book recommendations

[Cire]

Read those books a couple of years ago but what blew my mind was that Potatoes were from the new world. I guess I never really thought of it and always associated potatoes with poor European peasants...but potatoes were a key part of the population explosion in Europe, you could grow alot more calories per acre in potatoes than wheat or barley.

Really South America/Inca

rough ridin' Irish lived on potatoes and milk


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[michigancat]

Read those books a couple of years ago but what blew my mind was that Potatoes were from the new world. I guess I never really thought of it and always associated potatoes with poor European peasants...but potatoes were a key part of the population explosion in Europe, you could grow alot more calories per acre in potatoes than wheat or barley.

Really South America/Inca

rough ridin' Irish lived on potatoes and milk


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

And the potato bio-diversity discussion! And Native American agriculture in general!

[Sandstone Outcropping]

Currently reading A Christmas Carol by Dickens for the first time. It is just fantastic. I love the 1984 George C Scott movie adaptation of the novel. It looks like they basically used the novel as their screenplay. Really worth reading if you have never done so before.

Edit: just saw this. One of the best sections of the book/movie.

https://twitter.com/CenterLeft2020/status/1466614456083955712?s=20

[michigancat]

Currently reading A Christmas Carol by Dickens for the first time. It is just fantastic. I love the 1984 George C Scott movie adaptation of the novel. It looks like they basically used the novel as their screenplay. Really worth reading if you have never done so before.

Good tip. I might do this

[Cire]

Read those books a couple of years ago but what blew my mind was that Potatoes were from the new world. I guess I never really thought of it and always associated potatoes with poor European peasants...but potatoes were a key part of the population explosion in Europe, you could grow alot more calories per acre in potatoes than wheat or barley.

Really South America/Inca

rough ridin' Irish lived on potatoes and milk


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

And the potato bio-diversity discussion! And Native American agriculture in general!

I think it was in 91 where they discuss that horticulture/biologists/geneticists etc have no rough riding idea how they got maize as large and productive as they did.

The corn that they produced was already a fraction of the size of what we know but even to get it THAT big is apparently an incredible feat.

[Cire]

[Sandstone Outcropping]

Facebook just recommended this to me. Don't know if anyone if familiar with Vivian Maier but she was a reclusive / enigmatic nanny  who was totally unknown as a photographer until after her death when mountains of her jaw-dropping street photographs were discovered in a storage locker.  Would be a very interesting book for the person in your life who is into photography.

https://www.amazon.com/Vivian-Maier-Developed-Untold-Photographer/dp/198216672X/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=vivian+maier&qid=1639428149&s=books&sr=1-1

Vivian Maier, the photographer nanny whose work was famously discovered in a Chicago storage locker, captured the imagination of the world with her masterful images and mysterious life. Before posthumously skyrocketing to global fame, she had so deeply buried her past that even the families she lived with knew little about her. No one could relay where she was born or raised, if she had parents or siblings, if she enjoyed personal relationships, why she took photographs and why she didn’t share them with others. Now, in this definitive biography, Ann Marks uses her complete access to Vivian’s personal records and archive of 140,000 photographs to reveal the full story of her extraordinary life.

[Pete]

I started reading Foundation by Asimov and it’s nothing like the Apple show. Staggeringly different. It’s like Apple basically just said, we’ll take the book title, and a hand full of names and terms and we are good.

[steve dave]

Which is better?

[Pete]

Which is better?

The book is really slow. I'm about 30% through it, and hardly anything has happened.   It must get a lot better or something?

I thought the show was a little half baked, and was hoping the book would explain everything better.  I'm just more confused.  I'll stick with the book and see how it goes.  I don't like the old time science fiction so far though.

[steve dave]

The Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky is a good short read. Fast paced. I read the entire thing in one go last night. Also it's only like $4 on kindle.

[Kat Kid]

I think the Blizzard by Vladimir Sorokin is always a good winter read.

[michigancat]

CROSS POST

I just read "Among the Thugs" about English soccer hooligans and their riots in the 80's and it's wild (and Millwall supporters are highlighted quite a bit). Also especially relevant given the January 6 anniversary.

Also finished "The Bell Jar". so good and so sad.

[Pete]

Which is better?

The book is really slow. I'm about 30% through it, and hardly anything has happened.   It must get a lot better or something?

I thought the show was a little half baked, and was hoping the book would explain everything better.  I'm just more confused.  I'll stick with the book and see how it goes.  I don't like the old time science fiction so far though.

I'm half way through the second book in the Foundation series by Asimov.  Very old timey writing, but it's sort of charming.  Everyone smokes cigars and ciggeretes in these books, it's like a huge thing. Also, lots of physical paper descriptions (tubes delivering paper, documents that need to be filled out in triplicate, etc.).  Anything vaguely technical is described as being some sort of derivative of nuclear physics.  So, in order to enjoy these the reader has to quickly get passed the dated notions of what "the future" would look like.

[ben ji]

I'm about 350 pages into an 800 page book about Andrew Carnegie (just learned it's pronounced Car-Neg- e and not Carn-egy) and it's pretty good. What I learned so far is that he got rich as crap from insider trading type stuff (he worked for the RR, him and his buddies would form companies doing construction work/supplying the railroad with steel rails for inflated prices etc) when he was pretty young then just went on vacation to Europe for like 6 months out of the year while other people ran his companies and he got even richer  due to owning what would become US Steel.

Seems like he had the whole FIRE lifestyle figured out in the 1880's.

Also he was like 5 feet tall and very insecure about his height so he wore big boots all the time and if he was in a picture he would make everyone else sit or he would stand on top of stairs to look taller.

[ben ji]

Also most of his business was in Pittsburgh but he hated it there because of the pollution so he moved to NYC and only visited a couple of times a year. He would "work" from like 8-12 writing letters and sending telegrams then party with the NYC elite the rest of the day.

[ben ji]

And how did this young pipsqueak from Scotland become a powerful gilded age businessman? Well he started working at a telegram office as a teenager and was privy to all the inside deals of the Railroad and other business men since he would transcribe their telegrams so they started cutting him in on their deals. Fascinating stuff.

[star seed 7]

And how did this young pipsqueak from Scotland become a powerful gilded age businessman? Well he started working at a telegram office as a teenager and was privy to all the inside deals of the Railroad and other business men since he would transcribe their telegrams so they started cutting him in on their deals. Fascinating stuff.

The American dream

[ben ji]

And how did this young pipsqueak from Scotland become a powerful gilded age businessman? Well he started working at a telegram office as a teenager and was privy to all the inside deals of the Railroad and other business men since he would transcribe their telegrams so they started cutting him in on their deals. Fascinating stuff.

The American dream

Fun fact. Carnegie came to the US as a young boy in the 1840's but never actually filed for citizenship until the 1880's when he started to become wealthy/famous enough for the press to start hounding him about whether he was a European or American. He had held off filing for American citizenship until then because he thought maybe he would want to be a politician in Britain since he spent most summers there hob knobbing with lord's and crap.

Eventually he was shamed into becoming a US citizen by the press.

[Stupid Fitz]

And how did this young pipsqueak from Scotland become a powerful gilded age businessman? Well he started working at a telegram office as a teenager and was privy to all the inside deals of the Railroad and other business men since he would transcribe their telegrams so they started cutting him in on their deals. Fascinating stuff.

The American dream

Fun fact. Carnegie came to the US as a young boy in the 1840's but never actually filed for citizenship until the 1880's when he started to become wealthy/famous enough for the press to start hounding him about whether he was a European or American. He had held off filing for American citizenship until then because he thought maybe he would want to be a politician in Britain since he spent most summers there hob knobbing with lord's and crap.

Eventually he was shamed into becoming a US citizen by the press.

Nice, there was a series on the History Channel (I think) called The Men Who Built America. It was Carnegie, Ford, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, and JP Morgan. Very good.

Also, you recommending an 8000 page book made me think of this. I made the mistake of recommending and giving a book to my father in law and he "returned the favor" and brought me an old 900 page book about Warren Buffett.  Like, what is the etiquette here? I'll never get through it even if I try. I don't think he will really care, but its just sitting on my counter and I have no interest.

[mocat]

just skim a random chapter now and again and hit him with an interesting tidbit. it will make him feel good so i think it passes the #ethics test

[ben ji]

And how did this young pipsqueak from Scotland become a powerful gilded age businessman? Well he started working at a telegram office as a teenager and was privy to all the inside deals of the Railroad and other business men since he would transcribe their telegrams so they started cutting him in on their deals. Fascinating stuff.

The American dream

Fun fact. Carnegie came to the US as a young boy in the 1840's but never actually filed for citizenship until the 1880's when he started to become wealthy/famous enough for the press to start hounding him about whether he was a European or American. He had held off filing for American citizenship until then because he thought maybe he would want to be a politician in Britain since he spent most summers there hob knobbing with lord's and crap.

Eventually he was shamed into becoming a US citizen by the press.

Nice, there was a series on the History Channel (I think) called The Men Who Built America. It was Carnegie, Ford, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, and JP Morgan. Very good.

Also, you recommending an 8000 page book made me think of this. I made the mistake of recommending and giving a book to my father in law and he "returned the favor" and brought me an old 900 page book about Warren Buffett.  Like, what is the etiquette here? I'll never get through it even if I try. I don't think he will really care, but its just sitting on my counter and I have no interest.

An old coworker gave me this book around 10 years ago and I never read it, recently found it in my basement and decided to give it a shot.

The key is to skim right through all the boring parts like pages of love letters between Carnegie and his secret fiance.

Another fun fact, Carnegie was a total momma's boy and lived with her until she died. He wanted to Marry this girl but his mom thought he could do better so he just waited 5 years or so until his mother died before marrying who he wanted.

[CHONGS]

I need something new.  Fiction and purely for entertainment.  In the last 2 years I’ve read the Expanse series (waiting on book 9), Red Rising series (waiting on book 6), Kingkiller series (waiting on book 3, not holding my breath), and Stormlight series (waiting on book 5).  All were great.  Any suggestions?  Something completed might be nice.

The Murderbot Diaries series. There are 4 novellas and a novel and they are all so much fun.

I gave the first of these to my dad for Christmas based on this thread and he really liked it. Thanks!

Just finished the first Murderbot novella.  I enjoyed it.  It's basically a cyborg version of me. 

Yeah Murderbot is fun.  I am about to start book 2.

[Pete]

I need something new.  Fiction and purely for entertainment.  In the last 2 years I’ve read the Expanse series (waiting on book 9), Red Rising series (waiting on book 6), Kingkiller series (waiting on book 3, not holding my breath), and Stormlight series (waiting on book 5).  All were great.  Any suggestions?  Something completed might be nice.

The Murderbot Diaries series. There are 4 novellas and a novel and they are all so much fun.

I gave the first of these to my dad for Christmas based on this thread and he really liked it. Thanks!

Just finished the first Murderbot novella.  I enjoyed it.  It's basically a cyborg version of me. 

Yeah Murderbot is fun.  I am about to start book 2.

I didn’t read anymore after the second one. It was good, but I just felt like I had enough of it. 

[Pete]

Chings, I strongly recommend “We are Legion” (Bobiverse trilogy).  Very cool and fun ideas about AI (and immortality) and it’s role in protecting humanity in interstellar expansion.