What Are You Reading Now?

[SteelBlue]

Just finished book two of the Power of the Dog series by Don Winslow.

Really fun listen with great characters and storyline

I've never read any Winslow but I like his Twitter a lot. I need to give him a try.

[RC Vikings]

Putin's People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took On the West

Interesting book on Putin and the change over from the USSR to Russia and the money flow.

[SeattleUte]

Lol. You could’ve said that without sounding so condescending.

And I already very clearly said they were parts of it that I really liked.

He didn't say that corporations aren't real. He said they're an abstraction, like a myth or money. But that is not the deep insight. The insight is that the corporate form is was as important to the rise of the West and its dominance as the invention of the wheel to humankind and his lay person's explanations and examples for why that's so.

Most religious people don't like his books very much.

[Jeff Lebowski]

He didn't say that corporations aren't real. He said they're an abstraction, like a myth or money. But that is not the deep insight. The insight is that the corporate form is was as important to the rise of the West and its dominance as the invention of the wheel to humankind and his lay person's explanations and examples for why that's so.

Oh I get it. Just didn't seem that profound to me.

Most religious people don't like his books very much.

He has an overly simplistic and ham-fisted approach to religion, for sure.

This guy does a pretty good job dissecting the flaws in the book:

https://www.bethinking.org/human-life/sapiens-review

I would classify the book as "pop scientism".

[SteelBlue]

Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman. Build up to the battle of Stalingrad. Ends up feeling quite timely with fascism rearing its head again.

[Pelado]

Oh I get it. Just didn't seem that profound to me.



He has an overly simplistic and ham-fisted approach to religion, for sure.

This guy does a pretty good job dissecting the flaws in the book:

https://www.bethinking.org/human-life/sapiens-review

I would classify the book as "pop scientism".

SU will love that review:

His failure to think clearly and objectively in areas outside his field will leave educated Christians unimpressed.

[SeattleUte]

Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman. Build up to the battle of Stalingrad. Ends up feeling quite timely with fascism rearing its head again.

There are three great novels I've read that dramatizes Stalingrad. Life and Fate, Europe Central, and The Kindly Ones. All three have a scene with an unknown soldier playing the grand piano outside in the freezing air and snow amid destroyed Stalingrad, and captivating both sides. Something like that must have really happened. One of those scenes that's for a novelist too good to pass up.

[SeattleUte]

SU will love that review:

I knew the source of the ridicule of Harari. I'm very insightful about such things.

His main thesis is that humans are successful because they have language, which enables them to collaborate, and the glue for collaboration is stories. Religion is just another of those stories, along with money, corporations, nations, human rights, capitalism, etc. No more no less, except it's not even the most important story.

[Jeff Lebowski]

I knew the source of the ridicule of Harari. I'm very insightful about such things.

His main thesis is that humans are successful because they have language, which enables them to collaborate, and the glue for collaboration is stories. Religion is just another of those stories, along with money, corporations, nations, human rights, capitalism, etc. No more no less, except it's not even the most important story.

FTR, I thought his predictions of the future with robots and AI taking over was way over the top to the point of being comical. I have mentioned that before, but you choose to ignore it because it doesn't confirm your bias against me.

Humans are different because we have languages and stories? Wow, that is deep.

[Scott R Nelson]

An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore

I decided to read it again and see if it seems more believable now than when I read it after it first came out. Some things are not happening as fast as he was predicting, like the disappearance of of some glaciers, but other stuff is happening faster than he predicted too.

I think maybe we should have listened a bit more closely to what he had to say 15 years ago.

[LiveCoug]

In case some of y'all didn't notice, Audible is having a massive sale right now. Like pretty much every book is 65-80% off

Ends in a day and a half

[Bo Diddley]

In case some of y'all didn't notice, Audible is having a massive sale right now. Like pretty much every book is 65-80% off

Ends in a day and a half

I use the Amex subscription credit to get a free Audible book each month.

[LiveCoug]

I use the Amex subscription credit to get a free Audible book each month.

Well, sure, use that for one book. And then get a bunch of other books for like 3-7 bucks

[SteelBlue]

Hilary Mantel dead at 70.

[SteelBlue]

Was lucky and got galleys for the new George Saunders short story collection Liberation Day, and the new Adam Sternbergh novel The Eden Test.

Saunders collection is good. Nine stories but only 4 that have never been published. My favorite was Ghoul which you can read free on the New Yorker website. The titular story, Liberation Day was also strong. I liked them all, but I am admittedly a Saunders fanboy. I'd say if you like Saunders you'll like the collection and if you don't there's nothing here that's going to move the needle for you.

The Eden Test was a cool idea and I could see it as a 4 episode Netflix series. As a novel it didn't work for me as well as I wanted it to. I love Sternbergh's stuff.and went into this one really wanting to like it. I feel like his editor let him down. Lots of instances where I could feel the chapters had been written at far different times and the editor had missed that Sternbergh hammered a point in the previous chapter and then reintroduces it in the next as though you'd never heard it. It comes across as a dumbing down at times which is not something Sternbergh has done in previous novels. The book ended up feeling like a good idea but relied too heavily on deus ex machina and I found myself rolling my eyes with increasing frequency. Fun, but not up to Sternbergh''s normal high standard imo.