What are you reading?

We Were Soldiers Once And Young. Probably one of my favorite books of all time.

I just started reading the absolut emsot perfect book for me.

Just got done reading this book. Most of the resources came from western eyewitnesses or second hand story telling. A few Ottoman logs were included as well. Fun reading. I would give it a rating of 8 on the authentic scale (whatever that means!). The author could have taken liberties with his own bias but it made for very captivating reading. 

Currently reading Point Counter Point by Aldous Huxley

Originally posted by kotumeyil  ...sometimes V. Hugo tells about something needlessly long. For example: Jean Valjean escapes with Maris on his back through a sewer system. While telling this, Hugo talks about the history of the sewer system and criticise that we don't use human sh*t as a fertilizer, because its the best fertilizer on the world! This takes about 10-15 pages!!!

Strange that you should mention this. Human fetilizer must have been a fairly pressing question in the past, as their are references in Point Counter Point. Huxley creates excellent and sublimly detailed characters, who really are far more important than any plot, which only happens to form as a result of their actions, rather than as a guide. Lord Edward, one such individual, is having a discussion with the leader of the British Freemen, a para-military society whose goals are essentially fascist, with the intention of balancing the classes and preventing the great cataclysm. The politician is attempting to convince Lord Edward of the neccessity, the need and the responsibility to care for politics. Lord Edward, a devoted scientist, has no such interest, and finally unleases a furious tirade against the modern society politics in trying to build. His cheif complaint is that far too much phosperous is being squandered, mostly in the dumping of human waste into the sea. When infertility of the farmlands eventually results, he says, then the real cataclysm, the natural and unstoppable one, will arrive.

These comments from Huxley and probably less out of place than those of Hugo, writing as it were a novel ruled by a grand plot. Nonetheless, I think it's doubtful that Hugo included the section in haste or from the moments passion. I personally like little interuptions like that; I think they give good insight into the real world in which the author wrote; which, in the case of the romantics, was supremely important.