LES LIVRES EN FRANÇAIS
I'm not sure I'll understand L'écume des jours. I just read the first paragraph and it sounds like the man has taken a fingernail cutter to his eyelids. So I looked up the phrase and the line turns out to be a famous "contrepèterie"--a spoonerism. Better watch the movie first.
NON FICTION
Are you ready for the next challenge? I haven't read a lot of non-fiction since my two Poli Sci degrees--I was in a department that assigned a LOT of reading. And when I read non-fiction, it's usually research for my novels.
So... which one would you make me read this year? Vote! Vote! Vote! You know you want to.
The Evolutionists: The Struggle for Darwin's Soul
The debates, not over whether evolution happened, but how it happened--from within the field of evolutionary biology.
Why I Bought It: Read part of it on loan from work, and just found it to be an entertaining primer on evolution.
Three generations of Chinese women--an American, her Revolutionary mother, and her concubine grandmother.
Why I Bought It: Just sounded interesting.
Millionaire: The Philanderer, Gambler, and Duelist Who Invented Modern Finance
Guy created the first bubble and bust in France. Topical non?
Why I Bought It: The dude sounds funny. And I enjoy economics, but have to read pop books cause I don't have the math mind.
Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong: Why We Love France but Not the French
Why I Bought It: I've never been to France, and I don't hate the French. But the book looked entertaining.
The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives
Why I Bought It: Stats is like economics--I enjoy it, but can only grasp the frothy stuff.
"Mines poignant comedy from his peculiar childhood in North Carolina, his
bizarre career path, and his move with his lover to France."
Why I Bought It: Cause he's popular.
A year in the life of an inner-city neighborhood. The show The Wire is based on it.
Why I Bought It: Recommended by FriendPaul in the late 90s.
A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis
"how humanitarian organizations are often betrayed and misused, and have increasingly lost sight of their purpose."
Why I Bought It: Also recommended by FriendPaul. Yeah he's a cheerful guy. I think the dissertation he's writing is about western media coverage of the 1980s famine in Ethiopia. Should be vair interesting.
"insider's account of global economic policy"
Why I Bought It: Recommended by my East Asian Politics prof--Stiglitz worked for the World Bank and is supposed to be one of the better critics of how US-led global organizations fuck around with other people's economies.
When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda
"He coaxes to the
surface the historical, geographical, and political forces that made it
possible for so many Hutu to turn so brutally on their neighbors."
Why I Bought It: For school. But I was always speed-reading, so I want to re-read both this and Mamdani's other work. Super interesting descriptions of how ethnic identities are created.
The extra fun about this quest is that I'll feel obligated to read the books I bring with me. You can hold me to it!
