Another Book Thread

[Russell Jaslow]

The History of North Dakota?

In college, I took a History of New York State course. The first day, the professor disses on the western states, mocking a History of Kansas class in their university system. Of course, implying, NYS has way older and more intricate history than Kansas. Funny thing is, the Europeans completely laugh at any American history. That's recent times for them.

 

[FadeToBlack&Gold]

Funny thing is, the Europeans completely laugh at any American history. That's recent times for them.

My wife's degree is in history & poli-sci and she finds American history to be short and relatively uninteresting in the grand scheme of humanity.

 

[Jimjamesak]

Alaska has a required Alaska History course in high school. It was after my time but my daughter took it.

It focused a lot on precolonial Alaska Native history with some stuff on Russian America, the Alaska Purchase, and pre-statehood.

 

[Kepler]

In college, I took a History of New York State course. The first day, the professor disses on the western states, mocking a History of Kansas class in their university system. Of course, implying, NYS has way older and more intricate history than Kansas. Funny thing is, the Europeans completely laugh at any American history. That's recent times for them.

Did you tell her Kansas is older in human population, and that her initial dis was Eurocentric and racist? Because that would have left a serious mark.

 

[Kepler]

Rule 34.

 

[Kepler]

Now I have a bucket list. They are all written in the slang of the world the book is about. If you have read them, PLEASE no spoilers!

• Trainspotting by Irvine Walsh
• A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
• The Wake by Paul Kingsworth
• Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce
• A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride
• Dark Eden by Chris Beckett
• The Commitments by Roddy Doyle
• Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban
• The Policeman's Beard is Half Constructed by Racter
• Codex Seraphianus by Luigi Serafini

I have started Finnegan's Wake at least three times. I read the first 50 pages of Riddley Walker but could not go on with the impenetrable language. I read the first 3 pages of The Commitments but could not go on with the impenetrable language. I read A Clockwork Orange with no difficulty whatsoever.

I love the idea of books which do not merely immerse, they try to change you from the inside out. Hoban is testing the thesis that you can't understand his main character until you are within his linguistic world. I respect that enormously; it was just too heavy a lift while I was distracted by bullshit like work. I'll try again sometime.