![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Currently reading:
The same things I was reading last week (a book on POWs in Japanese camps and a book on POW creativity), as I got distracted and read other stuff in the mean time.
Recently finished:
Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes and The Panda's Thumb, by Stephen Jay Gould. These were re-reads. Gould's lucid, vivid prose and elegant arguments, not to mention his breadth of knowledge and his commitment to human equality, make his books almost infinitely re-readable to me. These are a couple of his earliest collections of essays and I'm sure some of the science has dated horribly, but they're still a delight.
The Master Plan: Himmler's Scholars and the Holocaust, by Heather Pringle. A history of the Ahnenerbe, the SS's "scholarly" branch, and its progress from almost-amusing crackpottery ("Those Swedish petroglyphs were made by ancient Germans! So were those Mayan ruins! And the Tibetans are actually Germans!") to abetting and in some cases inciting atrocities in the name of "racial science." I found the book intriguing and disturbing, not only because of what the Ahnenerbe did but because almost all of its prime movers got away wholly or nearly unpunished. Overall I'd have liked a little less focus on individuals and more on the Ahnenerbe's institutional and ideological roles; also the fact that Pringle is a journalist (who apparently doesn't read German and had to have documents translated) did make me wonder about possible sensationalizing of a topic that's already sufficiently horrific. Nevertheless, there's a depth of research one doesn't usually see in histories for a general audience, and I learned a lot.
Triumff: Her Majesty's Hero, by Dan Abnett. I was enjoying this as a lively, silly romp, and then some 45 pages in, I came across this passage: "Sire Roger Clarence, powdered, perfumed, teased, waxed, plucked, lipo-ed, laced, veneered, buffed, polished, and heeled in the very latest fashion, flounced into the Solar." And things got more blatantly stereotyped and homophobic from there. I decided that life's too short for that kind of bullshit, and threw away the book with great force.
What I'm reading next:
I'm not sure. I'm finding myself in the mood for more Gould, so I may see if the library has any of his books I haven't read yet.
The same things I was reading last week (a book on POWs in Japanese camps and a book on POW creativity), as I got distracted and read other stuff in the mean time.
Recently finished:
Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes and The Panda's Thumb, by Stephen Jay Gould. These were re-reads. Gould's lucid, vivid prose and elegant arguments, not to mention his breadth of knowledge and his commitment to human equality, make his books almost infinitely re-readable to me. These are a couple of his earliest collections of essays and I'm sure some of the science has dated horribly, but they're still a delight.
The Master Plan: Himmler's Scholars and the Holocaust, by Heather Pringle. A history of the Ahnenerbe, the SS's "scholarly" branch, and its progress from almost-amusing crackpottery ("Those Swedish petroglyphs were made by ancient Germans! So were those Mayan ruins! And the Tibetans are actually Germans!") to abetting and in some cases inciting atrocities in the name of "racial science." I found the book intriguing and disturbing, not only because of what the Ahnenerbe did but because almost all of its prime movers got away wholly or nearly unpunished. Overall I'd have liked a little less focus on individuals and more on the Ahnenerbe's institutional and ideological roles; also the fact that Pringle is a journalist (who apparently doesn't read German and had to have documents translated) did make me wonder about possible sensationalizing of a topic that's already sufficiently horrific. Nevertheless, there's a depth of research one doesn't usually see in histories for a general audience, and I learned a lot.
Triumff: Her Majesty's Hero, by Dan Abnett. I was enjoying this as a lively, silly romp, and then some 45 pages in, I came across this passage: "Sire Roger Clarence, powdered, perfumed, teased, waxed, plucked, lipo-ed, laced, veneered, buffed, polished, and heeled in the very latest fashion, flounced into the Solar." And things got more blatantly stereotyped and homophobic from there. I decided that life's too short for that kind of bullshit, and threw away the book with great force.
What I'm reading next:
I'm not sure. I'm finding myself in the mood for more Gould, so I may see if the library has any of his books I haven't read yet.
