THE GREAT "I RECOMMEND THIS BOOK" THREAD.

iolo · May 3, 2018

Mott the Hoople said:
To give you an idea what precocious kid I was I read Gulag before I read LOTR when I was 12.

Family influences help such precociousness. For my eighth birthday, my aunt, a trainee teacher and short of money, pinched T.S. Eliot's 'Selected Poems' from the school she was in for my birthday present. I thought it was great stuff, and as a result am probably one of the only people on earth who doesn't see him as a fiendishly difficult poet - just an old friend!

midcan5 · May 6, 2018

Cypress · May 8, 2018

My colleague at work gave me this book (I think she is secretly a Russophile)....and my palms are sweaty in anticipation of reading it!

"Moscow, 1937"
by Karl Schlögel

Moscow Under Terror: In 1937, the city was both a world capital of artistic ferment and a slaughterhouse.

In this dazzling 650-page feat of historical reconstruction, Karl Schlögel, a professor at the European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), has summoned up a great city—what was once the New Jerusalem for much of the world’s intelligentsia and downtrodden—as it consumed itself in an orgy of fear, paranoia, denunciations, mass arrests, suicides, and executions.

Schlögel’s book is a fragmentary yet meticulous social history of Moscow in the grip of the Great Terror—the period from the summer of 1936 to the end of 1938, when the already sanguinary Bolshevik regime let loose on itself its apparatus of suppression, purging, in waves, all Soviet institutions and at all levels of society, from the nomenklatura, the highest echelons of administrative, cultural, and scientific life, through the high command of the Red Army, to the engineers and apparatchiks, down to the factory workers and peasants. It is an almost impossibly rich masterpiece.

In Moscow 1937, Schlögel uses as a leitmotif the themes and settings of Mikhail Bulgakov’s great allegorical 1937 novel of the city under the Terror, The Master and Margarita. He opens with an exegesis of Margarita’s fantastical flight over the city in the 1930s, which allows him to establish the scene and dissect Moscow’s cultural and social geography. For the remainder of the book, he continues to take the reader on a tour of the urban center—the late-19th-century townhouses built by the nobility and later appropriated by the party; the hundreds of theaters that littered the still-drama-mad city; the communal apartments crammed with recent migrants from the countryside; the fancy shops selling sturgeon and czarist antiques to the Soviet elite and the endless flow of visiting progressives from the West; the just-completed marvel of Soviet engineering that brought the five seas to Moscow, the Moscow-Volga Canal (whose opening celebration coincided with the arrest, persecution, and execution of the overseers of its construction); Spaso House, the American ambassador’s residence, site of incongruously clinquant balls and receptions; the spacious, refined apartments where the new Soviet upper class held glittering salons, at which the likes of Shostakovich and Isaac Babel mixed with the high officials of the NKVD, the secret police (a group that deeply prized its literary and artistic connections); the NKVD’s immense network of offices, garages, shooting ranges, isolation cells, interrogation chambers, and execution cellars, metastasizing from the citadel-like headquarters at the Lubyanka and devoted to the investigation, arrest, incarceration, deportation, and slaughter of enemies of the people.

full book review at The Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/03/moscow-under-terror/309214/

Oracle Of JPP 714 · May 8, 2018

Frank Apisa said:
Credit to Ugly Truth's "Best way to kill time" thread: https://www.justplainpolitics.com/showthread.php?92340-Best-way-to-kill-time

While posting there, it became apparent that "reading" was a favorite of many people. So...here is a thread devoted to recommending books you've read...and commenting on 'em.

I'm going to start with one of my all time favorites...James Clavell's Shogun.

Damocles mentioned that he has read it several times...and I have read it twice. (It is that kind of book.)

So...what else have we got?

I started a thread similar to yours and I didn't know about this one. Mine is different because I have banned a lot of members who have posted here.

Chalk it up to synchronicity, imao.

Mott the Hoople · May 16, 2018

Phantasmal said:
I have such a limited life, by choice, I don’t care to flying or long ship rides. I like terra firma. I live through books, fantasy, horror, romance, history, science, the arts, philosophy, music...
I am never limited, there is always something to read.

Despite all our wonderful means to travel and expand our personal horizons and have challenging, meaningful and life altering adventures most people still choose to live and die near where they were born.

Mott the Hoople · May 16, 2018

Cypress said:
To me, books are a very personal choice, and I don't really like to make recommendations to people who might not share the same interests as me.
But I will give a few "life time achievement awards" to books that were absolutely gripping and riveting to me.
Even many years after having read them, they still have left a mark on me.

Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
The Guns of August - Barbara Tuchman... In this landmark, Pulitzer Prize–winning account, renowned historian Barbara W. Tuchman re-creates the first month of World War I: thirty days in the summer of 1914 that determined the course of the conflict, the century, and ultimately our present world. Beginning with the funeral of Edward VII, Tuchman traces each step that led to the inevitable clash. And inevitable it was, with all sides plotting their war for a generation. Dizzyingly comprehensive and spectacularly portrayed with her famous talent for evoking the characters of the war’s key players, Tuchman’s magnum opus is a classic for the ages. (Amazon summary)
The Discoverers - Daniel J. Boorstin ...An original history of man's greatest adventure: his search to discover the world around him. In the compendious history, Boorstin not only traces man's insatiable need to know, but also the obstacles to discovery and the illusion that knowledge can also put in our way. Covering time, the earth and the seas, nature and society, he gathers and analyzes stories of the man's profound quest to understand his world and the cosmos.
The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky....The Brothers Karamasov is a murder mystery, a courtroom drama, and an exploration of erotic rivalry in a series of triangular love affairs involving the “wicked and sentimental” Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov and his three sons―the impulsive and sensual Dmitri; the coldly rational Ivan; and the healthy, red-cheeked young novice Alyosha. Through the gripping events of their story, Dostoevsky portrays the whole of Russian life, is social and spiritual striving, in what was both the golden age and a tragic turning point in Russian culture. (Amazon summary)
The Gulag Archipelago - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - The Gulag Archipelago is Solzhenitsyn's masterwork, a vast canvas of camps, prisons, transit centres and secret police, of informers and spies and interrogators and also of heroism, a Stalinist anti-world at the heart of the Soviet Union where the key to survival lay not in hope but in despair. The work is based on the testimony of some two hundred survivors, and on the recollection of Solzhenitsyn's own eleven years in labour camps and exile. It is both a thoroughly researched document and a feat of literary and imaginative power. This edition has been abridged into one volume at the author's wish and with his full co-operation (Amazon summary)
The Harry Potter Series (Yes, I like geek books) - JK Rowling
Cadillac Desert, Marc Reisner...The story of the American West is the story of a relentless quest for a precious resource: water. It is a tale of rivers diverted and dammed, of political corruption and intrigue, of billion-dollar battles over water rights, of ecological and economic disaster. In his landmark book, Cadillac Desert, Marc Reisner writes of the earliest settlers, lured by the promise of paradise, and of the ruthless tactics employed by Los Angeles politicians and business interests to ensure the city's growth. He documents the bitter rivalry between two government giants, the Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in the competition to transform the West. Based on more than a decade of research, Cadillac Desert is a stunning expose and a dramatic, intriguing history of the creation of an Eden--an Eden that may only be a mirage (Amazon summary)

I’ve read all those except Potter and the Bros. The Gulag Archipelago is by far and away the most significant of those works and should be read by all not only as a warning about extreme leftists Marxist ideology but as a warning of the degenerate affects of all extremist ideologies.

Cypress · May 16, 2018

Mott the Hoople said:
I’ve read all those except Potter and the Bros. The Gulag Archipelago is by far and away the most significant of those works and should be read by all not only as a warning about extreme leftists Marxist ideology but as a warning of the degenerate affects of all extremist ideologies.

Holy smoke, great minds think alike.

People like Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov were my father's heroes, so growing up even as a little kid I was conscious of the gulag and the prominent Soviet dissidents, and was generally aware (at the little kid level) of the moral, political, and ethical dimensions spiraling around them.

Right now, I am starting a book called "Moscow, 1937" which apparently is a well-regarded historical tome, with Moscow in the year 1937 and the Stalinist purges serving as the back drop and context. An extraordinary year in an extraordinary city. Wish me luck!

Mott the Hoople · May 16, 2018

Cypress said:
Holy smoke, great minds think alike.

People like Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov were my father's heroes, so growing up even as a little kid I was conscious of the gulag and the prominent Soviet dissidents, and was generally aware (at the little kid level) of the moral, political, and ethical dimensions spiraling around them.

Right now, I am starting a book called "Moscow, 1937" which apparently is a well-regarded historical tome, with Moscow in the year 1937 and the Stalinist purges serving as the back drop and context. An extraordinary year in an extraordinary city. Wish me luck!

I drew the conclusion, even as a kid, when I read Gulag, that the Soviet Union was a military threat to the US but that communism was not. That Marxist ideology was incompatible with our culture and that the conditions simply didn't exist for it to be a threat as a political movement.

Cypress · May 16, 2018

Mott the Hoople said:
I drew the conclusion, even as a kid, when I read Gulag, that the Soviet Union was a military threat to the US but that communism was not. That Marxist ideology was incompatible with our culture and that the conditions simply didn't exist for it to be a threat as a political movement.

I generally agree, with a few caveats.

After the Trotskyites and the old Bolsheviks were eliminated by Stalin, the totalitarian form of authority we saw arise in the Soviet Union was never going to appeal to the vast majority of people in western liberal democracies...I would even say it was incompatible with human dignity and aspirations in most of the rest of the world too. Even when Khrushchev took the hard edges off the totalitarian system, and allowed some liberalization, it was never going to fool most people. The totalitarian state is, of course, a different question than the democratic socialism that took hold across much of Scandinavia and northern Europe.

With regards to the military.....Other than the threat of nuclear war, the conventional Soviet military was never that big a threat to the United States, in my opinion. It was hyped by the American national security state and the military industrial complex for their own purposes. The Soviet Union, and even the old Russian empire considered itself a major player on the world stage, but their territorial ambitions and visions of military dominance were always strictly limited to their Eurasian sphere of influence.

Cypress · Jun 16, 2018

Mott the Hoople said:
I drew the conclusion, even as a kid, when I read Gulag, that the Soviet Union was a military threat to the US but that communism was not. That Marxist ideology was incompatible with our culture and that the conditions simply didn't exist for it to be a threat as a political movement.

I am reading Gulag for a second time, and not only am I struck by how good a writer Solzhenitsyn is, but how closely the interrogation techniques of the NKVD paralleled the Bush Adminstration's "enhanced interrogation" methods.

Solzhenitsyn and the other Soviet victims of the NKVD were clear in understanding and articulating that sleep deprivation, stress positions, and psychological abuse were all forms of torture. Unequivocally. There was never even a question about it being torture. In some ways, the most insidious form of torture.

And this gave me a flash back the excuses for "enhanced" interrogation used by BushCo. and their internet defenders. It is just a bunch of fraternity pranks! Even the attempt to substitute the words "enhanced interrogation" for torture is really right of "1984" when you think about it.

Mott the Hoople · Jun 16, 2018

Cypress said:
I am reading Gulag for a second time, and not only am I struck by how good a writer Solzhenitsyn is, but how closely the interrogation techniques of the NKVD paralleled the Bush Adminstration's "enhanced interrogation" methods.

Solzhenitsyn and the other Soviet victims of the NKVD were clear in understanding and articulating that sleep deprivation, stress positions, and psychological abuse were all forms of torture. Unequivocally. There was never even a question about it being torture. In some ways, the most insidious form of torture.

And this gave me a flash back the excuses for "enhanced" interrogation used by BushCo. and their internet defenders. It is just a bunch of fraternity pranks! Even the attempt to substitute the words "enhanced interrogation" for torture is really right of "1984" when you think about it.

Yea it was an embarrassment and a stain on America’s reputation that Republicans where proudly like a cancerous wart. Sadly, and not unpredictably, virtually all the information gained by BushCo’s use of torture proved worthless.

Alis · Aug 14, 2018

I'm reading now The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway.
Like his books, recommend checking his books later.

Ross Dolan · Aug 14, 2018

Alis said:
I'm reading now The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway.
Like his books, recommend checking his books later.

A classic.

I enjoy reading classics rather than new releases once in a while.

Irish Exit · Aug 14, 2018

Alis said:
I'm reading now The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway.
Like his books, recommend checking his books later.

Hemingway is ok. I think Sun Also Rises was probably his best piece. I think stylistically it is more in line with the writings of Milan Kundera and the other more recent Czech writers.

THE GREAT "I RECOMMEND THIS BOOK" THREAD.

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