What book(s) are you reading currently?

[Starkos]

Decided to revisit Krakauer's Under the banner of Heaven after watching some riveting doco on LDS guru Warren Jeffs' scandal

A Story of Violent Faith and a proof that Islam doesn't hold a monopoly on fundamentalism

On July 24, 1984, brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty broke into the home of their brother, Allen Lafferty, and murdered his wife and infant daughter. After being caught, both brothers maintained that they were justified in the killing because they’d received commandment from God to commit the murder.

In order to try and explain this otherwise inexplicable crime, Krakauer explores the history of Mormonism and the branch off of Mormon Fundamentalism in the United States, starting all the way back with Joseph Smith and the founding of the religion and following it’s often violent roots to the present.

Jon Krakauer’s literary reputation rests on insightful chronicles of lives conducted at the outer limits. He now shifts his focus from extremes of physical adventure to extremes of religious belief within our own borders, taking readers inside isolated American communities where some 40,000 Mormon Fundamentalists still practice polygamy. Defying both civil authorities and the Mormon establishment in Salt Lake City, the renegade leaders of these Taliban-like theocracies are zealots who answer only to God.

At the core of Krakauer’s book are brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty, who insist they received a commandment from God to kill a blameless woman and her baby girl. Beginning with a meticulously researched account of this appalling double murder, Krakauer constructs a multi-layered, bone-chilling narrative of messianic delusion, polygamy, savage violence, and unyielding faith. Along the way he uncovers a shadowy offshoot of America’s fastest growing religion, and raises provocative questions about the nature of religious belief.

[Navvet]

I've always been a huge fan of Peter O'Toole. This bio was released in 2015, and is a very entertaining read.

[jesegr]

Quarry's List by Max Allan Collins


Second in the long running Quarry series about a hitman in early 70's Memphis. Originally published in 1975 under the title The Broker's Wife. Great cover art by Robert Mcginness.

[Sandi Anderson]

Just signed upto RB digital, downloaded audio app & Adobe reader app onto desktop, signed in using library card, downloaded a couple of Lee Child E books, 1 rebus audio book, no more traipsing to library. Some other books are out(virtual) one i`m 1st & 2nd in hold for those.
21 days usage then they disappear from apps, 12 items at any one time can be in My Library.

[reaper621]

Viriathus And the Lusitanian Resistance to Rome

[Brecht]

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - Faust I (1808)



Back to real literature. This must be the fifth time I'm reading Faust but I tend to choose different annotated editions. Anyone who's familiar with some basic examples of world literature doesn't need an introduction.

[ShutUpLutz!]

Working my way through The Beastie Boys book by Mike Diamond and Adam Horovitz which is ostensibly an autobiography of the RnR HoF inducted band, but is actually a lot more.

I will freely admit that although I have a copy of License To Ill on CD, I'm not a fan of theg roup because they came across as complete assholes early in their career and when they did turn the corner on all that it seemed to be more of a publicity move than actual sincere change of heart.

But the book shows that they were three Jewish middle class kids growing up in NYC who semi immersed themselves in various music scenes/genres and from that melting pot emerged first a hardcore/punk band which morphed into a hippity hop rap group. It is I dare say beautifully written and gives a good sense of what it was actually like to be a teenager in NYC in the late 70's early '80's.

Still boggles my mind that not only did the Beasties and their thirty foot tall dick tour with Madonna, but she didn't kick them off her tour even though they were acting like the worst kind of teenage asshats.

Strongly recommend checking it out.

[scoundrel]

It has been a while since I last read Ursula Le Guin's Wizard of Earthsea books, at least 25 years. There are similarities with the Harry Potter idea, particularly the constant presence of an academy for training children with the required gift to become wizards. I haven't read the Harry Potter books so I can't compare them. I can only say that the Le Guin books are very well written, full of strong characters, interesting story lines and intriguing themes and ideas.

There are six altogether, but many of those who have read all six regard the last three, written much later in the authors' life, as a completely separate trilogy exploring different ideas. I can say that the first three are mutually consistent and that the author is careful to not to break the rules of her imaginary universe.

The Farthest Shore is the third one and as well as being about growing up and finding your own identity, it is also about the eternal cycle of life and death. Tolkien sometimes considered this theme, for example in the relationship between the humans and the elves, in which the elves are ultimately doomed to leave Middle Earth because they are immortal. But Le Guin makes this theme into the central theme of her story.

The plot of the book concerns the disaster which lands on the whole of Earthsea. Reports keep coming in of distant places where magic no longer works and nature itself is out of joint. In these stories, magic is a natural thing, not supernatural, and it is because nature and the environment are losing harmony that magic is losing power. The main protangonist is a teenaged boy called Arren, a young royal and future heir to the principality of Havnor Island who is a messenger from his father, the reigning prince, asking the wizards of Roke Academy in general and the Arch-Mage especially for help and advice. The island flocks have suffered a murraine rather like anthrax and many of the spring lambs died at birth or were born deformed - the young prince only says "deformed" but it is clear to the wizards that he means more, something extremely bad.

Unfortunately, other distant islands have reported similar problems. The spells which normally maintain health and balance have lost their power. Many of the wizards, sorcerers and wise women have even stopped practicing altogether. Many communities have lost their faith and are regressing towards barbarism. Trade is languishing as production declines and there is a growing epidemic of piracy, slave-taking and general lawlessness. The world is out of joint.

The Arch-Mage of Roke Academy is a man in late middle age who was once the young wizard and growing boy hero of A Wizard of Earthsea. In this book, he has a different role, that of a mentor - he recognises that part of restoring the balance might mean restoring the whole island archipelago kingdom, and that if that turns out to be so, then Arren is actually the legitimate future whole island king. Also, though he has no magical power, Arren has the strong commitment to risk death and worse rather than let his home island disintegrate into chaos as he fears is only too possible. He is really still a boy, just turning into a man; but he is stout hearted and if he can see a man's deed which needs to be done, he'll do it no matter what. But it only as the story progresses that the Arch-Mage's idea that a monarchy must be restored gradually emerges. It emerges explicitly for the first time in the last third of the book:

Land lay ahead, low and blue in the afternoon like a bank of mist. "Is it Selidor?" Arren asked, and his heart beat fast, but the mage answered, "Obb, I think, or Jessage. We're not half way yet, lad."
That night they sailed the straits between those two islands. They saw no lights, but there was a reek of smoke in the air, so heavy that their lungs grew raw with breathing it. When day came and they looked back, the eastern isle, Jessage, looked burnt and black as far as they could see inland from the shore, and a haze hung blue and dull above it.
"They have burnt the fields," Arren said.
"Aye. And the villages. I have smelled that smoke before."
"Are they savages, here in the West?"
Sparrowhawk shook his head. "Farmers; townsmen."
Arren stared at the black ruin of the land, the withered trees of orchards against the sky; and his face was hard. "What harm have the trees done them?" he said. "Must they punish the grass for their own faults? Men are savages, who would set a land afire because they have a quarrel with other men."
"They have no guidance," Sparrowhawk said. "No king; and the kingly men and the wizardly men, all turned aside and drawn into their minds, are hunting the door through death. So it was in the South, and so I guess it to be here."
"And this is one man's doing - the one the dragon spoke of? It seems not possible."
"Why not? If there were a King of the Isles, he would be one man. And he would rule. One man may as easily destroy, as govern: be King or Anti-King."

There are a variety of misadventures as the Arch-Mage quests the islands in his long disused but ever faithful longboat, Lookfar, and Arren crews for him, guards him and assists him. Slowly they draw closer to the root and the first breakthrough is when they identify the cause of the disaster. It is happening because one man with sorcerer's powers wants to be immortal. In a very striking metaphor, the wizard Sparrowhawk describes it as though a wave in the sea seeks to exist forever and does it by freezing the world. The point is being made that in order to remain in balance the world has to be in a constant state of motion, and this is why there must be new births and why people must eventually die. By seeking to be immortal, the false wizard has destroyed the balance, and the Arch-Mage Sparrowhawk must now find him and defeat him.

Ultimately it is through the agency of a very old and powerful dragon whom Arch Mage Sparrowhawk once fought and then befriended that the evil-doer is traced. The dragon's name is Orm Embar, and I found his dialogue with the Arch Mage most interesting. As well as being the enemy of men, the false wizard has upset the lives of the dragons, who are normally predators of humanity - but it turns out that dragons have standards too, and lines they won't cross. Orm Embar is expressing his horror and loathing of the fallen world the false wizard has made of Earthsea. Dragons speak a different language called "the old speech" (like Latin perhaps) which wizards learn but non-wizards usually do not know, so after he has talked to the dragon, the Arch-Mage Sparrowhawk tells Arren what the dragon said.

I flew over Kaltuel returning north, and over the Toringates. on Kaltuel I saw villagers killing a baby on an altar stone, and on Ingat I saw a sorcerer killed by his townsfolk throwing stones at him. Will they eat the baby, think you Ged? [Sparrowhawk's name in the old speech] Will the sorcerer come back from death and throw stones at his townsfolk?

The sense has gone out of things. There is a hole in the world and the sea is running out of it.

This has been the effect of one man trying to be immortal. The book strongly asserts that nature has its own order and that to disregard that order is ultimately an act of self-destruction.

The book was written in 1968, 50 years ago - but it has a message for today, yes indeedy.

[rosestone]

'How Not To Die: The Foods Scientifically Proven To Prevent And Reverse Disease' by Dr Michael Greger



As Dr Greger himself says, he doesn't advocate a paleo-diet or a vegan diet or a pescatarian diet, he advocates an evidence-based diet, and given that more than a quarter of the pages of this book are just a list of all the scientific papers he cites, it would be difficult to argue with him.

It's full of fascinating facts and practical advice, like if you have a relative suffering from Alzheimers, adding a little saffron to their food should have aid their cognitive functioning, or that consuming broccoli helps relieve respiratory conditions.

Fascinating stuff.

[charliels531]

"The Hemingses of Monticello" is a formidable study of four generations of the Hemings family; three of those generations were slaves when Thomas Jefferson also lived there, but he plays a very small role in the granular story.

This is a stellar example of the history of the inarticulate, and magnificently written. At 700 pages it takes some work, but it is well worth the effort.