Re: Books Thread
Posted: Mon Sep 10, 2018 5:05 pm
The place for all things HeAthens
http://www.threedimesdown.com/forum/
Coincidentally, Sedaris' new one is next up on my list.whatwouldcooleydo? wrote: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 endorsementscotto wrote:Reading that now. Very good.whatwouldcooleydo? wrote:I read Eileen, which was quite good
That's been on my radar; you just sealed the deal.BigTom wrote:
This is the most fucked up thing I've read in a long time.
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.whatwouldcooleydo? wrote:
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
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.
I read that about a year ago.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 remember exactly that feeling during tornado season, just a state west and a couple years before this first scene is set.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 like this one better: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.
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.beantownbubba wrote:I like this one better: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.
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.
Yes, exactly. The labor theory of value is a recurring theme in her analysis though she never quite outright endorses it.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.
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.beantownbubba wrote:Yes, exactly. The labor theory of value is a recurring theme in her analysis though she never quite outright endorses it.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.
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.John A Arkansawyer wrote: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.beantownbubba wrote:Yes, exactly. The labor theory of value is a recurring theme in her analysis though she never quite outright endorses it.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.
Is that a not-quite-hard-on? A semi-hard-on? A hard-yet-soft-on?beantownbubba wrote:And 100 bonus points to the first person who can tell me what a "languid hard-on" is (p.20).
I was thinking along the lines of hard yet soft, though it makes no sense to me either in context or out.scotto wrote:Is that a not-quite-hard-on? A semi-hard-on? A hard-yet-soft-on?beantownbubba wrote:And 100 bonus points to the first person who can tell me what a "languid hard-on" is (p.20).
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.beantownbubba wrote:I was thinking along the lines of hard yet soft, though it makes no sense to me either in context or out.scotto wrote:Is that a not-quite-hard-on? A semi-hard-on? A hard-yet-soft-on?beantownbubba wrote:And 100 bonus points to the first person who can tell me what a "languid hard-on" is (p.20).
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.jr29 wrote:The postman delivered the new jeff Tweedy memoir this week. I'm looking forward to getting into it.