What book is everyone reading at the moment?

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Sigmund Freud - Dream Interpretation. It's basically. "I say this means that, because I think so, therefore it's true." :rolleyes:
 
My turn finally arrived to borrow the CDs of 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows' from the Library, read - superbly - by Stephen Fry. I am enjoying it.
 
Fatal Revenant (Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, book 2) By Stephen R. Donaldson.
 
Just finished Al Gore's book, "The Assault on Reason".

It was a tad monotonous in a few sections but generally I found it to be an excellent book. Of course Bush and Republican supporters won't be able to get past the Bush attacks. But objectively, the attacks are more factual that opinon. And the case for the NeoCon threat to our democracy is very well described and supported.
 
The Overachievers by Alexandra Robbins - better than i thought it would be, but that's not saying much...
 
Can't Buy Me Love by Jonathan Gould

The Beatles are well-trod territory, but Gould manages to hear the songs with fresh ears, and to say interesting things without getting too technical or too subjective or too speculative.

Surprisingly good.

Gould doesn't have much of an ear for skill at guitar, but that's my only general complaint.

A book about music which is actually about music! What a surprise.
 
1968: The Year That Shook the World, by Jack Kurlansky. This one is a page-turner for somebody my age. I keep thinking, So that's what happened!

I just wish Kurlansky was a better writer. He thanks his editor in the Acknowldgement section. He shouldn't.
 
Malamud, The Natural.

Eliz. David, Harvest of the Cold Months: The Social History of Ice and Ices.

Cz. Milosz, Rodzinna Europa (I'm reading the Polish, to keep my skills up; it was translated as "Native Realm.")

"American Rivals of Sherlock Holmes," ed.Greene.

I jump around a lot.
 
Double Indemnity by James M. Cain. In the same volume is The Postman Always Rings Twice and Mildred Pierce so I've got those to look forward to next.
 
Just finished, "State of Denial", by Bob Woodward. I had read the other two Bush books of his and bought this one but just couldn't stomach reading another Woodward on Bush book until now.

Essentially it paints the picture one would have if you believed there was no purposeful lying involved in starting the Iraq war, (kind of hard considering the fake Niger yellow cake documents and the Downing St Memo), and if you believed the real reason for going into Iraq had nothing to do with oil. "They meant well" to paraphrase the whole book except maybe the last 2 chapters.

A lot of the incompetence is covered. Rice looks as bad as any of them and Rumsfeld looks like the fall guy (though he deserves most of it). Only at the end does Woodward point out Bush's refusals to face the truth and the denial on all their parts of any personal responsibility. Very much Kissingerish. "We had no choice" "Nothing I did caused the deaths or mis-steps" and so on.
 
Just finished "Turn of the Screw" by Henry James and remembered a paper I wrote on it years ago for college. After we read the book the prof asked if we thought the ghosts were real or in the Governess' mind. For my analysis paper I took a different take on it. The Page notations may not match an edition you have.

How to Create an Elaborate Hoax
The back cover of our edition of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw states that it is “Widely recognized as one of literature’s most gripping ghost stories,” but actually it is the story of the most fantastic con job ever perpetrated upon a person. Mrs. Grose and Miles are the two con artists, and the mark is the Governess. They prey upon her naiveté, and succeed in driving her mad with their hoax. It’s easy for things to be going on outside of our view since the story is told from the perspective of the Governess, who not only is unaware of hidden things, but also is only too willing to rationalize the extraordinary things that happen in full view.

Mrs. Grose is the chief conspirator, and as some have speculated a previous conquest of the Master’s (gradesaver.com). When the Governess arrives, she believed Mrs. Grose was so happy to see her that she was “on her guard against showing it to much” (7). Mrs. Grose wasn’t happy at all to see the latest in a long line of pretty young women to come to the house. She told the Governess, “You’re not the first - and you won’t be the last” (9). The elder woman might even be the “great awkwardness” that followed, or caused the death of the previous governess (5). As the only adult that the Governess felt she could talk to, Mrs. Grose was able to be the sole source of information on the past of Bly. It is from her that we learn how Miss Jessel and Quint died (of which she tells little), what they looked like, and that Quint even existed (let alone what he did to Miles), leaving the Governess to fill in the rest on her own.

The appearances of the ghosts themselves would have been easy to pull off, with help. The only logical and visible help that Mrs. Grose could get was Miles, who was just kicked out of school for being “an injury to others” (11). Mrs. Grose defends Miles, convinces the Governess to trust him, and says she’ll “stand by” her decision to not tell the Master or write to the school (14). Peter Quint the first ghost to physically manifest doesn’t appear until Miles arrives from school. When he makes himself known it is at dusk, and at a great distance. It could have very easily been Miles, dressed as Quint. This is also true of the second appearance of Quint, through the window in the dining room. The Governess claimed that “He appeared thus again with what I won’t say greater distinctness” (20). In the time it took her to go outside and around to the window, he could have gone the opposite direction and disappeared into the house.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Grose had begun appearing as Miss Jessel, on the other side of large lakes, far enough away to not be recognized, but close enough to be seen by the Governess. By this time the Governess regarded these figures as ghosts, because Mrs. Grose had identified the man as Peter Quint and told her that he was dead.

On the staircase, two methods were used to spook the Governess. When Quint appeared, it was light enough so she could see him without a candle, but dark enough for him to go “straight down the staircase and into the darkness in which the next bend was lost” (40). The Governess then accommodated them by not following him and going back to her room. This allowed Miles to sneak back upstairs to his room. The other method, used to make Miss Jessel disappear, involved an object that James (through the Governess) went out of his way to mention, the long glass mirror, which the Governess admitted an unfamiliarity with, “for the first time, I could see myself from head to foot” (7). Miss Jessel’s appearance on the stairs was the only time she appeared at night, and this allowed Mrs. Grose and Miles to hide the mechanics of the illusion. They were not always so lucky however when the Governess saw Miles outside one night they were caught red-handed. The excuse he came up with even the Governess found hard to believe, but she still had no reason, at that point, to suspect he was manufacturing the ghosts.

Miss Jessel’s second appearance at the lake required cracker-jack timing, and proved that the two were working together. First Miles distracted the Governess with his music; meanwhile Mrs. Grose took Flora and the boat to the other side of the lake. Mrs. Grose then returned in time to help the Governess search for Flora, leaving Miles alone and forgotten. When they found Flora it is hinted that even she was in on the scheme, the Governess says, “[she] stood before us on the grass and smiled as if her performance was now complete” (68). Now it was a matter of erecting a dressmaker’s dummy wearing Miss Jessel’s clothes, which the reader can assume because it was “exactly as she stood the other time,” and it was also “without movement” so it would match her previous appearance (70,71). Then all that was required to drive the Governess further over the brink was for Mrs. Grose to simply deny seeing the figure.

With the state of mind that the Governess was in, we can assume that the last appearance of Quint must have been a hysterical hallucination. It was just after dinner, in November and in England, which makes it either dark outside or near dark, and therefore the Governess and Miles were using candles. With a light on the inside and darkness outside, the reflection would make it impossible to see out the window (whether there is a real ghost there or not).

The stopping of Miles’s heart is more metaphorical than literal; it represented Miles telling the Governess the truth and her finally losing faith in him. It is also harder to believe that Miles died, because she goes on to another job and I find it hard to believe that another couple would trust a governess, with their children, who had a child die of a heart attack. The humiliation that the Governess felt after the incident, being tricked by a young boy and a housekeeper, is probably why she suppressed the story for so long.

Since the story ends before we can see the aftermath, we only have the Governess’s commentary to base our opinions of what really went on. It’s also possible that Douglas, who held the manuscript for many years, took it upon himself to remove the most embarrassing part of the story by simply omitting it. Thus proving to the prologue’s narrator Douglas’s true feelings for her.
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If you don't want to read the book The Innocents with the late great Deborah Kerr, is IMO the best film version of the story.
 
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Circles by James Burke (the guy from the TV show Connections). It's a collection of short veiws of history with a theme, they start and finish with the same theme word, (hence the circles.)
 
I've just started The Persons Case - The Origins and Legacy of the Fight for Legal Personhood by Robert Sharpe and Patrician McMahon.

It is an examination of what has come to be known as "The Persons Case" in Canadian jurisprudence, which resulted in one of the most important constitutional decisions in Canadian legal history, and resulted in women being given the right to be appointed to the Senate by being recognized as "persons" for purposes of the British North America Act, 1987.

The decision - in 1929 - introduced the "living tree" doctrine that has shaped Canadian constitutional jurisprudence ever since, as it also overruled the prior view that constitutional interpretation was confined to the original intent of its framers.

It was a watershed decision for women's rights and for constitutional interpretation in Canada, and although I learned of the case in law school, that was only to the extent that it introduced the 'living tree' doctrine. I have never looked into it from a historical and social perspective, or learned the details of the people who made it happen, the circumstances of the time, etc.

The book looks promising.
 
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Nam-Sense by Arthur Wiknik. About 'Nam, About the 101st Airborne, about another guy who wound up their in the late 60's, but in the boonies insteand of at Long Binh.
 
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