The Book Thread 2024

[UncertainSloth]

Blimey, I read nothing for the last 6 months or so of last year…here’s hoping I can make more use of the thread this year.

Happy New Year & Happy Reading, folks!

[Blip]

Happy New Year to you too, UncertainSloth!

[don't get me started]

Happy New year readers.

I've been on a break from the book thread for 2023, (but not from reading, of course!).
I'm going to make an effort to participate this year...
Happy reading everyone.

[don't get me started]

1. The Seven Day Circle: The History and Meaning of the Week - Eviatar Zerubavel 206 pp.

A fascinating account of how the seven day week came into being and how it affects the structure of life, work, emotion, prayer and much more. The week has the unique position of being a completely human artifact, not based like the day, month or year on any natural phenomena. There are some interesting insights into how the system of 'day of the sun, day of the moon, day of Mars, came to be so named (the Japanese system is parellel to the English system 日曜日、月曜日、火曜日- sun, moon, mars...) The etymology of the days of the week of many different languages (from both inside and outside the Indo-European family) is investigated and found to have startling overlaps.
There is also the vexed question of which day is the first day of the week. Some traditions hold that Sunday is the first day, while for others it is Monday. (ISO 8601 states that Monday is the first day of the week..but this book is a bot old so it maybe predates the ISO decision.)
It turns out that the Christians and then the Muslims shifted their holy day away from the Jewish Sabbath to differentiate themselves from the foundational Abrahamic tradition.
There was a interesting chapter on the French revolutionary attempt to institute a 10 day week, but it never caught on and was quietly abandoned after only a few years. The Soviets also tried to institute a five and six day weekly calender, but like the French a century earlier, found that the seven day cycle to be too deeply ingrained and hard to eradicate.

Very interesting book with a wealth of linguistic, social, historical and psychological insights into this strange cyclical seven-day rhythm that deeply affects our lives.

[Blip]

1. Julia by Sandra Newman

That's Julia as in 1984. An interesting idea, with much to admire; it prompted me to go looking for my copy of Orwell's masterpiece, so that is likely to turn up in my list this year.

[Blip]

1. Julia by Sandra Newman
2. The Ghost Theatre by Mat Osman

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1. Julia by Sandra Newman
2. The Ghost Theatre by Mat Osman
3. Lord Jim at Home by Dinah Brooke

A classic from the 1970s, and deservedly so. That poor boy!

[Blip]

1. Julia by Sandra Newman
2. The Ghost Theatre by Mat Osman
3. Lord Jim at Home by Dinah Brooke
4. The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan

I think this counts as a psychological thriller; anyway, it's short, scary and hard to put down.

[sean_w]

1. Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky

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1. Julia by Sandra Newman
2. The Ghost Theatre by Mat Osman
3. Lord Jim at Home by Dinah Brooke
4. The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan
5. The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan

Good but horrific tale of four disturbed children who are left to their own devices when orphaned.

[Meme]

1. The Gunslinger by Stephen King

It's a moody little thing. The prose sparse and almost feral on occasion, and the text heads off into unexpected directions. Looking forward to reading the rest of the series this year.

[sean_w]

1. Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
2. An American Dream, Norman Mailer

[Blip]

1. Julia by Sandra Newman
2. The Ghost Theatre by Mat Osman
3. Lord Jim at Home by Dinah Brooke
4. The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan
5. The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan
6. The Whale Tattoo by Jon Ransom

This was pretty good, although those of a sensitive disposition might find it somewhat graphic in the sex 'n' violence departments; there's an informative review here.

[don't get me started]

1. The Seven Day Circle: The History and Meaning of the Week - Eviatar Zerubavel 206 pp.

2. A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster - Rebecca Solint 368 pp.

An optimistic and hopeful book that outlines the ways in which ordinary people react to disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes, terrorist attacks and so on. The author takes issue with the commonly held notion that once the lights go out humans devolve to some kind of Hobbesian state of greed, selfishness, distrust and ready resort to violence ( A notion that is pushed by Hollywood, and many news outlets. Instead, she documents the many, many examples of altruism, kindness, self-sacrifice, and cooperation that occur as people revert to a mutual-aid and communitarianism mode of sociality that springs up more or less spontaneously after disasters.

It is often the powers that be that react with panic and irrationality in the face of disaster. The author describes the repeated and demonstrable failures of the authorities to mitigate the effects of a disaster, with heavy-handed policing to head off an often feared but actually rare breakdown of 'law and order' - often dealing the victims a second blow on top of the disaster itself. The details of the clusterfuck of the Bush administration's attempts to deal with the effects of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans makes for grim reading.

Overall a very positive book and one that highlights the fact that humans can often find meaning in their lives and rise to the demands of doing well by their fellow humans in times of stress and heartache, and do so spontaneously.

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1. Julia by Sandra Newman
2. The Ghost Theatre by Mat Osman
3. Lord Jim at Home by Dinah Brooke
4. The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan
5. The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan
6. The Whale Tattoo by Jon Ransom
7. A Heart Full of Headstones by Ian Rankin

Rebus is reliably absorbing escapism and this, the latest, was no exception.

[NamelessFaceless]

Happy New Year everyone! I know I'm late to the party. Not sure what my excuse is. Anyway, finally finished my first book:

1. The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things - "J.T. LeRoy"

The author is in quotes because he (she) was discovered to be using an alias. A shame her work was discredited because her real life wasn't what she said it was. Still a compelling read.

[Animavore]

2023 Booker Prize winner from Irish writer Paul Murray about a rural Irish family who struggle in the 2008 crash. I couldn't put this one down.

1. The Bee Sting.

[sean_w]

1. Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
2. An American Dream, Norman Mailer
3. Living with the Genie: Essays On Technology And The Quest For Human Mastery

[don't get me started]

1. The Seven Day Circle: The History and Meaning of the Week - Eviatar Zerubavel 206 pp.
2. A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster - Rebecca Solint 368 pp.

The Language Game: How Improvisation Cteated Language and Changed the World -Morten H. Christiansen and Nick Chater 349 pp.

A thoroughly entertaining, informative and insightful look at how modern linguistics is reshaping the view of how language emerged, how language works and how language is embedded in human culture and cognition. The authors take issue with the increasingly threadbare 'generative Grammar' and 'Language Instinct' views of language that have held sway over the last half century or so. Language, in the view of the authors, is not some hardwired, genetic code embedded in our DNA and running off a formal system of meaning and structure.

Rather, in an appealing metaphor, it is like a game of charades. Communicators make best use of extant epistemic resources, shared understanding, established and conventionalized meanings, on the fly improvisations and so on. Communication takes place in the here-and-now of the attentional bottleneck caused by short-term memory limitations and relies heavily on the willingness of the interlocutor to try and dig down and intuit what is meant. This stands in sharp contrast to the monologic, mentalese, abstract and rather unhuman view promoted from the generative tradition of Chomsky and his followers.

This book is highly readable and accessible to non-specialist and offers a persuasive view of what this thing called language is.

[Blip]

1. Julia by Sandra Newman
2. The Ghost Theatre by Mat Osman
3. Lord Jim at Home by Dinah Brooke
4. The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan
5. The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan
6. The Whale Tattoo by Jon Ransom
7. A Heart Full of Headstones by Ian Rankin
8. Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo translated by Douglas J. Weatherford

One of the classics of Latin American fiction, disturbing, difficult and hugely influential: Gabriel García Márquez remarks in the foreword that discovering Rulfo was for him on a par with discovering Kafka. I may need to re-read it at some point.