Whatcha reading?

[Danger_Zone]

10 hours ago, maelia8 said:

@Danger_Zone I love that book! I've read everything by Murakami except for his first two books, which aren't widely available in English. Man, I'd love to get my hands on copies of "Pinball, 1973" and "Hear the Wind Sing."

Awesome! I'm really enjoying it so far, and I love Murakami novels in general. Up to this point I've read After Dark, A Wild Sheep Chase, Norwegian Wood, Kafka on the Shore, and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. By the way, I don't know if you know this, but Murakami just re-released those books as Wind/Pinball: https://www.amazon.com/Wind-Pinball-novels-Haruki-Murakami/dp/0385352123

That's impressive, @Neist! Hope you enjoyed.

Edited July 5, 2016 by Danger_Zone

[Neist]

21 hours ago, Danger_Zone said:

That's impressive, @Neist! Hope you enjoyed.

 

I did enjoy it.  Thanks! I think the earlier work is generally the better work, but it was a good journey.

Next up is an audio book version of The Hunt for Vulcan by Thomas Levenson. It was an Audible deal of the day earlier this summer, and I think it'll be a nice, short palate cleanser. I need something short after that marathon session.

 

[maelia8]

22 hours ago, Danger_Zone said:

Awesome! I'm really enjoying it so far, and I love Murakami novels in general. Up to this point I've read After Dark, A Wild Sheep Chase, Norwegian Wood, Kafka on the Shore, and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. By the way, I don't know if you know this, but Murakami just re-released those books as Wind/Pinball: https://www.amazon.com/Wind-Pinball-novels-Haruki-Murakami/dp/0385352123

@Danger_Zone I found out about the new edition yesterday!! I was so excited. I just downloaded it on my kindle and look forward to reading the two novellas.

[Danger_Zone]

5 hours ago, maelia8 said:

@Danger_Zone I found out about the new edition yesterday!! I was so excited. I just downloaded it on my kindle and look forward to reading the two novellas.

That's great, I hope you enjoy it! I own a few more Murakami books I need to get through, so I'm probably waiting until the paperback edition comes out. It will be really exciting to read his earliest works, though.

[Klonoa]

Currently reading Linda Witt, et al. "A Defense Weapon Known to Be of Value": Servicewomen of the Korean War Era and Evelyn M. Monahan and Rosemary Neidel-Greenlee's A Few Good Women: America's Military Women from World War I to the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I still need to finish Maggi Morehouse's Fighting in the Jim Crow Army: Black Men and Women Remember World War II and Angel Davis's Women, Race, and Class. Very shortly I will be starting James E. Westheider's The African American Experience in Vietnam: Brothers in Arms, Heather Marie Stur's Beyond Combat: Women and Gender in the Vietnam Era, and Mark Boulton's Failing Our Veterans: The GI Bill and the Vietnam Generation. Hopefully I will be caught up on all my reading by next Sunday.

[knp]

Has anybody read The Three-Body Problem? More importantly, has anybody read The Dark Forest? I've met 2-3 people who've read the first one, but have never even seen a review on the internet that acknowledges the second. But they are both great!

[knp]

I haven't had an institutional affiliation for a couple years: this has made accessing most scholarship either difficult or impossible. I just downloaded my first scholarly PDF through my new university's library system. This feeling:

[szabo]

I see Murakami fans, awesome! I used to be a book worm in junior and high school but no longer consider myself one these days. After watching a Japanese drama (Algernon ni Hanataba o) with a very popular actor (Yamashita Tomohisa aka Yamapi), I went to the local library (which is just a 5 minute walk from my apartment (cool!) and because the school's library did not have the book (not cool) ), I signed up for a library card to check out Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. Interesting story that's making me feel feels again (as if the drama did not do that already) 

[Neist]

On 7/13/2016 at 9:37 PM, knp said:

Has anybody read The Three-Body Problem? More importantly, has anybody read The Dark Forest? I've met 2-3 people who've read the first one, but have never even seen a review on the internet that acknowledges the second. But they are both great!

 

I have not! Both look pretty interesting. I'll look into them.

I really need to post an update in this thread. Ugh. The longer I wait, the more work it'll require... 

[Danger_Zone]

On 7/25/2016 at 3:24 PM, szabo said:

I see Murakami fans, awesome! I used to be a book worm in junior and high school but no longer consider myself one these days. After watching a Japanese drama (Algernon ni Hanataba o) with a very popular actor (Yamashita Tomohisa aka Yamapi), I went to the local library (which is just a 5 minute walk from my apartment (cool!) and because the school's library did not have the book (not cool) ), I signed up for a library card to check out Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. Interesting story that's making me feel feels again (as if the drama did not do that already) 

I'm the opposite, really. I didn't like reading in middle/high school, but started to love it by the end of high school and beginning of college. I had a totally different attitude from school then and basically hated any kind of reading I had to do associated with school. 

 

I haven't had much time to read with moving and getting ready for school but I recently read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot and am currently reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? By Philip K. Dick.

[Klonoa]

Today I just started reading Mary L. Dudziak's Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy and Thomas Borstelmann's The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena. I'm still creeping through Maggi M. Morehouse's Fighting in the Jim Crow: Black Men and Women Remember World War II. For two days straight I was going through old Ebony magazines, which really did my head in. I must admit that going through periodicals have been the worst part of my research.

[Danger_Zone]

Just started The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut. Hoping to finish this book and maybe one or two more before I need to start reading for school. Was going to start on it early but I don't quite feel in the right mindset yet..

[szabo]

On 8/1/2016 at 0:39 PM, Klonoa said:

Today I just started reading Mary L. Dudziak's Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy and Thomas Borstelmann's The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena. I'm still creeping through Maggi M. Morehouse's Fighting in the Jim Crow: Black Men and Women Remember World War II. For two days straight I was going through old Ebony magazines, which really did my head in. I must admit that going through periodicals have been the worst part of my research.

What are you reading the Ebony magazines for? Research? Personal interest? 

[Klonoa]

23 hours ago, szabo said:

What are you reading the Ebony magazines for? Research? Personal interest? 

It was for research. 

[Neist]

The procrastination must end!

In reality, I haven't burned through as much books as I would have liked this last month, but I've also been taking classes (foreign language) and prepping for entering my program (orientations and whatnot). However, I have completed the following:

• $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in American by Edin and Shaefer
• Adventures in Being Human by Francis
• Shocked by Casarett

I'm also about two-thirds the way through Isaacson's Einstein: His Life and Universe, and I've already signed up for some reading groups in the fall. There's honor's college sponsored reading groups each semester here, and they give you a copy of the book as part of the group. There's ~40 groups a semester, so there's always something interesting to dig into. I signed up for (and will hopefully get into) The Gene: An Intimate History, Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love, and On the Move: A Life.

I was really excited about the last title making it onto the list this semester. Oliver Sacks seems like an incredibly interesting person, and I've always wanted to read it.

[Neist]

I miss this thread. Is anyone reading anything interesting?

I need to post an update, but my reading habits have become prolific, for lack of a better word. I'll work on an update this evening, but I'm curious if anyone else still visits this post. 

[speechfan222]

I still follow this post every once in awhile. I need to read more non fiction, especially books relating to my major and area of interest, but I really enjoy fiction. Im currently reading Straight Man by Richard Russo now. Hes great. Love his works. 

[Neist]

Whew. Here goes nothing! And I'm only listing books that I've read outside of class. There's too much reading to keep tabs on for class.

So You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson
The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson
Scarcity: The New Science of Having Less and How It Defines Our Lives by Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir
Time Travel: A History by James Gleick
Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry by Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff
Eniac: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the World's First Computer by Scott McCartney
The Wright Brothers by David McCullough
In Defense of a Liberal Education by Fareed Zakaria

About half of them were in the last few weeks. As this being my first semester in graduate school, I had to acclimate a bit to the work; I think I've got it down at this point. Also, I've finished the three books that I previously mentioned for reading groups (along with Awakenings by Oliver Sacks, which was added to a reading group).

[Neist]

On 8/1/2016 at 11:05 AM, Danger_Zone said:

I haven't had much time to read with moving and getting ready for school but I recently read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot and am currently reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? By Philip K. Dick.

 

 

 

Wow, I didn't catch this until now. Did you like the book? I think it's fantastic and one of the better written for-popular-audience history of science books.

Edited November 12, 2016 by Neist

[ManifestMidwest]

I've been reading quite a few things lately, including 

Latour, Reassembling the Social

Starn, Ishi's Brain

Gorky, Mother

[Klonoa]

Currently reading Susannah Walker's Style & Status: Selling Beauty to African American Women, 1920-1975 (2007) for a paper I'm working on.

[Neist]

Just finished The Cultural Revolution: A People's History, 1962-1976 by Frank Dikotter, and read Library: An Unquiet History by Grover Gardner before that.

The first was quite good, and I think I'm going to read some more of Dikotter's work. The second was merely okay. Glad I read it, but I doubt I'll look up more by the author.

[MMii]

So interesting to see what everyone's reading

Currently reading Rape: A South African Nightmare by Pumla Dineo Gqola, Derrida's Memoirs of the Blind, and re-reading Registration and Recognition: Documenting the Person in World History by Keith Breckenridge & Simon Sretzer

Novel list for December: Achebe's Arrow of God and A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (which mysteriously appeared in my bookshelf)

[Neist]

Doing a little bit of primary source background reading.

I'm reading Zoological Philosophy by Lamarck. I was going to read the entire thing, but I think I'm going to stop midway through. Not sure if the latter half of the book is relevant to my research; I might revisit it later.

Now I'm starting Principles of Geology, v.2 by Lyell. 

Up next is a re-read of On the Origin of Species. 

[Neist]

Took me longer than I would, but I finally finished On the Origin of Species. The holidays completely kills productivity with familial obligations.  

Now, I'm reading Monk in the Garden. Not sure what I'll read next. Hm.