Bill Kaghan > Recent Status Updates

I enjoyed re-listening to this book. I first listened to this book in the winter of 2020 between January 6th and the emergence of the COVID pandemic. 5 years later

This is a fascinating retelling the story of the Reign of Terror in France from mid-1793.to mid-1794 by focusing on the activities of the.twelve members of the Committee of Public Safety. My appreciation of the book is much deeper than it was when I first read it as an undergrad.

Very interesting narrative history' of the fourth/fifth year of the French Revolution as told through the activities of.the Committee of Public Safety during the Reign of Terror.

I enjoyed this book very much. It reminded me of when I read "Pride & Prejudice" - an engaging story of an intelligent woman's maturation as a "global "Americal-African."

This book embodies the decline of the British Empire and the old aristocracy in the wake of WWII through the personal transformation of a capable but stodgy English butler during an eventful week in which he attempts to translate the essence of the dignity of service to the landed aristocracy into the dialect oa senior American businessman who has purchased and will inhabit the estate.

I am glad that had the chance to finish this book after having on it on my "Want to Read" for over 50 . I years. I had watched the film adaptaton by Mike Nichols and remember aving some difficulty following the plot. When I read the book, I discovered that there was not really any conventional plot but more of a mythic gestalt of life in war centered around the experience of the antihero Captain Yossarian.

This was a wonderful book. It refreshed my relatively meager memories and cleared up several sizable misunderstandings of "music theory" (e.g. Melody. Harmony, Rhythm, Scales, Keys, Meter, Chords). It also introduced me to the psychology of music/"music cognition" when a human being engages with the organized packet of sound (e.g. a song or a symphony) that is both produced and consumed by human beings.

This memoir reminded me of Joyce's '"Portrait of Arlist as a Young Man.." Pamuk''s memoir paints a compelling picture of growing up as a " Western intellectul" in the city that is a bridge between the West and the East.

The protagonist, Frankie, did her tour of duty in Vietnam from 1967 to1969. Those were my sophomore to senior year in high school. I felt like I was revisiting my memories of that time when all American teenage boys lived under the shadow of the draft and the possibility of doing combat in Southeast Asia. The novel helped me appreciate the trauma of the war from a perspective that I was not familiar with.

An excellent overview that highlights
The relevance of random processes to.the.sociall sciences.

This is a fascinating biography of "the Shadow Cstcher," an. American original.

This is an enchanting science fantasy novel built in a world/universe where stories with beginnings and ends (little time) and histories with hazy pasts and hazy futures (big time) are told by actors interacting in the present and cannot be reduced to a formal system of equations.

I enjoyed this 21st Century translation.

I read the Lattimore translation of The Iliad fifty years ago in college. I heard good things about this new translation and I decided to.give it a try. I enjoyed it.very much-

I love Lowry's style and his evocation of thee exotic aura of resident aliens (white Brit and American drinkers) living in a small remote city in southern Mexico under two volcanos,

Radium Girls is an engaging book that tells the story of the discovery and impact of radium poisoning from the perspective of the patients/victims

I like to read books about China. This book is a very well-written account of Hessler's experience (along with his young family) as a professor and journalist in Szechuan from 2019 to 2022/ Through his stories of his encounters with his university students and his family's encounters with the Chinese pre-college education system, he provides an engrossing picture of daily life and Chinese culture.

I liked the book better than the PBS. More care developing the character of Cromwell in the context of Tudor England.

This is a timely book. The author is a noted researcher in social media from Stanford as well as intermittent social activism. She does a fine job of grounding her discussion of the ongoing battles over content moderation over content moderation on social media platforms. In particular, she highlights the importance of "influencers" in the to establishing trends in the social media ecosystem.

I had read Maggie O'Farrell's novel "Hamnet" a couple of years ago and enjoyed it very much. Based on that experience, I decided to read this earlier novel. "The Marriage Portrait" - set in Renaissance Italy - is the story of the teenage Lucrezia De Medici's - the subject of an existing marriage portrait - tragic marriage. I enjoyed this book but liked "Hamnet" better.

This book is the second volume of Jemisin's "Great Cities" duology. One caution to any reader is that they should read the first volume before the second volume. I read and enjoyed the first volume and looked forward to reading this book but would have been lost f I hadn't read the first book. I liked the second book but felt it was not as sharp/polished as the first volume but is tied the story up smoothly.

I enjoyed this book very much. It is a rap song in praise of street ball and "heroes from the hood (particularly Lebron James). It is a prose poem that explores the meaning of life in the black, urban landscape of "fly over" Ohio. It is an impressionist painting that captures the grit and resilience of the author's hometown.

This book is a biography of Joseph Needham, a renowned faculty member at Cambridge University, an internationally renowned biologist, a colorful personality, a left-wing activist, and the author of the groundbreaking multivolume series "Science and Technology in China" over the course of the last fifty years of his life. Winchester, as usual, tells a fine story of an exotic career and life.

Kantika means song in Ladino. I enjoyed this story of Rebecca Cohen and her family and the Sephardic community from Istanbul to Barcelona to Havana and, finally to New York during the first half of the 20th century.

I have finished the first part of the book in which the author provides a stimulating discussion of the pre-paradugnaric "physics of life .* Looking forward to a more detailed exploration of hard questions and future direcyions.0