Weekly “what are you reading” Thread #16

I'm not currently reading anything

But I am listening to this on audible while I'm working:

I've been reading the Autobiography of Malcolm X and have been enjoying it a lot! It's very interesting to hear his perspective.

I'm still reading that SPQR book (yes I'm a slow reader, mostly because I only read for a couple hours each week). Chronologically the period I'm reading about now is the beginning of the empire with Augustus.

But the previous chapter about home life in the late Republic was pretty interesting. Apparently slaves made up some estimated ~20% of the population. It also wasn't really a racial thing - unlike slavery in ie the US where it was justified as "those black people are just subhuman anyways", slaves in ancient Rome seem to have mostly been prisoners of war, presumably the option was basically "we're gonna kill every last one of you but might make you a slave instead", so there were slaves of more or less every race. It was also extremely common for slaves to be freed, particularly as they got older, and there was even an expectation that they'd stick around and keep working for their ex master, just as a free person (presumably also therefore responsible for their own food and lodging). Anyways because communication was obviously slow (ancient world) and freeing slaves was common, many ran away and had no trouble fading away into greater society, they would just tell people their master had freed them, and how would some official 200 miles away have any way to verify?

But more interesting is that there was apparently some proposal in the Senate to do something about this by mandating that slaves wear some kind of uniform to make runaways easier to find. Kinda like prisoner uniforms. But the Senate quickly realized if they did this then it would be readily apparent just how many slaves there were which would only lead to a slave revolt, so they quickly shelved the idea.

The Downing Street Years by Margret Thatcher

I finished The Left Hand of Darkness. Overall I wasn't too impressed. I mentioned last week that the book picks up halfway through, but it still ends up feeling kind of long-winded. I think there was about a novella's worth of material here stretched to 300+ pages. It's possible that the bond between the leads wouldn't work as well in a shorter form, and that was the strongest part of the story, but I'm not sure the extra length is worth it.

This is one of the few occasions I find myself completely agreeing with a wokoid critique of something. Specifically, the use of almost exclusively male pronouns and words like "man," "brother," etc. to refer to the supposedly genderless inhabitants of Gethen. It just erases a lot of the feeling of a gender neutral setting. Singular they or a made up pronoun also would have felt kind of odd, but SF often engages in odd word games, and doing so would have been forgivable in this context. The most charitable interpretation of this artistic choice is that the protagonist is kind of a chauvinist and sees the heckin enbies as just lesser/defective men (and there is some evidence of that in the story), but by the end he's clearly accustomed to and comfortable with the way things work on this world, and his way of describing the characters doesn't really change.

I also started reading a Neil Gaiman story collection. First up was the wonderful (if slightly unsatisfying) "A Study in Emerald," a Sherlock Holmes-inspired story set in a world where the European royalty are Lovecraftian entities who conquered Earth 700 years ago. Gaiman is good at getting weird high concepts to work, and he pulls it off quite well here. My only complaint is that this story really felt like it should have been the first couple chapters of a novel instead of a standalone. Then again, it may be better to leave the reader wanting more instead of being kind of worn out (which is how I felt by the end of The Left Hand of Darkness).

I'm still reading The Wager by David Grann.

Haven't gotten through as much as I should have in the last week. Been slacking on reading tbh.

reading the Conscience of Zeno, by Italo Svevo aka Hector Schmitz

It's an amazing book, written as a first person diary of a man who is compelled to do so by his therapist (who's is basically just Freud but with a different name)

The introduction starts with this psychoanalyst who basically says "I told him to write this book to alleviate his problems, but he's insane, but I have the manuscript so I'll publish it and at least make money"

Lord of Mysteries 2: Circle of Inevitability

American Psycho

I just started reading How Nations Fail and then I have Too Like the Lightning on deck

Going to burn through Heart of Darkness this weekend, pretty hopeful about it since Apocalypse Now is one of my top 2 favorite movies.

When does the book club reading start?

About 3/4 through a People’s History of The United States and listening to the Decline and Fall of The Roman Empire Vol. II at work

Principles of Micro-Economics by Mankiw + Intermediate Micro-Economics by Hal Varian and Discrete Mathematics by Kenneth Rosen. Yes I am swamped with college shit and cant read the master and margarita

the sunday times style magazine

https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/recording-angel/

This is a great short story I first read in one of the Gardner Dozois Science Fiction collections, I recommend it to everybody.

I just finished a book about the mafia's presence in the Netherlands and I'm rereading Paul. It turns out the mafia is everywhere and one takeaway is that dozens of Italian pizza restaurants over here turn out to be money laundering machines. The mafia spreads itself out at least through Europe and the Americas. It's more lucrative, because they're being combated more effectively inside Italy itself. They systematically infiltrate businesses and after a while convert their money into power through bribery and extortion.

It hasn't reached that stage in the Netherlands yet. This country draws them because they can sell drugs here. The book gave the impression that the legality of selling drugs helps them, which is contrary to what most sources say.

What's interesting about Paul is that he was a man with a mission, and he calls on the reader to take up higher aims as well, to come into holiness. One epistle I read is Philippians. The gist of it seems to be that the church should be of the same mind in matters, and not look for personal gain in preaching Christ, but quite the opposite: to make sacrifices. Colossians is also very readable. I have five more shorter epistles to go, then I will tackle his longer ones such as Romans.

Mirrorred at Rabbit Hole.

I love carp