Book club planning thread and suggestions

[Cain]

I may not be able to keep up with the reading, since I have stuff going on this week and next.  The least stressful of which will be a citizenship ceremony.  I mean, I'll probably flick through, but since my personal time is going to be a lot less than it once was, I have to prioritise, and the book club may get left by the wayside for the moment.

Naturally, this also means I probably wont be online too much, either.

[Elder Iptuous]

so whats the next book then. this angeltech one?

Yes. it has been Officially Declared.™

download read digest

[Triple Zero]

/someone/ have uploaded it here: http://ifile.it/vjagfkr

[Ratonderio]

I know Angel Tech hasn't run it's entire course yet, but I went to pick up The Stranger and noticed it's only 120 pages which seems to fit the theme of "books you can cram into your busy schedule."  I hear it's not a terrible book as well... =P

[Iason Ouabache]

Are we going to move on to another book or is this idea dead already? 

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

School, procrastination, and having other books I'd prefer to be reading is keeping me from doing Angel Tech. I'd be happy to suggest books for people not in this situation, though.

[Elder Iptuous]

I just couldn't get into AngelTech.... i probably will later, but i'm out on that one.
I've been reading 'Guns Germs and Steel', although i've only got 125 pages under my belt, and i started weeks ago....
i needed something a little more grounded.
is anybody still reading the AngelTech, and planning on discussing it further?  the conversation on it was good to read.

[Cain]

I believe LMNO still is.

[LMNO]

Yup.  I tend not to talk about a book until I'm done, and my reading time has been slashed drastically lately.  


However, for suggestions on future works, I nominate "Listen, Little Man!" by W. Reich.  It's a short, punchy, rant-like polemic diatribe against the fascist in all of us.  

A sample quote:

For twenty-five years, in the written and spoken word, I have advocated your right to happiness in the world; have accused you of your inability to take what belongs to you, to secure what you had gained in the bloody battles of the Vienna barricades, in the American emancipation or the Russian revolution.  Your Paris ended in Petain and your Vienna in Hitler; your Russia in Stalin, and your America could end in the regime of a KKK.  You knew better how to win your freedom than how to safeguard it for yourself and others.  I have known this for a long time.  What I couldn't understand was why, every time you had fought your way laboriously out of one morass, you got into a worse one.  Then, slowly and gropingly, I found what makes you a slave: YOU ARE YOUR OWN SLAVE-DRIVER.  Nobody else except you yourself carries the responsibility for your slavery.  Nobody else.

[Rumckle]

I'm just about finished, unfortunately things have got pretty hectic since I got to toronto, but I'm still up for some book club shenanigans.

[Corvidia]

A sample quote:

For twenty-five years, in the written and spoken word, I have advocated your right to happiness in the world; have accused you of your inability to take what belongs to you, to secure what you had gained in the bloody battles of the Vienna barricades, in the American emancipation or the Russian revolution.  Your Paris ended in Petain and your Vienna in Hitler; your Russia in Stalin, and your America could end in the regime of a KKK.  You knew better how to win your freedom than how to safeguard it for yourself and others.  I have known this for a long time.  What I couldn't understand was why, every time you had fought your way laboriously out of one morass, you got into a worse one.  Then, slowly and gropingly, I found what makes you a slave: YOU ARE YOUR OWN SLAVE-DRIVER.  Nobody else except you yourself carries the responsibility for your slavery.  Nobody else.

I like that! I second this nomination.

[Cain]

I have a couple of other suggestions (I know, so far, my suggestions have been great).

Anne Norton - Leo Strauss and The Politics of American Empire

Part biography, part journey through modern American political philosophy, part polemic against Neoconservatives and the kulturkampf, this is surprisingly light and easy reading.

Page DuBois -  Trojan Horses: Saving the Classics from Conservatives

We've become accustomed to the wisdom of the ancient Greeks being trotted out by conservatives in the name of timeless virtues. At the same time, critics have charged that multiculturalists and their ilk have hopelessly corrupted the study of antiquity itself, and that the teaching of Classics is dead. Trojan Horses is Page duBois's answer to those who have appropriated material from antiquity in the service of a conservative political agenda-among them, Camille Paglia, Allan Bloom, and William Bennett. She challenges cultural conservatives' appeal to the authority of the classics by arguing that their presentation of ancient Greece is simplistic, ahistorical, and irreparably distorted by their politics. As well as constructing a devastating critique of these pundits, Trojan Horses seeks to present a more complex and more accurate view of ancient Greek politics, sex, and religion, with a Classics primer.

The Blood Bankers: Tales from the Global Underground Economy by James S. Henry

From 1970 to 2003, over three trillion dollars—$3,000,000,000,000—were loaned to developing countries by the West. Yet the gap between rich and poor is worse than ever. What happened? Where did all that money go? A financial insider, Jim Henry looks unsparingly at the snarl of transactions, often legal but usually immoral, that resulted in the rich getting richer and the poor, poorer.

Like tentacles on a vast octopus, the firsthand investigations in The Blood Bankers all lead to one core. A financial detective of sorts, journalist Jim Henry analyzes a range of scandals, including the looting of the Philippines by the Marcos family, corrupt lending in South America, and the financing of Al Qaeda.

A rogue's gallery of international criminals owes its existence to the dramatic growth of the underground global economy over the last two decades. Our world is being reshaped, often in sinister fashion, by wide-open capital markets and an international banking network that exists to launder hundreds of billions of dollars in ill-gotten gains.

Here is globalization's dark side—the new high-growth global markets for influence-peddling, capital flight, money laundering, weapons, drugs, tax evasion, child labor, illegal immigration, and other forms of transnational crime.

[LMNO]

Damn, I'm gonna have to look into those, Cain.

[Elder Iptuous]

anyone got a nice story or is the book club gonna be heavy all the way ? 

I'd be up for some good old-fashioned smut, if you'd like....

[Cain]

I have Anathem by Neal Stephenson, which I haven't read yet, but by all accounts, that shit is heavier than radioactive refuse.