The Books/Reading Thread
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The Ozzman
Melted by feels
Rick Atkinson is a very good author. Lots of detail and everything but he can go into too much detail sometimes. I stopped reading one of his 'Liberation Trilogy' books because of how dense it was and I don't have the focus for such a long book right now.
Dude was in Beghazi when all that went down. A true patriot.
rms
Active Member
viewerfromnihil
Vein-Marbled Tower
Much ado about impending graduate applications and potential supervisors.
I was quite happy with this work. I was afraid it would be a little to biographical for my tastes, but it turned out to be comprehensive, very readable, and entertaining. Goltz also rejects the narrative that Hindenburg was somehow passive in his undermining of the Republic, and argues the opposite quite convincingly.
Just started really digging into this yesterday. I flipped through it a bit when I was working on a historiographical paper on the genocide of the Herero, but didn't have the time to really take it bite by bite and digest it. It's a bit dense, overall satisfying thus far. Zimmerman published a book more recently on the strange partnership between Tuskegee and Imperial Germany in Togo to recreate the colony in the image of post-reconstruction South with a Booker T. Washington flair, which I hope to get to after hitting some publications of other potential advisers.
I was quite happy with this work. I was afraid it would be a little to biographical for my tastes, but it turned out to be comprehensive, very readable, and entertaining. Goltz also rejects the narrative that Hindenburg was somehow passive in his undermining of the Republic, and argues the opposite quite convincingly.
Just started really digging into this yesterday. I flipped through it a bit when I was working on a historiographical paper on the genocide of the Herero, but didn't have the time to really take it bite by bite and digest it. It's a bit dense, overall satisfying thus far. Zimmerman published a book more recently on the strange partnership between Tuskegee and Imperial Germany in Togo to recreate the colony in the image of post-reconstruction South with a Booker T. Washington flair, which I hope to get to after hitting some publications of other potential advisers.
Einherjar86
Active Member
That Zimmerman book sounds fascinating, looked at some reviews. The antihumanism element caught my eye, as it reminded me of Thomas Pynchon's representation of the Hereros in Gravity's Rainbow, in which they comprise one of the novel's plots. Pynchon fictionalizes a group of Hereros adopted into the German military to fight in World War II, but they assume a kind of counter-counter-revolutionary status and an effort to break from German bondage by so radically assuming the genocidal mantle that they deny the Germans their identity (as I understand it, it's a weird fucking book). In other words, they actively become the inhuman/subhuman others that the Germans made them out to be, and derive a revolutionary sense of agency from this inhuman state:
It goes on and gets more interesting, but Pynchon was fascinated by the implications of colonialism in South Africa in the latter half of the nineteenth century, and its effects in the twentieth century.
Gravity's Rainbow said:
It goes on and gets more interesting, but Pynchon was fascinated by the implications of colonialism in South Africa in the latter half of the nineteenth century, and its effects in the twentieth century.
viewerfromnihil
Vein-Marbled Tower
Sound's intriguing. I'll definitely have to put it on my reading list. The German experience in colonialism is an odd one, filled with rhetoric, backed by half-measures and incompetence (not unusual by Wilhelm II's standards), and the genocide of the Herero is reflective of this.
Interesting little note on late 19th century German anthropology I got from Zimmerman: freak shows and theatrical exhibitions of brown people in Berlin was the "field work" that built the empirical basis of German anthropology before venturing out to the colonies became common practice in the 20th century.
Interesting little note on late 19th century German anthropology I got from Zimmerman: freak shows and theatrical exhibitions of brown people in Berlin was the "field work" that built the empirical basis of German anthropology before venturing out to the colonies became common practice in the 20th century.
The Ozzman
Melted by feels
Einherjar86
Active Member
Yeah I read about this in the reviews! That's so interesting, and speaks directly to the observer paradox that anthropology would go on to grapple with in the next couple decades. It also reflects something of the German sociopolitical mentality that they were able to so easily (and unproblematically?) approach Naturvölker in this way.
You may enjoy Gravity's Rainbow in terms of its content and themes, if you can tolerate the deliberately goofy prose and dream-sequence passages. Pynchon has done a lot of research on German history and it shows. A lot of literary scholars have documented the multitude of references to German politics and history throughout the novel. In short, Gravity's Rainbow is a fever dream about the strangeness and sheer gargantuan-ness of World War II.
Blurry_Dreams
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TageRyche
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dwellerINTHEdark
Curator of the mausoleum
Einherjar86
Active Member
I watched the first couple episodes, which I thought were good. Then I fell too far behind and lost access to the third and fourth episodes.
The book is excellent though, in my opinion. I'm not a huge Simmons fan, but I think The Terror offers a great combination of suspenseful horror and fantasy.
He's also the author of the Hyperion Cantos, which is an epic sci-fi series.
The book is excellent though, in my opinion. I'm not a huge Simmons fan, but I think The Terror offers a great combination of suspenseful horror and fantasy.
He's also the author of the Hyperion Cantos, which is an epic sci-fi series.
The Ozzman
Melted by feels
Einherjar86
Active Member
Dak
mentat
Nice haul at the Harvard Bookstore's warehouse clearance sale:
After reading a synopsis and reviews I want to read this, although I'm pretty sure I'm going to be shaking my head the whole time. Also did not realize Jameson was at Duke.
Currently mostly finished with Dune for the first time. I know it's place early in modern SciFi, but I have to say it's left me rolling my eyes from the moment Paul "awakens" or whatever. Maybe I've been permanently scarred on this stuff by The Sword of Truth series.
Sirjack
Stinkupuss
Nice haul at the Harvard Bookstore's warehouse clearance sale:
I just finished Arkady and Boris' Monday Begins on Saturday. Fantastic. Bonkers as hell but a really good read. The Doomed City is supposedly just as sublime.
The Ozzman
Melted by feels
There was a great quote within the first 10 pages of the book so I hope it keeps delivering gems like that. It is going to be super long and require 100% of my attention while reading it. I have a feeling it will go on my 'I started reading this and then decided to restart at another time when I'm more in the mood' pile though. I have half a dozen books in that category right now.
Master_Yoda77
Juggalo
I just started re-reading the Lord of the Rings since it's been about a decade and that's a series that deserves to be read at least every decade. I'm already picking up new things in the first couple of chapters that I either missed the other couple of times through as a kid or I simply forgot.
Einherjar86
Active Member
This is good to hear. I've only read Roadside Picnic, which was also bonkers. Looking forward to getting into this one.
