So, what books are you reading right now?

Wow this thread has died down.

I just wrote a book and Now I’m going to read Thomas Reid’s Inquiry into the Human Mind. I’ve read it before but I didn’t really do a critical study. I want to do this for my own book which is kind of a philosophical odyssey. For pleasure I just read Name of the WInd. It’s a fantasy novel. It was brilliant. :slight_smile:

I attempted to write my own version of Sophie’s World but part one didn’t get good enough reviews for me to make part two even though I was 30% done with it. :frowning: I still play with my book every once in a while. I’ve moved on to a sci fi dystopian now. Here’s my project:

https://www.researchgate.net/project/The-Storm-and-Stress

If you see any chapters you might be interested in I could send you them.

The Great Courses

The Story of Human Language
Parts 2 and 3
Professor John McWhorter

Unfortunately I have to wait for Part I but I shall begin with 2 and 3.

I so look forward to them.

Hey! You too, huh? Those are great courses, aren’t they (hence the name :laughing:)? They really do pick professors who know how to keep an audience gripped.

Right now, I’m working my way through a bit of Roman history:

Famous Romans

Fall of the Pagans and the Origins of Medieval Christianity

The World of Byzantium

^ Really interesting stuff. I’m currently obsessed with emperor Constantine.

Let us know if they’re worth it.

I love to romance my own shadow. I come to know myself better. Just me and my shadow…da da da da da da da…

Strange Angel by George pendle the story of , the co founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, .ca Johns Parsons.

Here is a verse he wrote, (an excerpt) :

I height Don Quixote, I live in peyote,
marijuana, morphine and cocaine,
I never knew sadness, but only a madness
That burns at the heart and the brain.

ca.1952

Anne Rice’s, The Vampire Armand. Whenever I read Anne’s works, I feel as though I’m overindulging on beautiful writing.

A natural history of language, The Power Of Babel, by John McWorter


Stalin : Robert Service

Yes although I never finished it as I started something else instead

However he is absolutely right about it being the best year for music

I like John McWhorter. Is that worth reading?

To be honest, it’s my next read. It’s coming by UPS. Should’ve taken note of the “right now” part of the title.

I like the idea of languages evolving and going extinct, which this book promises to be about. I also like the idea behind the towel of babel, one language for everybody, so I picked this book based on that. If that gives you an idea?

Have you read other books by him? I think he’s an associate professor in linguistics.

This book has me convinced Shakespeare will be forgotten sooner than later.

It would be a terrible shame if Shakespeare and his works at some point came to be forgotten. But I do not believe that.
I am now listening to an audiobook about William Shakespeare called I believe William Shakespeare and how he became William Shakespeare. It is really a wonderful audiobook and fascinating, informative. It gives you a more intimate perspective into the man, the human being which he was, and some of the thing which might have driven him, the themes of which show up in his masterpieces.

There is another book about language. I cannot recall the name of it or the writer. I do not believe it is the Tower of Babel. But I will find it. The write-up sounded fascinating - one that McWhorter recommended.

I eventually got McWhorters Language Lectures on cd. They are well worth the viewing time and he is a great lecturer. Makes the history of language so come alive.

As long as there is written language, a language will not be forgotten or die out.
Why would you like language to die out?

The audiobook is actually called Will in the World: How Shakespeare became Shakespeare ~ written by Stephen Greenblatt.

Fall of Giants
Ken Follett

Enactive Realism by Kyle Takaki, a comparison of varience and similarity between Karl Polanyi’s tacit knowledge and Merleau Ponty’s phenomenology, in order to get to the latter’s : ’ The Visible and the Invisible, an unfinished work.

A spring to summer self assignment, perhaps a bit too ambitious, but worth a try.

Winter of the World
Ken Follett

Winter of the World picks up right where the first book left off, as its five interrelated families—American, German, Russian, English, Welsh—enter a time of enormous social, political, and economic turmoil, beginning with the rise of the Third Reich, through the Spanish Civil War and the great dramas of World War II, up to the explosions of the American and Soviet atomic bombs.

goodreads.com/book/show/129 … -the-world

No time or capacity for books, as my mind is occupied with reading Party manifestos, daily briefings on Party policies, and a tonne of political Party literature.

I will be in need of a very good party or two to attend, after the Local Elections are over, as doing such things during campaign time does not look good. :confused:

A Gentleman in Moscow
by Amor Towles

goodreads.com/book/show/294 … -in-moscow

Read it already.

I actually came to enjoy this book so much though at first I was a little bit bored with it - too light, slow, no action lol

“By their very nature, human beings are so capricious, so complex, so delightfully contradictory, that they deserve not only our consideration, but our reconsideration—and our unwavering determination to withhold our opinion until we have engaged with them in every possible setting at every possible hour.”

“Dutifully, the Count put the spoon in his mouth. In an instant, there was the familiar sweetness of fresh honey—sunlit, golden, and gay. Given the time of year, the Count was expecting this first impression to be followed by a hint of lilacs from the Alexander Gardens or cherry blossoms from the Garden Ring. But as the elixir dissolved on his tongue, the Count became aware of something else entirely. Rather than the flowering trees of Central Moscow, the honey had a hint of a grassy riverbank…the trace of a summer breeze…a suggestion of a pergola…But most of all there was the unmistakable essence of a thousand apple trees in bloom.
“Nizhny Novgorod”, he said.
And it was.”

“Who would have imagined,” he said, “when you were sentenced to life in the Metropol all those years ago, that you had just become the luckiest man in all of Russia.”

That last quote is the true beauty and meaning and essence of the book. What a beautiful character he was.

The same with the book

Beneath a Scarlet Sky
by Mark Sullivan

marksullivanbooks.com/beneath-a-scarlet-sky/

It is amazing how truly heroic so many human beings can be ~ I mean real heroes.