What Are You Reading Now?

[clackamascoug]

I finished Patrick O'Donnell's look at the men who escorted the Unknown Soldier of WW I back from France, The Unknowns

My thoughts if anyone is interested

I also finally typed up my thoughts on The Darkest Hour

I'm still plowing away on Chernow's bio of Grant.

There seems to be two basic themes in the narrative - the damage Grant's pre Civil War drinking did to his reputation as he rose to promanence and his accepting people at face value and as a result trusting people he shouldn't.

I finished Grant a couple of books ago... my takeaway was that he was a much bigger deal than I had ever appreciated.

[happyone]

Finished Grant
Fantastic read - I 5 Starred it on Goodreads. His efforts to secure civil rights for the freed slaves post Civil War and take down the Klan rise him up quite a few notches on the best presidents list in my estimation(somewhere in the middle - not top 10, but not bottom 10 - where he is so often rated - either). It seemed there were two major themes in the book - his innate honesty-goodness/expectation that everyone else was as honest as he was and his struggles with alcohol.

Through out his life, he never seemed to grasp that people would say one thing to his face and something 180 degrees opposite to other people. In addition that they would ever abuse his trust in them.

The scenes as he trying to finish his memoirs before he dies so his family will be provided for are especially touching.

Having just seen "Othello" at the USF, I was struck as just how much an Othello type character he was.

Military hero who trusted and defended his friends/subordinates in spite of evidence that they were up to no good

In Grants case it didn't quite destroy him physically (did destroy his reputation and presidency) and there was no sexual overtones.

Currently reading a biography of Nikola Tesla - Tesla: Inventor of the Modern

[Jeff Lebowski]

It makes sense (to me) that we are wired for intermittent fasting. The rest of it is pretty intuitively sensible too, it seems. But what is the mechanism of insulin resistance, at a chemical level, that causes weight gain? Is it the same thing that the Atkins people talked about (because the Atkins approach was pretty much the same as what you are talking about excpet, obviously, for the protein consumption).

Also, can you elaborate on the idea that bodies doesn't burn calories at a steady rate?

Here is an article that explains it well.

https://www.vox.com/2016/4/28/115188...-burn-calories

This is 95% consistent with the Jason Fung/Obesity Code book. Everything but the part at the end about avoiding fats and counting calories. Ignore that nonsense.

[swampfrog]

Here is an article that explains it well.

https://www.vox.com/2016/4/28/115188...-burn-calories

This is 95% consistent with the Jason Fung/Obesity Code book. Everything but the part at the end about avoiding fats and counting calories. Ignore that nonsense.

Finished the book last week. Talk about beating one over the head with study results. It's pretty convincing. More information here:

http://www.insuliniq.com/

This is cofounded by BYU's Benjamin Bikman.

[Pelado]

but there’s no clinical data for this predisposition against artificial sweeteners right? i guess anecdotally it does make me more likely to crave sweet stuff.

This article addresses the insulin response to artificial sweeteners:

http://www.insuliniq.com/3-not-so-sw...al-sweeteners/

[SteelBlue]

Took a bit of a break from current fiction for a while, filling in some gaps with the classics, and others I've just been meaning to get to over the years:

The Human Beast, Emile Zola. Inspired by Crime and Punishment, Zola takes a stab at writing a serial killer.

Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller. Miller is fascinating in a lot of ways and repugnant in many others. In this novel he moves around Paris making interesting observations about the human condition while sleeping with a Wilt Chamberlain-esque number of women divided equally between whores and respectable folk.

Tropic of Capricorn, Henry Miller. In this novel he moves around New York making interesting observations about the human condition while sleeping with a Wilt Chamberlain-esque number of women most of whom are his acquaintances, occasionally it’s his own wife. He seems to have possessed some almost magical power to sleep with just about any woman he met. Just ask him. Henry Miller would not have survived 2018.

Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk. You already know.

One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. This is one I've looked forward to for so long that it just wasn't ever going to live up to my expectations. I pride myself in being able to keep characters straight without notes etc... But this one challenged me to the extent that I'm sure I was wrong much of the time.

Zorba the Greek, Nikos Kazantzakis. Good stuff.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Victor Hugo. Wanted to make sure I read this before I went to Paris. Then my wife broke her foot and just the thought of standing in that line precluded us entering the church on this trip. Still a great read. Someday I'll go in.

Less, Andrew Greer. Pulitzer winner for fiction this year. I'd never heard of it prior to the win. I commented on this one in Piney's review.

A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens. You're probably sensing a theme. I read a lot of fiction involving Paris.

The Red and the Black, Stendhal. See above.

Edit: While in Paris, we visited the Pantheon. In the same crypt are the bodies of Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas and Emile Zola. It was cool to realize that though all three have long been dead, I have spent many hours in their collective heads and that they've each affected my own thinking in some way. Strange but I felt like I was visiting the crypt of men I actually knew.

[RC Vikings]

Ok, this is a fun read:

Embedded Tweet

The Theranos saga is crazy, and this book is a really well done telling of it; it's by the same guy who originally broke the story at the WSJ.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/blood...041000909.html

Looks like Theranos is finally finished. The part I find hard to believe is that all this investment money came in for a company that wasn't really generating any real revenue. Also at their peak they had 800 employees, how do you have 800 people working and not really accomplish something. It's amazing she keep it afloat as long as she did.

[Lost Student]

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/blood...041000909.html

Looks like Theranos is finally finished. The part I find hard to believe is that all this investment money came in for a company that wasn't really generating any real revenue. Also at their peak they had 800 employees, how do you have 800 people working and not really accomplish something. It's amazing she keep it afloat as long as she did.

This part is the least crazy aspect of Theranos.

[happyone]

I finished the Telsa bio - average, but what a fascinating man

I also read a bio of one of James I favorites/lovers - George Villiers. He came from relative obscurity to gain James' trust and love. The narrative makes it sound like he was James' true love. Any way James raised him to be the Duke of Buckingham ( against the wishes of other noble families). He was present at James final illness and took over his treatment. When James died he was accused of murdering him. Also average, but with some fascinating stories. For example Charles, the Prince of Wales, and Villiers decided to go to Spain to kick start the negotiations for Charles' wedding to the Spanish Infanta, They didn't tell anyone in Spain or France they were coming. They just showed up at the English Embassy on day. It didn't work and the marriage never happened.

As far as Villiers assassinating James, it's an interesting theory, but I really don't think the author made a particularly good case that it was an assassination and not a medical mistake.

The King's Assassin

Currently reading a fascinating look at Victorian Medicine and particularly surgery and how Jonathon Lister changed it. He was the first really advocate of antiseptic procedures in operating theaters.
I'm about 1/3 of the way through and am really, really glad I don't live in Victorian times!

There are some really gruesome stories of just what surgery was like (not pretty) and what patients in hospitals went through. Some hospitals had a 90% mortality rate for surgery patients or should it be victims. Also the looks at the changing status of surgeons. At the start of Lister's career they were seen as blue color technicians and the requirement to become one was basically just completing an apprenticeship. They had such a low status that the "Bug Catcher"- the guy who was in charge of keeping the hospital semi clean - at the London College Hospital was actually paid more money that any of the Surgeons working there.

The Butchering Art

[SteelBlue]

National Book Award Longlists are out:

Fiction:

Jamel Brinkley, A Lucky Man
(Graywolf Press)

Jennifer Clement, Gun Love
(Hogarth / Penguin Random House)

Lauren Groff, Florida
(Riverhead Books / Penguin Random House)

Daniel Gumbiner, The Boatbuilder
(McSweeney’s)

Brandon Hobson, Where the Dead Sit Talking
(Soho Press)

Tayari Jones, An American Marriage
(Algonquin Books / Workman Publishing)

Rebecca Makkai, The Great Believers
(Viking Books / Penguin Random House)

Sigrid Nunez, The Friend
(Riverhead Books / Penguin Random House)

Tommy Orange, There There
(Alfred A. Knopf / Penguin Random House)

Nafissa Thompson-Spires, Heads of the Colored People
(Atria Books / 37 INK / Simon & Schuster)


Nonfiction:

Carol Anderson, One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy
(Bloomsbury Publishing)

Colin G. Calloway, The Indian World of George Washington: The First President, the First Americans, and the Birth of the Nation
(Oxford University Press)

Steve Coll, Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America’s Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan
(Penguin Press / Penguin Random House)

Marwan Hisham and Molly Crabapple, Brothers of the Gun: A Memoir of the Syrian War
(One World / Penguin Random House)

Victoria Johnson, American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic
(Liveright / W. W. Norton & Company)

David Quammen, The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life
(Simon & Schuster)

Sarah Smarsh, Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth
(Scribner / Simon & Schuster)

Rebecca Solnit, Call Them by Their True Names: American Crises (and Essays)
(Haymarket Books)

Jeffrey C. Stewart, The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke
(Oxford University Press)

Adam Winkler, We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights
(Liveright / W. W. Norton & Company)

[Jeff Lebowski]

Haven't heard of a single book on that list.

[Scott R Nelson]

Haven't heard of a single book on that list.

I haven't heard of a single author on that list either.

[SteelBlue]

Haven't heard of a single book on that list.

I've only heard of An American Marriage because Obama had it on his summer reading list. Went to my library's web page to reserve copies this morning and they only had half of them.

[happyone]

I agree - I haven't heard of any on them either.

[BigPiney]

I've only heard of An American Marriage because Obama had it on his summer reading list. Went to my library's web page to reserve copies this morning and they only had half of them.

I reserved the four that looked interesting to me.
There There
Tommy Orange


The Great Believers
Rebecca Makkai


Where the Dead Sit Talking
Brandon Hobson


Gun Love
Jennifer Clement

American Marriage looks dumb so that did not go on my to read list.

Without even reading them, I predict that one of the two Native American ones wins this year.