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Guns of August & Part I - The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914 by Barbara W. Tuchman
I'm on page 72 of 588 of The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914 by Barbara W. Tuchman. Since each "chapter" is really an independent, discrete essay I am doing something I usually don't do; post serial essays more or less as I go. Pages 1-69 in about Victorian United Kingdom. While alleged to be the driest I found it quite fascinating. I read some of this material in Prof. Tuchman's Guns of August. It was a different, genteel and somewhat unjust era.
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I am surprised i didn't review The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman at the time I read it but then again I wasn't yet on CD. I read this book during the summer of 2010. One of my close friends, who is far brighter than I am had read Guns, and The Proud Tower, in which I am currently immersed. This book provides an indispensable window into a group of societies that clamored to control Europe and thus the civilized world.
What the book does not cover is how Europe surrendered control of the civilized world to the United States and Canada since Europe merrily and literally carved itself up. The movie 1917 does a wonderful job of chronicling the senseless nature of the middle of the war and its needless casualties.
After devouring Hamnet which everyone should read--- I took a little break for a few days... and last night got notice that Convenience Store Woman was available for me on kindle from the library. I don't know where I heard of the book ( I searched this thread and it was not here). I started it last night and only read a little bit but it seems like it will be a good one.
Well still have not figured out how I found that book; perhaps it was on goodreads? Anyway Convenience Store Woman was a very good read ( also quite short) andwell done.It's translated from Japanese and apparently won awards. The ratings are not terrific- usually I find that anything near 4 and above is really good. This is 3.7 . Still I would recommend it. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...ce-store-woman
Next I read Southern Lady Code which was a group of essays, but very entertaining and well done.
All of these I was delighted to get from the library on kindle.
Then someone on another forum suggested So Anyway by John Cleese, and I am reading that now. It's very good, but longer than I might prefer. Still, I am enjoying it. Quite at the beginning but he's a really interesting person.
"You will have a growing appreciation for life's basic experiences: the pleasures of simple friendship, creating something, helping a person in need, reading a good book, laughing with someone you care about. Sounds boring, doesn't it? That's because these things are ordinary. But maybe they're ordinary for a reason: because they are what actually matters."
"There's a difference between blaming someone else for your situation and that person's actually being responsible for your situation. Nobody else is ever responsible for your situation but you. Many people may be to blame for your unhappiness, but nobody is ever responsible for your unhappiness but you. This is because you always get to choose how you see things, how you react to things, how you value things. You always get to choose the metric by which to measure your experiences."
"I see life in the same terms. We all get dealt cards. Some of us get better cards than others. And while it's easy to get hung up on our cards, and feel we got screwed over, the real game lies in the choices we make with those cards, the risks we decide to take, and the consequences we choose to live with. People who consistently make the best choices in the situations they're given are the ones who eventually come out ahead in poker, just as in life. And it's not necessarily the people with the best cards."
I read Island of the Blue Dolphins so long ago, I totally forgot about it. I might have to read that again.
Finished Truly Madly Guilty by Lianne Moriarity, and I really enjoyed it. I know she irritates people because you have no idea what the point to the whole story is until the end, but I enjoy that.
And now for something out of the ordinary for me.......
Lonesome Dove series. Not a fan of westerns by I have exceptions (Deadwood!), and someone here said to give it a try so I am. So far so good, it's easy to fall into the story.
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I'm glad not only to find out about the book but where I can read it online as well.
Guns of August & Part I - The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914 by Barbara W. Tuchman
