Histories are very important. From technical manuals that keep technology growing to blueprints for buildings, to religious documents--all is meant to share with a wider range of audiences than our own circle, and possibly, to teach the next generation. However, I would classify language as more important before that. Most animals communicate, but rarely do they have symbols and abstractions that can be applied in new and seemingly unlimited ways. That's our most important tool, but it is still a tool. We have a language center of the brain and if it's disturbed, we lose our ability to communicate. But that area in people who are deaf, morphs into something else when language is not available. It resolves conflicts, it communicates ideas and concepts, our nuance. And basic understanding of language, allows us to move into higher thinking centers of the brain when we become adults. It is how we are able to share ideas right now on this message board. Each word carries with it a general concept, it has to stay general in order for it to be applied to more than one situation, and it has to apply to more than one situation in order for it to mean something when it is shared. I say "I am sitting in a chair." You have never seen me, but you know the position of my body, the concept of I (HaventGotALife), chair, sit are contained in that sentence. The concept of present-tense (what I am doing at the time of this post), is also present because I didn't say "sat." It's simple to us, a sentence like that. But it wasn't always. And we continue to learn and grow from those simple concepts in language, to more complex material and more obscure concepts. The more we are a master of language, the more precise we can be in our communication, sharing ideas, and possibly re-shaping the world. Anyway, this is WAAY off topic, and if you want to continue this discussion, I think we need to start another thread.
Both of those observations are true, but history is a science and language is a technology (i.e. applied science), and both can be art forms. And, yeah, it probably should be another thread.
To get back on topic, I'm reading The New Orleans Voodoo Handbook. It's an interesting read if you enjoy learning about both the history and components of religion. I'm having a good deal of fun with it.
Just finished Pratchett's The Fifth Elephant and considering which one to read next... Unseen Academicals is the one I think... I 'discovered' Pratchett relatively late in life so there's a lot of Discworld I still haven't read
Wikipedia: Discworld. But, that's a very long article Basically, though, the Discworld series are fantasy stories that happen in a medieval/renaissance'ish world where everything we, here on Earth, would call folklore is reality -with a twist. Magic is real and treated like any other scholarly subject, Dwarves live underground in their mines, Death is a cloaked skeleton with a scythe (he's one of my favourite characters), vampires go to meetings and learn a twelve-step program, 'Rock-music' is about banging rocks together (something trolls are good at )... any help? Basically: pick up any Discworld novel and read a couple of random pages... either you're hooked or you'll know it's not for you!
That actually sounds something I could get into. I will have to try that. The rock music reference kind of reminds me of the Xanth novel series which I really enjoyed back in my youth .
^Do, however, notice that the novels are quite British in nature. I've heard people exclaim that they can't really get into them because of it; the humour and cultural references might be (if there indeed is such a thing) too British for some U'r welcome Kolinahr
Being a fan of Sherlock and Dr. Who (less so the latter, but oh well) makes Discworld sound even more appealing now. British humor
That won't be a problem for me at all. I watch so many British TV series (love them), plus I am German , born and raised.
I finished A Storm of Swords earlier today, I can't put into words how great it was. I wish I started reading these earlier. I downloaded A Feast of Crows on my iPad but I'm not sure if I'm gonna start it right away. I have books I have pushed back to read these, Mike Piazza and Ron Darlings Auto-Biographies and a few novels. However I can hear the Songs of Fire and Ice calling to me.
I finished the before mentioned In Our Hearts We Were Giants last night. It was a moving story of a truly loving and close-knit family who had to cope with terrible circumstances. Tears came to my eyes several times. Today I started on Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry.
I finished The Arena Man and The Library, and am now starting a beta-read on another friend's novel called Time Immemorial.
I'm currently reading Game of Thrones. I'm almost at the end of the book. I also started reading Hyökkäys auringosta (Attack from the sun). It's a biography of Eino Luukkanen, a Knight of the Mannerheim Cross. He was a fighter pilot during the Winter War and the Continuation War.
I finished The Stars My Destination last weekend - I came away from it thinking that it was very much a story of its time, albeit with more female characters than your average 1950s space opera. Having finally gotten through Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy a few months ago, I decided to try reading another trilogy that I'd previously put down partway through - Stephen Baxter's Manifold trilogy (Manifold: Space, Manifold: Time, and Manifold: Origin). I think the problem I'd previously had was that I wasn't spending a whole lot of time reading for pleasure, and so they were hard to get into. Nowadays, I have about half an hour every morning on the bus when all I have to do is read, so I'm finding it easier this time. I'm still accumulating new books faster than I can read them, though - on Monday I picked up the latest Charlie Stross Laundry novel, and Life on the Preservation, by Jack Skillingstead. At the rate I'm going, I'm never going to finish everything on my shelf.
I finished Gathering Blue. I found it a quick and easy read. I think it is the only Young Adults book I've head this year. 4/5. I have just started reading A Long Way Home by Saroo Brierley on my iPad. It is an autobiography. Saroo was born to a very poor family in India. When he was about 5 he was with his older brother looking for dropped coins on a train when he fell asleep. When he woke up he found himself in Calcutta, hundreds of miles from home. He ended up in an orphanage and was adopted by a Tasmanian couple and was raised in Hobart. As an adult he started to look for his Indian family.