Star Wars EU Thread.
No new Disney canon allowed only legends.
What books have you read?
I am currently reading Children of the jedi.
Never read anything from the EU. Anything you'd recommend?
Didn't Disney kill the EU? I would have thought it would have been source material for them but as usual coorperate suits and self-annointed screenwriters think they can do everything better.
If they can de-canonize what is stopping them from de-canonizing the original films? They could get J. J. Abrams to rehash them and give them a Disney make over. I always thought Empire Strikes Back would be better if it had more convoluted plot and characters flatter than a loli’s chest.
http://4-ch.net/games/kareha.pl/1206548566/
This is a nice thread. Let's have a book edition.
I just read my first book by Haruki Murakami, "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle". Murakami gets a lot of praise in these parts, and after reading this book, I can confirm that it isn't unfounded. The book to me felt a bit weaker towards the end, but I really liked hearing the stories of Nomonhan, Siberia, and such.
>>110
shortly after writing this, I got distracted and never finished the sequel. well, I'm here now to announce that I did it! This month I finished the sequels: The Ocean of Years, and The Shores of Tomorrow by Roger MacBride Allen.
The Chronicles of Solace series was pretty good! It's a very tense yet slow experience and the author loves to summarise and revisit previous events, which can make it a bit boring to binge through and potentially frustrating for some - skimming is definitely recommended during the recaps at the start of each sequel, and for the first half of book 2, which really drags itself out. (I originally stopped reading due to boredom getting through book 2 but returned because the plot hook was interesting!) However, I found it lead to a very detailed cast and world, with the story culminating in a satisfying conclusion thanks to multiple converging plot threads tying together neatly. The only irk is some extreme handwaving of sci-fi mechanics at the closure of the book - despite a lot of thought put in to much simpler ones earlier.
Overall I think the concepts put forward by the series are a fascinating read, recommended if you want a slow burn classic sci-fi with a focus on time and space navigation and terraforming.
Art of Unix Programming by Eric S Raymond
Its full of pro-open source propaganda
ed mastery by Lucas
very good, learn good stuff
Steelworkers in America: The Nonunion Era by David Brody
Probably my first serious history book(though the posters here would not be impressed) and I wasn't disappointed. Brody has a focus on the community of an immigrant neighborhood and how steel men slowly dug their paws into it in order to disrupt any future strikes. It exposes their interest in "culture" as an attempt to portray the union men as ungrateful. So many truths in one read. Will dig deeper into the topic.
They Closed Their Schools: Prince Edward County, Virginia, 1951-1964 by Bob Smith.
It's a very personal read due to the amount of interview sourcing Smith relies upon, and his use of differing stories to show how suffocating Southern civility was in determining the truth of any event is...okay? I noticed it but didn't think much about it.
I struggle to say anything substantial about it that wouldn't just be a summary of the events like my last post, but I do like the air of futility given at the end. The "Uncle Tom" of this story not viewing the children as ungrateful or too brash but rather doomed to fail, simply because the organization of white money in the county was too great, too swift, binding together at a level of organization the blacks could only dream of. That's almost definitely a major misreading, but it was my first impression of it.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
HOLY CRAP! This book is amazing, and a true work of art that can only come from a divine power. The book provides great in-depth detail of a hungry caterpillar and his struggle to quench his hunger in this new world, but eventually succumbing to lust for food and making an example of what can come from gluttony, a tummy ache. I recommend this book for all of those wanting to educate themselves and become self-conscious of this caterpillar's story.
Anyone else think that it's kind of absurd to post here? I'm pretty sure that at least 85% of 4ch reads nothing that isn't online.
>It is entirely possible to use the net AND read books.
Not at the same time though. That ends in nothing but confusion.
Many classical literatures are available online as electronic text nowadays.
OP is wrong. I love books.
umm I find it's better to post on any of these text boards than on imageboards. I'm just so afraid I'll get made fun of by other /b/tards.
I love books. Though I think it's unfair to discount the internet as "unliterate" or whatever. There's the Gutenberg project and stuff, yeah, but...I have been truly amazed by the beauty and veracity of some internet copypasta. Or at least some good writing.
As we all know, smoking is really bad for your health. What a lot of people don't realize is that when you smoke, those few minutes of your expected lifespan are literally transformed into the ash you flick away into an ashtray. Ashtrays, each and every one of them, are constructed by a single group running several dozen front companies.
Basically, unless you're putting out your smokes beneath your heel or in the ashtray your kid made at camp, you're dispensing your ashen life into this group's eager little recepticle. Their ashtrays absorb the life force from the ashes and sends it to a central holding facility. No one knows for sure what these guys are going to do when they've collected all that life energy, but it's probably going to be huge.
Incidentally, there's talk of a rival organization leading the anti-smoking political agenda from behind the scenes. They probably figure removing smoking sections, and thus ashtrays, from restaurants and bars is a good first step towards thwarting whatever it is this ashtray company is trying to do.
"The copypasta" may become the great new literary form of the 21st century, just as "the film" overtook "the novel."
Yes
i am a heron. i ahev a long neck and i pick fish out of the water w/ my beak. if you dont repost this comment on 10 other pages i will fly into your kitchen tonight and make a mess of your pots and pans
I read the anarchist cookbook and it sucked! I tried Uncle Ted’s book but everyone’s read that already. De Sade is just porn spam that’s not even gurochan tier. Lolis are banned in my country. I need some recommendations.
Fascism: 100 Questions Asked and Answered. 90% of it is just establishing a new parliament based on interest groups(e.g one for the steel industry, one for agriculture, etc.), holding foreigners on a tight leash, and forcing capitalists to use local labor. I think he mentions something about expanding pensions and welfare, but my memory is shoddy. Honestly not much even a normie would disagree with minus the anti-Jewry.
I read Sayyid Qutb. He really isn't that bad. It's basically, dictatorship is bad, people should be free, religion commands us to fight for freedom. That's literally it. I'm disappointed. CNN told me this guy was the philosopher behind ISIS. It's all a lie as usual.
I read Bin Laden’s Letter to America. I don’t see what the fuss is about. It’s just him carefully explaining why he attacked America and most of the points were pretty reasonable and not the “he just hates our freedoms” thing. Turns out Bin Laden doesn’t like America propping up Israel or dictators or the Saudis and as a weeb he didn’t like the nuking of Japan. There’s a whole section where he complains about US corporations polluting the earth with toxic chemicals. He also claims AIDS was spread by America, which, looking at the state of online discourse, was probably right.
I read one of Stalin’s books. He actually wrote philosophy. He’s surprisingly erudite and knowledgable and not the foaming at the mouth lunatic you’d expect. But he sees the world in a very mechanical top down way like you’d a communist dictator naturally would.
>>5
Which one did you read in particular, Anon? Maybe you could talk about it in the Lenin-Stalin thread?
>>6
Dialectical and Historical Materialism. Its supposed to be a textbook intro to Marx’s philosophy. Stalin advises readers to just ignore Hegel and his understanding of dialectics is actually closer to Fichte and then he makes it all about biological development. Lenin and Stalin literally think that every physical thing has two basic contradictory elements inside it that are opposites and studying the struggle between them gives you the key to understanding the development of that thing. They take this method and think they can apply it to literally everything, from the history of society to how to read a book and manufacture cars. Its like a crystal ball that can do everything. They consider it objective science.
None of this actually matches up with anything Hegel or Marx actually wrote, except for when Stalin quotes them like a Bible thumper at a Sunday school. It actually explains a lot about communist countries and why they were so fucked up. These people think their geniuses that figured out the truth about the universe and everyone has to obey them because muh dialectic material analysis.
I tried reading Crowley's books.
Got notified that two of my loan requests just arrived, not by telling me what the titles are, but rather some ID numbers. Why force me to cross-reference my messages manually to see what the fuck just arrived?
So we can employ more programmers to debug a system that could have been simple but your company decided to use AI powered AWS Amazon Linux Bezos OS and employ a team of chimps to arrange the books as punishment for their war crimes in Australia
I don't get it. Please rewrite it but have all the characters replaced with pop culture references.
This reminds me that I'm slogging through Years of Hunger. Told myself I would be, anyway. As dry as you'd expect but never too wordy.
where is the Putin? what is this joke? Stalin didn't kill 10 million. He killed 100 million. Get it right! How would you feel if you worked hard to get the biggest high score and some asshole online low balled it by 90 million?
We talked about pseuds in a long-necroed thread, but what about authors who have just a little bit of truth but not much else?
Take Michael Parenti for example. There's more worth in most of his citations than anything he's written himself, and most of his fans think they're Neo after reading a middle-school level pamphlet.
Nick Land. His early essays had some good ideas but then he started sipping the crackpipe and did a complete 180 and now he's an alt right shitposter that writes travel guides for the Chinese government. Nick has the dubious distinction of being beloved by both far right schizos and left wing culture vultures, neither of whom can write coherent sentences. Before he became a drug addict and acolyte of Xi Jinping, he had some decent ideas. Like capitalism depends on racism and misogyny for smooth functioning, that humanism sucks, and instead of fighting the system we should just push it to collapse. Then the rest of it is incoherent rambling and filler designed to make him look smart and his more recent writing, if you can call it that, is just vapid /pol/ tier hot takes on twitter.
Haruki Murakami is one of those boring midwit novelists who is only read by white girls so as to look cultured and cosmopolitan.
Yuval Harari is possibly the ultimate midwit intellectual of our times. His books a short on scientific evidence and while most of what he says is just a summary of stuff people have known for years, his own innovations are sensationalist and the primary source is his ass.
So is there any good lit on Hamas? Since we already have an IRA thread might as well have a Palestinian one.
Tariq Beconi’s book is good
What does Fateh even know about Hamas? Let me tell you right here, nobody takes that Mahmoud Abbas seriously. His own men are trying to assasinate him. While he was scrambling for Israeli pay checks, Hamas went and attacked Israel and made him look like fool again. What's Netanyahu even going to do about it? He's already lost. He's never winning an election after this and that's if the irate Jews don't string up him from a post like Mussolini.
If you want good books on Hamas try Tamimi's Hamas A History From Within. You can also read their 1987 charter (it's not pretty and there's a lot of rambling about Jews) and their 2017 charter (we're just moderate democrats now with guns and Israel is a fascist country). You know I don't think people care. Just don't get your reading list from Herzog who's trying convince us all they have chemical weapons (it's like a meme at this point) and they read Mein Kampf to kids.
Just read Finkelstein's books. You can't sink the Fink. Gaza An Inquest Into It's Martyrdom.
Just started "The Secret History of The IRA" by Ed Moloney. Anyone else researching this topic?
I'd recommend Richard English's book Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA. It's pretty comprehensive, tracing the origins of the IRA in the 20s, covering the various armed campaigns and finally dealing with The Troubles and peace process. He gives a pretty nuanced and detailed look at what drove the IRA to violence in the early 1970s, covers the split between Officials and Provisionals very well and the secret talks with the Harold Wilson government. Kieran Conway, the IRA's director of intelligence, wrote an autobiography, Southside Provisional, which is worth a read. He's featured in the docu series Spotlight on the Troubles: A Secret History which covers the entire conflict with interviews with leading figures on all sides and access to declassified or leaked documents which shine a light on secret negotiations, the role of Gerry Adams in plotting attacks, and collusion between the British army and loyalist paramilitaries etc.
The IRA had shit tons of guns and ammunition given to them by the Libyans but never really did anything with it other than shoot a few cops and detonate car bombs once in a while. As a guerilla organization they were a total failure.
>>3
How? They went from being branded terrorists to parliment politicians with one of the largest and most popular parties. I'd call that a success. IRA have shown us that you can bomb, shoot and kill your way into high office. I'm surprised more people aren't adopting this strategy. It would certainly make the two party system more lively.
No they were very good at what they did. They had weapons, bombs and people supporting them. This scared the shit out of the retards in Westminster. They sent their military into Northern Ireland to try and put it all down, but the IRA and Irish in general resisted.
They didn't have aims to cause immense terror and suffering on the Irish population which is why they never really sought to use those weapons in excess. This is why they mostly did targeted attacks or would detonate bombs in places but give warning to authorities ahead of time so they could evacuate.
They successfully harassed the United Kingdom enough to make them essentially concede and withdrawal. There was no Irish reunification (not yet, at least, but hopefully one day) but they managed to draw down the conflict and get the UK to fuck off. They then evolved and morphed into one of the most successful political parties in the history of Ireland.
The IRA was never that successful outside South Armagh and maybe East Tyrone and Monaghan (at least untill Pat Kelly was killed at Loughgall). They had weapon supplies that most guerrillas could only dream of and lots of talented people but never used them well. There's a former US marine who fought with the IRA who wrote a book about his experiences. He said the IRA leadership just didn't care about skill. They had guys with serious military training but never used their full potential. They never had those guys train or lead other men.
>They then evolved and morphed into one of the most successful political parties in the history of Ireland.
Yet the Provisional IRA is still banned in the Republic and the UK. Politics is what happened. The IRA could have fought an effective military campaign to force the British out of Ireland. But Sinn Feinn realized they could use the army as leverage to further their political careers and that's exactly what they did. That's also why the Libyans and the Palestinains begun pulling their support.
Still better than the nothingburger that was(and are) the Puerto Rican nationalist movement.
I've been reading Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Needless to say it is close to unintelligible for me. What secondary lit should I read to properly understand it?
>>1
You can’t go wrong with the Cambridge Companion to Hegel. There is Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History by Buck Morss which is provides an alternative look at Hegel’s intellectual influences. There is a series on YouTube called Half Hour Hegel which goes through the entire Phenomenology including the preface and introduction.
>>2
Thank you! I have heard of Half Hour Hegel but it the book on Haiti, that sounds very interesting.
I've been here, >>1, and I recommend giving up. Whilst it does start to sink in after a lot of study and exposure to dumbed-down explanations I'm not sure it's worth the effort and what little I did gleam from my initial attempts I have long since forgotten. Go read Kierkgaard instead (who likes to poke fun at Hegel)
>>4
You still learn quite a bit by pushing through a dense philosophical book, even if you don’t understand what the author’s trying to get across it makes reading these books in the future a little easier. Sometimes the journey is better than the destination as the old cliche goes. It’s perfectly fine to go through a book and not really remember what the author is doing beyond a vague gist of what they’re trying to say.
>>1
Mind if I ask why your reading Hegel? Have you tried reading Hegel before? your a beginner you shouldn’t really start weigh Hegel and if your new to reading him you shouldn’t start with the Phenomenology but his Lectures on the Philosophy of History which provides you with nice intro to how Hegel sees world history and eases you into his dense writing style.
Anyway, if your looking for secondary sources I’d seriously recommend the Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Hegel’s Phenomenology of the Spirit by Robert Stern. It’s a really good introduction that’s beginner friendly and written in an easy to follow clear fashion.
>>5
I am reading Hegel because he's pretty much the guy everyone thinks overcame Kant (who I really like) and I wanted to evaluate his criticism.
>>6
Great! With a bit of patience and second hand reading you shouldn’t have an issue. I actually think Hegel is a lot easier to read than Kant lol
Since the creation of this thread Pinkerton has released a paragraph-by-paragraph explainer companion. I recommend this and Houlgate's reading guide for a boring-but-classroom reading of the Phenomenology.