HELP ME, Y'ALL
Jul. 29th, 2010 06:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
esmenetMy dear friends and relations, it is That Time Of The Year again. And by That Time Of The Year, I mean that these twenty nonfiction books scattered around me that I haven't read yet and ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
leftoverresearchquarterly are clearly not enough to get my nerdly/writerly synapses going again and I NEED NONFICTION RECS LIKE BURNING.
(Also, I adore reading other people's research notes. Or notes about research. Or posts like this, with all the awesome comments.)
Nonfiction/non-music podcast recs would be nice, too. I love the history of the Roman Empire, but when I can, off the top of my head, name more than twenty rulers of Rome, their good points, their bad points, and their causes and suspected causes of death, it's probably time to find a podcast about ancient China or something instead.
leftoverresearchquarterly are clearly not enough to get my nerdly/writerly synapses going again and I NEED NONFICTION RECS LIKE BURNING. (Also, I adore reading other people's research notes. Or notes about research. Or posts like this, with all the awesome comments.)
Nonfiction/non-music podcast recs would be nice, too. I love the history of the Roman Empire, but when I can, off the top of my head, name more than twenty rulers of Rome, their good points, their bad points, and their causes and suspected causes of death, it's probably time to find a podcast about ancient China or something instead.
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no subject
Date: 2010-07-30 01:53 am (UTC)Also in the humor/trivia line, the Uncle John's Bathroom Readers are always full of weird and interesting factoids.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-30 03:25 am (UTC)I really Wait Wait Don't Tell Me. It's a humorous weekyl quiz show on the news on NPR.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-30 12:39 am (UTC)First, I know you mentioned recs about Africa, Southeast Asia, and South America (I think?). I've finally managed to think up of a couple:
A Vietcong Memoir by Truong Nhu Tang (http://www.amazon.com/Vietcong-Memoir-Account-Vietnam-Aftermath/dp/0394743091/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1280449136&sr=8-1)
King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild (http://www.amazon.com/King-Leopolds-Ghost-Heroism-Colonial/dp/0618001905/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1280449210&sr=1-1)
Playing Indian by Phil Deloria (http://www.amazon.com/Playing-Indian-Yale-Historical-Publications/dp/0300080670/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1280449566&sr=1-1) -- yes, this isn't South America, but I'd still rec it because I think there are interesting parallels to be made. It's theory, but it's not as dry as you'd expect.
Also, ancient China, you say? I don't have a podcast, but I do have The Complete History of China by J.A.G. Roberts (http://www.amazon.com/Complete-History-China-J-Roberts/dp/0750931922/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1280449774&sr=1-1). Could be dry, but for research purposes it could be good.
As for stuff I have been reading, well, there's always White Like Me and Lies My Teacher Told Me and Guns, Germs, and Steel, but something tells me they're too basic or otherwise not quite what you're looking for. (Though Guns, Germs, and Steel might be good as a jumping-off point to learn more about Africa, Southeast Asia, South America, and non-Western cultures/civilizations in general, however problematic it may be.) Unless you want me to start reccing stuff about current foreign affairs and the portrayal of Native Americans in white American society and boring environmental policy texts.
I have an idea: Why don't you make a comment in
I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this post, as I also hope good stuff comes out of it. ^_^;
(BTW, what are the twenty nonfiction books you haven't gotten around to yet, exactly? And do you mind reccing me anything regarding Japanese history, both current and modern? I have A History of Japan by Mason and Caiger (http://www.amazon.com/History-Japan-R-H-Mason/dp/080482097X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1280450312&sr=1-1), but I don't know how good that is.)
no subject
Date: 2010-07-30 02:46 am (UTC)And the twenty-ish nonfiction books in various states of unread-ness are Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity (I've read a bit of this one; you should try and get a hold of it if you can) Charles Benn's Daily Life in Traditional China: The Tang Dynasty (I've only read a few pages from various parts of the book, but it seems pretty good), Haruo Shirane and Tomi Suzuki (editors)'s Inventing the Classics: Modernity, National Identity, and Japanese Literature (language is a little dense at first, but it's so exactly up my alley I'm definitely going to sit down and read it), Ian Buruma's The Wages of Guilt and God's Dust (which, though I've only read a little bit, seems to be about the conflict in Asia between 'modernization' that draws heavily from the West, traditionalism that rejects modern things and Western influence, and the reality that a lot of people kind of don't care) and Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies, Xinran's China Witness (in which the author interviews older Chinese people about their lives and histories; very interesting so far), Carl Sagan's Cosmos (which I've been trying to read for about six months now; very good, but I can't handle too much at a time before I have to go talk to someone about how awesome it is), Charles N. Li's The Bitter Sea: Coming of Age in a China before Mao (nice writing style, but not reading it until I finish at least one other thing), Fan Shen's Gang of One: Memoirs of a Red Guard (I'm about half finished with it; reads like a very good novel), Tale of the Heike (which I am decidedly not reading until I finish either Genji or The Pillow Book; two ancient Japanese classics at a time is quite enough), Zachary Mexico's China Underground (a bit sensationalist for me, but very engaging -- he starts off with drugs and prostitutes and Triads and ends up with gay rights and how really creative people are stifled by the system), and Orhan Pamuk's Other Colors, a collection of essays I do not at all regret spending $30 on and am kind of in love with.
Thank you for the recs, they look interesting. :D (And I totally forgot to look for White Like Me at the library yesterday! *facepalm*)
no subject
Date: 2010-07-30 02:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-30 12:39 am (UTC)Erik Larsen has a couple of interesting recent history books if you like that sort of thing.
Also:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128462652
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128588187
no subject
Date: 2010-07-30 01:15 am (UTC)Speaking of him, I recently finished a book called Machiavelli's Children by Richard Samuels, which is kind of painfully one of those books written by an academic for other academics, but it's full of awesome information. It's a sort of compare/contrast of Japan and Italy coming into and out of World War II. And now I'm going to have to hunt down Benito Mussolini's autobiography, because I had no idea how sincerely crazy that man was. Whoa. Berlusconi's sort of...following in the footsteps. More than I knew.
More WWII: Masters and Commanders by Andrew Roberts. I haven't actually read it yet, but I picked it up because I suspected the title might be a geeky reference to Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander (I was right. ^_^). Then it made me laugh out loud within the first ten pages. (Apparently the PM of Australia sent Churchill a stuffed platypus at one point. He was so gleeful about it that he completely destroyed a day's worth of meetings by showing off his platypus to absolutely everyone. XD)
...Let's see. I've been reading a lot about organized crime, are you into that? And war, now I think about it. Organized crime and war. And war crimes. Um. o_O *searches brain for other topics*
Ah! Anything by Joan Didion, because she's awesome. Slouching Toward Bethlehem or The White Album, especially. I have foolish daydreams of learning to write prose as beautifully as she does.
:D Good luck!
no subject
Date: 2010-07-30 02:57 am (UTC)Haha, I'm pretty big on organized crime and war myself. Also I trust your taste. ;)
no subject
Date: 2010-07-30 09:28 pm (UTC)Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson. Hunter S. Thompson was the IDEAL MAN to write this book, wow. Way to be scarier than the burly men with chains, Hunter S. He also spends a fair bit of time describing Oakland, CA in 1965. It's interesting that it hasn't changed since. Unless perhaps it is now slightly worse. Good job, Oakland.
Gomorrah by Roberto Saviano. I've spent a lot of quality time with this book. :) It's about the mafia families of southern Italy, and the Camorra clans most of all. Saviano grew up in Naples. His assumptions about life may be the most interesting thing about the book. (If only it were a little better organized, sigh.)
Christ Stopped at Eboli by Carlo Levi. Carlo Levi was exiled to southern Italy during WWII because he had a big mouth and didn't care for fascism. He was such an odd man. An odd man writing about an odd place. It's brilliant.
My Guantanamo Diary by Mahvish Khan. If this had been written by anyone else, it would have been way too painful to read. But the very existence of the author gives you hope for humanity, despite...you know...the actual content of the book. She's one of those rare and wonderful first generation kids who managed to combine everything that was awesome about both cultures and grow up double plus awesome. I love, too, that she has no sense of when it might be time to stop asking the angry, armed people questions. And yet this works for her somehow. :D Mahvish Khan, how did you get so cool?
no subject
Date: 2010-07-30 02:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-30 02:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-30 03:00 am (UTC)Here we go.
Date: 2010-07-30 03:06 am (UTC)Fiasco - Thomas Ricks
Samurai: The Rise & Fall of the Japanese Naval Air Force - Saburo Sakai
Ambush Alley - Tim Pritchard
Generation Kill - Evan Wright
About Face - David Hackworth
Steel My Soldiers' Hearts - David Hackworth
Attacks - Erwin Rommel
The Village - FJ West, Jr
The Long March - Harrison Salisbury
The 33 Strategies of War - Robert Greene
Badass - Ben Thompson
Dereliction of Duty - HR McMaster
no subject
Date: 2010-07-31 03:20 am (UTC)Nice post 37517
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