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  11/08/2020       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Pulling books off the shelf at random, the Reading Ladder offers some highlights of why these books are in the ladder. Starting with the most (Continue Reading)

What I'm Reading Now
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  • As we escape armageddon, just barely…….
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  10/31/2020       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Very often, statements of conditions are challenged. For instance, the Atlantic had an article titled How America Outlawed Adolescence. Without finishing the article, my thoughts (Continue Reading)

Culture, What I'm Reading Now

Tracing change in a language over millennia

  09/01/2020       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Reading Medieval and Modern Greek, we see the changes from Classical to Koine Greek, phonological and morphological. Most of such tracing I’ve learned has been (Continue Reading)

grammar & language change, scolds and guardians, What I'm Reading Now

Donald Trump wants to believe he matters……..

  09/01/2020       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

That is a line in John Dean and Bob Altemeyer’s new book on Trump, “Authoritarian Nightmare.” After doing a decent job of outlining Trump’s childhood, (Continue Reading)

Politics 2016/2020 running blog Corona edition, View from under the Bus, What I'm Reading Now

Twilight of Democracy

  08/21/2020       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Along with my list of books on my reading ladder I’ve added another category, casual reading. By that I mean books I just need to (Continue Reading)

What I'm Reading Now

Here’s a reading plan

  05/18/2020       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

My wife has expressed interest in the book Sugar in the Blood. It delves deeply into the social history of one island in the Caribbean, (Continue Reading)

What I'm Reading Now

The World and Acquiring Ergativity

  05/17/2020       Pat Barrett      2 Comments

Two books came, one yesterday on Ergativity and one today by Richard Haass who is seen a lot on Morning Joe. I’ve started both and (Continue Reading)

What I'm Reading Now

Why We’re Polarized

  04/14/2020       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

I dropped my 22 books I’m reading every day to spend 3 days reading Ezra Klein’s Why We’re Polarized. As a life-long liberal Democrat, I (Continue Reading)

What I'm Reading Now

Anthropological pitfalls

  03/31/2020       Pat Barrett      1 Comment

Trying to understand another culture is an amazing adventure. I have never lived in another culture other than my adjustment to African-American culture coming from (Continue Reading)

Culture, What I'm Reading Now

Reading for March 21, 2020 the year of COVID 19

  03/21/2020       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Once before I wrote up what I’d read in my reading ladder on one particular day. Things have changed around here, especially two: my grandson (Continue Reading)

What I'm Reading Now

Amy Chua on Tribal World

  03/06/2020       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Foreign Affairs put out an issue in July/Aug 2018 that featured an article on each division of our divided world: Realist, Liberal, Tribal, Marxist, Tech (Continue Reading)

What I'm Reading Now

A Maxim to remember

  03/05/2020       Pat Barrett      2 Comments

Skidelsky writes of the Rothschilds in the 19th century that “profts came before peace” despite their resistance to financing wars. And now profits come before (Continue Reading)

Pat's World View, What I'm Reading Now

Autism in bygone days….

  02/20/2020       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Reading Patrick O’Brian’s well-drawn characters in his Aubrey-Maturin novels, I am struck over and over again by the way the behaviors of some of the (Continue Reading)

Autism, What I'm Reading Now

Chilling memories prompted by Trump

  02/19/2020       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Sharp comparison given in article by George Packer on William Holbrooke quoting a woman who lived through the Balkan wars and was watching a Trump (Continue Reading)

Politics 2016/2020 running blog Corona edition, What I'm Reading Now

The True History of the Modern GOP

  02/06/2020       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

At the Republican National Convention in the Cow Palace in San Francisco in 1964, a piercing reminder of what these people have been thinking all (Continue Reading)

Politics, What I'm Reading Now

Nous – observations and questions

  02/06/2020       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

In NOUS, pp. 78-79 I’ve noticed some interesting things. A chapter is titled Une drole de journee. I had read that de is used after (Continue Reading)

Foreign language teaching & learning, What I'm Reading Now

Finishing two books

  01/30/2020       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

I’ve finished Berlin and am finishing tonight Trade. Both deal with African slavery, the former in the U.S. The first is very readable and I (Continue Reading)

What I'm Reading Now

The way it really was…..

  01/26/2020       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

In the wake of the Civil Rights Act passing, some people took it seriously. Here is an example of what happened (from Rick Perlstein’s Before (Continue Reading)

Pat's World View, Uncategorized, What I'm Reading Now

Cross fertilization

  01/21/2020       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

My reading tonight started with 3 books on economics and one on early Christian morals. (Morality, Money, Duflo, Pluto) In Morality, Meeks quotes MacMullen on (Continue Reading)

What I'm Reading Now

I’m reading about why my wife sees family the way she does

  01/16/2020       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

In Generations of Captivity, Berlin has a passage characterizing the Black family toward the end of the period of slavery when many free Blacks and (Continue Reading)

What I'm Reading Now

A page from one day, Jan. 4, 2020

  01/13/2020       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Just a note that I’ve added Rachel Maddow’s Blowout to my list to replace Aspect, which I finished. Another note: my blog guru, Wes, has (Continue Reading)

What I'm Reading Now

Preliminary write-up on What I’m Reading Now

  01/01/2020       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

The books I’m reading fall into four main categories: the African Diaspora, Language, Economics, and History. Eight books make up the reading on the African (Continue Reading)

What I'm Reading Now

List of reading books

  12/27/2019       Pat Barrett      Add Comment

Because I’ve started blogging routinely on what I’m reading now, it will be easier to use abbreviations for the books, so I will list them (Continue Reading)

What I'm Reading Now
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