Australian Politics Forum - What are you currently reading?

Lord Herbert

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Re: What are you currently reading?
Reply #60 - Dec 19^th, 2013 at 11:41am

bogarde73 wrote on Dec 19^th, 2013 at 10:14am:

Letters: Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh.

It's going to be a while, every letter has about a dozen footnotes re the people mentioned.

Couldn't you have bought the abridged version? Tongue

********

I've got Christopher Hitchen's 'Arguably' waiting to be read.

Here's The Guardian's (staunchly leftwing) take on it, deriding the very notion that Extreme Islam can be placed in the same stable with Naziism and Communism.

Quote:

The pleasures the reader feels at this escape are in proportion to the horrors of Hitchens at his worst. Let us consider just two of the fatuities. In a piece from 2007, when one might have expected post-9/11 rage to have been tempered by the experience of the war in Iraq, Hitchens writes of how Anglo-American co-operation defeated three great threats: "German Wilhelmine imperialism in 1918, the Nazi-Fascist Axis in 1945, and international communism in 1989." Then comes a sentence so shocking it is hard to believe that a man of Hitchens's intellect not only wrote it but agreed to republish it between hard covers: "The world now faces a barbarism that is no less menacing than its three predecessors – and may even be more so." This fourth threat is "bin-Ladenism". The claim that al-Qaida "may even be more" menacing to humanity than the Nazis or Stalin shows what Hitchens elsewhere calls "the way in which mania feeds upon itself and becomes hysterical".

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« Last Edit: Dec 19^th, 2013 at 11:52am by Lord Herbert »

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Postmodern Trendoid III Gold Member Offline Posts: 10266 Gender:	Re: What are you currently reading? Reply #61 - Dec 19^th, 2013 at 2:52pm Just read Australian Intellectuals : Their Strange History and Pathological Tendencies by Greg Melleuish. Nearly finished Radical conservatism and the future of politics by Göran Dahl. Just started The New Right Norman P. Barry.
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Lord Herbert

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Re: What are you currently reading?
Reply #62 - Dec 19^th, 2013 at 3:08pm

Postmodern Trendoid III wrote on Dec 19^th, 2013 at 2:52pm:

Just read Australian Intellectuals : Their Strange History and Pathological Tendencies by Greg Melleuish.

Nearly finished Radical conservatism and the future of politics by Göran Dahl.

Just started The New Right Norman P. Barry.

I'll leave the heavy lifting to you, then, MM.

For my sins I'll Carry on Regardless with the pot boilers and the Penny Dreadfuls printed on cheap pulp paper to help sink me into a gentle coma every night, perchance to dream.

Quote:

A penny dreadful was a type of British fiction publication in the 19th century that usually featured lurid serial stories appearing in parts over a number of weeks, each part costing one (old) penny.

The term, however, soon came to encompass a variety of publications that featured cheap sensational fiction, such as story papers and booklet "libraries". The penny dreadfuls were printed on cheap pulp paper and were aimed primarily at working class adolescents.[3]

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bogarde73

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Re: What are you currently reading?
Reply #63 - Dec 29^th, 2013 at 12:48pm

re NM/EW mentioned earlier, I am not finding it as heavy going as I thought. The thing about letters is you can put it down & pick it up whenever.
The other thing is you find out so much about the authors that you've read and the people they mixed with.
One thing I found out already is that "Love in a Cold Climate", which you may know of, was as much written by EW through edits and suggestions as it was by NM.

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Know the enemies of a civil society by their public behaviour, by their fraudulent claim to be liberal-progressive, by their propensity to lie and, above all, by their attachment to authoritarianism.

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St George of the Garden Gold Member Offline http://tinyurl.com/n 3o8m2x Posts: 9809 Gender:	Re: What are you currently reading? Reply #64 - Jan 1^st, 2014 at 7:23pm Neal Stephenson & Frederick George “Cobweb” is my current reading. Just finished the last volume of Stephenson’s Baroque trilogy
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The Heartless Felon Gold Member Offline Australian Politics Posts: 2869 Gender:	Re: What are you currently reading? Reply #65 - Jan 5^th, 2014 at 8:07am Just been given an anthology, " The Most of P G Wodehouse": Jeeves and Bertie, The Drones, Lord Emsworth AND the Empress of Blandings, et al...love it!
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greggerypeccary Gold Member Offline Australian Politics Posts: 140118 Gender:	Re: What are you currently reading? Reply #66 - Jan 5^th, 2014 at 8:59am
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bogarde73

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Re: What are you currently reading?
Reply #67 - Jan 5^th, 2014 at 12:48pm

The Heartless Felon wrote on Jan 5^th, 2014 at 8:07am:

Just been given an anthology, " The Most of P G Wodehouse": Jeeves and Bertie, The Drones, Lord Emsworth AND the Empress of Blandings, et al...love it!

Insanely jealous!
Wasn't the Empress of Blandings a pig? . . .as in porcine, rather than greedy, fat aristocrat.

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Know the enemies of a civil society by their public behaviour, by their fraudulent claim to be liberal-progressive, by their propensity to lie and, above all, by their attachment to authoritarianism.

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The Heartless Felon

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Re: What are you currently reading?
Reply #68 - Jan 5^th, 2014 at 7:54pm

The Empress, a mere pig?

Contrary to what you may have been told, Bogy, philistinism does NOT rock!

However, since I have an understanding nature, I will provide a brief excerpt from the members of the Drones Club:

"Do you know," said a thoughtful Bean, " I'll bet that if all the girls Freddy Widgeon has loved and lost were placed end to end...they would reach halfway down Piccadilly."
"Further than that," said the Egg, "Some of them were pretty tall."

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St George of the Garden Gold Member Offline http://tinyurl.com/n 3o8m2x Posts: 9809 Gender:	Re: What are you currently reading? Reply #69 - Jan 7^th, 2014 at 7:19pm Nice to see another admirer of PG Wodehouse.
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Emma Gold Member Offline Australian Politics Posts: 9853 OZ Gender:	Re: What are you currently reading? Reply #70 - Jan 8^th, 2014 at 1:48am 'The Bat' Jo Nesbo recommended by me.. A Norwegian detective in Sydney... and .... The first 'Harry Hole' novel.
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Lord Herbert Gold Member Offline Posts: 34441 Gender:	Re: What are you currently reading? Reply #71 - Jan 8^th, 2014 at 7:27pm St George of the Garden wrote on Jan 7^th, 2014 at 7:19pm: Nice to see another admirer of PG Wodehouse. Testing people's community spirit I found this interesting
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bogarde73 Gold Member Offline Anti-Global & Contra Mundum Posts: 18443 Gender:	Re: What are you currently reading? Reply #72 - Jan 12^th, 2014 at 11:04am Yes, I find it interesting too. Never knew about it. But to compare him with Haw Haw is fantasy. Haw Haw made continuous broadcasts aimed at frightening the British and encouraging defeatism. He had been a member of Mosley's organisation as well as having other fascist connections.
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Lord Herbert Gold Member Offline Posts: 34441 Gender:	Re: What are you currently reading? Reply #73 - Jan 12^th, 2014 at 12:13pm More on the real person behind the famous novelists: H.G.Wells ~ what a shocker. He was a full-blown genocidal Nazi. link
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greggerypeccary

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Re: What are you currently reading?
Reply #74 - Jan 12^th, 2014 at 3:14pm

"The view from the closet"

"After reading Cory's MANifesto and carefully considering the arguments within I'm prepared to offer punters 3-1 odds that he'll be caught in a Sydney hotel with rent boys and a smoking meth pipe within six months."

http://www.amazon.com/THE-CONSERVATIVE-REVOLUTION-Cory-Bernardi/dp/1922168963

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