book recommendations

[Spracne]

My fav Hemmingway is For Whom the Bell Tolls.

As for Faulkner, I haven't tried any of his work since my early 20's, but he was depressing and slow paced, iirc.

Faulkner is pretty great. He basically chronicles the story of the slow descent and decay of the postbellum South. Some real "Fall of the House of Usher" vibes.

[Kat Kid]

I haven't read much Faulkner, I got a collection of his letters and essays as a gift and this one on Mississippi is great:

https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/faulknerw-mississippi/faulknerw-mississippi-00-h.html

[chum1]

Faulkner is pretty much the opposite of light and easy.

[Pete]

I think most classics are boring af.

[DQ12]

I think most classics are boring af.

I enjoy reading them, and they make me feel proud of myself.  If I’m gonna slog through a book, I want it to be a book I’m proud to have read.

And every once in a while you’ll read some absolutely transcendent sentence and you think to yourself “oh, that’s why this book is a classic.”

[Sandstone Outcropping]

My fav Hemmingway is For Whom the Bell Tolls.

As for Faulkner, I haven't tried any of his work since my early 20's, but he was depressing and slow paced, iirc.

I could never get into Faulkner. Found it just unreadable.

_A Farewell to Arms_ is my favorite Hemingway novel. I really enjoy his "Nick Adams" short stories. Various vignettes from Nick's childhood in the forests of Michigan as well as Nick's return trips into nature in an effort to heal from the trauma of WW1.

[Sandstone Outcropping]

I'm about halfway through A Legacy of Spies by John LeCarre. I think it is my third favorite LeCarre novel behind The Spy Who Came in From the Cold and Call for the Dead.

[ben ji]

About 100 pages into "Losing the signal" the rise and fall of BlackBerry and it's pretty good. Currently into the 2001 era where during 9/11 cell phones were down so people could only talk with their BlackBerrys which were email only.

Some interesting notes

- BlackBerry focused their marketing on C level executives, would send salesmen to airports/conferences and give 1 month free trials to people using pagers or palm pilots. When those people got hooked they would demand their subordinates get blackberries too and so on down the line

- 10 days after 9/11 the US government bought blackberries for all of Congress/Senate and cabinet members because it was the only reliable form of communication during 9/11

[mocat]

I'm about halfway through A Legacy of Spies by John LeCarre. I think it is my third favorite LeCarre novel behind The Spy Who Came in From the Cold and Call for the Dead.

TSWCiFtC is also my fave JLC

[Sandstone Outcropping]

Just used the Libby app to check out the audiobook of GRANT by Ron Chernow. Great stuff so far. Very good reader.

This is a very long audiobook. Just getting to the part where Grant and Lee are sending messages back and forth to decide on a place to meet for negotiations to end the war. Spine-tingling stuff. Grant is commanding the most powerful armed force in history up to this time, holding the fate of the United States in his hands and is totally at ease with it all. The narrator is very good. Has voices for all of the different people. Is really performing the biography more than just reading it.

[Stupid Fitz]

Halfway through the new David Goggins book. Not nearly as good as Can't Hurt Me, but its ok.

[8manpick]

About halfway through the (audio)book of Secret Life of Groceries and it is quite compelling.

[Kat Kid]

The sense of an ending by Julian Barnes was a short, good read.

[Stupid Fitz]

Started Mud Ride by founding band member of Mudhoney Steve Turner. Why? Because Mudhoney still rough ridin' rules. Also, its just incredible how Seattle was just a regular place with not much of a music scene and then boom. I can't get enough of these stories from guys that were there from the beginning. Its wild how interconnected a lot of these dudes were and how big some of these bands became.

[Kat Kid]

The Man in the High Castle was really good. I had seen the first season of the tv show and didn't like it much, I really have liked every Phillip K Dick novel I've read and I've read like 4. The book has a really interesting look at what it would be like in the US if we had lost our place in the world at the individual level. Most of the novel focuses around how the racial hierarchies would have functioned and how American whites would have dealt with their loss of status. I think it very much anticipates the politics of today--reflecting how our society will come to deal with a US in decline, even if only due to the status being gained by China.

[steve dave]

US in decline

lol, lmao


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[Kat Kid]

US in decline

lol, lmao


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Ok

[catastrophe]

How much would the US have to decline for us to even acknowledge it? We’re already one of extremely few developed countries that provide affordable healthcare and people treat it like a point of pride.

What I’m saying is I don’t anticipate any psychological effects of being overtaken by any country on really any metric except maybe gun ownership.

[Kat Kid]

How much would the US have to decline for us to even acknowledge it? We’re already one of extremely few developed countries that provide affordable healthcare and people treat it like a point of pride.

What I’m saying is I don’t anticipate any psychological effects of being overtaken by any country on really any metric except maybe gun ownership.

I don’t know, but I don’t think that we will see the end of the US a empire in our lifetimes. But that doesn’t mean we haven’t peaked.

[Cire]

Napoleon bio pretty dry but I’ve enjoyed it. Really incredibly lucky life that guy had


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[Cire]

Napoleon was basically LHC Bill Snyder


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[DaBigTrain]

Napoleon was basically LHC Bill Snyder


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Except Bill’s reign didn’t even start age wise until
Napoleon was already dead. So Bill had a better career IMO.

[sys]

that doesn’t mean we haven’t peaked.

i guess that depends on what you mean.  in absolute terms, i think there is essentially a 0% chance that the united states has peaked.  americans will richer and live better lives every day of the future than they do now for the rest of our lives.

in relative terms, that some other countries may grow their economies and standards of living faster than ours and close the gap or surpass those of the people in the u.s - yeah, sure.  the former is basically 100% and the latter (for a large country, not a small resource exploiting or tax haven state) is reasonably likely within our lifetime.

[Kat Kid]

that doesn’t mean we haven’t peaked.

i guess that depends on what you mean.  in absolute terms, i think there is essentially a 0% chance that the united states has peaked.  americans will richer and live better lives every day of the future than they do now for the rest of our lives.

in relative terms, that some other countries may grow their economies and standards of living faster than ours and close the gap or surpass those of the people in the u.s - yeah, sure.  the former is basically 100% and the latter (for a large country, not a small resource exploiting or tax haven state) is reasonably likely within our lifetime.

Yeah this whole argument brewing is pretty dependent upon defining our terms. I am not saying that the market is crashing tomorrow and the us is poised to have riots in the streets tomorrow. I am pointing out the very obvious point that the us will have to deal with China (and other countries) on more equal footing and is likely to have a sad about it.

As far as how to measure things, I think we are past the point where GDP per capita is all that effective in describing quality of life for Americans as our Gini coefficient is likely to grow worse and as has been pointed out the things that improve quality of life generationally (education, health care, etc.) are seeing enormous inflation.

[star seed 7]

I am not very concerned about countries where half the population has a lower standard of living than our homeless.