What are you reading?

[Gillianren]

I read Hamlet for English class in high school. I was afterwards told that no pre-tertiary student is ever made to read Shakespeare in the original spelling, which I hope is untrue, because the edition I read didn't deign to spell the same word the same way in adjacent sentences. If that's a regularized version, dare one ask what was regularized away?

Oh, goodness no! No, no, I read it non-standardized; it was in our textbook that way. (Hamlet was just one work in the anthology handed out to seniors.) They do standardize the spelling of his name, at least, as should be done to make things easier for everyone. (It would make alphabetizing difficult!) I haven't seen your specific edition, obviously, but I doubt it was standardized.

Yes, the Dimbleby lecture. He did read an introduction to the lecture, then let Tony take over.
You've mentioned disliking YouTube, but if you can overcome the dislike, the first part is here, then the rest from the related ones to the right.

I will consider that. Thank you.

[AndreasJ]

I haven't seen your specific edition, obviously, but I doubt it was standardized.

That's a relief of sorts.

I've begun David W. Anthony's The Horse, the Wheel, and Language, a book about the Indo-European Urheimat question (Anthony subscribes to the Pontic Steppe theory).

[Cougar]

From Eternity to Here [2010] - Sean Carroll

[AndreasJ]

Just read CAS's "The Double Shadow", and started on "The Monster of the Prophecy".

Also slowly working my way through The Horse .... I wish it didn't dumb down the linguistics side as much as it does, but I guess I'm mostly reading it for the archaeology anyway.

[baskerbosse]

"F.H. Chapman : The First Naval Architect & His Work" by Daniel G Harris

/Peter

[Gillianren]

Get Capone: The Secret Plot That Captured America's Most Wanted Gangster, by Jonathan Eig. Another Daily Show book. I'm kind of wondering if sales of nonfiction have gone up since Jon Stewart started getting authors on the show so regularly.

[AndreasJ]

I wish it didn't dumb down the linguistics side as much as it does

I also wish Anthony would'a stuck to a particular transcription/reconstruction of PIE. If one's trying to present the material in a layman-friendly way, as Anthony clearly is, it doesn't help to write the same thing variously as eh₂, eh_a, and ā (that last is an 'a' with a macron (horizontal line) above, in case it doesn't show up right on your screen). One gets the impression he picked his examples from various linguists employing different conventions, and didn't bother to standardize. Clearly no appropriately nitpicky editor with the requisite background knowledge saw the book before it was printed.

[parallaxicality]

Really? Does this guy think he knows who the PIEs were? I've read about two dozen books on the PIEs and they each stated their point of origin with absolute conviction, and each gave a completely different region of the world.

Anyone else REALLY doubt the authenticity of PIE reconstructions? I mean seriously, it reads like gargling barbed wire. I took German in high school and even I can't imagine people desiring to listen to those words day after day.

And how long do you think it will be before we can start calling them Aryans again? Or at least come up with a better word than "Proto-Indo-Europeans".

[AndreasJ]

Really? Does this guy think he knows who the PIEs were? I've read about two dozen books on the PIEs and they each stated their point of origin with absolute conviction, and each gave a completely different region of the world.

That surprises me - there's essentially only two candidates with significant scholarly support (the Pontic-Caspian steppe and South Caucasia / East Anatolia). But of course there's plenty of crackpots arguing for other places, some unlikely (Scandinavia, India, etc), some insane (Atlantis, the Arctic Ocean ...).

Anyone else REALLY doubt the authenticity of PIE reconstructions? I mean seriously, it reads like gargling barbed wire. I took German in high school and even I can't imagine people desiring to listen to those words day after day.

German is pretty English-like in the grand scheme of things. Take a look at Georgian and Tlingit and then tell me if PIE looks all that unreasonable.

But sure, a doubt about the reconstructions is not exactly unknown. It's commoner among archaeologists than among linguists, which I think is suggestive.

And how long do you think it will be before we can start calling them Aryans again? Or at least come up with a better word than "Proto-Indo-Europeans".

Forever.

[tdvance]

Just finished Greg Bear's "Anvil of Stars" (sequel to Forge of God). I like the aliens the humans work with---look like big snakes, but they can come apart into little snakes (braided and linked). The little snakes are non-sentient (but can hold enough of a big snake's knowledge to, say, play chess). The big snake's intelligence is distributed through out its components.

Now, the braid (big snake--made up of cords, the small snakes) eats, sleeps, and reproduces in disassembled mode. Thus they have to be watched by an assembled braid so pieces don't run away or eat each other or something. They do eat their own dead, but that's not their primary food source (unlikely for that to work well, you know, too short a cycle in the food chain). Children are just newly born cords that fight each other, and the survivors eventually link up to form a new braid. When under stress, they literally fall to pieces. Oh yeah, they have an interesting way to "vote" as a group--each braid gives one or two cords to form new braids that have some of the knowledge of each member of the group, and they decide for the group based on that knowledge.

If too many cords of a braid dies, the braid loses sentience and becomes a different "person" once it acquires new cords.

The book didn't say, but I expect longevity is possible with care---be sure only one cord dies and is replaced at a time, a decent interval between deaths, perhaps an interval enforced by killing the weakest cord if nothing is actually dying after some interval.


So, for one thing, reproductive activities, eating, and childhood are things this culture never experiences. They have wars, but they don't turn out too well....fighting braids turn into fighting cords pretty quickly. It took them thousands of years of civilization to end wars within the species.

[geonuc]

I tried to read Absolutely Small, How Quantum Theory Explains Our Everyday World, by Michael Fayer (Stanford chemistry prof), but couldn't get very far into it. Right off, I was wary as he explained that I, as the reader, probably fell into one of two categories: one of his colleagues wanting to see how a book like this is written, or one of the 'vast majority' of people who have no clear view of why things in life are the way they are. As I think I have a clear view on many things he talks about and am not one of his colleagues, apparently I am not his target audience. Fair enough, but I wanted to read it anyway.

But the writing! Absolutely atrocious, chiefly because he painfully repeats himself to the point I want to scream "I get it! Move on!"

I'm sure the used bookstore with whom I have an account will happily give me a few bucks for it. Meanwhile, I'm off to a new vampire novel.

[AndreasJ]

Got round to reading the rest of "The Monster of the Prophecy". Gotta say the ending surprised me ... altho not in an entirely agreeable way.

[Paul Beardsley]

Got round to reading the rest of "The Monster of the Prophecy". Gotta say the ending surprised me ... altho not in an entirely agreeable way.

I can't actually remember if I've read that. But as I've just finished reading American Gods, and I'm not doing any Open University work till tomorrow, I might see if I can find a copy before I go to bed.

I believe CAS also wrote a story called A Prophecy of Monsters. He beat Gene Wolfe to the titles-mix-up game (The Island of Doctor Death, The Death of Doctor Island and The Doctor of Death Island) by a few decades.

As to American Gods... Hmm. I liked Stardust and Coraline, and some of Gaiman's short stories. And I thought there were some great scenes in American Gods, and I liked the prose. But there were not that many great scenes, and the book is 635 flipping pages long! I think my wife got a lot more out of it because she was able to read it in a few consecutive sittings, whereas I've had very little reading time these last few weeks.

[Disinfo Agent]

Silverberg's Up the Line. Engaging, though at times implausible. I haven't finished it yet.

[grant hutchison]

Silverberg's Up the Line. Engaging, though at times implausible. I haven't finished it yet.

I really like the ending.
I think Silverberg, through that book, is probably single-handedly responsible for triggering my long-standing interest in the history of Constantinople.

Grant Hutchison

[AndreasJ]

Read "The Hunters from Beyond" today, another CAS story.

[Gillianren]

I've started Lord of the Flies. It's not really drawing me in, but I'm reading it as kind of a duty. This is not a good sign.

[Fazor]

I've started Lord of the Flies. It's not really drawing me in, but I'm reading it as kind of a duty. This is not a good sign.

Well, at least given it's length, you should be about done with it by the time I finish this post. I didn't check the page-count in the copy I just bought, but from the thinness of it, I'd guess barely over 200, if that.

[Gillianren]

It's about 160.

[Fazor]

It's about 160.

See, I imagine you finishing that during a commercial break.

I'm not a particularly fast reader, but I'm not a slow reader either. (As many of you have probably already noticed by my tendency to mis-read posts and respond accordingly, I'm a "half-fast" reader. )

[AndreasJ]

Read "The Hunters from Beyond" today, another CAS story.

Also "The Isle of the Torturers" y'dy night.

[Gillianren]

I was in need of a comfort book last night, and Lord of the Flies doesn't do that. So I switched to Jane of Lantern Hill, by L. M. Montgomery. And, yes, I got through 92 pages in about an hour.

[dwnielsen]

tadvance, I really like Greg Bear's writing, but didn't get into Queen of Angels, so sort of stopped. Anvil of Stars sounds fun and interesting, though.

[Buttercup]

The Coming of the French Revolution by Georges Lefebvre. Originally published in 1939, it was later banned by the Vichy Gov't with 8,000 copies burned. :-\ Survived, was translated into English in 1947. As of 1989 (Preface date), it's better known/read in the Anglosphere than in France. Am reading it to get a better grasp of the sociopolitical underpinnings of the impending Revolution.

[geonuc]

I'm going on vacation and have selected as my leisure reading material Under the Tuscan Sun.

[gzhpcu]

Am reading a collection of newly reprinted novels on Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs... Brings back my childhood...

I already have all of his John Carter of Mars (Barsoom) novels....

[Gigabyte]

I'm working my way through all 163 pages of the US Emissions Inventory 2010: Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990-2008.

The fun, I can hardly control myself.

[Buttercup]

I'm working my way through all 163 pages of the US Emissions Inventory 2010: Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990-2008.

The fun, I can hardly control myself.

You're having ALL the fun!!! Arrrgh. I'm extremely jealous and will probably get a copy, just to spite you.

Yeah go ahead...antagonize us.

[grant hutchison]

This last week, two books about the Jeannette expedition, which sailed through the Bering Straits in 1880. The ship was crushed in the ice; a few survivors eventually made it to safety in northern Siberia.
Hoehling's The Jeanette Expedition is a brief treatment, a little confusing on the detail. I find that my second-hand copy has the publisher's stamp inside, marking it as their own reference copy. Presumably they're no longer in business.
Much more interesting is the memoire of one survivor: George Melville's In The Lena Delta. Melville stayed in Siberia to lead the search for his still-missing shipmates, and the book is a marvellous first-hand description of a remote part of the world, as well as of life among the Yakut natives, the imperial Russian administrators, and the intellectual exiles who lived there.

Grant Hutchison

[CJSF]

Track of the Cat by Nevada Barr. It's much...different...than I was expecting, but good.

CJSF