Books Read 2021

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Eel Snave
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Re: Books Read 2021

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El Guapo wrote: Tue Dec 21, 2021 12:07 am The Jewish State, by Theodor Herzl

This is Theodore Herzl's classic essay arguing (~1896) for the creation of a Jewish state. I found this in a free lending library (a different edition FWIW), so figured I'd give it a read since I enjoy diving through primary sources from time to time. It's interesting enough but that all that well written (it's a little meandering) and it wasn't as focused on the high minded theory that I was looking for. Rather, he seems mostly focused on arguing for why a Jewish state would be practical (to counter accusations of utopian pie in the sky thinking I think) and on the details of what it would look like (he was *very* focused on having a seven hour workday for some reason). Interesting enough, and not that long, but not the most interesting argument that I've ever read.
You ever read "The Hundred Years War on Palestine"? It's great for a different perspective on the whole thing.
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Re: Books Read 2021

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The Wheel of Time, Book 8: The Path of Daggers by Robert Jordan (hardcover): The first third of this book is great! We go on a rollicking adventure with several factions of spellcasters. After all the hype of how a circle of 13 spellcasters can create a lot more magic than they can individually, we finally see it happen. The resulting mess is really impressive and didn’t turn out as anyone expected.

The second third isn’t as good. It’s about the Amyrlin’s elaborate attempt to pull off something big. After numerous attempts to open her rosebud, the climax wasn't worth the buildup. It even ended in tears. Still, you could tell that the author had a huge Taraboner for it.

The last third is good, featuring fights and other cool things. One character has an incident when she tries to research an artifact described as a "crimson rod that felt hot … wrist-thick and a foot long." She later wakes up in bed wearing just her underwear. She has no memory of what happened, and we're not told what happened, but based on the looks on her friends' faces it was quite amusing and embarrassing. So what kind of artifact was it? A dild'ongreal??

Overall, though this book is considered part of the slog in the series, I didn't think it was that bad. It even has the first cover art that I like. Also, for the first time, I didn't listen to the audiobook version. The narrators are fine, but I needed a break from their voices. I'll revisit the audiobooks once I'm past the slog.

Lately, though, I feel the prose's clarity is decreasing. There are a few paragraphs I can't make sense of, either because I can't tell what the pronouns represent or a sentence in a (sane) character's internal monologue just comes out of left field. This problem is rare, but it shouldn't happen at all in a high-profile published work, and it's happening more and more with each book.

5 of out 8 bitches (which is how I misread "birches," though in context the meaning is about the same).
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El Guapo
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Re: Books Read 2021

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Freedom by Sebastian Junger.

Got this for my birthday, and read through it over the past couple days (it's a fairly short book). The premise is that the author (an award winning author) spent most of a year with a few friends walking along train tracks across the east coast, essentially living homeless and sleeping outside or wherever they could find shelter, with only the possessions on their backs. He wrote this book as a rumination inspired by his experiences, where he used his time and the land that he traveled as an inspiration to write about the concept of freedom, because in some ways he was completely free (almost no one knew where he was at any given time, could go anywhere and do anything that he wanted), but in some ways he was not (subject to the dangers of the natural world and of the cruelties of random people he encountered, was dependent on the civilized world for his possessions).

It's very well written and an interesting exploration of what it means to be free and to what extent is attainable and/or desirable in the modern world.
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Re: Books Read 2021

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Eel Snave wrote: Fri Dec 24, 2021 10:00 pm
El Guapo wrote: Tue Dec 21, 2021 12:07 am The Jewish State, by Theodor Herzl

This is Theodore Herzl's classic essay arguing (~1896) for the creation of a Jewish state. I found this in a free lending library (a different edition FWIW), so figured I'd give it a read since I enjoy diving through primary sources from time to time. It's interesting enough but that all that well written (it's a little meandering) and it wasn't as focused on the high minded theory that I was looking for. Rather, he seems mostly focused on arguing for why a Jewish state would be practical (to counter accusations of utopian pie in the sky thinking I think) and on the details of what it would look like (he was *very* focused on having a seven hour workday for some reason). Interesting enough, and not that long, but not the most interesting argument that I've ever read.
You ever read "The Hundred Years War on Palestine"? It's great for a different perspective on the whole thing.
I haven't. I'll check it out, though FWIW Herzl's book is essentially about the theory of Zionism and how it might look in practice, while it looks like that book is mostly the actual history of how it turned out (from the perspective of the indigenous Palestinians).
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Re: Books Read 2021

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El Guapo wrote: Mon Dec 27, 2021 1:34 am
Eel Snave wrote: Fri Dec 24, 2021 10:00 pm
El Guapo wrote: Tue Dec 21, 2021 12:07 am The Jewish State, by Theodor Herzl

This is Theodore Herzl's classic essay arguing (~1896) for the creation of a Jewish state. I found this in a free lending library (a different edition FWIW), so figured I'd give it a read since I enjoy diving through primary sources from time to time. It's interesting enough but that all that well written (it's a little meandering) and it wasn't as focused on the high minded theory that I was looking for. Rather, he seems mostly focused on arguing for why a Jewish state would be practical (to counter accusations of utopian pie in the sky thinking I think) and on the details of what it would look like (he was *very* focused on having a seven hour workday for some reason). Interesting enough, and not that long, but not the most interesting argument that I've ever read.
You ever read "The Hundred Years War on Palestine"? It's great for a different perspective on the whole thing.
I haven't. I'll check it out, though FWIW Herzl's book is essentially about the theory of Zionism and how it might look in practice, while it looks like that book is mostly the actual history of how it turned out (from the perspective of the indigenous Palestinians).
Interesting! I might have to give that a look.
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El Guapo
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Re: Books Read 2021

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Eel Snave wrote: Mon Dec 27, 2021 12:46 pm
El Guapo wrote: Mon Dec 27, 2021 1:34 am
Eel Snave wrote: Fri Dec 24, 2021 10:00 pm
El Guapo wrote: Tue Dec 21, 2021 12:07 am The Jewish State, by Theodor Herzl

This is Theodore Herzl's classic essay arguing (~1896) for the creation of a Jewish state. I found this in a free lending library (a different edition FWIW), so figured I'd give it a read since I enjoy diving through primary sources from time to time. It's interesting enough but that all that well written (it's a little meandering) and it wasn't as focused on the high minded theory that I was looking for. Rather, he seems mostly focused on arguing for why a Jewish state would be practical (to counter accusations of utopian pie in the sky thinking I think) and on the details of what it would look like (he was *very* focused on having a seven hour workday for some reason). Interesting enough, and not that long, but not the most interesting argument that I've ever read.
You ever read "The Hundred Years War on Palestine"? It's great for a different perspective on the whole thing.
I haven't. I'll check it out, though FWIW Herzl's book is essentially about the theory of Zionism and how it might look in practice, while it looks like that book is mostly the actual history of how it turned out (from the perspective of the indigenous Palestinians).
Interesting! I might have to give that a look.
Yeah, Herzl's book was published around 1896, a couple decades before the Balfour Declaration and Britain's victory in WW1 allowed for mass migration of Jewish people to what became the Palestinian Mandate. Herzl himself (who was a major leader in getting the Zionist movement off the ground) died in 1904, so he didn't live to see much of his vision translated into practice.
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Re: Books Read 2021

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Rumpy wrote: Sat Dec 11, 2021 2:50 pm I'm reading The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris and it's so slow moving. I don't usually have a problem with slow moving stories, but in this case it's almost like I'm waiting for the characters to do something, anything. There are pacing issues. It's character-driven, but the characters are also very thinly drawn, which is another issue. As an important period of history, I feel what directly follows the post-emancipation should be better explored than in this book, as it's only briefly touched upon at best. Wanted to like this one more than I have so far, as I really enjoyed The Water Dancer.
Finished, and yeah, I didn't really care much for this one. The two freed men which the author and the marketing make you believe are centered on, are really more like minor characters in the grand scheme of things. I pushed on to the end, to see how it would unfold, but felt like I could have been reading something else.
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Re: Books Read 2021

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Thomas More - Utopia : the Penguin Classics edition i read was a surprisingly readable translation of a book published in 1516 - and originally written in Latin. wherein ideas are presented - in the form of a fictional travelogue - on how to craft an ideal society. needless to say some of these ideas are exceeeedingly dated by now (e.g. don't think sentencing people to slavery for adultery would fly these days)
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Re: Books Read 2021

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Some folks:

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It's almost as if people are the problem.
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Re: Books Read 2021

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hitbyambulance wrote: Mon Dec 27, 2021 5:43 pm needless to say some of these ideas are exceeeedingly dated by now (e.g. don't think sentencing people to slavery for adultery would fly these days)
You apparently haven't met very many Filipinos. I believe that's the only form of penance they would accept.
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Re: Books Read 2021

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Gyo by Junji Ito (hardcover): A diver's strange encounter in the ocean is followed up by strange (and smelly) encounters on land. This grossout horror manga is shorter and not as good as Uzumaki but takes its concept to kooky places. And it's more disturbing in these times of pandemic and climate change. 5 out of 8 tubes.
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Re: Books Read 2021

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Below is a gallery of the books I read this year. If you want to know my thoughts on a book, just click on it!

I wasn't much of a reader before the pandemic. During most years, I'd read just a couple of books. But this year, I read 33 books. It was a good year of diverse reads, with my favorite being Know My Name by Chanel Miller. Next year, I hope to finish the Wheel of Time series.

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Re: Books Read 2021

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D-Day: June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of WW II by Stephen Ambrose (audiobook)

Wasn't sure where to put this as I finished it today, but since I read (listened to) 98% of it in 2021 I'll put it here as my final book of the year.

I decided to read this as I recently got a GMT Games game simulating the D-Day landing, and knew very little about D-Day beyond the broad strokes, so I thought it'd be interesting to check this out to understand the details of what happened. Pretty fascinating stuff - particularly interesting to learn about the Allies' massive intelligence advantage, such that they could pretty easily feed Germany tons of misinformation about when and where they were going to land. Such that basically right up until D-Day Germany didn't know, and expected that if the Allies landed in France they were going to land substantially to the east of where they actually landed. Also interesting to learn about how essential the allied naval bombardment (tied with air supremacy was). The sum of it is that the Germans were probably screwed from the word go, although there were a few close calls (including the decision on whether to go at all on June 6th, since it was storming until shortly before the launch time).

One of my favorite books of the year - a strong recommend.
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