2008-09-18 books, etc.

by Vasil Kolev

I love the autumn, but not this cold. So while I’m staying at home in the warm bed and thinking what heat stroke is awaiting me from 9 to 39 degrees, I’ll write a bit on what I’ve read in the last weeks, I need to take some rest from the lecture.
(

vasil@shrike:~/securax/astricon/lecture$ wc speech.txt
  488  4326 23666 speech.txt

)
(and I still haven’t finished my slides and haven’t generated some things, in the end I’ll just talk about them without showing them)

I managed to chew through “The Jews and Russia” by Solzhenitsyn. The translation is horrible, and Solzhenitsyn’s style is not one of the easiest to move to another language. The part before the revolution is not that interesting, but still worth reading. The book uses a lot of good sources and is pretty much unbiased.

The next is again by Solzhenitsyn, “August 1914”, the old edition (e.g. without the “Lenin in Zurich” part, which I ordered separately). The book is a novel, explaining the beginning of the First World War in Russia, through the eyes of the people there, it’s definitely interesting with the look over the people’s thinking (which at some points from our standpoint seems really naive). It’s written in an absorbing way and even though I read in in English, I still liked it a lot. I also want to note something for some of the comment posters in my blog on how Solzhenitsyn was praising the old monarchical regime, etc., that they need to read a bit before speaking gibberish.
(and long live the on-line book stores for old books)

“A street without name” by Kapka Kasabova is a book by a woman who has left Bulgaria with her family when she was 16 (in 1990) and has come back in 2006-2007. The book combines her childhood memories and her new experiences, with some stuff on the history of the country (pretty well picked and pretty much true), it was first published in England. I really liked it, went through it while traveling around (the better part of the bus rides – there are 20 minutes to read :) ).

“The Picadili file” by Hristo Hristor, who finally has gotten to the file of the agent who’s suspected to have killed Georgi Markov – looks like the last book on the topic if nothing very weird happens, like the destroyed part being found, etc.. This guy deserves applause for everything he’s done in this regard, seems to be one of the rare good journalists in Bulgaria. I really hope that he’ll finish the topic with the concentration camps.
(which reminds me, where can I find his first book on the camps?)

“The last theorem” by Arthur C. Clarke and Frederik Pohl – a good book, in the typical for Clarke style. Worthy reading (like all his books), written pretty entertaining and expands some of his idea for the feature. They seem a bit naive…

Expected: “Nation” by Terry Pratchett, “Anathem” by Neal Stephenson and “Lenin in Zurich” by Solzhenitsyn. I really hope to get at least one of those before traveling to the USA, to have something to read there.

And something fun – I went to some examinations today (around the pharyngitis, etc. there was was the question why is my organism so weak), so to note – I don’t have AIDS and chlamides :) Instead of that I have EBV (like half of the human population), so we’ll see…
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