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Current Non-Fiction reads

Well I'm in the middle of two, I read from both every now and then.

The Devil In Massachusetts: A Modern Enquiry into the Salem Witch Trials- Marion L. Starkey

I actually stopped reading this one for a bit because of a few strange events that occurred while reading it. It was just spooky...lol :eek:

Wooden On Leadership- John Wooden

I found myself reading this more in the winter time while I was coaching hockey and I get back to read sections from time to time.
 
Right now I'm reading two books ...

Who Killed the Constitution?: The Fate of American Liberty from World War I to George W. Bush by Thomas E. Woods Jr

and a book of letters written by Robert E. Lee.
 
Scorpion Down: Sunk by the Soviets, Buried by the Pentagon: The Untold Story of the USS Scorpion by Ed Offley. I started it last night and am not very far into it. Lots of footnotes which is great.
 
Charles Cross - Room Full of Mirrors. A biography of Jimi Henrix.

I also read Heavier Than Heaven by Charles Cross. A biography of Kurt Cobain.



DanG
 
Currently dancing my way through Ryszard Kapuscinski's Imperium. Fantastic book. I'm going to have to pick up more of Kapuscinski's stuff. Recommendations, anyone?
 
Just finished Dr. Russ Greene's book, The Explosive Child. I really enjoyed reading this as I work with girls who have many of the characteristics Dr. Greene mentions in the book. I picked up some good points to ponder, especially regarding acting out and intention-a common thing for people to connecet, though that isn't necessarily the case. Solutions include allowing kids more time to process a change in direction in their day, as well as working on expanding of vocabulary if you are dealing with a young learner or someone who is developmentally delayed. I really liked this book and it contained a lot of great examples to illustrate the author's ideas.
 
America and the World: Conversations on the Future of American Foreign Policy by Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft.
 
I just finished The Know-It-All by A.J Jacobs. Really interesting book, and Jacobs is a very funny man. I loved how he intermingled facts from the encyclopaedia with an ongoing story of his life and attempts to conceive - I think it might have been a bit dry otherwise.
 
beer good said:
Currently dancing my way through Ryszard Kapuscinski's Imperium. Fantastic book. I'm going to have to pick up more of Kapuscinski's stuff. Recommendations, anyone?
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You might like The Soccer War.It's the story of the match between El Salvador and Honduras in 1969.
But I want to read Shah of Shahs,it sounds interesting also.
 
sparkchaser said:
I didn't see you post a review of this. Did you get to it yet? I am curious as to what it's actually about.
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I am slowly making my way through it in intervals between other reading. So far (Chapters 1 & beginning of 2) it is a deeply analytical examination of the ways authors use the written word to tell stories. Chapter 1 is a detailed examination of free indirect discourse and its different uses in advancing the narrative. It segués into Chapter 2 with these remarks: "Stylishness, free indirect style, and detail: I have described Flaubert, whose work opens up and tries to solve this tension, and who is really its founder. . . . There really is a time before Flaubert and a time after him. Flaubert decisively established what most readers and writers think of as modern realist narration." And that is as far as I have gotten.
The flap says it is "a searching study of the main elements of fiction, such as narrative, detail, characterization, dialog, realism and style."
 
hostchecker said:
But there is a lot of science fiction ,No??
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Uh... yes? Your point being...?

I'm reading Reinhart Koselleck's Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time about how the future has changed through the past... that is, our perception of it. Interesting stuff and some quite fascinating perspectives, but man, is he ever German.
 
beer good said:
Uh... yes? Your point being...?

I'm reading Reinhart Koselleck's Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time about how the future has changed through the past... that is, our perception of it. Interesting stuff and some quite fascinating perspectives, but man, is he ever German.
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Finished it now, and my first impression stands: fascinating subject - how the concepts of history, the present and the future has changed over the last 2500 years or so, how it's impacted our use of language and the other way around, and how the concept of progress has (seemingly irrevocably) changed our view of what we can do and how the future can change or be changed. It certainly puts some of the history, historical fiction, and older fiction I've read in a slightly new light.

And Koselleck definitely knows his stuff. Unfortunately, he also really likes his sources and constantly prattles on and on with lengthy quotes in four different languages (to the point where he often has to stop himself with a "but enough about that"). Not to mention that he's not the best prose writer, plus I'm sure there's stuff here that went somewhat over my head partly because he likes to make things sound more complicated than they are and repeat himself. And repeat himself. For all the good stuff you can dig out of the book, the finished product barely gets :star3:
 
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