probably not be reading any additional books in the series, but it was an interesting trope inversion.
SP
I’m looking through Real Artists Don’t Starve by Jeff Goins. If you aren’t familiar with him, you can learn a bit about what he’s about here. Nothing earth-shaking within, but I personally like Jeff, so I picked it up.
With uncertainty swirling around us in the current work world, I’ve started reading Start Late, Finish Rich by David Bach. Not much new here, but Bach at least makes the reader feel as if they can change their condition. Spoiler: spend less, save more and invest more. (On a related side note, I’m a big fan of services that allow one to micro invest on autopilot. <– not intended to be financial advice.)
In fiction, I’ve just started Justice Burning, the second outing for Scott Pratt’s Darren Street character, a traumatized former defense attorney. I am not as big a fan of Street as I am of Joe Dillard, Pratt’s protagonist in his earlier series, but I’ll probably finish it.
sloopyinca
Sloop is reading The Neverending Story and contemplating whether the chapters constitute a countable infinity.
Playa Manhattan
When I’m not enjoying the infographics at USA Today (McDonald’s newspaper of record), I read cookbooks. Currently, I’m reading Modernist Cuisine.
I love the Matt Helm stories. Donald Hamilton had to have been at least a proto-libertarian. That’s not an easy thing to do, when your protagonist is a professional hitter in USG employ…
I don’t understand why most writers aren’t raving libertarians. The state provides virtually no support to their work in material means yet taxes and social security taxes the shit out of them.
I mean, I guess a heavy social welfare net means a writer won’t starve, but I’m pretty behind the idea that a writer who can’t find an audience is probably not a very good writer.
I’m similarly surprised top athletes aren’t either. To become a world-class athlete in a highly competitive field means logging hours and hours and hours of honing your body and your skills.
Because of the hours of training, they havent spent hours thinking.
On the other hand, wasn’t Cal Ripken a big Ayn Rand fan?
I’ll give athletes a pass on this one. They are paid for their bodies. Writers are paid for their thoughts.
I see what you’re getting at, but I would think that if an athlete heard a politician say something to the effect of “You didn’t build that”, his reflexive reaction would be “Fuck you, it took me decades of sweat, discipline, and dedication to get here.”
I’m pretty behind the idea that a writer who can’t find an audience is probably not a very good writer.
Certainly true these days. With Amazon digital self publishing, there are no more gatekeepers keeping your books from being found by the masses. Amanda Hocking is one of the best known examples, but there have been many others.
Even when there were gatekeepers, I wonder how much sellable literature was going unpublished. I mean, there were always small publishing houses that would put out anything they thought would make a buck.
A good amount, I think. Publishers rarely took unsolicited manuscripts, and the small publishing houses couldn’t get their books on the shelves unless the author was known.
Of course publishing was a very expensive proposition in the pre-digital era. You couldn’t just print up books and see what happened, that was a quick path to bankruptcy.
I love the Matt Helm series. More info on the books here.
The Casca series were exceptional, because they were also really well researched military history for being basic popcorn reads.
The Destroyer series was always hilarious. I wish the movie had done some sequels.
Don Pendleton stuff was mostly gun porn, but I read a Sci-fi novel by him that did a really good job of breaking down the issues of interstellar flight and FTL travel. It actually kept me up all night, thinking about the implications when I was in high school.
Have never read Matt Helm, though. Just remember the James Coburn movies.
I’m reading this book so I can keep in touch with the thinking of the yoketarians and their tractor pulls.
Braille: The language you sexually assualt.
I could get behind that.
You don’t “get behind” braille. You finger it.
Brett, the Laundry news is really disappointing. I’m picking up the The Nightmare Stacks now, and finished Rhesus after I read The Annihilation Score. Hated Annihilation, thought Rhesus was all right. I can see how the ending was memorable for most. Thought he was really ramping up the SJW bullshit in Annihilation, with almost a checklist quality to the writing. (“All right, I’ve got two women—one of color—one gay, two Pakistanis: Hmmm, what other groups can I include in this scene?”) Major characters and organizations acting completely against the type we’d expected in the previous 4-5 novels didn’t help.
How does Delirium compare to those two? Oh, and thanks for omitting the spoilers.
Read everything through Annihilation. Unless it’s highly recommended, I’m passing on Nightmare and any new stuff.
Rhesus’ end must’ve been too hard for Stross to follow.
I really liked Nightmare. It follows one of the PHANGs from Rhesus and contains no Bob or Mo.
Agreed. It was a great book. A true return to the early times.
Riiight. How to explain this… The Nightmare Stacks is a pretty good return to form. Bob and Mo are pretty much entirely off-stage, so Charlie has a much easier time dodging the Dresden Effect*. Delirium picks up immediately after that. And we’re back in Bob’s world, mostly. People from the past magically reappear and are way more powerful than they were. Which is one way to fight the Dresden Effect. If your heroes level up, so must your enemies. But I didn’t care for the way Charlie did it.
*For people who haven’t read Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files, the hero keeps leveling up to barely survive fighting enemies, but is eventually basically leveled up to an arch-angel, complete with God-given soulfire and genocide. Its a common trope in modern fantasy series.
Since I read Annihilation before Rhesus, this is what I was expecting to happen for the last two/thirds of that book: all of the people involved in the Code Red showing up no worse for wear.
I get the Dresden effect, and I think Stross at his blog pretty much said at some point that’s what was going to happen. Fine, I could see Alex being a Bob 2.0, and I get that Bob is supposed to be an unreliable narrator (though I’m not a fan of it being increasingly trendy in novels.). It was just that you spend 5 books setting up the universe to behave one way (magic is math, all of it’s supposed to be treated in a MiB-style of secrecy, enforced by death if need be, etc…) And Boom! Superheros are everywhere!
Not to mention I think the Laundryverse is also suffering from a bit of what ailed Niven’s Known Space towards the end: you invent a gadget to solve a particular problem (stasis fields, GP hulls, entities so smart there’s only one right answer to any problem) and then you have to account for why those gadgets wouldn’t solve your problems in subsequent books.
Sounds like another library special. Thanks for the added commentary.
It takes me a long time to get through a Dresden files book. I keep losing my place with all the eye-rolling.
I still think Dresden is very good popcorn fiction. I just turn my brain off and enjoy the zombie t-rexes and magic explosions.
They are atrociously written, but God help me… I want to know what happens next.
I’m always exhausted by the end of them. I swear I won’t read another, eventually cave and read the next one, love the first half to three quarters of the book, and end up exhausted by the end again.
Over the next couple of decades I might make it through the whole series.
I have been thumbing through some old wood working magazines (not a euphemism!) to see if there are some tips I can use on a few projects I have.
It’s strange to think that the men’s adventure genre is almost completely dead.
We’ll always have My Little Pony.
On my docket:
•Crisis of Abundance
•Catastrophic Care (H/T many Glibs pointing me to it)
•When Boston Rode the EL
•City Unique (H/T Rufus)
Also I picked up a copy of Baylen Linnekin’s newest book. I’ve only been through the first chapter so far, but god damn does he ever abuse the term “sustainable.” By my estimation, “sustainable” isn’t even defined or described at any point prior to its [excessive] use.
I am in a storage space packing thousands of records into boxes and am covered in a film of sweat and dust and can feel the airborne mold seeping into my lungs and asscrack and forming new kinds of burning rashes
Reading record covers and telling stories about where they came from
It’s mostly Aspergillus (the white chalky stuff on the sleeves and records themselves.) Just don’t dig around in your ears and take a long hot shower when you get home.
Just don’t dig around in your ears and take a long hot shower when you get home.
Oh you’re kidding
(Literally standing in towel with one finger in ear)
For the tiniest moment, I thought I was reading a short blip from Agile Cyborg’s stream-of-consciousness.
I am in a storage space packing thousands of records into boxes and am covered in a film of sweat and dust and can feel the airborne mold seeping into my lungs and asscrack and forming new kinds of burning rashes
I’ll be in my bunk
Lynch’s Gentleman Bastard series is a fun read.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00PL9LM48?ref=series_rw_dp_labf
Starting Monster Hunters International soon. Anyone have a review?
I liked the Gentleman Bastard series quite a bit.
I’ve read the first 3 novels of the Monster Hunters. I’d give it a “meh” rating. Not bad, not great. Fine fare to mix in with the rest of your reading list.
I’ve read the first. I hope you like gun-porn. Fast enough read, some neat takes on monster tall tales and cryptozoology. Marty and Mary Sue don’t make an appearance, but you can see their shadow lurking under the surface.
Uh, I think the gun toting, ass-kicking, panty dropping accountant in the book *may possibly* be a Marty Sue for the accountant-author.
Oh, like Sam in Game of Thrones is supposed to be GRR Martin (even if Martin would rather be Tyrion.), Sam isn’t a Westeros-stomping badass. Owen OTOH, pretty much is in MIH, but—and I realize this is going to come to personal taste—to me, he’s not quite so obnoxious as to deserve the Marty Stu badge. Yet. Are Books 2+ worse in that regard?
But yeah, I’d read Correia’s blog, and knew he was an accountant before author-dom, plus being a large dude, kinda’ like Owen. I still didn’t put 2 and 2 together until your comment.
I only read the first one, because it made me very uncomfortable. Maybe its a lifetime of consume art from artist that have nothing in common with me socially or politically, but I don’t enjoy this kind of red-meat escapist power-fantasy when it comes from a creator that shares my social outlook. This is even though I really enjoy escapist power fantasies (Howard’s Connan being one of my favorites). I think I’m afraid of it making intellectually soft.
Yep. I love Correia’s blog, but that series is some masturbatory stuff.
Concur with the others. I’ve read all up to the one just released. They’re not serious or the greatest reads but keep you interested. That’s fine with me and I think is what Larry C intended.
I liked Son of the Black Sword a bit more. Am thinking about jumping into The Grimnoir Chronicles but am still on the fence.
I really enjoyed Grimnoir. Very entertaining alternative history.
He calmed down on the whole HOLY CRAP I REALLY LOVE GUNS AND HATE THE GOVERNMENT!!!
I liked the Monster Hunter series and that bothered me a little, but he definitely improves as the series goes along.
Son of a Black Sword was excellent in my opinion.
I liked the Grimnoir Chronicles much better than the MHI series.
Gentlemen Bastards is fun stuff, although I thought the last one kinda went off the rails at the end.
Monster Hunters is good popcorn reading – fast, easy, with lots of gunfire, explosions, and gore.
Mad props on Mark Lawrence. Haven’t read any of his stuff I didn’t like. I actually thought the transition of the heroine of Red Sister from a kid in a tiny village to getting trained as a one-chick WMD was well handled, but I won’t spoiler it.
I actually thought the transition of the heroine of Red Sister from a kid in a tiny village to getting trained as a one-chick WMD was well handled, but I won’t spoiler it.
I agree, in case that didn’t come through.
Fuck, I missed book thread and now am reduced to Hihning it 🙁
MHI was initially written in installments for regular visitors of a gun blog Correia was hanging out on. Hence the oddly episodic structure, the gun porn and the almost-but-not-quite Mary Sue protagonist based on the writer.
The focus is lifted off Pitt after second book, and Nemesis in particular is an enjoyable look on the non MHI (the company) parts of the MHI universe.
He’s grown immensely as a writer since first MHI. I’d have never believed same dude wrote MHI and Son of the Black Sword, which topped every Moorcock book for me (even Hawkmoon, whom I adore) and almost tied Howard.
not enough laughter or accusations of aggression.
…
Wow! O.K., high praise. Next in the queue it is.
Good to hear he improved.
Another fair warning: although many plot threads are concluded and many explanations given in a satisfying manner, it is a part of the series. Next books haven’t been written, but they are high in his priority queue. He has a good working ethic, but he’s been spreading himself thin lately – I think he has two collaboration books (not counting two he did with John Ringo already), an anthology and next MHI book all coming out this year. He also still (far as I know) does Warmachine books which are probably important to get on deadline.
So basically, series might not be done before 2019. I just trust him to wrap it up without multi-year delays common to some other writers.
>>which topped every Moorcock book for me (even Hawkmoon, whom I adore) and almost tied Howard.
My eyebrow couldn’t be raised more. I guess this is now next on my list
Oh shit!
If you like
a) weird sexual stuff
b) bizarre creatures
c) lovingly described slaughter
and hate
a) Tolkien
b) Conan
c) Thatcher
Moorcock will be better.
Please also keep in mind, Hawkmoon is the only fantasy series of his I like. I understand what he was doing with Elric, but it left me cold.
I like Moorcock and REH both quite a bit, although I haven’t read much Hawkmoon. Its on my big list of stuff to read. But I rather like both Elric and Conan.
Its just that if anyone puts anything on par with Moorcock and REH, I’m going to check it out.
Finishing up “2666” by Roberto Bolano. Its…..interesting. A meandering novel about legacies (I think) written by a man who was dying, and ultimately did die prior to publication. He was very good at creating complex and believable characters, but also goes off on some seemingly, to me anyway, irrelevant tangents.
“Meandering Tangents” would describe that novel to a tee and would also be a great name for a Trance Rock band.
I don’t understand why most writers aren’t raving libertarians. The state provides virtually no support to their work in material means yet taxes and social security taxes the shit out of them.
Interesting point. Not long ago I saw a thing about artists- painters, for instance, can only deduct their actual material costs, so the revenue from a painting is almost entirely “profit”. I doubt you could (successfully) argue to the IRS, “I’ve been torturing a book out of this idea for a decade, so at least let me income average the proceeds over that period.”
As well, when we artists donate a piece of art to an auction for a good cause or whatever, we can only deduct the cost of the materials, not our time and not what the piece actually brings for the charity.
I wonder if you could incorporate, pay yourself a salary and make the book a work for hire owned by the corporation you own and then deduct your salary?
Yes. But then you are on the hook for even more of a paperwork nightmare with employment taxes on state and federal levels. There is no way to win.
Almost all of my writing income is paid to my business, not me. It only marginally helps.
Before you have a stream of income from writing, you’d be doing reverse tax deferral. Without the corp, you don’t pay any taxes until the book pays you. With the corp, you are paying income and payroll taxes every year, regardless of whether the book pays, ever.
Also begs the question of where the corp is getting the money to pay you if the book isn’t paying.
Now, if you have a stream of income already from writing, running it through a corp could maybe help with taxes, but only if its not a pass-through entity.
“I am pleased to report that the Nassau County Attorney confirms that Roger Waters’ proposed upcoming tour dates at the Nassau Coliseum are indeed in violation of Local Law 3-2016. Allowing Waters, who actively promotes and encourages others to withdraw from commercial relations with Israel and other “BDS” activities as defined by the law to perform at a County owned facility that must comply with all local requirements and governing laws not only violates the law, and the Coliseum Lease, but offends the sense of decency held by our residents.”
content-based censorship?
What an outrage!!! Everyone’s first amendment rights are in jeopardy!!! You can’t force people to do business with a group they find reprehensible!!! Now bake me a cake.
They also have Barry Manilow scheduled.
And Googling him, I just found out Manilow is gay. You could have knocked me over with a feather.
“He’s just a nice boy that loves his Mother!” exclaimed every elderly woman at Del Boca Vista.
I’ve been finishing up Lady of the Lake of the Witcher series. Also been hitting The Twelve Caesars here and there for the past month.
COMPTIA A+ test prep book.
Actually more fun to read than I thought it would be.
Modernist Cuisine is an A+
It makes me realize that I’m lacking in kitchen equipment.
I don’t have a combi or a centrifuge.
Put a tupperware in a sock. Swing it around. Congratulations. You have a centrifuge.
These euphemisms are getting kinda culinary.
Does it go 20,000 rpms?
Warty could do that.
Yeah, but he can’t be trusted with meat blood.
That’s entirely up to you. More seriously, I think you’d get more like 1-2% of that.
Well, as long as you have the spray-dryer…
The combi is worth the spend. I don’t find much need for the centrifuge.
Finished Lucid Blue today (HT USC). Good, but I look forward to getting back to the regular perspective in ShadowRealm, which I will read as soon as my kindle gets connected to wifi at home.
I’m about two chapters into The Ascent of Money based on one of the Gliberatti recommending it. No comment on it yet, but it sets itself up as something I want to read.
American Rifle. Amazing how much in this book has turned into common wisdom in the gun community. Don’t have enough perspective to comment on the accuracy but I felt like the die-hard vs progressive narrative was a bit forced. But maybe not.
I’ve been listening to a bunch of short stories on the Audible Channel Alternate Reality. Some good. Some jumped-up lit fic. A Quiet, Dry War was the standout. Text here: http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/quietwar.htm but the narration was good.
I purchases Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass but have been putting off listening to it, for which I feel great guilt. FD is one of the great historic American figures I wish I knew more about, but my brain doesn’t want me to read that book right now. Glibs – how dry or how readable is this book?
For Glibs who enjoyed “Ascent of Money,” you might* enjoy two of Peter Bernstein’s books, “Against the Gods” and “The Power of Gold.”
*Disclaimer: see reactions to some of my earlier reading ideas before reading either of these.
you might* enjoy two of Peter Bernstein’s books, “Against the Gods”
Take a look at it now?
Does anyone have a recommendation for a broad stroke world history book? Nothing too dense, just leisure reading. Thanks.
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
New world, anyway. Written by a long-form journalist, not an academic.
Thanks
For social history, there is the entertaining At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson. Some stuff he gets not quite exactly right, but it’s a light read that ties world events into practical results in people’s lives.
I read “a short history of nearly everything” and really enjoyed it. I’ll add it to the list.
Blainey, Short History of the World.
For the 20th century, Conquest, Reflections on a Ravaged Century
Looking for recos for science history, along the lines of Richard Rhodes or David Bodanis.
Tuxedo Park by Jennet Conant.
That looks really interesting! Will be a nice complement to The Making of the Atomic Bomb
The Scientist as Rebel by Freeman Dyson would also dovetail nicely – it’s written as a series of essays, including an excellent chapter on Oppenheimer. Marie Curie by Susan Quinn is an atypical and less reverent biography – Paul Langevin affair is well-documented.
It only deals with 8 or 9 events but James Burke, The Day the Universe Changed is good.
There’s a lot of Niven-Pournelle influence on the story, and that’s not a bad thing
Currently burning through the Man-Kzin Wars series while I think about what to start next. I think I’m going to get out of Known Space for awhile and maybe revisit some Cherryh,
Niven’s got a new collaboration with Matthew Harrington, who wrote two of the (IMHO) more interesting installments in the gigantic Man-Kzin shared universe. Haven’t read it yet, it’s sitting on my counter. It’s gotta be better than his last collaboration with Stephen Barnes. Yech. And I liked Dream Park and The California Voodoo Game.
Trying to get through The Hydrogen Sonata and then The Nightmare Stacks. I’m not what you’d call an early adopter.
Very cool, I’ll keep an eye out for it. I always found the Thrint idea scattered throughout the universe to be interesting but it doesn’t like they’ve done too much with it other than part of a short story here and there.
Charlie Gard has died.
The State’s Will be done. Blessed be the State!
If you’re worried about your blood pressure being too low, read this analysis in the New York Times.
Oh, good, I was worried I wouldn’t be able to maintain my rage all day!
Don’t believe your lying eyes people, nothing to see here.
FML, I am going to have a much better existence when my “10 free articles” runs out at the NYT.
“even as the High Court judge presiding over the case, Nicholas Francis, countered that to make a scapegoat out of Britain’s National Health Service was “nonsensical.”
Umm, so a declarative statement with no evidence wins the day? I guess when it fits the narrative no explanation is needed.
I started skimming it and when I got to the question “Should parents or doctors or the courts have the final say in irreconcilable disputes over the treatment of sick children?”
A voice in my head said “WHY SHOULD THE COURT HAVE ANY SAY, YOU FUCKING RETARDS!”
So I quit before I got worse.
incurably, right there, fourth word, and they show themselves already. We want to set the tone that this boy was a lost cause to begin with.
I’m going through “Economics in One Lesson” a couple chapters at a time every night. I will be recommending it to every person I think might get even the slightest benefit from it, because it is utterly fantastic. Clear, concise, does an excellent job of laying out the consequences of each action. Also lends credence to my theory that economics really is not that complicated, it just requires the ability to think through consequences.
Should be required reading for every econ 101 class.
Agreed. I loaned it to my sister because she said she didn’t understand economics. She gave it back unread because it was boring. Horse. Water. What ya gonna do?
Yep. Hard to educate someone who doesn’t want to be educated.
I’m going through “Economics in One Lesson” a couple chapters at a time every night.
Well then it’s not one lesson, is it?
I’m reading Reason for the first time in a month or two today.
This was a mistake that I now regret.
My thoughts and prayers are with you.
Suderman is whining about Republicans and healthcare, Gillespie is whining about trannies in the military, and Dalmia has an article. The comments are mostly awful.
It’s kind of like being frozen and waking up a hundred years in the future to see your old neighbourhood gone completely post-apocalyptic.
Dalmia’s the reason I haven’t posted once over there since we made the move here. Why do they employ her? (and Suderman for that matter)
My theory is that Dalmia has photos of Gillespie in blackface or with an underage Thai ladyboy or something.
In reality I’m guessing she’s an obvious equity hire to ‘diversify’ their content.
The Norks and the Iranians are going nuclear, the greatest healthcare system in the world for 350 million people is being deliberately wrecked, the government is riddled with socialists whose deliberate undermining of the president is sedition, global warmers are trying to scam 1T bucks out of the US,…shall I go on? And that is what Gillespie is worried about?
Shut up Gillespie. The military isnt a social experiment laboratory, it’s job is to kill people.
But I wouldn’t expect Gillespie to have any substantial thoughts on those subjects either.
I’m of the opinion that the best thing he could do for the libertarian cause is retire.
I still somewhat have a soft spot for Gillespie because he was willing to call Rachel Maddow on her tendencies to be partisan as fuck on Bill Maher.
But yeah, he’s way past his prime especially with the articles you mentioned above. I think the reason why Reason has turned into some sort of Anti-Trump magazine as opposed to a libertarian magazine, is because the people who they hang with hates Trump with a passion and of course he fucks with their sensibilities.
I fuckin’ hate Trump because of many things but probably mostly because of his bullshit and terrible stance on the Central Park Five teenagers, but if he does something to advance liberty and lessen the state’s yoke, even unintentionally, libertarian publications like Reason should applauding and encouraging those actions. Even if those actions are being done by a buffoon.
Before the Trump Presidency Gillespie was just somewhat embarrassing, with the decades-old pop culture references and idiotic ‘libertarian moment’ sloganing, but I see his editorial standards during the election and the direction he’s taken afterwards as the core reason why Reason declined so rapidly. It’s bad enough that he’s shilling for the Resistance for no real reason, but he also just doesn’t have a grasp of the actual political climate anymore. Which makes him a crappy journalist and spokesmen for your ideology.
I think it may have something to do with the direction from which one came to libertarianism. I came from the right, so it took me a lot longer to abandon the big military idea that it did to support unlimited gun rights.
Gillespie came from the left, so I think it’s much easier for him to grab on to leftist critiques than right-wing arguments.
I’ve never really gotten the ‘it’s easier to be sympathetic to the left if you’re from it’ argument, because I’m one of the resident ex-communists. If anything my experience on the left showed me how fundamentally unbalanced and untrustworthy they are.
the government is riddled with socialists whose deliberate undermining of the president is sedition
What in the good goddamn of monkeyfuck are you even talking about?
Oh, never mind. Deep State conspiracy horseshit.
How dare all the wreckers not fall in line behind Shining Glorious Dear Leader.
Not so much “conspiracy” (like some kind of overarching centrally controlled thing).
But, yes, there are powerful bureaucrats and minions who feel entitled to do what they feel they/the agency/the country needs, Congress and the President be damned. Yes, these people are overwhelmingly pro-Dem and anti-Trump. And yes, they are actively undermining the Trump administration via various legal and illegal means, with the illegal ones getting arguably close to sedition and treason.
I don’t think any of that should be particularly controversial.
If the “Deep State” terminology seems unnecessarily conspiratorial, just think of them as civil servants. Same people, doing the same shit.
They’re the ones who were working with Obama to give middle class white America third world diseases.
A phoney baloney intelligence dossier cooked up out of thin air by foreign operatives and passed off as the real thing by a sitting senator? Leak after leak after leak, some of which contain classified or confidential material? Relentless allegations and insinuations of treason with exactly zero evidence and hot mike admissions of the entire Russia crap being a fabrication.
Conspiracy theory stuff alright, except it isnt theory, is it?
Let me ask you a question, can you tell us in detail exactly where Trump touched you Sugarfree?
What do you think he does in his regular features?
I used to be Left-Inclined and then I helped put my ex-wife through Uni during the first wave of P.C. in the early 90’s. I held my hand to the red hot burner and vowed never again! Those assholes can go fuck themselves.
I just finished an old Dick Francis novel (horses of courses!) called Smokescreen, where the main character is handcuffed inside a car while in South Africa (set during apartheid).
Currently reading “The Hobbit” for the something something time – 30-40x? Who knows. It’s a book that I read at least once a year – I have fond memories of my oldest brother reading it to me when I was 8yo.
should have added: the main character is handcuffed inside a car while in the South African plain and must find a way to survive the heat without water.
Rookie mistake. You always check to make sure you have pedialite, water based lubricant, and a safe word before you let them put the cuffs on you.
I don’t remember that happening to Bilbo.
I only watched part one of the movie abomination called The Hobbit. The book is timeless.
What? This was a fine movie!
That one was OK if you couldn’t hear the sappy music.
I like Dick Francis. Haven’t picked any up in a long time, and never read that one. I’ll add it. Thanks.
Another month has gone by already? Geezus. Currently working (slowly) through Basic Spoken Chinese for a class.
That sounds fascinating. Do you use Duolingo? I’m learning Italian.
No, through a local college’s enrichment program so a book book and a live instructor.
Duolingo looks interesting. How do you like it?
OT: maybe Sessions is not the worst thing about Trump? Unless Steve is just trolling here like he did with the 44% tax rate for richies.
I think Bannon’s trolling here. Here’s the weird thing about ultra-wealthy types: huge amounts of them think of themselves as kind, giving leftists/socialists and say that they would be happy to pay more taxes.
On-topic – I think the FB/Google thing trolling for similar reasons. I’m sure Zuckerberg has called for more regulation of the internet many times before, not just net neutrality. Forgot if either supported the dead SOPA/PIPA, as well.
Checked: no they didn’t support SOPA or PIPA. I think it’s one of those “net neutrality is a regulation for my good feelz” and “SOPA is for my bad feelz” things.
I love SOPA/PIPAs.
They are crazy hard to make right. The oil in the fryer has to be exactly the right temperature to get a proper “pillow”.
Mmmmm sopapillas! You’re making this New Mexico convert homesick.
Churros are also pretty hard to make. You wouldn’t think so because they’re so cheap, but I’ve failed a few times.
Recipe for Churros is very similar to cream puff dough, which is kind of difficult in its own right since you’re leavening without leaveners.
Yeah, the recipe I had called for boiling water when making the dough.
Star tip on the pastry bag, squeeze it right into the deep fryer.
Cream puffs are just a matter of practice. One needs to simply learn how the dough should look and feel and adjust accordingly, not be a slave to a recipe. (Now I want cream puffs.)
yeah, this strikes me as a “you say you want “net neutrality”? You say you want to regulate speech on the internet? You say you have a right to the internet? WELL THEN, let me show you what that’s gonna mean for YOU” move. Especially since it’s in the Hill.
Off-Topic: I just now tried to explain the 17th Amendment to a bunch of Hill commenters today just to see what the prog talking points would sound like.
“Oh… you think elections cause the swamp? Most people think the voice of the people protects the people.”
“No, the best way to change how the Senate is elected is by overturning Citizens United, ban union campaign financing, and reclassifying lobbying as bribery. Get rid of outside money, and Congress will have little choice but to actually start working for the voters, not the special interest groups that own them.”
they still don’t know what CU was about.
The Left’s obsession with Citizen’s United is based on the idea that the common people are easily dazzled and duped especially by the glitzy and expensive political ads. So to fix that problem, government needs to regulate speech so the common folks won’t be easily duped.
They’re basically saying that people are too dumb to make informed choices.
CU was one of those cases that the left would’ve loved if it was a Clinton-supporting organization attacking Romney or McCain.
I remember posting the Ayn Rand quote: “The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities,” and one of my acquaintances who is statist as fuck flew off the handle because he felt as though, the majority should be able to force others to do their bidding if it’s for the common good. The funny part about this is that the dude is black. I explained that his belief was same rationale that the segregationists used when they fucked black people over.
He still didn’t get it and thought that I was being unrealistic.
Just started 3; Levin’s Liberty and Tyranny which I keep in the Jeep, Fredrick Douglass’ autobiography and Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. Re-reading the last two because it has been 35-40 years since the first read.
Oh, I just started this book about Eastern Airlines flight 980 and the lack of investigation. I saw a TV special about it a while back. The people investigating it found the FDR and/or FVR and took them to the U.S. without a by-your-leave from Bolivia. So now they’re in legal limbo. I can understand why they did it (took the black boxes) – there’s a lot of fishy shit with this flight and they didn’t want to trust any government with the information about the recorders.
FWIW, this is what wiki says about that (not sure how old the book/TV special are)
On June 4, 2016, after one of the warmest years on record in the area, human remains and a piece of wreckage labelled ‘CKPT VO RCDR’ were recovered by a team of five in the Andes mountains. Dan Futrell and Isaac Stoner of Operation Thonapa recovered six large orange metal segments and several damaged pieces of magnetic tape.[4][5][6][7]
On January 4, 2017, Futrell and Stoner – who had been inspired to undertake the search by reading of Flight 980 in the Wikipedia article “List of unrecovered flight recorders”[8] – met with NTSB investigator Bill English[9] to officially hand off the recovered components, following the approval in December 2016 of the Bolivian General Directorate of Civil Aviation for the NTSB to proceed with the analysis attempt.
On 7 February 2017, the NTSB released a statement, according to which what had been found was not the cockpit flight recorder, “but rather the rack that had fixed it on to the plane — and [a] promising spool of tape turned out to be ‘an 18-minute recording of the Trial by Treehouse episode of the television series I Spy, dubbed in Spanish’.” [8][10]
Ah, that’s disappointing!
The TV special was about those guys Futrell & Stoner
In South America, it’s safe to assume that the black box was looted, along with everything else.
There is an Indigenous tribe praying to it in a ramshackle shrine as we speak!
*perks up*
Oh.
Seriously, though, that does sound interesting.
Just started David Fromkin’s A Peace to End All Peace, about the end of the Ottoman Empire and how the WWI Allies are largely to blame for the mess that the Middle East has been ever since.
Right now I’m reading Brian Cuban’s “The Addicted Lawyer: Tales of the Bar, Booze, Blow, and Redemption”.
It’s a compelling tale, though I’m stunned that a man that did as much coke as he says he did is alive today.
Sounds more fun than that NYT article…
He’s been mentioned before around here, I think, but in my short stock of read soon books is Tim Powers’ Anubis Gates, up for a re-read. Its my favorite of his books, slightly ahead of “Drawing of the Dark (a story about saving Western Civilization by drinking beer). He can be a little uneven from book to book, but when he’s on, he’s really good.
He did a great interview about conspiracy theories (since many of his books either are, or have in them, “conspiracy theories” where he wraps some crazy tale around some actual facts).
Blast it. Forgot to load the link.
How does it compare to Declare or Expiration Date? I have his poker-ish novel around here somewhere that I’ve been meaning to get into.
Declare and Last Call are on the good list; he does some of his best conspiracy theory stuff in Declare. I just enjoyed Anubis Gates more than any others.
Expiration Date and its sequels are not my faves, although I vaguely recall some very small(?) overlap with Last Call.
The Stress of Her Regard is maybe another good one if you are grooving on Powers. There’s a scene early on in that one that still gives me the chills: the protagonist is drunk at some inn in Europe, and on his way back to his room puts his ring on the finger of a statue. When he comes out the next morning, the statue has closed her fist and his ring is still on her finger.
And then shit gets weird.
I am currently reading Anarchy, State, and Utopia by Robert Nozick because I want to get a deeper philosophical foundation in libertarian thought and someone in the last “what are we reading” thread mentioned how amazing it was. Currently, I am finding the writing style a bit dense, but am hoping it will get easier as I adapt.
This post reminds me of this portlandia clip:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6JLWQEuz2gA
I find that I like world-building in books, particularly those that take an accepted sci-fi/fantasy trope and dial it back closer to reality. Like in Ender’s Game, where FTL travel isn’t a thing, and the whole relativistic time-dilation/twin paradox makes the power of compound interest that much more powerful. The third book fucked it all up, of course. One of OSC’s books that I never see mentioned is Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus In that one, time travel is a thing, but a) there is only one time line and b) randomness is always random. So if you were to go back in time with yesterday’s lottery numbers, it wouldn’t help you. Of course, since there’s a lot of randomness in which sperm fuses with an egg, anyone conceived after you pop back into the timestream will never exist.
A free work that I loved was Worm. I wish the author would publish it so I can put it on my kindle, but he is apparently uninterested in money. A great example of eschewing exposition and letting questions build up in the reader’s mind, without the bullshit fake foreshadowing of Steven Moffat.
b) randomness is always random. So if you were to go back in time with yesterday’s lottery numbers, it wouldn’t help you.
There is no randomness involved in that, just an complex and likely uncomprehendible order.
I just read Doomsday Book about a month ago, after seeing it on a top 100 sci-fi/fantasy list. Starts out pretty weak, and like SF says, is somewhat repetitive in nature and sometimes bogs down in the “current” time frame (which is actually in our future, in the 2050’s). I spent the first half of the novel wondering how it garnered the awards it did, but by the end it made a lot more sense. I would definitely recommend sticking it out even if you aren’t impressed early on.
Currently on book 13 out of 20 of The Cadfael Chronicles, a series of mysteries featuring Cadfael, a 12th century Benedictine monk and former Crusader living in the abbey at Shrewsbury at the time of the novels. I really enjoyed the British “Mystery!” series based on the books, starring Derek Jacobi, but as usual the books are quite a bit deeper, and many important details were left out or changed for the series. The novels are set during “The Anarchy” period, and are well researched and historically accurate, with the author (Ellis Peters, pen name of Edith Mary Pargeter) cleverly fitting her fictional characters into gaps in the historical record.
I think the past portions should have been first person, maybe all her journal.
I just finished The Cardinal of the Kremlin. Next up is Hell’s Angels. Then probably something by Larry Correia.
Re: Cardinal of the Kremlin. First Clancy book I read. Read it on a bus trip thru Argentina. One of the few books I’ve read where a plot twist caused me to swear out loud.
I always thought it was the most interesting of Clancy’s novels.
Got sick and tired of Publisher’s Weekly emailing me smug “Milo’s sales aren’t as good as he says they are, Milo’s sales are dropping” emails every other day, so I decided to help his sales by buying a copy of his book. It’s better than I thought it would be.
Incidentally, I didn’t research this very hard, but when I went to buy the ebook, I just clicked on the bestsellers tab thinking that would be faster than typing in the title. It didn’t show up on the bestseller list at all, even though when I did finally find it, it was something like #3 overall in the paid Kindle store. Trying to bury it, Jeff?
Just because you’re cynical, that doesn’t mean you’re wrong. (TM)
I’m tempted to buy it out of spite.
How delightfully “Milo” of you!
I was thinking the same thing. It was written out of spite, so it makes sense to buy it out of spite.
I’m currently checking out the collected works of Luo Dong and the art of meditation in the western world…
Pure genius. He’s molesting people in plain sight.
I recently re-read the classic “Geek Love” by Katharine Dunn. I just love that book. For me, it is up there with “A Confederacy of Dunces”.
Wow, I read that when it came out. It was a strange, acid trippy experience.
That’s why I love it
Iove Confederacy. Think I read Geek love in college (for fun). . should read again. Yhanx 4 reminder. Sorry typing bad, pouring antibiotics in mybrain
Alexander Dolgun, 2/3 thru
Next Diaspora, Mark Egan
Then I’ll probably read a chapter of Popper, cry uncle, and switch back to something easier.
I’m Popper.
No, wait, wrong meme. Sorry.
That was the philosopher with the underage girlfriend, right?
It’s strange to think that the men’s adventure genre is almost completely dead.
That’s because it promotes toxic masculinity, and we can’t have that. Stay woke, bro.
Somebody recently mentioned the Czech Legion. I’m partway through a very good and thorough treatment of it, “Dreams of a Great Small Nation”, by Kevin J. McNamara.
My Amazon list just keep growing and growing and growing…
I’d have more time to read if I didn’t spend so much of time lurking on the fringes of this web-site. My baseball team is sucking hind tit this year and that is usually when I get the majority of my day-reading done. I always keep a history tome for bed time and usually read literary fiction for fun.
I’m reading Mark Twain: The Adventures of Samuel Clemens. So far, good.
I’m reading ‘Fuck off and suck my dick’ by Albert Fucku.
You’ll love the ending.
Enjoying Shattered.
No spoilers please!