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What are you reading?


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Well, people, what are we reading?

"Diabetic ketoacidosis and hyperglycemic hyperosmolar nonketotic syndrome". by G.Umpierrez ,M Khajavi M and A Kitabchi .

Translation ... please! :clapping:

(Am I correct to assume that this is NOT the text on which "Metastaeis and Pithoprakta" was based ??? )

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ROXANA--the Fortunate Mistress, by the Right Honourable Genius Daniel Defoe, and such superb prose I have to quote the 3rd paragraph:

"I retain'd nothing of France, but the Language: My Father and Mother being people of better Fashion, than ordinarily the People call'd REFUGEES at that Time were, and having fled early, while it was easie to secure their Effect, had, before their coming over, remitted considerable Sums of Money, or, as I remember, a considerable Value in French Brandy, Paper, and other Goods; and these selling very much to Advantage here, my Father was in very good Circumstances at this coming over, so that he was far from applying to the rest of our Nation that were here, for Countenance and Relief: On the contrary, he had his Door continually throng'd with miserable Objects of the poor starving Creatures, who at that Time fled hither for Shelter, on Account of Conscience, or something else."

Oh, the boon of Ballet Talk! I was reminded to read this due to the Classics thread, and also to re-read 'Treasure Island' for the first time since I was 7 years old due to the 're-reading' thread, so that I remember the precise day as it was with my aunt and cousins, but also even remembered the last paragraph. So I had a kind of Stevenson/Proust experience with these, but got bored with 'Treasure Island' about 2/3 of the way through, so started some John Cleland--the first 60 pages or so--and this led to writing a passage including the Proust sensation and a new XXX-rated passage for Treasure Island itself as part of the 4th Chapter of my Own Third Book which will be published in late 2008 or early 2009.

The natural synthesis and reward for having balanced out Stevenson's gentleness and Cleland's courtly indecency in a production of my own is the joy of Defoe's fantastic prose--and made all the greater by his fighting in wars, his successful and failed businesses, his time in Newgate which helped him write 'Moll Flanders' I guess, his debts and bankruptcies and numerous arrests. In short, the huge character of Defoe, an exemplary individual!

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Well, people, what are we reading?

"Diabetic ketoacidosis and hyperglycemic hyperosmolar nonketotic syndrome". by G.Umpierrez ,M Khajavi M and A Kitabchi .

:smilie_

Translation ... please!

(Am I correct to assume that this is NOT the text on which "Metastaeis and Pithoprakta" was based ??? )

:beg: ...it's just work related...basically about diabetes...

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Currently, I'm reading "The Cry and the Covenant". It's about how a doctor decided to change the awful unhygenic practices back in the 1800s, when women were dying left and right from childbirth. I find it an inspiration, since hopefully, I'll be in medical school in 4 years time! It's always nice to read about my future profession HELPING people everywhere!

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Recently finished Simon Sebag Montefiore's biography of Stalin. Just finishing 'Stalin's Folly' by Constantine Pleshakov (about Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the USSR in June, 1941).

Starting 'The Bookseller of Kabul' (which doesn't promise to be much more cheerful than either of the above).

In the tbr pile: Julie Kavanaugh's two bios (Ashton and Nureyev); more books about the Stalin period; several about the current war in Iraq.

I have a four-hour round trip daily commute, and it's too dark in the winter for reading on the way home, so I switch to audio books. Last winter was all of Jane Austen. This year it's going to be Anna Karenina.

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I wish you all the best, ngitanjali! Once you're in med school, you may very well find "Diabetic ketoacidosis and hyperglycemic hyperosmolar nonketotic syndrome" by G.Umpierrez ,M Khajavi M and A Kitabchi on your reading list. :beg:

Or just come on over and let me show you how to do this neat little procedure. That's me at the top of frame, bobwig and all.

Ever read Benjamin Rush on surgery? His principal advice is, "work as fast as you possibly can!"

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I just finished reading The Boy Who Was Raised As a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook: What Traumatized Children Can Teach Us About Loss, Love and Healing by Bruce D. Perry and Maia Szalavitz. I took Amazon's recommendation and bought it along with The Neuroscience of Human Relationships: Attachment and the Developing Social Brain by Louis Cozolino. It's a great pairing.

Perry has worked with traumatized children from many well-known situations: the Branch Davidian children, the kids who were at the heart of the supposed Satanic ritual incidents in the '80's/'90's. His common sense and big heart has made this book a favorite of mine, and I've read many of these sorts of books over the years. Although some of the children's traumas are heartbreaking, the book actually gave me lots of hope about human relationships.

I read bits and pieces of Cozolino's book, much drier and full of chemical and pharmaceutical terms, after reading a chapter at a time of Perry's. The result is that I probably can't always tell you who said what, but they are a terrific match.

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I have a four-hour round trip daily commute, and it's too dark in the winter for reading on the way home, so I switch to audio books. Last winter was all of Jane Austen. This year it's going to be Anna Karenina.

Welcome to the forum, PeggyR. A four hour commute! You'll definitely have time for Tolstoy....

Currently, I'm reading "The Cry and the Covenant". It's about how a doctor decided to change the awful unhygenic practices back in the 1800s, when women were dying left and right from childbirth. I find it an inspiration, since hopefully, I'll be in medical school in 4 years time! It's always nice to read about my future profession HELPING people everywhere!

Best of luck to you, ngitanjali. Even today, pregnancy and childbirth or more hazardous than people realize, but it is amazing how far we've come. Is this fiction or non-fiction?

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I want to thank Ray (and Anthony NYC) for his information about the "new" translations of Thomas Mann by John Woods. Thanks to this thread, I got the chance to reread Buddenbrooks -- while looking out at the Baltic (not from Lubeck, however). It's a marvellous work, both funny and deeply sad. I can't speak for the accuracy of the translation, but the book is a smooth and elegant read, and has none of what always seemed to me to be the old-fashioned fustiness of the previous translation. I'm just about finished and am anticipating Dr. Faustus and Magic Mountain.

Julie Kavanaugh's Nureyev is singing a siren song from the shelf, but I have tied myself to the mast, so he will just have to wait a bit longer. :flowers:

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"The Courtier and the Heretic" by Matthew Stewart.

A great read about, as the book's subtitle has it,: 'Leibniz, Spinoza and the fate of God in the modern world'.

Wow...i'll never forget Leibniz Monad's theory as long as i live. It gave me a great deal of a hard time on a Philosophy final :angel_not:

What is interesting to me is that Leibniz's reputation was not in the slightest affected by his ridicule in Voltaire's most famous work 'Candide', which many of us are introduced to far earlier than we are to Leibniz (if we ever are.) Serious philosophers discuss Leibniz much more than they do Voltaire, which makes it seem possible that Voltaire, in satirizing Leibniz's 'best of all possible worlds', was not even directing his poison at the way Leibniz meant it. Voltaire seems to make it as though Leibniz was some 'positive thinking New Age' type who thought everything was just wonderful, whereas looking even slightly at Leibniz you see that he's talking about how things work together in such a way as the 'best possible world' is simply the one that does occur, as ineluctable as a fait accompli. The 'best possible world' would be the one that was inevitable, not that the world we do get doesn't contain within it the possibility of imagining that things 'could be different and better'. That certainly is one thing all eras have in common, that there are naysayers of everything that happens, and their protests and fury are part of what makes the next inevitable development happen. It may have to do with Voltaire's high reputation during his lifetime. I prefer the racier Crebillon fils for amusing 18th century satire, but Zadig is also interesting with that image of the 'stare of the basilisk'. Imagine Huysmans felt himself to be a kindred spirit with Voltaire, with much more dripped poison still, but Leibniz is taken very seriously, and without any bow to Voltaire's ridicule, by Heidegger, Derrida, Deleuze, and in fact all serious 20th century philsophers. There's probably no mention of him in Marx, but what could you expect--that's all about how we always live in the worst of all possible worlds until we do violent overthrow of the people who have gotten control of anything whatever. Voltaire's satire is more like the constant political complaints that change like cloud shapes but remain the same underlying dissent (and surely necessarily so) in that it is always there even when the old problems get solved (once 'solved', they are then complained about anew.)

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Voltaire seems to make it as though Leibniz was some 'positive thinking New Age' type who thought everything was just wonderful, whereas looking even slightly at Leibniz you see that he's talking about how things work together in such a way as the 'best possible world' is simply the one that does occur, as ineluctable as a fait accompli. The 'best possible world' would be the one that was inevitable, not that the world we do get doesn't contain within it the possibility of imagining that things 'could be different and better'.

Voltaire’s not the only one who misses that.

Thanks for posting, chiapuris. What are some of the things Stewart observes about Spinoza v. Leibniz (I’m unfamiliar with the book and going on the assumption that the two are presented adversarially)?

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What are some of the things Stewart observes about Spinoza v. Leibniz (I’m unfamiliar with the book and going on the assumption that the two are presented adversarially)?

I'm only halfway through the book; so far, Stewart stresses the admiration Leibniz showed for aspects of Spinoza's 'universal' philosophy, while at the same time denouncing Spinoza in his self-appointed role as 'God's attorney'. A love-hate on Leibniz's part.

The center of the book is the meeting at The Hague of Spinoza and Leibniz on (or about) November 18, 1676. (I'm not there yet).

A very interesting book on the intellectual life of the 17th century--when philosophy was a dangerous business.

On my future reading list is Spinoza's Ethics and something short, by Leibniz. Hopefully -- to be accomplished.

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I have a four-hour round trip daily commute, and it's too dark in the winter for reading on the way home, so I switch to audio books. Last winter was all of Jane Austen. This year it's going to be Anna Karenina.

Welcome to the forum, PeggyR. A four hour commute! You'll definitely have time for Tolstoy....

Currently, I'm reading "The Cry and the Covenant". It's about how a doctor decided to change the awful unhygenic practices back in the 1800s, when women were dying left and right from childbirth. I find it an inspiration, since hopefully, I'll be in medical school in 4 years time! It's always nice to read about my future profession HELPING people everywhere!

Best of luck to you, ngitanjali. Even today, pregnancy and childbirth or more hazardous than people realize, but it is amazing how far we've come. Is this fiction or non-fiction?

I previously thought it was fiction, but apparently, it is indeed nonfiction, about Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis! Unfortunately, as my mother reminded me last night, to get to medical school, one has to do very well in science courses that one is enrolled in :) No reading until Thanksgiving break! I do encourage anyone to pick it up, since it's just fascinating, and so...insightful and important for everyone to know about the patient and doctor sides of medicine :)

ngitanjali

PS: Thank you for all your good wishes!

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I don't have much time lately for recreational reading, so I consider myself very lucky that my high school tutoring jobs this year have required me to read Perrine's Story and Structure, a gem of a compilation of short stories whose authors include Hemingway, Faulkner, Porter, Cather, Welty, Gordimer, Hawthorne, O'Henry, and several others including a short work by Tolstoy. In high school, I had read most of them but, as is often true of high school reading, I just didn't have the life experiences to fully appreciate them. I reread some of them when my own children were high school 9th and 10th graders, but I still didn't fully enjoy them.

Now, at 53, coming back to these stories, I am feeling as though I just found water after a long drought. I find this curiously so, because I've never considered myself to be especially appreciative of contemporary short stories; I usually find them so depressing that I tend to avoid them. (My favorite exception is Elizabeth McCracken's "Here's Your Hat, What's Your Hurry" - poignantly funny).

Anyway, right now I am gobbling up one story after another, and trying to slow myself down! My current favorite is Willa Cather's "Paul's Case" because of his craving for beauty and comfort and the lengths he went to in his effort to acquire it in his life.

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