Subbing in for rinx when I realized I hadn't seen these around.
I just got my Asimov's The Complete Stories: Part I. I already know most of the works in the book, but it's cool just for the ones I don't. There's a part II, but no part III, which makes having a complete (and compact!) collection of Asimov stories quite the pain.
I also tore through Liu Cixin's Three-body problem last week, and oh my god are they good. I actually like the style that the translation from chinese resulted in, and the plot is great. Definitely deserved that price. Now, the third volume is out since 2010 in chinese, but will only be released end of the year. Can't wait.
What are you guys reading?
As per kleinbl00's recommendation I've been reading Destiny Disrupted. I was expecting a more difficult read, but Tamim Ansary does a great job of explaining the situation in clear language. It's nice to read his explanation of people's behaviour instead of abstracted nations and groups. This part of history is such a blind spot for me, and while it's not easy dealing with all the foreign names and pronunciations I like what I'm reading so far. Last week I found out that my university has Springer books under license. I found this out while looking for the 1629 pages, $1,440 monolith called Handbook of Intelligent Vehicles. So now I've started the collossal task of reading the entire thing because I can't call myself knowledgable on the subject until I've done that. It's very interesting though. (If anyone knows some more good Springer books, let me know! I already found a neat Python for science book.)
Finished Black Earth a couple days ago and I gotta say - I'm unimpressed. The argument for the resurgence of Nazi-ism is basically "destroy a country twice and plug into a race's latent hostility towards outsiders and genocides will happen." The author does a marvelous job in his "pile all your pontification in one place" afterword of pointing to Hutu vs. Tutsi violence but glosses over Bosnia like it never happened, probably because it was stopped in its tracks by NATO. The author also stone-cold ignores Chechnya, probably because it demonstrates the exact opposite of his hypothesis. Dunno. Judt, Tuchman and Said make a pretty compelling case that the Holocaust happened because Europe has hated the fuck out of some jews for a long goddamn time and the only thing different was the scale. Snyder just sorta waves hands and argues that we're all a bunch of jew-murdering hypocrites we just don't know it while steadfastly refusing to lift a finger to investigate the differences that separate the Holocaust from, say, the American genocide of Native Americans or the Turkish genocide of Armenians or the Japanese genocide of Chinese. I would go as far as calling it a bad book. On the other hand, based on this discussion and a few other recommendations, I'm halfway through Dan Lyons' Disrupted, wherein fake Steve Jobs gets laid off as technology editor of Newsweek and takes a gig writing blogspam for an SEO factory. It's entertaining but more than anything it makes me celebrate the fact that I'm going on ten years without a "job."
I agree that the last chapter (or the epilogue or whatever it is) feels forced, as if it were put in to make the book feel relevant in the current political climate. That said, Snyder and Judt were collaborators, so I doubt their views are that divergent. What I took away from Black Earth wasn't that we're all Jew killers waiting to be unleashed but rather the opposite. The basic thesis of the book is that statehood matters, citizenship matters, and that not even the Nazis could transcend that fact. I think that that thesis is generally true, but that also the Holocaust isn't so much of a generalizable (sp?) event, and that is perhaps where Snyder may come up short.
I dunno, man. The actual analysis into the cause of the Holocaust was always an iteration of "why are people shooting other people? Well, because we're all money-grubbing shitheads that will do anything to get ahead, now listen as I rattle off eighteen unconnected anecdotes about people who weren't." The book is subtitled "The Holocaust as History and Warning." The book even falls down on the 'history' portion of the program, effectively stopping as soon as the death camps get cranking because, apparently, Snyder finds that shit boring. Which, if the thesis is as you say, is fucking stupid. Snyder pays lip service to the things the Nazis had to do to their collaborators in order to get them to participate in mass murder, and makes great pains to point out that it wasn't institutionalized violence that caused the holocaust, it was random street violence shaped roughly by intentions from Berlin. But then when we've got tanks of Zyklon B and custom-built ovens, he peaces the fuck out and decides to make the exact argument the death camps would refute. It's funny. The more history I read, the more Zionist I become. And the more analyses of WWII I read that say "well, it wasn't about the jews, per se," the more clear it becomes that it was about the fuckin' jews.
I essentially felt the same while reading as b_b, and didn't notice those flaws in his central thesis - partly because I don't have a few Judts in my library, partly because I didn't notice them. What argument do you refer to, and how would the death camps refute that? I think I have an idea but I want to be sure I understand this.But then when we've got tanks of Zyklon B and custom-built ovens, he peaces the fuck out and decides to make the exact argument the death camps would refute.
Right - so let's go ahead and take this b_b-supplied argument as the central thesis: The "history" portion of the book stops once the Soviet Union repelled the Nazis. This is the point where Snyder argues the Nazis doubled down on the death camps, switching from shooting people in ditches to gassing and burning them in ovens. He makes much of the fact that all of the death camps were in Poland, not Germany. But he skates over Action T-4, other than to point out that the methods of the death camps were taken from them, without noting that the Nazis started forced euthanasia of tens of thousands of German citizens in - Saxony - Brandenburg - Bavaria - Hesse - Austria He also skates right the fuck over the fact that half again as many Soviet POWs died in the death camps, and these were guys who were fully under the protection of the Geneva Convention and under the flag of the very people that, according to Snyder, Hitler felt were the genetic superiors of the Germans. He plays a few games by pointing out that Danish jews that stayed in Denmark were less likely to die in the Holocaust than Danish jews that were exported to the death camps, but he says this has nothing to do with the Danish people and everything to do with "state protection". He argues that the Germans "let" the Danes export their Jews to Sweden, rather than observing that the Russians had been annihilated on the Eastern Front, were forced out of Africa, were experiencing heavy bombing by the US, were knee-deep in the Warsaw uprising and were losing Italy to Patton. The Nazis weren't in a position to "let" anything happen at that point. What's really galling is that Snyder points out that the doubling-down in the extermination camps didn't happen until the Eastern Front had been lost, making defeat an inevitability. Yet he uses the argument that since Denmark retained sovereignty, Danish jews were safe without acknowledging how truly fucked anybody Soviet was. Because the death camps, to Snyder, are uninteresting. And don't prove his point. So he ignores them.statehood matters, citizenship matters, and that not even the Nazis could transcend that fact.
I suppose when I read it, it didn't occur to me to think that Snyder was arguing that it wasn't about the Jews. I thought he was arguing that is wasn't entirely about the Jews for some self-preservationists, inherently apolitical types that dominate the masses of most societies. It was these people that the Nazis needed to co-opt in order to precipitate the holocaust, and where that was impossible (i.e. according to Snyder's hypothesis, those places where bureaucracy was basically intact), the holocaust proceeded much slower. Anyway, that's what I took away, but I can see your point now in a way that wasn't obvious to me from the first two postings you made about not really liking the book.
he goes as far as blaming the Protocols of the Elders of Zion for antisemitic violence in the Soviet Union while dismissing the steady and unopposed pogroms that drove many jews out of tsarist Russia. That's one of the things I really liked about Judt - when presented with the breakup of Yugoslavia, he didn't wave his hands and say "no one could have predicted" and "both sides were at fault." He lays out chapter and verse how the Serbians had a blood feud against the Bosnians and have done since the Hapsburgs but violence was held in check by larger political powers. What was the Woodrow Wilson quote? "You can have peace or justice, but not both?" It seems like "peace" requires blame to be assigned to victims even when they're blameless. Snyder's book stinks of that.
Haven't been reading at all. In order to get back into the swing of things i decided I am going to finish The Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy trilogy from where I left off (2nd book). After that I plan on reading something much more difficult.
The New Buffetology (Mary Buffet & David Clark) Who Should I Choose You? (Chamandy & Aber) Hogfather (Terry Pratchett) (Discworld #20)
Restarted Jane Eyre and can't figure out why I put it down several years ago, leaving a bookmark at page 170. Every time I get into a classic, I wonder why I waste so much time reading recently published stuff that hasn't passed the test of time. Then I find another mention of Anathem and I remember why. Still, the thrills of a modern thriller are diverting and memorable, but the staid prose of a classic has timeless appeal. Poor Jane, how we wish she would relax her strict morals and taste bliss! Yet, for now at least, she endures hardship and takes the high road.Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my convenience I might break them, what would be their worth?
Just finished The Cold War: A New History on audiobook, it really gave me a lot to think about. kleinbl00 regarding our conversation many moons ago about the power of bureaucrats... Well I'll just say I've learned a lot and will continue to do so. On to the next one!
after those two spawn your interest (presuming they do) I would recommend going on and reading blood meridian and suttree
Just finished Anathem the other day. I've read two of Stephenson's books now (the other being Cryptonomicon), and I thought both were brilliant. I never have a shortage of non-fiction to read, but I'm now in the hunt for my next novel. The couple that I've searched my local library for are checked out at the moment, so any rec's would be appreciated.
Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett. When I asked my mentor to make a recommendation of a well-paced thriller, that's what he gave me. It's technically excellent and enveloping. Truly a gripping read. And if you find Stephenson to be brilliant you'll probably be done with Follett in a bathroom break. I gave up on Cryptonomicon about 12 hours into it 'cuz I just couldn't give a shit.
Cryptonomicon is a lot of fun if you know/are the sort of people he's writing about, but I'm constantly surprised it gets recommended outside of techy circles. It's like a big collection of in-jokes and history of cryptography and computing with a half-assed thriller plot to sort of tie it together.
1Q84 - Murakami ; just finished the first book of the trilogy about 5 minutes ago. Clash of Civilisations - Huntington ; started it 2 minutes ago.
Craig Mullaney's The Unforgiving Minute. Story of going through West Point, Ranger School, transitioning to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and then serving as a 2nd lieutenant in Afghanistan. Easily the best story I've read in a long time. Insanely powerful but very aware, funny, and humble. Also really authentic and enjoyable writing. Would recommend to any serviceperson, and especially to any skeptic.
"Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?" by Jeanette Wintersson. It's that kind of week.
Three-Body Problem was a fantastic read, but I'm a bit biased as I'm quite fond of Chinese novels in general. I am currently reading The New Jim Crow, which is terrifying but brilliant and I'm trudging through an assortment of historical works on Xinjiang and Kashmir for my dissertation, namely Xinjiang: China's Muslim Borderland and Demystifying Kashmir, which are both excellent.
The New Jim Crow is such an awesome read. It structurally blasts the myth that there is no injustice being done, and paints are a really scary picture of what is happening and on what scale it will happen in the future if we dont do anything.
I have more than a passing interest in Xinjiang and Uyghurs, so if you ever want to post anything or just share a deeper level of info/news, please do. It's not the easiest place to get ahold of news about, especially if I'm not readily keeping up. Which I'm not :/ I think I see the tie between Kashmir and Xinjiang that it seems like you may be making if you're studying both, but I'd rather hear about from you, it sounds interesting.
It is a fascinating place! I don't know as much as I'd like on the subject as I've only really just begun digging into it but I can make a couple recommendations as to reading material and the like, if you're interested! It is pretty difficult to get info on what is currently happening in the area but there's a decent amount of material available on the 50s to the 80s (and the pre-CCP era). As to my dissertation, it is pretty embryonic at the moment but I'm comparing Indian and Chinese minority policies in the 50s and 60s, particularly in Xinjiang and Kashmir. They're both predominantly Muslim, exceptionally important to the idea of the Chinese and Indian nation-states, and basically represented the 'frontier' to both central governments. And I guess I'm just interested in comparing the two modern countries in general, as they're actually a bit more similar than people generally suspect.