What are you reading the week of September 15, 2013?

[DUgosh]

Iron River by T. Jefferson Parker ~ Charlie Hood #3

2013 book #103

[northoftheborder]

1. I'm trying to decide whether to buy the actual book, or download it to read or listen to: "1491"

Someone I know read it and really liked it, and I've had other recommendations on it. Has anyone read it? It is all about America, it's people, geography, cultures, flora and fauna, the year before it was invaded by Europeans. Maybe it's one to keep on a book shelf and share.

[fadedrose]

4. I have a great curiousity about America

and what was here even before the Indians were here.

I could see why they called this the "New World" and why it appeared to be a new world. Other cultures - Europe and all of its countries, Africa and many of its countries, India, Russia, Asia, etc., were all developed. They had cities, doctors, artists, armies, schools, chefs, castles, clothing and shoe fashions, and horses and cattle, chickens, etc.

America had trees, fish, deer, and an early native population when Columbus happened on its shores. I'd like to know about America from before 1000BCE to 1000AD to know why there was no development or what the hell happened to it. This was not a world any newer than the world that existed. Why did it appear so?
A topic for another forum I think.

1491 might answer some of those questions if somebody back then had asked them...

[Enthusiast]

7. You might read Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared M. Diamond

http://books.google.com/books?id=vAE9PgAACAAJ&dq=guns+germs+and+steel&hl=en&sa=X&ei=l1o4UvboNIqvqwHLxoD4BQ&ved=0CEAQ6AEwAQ

[fadedrose]

14. Which of these do you think I should start with?

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_nr_p_n_feature_browse-b_mrr_1?rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3ADiamond%5Cc+Jared%2Cp_n_feature_browse-bin%3A2656020011&keywords=Diamond%2C+Jared&ie=UTF8&qid=1379644677&rnid=618072011

My library has most of them...

thanks.

[Enthusiast]

15. Guns, Germs and Steel gives us Diamond's explanation

for the technological gap of pre-Columbian North and South America. It also explains why native North Americans were so vulnerable to European diseases, mostly small pox. I'm not familiar with Diamond's other books. I mostly read fiction these days.

[SheilaT]

19. It's an amazing book.

The thing I have most retained from it is that humans have domesticated every single animal that it is possible to domesticate. Humans in Africa didn't domesticate the zebra because they were too stupid to do so, but because the zebra simply isn't domesticatible.

The other thing I got from the book is that humans are incredibly smart. We really are. We exploited whatever environment we wound up in to its fullest. No one group is necessarily smarter than any other. Although Diamond does say in another book that he thinks that Europeans won out only because they survived disease vectors, and he thinks certain other groups may be actually smarter.

I have long had an issue with those who vilify Christopher Columbus for bringing European diseases to the New World. While Columbus certainly had his flaws, had it not been for him, it would have been someone else. The separate evolution of Europeans and other peoples guaranteed that once they re-connected, there was going to be hell to pay. Europeans spent centuries in circumstances that bred disease and then immunity to those diseases. Humans in the other hemisphere didn't live in those kinds of conditions, so they didn't have those diseases nor those immunities. It was a set-up for the disaster that we know followed.

Had the European contact with the Western Hemisphere been delayed until a modern understanding of disease, there still would have been the inadvertent disease genocide that did take place. The separation of the populations meant that a genuine difference of disease contact and immunity was inevitable.

In a way the current global culture that allows disease vectors to spread across the planet in weeks is a good thing. Exposure to a novel disease will mean that those with an immunity will live. Those without will die. It sounds harsh, but that's how it goes.

[Enthusiast]

20. Yes, SheilaT.

We are subject to the laws of evolution whether we wish to admit it or not.

I agree about Christopher Columbus, of course. Europeans were bound to find and exploit the "new world" maybe within the next decade or so.

It's a fascinating subject, one that needs further exploration.

[pscot]

18. the Indians will tell you

they were always here. there was no before.

[LWolf]

2. Dandelion Wine.

Ray Bradbury.

[fadedrose]

3. THE OLD GRAY WOLF

by James Doss, of course.

This was my 2nd reading of the 17th and final book in the series. Doss' picture on the back cover is worth the price of the book.

I have two neighbors reading them, one man and a woman, both elderly like me, but I am leaving my 17 books to a young teen granddaughter because when she visited, she read the first one and liked it.

Haven't posted because reading from the first to the last all summer was boring to post, but not to read.

Cheers....

[fadedrose]

5. TULAROSA (1996) by Michael McGarrity

SW mystery about Kevin Kerney, ex-chief of detectives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. First book in series of 12.

http://www.stopyourekillingme.com/M_Authors/McGarrity_Michael.html


24th book of 2013, includes second readings.

[Enthusiast]

6. Shadow Man by James D. Doss nt

[SheilaT]

8. Mirage

by Matt Ruff.

9/11/01 was 9 November, 2001, and it was the Tigris & Euphrates World Trade Towers in Baghdad, second largest city in the United Arab States, that were brought down by Christian fundamentalists. Another plane flew into the Arab Defense Ministry in Riyadh, and a fourth plane was brought down by the passengers.

I'm all of 30 pages into it and it's very good so far.

[Snarkoleptic]

9. A horror anthology that was just released this morning for download on Amazon.

From their website-

Dark Visions: A Collection of Modern Horror – Volume One Exclusively at Amazon
The Seventeenth of September is Here, And So is Some Electronic Evil…




We fondly echo the words of Guy Fawkes, while also exercising creative license for fun and effect. “Remember, remember the seventeenth of September” as that is the date that the premiere anthology from Grey Matter Press, Dark Visions: A Collection of Modern Horror – Volume One was published.

After several long months of work, we are proud to announce that the electronic version of Dark Visions – Volume One is now available exclusively at Amazon. A trade paperback version will be published later in September.

Everyone at Grey Matter Press is thrilled to bring to you this collection of dark fiction that includes the work of some of the best visionary minds writing horror, fantasy and speculative fiction today. Dark Visions – Volume One contains thirteen stories from contributors Jonathan Maberry, Jay Caselberg, David A. Riley, Ray Garton, John F.D. Taff, Jason S. Ridler, Sean Logan, Sarah L. Johnson, Brian Fatah Steele, Jonathan Balog, Jeff Hemenway, Charles Austin Muir and Milo James Fowler.

The complete Dark Visions collection, consisting of two volumes packed with dark fiction, will be published over several months during the Fall of 2013. We expect Dark Visions – Volume One to thrill and chill readers as much as it entertained us during the process of selecting the stories to be included. Everyone at Grey Matter Press is truly humbled to be able to include so many talented authors in this, our first collection.

For a limited time, the electronic version of Dark Visions – Volume One will be available exclusively for purchase from online retail partner Amazon.com and via its extensive distribution channels in markets throughout the world. Get your copy today, and make sure to let everyone know what you think with a review on Amazon, Goodreads or on your own website or blog. And feel free to share any links with us on our Facebok page.

[Daemonwulf]

11. Thanks for Sharing!

This looks like a great anthology! I'm going to have to check it out.

[Snarkoleptic]

12. kick

[russspeakeasy]

10. Light of the World, by James Lee Burke....Excellent.

[Paladin]

22. Mr. Burke is great, isn't he? (nt)

[closeupready]

13. Graham Masterton's The House That Jack Built.

It's fine as a horror story - a familiar haunted house set-up, and I have to admit that I'm enjoying reading about lots of the settings in the book with which I am quite familiar - like Cold Spring, Bear Mountain, Woodstock, 8th Avenue (New York), etc.

But I'm getting tired of reading lots of schlocky books, and I think I'm going to mix it up a bit and turn to some non-fiction for the next few reads when I'm done with this.

[YankeyMCC]

16. Within the Tides by Joseph Conrad

It contains four novellas

The Planter of Malata
The Partner
The Inn of the Two Witches
Because of the Dollars

[closeupready]

17. I put aside "House That Jack Built" and moved to Pet Sematary,

because House seems SO much like a Shining copy, and Pet Sematary has been recced by many of my friends, so I'm going to spend time on the yarn from one who's copied. And Pet is good - I started last night and I'm on page 50 already, which is pretty fast reading for me, but it's a good story that I don't get too distracted from, so it goes much more quickly than something like War And Peace or Moby Dick.