What Are You Reading?
- Thread starter TimmyBoston
- Start date
The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk.
Kilroy6644
Smoking a corn dog in aviators and a top hat
"Interview With The Vampire," by Anne Rice.
shavefan
I’m not a fan
Kilroy6644
Smoking a corn dog in aviators and a top hat
"My Early Life," by Winston Churchill.
just finished this last night. What a wonderful book. once you get past the Norse saga-style language and presentation and focus on the story, it’s a fantastic read.
This catches me up on all of the JRRT I had read before. I will tackle Unfinished Tales and both volumes of The Book of Lost Tales over the next six months or so.
Leningrad and the Shostakovich 7th symphony.
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Remember reading this in high school on my own. Not what I'd thought it would be.
Wasn't impressed by it, but had learned enough US History to catch errors in my college history textbook. That, sadly enough, isn't saying all that much. In the case of the textbook, it was an issue of incompetance. If the authors had bothered to read an account of someone who was there, they wouldn't have pulled that howler (that's how I caught it).
Zinn...well, unfortunately, I put him in the biased category. There's a book called Debunking Howard Zinn that may be well worth your time.
I do not need to take sides. but I would say Mary Grabar, the author of Debunking Howard Zinn, has her own agenda. I do not think Howard Zinn was shy about where he was coming from. He is well-known for saying that he was "something of an anarchist, something of a socialist. Maybe a democratic socialist."
I would say not so much my college history text books, but my high school text books, were not very accurate or in depth. By the time I took a graduate level course in diplomatic history, things became more nuanced and seemed to better reflect what really happened. I would encourage everyone to have an interest in history and to read broadly. I think Howard Zinn himself said that all history is written through particular lenses.
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G.K. Chesterson observed that before you take down a fence, you should know why it was put up. The other side of that is if you find someone destroying a fence, you should find out why.
shavefan
I’m not a fan
G.K. Chesterton is great!
G.K. Chesterton had a turn of phrase in making a point that can be unexpected, like rounding a bend and discovering a breathtaking vista you didn't know was there.
This is maybe worthy of another subject heading. Not because of Howard Zinn, but in the unfortunate tendency of historians in not quite giving a full picture and making outright errors. What really soured me wasn't Zinn, but reading Thomas Paine and discovering he was a deist and not the atheist I'd been taught he was.
shavefan
I’m not a fan
I would love a thread that discusses "accurate' books regarding history. As was mentioned, I agree that most relating of history is slanted. Of course, some slants are steeper than others.
Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree - by Tariq Ali
Just so! The type of public intellectual we could use more (some?) of these days. Brilliant capacity to use the English language.
"Windows 10, The Missing Manual" (May 2019 Update) by David Pogue. I always buy Pogue books every time I upgrade Windows. My wife has generously allowed me to upgrade my 5+ yo home-built pc with more RAM, a new video card and other improvements so I can install Win10 on my pc and help her configure Win10 on her new laptop/tablet.
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