Literature Fans

[TimV]

Reluctant to enter such a high brow thread, but will lower the bar a little for good fiction- The Help by Katherine Stockett is a great story about domestics in 50s-60s Mississippi.

[Ken70]

Novus Ordo Seclorum, McDonald - intellectual foundations of the Constitution

I have this on my bookcase.  Maybe I'll give it another try, I remember being disappointed.

I'm glad you mentioned it; in rereading it it's great.

I was just looking for a non-ideological history of the Constitution and it filled the bill perfectly I thought.

[Trotsky]

Novus Ordo Seclorum, McDonald - intellectual foundations of the Constitution

I have this on my bookcase.  Maybe I'll give it another try, I remember being disappointed.

I'm glad you mentioned it; in rereading it it's great.

I was just looking for a non-ideological history of the Constitution and it filled the bill perfectly I thought.

Publication date: 1985, before the Great Stupefication.

[Roy 82]

Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac for Friday April 23 noted the birthday of Vladimir Nobokov and added:

He was invited to give a lecture on Slavic languages at Stanford University in 1939, and he decided to stay, formally immigrating and becoming a U.S. citizen. And he started writing books in English, including the one for which he is most famous, Lolita (1955).

http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/ (check the archives if you click on this link on a different day)

Hmmm. Seems like there is some missing information that might be of interest to folks on this board but I can't quite put my finger on it.

[Rita]

On my short train ride into work and back, I'm now reading Jane Austen's "Northanger Abbey". The 10-15 minute ride is perfect for Austen because after about 15 minutes, I need a break. I'll slowly get through this book at the clip of ~15 pages/week.  

The book does relate a bit to hockey in that I got it in Denver at the Tattered Cover Book Store when I was out there for the Frozen Four in 2008.

In Detroit for this year's Frozen Four, Kim and I found a huge used bookstore (John K King rare and used books). I am planning on going to St. Paul for next year's FF and will be looking to get lost in a used book store in the Twin Cities.

[Beeeej]

Currently reading Jonathan Lethem's "Chronic City" and enjoying it, but particularly for the NYC landmarks very familiar to me.  Just finished Curtis Sittenfeld's "Prep," and enjoyed it but wouldn't say it was fine literature.

[munchkin]

Currently reading Jonathan Lethem's "Chronic City" and enjoying it, but particularly for the NYC landmarks very familiar to me.  Just finished Curtis Sittenfeld's "Prep," and enjoyed it but wouldn't say it was fine literature.

Prep was beach reading for me.  Sittenfeld has some other beach lit, which as you said not fine literature, but still enjoyable to read.

[Roy 82]

Currently reading or recently read

A waste of time:

Predictioneer's Game, de Mesquita - using game theory to predict world events, self promoting and somewhat obvious, no "beef"
Dirty Rotten Strategies, Mitroff - "how we trick ourselves into solving the wrong problems precisely", shallow, repetitive

So that brings up a beef that I have with many pop sci books such as Th Wisdom of Crowds, The Black Swan, Freakanomics, etc.

Aside from being rather repetitive and anecdotal (they really don't have much to say), they seem to imply or claim that they have discovered some previously unknown principles of math, science, economics. If so, then why not go for it and do the match and science and get yourself a Nobel.  Why the reliance on vague anecdotes and a near total absence of math (the language of science) to make your point?

[Lauren '06]

Currently reading or recently read

A waste of time:

Predictioneer's Game, de Mesquita - using game theory to predict world events, self promoting and somewhat obvious, no "beef"
Dirty Rotten Strategies, Mitroff - "how we trick ourselves into solving the wrong problems precisely", shallow, repetitive

So that brings up a beef that I have with many pop sci books such as Th Wisdom of Crowds, The Black Swan, Freakanomics, etc.

Aside from being rather repetitive and anecdotal (they really don't have much to say), they seem to imply or claim that they have discovered some previously unknown principles of math, science, economics. If so, then why not go for it and do the match and science and get yourself a Nobel.  Why the reliance on vague anecdotes and a near total absence of math (the language of science) to make your point?

Because the "pop" in pop science is not inconsequential to some people.  I would say most literate people have heard of Freakonomics, but only a very specific subset of that could tell you what the last ten Nobel Prizes in economics were won for, and I can only name one winner because Russell Crowe was in a movie about him.

[Ken70]

Currently reading or recently read

A waste of time:

Predictioneer's Game, de Mesquita - using game theory to predict world events, self promoting and somewhat obvious, no "beef"
Dirty Rotten Strategies, Mitroff - "how we trick ourselves into solving the wrong problems precisely", shallow, repetitive

So that brings up a beef that I have with many pop sci books such as Th Wisdom of Crowds, The Black Swan, Freakanomics, etc.

Aside from being rather repetitive and anecdotal (they really don't have much to say), they seem to imply or claim that they have discovered some previously unknown principles of math, science, economics. If so, then why not go for it and do the match and science and get yourself a Nobel.  Why the reliance on vague anecdotes and a near total absence of math (the language of science) to make your point?

FWIW - I read these three and I found Freakanomics and TWoC way better than the two I diss'd above.  But I agree The Black Swan fits in the "repetitive/no beef" category.  It was a one trick pony turned into a three ring circus.

I thought Freakonomics was more about bringing new findings in economics (really behavioral economics) to the attention of the general public than putting forth any unique discoveries the authors themselves have made.  Although scattershot it was enjoyable and thought provoking, which was, it seemed, all it attempted to be (in addition to making the authors a few bucks).

Wisdom of Crowds made a interesting argument, I thought, which was: in many circumstances individual decisions, even by "experts", aren't as a good as group decisions, and group decisions in which the decisions of independent members are combined/averaged to arrive at an answer are more accurate/better than those in which the group arrives at a concensus answer.  It's more complex and nuanced than this, but that's the intriguing gist.  Siruwiecki backed this up pretty well with various studies as well as anecdotes, and gave examples of how it worked in organizations from the military to sports to industry.  He has a short chapter on government and democracy at the end but doesn't mention the fact that his argument supports not just general democracy but the "wisdom" of Federalism, the genesis of which is nicely described in  another book we've mentioned here, Novus Ordo Seclorum.

[Josh '99]

I figured the literature fans here might enjoy this. On the other hand, it might fill you with rage or sadness. I found it amusing, but you've been warned:

http://www.examiner.com/x-562-Book-Examiner~y2010m4d16-The-50-best-author-vs-author-putdowns-of-all-time

26. Marcel Proust, according to Evelyn Waugh (1948)

I am reading Proust for the first time. Very poor stuff. I think he was mentally defective.

If you're calling the author of À la recherche du temps perdu a looney, then I shall have to ask you to step outside!

[Josh '99]

Currently reading Jonathan Lethem's "Chronic City" and enjoying it, but particularly for the NYC landmarks very familiar to me.  

IMO "The Fortress of Solitude" is excellent, "Motherless Brooklyn" not quite as good, although the awards they have received would say the opposite.

[David Harding]

I thought Freakonomics was more about bringing new findings in economics (really behavioral economics) to the attention of the general public than putting forth any unique discoveries the authors themselves have made.  Although scattershot it was enjoyable and thought provoking, which was, it seemed, all it attempted to be (in addition to making the authors a few bucks).

My memory of Freakonomics is similar.  Much, if not all, the work had been published by Levitt in scholarly journals.  Someone thought the stories were interesting enough to be presented to the lay audience, and he/she was right.

[Trotsky]

Wisdom of Crowds made a interesting argument, I thought, which was: in many circumstances individual decisions, even by "experts", aren't as a good as group decisions, and group decisions in which the decisions of independent members are combined/averaged to arrive at an answer are more accurate/better than those in which the group arrives at a concensus answer.

Unfortunately this idea has now become a cottage industry in Corporate Idiocy World, with Dilbert-esque "consensus skills" seminars.  If you've ever had to sit through "The Blizzard," you want to prevent the guy who wrote WoC from being born.

Also, it defies another time-honored truth.

[RatushnyFan]

I've been in a bit of a perseverance and adversity rut, I just read The Grapes of Wrath and The Road.  I actually enjoyed both novels but wouldn't necessarily recommend reading them consecutively.  I found that both were hard to put down.  The Road was a very quick and easy read whereas The Grapes of Wrath required more concentration due to a broader cast of characters.  The Road had far more closure at the end which helped ease my mind.  I don't know what it is about Cormac McCarthy, his sentences are so short and the dialogue is so simple (and without quotation marks of course) but he does an excellent job of developing tension and a sense of foreboding.  I enjoyed No Country for Old Men as well, even more than The Road.  Steinbeck plays the oldest trick in the book in The Grapes of Wrath, leaving the reader without a definitive sense of closure at the end of the novel, but it gave me a chance to think for myself which was nice.  I understand that the union theme in the book was highly controversial at the time, times have certainly changed.  I really enjoyed Tom Joad's conflicted character, I found myself cheering for him and hoping for some sort of a reprieve.

I'm currently reading In Cold Blood.......I've always had a morbid curiosity about the book.  I haven't read Capote before.  I'm about 100 pages in, I like how he spends time giving the reader a fair amount of detail about each of the victims (I would say character development, but they weren't characters!), their neighbors and the two perps.  I think I'd like to read The Grass Harp at some point based on the description.

I think I'm going to cool off with all of the death and suffering for a while, maybe relax with a John Irving novel next.  There's still a couple that I haven't read.