What was the last book you finished and when did you finish it?

Mine was The Red and the Blacklist by Norma Barzman, which I finished last night. It was a pleasure to read, relatively light for me. A memoir of the 1940s in the communist precincts of Hollywood, the 1950s among the exile film and arts community in Paris and the South of France, and the 1960s, when it was mostly safe for blacklisted screenwriters etc. to show their faces in Hollywood again. Interesting life.

Two weeks ago.

(I'm a DUer--whatdja expect?)

Finished it Thursday night.

that's me too, about an hour ago

Finished it a couple weeks ago. Now I can't find it. Damn.

Could have wrote the same post word for word. :) :thumbsup:

SPEED READER.

that I finish them in one evening (usally about 4 AM), but I pay for it the next day. :hangover:

Gotta go hit the library, they are holding "Lying Liars" for me :)

..by Beppe Severgnini. Terrific book about an Italian journalist's year spent living in DC.

I finished it two nights ago. I read it for my philosophy class in college. It is about the last day of Socrates' life. The day he drank the hemlock because he was sentenced to death for corrupting the youth with his teachings. Old boy did some heavy duty philosophizing and was right calm about taking the big dirt nap.

What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know" by our own Will Pitt.

Bought it on the way home from the "Bring the Troops Home" rally and read it during the second half of the Cowboys game.

Good book. Plus the Cowboys won. This is starting to be a pattern. I was reading Will's second book when the Cowboys won the previous game. Hmm...

DV

I finished it yesterday, and started on Lies by Al Franken.
Next up is The Demon Haunted World - Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus - two days ago.

I finished it last night. :)

interested in the castrati...

:thumbsup:

Finished it a few months ago, and I've been working on a biography of Tecumseh ever since then. It's about eight hundred pages, including the footnotes. Lots of interesting information, but it seems to take me longer to absorb all of it. Of course, most folks' knowledge of the years and events leading up to the war of 1812 is pretty lacking, so I don't feel bad about that.

Great book. Good cyberpunk stuff.

Read it last month - just in time for Elia Kazan's death. I thought of Norma and her family right away last night.

As for me, I just finished "Angels and Demons," by Dan Brown. Good!

finished it the other day. Franken's "Oh, the things I know" is next.

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

I just finished Beverley Nichols' Cats A, B and C and am halfway through Cats X, Y and Z. What a pleasure to see our feline friends through the eyes of this masterful writer.


Cher

on edit: Joe Conason's book is next!

are the last ones i've finished.

"Survivor" was pure Pahlinuk, but it left me hanging at the end. Lots of interesting twists though.

I'm always in the middle of a few.

One i'm almost done with is about the red baron by Peter Kilduff. It's a dreadfully boring book full of lots of minute details on seemingly every kill made by the german ace. But it does paint a few things about him I didn't know. Besides, I picked it up for like a dollar.

Other than that, I'm in the middle of "The Culture of Fear" and "Manufacturing Consent". I'm finding Manufacturing Consent also somewhat dry. The information is interesting, but the writing is not the most entertaining prose. Of course, I found the same with Zinn's PHoTUS.

I've only read a chapter but it's supposed to be a good book.

Eqbal Ahmed: Confronting Empire

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0896086151/qid=1064872722/sr=8-2/ref=sr_8_2/102-3094767-9616952?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

"So-called Islamic ‘fundamentalism’ does not spring, in Pakistan, from the people. It is imposed on them from above. Autocratic regimes find it usefull to espouse the rhetoric of faith, because people respect that language, are reluctant to oppose it. this is how religions shore up dictator; by encircling them with words of power, words which the people are reluctant to see discredited, disenfranchised, mocked.

But the ramming-down -the-throat point stands. In the end you get sick of it, you lose faith in the faith, if no qua faith then certainly as the basis for a state. And then the dictator falls, and it is discovered that he has brought God down with him, that the justifying myth of the nation has been unmade. This leaves only two options: disinteragtion, or a new dictatorship...no, there is a third, and I shall not be so pessimistic as to deny its possibility. The third option is the substitution of a new myth for the onld one. Here are three such myths, all available form stock at short notice: liberty; equality; fraternity.
I recommend them highly. "

Salman Rushdie “Shame”

About the book (very good discussion)
http://www.postcolonialweb.org/pakistan/literature/rushdie/shameov.html

I read four damn books, posted em all and the post is gone. Gremlins are at work at DU. The books: Blumenthal's Clinton Wars; Hillary's Living History; Queen Noors book and a ten-year old book I HIGHLY recommend -- Who will tell the People: The betrayal of American democracy by William Greider. Explains all about money, lobbists, corporations, politics, other countries and how it all fits together.


Remove this post and your'e a dead man/woman :mad:

By Smokin' Joe Conason. Great Read! Highly recommended.

Living History was by HRC obviously :), and The Clinton Wars was a great book by Sidney Blumenthal.

The first two are distinct from the second two, but they all add up to bubbly, grapefruity goodness, similar to Fresca.

yesterday

By Douglas Adams. It was really good. I'm going to finish Dream of Reason tonight then get down to the business of translating 1 Samuel etc.

A must read for everybody on DU. being a roman a clef on the late great James Curley, Mayor of Boston. Its about machine politics, and the importance of politics to the life of a city.

...three or four days ago. Now reading "The Years of Rice and Salt" by Kim Stanley Robinson.

Almost done with What Liberal Media? by Eric Alterman.

Waiting for:

Lies, Wars, and a good deal on Grass

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0553211161.01._PE_PIdp-schmoo2,TopRight,7,-26_SCMZZZZZZZ_.gif

Last week, and Lies and the Lying Liars -Al Franken the week before. Both really great books.

Now reading Pattern Recognition by William Gibson.

Sonia

By Walter Issacson. Very well written.

Franklin was a "moderate" but always represented the interests of his fellows.

He played England and France off one another masterfully although many on DU might accuse him of being a "pink tutu" Patriot. He only supported breaking with England until it was absolutely necessary due to cirumstances. He also lobbied hard for himself to get a land grant from the King of England. However, the very fact that he wasn't antagonistic in his methods was what kept the channels between both France AND England open... and lead to his successes for the American Cause.

Fact is he is STILL the Definitive Diplomat and was responsible for keeping the Constitutional Convention together & the compromises made there ACCEPTED.

Finished it last night. Quite good and recommended, especially if you like Stephenson...many many tie-ins with "Cryptonomicon". Set in 17th century Europe (Holland, Vienna, assorted German locations, post-Restoration England), with the ferment in knowledge, politics and economics of the times forming major themes of the novel, particularly the development of what was then called "natural philosophy" (which we now think of as "science").

By Graeme Fife.

Finished it yesterday. A good, clean adrenaline high.

Silvana Paternostro's 'In the Land of God and Man'. I finished it on Saturday. It revolves around her visits with women from Latin America (housewives, prostitutes, etc), and their stories. Some of it is really disturbing ...

Great book, though!

Welcome to DU!! :toast: