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.
The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice by Christopher Hitchens
Not sure when my mother got all super atheist, but it was right around the time she retired and didn't have to be polite to anyone ever again. So I got this book (or long essay?) shoved in my face.
Hitchens never has anything nice to say, not even about Mother (Fucking) Teresa. Turns out she was cool with terrible right-wing dictators and misappropriated donations. Then again, that's the Catholic hierarchy in general. If you're looking for a reason to hate a saint, go for it. If you prefer to believe she was a generally good person, or that anyone can ever be anything approaching any Christian definition of good, I'd ignore it.
Rossiya: Voices from the Brezhnev Era by Alex Shinshin
A slightly interesting memoir of a trek across the USSR and the Eastern Bloc in the 1970s. Traveling from Vladivostok to Poland, Shinshin most-memorably notes subtle instances of Soviet rebellion in an era when supposedly no such thing existed. If you're into this sort of thing, you'll like it. Otherwise, you'll wonder why I'm even bothering to type so many (72) words about it.
The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason by Sam Harris
OM[Undefined], we get it. Christian/Islamic fundamentalism is awful. We know. This book seems to insist we can be "spiritual" without any god and that mostly involves Buddhism. Sure, whatever dude. The Buddha gets his oranges and incense as part of my personal superstition, and I live your dream or not, or whatever. In the meantime, my adopted gods have obviously acquired a taste for Clif Crunchy Peanut Butter Energy Bars in addition to their favorite bananas, as evidenced by my good fortune in traveling the South Pacific. Watch me fail to give a fuck and continue to leave offerings for the good of my wayward traveling companions who give their offerings to the wrong piles of rocks. I guess this might appeal to you if you have never once heard of an alternative worldview. Otherwise: atheism, yadda, yadda, yadda, the most-logical option.
Sorry, I can't believe there's such a market for these books.
The Russia House by John le Carré
Imagine James Bond told from the perspective of his accountants. It's kind of like that. Except imagine that the James Bond in question fell into spying after his career in banking fell through. Not sure why this was forced on me, but hey, it offers some highly fictionalized accounts of the everyday early Perestroika-era Soviet lifestyle and I dig that for some reason. An entirely bureaucratic spy novel.
The Vast Unknown by Broughton Coburn
It's about the first American expedition to the summit of Mount Everest. After having been beaten in the race to #1 in nearly everyone else by 1963, Americans seek to play catch up in mountaineering too. Notable for a few technical firsts, the expedition was otherwise routine, including the death of one member. As far as these books go, it's OK. The best part is mention of the Camel cigarettes tie-in promotion. Oh, 1963, you so silly.
The Greenlanders by Jane Smiley
Difficult to read if only because everyone has a difficult name. Gives a highly-fictionalized account of the many trials of the Norse Greenlanders in a style sort-of reminiscent of the sagas. Greenlanders were the hardest of Viking remnants, who managed to eke out an existence through primitive pastoralism in the worst theoretically-habitable place on earth. They did this for close to five hundred (miserable) years. They died out due to isolation, climate change, and invasion on two fronts. Take note, Western World! Or read about Rapa Nui, I guess.
Otherwise, cherish hilarious (in the Icelandic-sense, so not particularly) tales of St. Olaf the Greenlander and the various drawn-out stories of so-and-so's-dottir living a full and detailed life before suddenly dying by falling through thin ice while seeking out her lost sheep. If you're into misery porn, you might as well learn something from it! Read it!
The World Without Us by Alan Weisman
Taken from a series of magazine articles, it sure has that feel to it. Interesting stuff, most of which is plastic is bad, m'kay. If you deny the human influence on climate change, then buy six copies, have them delivered overnight air, burn them, read it on your good iPad and have a good laugh. Otherwise, it might make you a little nervous about the future.
Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune. by Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell, Jr.
Las Vegas is in Clark County, Nevada. This story is about Hugette Clark. The woman inherited something like $300M, when that kind of money was a lot more than a Powerball prize. She used her fortune to live as a recluse in a New York apartment for thirty years and thirty+ more in a hospital room. All this while she owned sizable estates on the Santa Barbara and Delaware coasts that she hadn't visited in sixty years. Purely from an accounting perspective, this is a lot of fun!
Man I need to start reading again
>>91
I think the thanking is a good idea. For whatever reason, people get unduly attached or committed to their items. I guess it's the sunk cost fallacy. Making that commitment explicit by "thanking" it, makes it easy to get over and realize it was just a tool that had a purpose which is no longer needed without feeling guilty.
<i>Constellation Games</i> by Leonard Richardson
A disenchanted antihero game developer quickly becomes a pivotal player in a first-contact scenario by reviewing alien video games. I loved this book and I plan to read it again soon. Highly recommended for science fiction fans who also happen to be programmers.
Serotonin, by Houellebecq.
It was bleak. I love this author.
I recently finished The English Patient, by Michael Ondaatje. It had some really breathtaking prose, and the narrative structure is also fantastic.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid, by Jeff Kinney
I fucking lmao when Greg's dad dumped a garbage can of water on teens for Halloween, classic.
I finished Profesor Unrat by Heinrich Mann yesterday. It's about a paranoid nutcase of a teacher and it's beautiful. I've read afterwards that it#s about social critique and changing politics embedded in the historical context in which it was conceived yada yada yada but I think it's quality is vastly increased if you read it like it is. Compared to Thomas Heinrich's style is a lot more funky and interesting but also more light-hearted so it hits altogether differently.
>>95
I liked that one as well, I read Oblomov some time before that and somewhat hoped he would kill himself so I was welcoming the serotonin ending
Just finished "Flower for Algernon", by Daniel Keyes.
It got me in tears at the end, I just realized how much potencial I am wasting with each passing day by doing nothing at all, while so many people wished they had the opportunities I have.
It is a very good read and I can't recommend it enough.
>>99
I read that when I was a teen and cried as well at the ending.
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
Been reading the Redwall series, finished the first two books, about halfway through the third.
It's a pretty fun little series, but I remember catching a look at the wikipedia and seeing a mention of criticism of it being repetitious, and I have to agree with what I've read so far.
It's not a major deal breaker or anything but the riddles and exactly 2 named allies dying among other thins is annoyingly ever-present. The main protags are also all very similar but that's kind of the point so whatever. 3rd book is looking a little fresher at least so far.
Also I had the weirdest issue reading the first one in that it has some weird early installment thing where it's vaguely implied they live in a world with humans with human-sized carts and buildings and the like; it was really confusing to try and envision it in my head since other parts made it seem like things were the size of the animals. And Redwall itself is made much, much smaller in the 3rd book, so at least it's not an issue in the later entries.
>>1
I've read The white nights, by Fedor Dostoievski. A short book, However, a great book.
I listened to an English translation of "La Maldicion de la Cabeza Reducida" but forgot to make a file for the last chapter.
"Paperback, 72 pages
Published [2009-06-01] by TPRS Publishing, Incorporated"
Links:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12433349-la-maldicion-de-la-cabeza-reducida
https://www.teachersdiscovery.com/product/la-maldicion-de-la-cabeza-recudinda-level-2-intermediate-low-spanish-novel/spanish-clearance
https://www.abebooks.com/book-search/isbn/9781934958971/
https://m.directtextbook.com/isbn/9781934958971
https://fluencymatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Spa-Maldicion-TG-Web.Spl_.pdf
https://fluencymatters.com/courses/la-maldicion-de-la-cabeza-reducida-e-course/
https://cinovels.fandom.com/wiki/La_maldición_de_la_cabeza_reducida
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehensible_Input
https://www.amazon.com/Maldicion-Reducida-Pinelands-Regional-Spanish/dp/1934958972
Just finished Watership Down.
A thoroughly captivating read from beginning to end, beyond what I expected even as I already had high expectations. I'm not altogether sure why, but reading about the little group of rabbits fighting against the odds to achieve a happy life through strength and smarts was very satisfying. I also liked the sort of culture the rabbit's were given, it was clever and worked well in the narrative.
I was actually a bit surprised to find the story to be as happy and sentimental as it was; I had heard it was quite the brutal tale, and, while there was blood and death to be sure, it wasn't nearly as grim as I was expecting. I imagine that must be more associated with the movie, considering its own reputation as not being a typical children's film and knowing that The Plague Dogs movie, based on another book by the same author, was actually made more dismal than the book, if I remember correctly.
Altogether, I enjoyed this book immensely. It's no wonder its considered such a classic.
Read Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
Pretty standard fare I'd say, and, though the fact I was familiar with the movie adaptation probably gives me a bias to some extent, I feel the film was in fact a better piece of work, even considering the deus ex machina in the amulet. The novel was surprisingly rather bland and short, the main conflict just sort of came and went without much issue and even that much trouble for Mrs. Frisby aside from her capture; the movie did a lot to show a beautiful advanced world and definitely showed more of the protagonist's emotions and inner challenges. Actually having Jenner present as an antagonist helped the climax a great deal I believe as well, the scientists trying in vain to capture the rats was a lot weaker for an ending.
The story itself was fine at least, but I don't think it's very surprising the adaptation is much more famous.
Just finished reading Neuromancer. Been on my backlog for about ten years at this point, but so glad I finally got around to it. Some aspects are understandbly dated, but this serves only to contrast the amazing vision of “cyberspace” that existed in Gibson’s dreams, long before the advent of the internet. Brilliant stuff.
I read The Depths of Time by Roger MacBride Allen, borrowed from the Internet Archive’s digital library. It was pretty good, I might read the next book in the seties.
Read Raptor Red a little while ago
An alright book, starts off pretty weak but it picks up quickly for the most part. The weird combination of anthropomorphic thoughts/actions alongside these really out of place overly-specific technical descriptions almost killed it for me, though it lessens up as it goes on (or I just got used to it). Word choice was kind of odd throughout the story as well, like the use of "Darwinian" 4 times in the first chapter and the use of the word "shit" like 6 times on one page and then never again. Just obtuse language here and there like the whole sentence "Another vital bit of information was added to the hard disk of her mental computer."
That kind of thing makes it VERY obvious this novel was written by a paleontologist and not a professional writer, which in all fairness has a charm of its own.
Like I said, it does get interesting and becomes a fun read but something about took me out of it every few pages.
Finished The Hobbit. Reread it for the firs time in a long while. Might actually be better than I remembered, it's really charming and such a perfect distilled version of fantasy. Tolkien went a long way to make the story feel like it was actually being related to you in a really cozy way. And not being intimately tied into an overarching epic like LOTR is pretty nice too in that it's a short, pleasant read.
Finally finished Tolstoy's war and peace. it took me nearly 5 years but i'm finally done with it. a lot better than i thought it would be, i kept quitting and putting it off to read other stuff only to come back to it later. its actually pretty good once you get past the ancient writing style and just how slow and dry the start is. i wouldnt recommend it though. save yourself the time and read as summary online.
Just finished Political Theology by Carl Schmitt. It’s a short work, to the point, and can be finished in just two hours. Schmitt dives straight in with his famous definition of the sovereign as “he who decides on the state of exception.” From this he unfolds an infamous critique of liberal democracy manifest in the Weimar Republic. Schmitt argues that politics hinges on a distinction between friend and enemy, a fundamental distinction liberals try to deny or erase while in the process make things much worse. Whereas Schmitt advocates a pragmatic and realist engagement with the enemy, as someone who can be respected and traded with, liberals maniacal obsession with humanity leads to the dehumanization of the ‘other’ and this reduction of the enemy to less than human invites all kinds of brutal atrocities. Schmitt concludes that the ‘depoliticizing’ tendencies make liberal regimes unattractive and incapable. There is a lot of debate over Schmitt’s own politics and he’s relationship with Nazism, although a party member it’s debatable whether he was so out of genuine conviction or simply a pragmatic move to ensure his survival in Hitler’s Reich. Overall, I found Schmitt’s arguments to be thought provoking but not always entirely convincing, why exactly should we accept his claim that the political is founded on an antagonism? Nevertheless, his critique of liberalism helps us understand how that ideology has maintained a stranglehold over humanity despite the numerous atrocities it has inflicted on us.
Industrial Society and Its Future by Ted Kaczynski.
7/10
Ted has a lot of great stuff to say about technological determinism and the creeping effects on human autonomy and freedom. Sadly, too much of his book is spent analyzing leftism, and while he makes a good point it's poorly worded and takes up too much space. It's a shame because you can bring in the Frankfurt School and look at how their criticisms of instrumental reason sit with Ted's anti-technological revolutionism. Nevertheless, it's a good read and worth picking up. Just be careful where you download it. The last thing you want is to end up on a government watchlist.
Messages to the World - Osama Bin Laden translated by Bruce Lawrence
Bin Laden spoke with eloquence and clarity while being the most wanted man in human history. But in the translated interview with Aljazeera reporter Tayseer Allouni, Osama falls apart and comes off as an incoherent chunni whackjob. Other than that, it's pretty simple: America commits crimes around the world and are evil. Nothing new or special. One thing that surprised me was Bin Laden didn't really have much of a political vision of the future he wants to create and he doesn't come up with elborate theories like most paranoid whackjob political types.
4/10
>>117
You have to give Ted credit where it’s due. His ideas about technological determinism are pretty on point even if he is just a serial killer.
I few months ago I finished reading Self-Made Man by Norah Vincent.
Well, it did not change in how I view men and women.
The problem is that most of her struggles in a social setting were due to the fact that she was afraid that people would discover that she is in drag, and if those people discovered it, they would harm her.
The prose was nice, very easy to read.
All this thread does is remind me that I don't finish anything. I get a few good days, sometimes weeks of reading and then depression comes around and I don't feel like doing anything. I can force myself to read for about 20 minutes during those times and then my brain's noise/self-hate blocks out any further information so I can't even parse the words in a single sentence.
>>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.