Fast Food Nation. I love, love, loves me a good burger but after reading the description of mass-produced ground beef, I am thinking of raising my own steer.

Eggers "What is the What". Interesting non fiction goes fiction take. Cool, worth the read.

just finished reading the Lone Wolf and Cub comic series. Easily one of the best comics series I ever read. And "Mother Night" by Kurt Vonnegut and the Marvel Comics "Civil War" series.

Here you go:

My recomendations:
Arc of Justice - Boyle (Black family in detroit durring the 20's, it was totally riveting).
Philbrick (Mayflower, In the Heart of the Sea)
Ellis (American Sphinx, His Excelency, etc)
McCullough (Mornings on Horseback, Johnstown Flood, Truman, Adams, etc)
A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson

Up next on my list are:
A People's History of the United States - Zinn
The Worst Hard Time - Egan (Dustbowl)
Paine - Rights of Man and Common Sense

I am currently reading Streetcar Suburbs, which has thusfar proved rather uninteresting, which is disapointing because it could have been really cool (it is about how streetcars affected the population increase of Boston and it is supposed to talk about the laying of the lines and how they followed

my two cents on the previous two posts:
"mother night" is a very good vonnegut book.
"a people history..." is also really good: it's well written and is a interesting take on US history.

other good history books (not that anyone would be too interested in either of these subjects) that i read last semester were
Frank Jones and Malcolm Wanklyn's "a military history of the english civil war" (provides a nice, concise synopsis of the first english civil war
AG Dickens "the english reformation" which should be read with Christopher Haigh "the english reformation". the dickens is the traditional view of the reformation, and haigh is somewhat of a revisionist; it's interesting to see both.

anyone ever read shaara's the killer angels? i can't decide what my next read is going to be.

books i have to read for next week
James Joyce Ulysses (the first part)
Charles Brockden Brown Wieland
John Bunyan The Pilgrim's Progress
Luigi Pirandello Six Characters in Search of an Author
Oscar Wilde The Picture of Dorian Gray
Eugene Ionesco The Bald Soprano and The Lesson

try anything written by Paul Farmer about Haiti. he puts a very human face on the history of haiti. he has worked intensively in medicine - public health and epidemiology - in rural haiti. "the uses of haiti" is really good. "infections and inequalities" is very good, too, but not history. but rather historical.

Please more book recommendations.

Best thing I've read recently was "Sex, Drugs and Coco Puffs" by Chuck Klosterman. Laugh out loud funny. Chuck Klosterman IV, not so much more of the same but less funny. Like David Sedaris in that if you read one good one, like "My Talk Pretty Some Day", you should probably avoid the lesser ones.

Also the Tipping Point, which was good when I was reading it but upon further thought seemed pretty facile and not all that interesting.

Would love a good novel. From this thread last year I picked up "The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay" and "Kafka on The Shore" which were both really good. Next on my list is "A Savage War of Peace" about the French war in Algeria which a lot of people in Iraq are reading apparently as a guide to insurgencies. Need something a little less historical to go with it.

You all make me jealous.

For me this week it's:

Tannenbaum, F. (1946) Slave and Citizen: The Negro in the Americas. New York, Vintage Books.

Rout, L. (1976) The African Experience in Spanish America. Cambridge University Press.

Russell-Wood, A.J. (1982) The Black Man in Slavery and Freedom in Colonial Brazil. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Díaz, M. E. (2000). The Virgin, the king, and the royal slaves of El Cobre : negotiating freedom in colonial Cuba, 1670-1780. Stanford, Calif., Stanford University Press.

Bennett, H. L. (2003). Africans in Colonial Mexico : absolutism, Christianity, and Afro-Creole consciousness, 1570-1640. Bloomington, Indiana University Press.

Sweet, J. H. (2003). Recreating Africa : culture, kinship, and religion in the African-Portuguese world, 1441-1770. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press.


I Hate Comprehensive exams.

right now:
oscar wilde "picture of dorian gray"
john bunyan "the pilgrim's progress"
aphra behn "oroonoko"
samuel beckett "endgame"
samuel beckett "waiting for godot"
catherine maria sedgwick "hope leslie"
james fenimore cooper "last of the mohicans"

Simultaneously?

I used to read 2 or 3 books at a time, it's not a good idea. 7 is a lot worse. BTW, how are you liking Endgame?

niccolo machiavelli - the prince & discourses
peter o'toole - honorable trechery
henry kissenger - diplomacy

and on a lighter note...
khaled hosseini - the kite runner (excellent fiction book)

Yes, and I enjoyed it very much. Shaara spends a lot of time Little Round Top with Joshua Chamberlain.

Climbing Mount Improbable by Richard Dawkins
Dry by Augusten Burroughs
Magical Thinking by Augusten Burroughs
Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis
Cosmos by Carl Sagan

That's what I picked up at the library recently.

The Meaning of Sport by Simon Barnes.

After about 200 pages everything starts making sense

I actually have witnessed the fall of civilization in print form. I saw a new series of books.....the 50 cent G=ggggggg G-Unit streetwise hard hittin' novels. Oh yeah. Get some.

Almost forgot..

Behind Bars: Surviving Prison by Stephen C. Richards

Politics as a Vocation by Max Weber
Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader by Bradley Martin
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

middlesex by jeffrey eugenides

cause i only read one book at a time.

Goodwin's image of Johnson is interesting when juxtaposed against Caro's image. Also her new book on Lincoln and his cabinet is righteously good.

It's required reading for class. I doubt I'll get more then 5 chapters into it...c'est la vie.

i'm working my way through this one as well. my progress hasn't been aided by the fact that i've got volume 2 waiting on the shelf.
i wish i could say that i'm enjoying this read, but it's premise(s) start to weigh on me after a couple of chapters, and i have to set it down to let the material seep into my skull...that's when the interior dialogue starts, i mean, would i have what it takes to live in a world after civilization collapses? i am typing this out on a fancy, electrical, all-too-civilized gadget, not too mention posting it out over a world wide information network; neither of which will survive said collapse...well, i suppose my computer would survive, but with no power, it would become a writing tablet...or i could slip it under my shirt for a makeshift bulletproof vest.

I'm enjoying it despite the fact i am reading it pretty slowly. It's well written and it's certainly convincing towards the destruction of civilization. I'd say its definitely worth reading if you are considering it.