Books Thread

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whatwouldcooleydo?
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Re: Books Thread

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Re: Books Thread

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whatwouldcooleydo? wrote:
scotto wrote:
whatwouldcooleydo? wrote:I read Eileen, which was quite good
Reading that now. Very good.
I discovered Eileen via David Sedaris— we saw him live here in Chico and he was raving about it, so I checked it out based on his passionate endorsement
Coincidentally, Sedaris' new one is next up on my list.

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Re: Books Thread

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^ Just finished Sedaris' new one, Calypso. Man, did I LOL.

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Re: Books Thread

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had this one in the pile for ages, finally started it and about 150 pages in
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Re: Books Thread

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This is the most fucked up thing I've read in a long time.
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Re: Books Thread

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BigTom wrote:Image

This is the most fucked up thing I've read in a long time.
That's been on my radar; you just sealed the deal.
Now it's dark.

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Re: Books Thread

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I hope this is acceptable, and if not let me know and I will be happy to remove it.

I wanted to let my Heathens family know that I have published my first novel, and I'd love to have you read it.

If nothing else I think you'll get a kick out of the tagline. (in the project description and on the back cover of the paperback version)

In paperback (currently exclusive on Amazon, as I work out issues with a distributor)
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/05784 ... ZP0NG4ZW63

Ebook (widely available at many retailers)
https://books2read.com/everythingisbroken

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Re: Books Thread

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this one's been in the "to be read" stack on the dresser by my bed for ages, last night finally started it. Blazed through first 75-100 pages before falling asleep
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Re: Books Thread

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whatwouldcooleydo? wrote:Image

this one's been in the "to be read" stack on the dresser by my bed for ages, last night finally started it. Blazed through first 75-100 pages before falling asleep
As always when Clarke's name is mentioned I feel compelled to state that he is one of the biggest assholes I've ever met. That is all.
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Re: Books Thread

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Rise and Kill First by Ronen Bergman. I believe it was TC who was recently musing about the wear and tear of constant moral ambiguity. I give you Exhibit A. That this book exists at all is astonishing. That it is as good, complete and thorough as it is is incredible. The subject is the use of "extrajudicial measures" as a tool of state policy by Israel since before its founding through about last week. More former secrets are spilled here than in the 24 hours after any US Cabinet meeting. I truly don't know how he got people to talk, how he got access to the documents he's obviously seen and how he got it all by the censors, so this book is a journalistic miracle even before you turn the first page. And substantively it reads like a really first rate thriller. Talk about your inside stories! Talk about your "you couldn't make this up" whiz bang James Bond stuff, talk about your monumental stupendous fuck ups! Talk about heroes, courage, bravery, stupidity, cowardice, timidity, uncertainty, the whole human drama is here.

But what to make of it? Damned if I know. Moral ambiguity drips from almost every page. I know this is an important book and the author does a great job laying out the issues, the costs and benefits. He is as even handed as it is possible to be, more or less. But conclusions? Those are harder to come by. If nothing else, this book is worth reading because, having read it, you will realize how little we ever know of the real stories behind any given headlines and that's a useful cautionary tale in any context, not just Israel and the middle east. At worst I suspect you'll be at least a little bit humbled, if not by how little one actually knows than by how insignificant our lives are compared to those who actually do stuff and make life and death decisions on a daily basis.

An impressive achievement and highly recommended. Also very long but definitely worth your time.
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Re: Books Thread

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beantownbubba wrote:As always when Clarke's name is mentioned I feel compelled to state that he is one of the biggest assholes I've ever met. That is all.
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Re: Books Thread

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Somehow, I never see it in advance when a story will make me cry, yet it's always obvious why in retrospect: Fitting In
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Re: Books Thread

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Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann: Fascinating true story that I had never heard about before (I hate when that happens). Well told in a matter of fact more or less chronological way in very straightforward prose. Impressive research and as I said a really incredible story.
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Re: Books Thread

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beantownbubba wrote:Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann: Fascinating true story that I had never heard about before (I hate when that happens). Well told in a matter of fact more or less chronological way in very straightforward prose. Impressive research and as I said a really incredible story.
I read that about a year ago.
It's incredible that the story isn't more well known. I had never heard of it either.

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Re: Books Thread

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Re: Books Thread

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Another short story by someone I've never heard of that snuck under my defenses and hit me where it hurt: "Nine Last Days on Planet Earth", by Daryl Gregory:
LT asked for the popsicles they’d made yesterday and Mom said something like what the hell. He ran to the freezer, lifted out the aluminum ice tray. The metal sucked at his fingertips. He jiggled the lever and freed one of the cubes, grape Kool-Aid on a toothpick, so good. That memory, even decades later, was as clear as the image of the meteors.

He decided to bring the whole tray with him. He paused outside the woodshop, finally pushed open the door. His father leaned over his bench, marking a plank with a pencil. He worked all day at the lumberyard and came home to work with scraps and spares. Always building something for the house, for her, even after it was too late to change her mind.

“Did you see the sky?” LT asked him. “It’s like fireworks.”

LT didn’t have his mother’s gift for commanding attention. But his father followed him to the field, put his hands on his hips, tilted his head back. Wouldn’t sit on the blanket.

“Meteorites,” his father said, and Mom said without looking back, “Meteoroid, in the void.”

“What now?”

“Meteoroid in the void. Meteorite, rock hound’s delight. Meteor, neither nor.”

LT repeated this to himself. Neither nor. Neither nor.

“Still looks like Revelations,” Dad said.

“No,” his mother said. “It’s beautiful.”

The storm continued. LT didn’t remember falling asleep on the blanket, but he remembered jerking awake to a sound. Then it came again, a crack like a shot from a .22. Seconds later another clap, louder. He didn’t understand what was happening.

The sky had reversed: It was more white than black, pulsing with white fireballs. Not long streaks anymore, chasing west. No, the meteors were coming down at them, down upon their heads.

A meteor struck a nearby hill. A wink of light. LT thought, Now it’s a meteorite.

His father yanked him onto his feet. “Get inside.”

Then a flash, and the air shook. The sound was so loud, so close. He couldn’t see. His mother said, “Oh my!” as if it were nothing more surprising than a deer jumping across the road.

His father yelled, “Run to the fireplace!”

LT blinked spots from his vision. His father pushed him in the small of the back and he ran.

His father had built the fireplace himself, stacking the river rock, mortaring it with hand-stirred buckets of cement. It was six feet wide at the mouth, and the exposed chimney ran up the east wall, to the high timbered ceiling twenty-five feet above. Later, LT wondered if rock and mortar could have withstood a direct hit, but at that moment he had no doubt it would protect him.

The explosions seemed random; far away, then suddenly near, a boom that vibrated through the floorboards. It went on, an inundation, a barrage. His mother exclaimed with every report. His father moved from window to window, frowning and silent. LT wished he wouldn’t stand next to the glass.
I remember exactly that feeling during tornado season, just a state west and a couple years before this first scene is set.
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Re: Books Thread

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The Value of Everything by Mariana Mazzucato

It's very rare to find actual original thinking but this is the real thing. You should read this book because whatever your views, it will challenge you, make you think and even if it doesn't change your mind about anything it will at least cause you to examine your assumptions and re-think why you think the things you do. In brief, Mazzucato seeks to examine our understanding of the term "value" and how manipulating and finessing the term has led us into a lot of trouble as we try to understand the economy, how it works, who wins and who loses and how to make it more efficient, and, dare I say it, more fair.

For a book about economics the book is remarkably free of jargon and technicalities, but it is a book about economics so there's still plenty of technicalities and jargon but on the whole it reads fairly easily. If nothing else, the author's grasp of the history of economic thought and her ability to explain it is incredibly impressive. The book is not a "unified theory" in that it doesn't explain everything in one tidy package but it does explain or at least seek to explain a whole hell of a lot, including plenty about inequality and its causes.

Her takedown of the Peter Thiels, Lloyd Blankfeins and Jaime Dimons of the world is a thing of beauty as she explains quite clearly and convincingly how much of finance is a scam and amounts to nothing more than the extraction of rents (unearned income) as opposed to the creation of actual value. Her examination of how government got such a bad name is pretty convincing, too. As always, though, in books of this type, as hard as it may be to analyze the problems, it's still a lot easier than suggesting solutions which is the weakest part of the book. Still, a real tour de force (and a short one, too!) and well worth your time.
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Re: Books Thread

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beantownbubba wrote:The Value of Everything by Mariana Mazzucato

It's very rare to find actual original thinking but this is the real thing. You should read this book because whatever your views, it will challenge you, make you think and even if it doesn't change your mind about anything it will at least cause you to examine your assumptions and re-think why you think the things you do. In brief, Mazzucato seeks to examine our understanding of the term "value" and how manipulating and finessing the term has led us into a lot of trouble as we try to understand the economy, how it works, who wins and who loses and how to make it more efficient, and, dare I say it, more fair.

For a book about economics the book is remarkably free of jargon and technicalities, but it is a book about economics so there's still plenty of technicalities and jargon but on the whole it reads fairly easily. If nothing else, the author's grasp of the history of economic thought and her ability to explain it is incredibly impressive. The book is not a "unified theory" in that it doesn't explain everything in one tidy package but it does explain or at least seek to explain a whole hell of a lot, including plenty about inequality and its causes.

Her takedown of the Peter Thiels, Lloyd Blankfeins and Jaime Dimons of the world is a thing of beauty as she explains quite clearly and convincingly how much of finance is a scam and amounts to nothing more than the extraction of rents (unearned income) as opposed to the creation of actual value. Her examination of how government got such a bad name is pretty convincing, too. As always, though, in books of this type, as hard as it may be to analyze the problems, it's still a lot easier than suggesting solutions which is the weakest part of the book. Still, a real tour de force (and a short one, too!) and well worth your time.
I like this one better:

If you're reading this, you should read *The Value of Everything* by Mariana Mazzucato. If nothing else, original thinking is so rare that it should be appreciated whatever one thinks of the substance, and at least to my admittedly less than complete knowledge, Mazzucato is an original thinker.

The thrust of her argument is that we need a new understanding/definition of "value" so we can better understand who/what creates value in the economy and who/what extracts value from the economy which in turn would allow us to make better informed and better policy choices. The underlying subject is inequality and how we got here, sometimes addressed directly, often times implied.

She will make you think, she will challenge you, and she will force you to re-examine (or perhaps examine for the first time) long-held beliefs that may or may not stand on the strong foundation you think they do. The book is short (less than 300 pages) and written w/ the minimum of jargon and technicalities (though it's not jargon and technicality-free).I can't say I understood every word but Mazzucato explains difficult concepts in remarkably accessible language.

Special bonus: Since the financialization of the economy is a major focus of her analysis, Mazzucato leaves the Thiels, Blankfeins and Dimons of the world splattered like roadkill on a potholed road. You may not agree w/ her analysis but you will have to deal with it. It's also very amusing to watch her sneak in Marxist concepts in the guise of "oh, it's all just economics." And like virtually every book that provides trenchant and insightful analysis of big problems, her proposed solutions are less compelling. No points off for that, though. If the problems weren't hard we wouldn't be reading and advancing our understanding of the problems is a big achievement by itself.
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Re: Books Thread

Post by dogstar »

beantownbubba wrote:
beantownbubba wrote:The Value of Everything by Mariana Mazzucato

It's very rare to find actual original thinking but this is the real thing. You should read this book because whatever your views, it will challenge you, make you think and even if it doesn't change your mind about anything it will at least cause you to examine your assumptions and re-think why you think the things you do. In brief, Mazzucato seeks to examine our understanding of the term "value" and how manipulating and finessing the term has led us into a lot of trouble as we try to understand the economy, how it works, who wins and who loses and how to make it more efficient, and, dare I say it, more fair.

For a book about economics the book is remarkably free of jargon and technicalities, but it is a book about economics so there's still plenty of technicalities and jargon but on the whole it reads fairly easily. If nothing else, the author's grasp of the history of economic thought and her ability to explain it is incredibly impressive. The book is not a "unified theory" in that it doesn't explain everything in one tidy package but it does explain or at least seek to explain a whole hell of a lot, including plenty about inequality and its causes.

Her takedown of the Peter Thiels, Lloyd Blankfeins and Jaime Dimons of the world is a thing of beauty as she explains quite clearly and convincingly how much of finance is a scam and amounts to nothing more than the extraction of rents (unearned income) as opposed to the creation of actual value. Her examination of how government got such a bad name is pretty convincing, too. As always, though, in books of this type, as hard as it may be to analyze the problems, it's still a lot easier than suggesting solutions which is the weakest part of the book. Still, a real tour de force (and a short one, too!) and well worth your time.
I like this one better:

If you're reading this, you should read *The Value of Everything* by Mariana Mazzucato. If nothing else, original thinking is so rare that it should be appreciated whatever one thinks of the substance, and at least to my admittedly less than complete knowledge, Mazzucato is an original thinker.

The thrust of her argument is that we need a new understanding/definition of "value" so we can better understand who/what creates value in the economy and who/what extracts value from the economy which in turn would allow us to make better informed and better policy choices. The underlying subject is inequality and how we got here, sometimes addressed directly, often times implied.

She will make you think, she will challenge you, and she will force you to re-examine (or perhaps examine for the first time) long-held beliefs that may or may not stand on the strong foundation you think they do. The book is short (less than 300 pages) and written w/ the minimum of jargon and technicalities (though it's not jargon and technicality-free).I can't say I understood every word but Mazzucato explains difficult concepts in remarkably accessible language.

Special bonus: Since the financialization of the economy is a major focus of her analysis, Mazzucato leaves the Thiels, Blankfeins and Dimons of the world splattered like roadkill on a potholed road. You may not agree w/ her analysis but you will have to deal with it. It's also very amusing to watch her sneak in Marxist concepts in the guise of "oh, it's all just economics." And like virtually every book that provides trenchant and insightful analysis of big problems, her proposed solutions are less compelling. No points off for that, though. If the problems weren't hard we wouldn't be reading and advancing our understanding of the problems is a big achievement by itself.
You mention she sneaks in Marxist concepts. Is she using the labour theory of value in her analysis? The book below is built on these ideas, which I struggle a bit with all the classical economics I was taught, and is by someone who is 'out' as a Marxist.

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Re: Books Thread

Post by beantownbubba »

dogstar wrote:You mention she sneaks in Marxist concepts. Is she using the labour theory of value in her analysis? The book below is built on these ideas, which I struggle a bit with all the classical economics I was taught, and is by someone who is 'out' as a Marxist.
Yes, exactly. The labor theory of value is a recurring theme in her analysis though she never quite outright endorses it.
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Re: Books Thread

Post by John A Arkansawyer »

beantownbubba wrote:
dogstar wrote:You mention she sneaks in Marxist concepts. Is she using the labour theory of value in her analysis? The book below is built on these ideas, which I struggle a bit with all the classical economics I was taught, and is by someone who is 'out' as a Marxist.
Yes, exactly. The labor theory of value is a recurring theme in her analysis though she never quite outright endorses it.
I have a degree in math and difficulty understanding double-entry bookkeeping. I'm somewhere between those levels of understanding the labor theory of value in the economic sense. I get it as a political and ethical idea about how we should divvy up, but it doesn't make any sense to me when I think about what a thing costs. Should I just leave it at that? Am I hopelessly bourgeois for thinking about value in terms of price? It's a mystery to me.
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Re: Books Thread

Post by beantownbubba »

John A Arkansawyer wrote:
beantownbubba wrote:
dogstar wrote:You mention she sneaks in Marxist concepts. Is she using the labour theory of value in her analysis? The book below is built on these ideas, which I struggle a bit with all the classical economics I was taught, and is by someone who is 'out' as a Marxist.
Yes, exactly. The labor theory of value is a recurring theme in her analysis though she never quite outright endorses it.
I have a degree in math and difficulty understanding double-entry bookkeeping. I'm somewhere between those levels of understanding the labor theory of value in the economic sense. I get it as a political and ethical idea about how we should divvy up, but it doesn't make any sense to me when I think about what a thing costs. Should I just leave it at that? Am I hopelessly bourgeois for thinking about value in terms of price? It's a mystery to me.
LOL, read the book. One of her pet peeves is price as a measure of value especially to the exclusion of other measures or definitions of value.
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Re: Books Thread

Post by beantownbubba »

It's a pretty common structure for thrillers to switch back and forth chapter by chapter to different locations where action is taking place more or less simultaneously. Usually there's a heading or subheading giving the location and time. So I'm reading True Fiction by Lee Goldberg which follows this format. The problem is that the story takes place in present day July and all times in all US locations are listed as "Standard Time." In July of course all times (except AZ I think, which is not in the book) are Daylight Time. I don't know why this bugs me so much, maybe because the mistake is repeated over and over, but it does. Probably says more about me than the author or editor but there you have it.

And 100 bonus points to the first person who can tell me what a "languid hard-on" is (p.20). :shock:
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Re: Books Thread

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beantownbubba wrote:And 100 bonus points to the first person who can tell me what a "languid hard-on" is (p.20). :shock:
Is that a not-quite-hard-on? A semi-hard-on? A hard-yet-soft-on?

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Re: Books Thread

Post by beantownbubba »

scotto wrote:
beantownbubba wrote:And 100 bonus points to the first person who can tell me what a "languid hard-on" is (p.20). :shock:
Is that a not-quite-hard-on? A semi-hard-on? A hard-yet-soft-on?
I was thinking along the lines of hard yet soft, though it makes no sense to me either in context or out.
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Re: Books Thread

Post by jr29 »

Blood, Bone, And Marrow- A Biography Of Harry Crews

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Re: Books Thread

Post by jr29 »

The postman delivered the new jeff Tweedy memoir this week. I'm looking forward to getting into it.

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Re: Books Thread

Post by John A Arkansawyer »

beantownbubba wrote:
scotto wrote:
beantownbubba wrote:And 100 bonus points to the first person who can tell me what a "languid hard-on" is (p.20). :shock:
Is that a not-quite-hard-on? A semi-hard-on? A hard-yet-soft-on?
I was thinking along the lines of hard yet soft, though it makes no sense to me either in context or out.
Following a spare link this week, from a page on which I'd searched a Tin Huey song to Urban Dictionary, unfortunately gave me one possibility, which, because I like you guys, I will decline to share. You're welcome.
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Re: Books Thread

Post by beantownbubba »

The Man Who Came Uptown by George Pelecanos: It won't stand among his classics, but as always he's worth reading.
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Re: Books Thread

Post by jr29 »

jr29 wrote:The postman delivered the new jeff Tweedy memoir this week. I'm looking forward to getting into it.
I just finished the Uncle Tupelo section and it's heartbreaking. I know the Jay vs. Jeff thing has been beaten to death but reading Jeff's firsthand take is tough.

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