• BookTalk.org News will soon go out via email in HTML format. The goal will be to keep people posted on our current book discussions and other relevant news items.
• Contest #2: "On The Importance of Reading" has started. Visit the Contests forum - the very top thread.
Please support our free community by making a credit card donation through our secure PayPal account. We appreciate and depend on the generosity of our members. Thank you!
I've always been a fan of Rebecca West and have read many of her writings over the years. I've never heard of this one - The Gray and the Falcon (something like that) - but would enjoy reading it.
In Cold Blood is always current simply because it is a wonderfully written book.
However, my non-fiction book for this month will be Home, by the lovely Julie Andrews. Good reviews and it will sell well - probably far too popular for this crowd.
I would love to read "Neither Wolf nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder" by Kent Nerburn. I have already read this book unlike almost everyone I know and have it so earmarked it's a mess! It was very spiritually grounding for me and has changed the way I see so many things. I'd love to hear how others feel about it.
Attaching the Review:
From Booklist
Readers looking for another red-man-departs-wise-words-to-white-man-to-lessen-white- man's-guilt will be disappointed by the tone and content of this work. Realists wanting a truthful, fiery, and, ultimately, cleansing dialogue between Indian and white will definitely want it. Nerburn reluctantly agrees to a meeting with Dan, a Lakota elder who asks him to construct a book from a motley collection of notes, diatribes, and political and social commentaries written over seven decades and kept in an old shoe box. Void of the hypocrisy rampant in many books that have whites adopting the ways of "the great spirit," Nerburn exposes the real truth, which whites are unwilling to face: that in "the hunger to own a piece of the earth, we had destroyed the dreams and families of an entire race." Joined by a dog named Fatback, Dan gives Nerburn the ride of his life as they cross the vast Midwest in Dan's Buick. Along the way, Dan alternates between rage and melancholy, and Nerburn between shame and confusion. Nerburn unintentionally touches nerve after nerve and elicits an almost unbearable flood of anguish and despair. The truth revealed in this book will be difficult for most whites to face, but it is painfully necessary if healing is ever to begin. Kevin Roddy --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Posted: Sat Apr 05, 2008 5:53 pm Post subject: Current events
I suggest Marching Toward Hell - America and Islam After Iraq by Michael Scheuer. The author headed the CIA's Osama bin Laden unit and so knows more about him that just about anyone...
If that's too much, I second DWill's suggestion for Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5 Billion-Year History of the Human Body, by Neil Shubin. I saw an interview with the author and it sounded quite interesting.
This book looks similar to the above, but doesn't go so far back into our ancestry. Our Inner Ape - A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are by Frans De Wall.
Have we ever done a biography? How about Benjamin Franklin, An American Life by Walter Isaacson. Hey, out of 191 Amazon reviews, 161 are 4 or 5 star...
I propose Thomas Sowell's The Vision of the Anointed...
There's no way I'd read a book of Sowell's. Here's the Amazon review of that book:
Quote:
In this broadside against the received wisdom of America's elite liberal intelligentsia, noted conservative Sowell, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, offers some strenuous arguments as well as fuzzy generalizations. Thus, his attacks on the war on poverty, sex education and criminal justice policies forged in the 1960s counter some slippery rhetoric by their defenders, yet his suggestion that these policies exacerbated things is questionable. Sowell deconstructs how statistics can be distorted to prove assumptions (that lack of prenatal care is the cause of black infant mortality) and gleefully skewers "Teflon prophets" such as John Kenneth Galbraith (who said that big companies are immune from the market) and Paul Ehrlich (who said starvation loomed). While "the anointed" favor explanations that exempt individuals from personal responsibility and seek painless solutions, those with the "tragic vision" see policies as trade-offs. Sowell scores his targets for disdaining their opponents, but this book also invokes caricature-these days, many of "the anointed" are less unreconstructed than he assumes. Conservative Book Club and Laissez-Faire Book Club selections.
Regarding The Chalice and the Blade. which Saffron recommended, my understanding is that most historians disagree with the belief in past matriarchal societies.
Anyway, thanks for making those suggestions. Don't let my objections discourage you from suggesting other books in the future
Posted: Sun Apr 06, 2008 3:19 pm Post subject: Book Talk for May/June
Hello Everyone,
This is author Michael Corbin. I think that my illustrated art book called, "The Art of Everyday Joe: A Collector's Journal," would make a
fantastic book for discussion. I'm an art collector and I write books about art and life. My books are NOT academic. They're fun, insightful, witty and will make you see contemporary art in a whole new light. You'll want to become an art collector yourself! I'm not kidding. Art is for the "Everyday Joe." That's what my books are all about.
This theme, suggested by Landroid, interests me a lot.
I am actually reading two books by French ethologist and psychiatrist Boris Cyrulnik, it'd rewarding to study animals to compare them with humans, and hopefully we'll know ourselves better after reading "Our inner Ape".
Regarding The Chalice and the Blade. which Saffron recommended, my understanding is that most historians disagree with the belief in past matriarchal societies
Riane Eisler is not making an argument for the existence of past matriarchal societies. She is the first to say they never existed. However, most scholars do agree that most if not all cultures prior to the onset of patriarchy, worshiped the Goddess. She is make a case for a new frame work to describe cultures, rather than matriarchy and patriarchy. Her words are dominator and partnership. She believes this frame work is more useful in understanding a cultures distribution of power, division of labor, sex, etc. Her work is based on sound archaeological evidence.
This theme, suggested by Landroid, interests me a lot.
I am actually reading two books by French ethologist and psychiatrist Boris Cyrulnik, it'd rewarding to study animals to compare them with humans, and hopefully we'll know ourselves better after reading "Our inner Ape".
