crazedandinfused Posted February 10, 2012 Share Posted February 10, 2012 (edited) Starting Max Edelson's Plantation Enterprise in Colonial South Carolina. I'm thinking it might be kinda Stuart Schwartzy. God, I wish I had gotten into Yale Scratch that - this book is way cooler. Edited February 10, 2012 by crazedandinfused Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Riotbeard Posted February 10, 2012 Share Posted February 10, 2012 UNC has a pretty big military history contigent, and gary galliger at UVA is a military historian. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SapperDaddy Posted February 10, 2012 Share Posted February 10, 2012 UNC has a pretty big military history contigent, and gary galliger at UVA is a military historian. Yes, forgot UNC. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oseirus Posted February 10, 2012 Share Posted February 10, 2012 Yes, forgot UNC. When I looked there seemed to be pockets here and there so I sort of discounted the notion of me getting into a school purely on that basis. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
New England Nat Posted February 11, 2012 Share Posted February 11, 2012 UNC and Duke run a miltiary history program togeather that has a lot of faculty but frankly military history can kind of ghettoize you in the historical profession, both because of the bias of academics and because there is so much poorly written military history. oseirus and D'oh! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oseirus Posted February 11, 2012 Share Posted February 11, 2012 Which is such a shame because classically speaking military history was always one of the most important branches within the field, next to religion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oseirus Posted February 11, 2012 Share Posted February 11, 2012 BTW I started rereading Bill Simmons' The Book of Basketball, so I guess that counts since it is a history of the NBA. kotov 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D'oh! Posted February 12, 2012 Share Posted February 12, 2012 North Texas is also good in military history. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Doctor Whom? Posted February 12, 2012 Share Posted February 12, 2012 Currently reading: Eeeee Eee Eeee by Tao Lin, Flying by Ralph Ellison, and All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy. In terms of more history related stuff, I'm also reading Migrant Imaginaries by Alicia Schmidt-Camacho. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BCHistory Posted February 17, 2012 Share Posted February 17, 2012 I'm currently reading Modris Eckstein's Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age, George Mosse's Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars, Dylan Penningroth's The Claims of Kinfolk: African American Property and Community in the Nineteenth-Century South, and Patricia Sullivan's Lift Every Voice: The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement. Yeah, coursework pretty much owns my time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kotov Posted February 20, 2012 Share Posted February 20, 2012 Pretty much finished doing research reading for the semester. I picked up Charles King's Odessa: Genius and Death in a City of Dreams over the weekend so maybe I'll get to that soon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crazedandinfused Posted February 20, 2012 Share Posted February 20, 2012 Edmund Morgan's The Genuine Article, Alan Lomax's The Land Where The Blues Began, and I just finished Huck Finn (again). I'm an Americanist....... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StrangeLight Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 in addition to reading and re-reading 3 books a day for comps prep (seriously), i'm also reading the brief wondrous life of oscar wao for a caribbean literature class. i sort of hate the omniscient narrator so far. he's trying too hard to be edgy by saying "fuck" and "shit" with absolutely no force behind the words and it's coming off as really inauthentic. i'm hoping there's a twist that redeems this, though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
virmundi Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 in addition to reading and re-reading 3 books a day for comps prep (seriously), i'm also reading the brief wondrous life of oscar wao for a caribbean literature class. i sort of hate the omniscient narrator so far. he's trying too hard to be edgy by saying "fuck" and "shit" with absolutely no force behind the words and it's coming off as really inauthentic. i'm hoping there's a twist that redeems this, though. Strange -- if you don't mind my asking, how do you do the 3 books/day thing? I did 100 books in 90 days for my M.A. comps, but that was basically 1/day which was still somewhat of a strain... Knowing, as I do, that Ph.D. comps often involve three times as many books and not necessarily a lot more time to prepare for them, I am wondering if you would be willing to share any ideas that you've picked up...! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Safferz Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 in addition to reading and re-reading 3 books a day for comps prep (seriously), i'm also reading the brief wondrous life of oscar wao for a caribbean literature class. i sort of hate the omniscient narrator so far. he's trying too hard to be edgy by saying "fuck" and "shit" with absolutely no force behind the words and it's coming off as really inauthentic. i'm hoping there's a twist that redeems this, though. I loved that book!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StrangeLight Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 Strange -- if you don't mind my asking, how do you do the 3 books/day thing? I did 100 books in 90 days for my M.A. comps, but that was basically 1/day which was still somewhat of a strain... Knowing, as I do, that Ph.D. comps often involve three times as many books and not necessarily a lot more time to prepare for them, I am wondering if you would be willing to share any ideas that you've picked up...! i do it very, very poorly. i read the intro and conclusion of each book. pick one chapter per book that seems most relevant to my work or most interesting and skim it. then i read 2-3 reviews per book. this is not ideal. i had more time to prepare and didn't move through my work as quickly as i should have, so i'm backloaded on the last 20 books. usually i did a book a day and even then i did a lot of skimming. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
virmundi Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 i do it very, very poorly. i read the intro and conclusion of each book. pick one chapter per book that seems most relevant to my work or most interesting and skim it. then i read 2-3 reviews per book. this is not ideal. i had more time to prepare and didn't move through my work as quickly as i should have, so i'm backloaded on the last 20 books. usually i did a book a day and even then i did a lot of skimming. Oh -- okay -- thank you! I did something similar for my M.A. comps (albeit a bit more in depth because of the lesser load of texts!)... I read intro and conclusion, then did a five sentence outline of each chapter... Needless to say, this didn't feel adequate either -- although I passed my comps and the grade is all but forgotten, I suppose, now that I have moved on to writing my thesis where the real scrutiny lies... Comps sucks, and I don't look forward to doing them again -- but I will admit that they have been extraordinarily useful in terms of preparing me for the kinds of utilitarian pillaging that I need to perform on texts for my thesis. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simple Twist of Fate Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 in addition to reading and re-reading 3 books a day for comps prep (seriously), i'm also reading the brief wondrous life of oscar wao for a caribbean literature class. i sort of hate the omniscient narrator so far. he's trying too hard to be edgy by saying "fuck" and "shit" with absolutely no force behind the words and it's coming off as really inauthentic. i'm hoping there's a twist that redeems this, though. I enjoyed that book. He also wrote a short story collection called "Drown". If you end up liking Oscar Wao, "Drown" is a pretty good read. Sounds like you might not have time in the near future, of course... Just finished Anna Karenina. It was... okay. Seems to be one of those books that people either love or hate, yet I don't have any strong feelings about it. By the way, my birthday's coming up and I'm making a list of a few good monographs that might be useful to own someday. Do any early Americanists have thoughts? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StrangeLight Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 i was pretty ambivalent to anna karenina myself. it was like wallpaper. further into the book, i'm liking oscar wao a lot more. a friend told me "drown" was great. maybe i'll have time to read it in may. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RevolutionBlues Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 Just finished Anna Karenina. It was... okay. Seems to be one of those books that people either love or hate, yet I don't have any strong feelings about it. I'm about 200 pages behind you on Anna Karenina, but I'm really liking it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oseirus Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 I'm about 200 pages behind you on Anna Karenina, but I'm really liking it. Spoiler Alert ... that book almost caused me to reenact the ending ... that's how depressing Russian lit has been for me unfortunately Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
New England Nat Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 I've also been reading pulpish military fiction I read as a teenager. W.E.B. Griffin... boy those books have a lot more sex than I remembered. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oseirus Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 I've also been reading pulpish military fiction I read as a teenager. W.E.B. Griffin... boy those books have a lot more sex than I remembered. Speaking of military fiction, have you read of the Harry Turtledove series? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
New England Nat Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 Speaking of military fiction, have you read of the Harry Turtledove series? Only Guns of the South and that was ages ago. Weirdly it came up during a Civil War job search and everyone who accidently admitted to having read it was slightly embarrassed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oseirus Posted February 21, 2012 Share Posted February 21, 2012 Only Guns of the South and that was ages ago. Weirdly it came up during a Civil War job search and everyone who accidently admitted to having read it was slightly embarrassed. Why do people treat his works like some trashy airport book? He is a fascinating author I find ... maybe I shouldn't admit this in public if the consensus is that he is a hack Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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