Liberal Socialist Guerilla Pinko Treehuggers of DU, What'cha reading these days?

[marmar]

I just finished Raj Patel's The Value of Nothing. Amazing, essential reading.

Anyway, I'm ready to move on to the next one. Any suggestions for the hardcore leftist reader? :P

[rurallib]

1. 'Lost Christianities' by Bart Ehrman

I have been on a real 'find out as much real history of religion as possible' kick.
For me, understanding some of the ancient manipulations helps me understand some of where we are now.
To say that things don't change is an understatement.

[marmar]

3. Very true.....Organized religion has so shaped the world's history.

For better or for worse. Mostly for worse.

[rurallib]

6. And much of it by the winner of the scrap to be the main Christian group

or - well, at least in what we call the west.

[hatrack]

2. "Endgame" by Derrick Jensen - "Laff-Riot" doesn't even come close, lemme tell ya!

:toast:

[marmar]

8. .......

Having long laid waste our own sanity, and having long forgotten what it feels like to be free, most of us too have no idea what it’s like to live in the real world. Seeing four salmon spawn causes me to burst into tears. I have never seen a river full of fish. I have never seen a sky darkened for days by a single flock of birds. (I have, however, seen skies perpetually darkened by smog.) As with freedom, so too the extraordinary beauty and fecundity of the world itself:
It’s hard to love something you’ve never known. It’s hard to convince yourself to fight for
something you may not believe has ever existed.


excerpt from "Endgame"......I might pick that one up next.

[LeftyMom]

4. Please don't call me a liberal.

I'm not nearly that conservative. ;)

Current reading: http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Bullets-Suppression-Dissent-United/dp/1904859593/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271622566&sr=8-2

[marmar]

5. Ooooh, that looks interesting.

:thumbsup:

[LeftyMom]

20. If you're into that kind of thing, AK Press will rock your world.

http://www.akpress.org/

[piratefish08]

7. Searching for the Sound - Phil Lesh

[EFerrari]

9. Reading Zinn's memoirs and thinking about crossover figures

who started with one movement and worked with others, like Martin worked for peace, like Bonhoeffer (Lutheran ethicist and theologian in Nazi Germany who came to New York and understood social justice from listening to Adam Clayton Powell in Harlem and went back home to resist Hitler) like Pieter-Dirk Uys who went into drag and slammed the South African Apartheid government for years and then went back to teach black kids how to avoid AIDs. And thinking, we need MORE liminal types, more crossover leaders but we seem to be kept in boxes.

Reading about "social justice" and trying to figure out if that's mostly a term associated with formal religion.

You asked.

lol

ETA: There is a CSPAN segment with Rag, Amy and Naomi Klein:

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/291577-1

He's great. :)

[Dappleganger]

10. "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis.

All I can say is that we've been truly fucked by Wall Street.


:banghead:

[Duer 157099]

11. I just finished David Finkel's The Good Soldiers

http://www.amazon.com/Good-Soldiers-David-Finkel/dp/0374165734/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271622918&sr=8-1

The author, a journalist embedded with the group of soldiers who were participants in the WikiLeaks video from last week, does a good job of communicating what life on the ground during "the surge" in Baghdad in 2007 was like for the soldiers.

To this day, I don't know his political leanings, that's how, imho, objective he was in telling the story. Although I detected a faint hint of cynicism bleeding through.

Good storytelling though.

Now I'm onto something very different, Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe

http://www.amazon.com/Biocentrism-Consciousness-Understanding-Nature-Universe/dp/1935251740/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271623223&sr=1-1

[gulliver]

12. Fates Worse than Death by K. Vonnegut n/t

[longship]

13. "The Lightness of Being" by Frank Wilczek.

Physics Nobel Laureate tells about the latest physics stuff.
Nicely written and cutting edge.
One of the best I've read on the topic.

The Lightness of Being

Any science geek would love it.

[Radical Activist]

14. Reckoning at Eagle Creek by Jeff Biggers

Seriously worth picking up. He brings a story and writing style to the topics that are often lacking.

[Sisaruus]

33. I'm watching him right now on BookTV

I think I'll order his book.

[JitterbugPerfume]

46. he was on Book TV yesterday

and the book sounds really interesting It is on my "list'

[EFerrari]

54. His segment can be streamed here (they're fast over there!)

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/id/219647

[alfredo]

15. "The Moor's Last Sigh", by Salman Rushdie, just finished

Marquez's "Memories of My Melancholy Whores." Before that it was Craig Ferguson's "American on Purpose."

[EFerrari]

55. I want to read all of those!

Maybe you should just sell me your used books when you're done. lol

/oops

[alfredo]

58. I have a shit load of books. Be sure to read Rushdie's

"Shalimar the Clown" and Orhan Pamuk's "My Name is Red." Margaret Atwood's "Oryx and Crake, The Year of The Flood, and The Handmaiden's Tale." The year of the flood is the continuation of Oryx and Crake.

[EFerrari]

59. For a while in the 80s, I followed Atwood closely because

we were both writing poetry. Heard her at SF State one night. She read beautifully.

[alfredo]

60. You ever read any Linda McCarriston poetry?

http://books.google.com/books?id=GEj-WNZogNUC&dq=Linda+McCarriston&source=gbs_book_other_versions

From Eva Mary by Linda McCarriston

La Coursier De Jeanne d'Arc

You know that they burned her horse
before her. Though it is not recorded,
you know that they burned her Percheron
first, before her eyes, because you

know that story, so old that story,
the routine story, carried to its
extreme, of the cruelty that can make
of what a woman hears a silence,

that can make of what a woman sees
a lie. She had no son for them to burn,
for them to take from her in the world
not of her making and put to its pyre,

so they layered a greater one in front of
where she was staked to her own--
as you have seen her pictured sometimes,
her eyes raised to the sky. But they were

not raised. This is yet one of their lies.
They were not closed. Though her hands
were bound behind her, and her feet were
bound deep in what would become fire,

she watched. Of greenwood stakes
head-high and thicker than a man's waist
they laced the narrow corral that would not
burn until flesh had burned, until

bone was burning, and laid it thick
with tinder--fatted wicks and sulphur,
kindling and logs--and ran a ramp
up to its height from where the gray horse

waited, his dapples making of his flesh
a living metal, layers of life
through which the light shone out
in places as it seems to through the flesh

of certain fish, a light she knew
as purest, coming, like that, from within.
Not flinching, not praying, she looked
the last time on the body she knew

better than the flesh of any man, or child,
or woman, having long since left the lap
of her mother--the chest with its
perfect plates of muscle, the neck

with its perfect, prow-like curve,
the hindquarters'--pistons--powerful cleft
pennoned with the silk of his tail.
Having ridden as they did together

--those places, that hard, that long--
their eyes found easiest that day
the way to each other, their bodies
wedded in a sacrament unmediated

by man. With fire they drove him
up the ramp and off into the pyre
and tossed the flame in with him.
This was the last chance they gave her

to recant her world, in which their power
came not from God. Unmoved, the Men
of God began watching him burn, and better,
watching her watch him burn, hearing

the long mad godlike trumpet of his terror,
his crashing in the wood, the groan
of stakes that held, the silverblack hide,
the pricked ears catching first

like driest bark, and the eyes.
and she knew, by this agony, that she
might choose to live still, if she would
but make her sign on the parchment

they would lay before her, which now
would include this new truth: that it
did not happen, this death in the circle,
the rearing, plunging, raging, the splendid

armour-colored head raised one last time
above the flames before they took him
--like any game untended on the spit--into
their yellow-green, their blackening red.

[EFerrari]

62. I don't think so. Name isn't familiar.

It's been a while since I looked at anyone new (to me). I liked Elizabeth Alexander's inaugural poem.

[Lost4words]

16. finishing up on Naomi Klein, Shock Doctrine! its a must read!

:hi:

[DemoTex]

17. "Americana" by Don Delillo.

Just finished Wm. Faulkner's "Sanctuary."

[awoke_in_2003]

18. bookmarking for future reference...

when I might actually have time to read :(

[Brickbat]

19. A book about Finnish socialists on the Irong Range of Minnesota in the early 20th century.

Doing a little research.

Also, for fun, "My Lord Bag of Rice" by Carol Bly. LOVE HER.

[Sisaruus]

27. Title?

And what is the nature of your research? I have a personal interest in Finnish socialists who settled in the U.S.

I just finished a novel, The Cloud Sketcher, part of which was set in Finland, part in U.S. - takes place in the early 20th century.

[Brickbat]

29. I don't have it handy -- and Mr. Brickbat is sleeping in the room where it's at.

I'll kick this up later with the title.

Part of it is personal interest -- where we live, our own politics (not heritage, though). Part of it is I'm writing a novel about it. There, I said it! :o

Haven't read the Cloud Sketcher, but it's on my list to read.

[Sisaruus]

31. Have you read Ursula, Under by Ingrid Hill?

My maternal grandfather emigrated from Finland, via Canada, to the mining region of (I believe) Minnesota. As the family story is told he was too good-looking and quite the ladies' man so his buddies got him drunk one night and put him on a train eastbound. He eventually found his way to NYC and became a bootlegger supplying the NYC police dept - he carried an in-advance pardon from the governor lest some cop-who-didn't-know-better tried to bust him.

All 4 grandparents emigrated from Finland but the others all came to and stayed in the northeast.

[Brickbat]

32. Haven't heard of it until now.

That's a great story about your grandfather, though. He sounds like a helluva guy!

P.S. I like your username.

[Sisaruus]

38. I arrived after he settled in CT

A lot of Finnish socialists ended up in eastern CT. My small town had a Finnish IWW hall (although it was controversial with the wobblies because one was not supposed to have a national affiliation, one was a worker of the world). My family was affiliated with the socialist hall the next town over which is now a Finnish heritage society and has archived all the records from all the New England Finnish-socialist halls. A lot of the socialist identity went underground, or worse - went away, during the McCarthy/HUAC years.

[Brickbat]

43. Here's the name of the book.

"For The Common Good: Finnish Immigrants and the Radical Response to Industrial America‎," various authors. It was published by Tyomies (hand over heart).

[Sisaruus]

63. I just ordered a copy from alibris

It looks like something I should read. Thanks.

[Brickbat]

65. Enjoy, and let me know what you think.

[Brickbat]

45. We have a socialist hall near us; it's still used as a community center and many still take pride in

its red past. We go there to hear a lecture once in awhile, just like in the old days. People here really held onto their socialist ideals and you can still find those who joke about this area being the People's Republic of the Missabe.

[babylonsister]

21. Almost done with 'Three Cups of Tea'. I know, I'm late to this

tea party :P but it's a great read about a remarkable man named Greg Mortenson, an American who helped finance and build 55 schools in in the Taliban's backyard.

[marmar]

22. The American Talibangelicals or the Afghanistan one?

:P

[JitterbugPerfume]

23. I just finished The Book of Genesis, illustrated by R Crumb

it is fascinating , especially the commentary . There is a review of it at BuzzFlash by Thom Hartman.

I am now reading Animal farm by David Kirby. Where Genesis was a fun book , Animal Farm is deadly serious. I will never eat pork again!

I loved The Value of Nothing , Raj Patel is a very interesting person.

[Agony]

24. Venezuela Speaks! Voices from the Grassrooots. Martinez/Fox/Farrell

I am almost done with it. Interviews with activists involved in Venezuela's social movements. The cooperatavista's for example, bolivarian revolutionary people... The revolution apart from Chavez.

I forget who but someone here on DU recommended it....

I also have it but haven't read it yet... Eduardo Galeano's, Open Veins of Latin America. The book that Chavez gave to President Obama at the Summit of the Americas, I wonder if he has read it?

Raj is good! You might also like Nomi Prins, Other Peoples Money

Cheers!
Agony

[Arkana]

25. "Woodrow Wilson: A Biography" by John Milton Cooper Jr.

[rucky]

26. Whose Freedom? - George Lakoff

Though it was written a few years back, it's a good window into the mind of the teabagger (and the propagandist)

[Sisaruus]

28. I'm reading Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism

by Susan Jacoby. Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle by Chris Hedges is due to arrive any day now - really looking forward to getting my hands on it.

[JitterbugPerfume]

41. I loved that book!

by Susan Jacoby

[scarletlib]

30. Reading "The Bloody SHirt" by Stephen Budiansky

An account of the South immediately following the end of the Civil War to when Reconstruction ended. Basically just more documentation of the fact that Southern White leadership never from the first day of surrender at Appomattox had any intentions of ever trying to accept African Americans as equal in any way. It's a well written, easy to read story. I think it's relevant to today for several reasons. First, we all need to really know and understand what really happened after the Civil War and I think the action's of many of the militias and tea partiers directly relate back to the racism that still permeates our country.

One thing I do know now is that the South only lost on the battlefield. In every other way (with the exception that slavery was 'officially' abolished) they won. Blacks denied their civil rights for another hundred years brutally terrorised and repressed.

[EFerrari]

56. I saw him on CSPAN and it looked like a really good read. n/t

[Joey Liberal]

34. Band of Brothers

Good book.

[Swamp Rat]

35. "Atmospheric Correction of Landsat ETM+ Land Surface Imagery"

I love the part about the new atmospheric correction algorithms and the clustering analysis technique that uses the NIR and two MIR bands. :D

[walldude]

36. Rock and Hard Places by Andrew Mueller

Brilliant book. Mueller is both a rock music writer and a war correspondent. This is a collection of his writings. Go from backstage with U2 to war torn Bosnia to the birth of the Taliban. You'll get a view of things you don't get anywhere else. I highly recommend it.

[Thothmes]

37. Cold Harbor by Gordon Rhea

[Atticus]

39. "A People's History of the United States", by Howard Zinn nt

[Posteritatis]

40. Samantha Power's "Chasing the Flame," a biography of Sergio Vieira de Mello

Only a bit into it so far but I'm enjoying it.

[havocmom]

42. Couple months ago read 'Goodbye, Wifes & Daughters' about a mining disaster in the early 40s

It was written by Susan Kushner Resnick. I recommend it to help with background on a very current disaster.

The mining tragedy in the book was in Montana, but mine was gassy and had too much coal dust. And mine managers/owners had too much greed. The Smith Mine Disaster in Bear Creek, MT pretty much got the ball rolling on serious mining regulation. Too bad the Robber Baron Class has regained so much power in America.

Book is a quick read, worth every minute and likely to tear your heart out.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=8153479

not tellin what I am reading now :evilgrin:

[clyrc]

44. The Woman Behind the New Deal

by Kirstin Downey. Really, really good stuff.

[BreweryYardRat]

47. A lot of P.G. Wodehouse.

Next up: Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki.

[Tailormyst]

48. I just finished Xombies

I have to say it wasn't up there on my lists of books in the Zombie genre, but I did find it neat that the setting was close to where I live. I would definitely suggest Max Brook's (Mel's son) The Zombie Survival Guide.

:toast:

[RussBLib]

49. "Freefall" by Joseph Stiglitz

Checked it out from the Library. My wife is in the financial world, and she thinks the guy is a genius. Very good so far.

Some asshole requested the same book from the library, so I only get it for two weeks!

[Arugula Latte]

50. "The Worst Hard Time" -- Harrowing, comprehensive book about the Dust Bowl

Holeeee Crap. Those times were 100 times worse than I'd ever imagined. The suffering is unfathomable.

I don't know if it's hardcore lefty, but it shows how the disaster was manmade (stripping millions of acres of plains of their natural coverage + drought = total disaster). Also, it shows the amazing response of Roosevelt's administration, especially as compared to that worthless Republican sap Hoover.

[RedCappedBandit]

51. Zinn's "A People's History of the US"

[ismnotwasm]

52. "Dirt"

"The Erosion of Civilizations" by David R. Montgomery. It's an interesting read about the effect of the quality of soil on human kind

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

53. "Mystic River" by Dennis Lahane

I thought it was the sequal to "Mystic Pizza" and, boy, was I wrong!

[mikeSchmuckabee]

57. Krackpotkin, of course

Quest for bread.

Now how do you want your Veblen?

[nadinbrzezinski]

61. A few history articles from the Joural of Economics, Ameican Historical Review

things like that...

:-)

[Sisaruus]

64. The problem with this thread...

is that I've just ordered 2 of the books mentioned. It's not as if my to-be-read pile was lacking. Too many books, too little time.