What are you currently reading?

I've started reading \"Perfume: The Story of a Murderer\" by Patrick Süskind. I got it from the library last week and was quite shocked to see my friend pull it out of her bag yesterday! We never even talked about that book or even the movie that was made after it and we picked up reading it almost at the same time now. A bit scary! :woohoo:

Ugh..A million books right now. Most notably 'Hitler's Willing Executioners' by Goldhagen, 'The Origins of the Final Solution (evolution of Nazi Jewish policy)' by Browning and 'Backing Hitler - Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany' by Gelatelly. Essential reading if you're studying the Holocaust and the involvement of the German population.

The rest (10+ various others) are by not-so-well-known authors and cover similar stuff..Basically explorations of anti-Semitism and the contribution by German society towards the Holocaust.

Really keen on finding another book by Browning though..'Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland'..It would be extremely useful for my essay, but ahwell. I can find a summary online I guess (it supposedly has an opposing view to Goldhagen's on the German people and their connection to the Holocaust which would be great for my essay) - It would just be nicer to be able to read and cite pages from the book itself rather than a general idea.

Envy wrote:

Ugh..A million books right now. Most notably 'Hitler's Willing Executioners' by Goldhagen, 'The Origins of the Final Solution (evolution of Nazi Jewish policy)' by Browning and 'Backing Hitler - Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany' by Gelatelly. Essential reading if you're studying the Holocaust and the involvement of the German population.

The rest (10+ various others) are by not-so-well-known authors and cover similar stuff..Basically explorations of anti-Semitism and the contribution by German society towards the Holocaust.

Really keen on finding another book by Browning though..'Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland'..It would be extremely useful for my essay, but ahwell. I can find a summary online I guess (it supposedly has an opposing view to Goldhagen's on the German people and their connection to the Holocaust which would be great for my essay) - It would just be nicer to be able to read and cite pages from the book itself rather than a general idea.

I'm not a fan of anything regarding the Holocaust. Even books about it just make me feel nauseous. :S I really wish people would all accept each other and look at what unites us as human beings instead of finding reasons to use violence to solve problems created by ourselves. However, throughout history that desire has been shown to be impossible to fulfill. A real shame.

On a brighter note, I'm currently reading Interview With The Vampire. I've read most of Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles but I've never actually finished that one. I've always preferred Lestat to Louis. I find him much more interesting.

firensia wrote:

I'm not a fan of anything regarding the Holocaust. Even books about it just make me feel nauseous. :S I really wish people would all accept each other and look at what unites us as human beings instead of finding reasons to use violence to solve problems created by ourselves. However, throughout history that desire has been shown to be impossible to fulfill. A real shame.

It is a very hard to swallow subject, however, if you manage to delve deeper into the roots of it all, it becomes very interesting and your mind may actually change about many of the preconceptions that the media and basic schooling would have placed into your mind, e.g. the typical thing they teach over here in the early schooling years is that Hitler was the all-knowing and powerful dictator and had control over everything including the Final Solution..And fair enough that'll be a view you can use to get you a passing grade, but it's not the only view out there, and there is tons of evidence to suggest that Hitler was actually a lazy and lost character who had little interest in the real work a 'dictator' had to put in to his country.

..Plus there's no hardcore evidence that he even gave the orders for the final solution. Most evidence appears to be for the idea that the solution just developed after many others that 'weren't as effective'..

..Oh, and there's always the odd things you pick up along the way, like apparently Hitler loved Disney movies and was noted to have never given straight orders. Instead, officers have claimed that he loved rambling on about ideological things in his mind for hours and hours everyday..

But I won't go in-depth. It's a topic I could write books of my own about now. :S

(The above in no way means I sympathise with any of the people involved/blamed for the Holocaust, but by reading more, you will naturally lose some ideas that you thought were definately true about the Holocaust before reading)

I've just finished \"The Pursuit of Alice Thrift\" by Elinor Lipman. A pretty good light read, so I just needed two days to finish it while I actually spent most of my day studying for exams.

The Methodology of Economics: Or, How Economists Explain by Mark Blaug.