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Notes -
So, what are you reading?
I’m still on Mises’ Human Action. Also going through Gregory’s The Seven Laws of Teaching which appears to have had an influence on the classical education movement.
I broke 1000 pages on War and Peace. I'm going to dump my thoughts about Tolstoy afterward, the way he plays with the question of what is real and what is fake, the concept of society and the layers of power and importance, are fascinating.
My tablet book for boring public meetings is Stranger in a Strange Land. I commented a couple months ago about how after reading Dune I suddenly realized half of A Song of Ice and Fire was ripped off from Dune. Now I'm reading Stranger in a Strange Land and realizing that half of Dune is a straight rip from Heinlein. A specially trained Psychic young man who founds a religion, along with his loyal Water-Brothers, to overthrow a corrupt and sclerotic government. For the most part though, the book is rendered a historical artifact by how it was written. It's set in the near future, and we've reached Mars, but is filled with Mad Men era businessmen and Chandler-esque gumshoe reporters calling secretaries 'Toots.'
Fascinating factoid from the introduction by Heinlein's wife: the germ of the story came from a SciFi magazine Time Travel gag issue, a fan wrote a letter to the editor where he said he had traveled through time and seen next year's issue and here were the Authors and the Titles of their pieces. So the magazine contacted the authors and asked them to write a short piece with that title. Heinlein and his wife dreamed up the outline of Stranger and it expanded until it morphed into a novel, he wrote something else for the magazine.
I also have my old copy of Shogun sitting on my nightstand, between the series and a friend reading it I'm looking up and referencing passages constantly.
On audiobook, I'm listening to Numero Zero by Umberto Eco. It feels at halfway mostly a shorter version of Foucault's Pendulum, with the same theme of the fake accidentally becoming real, so if you like Eco but want something short and punchy it's great. I adore Eco, so even a knockoff is worth it. Sort of like Hemingway with The Old Man and the Sea vs The Undefeated. It's got everything I love about Eco: it's fun and light, easy to enjoy, while also having a ton of depth and intelligence to it. I'd highly recommend it.
Request: a while back someone on here was reading a long book and posting a series about it on Irish history around the IRA and the Easter Rising, what was the book? I can't remember.
Smells like Trinity by Leon Uris.
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