what are you reading now?

[luka]

I agree with you, the 21 Aubrey / Maturin books are the pinnacle.
You might want to try James Clavell’s Asian saga, starting with Shogun. They come close.
If you want to stay nautical, I also enjoyed the Horatio Hornblower series (11 books I believe).
Other suggestions are the Sherlock Holmes series for Victorian British mysteries, or even the Lonesome Dove series if you think you would like Westerns.
You can’t go wrong with any of these . Enjoy!
The bottle stands by you, sir !!

 

[jenks]

I'll be on the Southbank tomorrow, going to ask for a poem about butterfly knives chopping pale flesh, 50p should suffice

Good luck - I turned up the other day and he was nowhere to be seen.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

There is a short story by HG Wells (I think) called In The Land of the Blind where this sighted guy ends up in a community of people without eyes - far from being king however his claims to be able to see are dismissed as a fantasy and he's unable to prove his genuine "superiority" cos the place is optimised for its inhabitants. I think it ends with him having his eyes put out.

I think 'em up, Wells writes them with his time machine.

 

[Clinamenic]

Just started reading Keynes' General Theory in the sauna today, looks like this experience is going to be at once highly grueling but also potentially deeply formative.

 

[subvert47]

just read (not in this order):
Judy Blume - Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret
Judy Blume - Then Again, Maybe I Won't
Eve Garnett - The Family from One End Street
Eve Garnett - Further Adventures of the Family from One End Street
Eve Garnett - Holiday at the Dew Drop Inn
Rumer Godden - Tottie: The Story of a Dolls' House
Gwen Grant - Knock and Wait
Gwen Grant - One Way Only
Gwen Grant - Private, Keep Out
Jill Murphy - The Worst Witch
Philippa Pearce - Tom's Midnight Garden
EB White - Charlotte's Web

next up:
Sybil Burr - Life with Lisa

 

[Corpsey]

I was reading the tempest outside a pub, got to act 2, and pint 3, now I can't read anymore

 

[jenks]

just read (not in this order):
Judy Blume - Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret
Judy Blume - Then Again, Maybe I Won't
Eve Garnett - The Family from One End Street
Eve Garnett - Further Adventures of the Family from One End Street
Eve Garnett - Holiday at the Dew Drop Inn
Rumer Godden - Tottie: The Story of a Dolls' House
Gwen Grant - Knock and Wait
Gwen Grant - One Way Only
Gwen Grant - Private, Keep Out
Jill Murphy - The Worst Witch
Philippa Pearce - Tom's Midnight Garden
EB White - Charlotte's Web

next up:
Sybil Burr - Life with Lisa

YA before it got all urban and issues based.
I remember Family from One End Street as a kid and I’ve taught TMG to 11 year olds - many years ago.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Jill Murphy - The Worst Witch

Excellent book, that.

for a blatant Harry Potter ripoff, I guess

 

[subvert47]

YA before it got all urban and issues based.
I remember Family from One End Street as a kid and I’ve taught TMG to 11 year olds - many years ago.

more children's really; I think only the Judy Blume would fit the young adult category

btw these are all books I've read (or reread) since reading Lucy Mangan's Bookworm

 

[okzharp]

I'm about half way. It's a real page-turner.

 

[Mr. Tea]

I'm about half way. It's a real page-turner.

It's great, although I did find myself rolling my eyes after reading the phrase "As soon as Dawn appeared, fresh and rosy-fingered..." for the tenth time.

 

[Clinamenic]

It's great, although I did find myself rolling my eyes after reading the phrase "As soon as Dawn appeared, fresh and rosy-fingered..." for the tenth time.

Yeah I found that odd too

 

[Corpsey]

I didn't really like the odyssey but I suspect I was poisoned against it by the audiobook I was tethering my reading to

Although I didn't have an audiobook for the iliad and I didn't like that, either, so much so that I only read about three chapters (or whatever they are) of it

I'm constantly reading things where people take Homer being the GOAT as a given and I feel like they're either 1) saying what they're supposed to 2) have appreciated something i haven't (most likely) 3) have read it in greek

I like all the stories from it, ofc, the cyclops and so on, I'm not a monster

 

[Slothrop]

Just read Imperial Mud by James Boyce. A history of the draining of the Fens, in which it's understood as an act of internal colonization, the destruction of a way of life (retroactively justified by the vilification of that way of life) via a massive land-grab in the interests of powerful absentee landowners. Shades of James C Scott. There's a few bits of what look like motivated reasoning (like the positive framing of the accidental introduction of malaria by the Romans) but it's well worth a read.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Just read Imperial Mud by James Boyce. A history of the draining of the Fens, in which it's understood as an act of internal colonization, the destruction of a way of life (retroactively justified by the vilification of that way of life) via a massive land-grab in the interests of powerful absentee landowners. Shades of James C Scott. There's a few bits of what look like motivated reasoning (like the positive framing of the accidental introduction of malaria by the Romans) but it's well worth a read.

This kind of thing happened all over the place in the early modern era, didn't it? Tenant farmers got screwed over everywhere by the Enclosures Acts, plus of course the Highland clearances, Ireland..

Not really all that different from the Soviet collectivization of farms or Saddam draining the southern Mesopotamian marshes to destroy the Marsh Arabs, even if it wasn't on quite the same scale.

 

[Corpsey]

Uninteresting coincidence, I looked up the word "fen" yesterday while reading the tempest outside a pub, and noticed it reoccurred

 

[Corpsey]

Maybe not so irrelevant after all

Caliban and the Fen-Demons of Lincolnshire: The Englishness of The Tempest

Abstract. Chapter 6 mires The Tempest in the English fens and establishes that the play generates dramatic conflict out of the furore incited by campaigns

academic.oup.com

Chapter 6 mires The Tempest in the English fens and establishes that the play generates dramatic conflict out of the furore incited by campaigns to drain them. Shakespeare’s romance glances at Ireland and the Americas but Prospero’s magical dominion over his island also mirrors the domestic colonization of England’s wetlands.

 

[versh]

One of my brothers is currently in the middle of a temperate rainforest in Scotland. It's funny because I was reading a government plan to recover England's a few weeks before he mentioned he was heading up there, and it turns out my dad's just finished reading a book about them as well. Beautiful synchronicity.

Scotland's Rainforest | Forestry and Land Scotland

Scotland's rainforest is found on Scotland’s steep and rocky west coast – where the climate is wettest.

forestryandland.gov.scot

 

[Slothrop]

This kind of thing happened all over the place in the early modern era, didn't it? Tenant farmers got screwed over everywhere by the Enclosures Acts, plus of course the Highland clearances, Ireland..

Yeah, I mean it's somewhat different from most other bits of England in that there's a complete transformation of the nature of the landscape, and hence the destruction of a whole mode of living and an indigenous culture. This goes hand-in-hand with the (culturally persistent) depiction of the drainage as a creation of productive land rather than an appropriation of it, which is something else it has in common with colonialism as it's usually understood. Also, there was a fairly sustained (and surprisingly effective) resistance to it, and I think this is part of what the author is interested in - history of colonization is his usual thing, and he talks a bit about trying to pick at resistance-is-futile narrative of Imperialism and re-center the anti-Imperial struggles of colonized peoples.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Yeah, I mean it's somewhat different from most other bits of England in that there's a complete transformation of the nature of the landscape, and hence the destruction of a whole mode of living and an indigenous culture. This goes hand-in-hand with the (culturally persistent) depiction of the drainage as a creation of productive land rather than an appropriation of it, which is something else it has in common with colonialism as it's usually understood. Also, there was a fairly sustained (and surprisingly effective) resistance to it, and I think this is part of what the author is interested in - history of colonization is his usual thing, and he talks a bit about trying to pick at resistance-is-futile narrative of Imperialism and re-center the anti-Imperial struggles of colonized peoples.

What sort of era are we talking about here? It sounds interesting, if very sad.