Good Reads

[MikeBjerum]

Long ago we had a topic about books we were reading.  Amazing the broad range of literature that this group of so called knuckle dragging Neanderthals reads and studies.

I have been reading The Art Of War for the last several weeks.  It is a very short and simple book that a person could read in a couple evenings.  However, its simple short statements are so deep and thought provoking that it takes a long time to get through.

Everyone should read this to help us as individuals and groups to understand how to fight our battles.  I encourage everyone here to pick up a copy, if you don't already have one, and pay attention how the DFL, Liberals, Anti's, etc. are using these techniques against us, and we are falling for it.

I have often said that while the conservatives were taking business, management, history, science, etc. classes, the liberals were taking debate and communication.  This enables them to beat us on any topic regardless of how off base and out of touch with reality they are.  Well, guess what!  They studied these warfare methods!  I recognize many of their techniques in this book, and I can see where we have lost track of how to fight to win the war.

[tombogan03884]

Read in a couple evenings, think about for YEARS. LOL.

[alfsauve]

The trick to reading Art of War is to pick out which edition.

Almost every printing has translation, editing, annotation and commentary by one scholar or another.   I even think Terry Bradshaw as a version out there.

All versions have to be translated, unless you speak Chinese, and while you can get a free un-annotated version, probably at Gutenberg Project, you might want to consider whose version you want to read.

Sun-tzu wrote in very short, terse and pity phrases and it helps to have a guide.  The annotations give you time to reflect over each line.  I choose the edition by John Minford, primarily because he is a renowned Chinese scholar.  I think his annotations are possibly more factual than those by military or political strategists.   He doesn't have an ax to grind or a war to win.    It also includes a bit of history to set the context for many of the passages.



And I might be wrong about a Bradshaw version, but Amazon just returned me over 130 versions of Art of War, so then again he might.

[tombogan03884]

Since I got my tablet I've been reading a lot (100+) of books from Kindle, and the Internet Archive.
Mostly free .
Anything by Fredrick Selous on Africa is interesting and good reading, his book on North American hunting isn't as good because he didn't have the same background knowledge.
Another good writer on the old days in Africa is Stanley Portall Hyatt, read "The old transport road", and "Wanderings of a soldier of fortune", They are true, and told as if you were sitting around the club telling stories , the rest of his stuff is typical Victorian fiction and not as interesting
One on Western history that will be of particular interest to those here is " The autobiography of Billy Dixon"

[ExurbanKevin]

I'm a big detective fiction fan (Robert B. Parker and John D. MacDonald being my favs), so I'm going back to the source and reading Hammett, Chandler and Runyon. I'd read "The Big Sleep", "The Long Goodbye" and "Poodle Springs" (co-writtern by Chandler and Parker), but never made a serious attempt to the get to the taproot.

And they're terrific reads. Halfway thru "Red Harvest" right now, and I can see how Kurosawa got his inspiration for "Yojimbo" from this book.

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