Books - we read what we are?
Apr. 27th, 2008 04:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
misscamBeen writing on a new BSG fic, whereupon I scribbled down the following line: He trusts her with books - "it's a gift, never lend books" - and thus part of him. (What you read is part of who you are, after all. She's a teacher, she knows that.)
I started to think about that - my mind is horrible at wandering off on tangents, truly - and comments from the last post I did concerning my bookshelf. So, are we what we read?
Here are the last ten books I read (or reread). With opinions. Draw your own conclusions.
1.Thud!
This is one of my favourite Terry Pratchett books and I reread it about once a month. It's not the funniest of them. But it is an example of how much a book can tell you about our own world when not set in it.
2. How Soccer/Football Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization
Flawed book, but interesting topic. Don't agree with half of it, but arguing with it in my head was half the fun.
3. A Deadly Brew
I think it was![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
falena84 that recommended these to me while I visted her in Italy. I've been reading the series slowly but surely. It's got crime, which I adore, and it's an interesting visualization of a historical time I've had troubles picturing before. Good book - I even lent it to my mum.
4. What Came Before He Shot Her
I've tried three times to finish this book. I always fail. It's a book set in the world of The Inspector Lynley Mysteries, but it's a book about the killer, not the police. It's so relentlessly grim and depressing I can't take it. I'm not the most cheerful of people in my own writing at times, but holy shit I cannot take that book. I need some hope.
5. A Short History of Nearly Everything
I reread this book a lot, because there's so much fact in it and every time, I managed to put more of it in my brain. I love this book. This is a book that shows why science, life and the universe is awesome. It's a gateway into more awesome. It's also the book I would hit hardcore creationists with. Weapon of choice, yes.
6. Nordfronten. Hitlers skjebeområde (by Asbjørn Jaklin)
This is a Norwegian book, the title roughly translating to The Northern Front. Hitler's fateful territory. It's basically about the war in the North during WWII - invasion of Norway, Finland's involvement, the northern battles against the Soviet Union. I knew a lot of the Norwegian stuff already, of course, but this book gave me a lot of sympathy for Finland, caught between Hitler and Stalin. We often write WWII as the war between good and bad, but nothing's that simple. In a battle of Biggest Asswipe, Stalin and Hitler would take it into extratime, seriously.
I want to hug Finland :(
7. War of the Ancients
Why thank you, I am a horrid WoW geek! Now this includes reading backstory. And also Tyrande/Malfurion OTP, yo. Blizzard must love my money. (Bookwise, I rate it average - I've read worse, I've read better, it kept me entertained on the train so did its job.)
8. Simply Love
A Romance Novel. Yes, I read them. I have a vaguely love-hate relationship with the genre, because on one hand I must enjoy it to have kept reading the genre for many years, but on the other hand I've been known to get so annoyed at some books I stop reading midways. This one I liked okay. Sex didn't fix everything, the characters didn't annoy me to death and the romance was built slowly.
9. Stalingrad
Oooow this book. Not because it's bad - it's very well-written, and that's exactly why. This makes all the suffering real and painful and for both sides. It makes a painful truth of war clear - war kills moral highground. Reading Berlin just made this clearer to me.
10. Berlusconis Italia. Historier om makt, mafia og motstand (by Simen Ekern)
This is another book in my "understanding Italy" project, which I started after visitingfalena84. Italy has always been football and food to Norwegians, and when I realised I knew more of ancient Rome than modern Italy, I started reading. This is a Norwegian take on it - Berlusconi's Italy. Stories about power, mafia and resistance roughly translated. I'm not sure how my project is doing, but where I before regarded as Berlusconi as a joke and expressed my bewilderment anyone would vote for him, I think I get some of it now. It depresses me, as I can no longer pin it all on Berlusconi, asshat of impressive height. I also have to realise the very sad truth - to my social democratic heart - that in Italy, the left is not particulary better. Between plague and cholera, what do you pick? At least the cholera brings a show. Oi, Italy. I feel for you.
Give me your last ten - or five, if you can't remember ten. I'll tell you what impression of you I get from it. Also, taking book recs eagerly, oh yes.
(Yay football now, and my team won yesterday wheeeee.)
I started to think about that - my mind is horrible at wandering off on tangents, truly - and comments from the last post I did concerning my bookshelf. So, are we what we read?
Here are the last ten books I read (or reread). With opinions. Draw your own conclusions.
1.Thud!
This is one of my favourite Terry Pratchett books and I reread it about once a month. It's not the funniest of them. But it is an example of how much a book can tell you about our own world when not set in it.
2. How Soccer/Football Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization
Flawed book, but interesting topic. Don't agree with half of it, but arguing with it in my head was half the fun.
3. A Deadly Brew
I think it was
falena84 that recommended these to me while I visted her in Italy. I've been reading the series slowly but surely. It's got crime, which I adore, and it's an interesting visualization of a historical time I've had troubles picturing before. Good book - I even lent it to my mum. 4. What Came Before He Shot Her
I've tried three times to finish this book. I always fail. It's a book set in the world of The Inspector Lynley Mysteries, but it's a book about the killer, not the police. It's so relentlessly grim and depressing I can't take it. I'm not the most cheerful of people in my own writing at times, but holy shit I cannot take that book. I need some hope.
5. A Short History of Nearly Everything
I reread this book a lot, because there's so much fact in it and every time, I managed to put more of it in my brain. I love this book. This is a book that shows why science, life and the universe is awesome. It's a gateway into more awesome. It's also the book I would hit hardcore creationists with. Weapon of choice, yes.
6. Nordfronten. Hitlers skjebeområde (by Asbjørn Jaklin)
This is a Norwegian book, the title roughly translating to The Northern Front. Hitler's fateful territory. It's basically about the war in the North during WWII - invasion of Norway, Finland's involvement, the northern battles against the Soviet Union. I knew a lot of the Norwegian stuff already, of course, but this book gave me a lot of sympathy for Finland, caught between Hitler and Stalin. We often write WWII as the war between good and bad, but nothing's that simple. In a battle of Biggest Asswipe, Stalin and Hitler would take it into extratime, seriously.
I want to hug Finland :(
7. War of the Ancients
Why thank you, I am a horrid WoW geek! Now this includes reading backstory. And also Tyrande/Malfurion OTP, yo. Blizzard must love my money. (Bookwise, I rate it average - I've read worse, I've read better, it kept me entertained on the train so did its job.)
8. Simply Love
A Romance Novel. Yes, I read them. I have a vaguely love-hate relationship with the genre, because on one hand I must enjoy it to have kept reading the genre for many years, but on the other hand I've been known to get so annoyed at some books I stop reading midways. This one I liked okay. Sex didn't fix everything, the characters didn't annoy me to death and the romance was built slowly.
9. Stalingrad
Oooow this book. Not because it's bad - it's very well-written, and that's exactly why. This makes all the suffering real and painful and for both sides. It makes a painful truth of war clear - war kills moral highground. Reading Berlin just made this clearer to me.
10. Berlusconis Italia. Historier om makt, mafia og motstand (by Simen Ekern)
This is another book in my "understanding Italy" project, which I started after visiting
falena84. Italy has always been football and food to Norwegians, and when I realised I knew more of ancient Rome than modern Italy, I started reading. This is a Norwegian take on it - Berlusconi's Italy. Stories about power, mafia and resistance roughly translated. I'm not sure how my project is doing, but where I before regarded as Berlusconi as a joke and expressed my bewilderment anyone would vote for him, I think I get some of it now. It depresses me, as I can no longer pin it all on Berlusconi, asshat of impressive height. I also have to realise the very sad truth - to my social democratic heart - that in Italy, the left is not particulary better. Between plague and cholera, what do you pick? At least the cholera brings a show. Oi, Italy. I feel for you.Give me your last ten - or five, if you can't remember ten. I'll tell you what impression of you I get from it. Also, taking book recs eagerly, oh yes.
(Yay football now, and my team won yesterday wheeeee.)
