Larry’s Comments (group member since Nov 23, 2020)

Larry’s comments from the Nonfiction Reading - Only the Best group.

From fivebooks.com

"The sudden change to a slower gear also left more room to reflect on the state of the world and our place as humans in it. Sophie Roell, editor of Five Books, takes us through her personal choice of the best nonfiction books of 2020. " I'm not sure that I would pick out any of the six books chosen as best books ... but I think that each is a very good book indeed.

https://fivebooks.com/best-books/nonf...

Carol,

Do add both. Some of our readers use smartphones the GR app on those devices, as John says, just doesn't work well if its just the image.

Thanks.

Larry

So what are the possible best books on the War in the Pacific during World War II. If you are looking for one work that looks at the broad strategy of both Japan and the united States, it's still hard to beat Ronald Spector's Eagle Against the Sun: The American War with Japan which was published in 1985. But if you want a more detailed look, do go for Ian W. Toll's three books. I just finished the second one of these a few weeks ago and will get to the last one soon. In sequence the three books are: Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942

The Conquering Tide: War in the Pacific Islands, 1942-1944

The Conquering Tide: War in the Pacific Islands, 1942-1944

The first two books are a brilliant accounting of the conflicts that shaped the war. It goes way beyond the conflict between the two major nations. It explains the conflicts between the Japanese army and the Japanese navy, the conflict between Adm. Yamamoto and the Japanese naval command in Tokyo, the conflict between naval aviators and surface warfare warriors in both countries, the three -way conflict between the U.S. army, navy, and marines, and so many personal conflicts, e.g. MacArthur against Nimitz. (A most important conflict was between CNO Adm. King and the British over how many U.S. resources to devote to the European Theater an dhow many to the Pacific.) The books read like novels but are backed up with scrupulous detail. The books have won numerous awards.

I'll get to the third book soon.

John wrote: "Sher wrote: "John,'When was this poem written? 1980s? or...

Would we call it post-modern?

..."

I sometimes argue that we are living in a post-postmodern world ... but no one is listening to me. :-) ... But we haven't gotten to the post-ironic stage yet. :-) :-)

John & Sher,

Billy Collins is the poet who brought me back to reading poetry. It is the simplicity of his poetry which often conceals deep meaning that I like so much.

Billy Collins addressed the problem that poets face when it comes to ebooks. He argues--I think totally successfully--that ereaders can screw up the line spacing of individual poems and that poets almost always take great care in how the lines are laid out in their poems. Ebooks have gotten better, but can still be a problem.

My favorite reading of a Billy Collins poem is this three year old boy reading "Litany."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVu4M...

I had a great discussion about Bryson with the New Zealand Ambassador to the United States about 15 years ago. It started with me mentioning In a Sunburned Country, Bryson's book about his travels in Australia and suggesting that New Zealand invite Bryson to do a similar book on NZ. Amb. Bolger quickly turned to subject to A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail, saying that he liked that book a lot. And we probably spent about 15 minutes talking about the book ...

John wrote: "Rick Atkinson has written a lot of great military history. I read almost all of his The Liberation Trilogy Boxed Set, which covered the US Army during World War 2. I also purchased ..."

I have read the first books in each of the two trilogies. No excuse for not reading books two and three in the first one based on how much I liked the first book. I am eagerly waiting for the next books in the Revolutionary War trilogy. So detailed, but he chooses the important details to butress his arguments.

Cynda wrote: "Larry wrote: "Cynda wrote: "Another Question. Women's studies has still not yet quite left that collective and group biography stage. I have a collective biography of civil war nurses--not a collec..."

Thanks, Cynda. That is the overall plan. We'll try to stick to it.

Cynda wrote: "Another Question. Women's studies has still not yet quite left that collective and group biography stage. I have a collective biography of civil war nurses--not a collection of biographies, one right after the other, but of various nursing operations and nurses during the Civil War. How do you want me to categorize both

• anthologized biographies of women
• group biographies?

Perhaps you would like for me to group all the women's booms together?

Sub-question. As we continue to find, assess, and edit and then later synthesize and even later inform organizational experience, women's writing of letters, journals, day books, and narratives/memiors, we will continue to develop the field of women's history. May we have in place already threads for original documents (as named above), biographies, professionals, ruler/politicians, military participants (nurses and soldiers), etc"

Cynda,

I'm sorry ... just too much complexity for here.

Larry

John, I didn't even know about the Caribbean book. I'll add it to my list. I love his digressions.

"This is as good a place as any to mention that, as some people have a very poor recognition of names and faces, I (generally) have a poor recollection of details or plots of books; instead, I have a recollection of how I felt about the book which stays with me. "

I have a similarly poor recall for lots and details ... what is strange is how selective it is, When I look back over the lost of books that I have read the last 30 years, there are books that I can remember a good deal about and some that I recall nothing about.

John, I see that you are reading Fermor's Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese.

One of our friends is a person named Mimi who is a member of the Patrick Leigh Fermor society and who makes a trip--usually to Greece--every year organized by that group. Mimi always attends our Thanksgiving meals with her son John. I asked her this year about the trip and she said it was cancelled. (Last year I gave Mimi a Folio Society copy of Fermor's A Time of Gifts: On Foot to Constantinople - from the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube -- I've been purging paper books in favor of e-books wherever possible.

Here's a link to the Fermor Society website: https://patrickleighfermor.org/catego...

I am struck these days by people who say that they are libertarians but when you have a conversation with them they seem to have some ideas that the founders of modern libertarians wouldn't have agreed with.

Modern libertarianism started with Hayek's The Road to Serfdom. Milton Friedman in his his several books, refined it. See for example his Capitalism and Freedom. and philosophically, no one has done a better job than Robert Nozick, in his work, Anarchy, State, and Utopia. But most so-called libertarians in the United States seem curiously ignorant about what these "founders" called for. Hayek justified a national health care system, Friedman called for a guaranteed minimum income (in the form of his negative income proposal), and Nozick in the end stepped away from a lot of his libertarian positions (although it was unclear what his change in political philosophy actually was). Most American libertarians seem to be rational individualist, that is followers of Ayn Rand, and a lot of libertarians in decades past wanted nothing to do with her or her philosophy.

I still recommend the three books cited as being the best in understanding what libertarianism is.

A final thought ... for fun, read the comments on Anarchy, State, and Utopia. The ones who hate the book usually seem to be in a fit iof rage. Those who like seem to have some very interesting insights.

This folder is for the best works on libertarianism

John, I totally feel like that. After perhaps two hours or so on Spotify, I'll start up a radio station for perhaps an hour. I also wonder about younger people who have only had Spotify as their main source of music. A number of people have made the point that they don't have the experience of listening to albums (even though that is easy to do with Spotify) because they choose one track after another from many different artists.

Sher wrote: "Hi John:
That's an excellent follow up for Orwell's Burmese Days, which I have read and liked very well. Someone might benefit from checking them both out..."

I have not read Burmese Days but I have read his excellent and disturbing essay, "How to Kill and Elephant," based on his experience in Burma as a assistant superintendent in the British Indian Imperial Police in Burma from 1922 to 1927.

John, every morning, I look at these three websites ... thus three new poems each day.

https://www.garrisonkeillor.com
https://poets.org
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem...

One of my friends (a man, BTW) complained that I was taking too many poems from Garrison Keillor's website and that I should be ignoring him because of the sexual harassment charges made against him. In truth, his site--of the three--seems to have the poems that I like the most, and most often link to on Facebook.

John wrote: "Carol wrote: "What about the Times Literary Supplement? I see Stig Abell at least once a week on the TV, who until recently was editor, and is now executive editor. I always like his opinions and h... The New York Review of Books dangled ten issues in front of me for ten dollars. I am probably overloaded with reading, but it seems hard to pass up. "

John,

I used to subscribe to the NYRB, but a few years ago, our public library started subscribing to it through RBDigital, so now I can read it for free. I find a few articles each issue to be essential reading.

I enjoyed the Times Literary Supplement also, but had so many technical problems ... that would get resolved (sometimes only with help from TLS tech support) ... and then crop up again. After about the fifth time .... over a number of months, I said "forget about this!" and even quit reading it until my subscription ran out. I miss certain parts of it a lot, like Mary Beard's column, but as I've gotten older, I decided that I just won't put up with these kind of recurring tech problems.

I do subscribe to the London Review of Books also ... as a Kindle subscription.

Sher,

I have the latest Yergin book also. How far into the book are you?

Larry

One of the strange things for me about Ozymandias is that it's probably the only poem that I can remember reading in high school English and then again in English Lit in college. I think that it's the image it leaves you with that made it stick in my mind.

Put great TV series here