I haven't read anything besides Tenth of December, but I can't imagine you going wrong with that.

I'm about halfway thorough Sally Denton's The Profiteers, which covers the rise and corporate history of the Bechtel Corporation.

For those who are unfamiliar with Bechtel, they are a San Francisco based construction and energy giant that first made their mark in being on of the six companies to build the Hoover Dam. They done projects like BART (SF Bay Area subway) of the Washington DC Metro, oil, natural gas and coal pipelines, nuclear power plants, dams and a host of international projects, with a large emphasis on Saudi Arabia and the Middle East.

Bechtel is the third largest privately held US Corporation after Koch Industries and Cargill. They are most often compared to Halliburton in scope.

The author takes the approach that Frank Norris did when he wrote The Octopus. She tends to see conspiracies of the military-industrial complex run amok. The very private nature of Bechtel tends to lend itself to speculation about its true interests. The fact that Bechtel has served as a revolving door between Washington and private industry doesn't calm suspicions. Among Bechtel executive have been a former CIA Director, a Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, and many others.

If you're interested in the economic development of the West, nuclear power (which is lightly touched IMO), the Arab boycott of Israel, behind the scenes mechanics of Eisenhower, Nixon and Reagan presidencies, you may well enjoy this book.

It's very light on details of development but long on right wing corporate conspiracies.

3.5 of 5 (at the half way point).

Anybody happen to have an opinion on "Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House" vs. "Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency", or something else about them?

Just finished rereading the greatest book of all time: Dumas' Count of Monte Cristo. I could honestly start over again and still love it. No other book hits the highs and lows like this one. The plot is so ridiculously intricate, tight, and well-woven that you can almost hear it *ping* when it starts to unravel. Yes, the characters are mostly black and white, but they suit their roles well. Little details like Eugenie's sexual orientation, Debray's relationship with Madame Danglars, the paralyzed Noirtier's dominance over every scene he's in with a mere blink of his eyes.... It's all so grand and biblical while at the same time remaining intimate and personal.

My wife and I tried the Count of Monte Cristo audio book after so much love in the thread and it was not good. We gave up quickly. I think the narrator was just not engaging.

I will try to read the book someday.

I listened to it this time around -- Bill Homewood version. I had to speed it up to make his voice sound like a normal speed, and his character voices were subpar (Dumas was also a playwright and his scenes involve a lot of dialogue, so that was a pretty big drawback to this version). I liked his reading overall, though -- good production, pacing, and intonations, especially with Noirtier's "Yesss," which curdled my blood every time.

It's definitely not a small endeavor to read this book, but absolutely worth it.

Last night I read the fourth volume of Powers. It was fantastic. Much better than the first three and I had enjoyed those. I decided to read the whole series.

My fave or 2nd fave read of the past 3-5 years.

co-sign greatest book of that century. So damn intricate.

Yeah whenever anyone I know who isn't a serious reader asks for a recommendation to get into reading I always say count of Monte Cristo. I don't mean that like it isn't a serious hook but it's just so thrilling and taut that I can't imagine the person who is bored by it or doesn't get through it.

Started The Goldfinch. Seems worthwhile after the first 100 pages. Urged upon me by a friend as was Francine Prose's Blue Angel, which will be up next.

Enjoyed the goldfinch a lot.


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Well, I finished Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House. I read We Have Always Lived in the Castle a couple years ago and loved it, and I was all set to love this one, too, but it didn't do it for me. I mean, it's okay -- Eleanor's a good character, the story is sufficiently creepy, and I like the meta-horror concept. But it seems unpolished. Luke early on is described as a liar, but throughout the story he doesn't much live up to that. And lots of other good stuff gets wasted, like the cup full of stars or the white oleanders or the mantra about lovers meeting. I get that it's a genre-defining book and all that, but it's a pretty uneven story overall.

I love that book so much.

I haven't read Number 9 dream or slade house. Going to read both of those before 2/1/17.

I plan to read 1 mitchell book every two months, starting back from the beginning.

Finished More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon. Excellent novel. Kind of a cross between Bradbury and PKD. But whereas Bradbury can sometimes get too flowery and Dick can be overly zany, this book finds a nice in-between ground. The story revolves around a group of evolved humans (kind of X-Men-esque) but is very character-oriented with a psychological / philosophical bent. Well-crafted, too. I've been looking forward to reading some Sturgeon for a while and I'm very impressed.

Though it's been a long time, I have very fond memories of the short stories in Caviar. I recall his making a joke about it being the only time ever to get caviar from a male sturgeon.

More than Human sounds great. One of my favorite short stories is Microcosmic God by Sturgeon. Given that it's a short story, I won't spoil the premise.

Finished re-reading expanse for book 6 coming out tomorrow.

Thanks for the Sturgeon recs.

Vegas, that's a pretty solid undertaking, there -- those aren't short books. I'm looking forward to Babylon's Ashes, but it'll probably be a couple months till I get around to it. How does the series stand up to a reread? I'd say books 2 and 5 were my favorites the first time through.

AT THE EXISTENTIALIST CAFÉ
Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails
By Sarah Bakewell

I picked this book up because it was Nigel Warburton's pick for best philosophy book of the year, and because the Kindle version was only $3.99.

The book provides biographical and philosophical background on the major phenomenological and existentialist thinkers. The main protagonists are Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, with Martin Heidegger, Albert Camus, Maurice Merleau-Ponty covered in some detail, and many others making brief appearances.

Bakewell mixes biographical and philosophical discourse with ease. The book is very readable, and never spends too much time bogged down in explanatory material before again taking off into cool stories. One thing I learned from the book was the staggering volume of Sartre's literary output. Everyone is at least aware of Nausea, No Exit, Being and Nothingness, and maybe Existentialism is a Humanism, but he also penned a 700-page biography of the vagabond poet-thief Jean Genet, and a 2800-page biography of Flaubert (!), among an avalanche of miscellaneous output.

She also tackles the tough nut of Heidegger with aplomb. Heidegger presents a tangle of difficulties both biographical and philosophical, and the author doesn't shrink from the challenge of either, using his Black Forest hut lifestyle to elucidate concepts in his philosophy, and vice versa.

Existentialism is mostly out of favor these days, with Camus, Sartre, and de Beauvoir mostly relegated to literary fame, and Heidegger the only subject of the book with much current philosophical cachet, largely through his influence on other philosophers such as deconstructionist bad boy Jacques Derrida. But existentialism still has something to tell us about personal freedom and responsibility, and this book tells it well.

No Kierkegaard? Boo

She discusses Kierkegaard along with Nietzsche as predecessors to the existentialists but not to any great extent. I remember her mentioning Fear and Trembling, which is the only Kierkegaard text I've been able to get very far with. Kierkegaard was in great need of an aggressive editor, he tends to drone on about the same thing over and over.

She also goes pretty deep into the phenomenologists. I learned a great deal about Husserl, who actually turns out to be a pretty interesting character. He demanded great loyalty from his assistants. One female assistant is quoted as saying something like, "I am to stay with him until married, and then I may only accept a man who will be his assistant, and the same holds for the children."

It was pretty interesting, because I also watched the first season of the tv-show (which I thought wasn't that great), but after seeing the show, now all of a sudden all the characters are 'visual' representations of what I've seen from the tv (which is quite different from how I visualized them the first time I read the books).

I think books 1 (even though 1 wasn't that great, it was just fun to get back into it again) and 2 are my favorite on the reread, and I love the slow-zone part, but remembered a bit too much from book 5 to make it that interesting to re-read it again so soon.

Oh man, it comes out tomorrow? I pre-ordered it like 6 months ago. I guess everything else I'm reading will be back on the queue until I finish Babylon's Ashes. I really enjoy the Expanse series.

Pretty interesting. I found Kierkegaard alot more entertaining to read than Husserl or Ponty. But that was a while ago and I only read fantasy books now. Rip pretending to be smart.