What are you reading?

[raybone]

philip caputo's "acts of faith". about missionary and relief workers in the Sudan and the commercial pilots that make the deliveries.

[katoeylover]

Just bought Angels and Demons - should be a good read on a beach somewhere...

[Torurot]

Just finished this and enjoyed it. He has a number of other books. Sea of Poppies is the most recent.

Amitav Ghosh 2008
Sea of Poppies ISBN 978-0-7195-6896-1

From his web site http://www.amitavghosh.com/

At the heart of this epic saga, set just before the Opium Wars, is an old slaving-ship, The Ibis. Its destiny is a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean, its crew a motley array of sailors and stowaways, coolies and convicts. In a time of colonial upheaval, fate has thrown together a truly diverse cast of Indians and Westerners, from a bankrupt Raja to a widowed villager, from an evangelical English opium trader to a mulatto American freedman. As their old family ties are washed away they, like their historical counterparts, come to view themselves as jahaj-bhais or ship-brothers.

[Torurot]

Another just finished from Amitav Ghosh. Really enjoyed it.
Anyone been to the Sundarbans??

The Hungry Tide
ISBN: 0007141777
Type: Novel
Publisher: HarperCollins
In between the sea and the plains of Bengal, on the easternmost coast of India, lies an immense archipelago of islands. Some of these islands are vast and some no larger than sandbars; some have lasted through recorded history while others have just washed into being. These are the Sundarbans - the beautiful lands. Here there are no borders to divide fresh water from salt, river from sea, even land from water. The tides reach more than two hundred miles inland, and every day thousands of acres of mangrove forest disappear only to re-emerge hours later. For hundreds of years, only the truly dispossessed and the hopeless dreamers of the world have braved the man eaters and the crocodiles who rule there, to eke a precarious existence from the unyielding mud.

The settlers of the Sundarbans believe that anyone who dares venture into the vast watery labyrinth without a pure heart, will never return. It is the arrival of Piyali Roy, of Indian parentage but stubbornly American, and Kanai Dutt, a sophisticated Delhi businessman, that disturbs the delicate balance of settlement life and sets in motion a fateful cataclysm. Kanai has come to visit his widowed aunt and to review some writings left behind by her husband, a political radical who died mysteriously in the aftermath of a local uprising. He meets Piya on the train from Calcutta and learns she has come to the Sundarbans in search of a rare species of river dolphin. When she hires Fokir, an illiterate, yet proud local fisherman to guide her through the mazelike backwaters, Kanai becomes her translator. From this moment, the tide begins to turn.

Amitav Ghosh has discovered yet another new territory, summoning a singular place from its history, language and myth and bringing it to life. Yet the achievement of The Hungry Tide is in its exploration of a far darker and more unknowable jungle, the human heart. It is a novel that asks at every turn: what danger resides there, and what delusion? What man can take the true measure of another?

[Road Runner]

Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany and the Winning of the Great War at Sea by Robert K. Massie.

In August 1914, the two greatest navies in the world confronted each other across the North Sea. At first there were skirmishes, then battles off the coasts of England and Germany and in the far corners of the world, including the Falklands. The British attempted to force the Dardanelles with battleships - which led to the Gallipoli catastrophe. As the stalemate on the ground on the Western Front continued, the German Navy released a last strike against the British 'ring of steel'. The result was Jutland, a titanic and brutal battle between dreadnoughts.

Well you did ask!

RR.

[kevin4252]

A History of the English Speaking Peoples, some guy named Churchill wrote it.

[Road Runner]

A quote from the book I mentioned above:-   Winston has written a big book about himself and called it The World Crisis," said Arthur Balfour

RR.

[Dieter]

Hitler .."Mein Kampf" and Marx"Das Kapital".....

of course Mao too..

Dieter

P.S.: Donald Duck just got 75 ... greatest ever I read  

[stonefre]

Blow by Bruce Porter - Johnny Depp was in the movie.

[PanzerPorn]

(Dieter @ Jun. 13 2009,06:36) Hitler .."Mein Kampf"

Even the number of your posts is in the right time

[Road Runner]

(PanzerPorn @ Jun. 13 2009,01:33) Even the number of your posts is in the right time

9 more and he'll be off to invade Poland!

RR.

[marshal]

Travel photography by lonely planet Not bad, but aimed at inspiring travel photographers.

[strocube]

Thanks, Torurot.
Both of those books look interesting, especially Sea of Poppies. I think I may order it from Amazon.
I'm currently reading The Shanghai Gesture, by Gary Indiana. ISBN # 978-09820151-0-0
The following is from the Washington Post:
I wanted to read "The Shanghai Gesture" because it's largely a pastiche of a Dr. Fu Manchu adventure. Tremble, ye mortals, at the sound of that name! Yes, we're speaking of the insidious Dr. Fu Manchu! The yellow peril incarnate -- the gigantic intellect with a brow like Shakespeare's and a face like Satan's, the greatest criminal mastermind of all time. During the first half of the previous century, Sax Rohmer chronicled the Devil Doctor's repeated attempts to conquer the world through one nefarious plan after another. Shocking to say, Fu once even meddled in American politics (see "President Fu Manchu"). When this fiend in human form eliminated his enemies, it was never with a mere bullet but through such sinister means as "The Call of Siva" or "The Six Gates of Joyful Wisdom." There must have been a dozen Fu Manchu adventures, and around the age of 13 or 14 I read them all. Over the decades, Fu's schemes were consistently thwarted by Nayland Smith, often seconded by his companion Dr. Petrie. Nonetheless, the consummate Architect of Evil invariably managed to escape in each book's last chapter so that he might once again send forth his dacoits and Thuggees, his shape-shifters and Cold Men, his sheath-dressed Eurasian temptresses and all the mindless minions of the Si-Fan brotherhood. Given this xenophobia and racism, not to overlook the sheer pulpy trashiness and repetitiveness of the plots, these novels are now little read except by aging nostalgists and a few students of popular culture. But the name of Fu Manchu has nonetheless grown iconic, like that of his rough contemporaries Sherlock Holmes and Tarzan. In "The Shanghai Gesture," Fu is once again plotting to overthrow the West. As gradually becomes clear, You Know Who -- as he is sometimes called -- has been using the small town of Land's End, England, as a laboratory, a testing ground for narcoleptic drugs, deadly cyborg insects and hideous murders. But Fu is resolutely opposed by (the slightly renamed) Weymouth Smith and Dr. Petrie, the first a trigger-happy Scotland Yard inspector, the latter a rather pathetic heroin addict.

[Torurot]

Three Cups of Tea Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin
One Man's Mission to fight terrorism and build nations.... one school at a time.
ISBN 0-670-03482-7 © 2006 371.822 http://www.threecupsoftea.com/

Enjoy Three Cups of Tea!
The #1 New York Times Bestseller Three Cups of Tea: One Man€™s Mission to Promote Peace, One School At A Time, by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin, recounts the journey that led Greg Mortenson, Central Asia Institute co-founder, from a failed attempt to climb Pakistan€™s K2 to successfully establish dozens of schools, and promote girls€™ education in rural Afghanistan and Pakistan.

[Tomcat]

This looks worth a read for the Academia minded.

Its focused on the myth that there are just two sexes. Callahan, an Immunologist, has apparently wrote a charming book according to NewScientist and alludes to the fact that Biologically there are many shades of sexuality and not just male/female. He also gives a History of what we term intersexuality and as well as the hard Biology
.

http://www.newscientist.com/article....an.html