What are you reading?

[Decatur Guy]

I am reading "King Lear" again. It's one of my favorite Shakespeare plays. I got bogged down last week near the end of Act III. I need to get the momentum back.

 

Like dannyboynyc, I love Armistead Maupin and his "Tales of the City" series. I read "Lear" because I can't bear the thought of the series being over, so I'm postponing it.

[AdamSmith]

What that means is that I have a whole shelf of books with swastikas on the spines. When I brought my organizer in, placed those books them near the floor, so people wouldn't see them.

 

Ditto my library on the Manhattan Project and subsequent nuclear doomsday history and policy. E.g., McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival: Choices about the Bomb in the First Fifty Years.

 

Thanks for the pointer to The Devil's Disciples.

 

Sereny's book was brilliant. And just as it was about to grow too long, delightful how it inadvertently spruced up at the end when she could not keep out of the text her bitter jealousy over Speer's late-life extramarital affair.

[ragazzolupo]

Next up on my iPad is Wolf Hall.

 

Kevin Slater

 

If you are reading Wolf Hall, watch out for Hilary Mantel's regular use of personal pronouns with no antecedents. (Who the hell is "he"?). the book is good, however and I love Tudor history.

[actor61]

Having been a history major a thousand years ago and still a major history buff I seldom read fiction. I am currently reading:

 

The General: Charles De Gaulle and the France He Saved by Jonathan Fenby

&

Queen Ann: The Politics of Passion by Anne Somerset

 

I just finished reading:

 

Explorers of the Nile:The Triumph and Tragedy of a Great Victorian Adventure by Tim Jeal

 

I rarely read fiction either; I'm a European history buff. I finished the most recent bio of Marie Antoinette a few months ago and am now reading a bio of Louis XVIII, her brother-in-law who became king when the Bourbons were restored after Bonaparte. I found the relationship between the royal brothers-in-law and Antoinette fascinating and so decided to read further. They fled France while their brother (Louis XVI), sister-in-law (Marie Antoinette), and sister (Madame Elisabeth) were guillotined and their nephew was tortured and starved to death in the Temple prison. Fascinating stuff about families, dynasties, royalty, and king making that is as pertinent now as it was then. Look at all the revolutions currently taking place; they aren't using a guillotine set up in the town square but the powers that be are still butchering people in the name of politics or religion. Lessons are hardly ever remembered and things hardly ever change.

[+ FreshFluff]

Ditto my library on the Manhattan Project and subsequent nuclear doomsday history and policy. E.g., McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival: Choices about the Bomb in the First Fifty Years.

 

Thanks for the pointer to The Devil's Disciples.

 

Sereny's book was brilliant. And just as it was about to grow too long, delightful how it inadvertently spruced up at the end when she could not keep out of the text her bitter jealousy over Speer's late-life extramarital affair.

 

Yeah, that I reread that part several times. I don't blame her either. I can't believe I'm saying this, but he was really attractive, even in his eighties.

[+ FreshFluff]

Hell, I even read a bios of Nazi groupies and scholars:

 

Diana Moseley: Mitford Beauty, British Fascist, Hitler's Angel by Anne de Courcy

Hugh Trevor-Roper by Adam Sisman

[gp0560]

I rarely read fiction either; I'm a European history buff. I finished the most recent bio of Marie Antoinette a few months ago and am now reading a bio of Louis XVIII, her brother-in-law who became king when the Bourbons were restored after Bonaparte. I found the relationship between the royal brothers-in-law and Antoinette fascinating and so decided to read further. They fled France while their brother (Louis XVI), sister-in-law (Marie Antoinette), and sister (Madame Elisabeth) were guillotined and their nephew was tortured and starved to death in the Temple prison. Fascinating stuff about families, dynasties, royalty, and king making that is as pertinent now as it was then. Look at all the revolutions currently taking place; they aren't using a guillotine set up in the town square but the powers that be are still butchering people in the name of politics or religion. Lessons are hardly ever remembered and things hardly ever change.

 

Agreed. I also like history of pre-Civil War days and of the times leading up to WWI. It fascinates me to learn how they thought, not knowing what was in store for them. And in that vein, it's disturbing to see so many similarities between our times and the pre-French Revolution times. Give us a couple of bad harvests or similar disasters along with income disparity and we'll all be gurgling blood into the sawdust at the foot of the guillotine, while children play at bocce with our heads.

[bigvalboy]

Having recently migrated to FL...I was just gifted the book "Tourist Season" by Carl Hiaasen. Thus far it is a very clever read. I doesn't look like it will disappoint.