What are you reading?

Excellent - yes my friend has read some of his Byzantine work and told me about him and his style. Very 'great-man' and politics related...doesn't focus much on culture, the arts and religion...but still gives a generally fantastic chronological overview. I've read a bit more of the Middle Sea and was a bit disappointed at how fast it went through Classical Greece and such, but I guess, it does have to give a history from the beginning up until the Treaty of Versailles! It's worth a read though, simply because of how vast but concise an overview it gives of the region.

I ducked into a university library today and found an absolutely fantastic book called 'In Defense of Dolphins'. It was a book looking at the behavioural psychology and biology of Dolphins, then applying it to philosophy. The book (of which I only got through a bit) delves into the idea of a 'nonhuman person' and such, using science and real life instances to piece together a proposition that dolphins could be 'nonhuman persons', intelligent, emotional and empathetic. It's not as far fetched as I may have put it, so sorry if you got the wrong impression about it. I of course am not as much concerned with the philosophical dimension of the book, but rather, the science and behavioural psychology of these enigmatic creatures.

Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism. Interesting book, and while I accept Goldberg's central thesis about the common ancestry of socialism and fascism, I fail to appreciate the convulsed method by which Goldberg argues his case.

I'm reading Walter Scott's 'The Talisman' at the moment. Its hard to break in to his style of writing, since I think he wrote it in the 1820s, but once your over that curve its plain sailing. Interesting book actually, I've always been interested in 'romantic history', as in, historical fiction involving the real characters. Apparantly the Talisman is one of his less well known, I only heard of it through my lecturer who was bitching about it in a crusades lecture. Had to read it after that :-)

Reading the new annotated Dracula, as well as "The Social Contract" by Rousseau.

I read a little bit of John Locke and been reading a book on the KGB, Stalin was one paranoid man lol. I never knew Trotsky was killed with an ice pick...wow

I am reading Robert Heinlein's Space Cadet. I love historical science fiction.

I have a copy of "Homer's Daughter" by Robert Graves. I might put the Iliad down and read this first.



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Personally I just saw an amazing copy of 'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies'. Considering picking that one up.

Originally posted by Zaitsev Personally I just saw an amazing copy of 'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies'. Considering picking that one up.

I picked up a copy of that, but I haven't had the time to read it yet.

In the past three weeks I've read F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, and The Pigman by Paul Zindel for my ESL classes.

I'm currently reading A Separate Peace by John Knowles - good book so far.

In the last couple of days in order to distract myself from studying for my exams whilst providing the illusion that I'm doing something productive, I've read and finished two books. Alduous Huxleys' 'Point Counter Point' (A fantastic book, very funny and deep!) and William Kennedy's 'Ironweed' (Not so good, OK, but a little missing in something)

Probably a sign of things to come this summer. No job + sun = lots of reading. Probably.