podpolia

I haven’t been writing much in here recently, because the news hasn’t been overly interesting. Bits and pieces here and there, yes, but nothing that I though required me telling you what I think about the topic. Also, I just finished the last week of classes and am moving into finals week, so I had other things to do (actually, instead I was playing Combat Grounds).
Since you’ve had several days where you didn’t have me telling you what to think about things (and I know you enjoyed the break, because I had more than three times the regular number of visits over the past few days), I thought I would go back to boring you with what I was reading from September 19, 2004 (where I left off in the last books post) to January 12, 2005. Without further ado, here’s the list:

The Time of Troubles — Platonov
Presidential Elections — Polsby
The Revolution of Peter the Great — Cracraft
Lady Chatterly’s Lover — Lawrence
Unexplained Facts: Enigmas and Curiosities — Gould
The Russian Revolution, 1917 — Wade
Something’s Alive on the Titanic — Serling
America (The Book) — Stewart
Anna Karenina — Tolstoy
How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must) — Coulter
The Decameron — Boccaccio

You can probably already gather why the post is named what it is, but I’m going to torture you with my descriptions of the books anyhow.
The Time of Troubles is quite a good book discussing the (duh) time of troubles in Russia in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The smutnoe vremia followed the death of Ivan the Terrible (or, as Dr. Snow prefers, Ivan the Dread), and lasted for 15 years. Platonov was a Russian historian and writer, and wrote the book in the early 1920s as a condensed version of another work on the same topic in 1899.
Presidential Elections was a textbook for my Political Parties and the Election class. It was actually very good as far as textbooks go, and there were only a few sections that could have been shortened to benefit the readability. The authors used a number of helpful examples from past presidential elections to throw light on the trends of them as a whole. Definitely recommended for anyone wishing to study presidential elections.
The Revolution of Peter the Great was the second book required for my History of Tsarist Russia class (Platonov’s was the first), and it was considerably more boring than the first. The book rather sacrificed a linear view of Peter the Great and the reforms he brought about. Despite having a wealth of information on all of the reforms, they’re not tied sufficiently to a broad framework, and instead are divided by subject. This makes the book fairly difficult to follow and gain a broader understanding of Peter’s reforms. It also makes the book pretty boring to read — more of a reference work really. Individual chapters (on separate subjects) are fine, but unless you’re really dedicated, you probably don’t want to read the whole thing.
Lady Chatterley’s Lover was required reading for my English History 1066 – Present class. Don’t ask me why, we never really figured that one out. Lawrence definitely had something he was saying with this book, but at the same time he chose to discuss and focus on sexuality in such a way that it completely alienated many of the very people who the book should have spoken to. While much of it is incredibly well written and would deserve to be a classic of English literature, the sleazy bits really don’t flow very well with the narrative, and seem to be there only to titillate — which clashes with the entire gist of the book.
Unexplained Facts: Enigmas and Curiosities is a book that really belongs to another time. It’s amazingly rigorous and academic, and examines a number of incidents that were mysterious — ship collisions, apparent violations of laws of physics, a murder mystery that led to a change in English law, a naval accident — none of which you’re likely to hear about in any history class. Gould writes about each with style and at length, and shows that there still are mysteries out there to be solved. Quite a good book.
The Russian Revolution, 1917 is a thorough discussion of… (suprise!) the Russian Revolution. It treats both the February and the October Revolutions as one extended social upheaval. It’s a fascinating story, and while it’s not exactly an easy book to read for the layperson, it’s quite worth it for anyone interested in the subject.
I went from the Russian Revolution to a horror story about the Titanic. Something’s Alive on the Titanic is a great book, in my opinion. However, I also enjoy bad ’80s horror films, so take this however you want.
America (The Book) by Jon Stewart is definitely funny. I found myself wishing he had written more on the specifics of American History and some of the deeper aspects of politics in America, instead of the more superficial, but that would probably have limited the audience that would have understood and appreciated it. My prof for Parties and Elections would have used it for an Intro to American Government class, except for the picture of the Supreme Court naked.
Anna Karenina is a classic of Russian literature. Definitely worth reading. (Hey, Oprah apparently reccomends it, and who am I to argue with the god of the aliens? — read closely.)
Ann Coulter amuses me. I don’t remember much about her book, but I do remember that it was very funny.
Boccaccio’s Decameron is an interesting book. 100 different stories, told by ten characters over ten days. There’s all kinds of stories in here, some of them quite raunchy, but most of them fairly good. It’s a bit long, and a bit old (hey, it was written by somebody who survived the plague), but definitely worth reading.
Well, I’ve subjected you to another eleven books now, so I’m going to stop and save more for later.

UPDATE 5/01/05 12.34AM: Fixed HTML error and jiggered with the content that fell out because of it.
UPDATE 12/03/05 2.42PM: Added Amazon links.

I have decided that in a (likely futile) attempt to recoup some of the money that I spend on the domain name and such for this site, that I will become an “Amazon.com Associate” and provide links to pages where you, dear reader, can buy the books. The more of them you buy, the more money I make. So get to work!