Read any good books lately?

[Clueless Morgan]

I'm currently reading War of the Whales by Josh Horwitz; it's about the Navy sonar testing that was causing whales to beach back around 2000. It's sort of the true story behind this piece of crap:



Or at least Animal Planet wove an interesting (i.e. interestingly full of bullshit) story about mermaids into this true story about the Navy and whale beachings, and this mysterious(ly stupid) thing called the bloop. Until I started this book I thought it was all bogus, but it turns out the Navy thing and the whale thing are actually true... But the aquatic ape part is not. :p

So far it's been extremely interesting because it talks about underwater acoustics and how sound propogates through the ocean, the bioacoustics of whales, the eco-lawyers who got involved in pushing the Navy sonar testing out of marine sanctuaries, etc. It's pretty compelling because it's written like a novel, but all of the "characters" are actual people IRL.

I'm making sure I go to bed about an hour before sleepy time so I can get in some good reading on it.

[Cato]

Recently, I quoted from the Master and Commander movie. Someone, sorry I can't remember who, referenced the Aubrey-Maturin series. I quickly discovered Patrick O'Brian and the four volume complete set at the Queens library. I'm now hooked. Finished Master and Commander and am one chapter shy of completing Post Captain; then I sail aboard HMS Surprise. 17 more to go after that.

If the person that mentioned the series reads this.....Big Thanks! I'm enjoying them immensely.

[Crossless2.0]

I'm about 100 pages into Thomas Pakenham's The Scramble for Africa: The White Man's Conquest of the Dark Continent from 1876 to 1912. So far, it's a fascinating look at a period of history that has always been a bit murky to me. I hope that this book will give me enough background information to begin to make some sense of post-Colonial Africa.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I'm currently reading The Creators from Daniel Boorstin -- it's a history of the Western arts (including architecture and the construction of religious mythology); very interesting. On deck is the same author's The Discoverers, the history of scientific advance. I'd read it about 15 years ago. Boorstin's a good writer who sometimes gets a little purple; but he paints some of the richest nonfiction scenes I've ever read, and he packs much meaning into his sentences.

Recently finished My Life in New Orleans, from Louis Armstrong, which was an incredibly annoying read to this writer: scattered thoughts splattered across the pages, for the most part. While the flavor of New Orleans comes through in his memoirs, it's disjointed enough to be positively distracting. He should have hired a ghost-writer. I only finished it because Satchmo, goddamnit.

[Clueless Morgan]

Recently, I quoted from the Master and Commander movie. Someone, sorry I can't remember who, referenced the Aubrey-Maturin series. I quickly discovered Patrick O'Brian and the four volume complete set at the Queens library. I'm now hooked. Finished Master and Commander and am one chapter shy of completing Post Captain; then I sail aboard HMS Surprise. 17 more to go after that.

If the person that mentioned the series reads this.....Big Thanks! I'm enjoying them immensely.

I found the initial description of the captain to be very interesting (wasn't it at a violin concert or something?) and some of the descriptions were very evocative, but I couldn't get in to Master and Commander; not in the right mood, I suppose. My mom loves them though.

Have you read the Sharpe books? Those are another series that my mom tried to get me into.

[Oldm8]

Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape
Raja Shehadeh

---

Down Under - Bill Bryson

Life after the State - Dominic Frisby

and of course

The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins

who annoyingly gets so up his ass as to turn Atheism into a religion itself.
It really isn't supposed to be like that.

[Mudhammam]

The Nature of Things by Lucretius (just finished a couple of days ago) and Medieval People by Eileen Power (will finish by today or tomorrow)--holy fuck both are superb and highly, HIGHLY recommended (the latter if you're interested in how common folk lived through the 9th-16th centuries).