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Argali posted:Any good non-historic fiction about pirates? Was at the beach yesterday and got a hankering for a good pirate story. Gene Wolfe did a pirate story. Pirate Freedom. I love Gene Wolfe more than just about any other author, and I liked this book. It's not straight pirates - but then you asked for non-historic, so I think it fits.
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Aug 24, 2015 06:30
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Grey Elephants posted:I just finished reading Waiting for Godot and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and really enjoyed them. Where should I go from here if I want to read more absurdist/existentialist stuff? Camus is what you want. Start with The Stranger.
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Aug 31, 2015 14:38
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Jack the Lad posted:I guess what I'm actually talking about and looking for are books featuring very competent characters solving problems and overcoming adversity with smarts/science in general. Fair warning: this is about the Neal Stephenson-est book he ever wrote. If you're familiar with his work, you'll know what I mean. But if you like The Martian, then maybe infodumps are your thing. It's certainly the closest thing to The Martian that I've personally read.
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Sep 9, 2015 02:14
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Hey, just looking for some books my mom would like. Last year she asked for these 4 books: Two Nights in Lisbon, by Chris Pavone Trust, by Hernan Diaz A World of Curiosities, by Louise Penny A Twist of the Knife, by Anthony Horowitz I looked for new stuff by those authors but no luck. Can anyone give me suggestions based on those? She often likes thrillers and mysteries, especially bestsellers. She reads a lot, so she might have already read the most popular ones.
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Dec 22, 2023 21:41
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Minotaurus Rex posted:I’m in the UK so it’s not really necessarily a US-based history I was imagining.. I was under the impression the left/right concept had its start in the French Revolution so before communism and Marx etc. Wasn’t so much looking for histories of specific American anticommunist activities per se tho I can how they’d be relevant to the subject. Not entirely sure what I’m looking for myself here so can only offer these vague intimations Starting in the middle: once upon a time there were kings. Kings were men in forts with armed thugs who could do what they want and charged the people in their area for the privilege. Mafia poo poo. Politics were things that happened between kings. E.g. the magna carta is a deal between a bunch of smaller kings called nobles and the king of the whole country. (If you want to know how we got there, David Graeber and Marshall Sahlins wrote On Kings and Graeber and Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything also goes into it a bit.) Then there were a bunch of revolutions to overthrow monarchies. The American revolution, the French revolution, etc. These were liberal revolutions: they were mainly fought by liberals against monarchists. In the French Revolution, the liberals literally sat on the left and monarchists on the right. So that's the original left/right - liberals vs monarchists. During those revolutions, there was "the political question" and "the social question." (Respectively: Should people have political equality? and Should people have social equality?) In all of the liberal revolutions, there were people advocating for social equality, but they never won. (You can find people advocating for equality for women and gay people in the revolutions of 1848, for example.) The forces in favor of political equality and social inequality always won. The wealthy non-nobles who owned everything were sick of the landed nobility bossing them around, but wanted to still be able to boss everyone else around, and they came out on top. Well, monarchists have been steadily dying off since then and "the west" doesn't have many of them around anymore. So left/right became something different. It had been about the political question, but became about the social question. And then the world started getting a new thing: socialist revolutions. So that was the left/right for a century or more: socialists on the left, liberals on the right (and fascists and monarchists on the "far right" - people still stuck on the political question centuries after it was settled). And I think that's basically still the only coherent version of left/right that makes sense outside of a specific national/local context. The social question has either not been settled, or has been settled with a resounding "no, you will never have equality." There is no other question of that breadth that is being addressed in politics in the world today that could take its place. What people call left/right in a local or national context is not consistent around the world, and the West is basically all just liberals arguing over specific liberal policies. Other parts of the world have socialists or monarchists (or monarchies) in politics still, but where we are, it's just liberals ("There Is No Alternative"). So the people saying you should look at books about communism and anti-communism are correct. And the US had huge worldwide anti-communist programs and activities, so any book about anti-communism is going to have to be about the US in large part.
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Jan 11, 2024 00:42
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. Any recommendations appreciated
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My daughter is 12 and she asked for a non-fiction book about fantasy. I've found some kids books on monsters and on mythology, but I don't have any idea as to their quality and was just wondering if anyone here had any particular recommendations. (Her reading level is typical for her age, so anything for adults or even older teens is going to feel "boring" for her.)
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Feb 21, 2024 15:20
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Anyone have recommendations for British boarding school fiction that is NOT cozy. Anti-cozy, even. Hazing, bullying, nasty teachers, neglectful parents, etc. Will also accept recommendations for memoirs/non-fiction on the same topic.
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May 5, 2024 22:44
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Thanks for the boarding school recs! I have put a hold on Never Let Me Go, since I liked Remains of the Day, and I'll check out the others after that.
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May 7, 2024 23:16
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