false 12 236 198 true 5655905 read 0 true 2849511 currently-reading 38 true 2849510 to-read 26 false 3011774 history 22 false 3011977 mystery-thriller 21 false 3011834 great-non-fiction 19 false 3011974 humor 15 false 3011922 comics-graphic-novels 13 false 3011910 sci-fi 12 false 3257891 fishing 12 false 3174524 favorites 4 false 3011779 fantasy 1 false 3906881 read-with-kids 1 false 5038294 first-reads http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/78751014 to: The Wordy Shipmates (Paperback) by Sarah Vowell
bookshelves: history
A wonderful, iconoclastic retelling of the story of the puritans who settled Massachusetts on the heels of the Pilgims. Sarah Vowell's unique voice and style bring to life John Winthrop, Roger Williams, John Cotton and Anne Hutchinson and make their lives and legacies fascinating and relevant. This is, to me, Vowell's best book to date. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/69593020 to: Hard Times (Penguin Classics) by Charles Dickens
Well of course I am going to give Dickens five stars, but it is well-deserved. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. Works brilliantly as both a good story (though one of the simplest of all the Dickens books) and as social commentary. It hits you over the head with its message at times, but it is a worthy message, so that seemed okay. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/77790549 to: The Restraint of Beasts (Paperback) by Magnus Mills
Great deadpan humor,seemingly simple plot, but actually deceptively complex and full of meaning and metaphor. Not for all tastes, but well worth the effort. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/77305084 to: Pattern Recognition (Paperback) by William Ford Gibson
I have been sort of aimless in my reading habits of late. I picked up Alan Bullock's dual bio of Hitler and Stalin that I have been working on for some 15 years now and read a chapter, I am working my way through Dickens's Hard Times and am enjoying that, and my pile grows with every new acquisition from paperbackswap.com, but nothing was really hitting me. Then my neighbor handed me this book. I read Neuromancer many years ago and liked it a lot, but had no idea what this one was about. I was immediately sucked into to Gibson's brilliant rumination on modern marketing, the commodification of cool and the nature of identity in the modern world.

"We have no idea, now, of who or what the inhabitants of our future might be. In that sense, we have no future. Not in the sense that our grandparents had a future, or thought they did. Fully imagined cultural futures were the luxury of another day, one in which 'now' was of some greater duration. For us, of course, things can change so abruptly, so violently, so profoundly, that futures like our grandparents' have insufficient 'now' to stand on. We have no future because our present is too volatile. ... We have only risk management. The spinning of the given moment's scenarios. Pattern recognition"

]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/39771939 Alan's review of Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare
by Philip Short

To get to the glossary, you need to go to the toc, scroll to the next page and then down to glossary, then hit next page until you find the name, each page refresh taking a second or two. Then find your way back to where you were. With a book, you just turn to the glossary. It was clear that the publisher/Amazon did no special formatting beyond putting it into Kindle format. For example, it retained word-break hyphens from the print edition even though the words appear in different locations on the page on the Kindle edition, which was annoying. I suspect it will be better once books are formatted with ebook readers in mind. Until then, I will probably stick with novels only on the Kindle.
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/39771939 to: Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare (Paperback) by Philip Short
bookshelves: history
Short's history/biography combines an engaging narrative flow with a good amount of detail. I am still not sure I understand how Pol Pot evolved from the mediocre student, Saloth Sar, and budding Marxist into the leader of a (briefly) successful revolutionary movement. Short does mention his later charisma, but if he possessed such an appeal in his early days, the book did not really show it. It did, however, do a brilliant job of showing how Cambodian culture, psyche and worldview were more important in explaining what happened as the Khmers Rouges took power than was Marxism. Pol was certainly influenced by revolutionary writings of the past (especially the more radical and violent stuff) but readily ignored, revised or rejected that which did not serve his ends. I also found the geopolitical aspects of the conflict fascinating. Cambodia found itself between two very different cultures, Sino-influenced Vietnam and Indo-influenced Thailand. Outside powers took sides based on broader strategic aims and ended up being drawn into the conflict in unexpected ways.

I read this on a Kindle, which was not ideal. There are a lot of people to keep track of, many of whom change their names a few times, so it was a bit of a pain using the glossary of names in the back of the book. Maps were not very clear (though they are probably better on the Kindle 2 and DX). ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/71552987 The Last Thousand Days of the British Empire: Churchill, Roosevelt, and the Birth of the Pax Americana (Hardcover) by Peter Clarke
bookshelves: to-read
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/71552916 The Last Days of Publishing (Paperback) by Tom Engelhardt
bookshelves: to-read
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/71207489 The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution (Hardcover) by Richard Dawkins
bookshelves: to-read
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