{"id":10137,"date":"2015-01-25T16:47:20","date_gmt":"2015-01-25T21:47:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/?p=10137"},"modified":"2023-09-26T20:27:05","modified_gmt":"2023-09-27T00:27:05","slug":"2015-reading-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/2015\/01\/2015-reading-list\/","title":{"rendered":"2015 Reading List"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am way behind on my reading.\u00a0 I keep ordering books I want<\/em> to read, and they arrive at my door, and then they sit for awhile on the shelf of my end table, their titles looking up at me now and again with their cat-like eyes, pleading for me to pay just a little attention to them, reminding me what a deliberate reader I am.\u00a0 If they could, these books would rub their pages up against my legs and purr.\u00a0 Which would be pretty fucking weird.<\/p>\n

With that, here are the books I intend to finish in 2015:<\/p>\n

The Sleepwalkers<\/a><\/em> by Christopher Clark.\u00a0 This was widely hailed in 2014 as the<\/em> book to help one understand the zeitgeist at the start of World War I.\u00a0 I’m a third of the way through and it has already given me a better perspective.\u00a0 But why World War I?\u00a0 The Guardian<\/em> explains<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The first world war and the treaties that followed it redrew the map of the Middle East by creating new states and new political realities on the territory of the defeated Ottoman empire.\u00a0 Rivalry between Britain and France, the growth of Arab nationalism, Zionist ambitions in Palestine and the emergence of modern Turkey all changed the face of the region.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

European arrogance in the early 20th century shaped events, distorted cultures and impacted tens of millions of people for many decades.\u00a0 It contributed to the rise of the various Al Qaeda groups, ISIS and other violent fundamentalists vying for power and territory in Asia, Africa and elsewhere.\u00a0 I have read Paris 1919<\/em>,\u00a0The <\/em>Ottoman Empire: 1700-1922<\/em> and The First World War: To Arms.\u00a0 <\/em>This will be my last read on the topic.<\/p>\n

The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Time<\/a><\/em> edited by Craig Callender.\u00a0 I am curious how the universe works on a fundamental level.\u00a0 I enjoy reading physics and I enjoy reading about time.\u00a0 Philosophy, not so much.\u00a0 I have made my way through a few chapters in this book — they have been heavy on symbolic logic and arguments about what constitutes a true sentence.\u00a0 For example, I just learned that “necessary truths are actually true; that necessary truths are necessarily<\/em> necessary; and that \u03c8<\/em> is necessarily possible if it is possible.” \u00a0 It is actually possible that the entire book will consist of this punctilious crap, but not necessarily.\u00a0 I will not know for sure until I have finished reading it and have thereby transformed a possible future into the immutable past.\u00a0 Stay tuned.<\/p>\n

Lilith’s Brood<\/a><\/em> by Octavia Butler.\u00a0 I started this thick science-fiction read over a year ago but got bogged down one-fifth of the way in.\u00a0 Unlike the Serial <\/em>podcast, this novel maintains an uneven hold on my attention, but I’m going to give it another shot and see what goes.<\/p>\n

Meet You in Hell<\/a>\"Carrie<\/a><\/em> by Les Standiford.\u00a0 I picked up this book\u00a0 on a visit to the Frick House in Pittsburgh last year.\u00a0 It is the story of the turn-of-the-century steel empires of Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick, the feud between the two men, and the (mis)treatment of their workers, which is the aspect I’m most interested in.\u00a0 By chance, on that same trip to Pittsburgh, I had toured an abandoned blast furnace built by Andrew Carnegie in 1884 and which operated until 1982.\u00a0 The hot, strenuous and dangerous work conditions described by our tour guide, a former employee, were incredible enough — it is hard for me to imagine what that same work would have been like a century earlier.<\/p>\n

Racisms: From the Crusades to the Twentieth Century<\/a><\/em> by Francisco Bethencourt.\u00a0 I know that racism existed before the enslavement of Africans by European colonists, but I am ignorant of its origins and how it spread.\u00a0 I am hoping Bethencourt’s book gives me a better idea of the depth and breadth of this ongoing tragedy of human history.\u00a0 There are many books on racism I could have picked — I settled on this one to get started.<\/p>\n

\"CarlThe People, Yes<\/a><\/em> by Carl Sandburg.\u00a0 After all those weighty reads, the last book on my list for 2015 (should I be lucky enough to finish them all) will offer some respite.\u00a0 This book-length poem was a birthday gift from my wife — we often visit the Carl Sandburg House in nearby Flat Rock when we have out-of-town guests.\u00a0 The photo at right shows his second-floor writing room.\u00a0 Sandburg was a much more diligent reader and writer than yours truly.<\/p>\n

Except for pet photos, there probably isn’t anything more boring to share than one’s reading list.\u00a0\u00a0 But at least you now know that my dance card is full — just in case you were thinking of inviting me to join your book club.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am way behind on my reading.\u00a0 I keep ordering books I want to read, and they arrive at my door, and then they sit for awhile on the shelf of my end table, their titles looking up at me … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-notes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10137"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31165,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10137\/revisions\/31165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}