[skinster]

Is that the book where Hillary talks about the time her and Bill used slaves...I mean, "prison labor"?

[mikema63]

Nope, it's the one about her time in the state department.

[skinster]

[ThirdTerm]

Target America (Sniper Elite #2)
by Scott McEwen, Thomas Koloniar

This is an exiting novel involving Chechen terrorists who managed to sneak into America with suitcase nukes. Scott McEwen ghostwrote "American Sniper" for Chris Kyle but he's as good as Tom Clancy in this genre.

From the coauthor of the #1 New York Times bestseller American Sniper comes a heart-pounding military thriller in which the fabled Special Ops unit is activated to stop a group of terrorists from launching “suitcase” nukes somewhere in America.

When Chechen terrorists manage to smuggle a Cold War–era Russian nuke across the Mexican-American border, the President is forced to reactivate the only unit capable of stopping them: Navy SEAL sniper Gil Shannon and his brash team of SEALs and Delta Force fighters. First introduced in Sniper Elite: One-Way Trip, hailed by Publishers Weekly as a “meaty thriller” with “snappy dialogue and well-timed humor,” Shannon and his team were run out of the military after defying direct orders and instead choosing to save the life of one of their own.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/214 ... et-america

[skinster]

Last. Very good.


Current. Very good.

[Quantum]

Read most of Les Misérables. It's a tedious book and could have been condensed by half if Hugo got rid of the allegories and not being sidetracked every chapter. From now, I want the summaries of all the great books of the Western canon because I won't remember most of the content.

[Igor Antunov]

Anyone know of some good historical fiction set in ancient rome/greece?

[Potemkin]

For ancient Greece, the novels of Mary Renault. For ancient Rome, the novels of Robert Graves.

[fuser]

Meh, just read about Diadochi Wars, no fiction can come close to this real deal, seriously.

Also Pankaj Mishra.

[skinster]

Have you read this one, fuser? It's the first I've heard of him but I saw he wrote a bunch of other stuff.

[fuser]

No but its actually on my amazon wish list, I have read his other works and I can recommend and I think you would like his article in this book (a collection of essays) called "Kashmir : A case for Freedom" and frankly I thought his essay was the best one even though this book included likes of Arundhiti Roy.

I can also recommend "Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet, and Beyond", a fascinating read to say the least although non south asians might have problems at following this book.

[skinster]

Ah, I read that wee book on Kashmir!

I'll look out for Temptations of the West, danke.

[MistyTiger]

Anyone know of some good historical fiction set in ancient rome/greece?

For Rome I like to read the The Roman Mysteries series by Caroline Lawrence. They are pretty quick reads. For Greek fiction, I like the Rick Riordan series. They're funny and fun reads, especially if you get the listening library versions.

And of course...goodreads.com has good lists about books in their genres.

https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/greek-fiction

[Wellsy]

On a long flight from Australia to the US I read brief short stories, The Stranger - Albert Camus and Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury.

Ambivalent about the protagonist in The Stranger, had some interesting moments but I did feel a strong aversion to his selfishness via indifference/neglect which I perhaps relate to my own character flaws.

Fahrenheit 451 was quite an amazing read though the whole way through, Ray Bradbury certainly does something really well in his characters and their interactions. I automatically felt empathy from the position of the protagonist for other characters. That don't say it, show it sort of thing one expects from a good film or book I imagine. A lot of things I was able to project into the work, which was stimulating, I found quite interesting the rationale for censoring and the concern about the speed of things in which one is contained in a hollow happiness to never confront reality.
Something very applicable and perhaps even more so for modern society, there can be a felt sense of no time to stop and think or feel. And I'm not even a particularly busy person though probably feel worried I won't always have the time to freely ruminate as I enjoy. There is so much to read & if I should make time for fiction, then Ray Bradbury seems to be a strongly recommended writer & now I have an experience to feel why that is. Perhaps someday I'll read his Dandelion Wine.

[MB.]

Working on the Gonzo Papers, Volume I. at the moment.



I recently finished reading Hunter Thompson's masterpiece, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72; by far his best work. Written immediately after Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the book is composed of many of Hunter Thompson's unedited dispatches to Rolling Stone magazine, chronicling his coverage of the 1972 Presidential election from the Democratic primaries to the crushing defeat of George McGovern in November. The book is so good because it clearly shows Thompson's development into a mature political corespondent, simultaneously taking Gonzo journalism to new, unexplored places. Today, journalists such as Matt Taibi and, at one time, David Foster Wallace, mimicked Thompson's style during the 2004 election (Taibi's coverage of John Kerry) and the 2000 election, (DFW's coverage of John McCain). But it all started with HST in 1972.

The book starts off, Gonzo as fuck. Thompson/Raul Duke/Peter Sheridan is crashing primary candidate transportation, press events, stump speeches; consuming huge quantities of gin, tequila, LSD and speed. But what makes this book truly a masterpiece is how Thompson transitions from an outsider freak-power satirist and becomes wrapped up in the effort to defeat Nixon's re-election bid. As the story progresses, HST's political access to the behind-the-scenes machinations of the McGovern campaign expands, so although it never stops being Gonzo, HST matures from simply chronicling the corruption and lies of post-LSD freak culture and Nixon America, to actually making national political history. McGovern's eventual mainstream rail-roading and inevitable political defeat at the hands of Nixon's goons is thus truly tragic, seen from the inside as it all goes down.

10/10

[Drlee]

They were amazing times MB. The whole hippy-counter culture movement is dismissed as brainless but there was a lot of 'stuff' behind it. We did not see Leary as a freak or Thomson as a comedian.

[The Sabbaticus]

Anyway,

Camus - The Plague

Details the story of a North African colonial town placed in quarantine due to an outbreak of the plague. Mostly an anthropological examination, using the historical conditions of the plague to provide insight into human nature. One of those books where you learn something while reading.

Now reading

'Ideal Husband' - Oscar Wilde

Another story about human nature, irony, 'love', projected imagery and the clash between idealism/realism. It's rather short, featuring lots of political intrigue.

[anasawad]

As of today.

[MB.]

Drlee, I think Norman Mailer was correct when he wrote in, A Fire On The Moon that the WASPs were basically victorious in 1969, the fact that Woodstock immediately followed Aldrin, Collins and Armstrong's landing suggests that the battle was indeed already over before the "fight" had really begun. Kent State and Vietnam not withstanding. I think HST nailed this when he wrote about Leary's failure to transcend, something Tom Wolfe laid on Kesey in Acid Test.

The movement had no legs, so to speak. It failed to stop Vietnam, then re-elected Nixon.



It's a subject I'm very interested in, one of the reasons I think HST's coverage of the campaign 72 is so good: in part he's trying to explain not just Nixon's - clearly corrupt- victory but also why the transcendental movement of Huxley, Leary , Kesey, etc failed so spectacularly.

Or maybe that's unfair. As the ending of the Campaign Trail 72 indicates, the movement may have suffered political defeat, but culturally it managed a draw with the WASPs. It is still difficult to say which was more significant: Apollo 11 or Woodstock. On balance maybe Mailer was wrong, since I bet more people today are familiar with the Woodstock lineup than, say, who Mike Collins or Pete Conrad were.

The Sabbaticus is still working on high-school prescribed existentialism, so we can assume he's about 17 years old- or there's something terribly wrong with the Dutch education system. I can only imagine what kind of "Dutch youth literature" they prescribe in their public school system.

[Potemkin]

It failed to stop Vietnam, then re-elected Nixon.

...who did stop Vietnam. Lol.