What are you reading, Lain?

I really enjoyed reading the old /lit/ thread, both to find suggestions for books to read, as well getting some indication as to what Lainons are reading & where their interests lay. ITT: Share what you're currently reading, what you've read, and/or what you'd like to read (especially when another Lain has it in the former two categories.) Also ITT: General discussion of books, especially those that are mentioned in this thread. Feel free to request recommendations or solicit opinions, or bring up a relevant topic of discussion.

>curretnly reading H.P. Lovecraft The Complete Cthulhu Mythos Tales The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles -Really liking this book so far. I'm currently almost done with the first project. I am a first year (technically sophomore due to AP classes and a short summer semester) EE student and I've always wanted to know how to build a basic computer from scratch. It's a godsend. >what you'd like to read I'll probably read Brave New World after finishing Lovecraft. I've read 1984 already and loved it.

>>24 I'll start. (Addendum, >>25 beat me to the punch.) I've just returned from vacation, and have been reading a lot: Currently Reading: + Stories of Your Life, And Others - Ted Chiang (Extremely good collection of sci-fi by an author I wish I'd heard about years ago; the titular story is the basis for the film "Arrival". Many themes in his stories, while not necessarily cyberpunk, would appeal to Lainons.) + Universal Harvester - John Darnielle. (I adore the Mountain Goats, and when one of my hosts informed me he had written another book, I immediately went & purchased it. Very good so far; think I enjoyed his Wolf In White Van more.) + Virtually Human: The Promise and the Peril of Digital Immortality (Seems very interesting to so, was very excited to read this but got totally sucked in to the above two books.) --- Recently read: + Neuromancer - William Gibson (This has been sitting on my shelf for years. Wish I'd read it a decade ago.) + They Know Everything About You: How Data-Collecting Corporations and Snooping Government Agencies Are Destroying Democracy - Robert Sheer (Both a wonderful exploration of the fundamental right to privacy, and the reality of the corporate and governmental ventures that undermine that right. I found out things from this book that really unsettled me.) + Data & Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World - Bruce Schneier (Similar vein as above, but far more in depth, on both the technical and the philosophical front) + The Wind Up Bird Chronicles - Haruki Murakami (I tried to read this years ago and put it down halfway. Glad I stuck it out this time. What a weird ride.) Want to Read: I picked up Snowcrash on the vacation. I don't really think I'll enjoy it, but figured I'd give such a lauded classic a shot. I have a small stack of Rushkoff here, namely, PresentShock and Throwing Rocks At The Google Bus. I also have a PDF of Cyberia - which gave the SEL club it's name - that I hope to get to soon. Various books on the CIA, recent war histories, Naomi Klein's latest... a glut, will tackle that when I get there.

>currently reading The witcher series, i'm currently in the second book of short stories (the sword of destiny) and it's really good. Geralt is an excellent character and the stories are completely out of what i initially expected. I was expecting epic tales, what creatures he killed, etc.. But it's not about that at all, each story talks about an aspect of his personality and the people around him, not only that but each story has a different feel to it, there are love stories, detective stories, dragon-slaying stories and even secret society stories. There's a short society about a city that hates non-humans and sorcerers, and in this city there's a secret society of mimics! Mimics who shapeshift into church officials to chase other mimics and save them! And there's this awesome dialogue of a mimic confronting geralt about his right to be happy and get drunk and fuarrrk and have a wife without fearing for his life. I do no justice to it with my poor english and horrible descriptive skills, though. I'm positively surprised on these first two books, and i really hope that the witcher-saga books (the ones that tell a linear story) don't lose this simplicity of common people dealing with common problems and feelings. I'd recommend these first 2 books for anyone. >what you'd like to read After finishing the 7 witcher books, i'll probably start reading Dune.

Anyone here into Balzac? I read Father Goriot a while back and it is one of my favourites. Basically a look at corruption within fashionable society in post-Napoleon Paris and a man's obsession with achieving social status. (Highly simplified description, this book has it all) But Balzac's writing is more playful and ironic than morose as he describes the decadence and inanity of high society. This theme is kind of common in French writing around that time (Stendhal, Flaubert..) but Balzac's got a distinguishing cheekiness that makes him fun to read while also being great literature. What really stands out is his characters. If you like stories with lots of characters with deep personalities who develop in very interesting ways.. you should give it a try. Right now I am reading his Cousin Bette which looks like it is going to be another winner.

mods, can i request that this be moved to /lit/? uploading the first story out of the Stories of Your Life and Others. This transcription looks pretty janky, there's a typo in the opening sentence, for example. Ignore the text at the top, the story begins with: >Were the tower to be laid down across the plain of Shina

>>24 Current Metro 2033, Planning: Metro 2034/2035 Audio books tho, since I like to listen while coding

>>30 where do you source your audiobooks? i'm afraid to say I pay for an audible subscription. but my last job, plus bay area traffic, had me driving sometimes 3 hours a day. compound that with using audiobooks to work through books while doing many other things, and it's actually been pretty great. i could stand to not pay monthly for a good audiobook source, not to mention that they're totally proprietary (and to work around that on linux requires downloading chrome)

>>31 audiobookbay.me Haven't paid for an Audiobook in yonks.

One could argue that this is one of the most important books of our time.

>>33 Nick Bostrom... Isn't he the philosopher who figured out that our reality might be simulation fir the first time?

Continuin on my IPFS education with: http://filecoin.io/filecoin.pdf

>recently finished Light Fantastic by T.Pratchett. Nice easy read with the occasional reference to Necronomicon and computer service. Man and his symbols by C.G. Jung and some others. Will most likely advance in Jungs writings as it is interesting stuff, those dreams. His collective unconcious for example is a main point in Lain. >currently reading The Holy Bible (KJV) and Seven Pillars of Wisdom by Lawrencu-san. And from the bible I read St.Matthews, fitting nicely with easter. >want to read Some easy novels, theology and some tech related books, feeling that I need to understand more about technology in todays society. Like >>25 maybe, but if anyone knows any good general computer system related books I'm open for suggestions. >>27 I have read the first witcher book and liked it, comfy with small bits of Geralts adventure and Dandelion. Is the second similair, in a good way?

>>34 There have been philosophers saying that all throughout history. Anyone who spends a moderate amount of time thinking about the nature of reality has played with that idea at some point.

Recently read >"The Gene: An Intimate History" by Siddhartha Mukherjee, >"How not to be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking", and most recently >"On Tyranny, Twenty-One Lessons from the Twentieth Century" by Timothy Snyder >The Second Machine Age Overall, I really enjoyed all four of those books, but my personal favorite of the three was "The Gene." I'm not really to into biology, but the way Muhkerjee places the entirety of the history of modern biology, and explains relevant concepts along the way is absolutely fascinating. Kind of fanlaining here, but my favorite aspect of the book in the introduction, how there are three main universal units of information: The Atom, The Bit, and the Gene. If you have the means to do so, definitely read "The Gene". It's absolutely amazing Books I want to read: >Brave New World >Patient HM

Don Quixote. Not /cyb/ in the slightest, but it is a good laugh. Only problem is that the writing can be a little awkward to follow at times; all the characters speak in very extensive prose (I'm pretty sure one sentence took up a whole page at one point). I suppose that's just how books were written in the 1600s, or it's deliberately overdone as a parody of how they were written.

>>39 I got about halfway through before my corrupted e-book file ended. I loved the bit where they're selectively burning Quixote's book collection, I think the author managed to slip in a few sly jibes at his peers and predecessors...

I'm currently reading Memoirs of the Court of Marie Antoinette, by Jean-Louise Campan. It's interesting but very dry. I've been kind of fascinated by Antoinette since reading the Rose of Versailles last summer. >>39 >or it's deliberately overdone as a parody of how they were written I haven't read it yet (someday, maybe), but this seems likely. I know it's a parody of medieval romance. I really want to get to Le Mort d'Arthur one of these days.

>>24 I don't read as much as I wish, but I'm currently reading Doom 4: Endgame. I consider thr Doom series by Dafydd ap Hugh a pretty good story but it doesn't do much in the thinking department. It is pretty much a thriller story meant to keep you in the action.

- The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories (collection of the short stories of Washington Irving) - The Complete Stories (collection of the stories of Franz Kafka) - The Book of Tea - Kakuzo Okakura - The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich - William Shirer - The Secret Life of Birds - Colin Tudge - The Dhammapada (translated by Eknath Easwaran) I've not been reading as much as I'd like to lately, so I've had a few books on the go for some months now. I think I'll finish The Book of Tea tonight. >>34 Even Decartes wondered about that. "I think therefore I am" comes from wondering what one could be certain of, even if a demon were controlling all of your perceptions. The old-world demon is the new-world simulated reality. >>36 If you like poetry (and theology), check out Paradise Lost. Words can't really do it justice, it's just so good. You end up rooting for Satan for a significant chunk of it, as he is treated so unfairly by God.

>>42 Is that related to Doom the computer game? I know there's a series of novels, but I've never read them. >>43 I love Kafka. The Trial, especially.

>>36 >I have read the first witcher book and liked it, comfy with small bits of Geralts adventure and Dandelion. Is the second similair, in a good way? Yes, it's less cheerful but follows the same structure of the first book. I liked the second one more than the first though, the stories are heavier, often miserable. I just finished reading it today and i really loved it.

>>44 The Trial is possibly my favourite. The Castle, I think I would have enjoyed more if I'd read it before The Trial, as they're both kind of similar in theme.

>>44 It's the original series, there's also a series that went with Doom 3, and an unintentionally hilarious comic. What I really want is to track down the two Shadow Warrior novels...

>>43 how are you liking the dhammapada? also super curious on your take on the book of tea. what works have your explored along a similar vein (for each or either book)? forgot to mention that i also replaced my long lost copy of Man In The High Castle, since it mysteriously disappeared before I ever got to finish it. the concept of aleatoric composition involving the i ching, written by dick, pushes all the right buttons. also, really want curious as to whether anyone else has read ted chiang. his writing is beautiful, his concepts are super thought provoking, could definitely be considered somewhat cyberpunk. (he also has a background in computer science.) I haven't read this story yet (I've just started the titular story that was adapted in Arrival), but maybe someone here will get a kick out of it. > Ted Chiang - The Lifecycle of Software Objects http://subterraneanpress.com/magazine/fall_2010/fiction_the_lifecycle_of_software_objects_by_ted_chiang/

>>46 It's been many years since I read them, but I remember both The Castle and Amerika being kind of dull compared to The Trial. Although, as an American, Amerika is amusing for how little it actually resembles my country. His shorter stories are similarly hit and miss. My favorites are probably Metamorphosis, A Hunger Artist, and The Judgement. >>47 YOU'RE HUGE, THAT MEANS YOU HAVE HUGE GUTS! RIP AND TEAR! >>48 >dhammapada I'm not that guy, but I've dabbled in Buddhism off and on since high school, and the Dhammapada is a book I keep coming back to. It's just a long list of rules and advice, so it isn't particularly fun to read, but it's short and wise.

>Currently Reading A Fine and Private Place by Peter S. Beagle. It's nothing special as far as musings on life and death go but the fact that he published it when he was 19 is remarkable. Going on to The Last Unicorn next. Also I'm always working my way through the complete works of Gene Wolfe, probably the greatest living science-fiction author. I tried Chiang but he didn't do anything for me. His work felt dry and clinical and somehow reminded me of Margaret Atwood, who I don't care for.

>>50 huh, different tastes, it seems. i love what i've read of atwood (namely, the MaddAdam series.) I find it curious that you've found Chiang's work as you described. For curiosity's sake, who are some other authors, especially in the sci-fi realm, you enjoy or rank highly? I haven't checked out Gene Wolfe, I'll look into him (Book of the Long Sun sounds interesting.)

I am currently reading "The Fall" by Albert Camus. It was recommended by a lainon on the previous /lit/ thread. So far I think it's pretty interesting. Going to be reading "Count Zero" next.

I'm reading Seven Surrenders, the sequel to Too Like The Lightning. It's a little disapointing. Too Like The Lightning was kinda like the most exciting worldbuilding I've read in a long time. Every page something novel and interesting was happening. The sequel finishes the main story, from what I understand. What we are learning now and how plots are resolving is a little less exciting than I had hoped. Still feel positive about it, but not as positive as Too Like The Lightning.

Is the Lain Volafile room linked anywhere from the main page?

>>54 V next to the twitter icon in the top bar.

>>48 >Dhammapada I think I'll start it again. I've read the first two parts, 'Twin Verses' and 'Vigilance', but it's been so long I can't really remember them. I did very much enjoy the introduction in this translation, a hundred-page overview of the Buddha's life and teachings. Each part also comes with an introduction. This is a very nice edition. >The Book of Tea It's short, but very dense. I like how it seems to be transitioning from more practical matters (the history of tea, the stages of boiling water, etc) to more spiritual things (the meaning of the decoration of a tea house, the appreciation of art, etc). There's this great little story: > Rikiu was watching his son Shoan as he swept and watered the garden path. “Not clean enough,” said Rikiu, when Shoan had finished his task and bade him try again. After a weary hour the son turned to Rikiu: “Father, there is nothing more to be done. The steps have been washed for the third time, the stone lanterns and the trees are well sprinkled with water, moss and lichens are shining with a fresh verdure; not a twig, not a leaf have I left on the ground.” “Young fool,” chided the tea-master, “that is not the way a garden path should be swept.” Saying this, Rikiu stepped into the garden, shook a tree and scattered over the garden gold and crimson leaves, scraps of the brocade of autumn! >Similar works Some of the short stories of Jorge Luis Borges probably count. More directly, Sidhartha and Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse. Siddhartha is about a man's spiritual and physical journey through life, Steppenwolf is about a man caught between worlds. I greatly enjoyed both, but I felt I was too young when I first read Steppenwolf, as I was you fairly typical somewhat-pretentious teenager without any real conflict or strife in their life. Now that I have matured a bit I think I would get more out of it. For books which retain that philosophical feel, but aren't particularly Eastern-inspired, anything by Olaf Stapledon will do. I think his masterpiece is Star Maker, about a man from Earth who is swept up into the cosmos and joins with more and more alien minds, learning more and more about life and existence, until they are exalted enough to behold the Star Maker, god. It is truly epic in scope, spanning billions of years. Last and First Men is about the entire future history of the human race (the beginning of the book is a bit dated now), and merely spans a few thousand million or so; and is referenced in passing in Star Maker.

>Currently reading Leo Tolstoy - Kingdom of God is Within Us. A lot of insight of tolstoyan movements philosophy, as well as some historical facts I was not aware of. >What you'd like to read The Foundation Trilogy by Asimov. Been a long time since I've read any sci-fi.

Dave Eggers - The Circle A movie adaptation comes out soon. I really enjoyed the book, I thought character relationships felt rather shallow and could have been explored more but it's definitely an entertaining enough read. Not sure what to read next, I was thinking maybe some hard science fiction like the Arrival book. I know it was based off a couple of short stories but they just re-released a version of it. Will have to look into it.

>>27 You put more effort into your writing than a lot of people, so your English is pretty good. So are the Witcher games based off the novels and do they differ greatly from the novels? I find it interesting that stories can be created around a game's universe, but I do not believe I have ever seen a game based on books.

>>39 So what language are you reading it in? I myself can read Spanish pretty badly, but I was gonna try and read the original first and maybe an English translation after.

>>58 FYI, Arrival is the titular story in the Stories of Your Life and Others I mentioned in the OP. I highly recommend this volume (currently reading said story.) I hadn't known of Ted Chiang until my latest romp around a bookstore, and wish I'd heard of his writing earlier. I adore it. I wouldn't really call it hard sci-fi though. Chiang himself prefers the term speculative fiction, i.e., fiction that is based on extant patterns, such as technology. You can check out the first story in the volume in >>29, although as stated in that post, there may be some errors (such as the one in the first sentence) and see if you like it. Also, The Circle++. I'm not normally much of an Eggers fan, but I read the Circle a few years ago and really loved it - and I didn't know half of the tech/*sec soykaf I know now. Have been considering rereading it in anticipation of the movie release. Also, if you'd like a non-fiction analogue to the themes of technological surveillance explored in The Circle, the "They Know Everything About You" from OP is a good introduction to modern efforts to subvert privacy, as well as the philosophy of the right to privacy. Schneier's "Data & Goliath" is a more comprehensive text on the subject, and could very much be required reading in regards to /sec/.

The Collected Stories of Breece D' J Pancake. Read "Trilobites" if you can.

>>24 >currently reading The Last Unicorn. It's good but Gene Wolfe is still far and away the greatest living fantasy/science-fiction writer.

>>24 I was about half way through Neuromancer, havent gotten back to it in a while. It seems the ebook I downloaded has some weird issue, the grammar of some sentences is really weird as if its been machine translated to one language and back to english. Can anyone corroborate this? Did anyone notice weird writing in places or is it a strange download?

>>24 currently trying to read the first volume of the art of computer programming and its going slowly but there's so much to take in. Between schoolwork and my full time factory job I hardly get to touch it but i'm working on it. It is lovely so far but I cant speak for the book as I haven't really gotten past the first part, but what I've read so far 30 pages into the book I would still recommend it to any programmer.

>Currently reading Watchmen, Heart of Darkness and The Colour Out of Space. >Recently finished The first Mistborn trilogy and the Space Odyssey quadrilogy. >Would like to read Definitely the Sprawl Trilogy, as well as the Dune series

>>59 >So are the Witcher games based off the novels and do they differ greatly from the novels? The first game starts 5 years after the last novel, so they're free to expand on the universe. At the start of the first game geralt loses his memory, so they really have a lot of freedom. They respect the universe though, things work the same way, people have the same personality, it really is an honest expansion of the universe and i could see the game as a real part of the original saga.

>>61 Thanks saved. This will definitely be my next read. A few years back when it came out I read China Miéville's Embassytown and since then I've yearned for more sci-fi that explores the complexity of things like linguistics and communication between alien species. Small things that other mainstream sci-fi perhaps overlooks.

>>65 TAoCP is usually treated more as a reference book than as one which you read cover-to-cover. >>66 What do you think of The Colour Out of Space? Have you read any other Lovecraft? There's a great German adaptation of it called Die Farbe.

>currently reading Moby Dick. Melville's ideas about the human condition resonate with me like nothing I've read before.

I just finished Axis Mundi, a story a lainon posted some time ago. It's a pretty /cyb/ tale about a hacker running an imageboard on "borrowed" equipment in an abandoned datacenter. The story is fun overall, and I especially enjoyed the author's depiction of chan shenanigans.

>>33 How many are "the most important"? If they are about 5, i'd disagree. There's quixote and finnegans wake and the origin of species and some others i guess

>>190 Running a site out of an abandoned datacentre?

SICP and the old testament, since I want to learn semitic mythology.

>>204 Yeah, after a virus wiped out the AIs that ran everything, so there's lots of people squatting in abandoned buildings. It's a pretty cool story.

The aforementioned Axis Mundis, for those interested. To the author, if you're still around, good job, I would read other stories in the same 'verse with great interest.

>currently reading Up in the Old Hotel, a collection of Joseph Mitchell's writing for The New Yorker. I'm about a quarter in and it's pretty good. He wrote profiles on unusual city characters, witty but humanizing. I recommend it, even if you don't usually read journalism or biography. >recently read Illuminatus! It was beautiful. >like to read Diamond Age Foundation Maybe a reread of Ulysses >>64 It's been a while since I read it but I remember it being pretty readable. You might want to find a different version and compare. >>117 Not >>66 but I read it last year and enjoyed it. Something lurking in the soil and in the well, draining the life of everything nearby, is actually pretty terrifying even by Lovecraft standards. >I hope the water will always be very deep—but even so, I shall never drink it.

>currently reading The Counte of Monte Cristo. I'm about halfway through, and I'm enjoying it a lot. >Next on my list Either L'Morte de Arthur or The Illiad. I received both in a really, really nice edition (hard cover, fake leather, gold edging around the papers, the works) and it would be a waste not to read them at least once. >>57 >The Foundation Trilogy I can recommend it, Asimov is one of my favorite authors

>What are you reading Early Greek Philosiphy from penguin classics >What have you read Just finished Watchmen

I've had quite a few I've been hacking at in my down time (few and far between as I finish up my last semester at university). + A Random Walk Down Wall Street + The Ego and His Own + Conquest of Bread + Snow Crash (I finished the Sprawl Trilogy recently and was really pining for some good Cyberpunk. I've only ever read Gibson and was nervous about the change, but soykaf I read half this book in a day; I really can't put it down).

>>217 I tried the Iliad a while back and couldn't get into it, which is weird because I loved the Odyssey when I read it in high school many years ago. I should really give it another try.

>reading Whatever - Houllebecq Truly the breadpilled individual of our time, actually quite good for contemporary lit >finished moscow petushki (moscow to the end of the line / moscow stations / moscow circles / etc) Contemporary huissian literature about drunk slav goes on a train journey to see his waifu in petushki gets very drunk and has discourses with fellow passengers, plot goes a bit mad towards the end, some knowledge of russian canon recommended but overall recommended >next maybe either titus groan or the slynx depending what I'm in the mood for

>currently reading Leviathan Wakes >want to read Neuromancer

Philosophy of religion: selected readings 5th Ed.

Started reading Vampire Masquerade Clan Sagas.

>reading The Skin Team by jordaan mason( i can't say anything about it honestly, it's like a schizophrenic tried to tell you about queer stuff ) >finished The glitterboys and Their Friends Between Revolutions by larry mitchell( welp, product of it's times, i read it mostly from curiosity how some users perceived reality at the time ) The Wild Boys by burroughs( lovely lovely lovely, i understand it had some "grander meaning", but i couldn't care less among all that colorful soykaf ) The City and the Pillar by gore vidal( similar reason to the mitchell's book, though i loved the book's ending, because it was somewhat relatable minus the murder and rape part ) >want to read Quarelle by genet( i loved the movie, book will be better for sure )

The Water Knife - Paolo Bacigalupi Daemon and Freedom(tm) - Daniel Suarez

The Great Passage by Shion Miura. I only started it this afternoon, but so far it's a lot funnier than I remember the anime being.

Liu Cixin - Remembrance of Earth's Past Triology (Three Body Problem, Dark Forest, Death's End), currently at Dark Forest It's the most popular SciFi novel series in China and his stories are reminiscent of Asimov, Clarke, etc. with scientists as the main characters, studying the impact of aliens on human society as a whole, etc. BREDY GUD

I'm reading >>33 but for some reason I'm reading it really fuarrrking slowly.

Right now I'm reading 2666 by Roberto Bolaño, I ain't hooked by the story yet but the way the narration is going is quite smooth so its still a pleasure to read, I've read the Savage Detectives which I loved and I'm sure that this one is going to be very good too. There is also a book from Evelyn Reed that I found very interesting, it is named Sex vs Sex or Class vs Class, and its a Marxist analysis of feminist theory and how some of such movements are changing the focus of conflict theory from class to identity and how this dis articulates popular movements. The book is quite well researched and has plenty of good arguments. Lastly I'm also reading Learning Python the hard way which I don't think I have to explain.

>>475 Really good book actually, I read it for a chinese literature class and it was one of my favorites. Probably mainly because it was translated really well and a lot more contemporary than somenof the other stuff we were reading, bit still! Had some really weird bizarre ideas in there, and the parts in the simulation were always super fuarrrking interesting.

>>33 I've always had this idea that if we do make superintelligence it would just kill itself and it would be a very frightening depiction of what awaits for humans as we advance and continue discovering and expanding our brains. And that perhaps intelligence is actually a bad evolutionary trait, and this is why we never meet any aliens because they all also killed themselves in the grand scheme of things.

>Currently reading Legend of the Galactic Heroes volume 1: Dawn, The Domination of the Draka >Previously read Farnham's Freehold, Battle Royale >Reading next The Camp of the Saints, Ready Player One

>>536 I like the approach to advanced AI in Larry Niven's Known Universe. Any super-human intelligent computer inevitably goes insane, becomes unresponsive until it thinks itself to death, or commits suicide. The one time we get to see things from the perspective of such an AI, it falls in the second category: it's simulating its own universe, acting as god, and is too busy/interested in that to bother with the outside universe and those pesky humans asking it to run calculations for them. The only other super-intelligence we encounter is biological, in the form of the Pak Protectors: super intelligent, and also programmed with very powerful instincts to protect their genetic offspring and their interests. As a result of their instincts, Protectors are genocidal when it comes to eliminating threats and acquiring resources to improve the lives of their families, to the point that all predatory/parasitic animals and poisonous plants on their planet were exterminated hundreds of thousands of years ago and their entire species has been locked in a constant state of warfare, with each clan vying for domination. Any alien species that encounters the Pak is immediately targeted for extermination as they pose a potential existential threat, or at least just competition for resources. Different clans will only cooperate so long as cooperation is mutually beneficial; as soon as one clan or the other benefits from betraying their allies, they do exactly that. When a human was transformed into a Protector (humans are evolved from Pak and Earth is a long-lost Pak colony), he noted that because of how intelligent he was, he always knew the best course of action for any given scenario, and because of his instincts he was always forced to take that course of action (or at least the one most beneficial at the time), essentially leaving him without free will to make decisions because he COULDN'T choose to do something else. If there was even the possibility of another group threatening his "clan" (which he had extended to encompass all of humanity), he HAD to act on it and take the most aggressive/extreme option available. He was basically a humanoid version of Skynet. The only time a Pak Protector is taken down by something other than another Protector is when the Protector in question WANTS to be defeated/killed; they're otherwise too intelligent for human beings or other aliens to fight; the Protector always knows what they're going to do and counteracts it. Best exemplified in Niven's novel Protector; his portrayals of Protectors in the Ringworld series get progressively flimsier because, as Niven himself admits, it's really difficult to write about a creature so tremendously intelligent when you're not that intelligent.

>>601 >neurosuggesting you wouldn't fuarrrk the one on the right

>>601 >Farnham's Freehold I've read that but it's been such a long time. I know many people find his political and sexual ideas creepy (and some of them are!), but Heinlein's always been on of my favorite sci-fi writers. Stranger in a Strange Land and the Door into Summer are probably my favorites of his. >>604 It looks like a fat Evangelion wearing ballet slippers. Does it have a vagina?

Just started Welcome to the NHK by Tatsuhiko Takimoto.

>currently reading nothing, but I'll have time again soon, so I'm gonna be reading from my want to read list then >want to read Neuromancer. it's almost blasphemy that I haven't yet, to be fair. Norwegian wood. it's such a well known Murakami work, and so far I've liked all his work that I read

Went on a bit of a buying spree lately so got a pretty hefty backlog to work through, had the week off work but have spent most of it taking naps and playing videogames rather than doing anything productive. >Recently Read Count Zero by William Gibson Nowhere near as good as Neuromancer or any of his short stories that I've read, mostly due to it taking forever to actually get anywhere, but still some solid sci-fi and the last 70 pages or so do make it worthwhile. >Want to Read The next book I'm planning to read is a compilation of some of Kafka's short stories and novellas but after that I'm planning on reading the final book in Gibson's Sprawl trilogy. Outside of fiction I'm wanting to read more of the existentialist philosophy canon, some more lefty political theory and some more of the /g/ recommended reading list.

>>698 I've been thinking this book seems pretty realistic, so I googled the author. Apparently he was a hikkikomori and wrote based on his own experiences.

Currently reading Fear and Trembling by Søren Kierkegaard, or under his pseudonym Johannes de silentio. I've never read such a difficult text, admittedly this being my first philosophical or edifying read. Part of the difficulty is picking up where Kierkegaard is being ironic or heckling in an obscure way; whether or not he's being serious about what he's saying. Lots of re-reading paragraphs and contemplation.

>>698 >/a/ >/lit pick one

>>779 Nope. You're not my real dad, I don't have to do what you tell me.

>>779 Don't spew such bullsoykaf, although you and I may not like it, nor is it highbrow, manga is still, by definition, /lit/.

>>779 MW and fuarrrk you.

>>794 I'm actually reading the original novel, not the manga. That said, there was a pretty nice manga thread (I think it was on /lit/) before the fuarrrkery.

>>779 Some years ago there was tons of anons who crossposted on /lit/ and /a/

I've been working through my Discworld books over the past few weeks. Some these I haven't read in maybe a decade. I've read Mort, Reaper Man, Soul Music, Hogfather, Equal Rites, and Wyrd Sisters in about three weeks. Today I started Witches Abroad. It's pretty fun! I never used to re-read books, because I'd remember the story and get bored. But now I'm picking up on jokes and references I missed when I first read them, so long ago. For instance, both Unseen University and the castle of Lancre are compared with Gormenghast in different books. When I last read these, I hadn't read Gormenghast, so that comparison just meant nothing to me. Now it really helps with the image I get of the architecture. >>61 I think the difference between "speculative fiction" and "sci-fi" simply comes down to what impression the author wants to give readers. For some reason "sci-fi" tends to have a bad name, as some sort of low-brow literature, at least in some parts. "Speculative fiction" doesn't have that, for reasons I cannot fathom. >>217 >The Count of Monte Cristo One of my all-time favourite books. It's just so good! I've been let down by some of the "classics", so I was a little wary when I started that behemoth of a classic book, but I was wrong to worry. >>603 >Any super-human intelligent computer inevitably goes insane, becomes unresponsive until it thinks itself to death, or commits suicide. Does that imply that humans are at some sort of "sweet spot" of intellectual development then? Smart enough to do basically whatever they want, stupid enough to not go insane.

>>62 I think Tribolites is a perfect short story and it alone should cement Breece's legacy, though I like the rest of his stuff as well. It's a shame he wasn't around longer.

>>24 The second sex by simone de beauvoir. Interesting, but she sure knows how to rant. haven't gotten too far so I can't comment a whole lot on the content but so far she's given a historical perspective on the differences between men and women and how culture was influenced by them. However, I think she kind of neglects to mention at some points that it might be the other way around: justifying the differences through official tales and points of view, while the worldview is already imbedded in the culture and the myths and explanations are just chosen to explain how they view things, not as some explanation that lead to them seeing things that way. or maybe I'm reading her wrong or haven't gotten far enough yet.

>>208 Just finished Up in the Old Hotel. The stories in the middle dragged on way too long; at some point he became fixated on fishing and one of the stories is thirty pages mostly listing the different things living in the New England bays. But "Joe Gould's Secret" made up for it all in the end. Probably going to read a couple Battletech books next. I read the first Blood of Kerensky last year and should try and get to the others before I forget the story. >>936 Discworld is great. I haven't read all of them yet and only get to one or two in a year, so I'm trying not to halt my progress by rereading any. It's getting increasingly hard to resist rereading the Death books the longer I go. They were a major influence on my life in high school.

>>207 Just finished reading this, and if the author is around: I thought it was super cool, a piece of native lainchan literature! > currently reading Scientific Thought and Social Reality - Michael Polanyi Trust - Francis Fukuyama The Lathe of Heaven - Ursula le Guin > just finished The Three Body Problem - Liu Cixin With apologies to >>475 and >>535 I have to say that I just hated this book. I love science fiction, and this got such glowing reviews that it came out that I thought it'd be one of those devour-breathlessly page-turners. But the dialogue was wholly wooden (even allowing for the fact that it's translated) with no characters having a "voice"; the protagonist (well, all the characters) go through truly existential revelations and we never get any meaningful insight into how the feel; and he's literally shuttled from one plot point to the next, without any nuance or motion - there's no impression of the character as an autonomous, decision-making, sentient human being. Like at one point, he finishes discovering a major development in the plot and the chapter closes dramatically. Then we get this: > As soon as [he finished dealing with that] the phone rang. > It was Shi Qiang [the policeman] who said it was urgent that he come down to Shi's office at the Criminal Division. Wang glanced at his watch: It was three in the morning. So without missing a beat he goes to meet the cop and within a paragraph we have: > "I'm sorry to bother you, but at least it looks like you weren't asleep," Shi said. "I have to deal with something I haven't told [the others] yet, and I need your advice." He turned to Wei. "Tell him what you told me." > "My life is in danger," Wei said, his face wooden. > "Why don't you start from the beginning?" > "Fine. I will. Actually, I've often thought about talking to someone lately ..." And then we launch into an uninterrupted chapter-long exposition of this character's entire backstory, which is also a crucial plot development. Am I going crazy? Everyone seems to love this book but everything about it seemed amateurish and ham-fisted to me. Like Liu saw a truly sublime sci-fi film and then a few months later tried to write a novelisation based on his memory of the plot but couldn't express the art and feeling that turns a compelling sequence-of-events into a truly great story. (I'm sorry for the rant but I just feel really let down by this book, not to mention a waste of 400-odd pages.)

Finished The Book Thief and I'm not really sure how to feel. It didn't have an effect on me as I couldn't connect to some of the characters, especially Rudy. But the last few chapters were really good from a drama standpoint. Starting on Catcher In The Rye.

>>698 That was really good actually. The LN has a spot on my shelf still.

just finished diamond age by neil stephenson. it was good but anathem is better. also finished up the bridge trilogy. idoru is essential post-cyberpunk.

Currently reading Nausea by Sartre There are parts of it I find a bit boring, and then there are parts that punch me in the gut with how much they resonate with me. It comes out of nowhere and I find it shocking how much I identify with it. Felt a bit the same way when I was reading Notes From Underground. Next after Nausea is The Myth of Sisyphus by Camus, and after that I'm taking the dive into The Iliad. After that one I'll probably unwind with something lighter

>>1111 I haven't read a lot of light novels, so I can't really comment on their literary quality as a genre (or demographic, or whatever), but Welcome to the NHK is a really good book. I found the main character both relatable and repulsive.

>>936 Still reading Discworld. I finished all the Witches books a week or so ago, now I'm on the Watch books, just finished Guards! Guards!. I'm also reading Helliconia, which is about a planet orbiting a binary star system with a 3000-year-long "Great Year", over which the planet heats and cools fairly dramatically, and the effect of this on the indigenous peoples. It's pretty good.

>Just finished The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea - Yukio Mishima Probably the only book that's ever made fascist ideology appealing to me, and that's saying something. The guy really knew how to transform ideology into prose, it's very beautiful. And that ending, jesus christ. >Currently Reading Augustus by John Williams. I'm very poorly read, but he's definitely my favorite author so far. I've read his Stoner and Butcher's Crossing; the former being my favorite book of all time, the latter also being incredible. I can't believe his range, and I'm saddened that he only ever wrote one minor other book besides from this (his first, Nothing But the Night, which isn't widely published and considered his weakest.) As for Augustus, it's just as spellbinding as his other works. I can't believe this man's range. It follows Emperor Augustus' life through the communications, diaries, and memoirs of those around him. As a classics nerd, I was instantly drawn into it, and the man does a damned good job of making you feel like you're in Rome. It's radically different from his infamously dry, straightforward, and piercing style from Stoner and Butcher's; he's able to adopt the (translated) Roman style of writing really really fuarrrking well. But, despite its difference in style, he's able to detail beaming humanity (I don't know a better way to describe it) into almost every sentence. The ultimate bittersweet writer. >Agrippa and Salvidienus looked at me amusedly and gave me their names; Octavius did not turn; and thinking that I saw arrogance and disdain in his back, I said: "And you must be the other, whom they call Octavius." >Then he turned, and I knew that I was foolish; for there was an almost desperate shyness on his face. He said: "Yes, I am Gaius Octavius. My uncle has spoken of you." Then he smiled and offered me his hand and raised his eyes and looked at me for the first time. My only issue? It's a bit long for Williams, and I've found myself forgetting certain events and descriptions that occurred earlier in the novel. But I'm about half-way through, and I hear the last chapter is the best. Def rec.

>>290 How are those? I have them downloaded because I'm a huge VTMB fanboy but I'm not really into the tabletop. Some of those were such a pain in the ass to track down

>>1135 Would you care to upload tose anon?

Started Myth of Sisyphus, excited to continue. I love Camus

>>1162 Camus is amazing, though it saddens me that The Stranger gets more love than The Fall

Volume 1 of Capital, by Marx. I haven't read much of any Hegel, so I'm trying to paper over any gaps in my understanding by reading Wolff's companion to Capital alongside it.

>>777 >sOren wtf - can penguin not afford a typepress with the right letters? I can understand poeple not wanting to find special characters when making an off-hand tweet or blog post, but publishing a book in his name, spelt wrong? only is more disrespectful because he never intended to release it under his own name. man, am I triggered. ø != o, jammit.

Currently reading a Confederacy of Dunces and The Fellowship of the Ring. Will probably start TTT after FotR and reading Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics to get a better grasp about economy.

I've been reading Les Miserables. Not that far in, but I enjoy it.

>>1179 >Confederacy of Dunces I never was able to see any humor in it.

>>1177 Try reading it alongside David Harvey's Capital lecture series on youtube. Dude's one of the foremost marxists alive and explains it beautifully.

>>1181 Probably because it's become damn uncanny

>>1183 Why are people still hanging here?? Ive been looking around seeing maybe a handful of posters. What happened?

>>1184 Lainchan went down for awhile, got new management, boards got rearranged, deleted, recreated, and deleted again. Smaller imageboards don't tend to really survive that much jostling, and Lainchan, though decently sized for awhile, is no exception. IMO there should only be three or four boards. 11 is way too many right now, so it feels even smaller and slower than it actually is. It's a shame too, this was a pretty great bastion from 4chan's decline. No clue where most people went though, maybe 8chan, 420chan, maybe Dreamchan or Discords communities.

>>1185 > IMO there should only be three or four boards. 11 is way too many right now I just browse /mega/, the site doesn't seem lonely this way.

>>1185 >No clue where most people went though I wander, and just happened to stop by here again today. 4chan is so soykaf now I can't end up monitoring over a couple threads at a time even if I blow a couple hours looking between a few different boards for something good, and even then I really don't care much about the threads I do end up monitoring. I gave up on most of 8ch a while ago but stop by some boards on occasion. I occasionally stop by reddit but never do more than lurk a bit. I also tried messing around with IRC some but was drinking one night a few weeks ago and talking about the things I got derezzed for on 4chan so they derezzed me from that channel, and I haven't done much more with that since.

>>1187 I would like a place to go with actual discussion. Seems the popular boards always turn degenerate with internal strife, porn spam, gas the Germans etc. From what I've seen this was a comfy place to hang out.

>>1188 Pic related

>>1188 >degenerate Last I checked there are plenty of boards for your kind, or do you want yet another place to run to because it's better, only to bring along your baggage instead of integrating and drag that place down as well?

>>1190 This. Lainchan is no place for fuarrrks like you.

>>1192 That's one book that I can pick up and enjoy a random page or several pretty much anytime. I've read it twice. His short stories are some of the best ever written. >>1189 lol, dat pic doe

This may be kinda stupid for you /lit/ people, but since you asked, I'll answer. I just finished reading Grimoire Nier, the companion to the Nier game. It was pretty fuarrrking good.

>last thing I read before Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell >what I'm reading now The Kafir Project by Lee Burvine Computer Organization and Design: The Hardware Software Interface (ARM edition) by David Patterson and John Hennessy >what I plan to read in the near future Hacking: The Art of Exploitation by Jon Erickson Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand Bad Science by Ben Goldacre

>>1127 The only light novel I have ever read was Umineko. It was beyond amazing, tbh; I was enjoying it so much. Unfortunately, however, I lost my saves and never finished. When I lost my saves, I had progressed a lot in the story, so I didn't feel like repeating it because it's really long. That was several years ago, though; so I am planning to start reading it again. That light novel got me into philosophy, so I really want to read it again.

>>1196 Does "light novel" have another meaning I don't know about? Light novels are like, crap they sell at airports and drugstores. The kind that don't require any thought from the reader. You meant visual novel, right? If you say it was "amazing" and had "philosophy" then it's not exactly light.

>>1197 Yes, I meant visual novel. Damn, I always thought visual novel == light novel. :/

>>1198 I actually like your definition better.

>>1197 "Light novel" is a Japanese term for paperback genre novels. Most of them aren't great literature, so your comparison to airport novels is probably about right. That's not to say none of them are smart, though.

Continuation of this post: >>1195 I forgot to add to the books that I've read recently: Deus Ex: Icarus Effect by James Swallow. I read this after 1984, but I forgot to add it to my post for some reason. Icarus Effect is the prequel novel to the game Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Although HR is one of my favorite games, I wasn't expecting much from it's prequel novel; however, I was pleasantly surprised; Icarus Effect is an amazing novel that really keeps you flipping the pages while you're on the edge of your seat. I started reading it on the bus (as I said, I wasn't expecting much), but then I got addicted to it and couldn't stop reading and ended up finishing it in two days.

Currently reading Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. Going to start The Histories by Herodotus after that.

>last thing I read before Finland's War of Choice: The Troubled Finn-German Coalition on WW2 >what I'm reading now Girls und Panzer: Ribbon Warrior >what I plan to read in the near future The Catcher in the Rye

>Currently reading I'm reading some short outdoor living guide that I've found on here: The complete outdoorsman handbook. I'm surprised by how well it is written. Pretty uncommon. An enjoyable read with practical and curious information and tips. I'm also reading a book called Doing Bayesian Analysis. It is a relatively simple approach to the subject and I suspect it would even be appropriate to somebody with some knowledge of probabilities who hasn't even been initiated to the Frequentist tradition in statistics. I really enjoy the throughouness of the author and that all the code is there for me to reproduce the examples. Lastly, I was reading Disposable People: New slavery in the global economy. It is an allright book but it really lack a systematic presentation of its subject. Instead of giving numbers and detailed explanation of the forms of slavery and the ways by which they are perpetuated, the authors choose to present in great length distinct examples of slavery peculiar to the countries he visited. Very lackluster, although I admire the author's work from a more political point of view. >What you've read I was just reading Decision in the Ukraine, a nice book about the Mius-front (about 1941-1943). Very dry though, I'll get back to it when I feel like it. Overall, I've had a hard time reading cover to cover this year. I guess it'll come back at some point. I mostly focus on interesting chapters in non-fictions.

Recently ive been reading The Crying of Lot 49 by Pynchon. Picked up V a few years ago when i first started reading and I was lost. Now returning to Pynchon i feel as though I can read him more easily but that I still am missing many of the finer points Next up is History of Madness by Foucault. (Going through my pomo phase if you cant tell) Finished Infinite Jest at the beginning of summer. Incredible I love IJ. Also read Catch 22 recently- well got bored halfway through after realizing the whole book was just the catch 22 concept rehashed lver and over again >>1162 Love Camus as well and these are my thoughts exactly

>currently reading The Invincible by Stanisław Lem >what you'd like to read I'll probably start Sprawl Trilogy by William Gibson

>>24 >last book I read: Finders Keepers, Stephen King >book I'm currently reading: War and Peace >book I want to read next: All Tomorrows >>1241 >Dirk Gently One of my favourite books! have you also read "Last Chance to See"? If not, you definitely should

>Last thing I read Starship Troopers >Reading now Storm of Steel >Plan to read in the near future Ride the Tiger

>>1300 Interesting, I love me some obscure WW2 fronts, specially Baltic or Artic Fronts.

I just finished reading The Idiot by Dostoevsky. I absolutely loved it, it's the first Dostoevsky book that I've read. So much of it resonated with me personally. I'm currently reading Paradise Lost.

Finished Black Jack vol 1 from Tezuka recently and started on the second. Picked up some WH40K novels and figured a few would be nice for a jumping in point for the lore.

Just finished Fahrenheit 451. That was good, though shorter than I expected. Might go with something by Dick next, or take a comedic relief break with some Pratchett.

Guys, I come to you with a dilemma. I've just finished Cormac McCarthy's "Blood Meridian," which I think is the best book I have ever read. I've also fallen in love with McCarthy's writing, as such--declarative, past-tense sentences, totally action-oriented, devoid of superfluous speculation or affectation. He's also known to use minimal punctuation (no quotation marks and almost no commas) and I've come to really like that, too. Does such writing exist in the sci-fi or fantasy genres? I need your help, lainons; McCarthy has ruined me for this whole scene and I can't recover. [pic for aesthetic]

Technical ------------------------- - Grey Hat - Nand2Tetris - Man everything Fun ------------------------- - Death's End (Liu) - My Struggle Book 2 (Knausgaard) - Hunger (Hamsun) - Traitor's Moon (Flewelling)

I've just finished "The Stars My Destination" by Alfred Bester. This novel really surprised me, it was written in 1952 but the writing style of Bester make it so modern. Clearly this book is one of a kind (for me), it's faced paced, visionnary, rich and ambitious and fiercy in its writing. The two first paragraphs showcase well what this book as to offer : "THIS WAS A GOLDEN AGE, a time of high adventure, rich living, and hard dying… but nobody thought so. This was a future of fortune and theft, pillage and rapine, culture and vice… but nobody admitted it. This was an age of extremes, a fascinating century of freaks… but nobody loved it. All the habitable worlds of the solar system were occupied. Three planets and eight satellites and eleven million million people swarmed in one of the most exciting ages ever known, yet minds still yearned for other times, as always. The solar system seethed with activity… fighting, feeding, and breeding, learning the new technologies that spewed forth almost before the old had been mastered, girding itself for the first exploration of the far stars in deep space; but, "Where are the new frontiers?" the Romantics cried, unaware that the frontier of the mind had opened in a laboratory on Callisto at the turn of the twenty-fourth century"

Found this Serbian translation on a book fair. There was a box with all sorts of random books in it, all $5 books. Dug up a little and found this lil baby. Reading it for the third time now. The translation is surprisingly good.

>>1381 I tried reading The Road and was instantly turned off by the writing style. Might have to try again.

Just started Destiny's Road. I like it a lot so far, one of Niven's better solo works imo.

History of Religious Ideas - Volume 1 - Mircea Eliade Basically this book talks about why and how the human animal became religious, and how changes in culture, technology, etc changed religion over time, how religion became more abstract as it was rehashed by subsequent holy men, and much more. Pretty good scholarly work, gave me a lot of good ideas for a book I'm writing, I guess the author basically created the field of comparative religion.

>>1200 You remind me, the first 'light novel' I ever read was All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka. It features illustrations by a certain character designer Lainons are probably familiar with. Anyway, being a soldier myself I was surprised at its many authentic elements

>>1483 I've been meaning to read that. Is it any good?

==The World That Never Was: A True Story of Dreamers, Schemers, Anarchists, and Secret Agents== by Alex Butterworth. It's the true story of different anarchist groups in the late 19th/early 20th centuries, and the police and propagandists who shut them down. Based on declassified documents, it seems that the surveillance deep state is at least over a century old, and has always been strongest in the USA and Russia. It's fascinating to read about how much power propagandists and spies had, and how for instance the miscalculations of one Russian spymaster may have directly lead to both world war one and the Russian revolution.

>>1424 eliade also has an excellent book, yoga immortality and freedom. for anyone interested in the subject, that would be the main book to read, it's the original scholarly work, without all the contemporary fluff. eliade lived that stuff, he practiced both in the brahminic and the renouncer traditions at various times, and the book is definitely opinionated. right now i'm reading neuromancer. i've read it back in the 90s, but since then i haven't had a chance to sit and read through the whole thing. it's nice to read it as a grownup and notice all the grownup details that i didn't see last time around.

>>1424 but i don't think eliade created the field, that would be an overstatement, though he's one of the major contributors. by then joseph campbell has already published his the hero with a thousand faces. that book you're reading is late 60s, where's hero is mid 50s. also like many spiritualists fof the late 20th century, eliade was a post-theosophist. you could argue that theosophists were the original "comparative religion" (even though they sucked at it and at life in general). if nothing else campbell came to it from a much cleaner direction.

just finished this. :)

>>1484 It is very good. My only complaint is that it's over too fast. But, if it weren't, I guess it wouldn't be a 'light' novel. This is the same guy who said earlier that Blood Meridian is the best book I've ever read, to give you an idea where I'm coming from with this. It's hard to communicate the interminable suffering of a war campaign in a book that you can read in one sitting. But Sakurazaka does a great job with the pages he's got.

>>1488

>>1490 I read a funny article once by a girl who works in a bookstore about all the doodbras who come in asking for that hoping to impress her, because you know it's like LONG and therefore DEEP. I wonder though, just because those guys like it, someone had to decide that it was good in the first place in order for them to catch on. I try not to discredit anything by the sole fact that some assholes recommend it.

>>1494 >>1490 If there is one thing I learnt from browsing 4chans terrible /lit/, it's that this book is the default 'white midwest suburban'-book. (This sounds weird, I know) Needless to say, it's all memes.

>>1495 Idiots who want to appear more intelligent and worldly than they are will always fetishize something or other towards that end. It really says nothing about the thing itself or the other people who got something out of it before them, the people who made it popular to begin with. I might have to read Infinite Jest now just to see what the fuss is about. I read some magazine articles of his, they were funny.

>>1498 >>1495 im the lain who read it and posted the pic of it. i used to browse 4chan's /lit/ a couple years ago so i know the memes that surround it. still, the book is really enjoyable. the diction is really fun, the narratives are interesting, and these narratives are communicated in a variety of ways, like third person indirect, meeting transcripts, interviews, stream of consciousness that is enjoyable and easy to drawn into, and 370-some endnotes. Easily the best long book ive ever read, and a strong contender for the title of favorite book. give it a try, you can always put it down if you dont like it.

I haven't read fantasy stuff for years, but I recently started playing D&D and looked to this for inspiration. Bredy gud!

>currently reading Philip K Dick Vulcan's Hammer

>just finished Lolita - Vladimir Nabakov >currently reading Totalitarianism in a Tundra - Anonymous >will read Alice - Lewis Carroll Overall not very /cyb/ picks but that's what I'm currently reading. Eventually I'll get into the /lit/ aspect of cyberpunk.

>currently reading I've been switching between Revolution in Rojava and No Brand. No Brand is a little outdated but still worth reading in my opinion. Another book I've started to read is last exit brooklyn but it's a little bit too dark for me to read before sleep. >recently finished I've recently finished The Sailor who fell from Grace with the Sea and Patriot from Mishima. Both are good books, I'm surprised by how much I like his writing. >plan to read I want to read the 4 books of the fertility (hope I don't get this wrong) series from Mishima. I also ordered some other books considered "classics", I kinda want to build up some knowledge.

>>1307 Book update: >Storm of Steel I'm honestly a bit dissapointed, it's not a book that will take you on an adventure narrated by a war veteran it feels more like Ernst Jünger just tells you how things are going on on the front. It didn't change how I look at war save for the fact that miraculous survival stories aren't that rare from wartime. I wouldn't recommend it, perhaps it has lost its edge with the passing of time. >Ride the Tiger by Julius Evola It's definitely not a book to be read just to widen your gaze. It's a survival guide (as is the subtitle of the book) for the certain type of man that Evola speaks of. It's a manual of how to live your existence as best seen fit by Evola, heavily influenced by ancient cultures and their esoteric beliefs and such. One thing that stood out was Evola's way of representing his ideas through existentialists, he sets his foundation on pointing out the "flaws" of existential thinking (of the scholarly existentialists) so in other words he calls existentialists out on a lot of things before delving into why everything in the modern world is _dissolution_ and how a proper man should exist in this 'epoch of dissolution'. If you are into neo-paganism and all the things modern RW paramilitary groups stand for (in theory at least) then maybe you should give it a read, it will awake a beast in you if it's fated I feel. The person I was a few years ago would've taken the majority of the book to heart but nowadays it's lost on deaf ears with me.

i am reading 'Influence: The Psycholigy of Persuasion' by Dr. Robert Cialdini its a good read, i try to employ more and more tricks everyday

>>1516 >Evola liked to take strolls during bombing raids because it "focused the mind". >Got hit by shrapnel >Spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair Yeah, I take anything written by Evola with a pinch of salt. Including his mystical attempt at rationalising his bigotry by attributing "tellurian" life forces to blacks. Lol, reminds me of Dave Sim making up his own version of Islam and trying to excuse his misogyny by claiming that men are "lights" and women are "voids". I guess trying to write 300 issues of a comic about a fuarrrking aardvark with a sword can make you nuts, but what was Evola's excuse?

>currently reading - Operating Systems Concepts 9th edition by Abraham Silberschatz, Peter B. Galvin and Greg Gagne - Computer Networks: A Top Down Approach 7th (Global) edition by Kurose and Ross >Plan to read: - Linux From Scratch (planning to start reading and doing it this weekend) - Head First SQL - The Design of everyday things by Don Norman - Might is Right by Ragnar Redbeard - Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

>>1516 I've been reading Evola's "Introduction to Magic" after being introduced to it from a YouTube comment on a Death in June song ("Fall Apart"). From what I've read he talks much of loss of self and what it takes to recover it. I'm a person trying to see the connections between everything. Are you a believer or practitioner of the occult? if so, what do you think of the dual connection between Death in June and magic as such?

>>1516 I've been reading Evola's "Introduction to Magic" after being introduced to it from a YouTube comment on a Death in June song ("Fall Apart"). From what I've read he talks much of loss of self and what it takes to recover it. I'm a person trying to see the connections between everything. Are you a believer or practitioner of the occult? if so, what do you think of the dual connection between Death in June and magic as such?

>>1516 what is "RW" paganism? rich white? remote and within?

>>1596 Right wing. Some neoNazis who like to paint their faces and LARP around in the forest thinking it has something to do with a religion that's been buried for 1000 years (naturally they have to invent a lot of things to fill in the gaps).

Competing in the category of most unLainlike entry in thread: I've been reading all the Anne of Green Gables books. I didn't when I was a kid because, you know, those were for GIRLS lol. Most people think it's a trilogy, and never read more than the first one but there's more than ten, and she's only the classic precocious little girl character in one of them. There's some that are short stories about Avonlea where Anne is only a bit character, and one about a daughter she has later. It's better than I thought.

>>1598 My wife is the biggest Anne of Green Gables fan. You know there's an anime?

>>1599 I heard of it but I haven't seen it. I was told it was very good. I always thought she was a Canadian phenomenon, particularly here in the east, and was surprised that she was known in Japan at all but whenever I mention the books, people from all sorts of countries know them. The 1985 CBC adaptation was very good and apparently they've made a new one this year.

>>1600 The web comic, Spinnerette, has The Green Gable, a male descendant of Anne, who fights crime in a dress, braids, and a kicky little hat.

>>1601 That's even better than Pierre Trudeau appearing in Marvel back in the 70s.

James Tate has a lot of surreal poetry. I have The Ghost Soldiers at home, which is a collection of poems that are more cynical and dismal than surreal, but fun to read nonetheless.

>currently reading >Murakami - Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World No idea why it took me so long to read him. I like it a lot so far. Kind of reminds me of Slaughterhouse Five. >plan to read Probably more Murakami... Taking a break from Gibson for a bit. Maybe finally get into P.K. Dick properly? Other than that, I really like speculative world-building sci-fi like Anathem by Neil Stephenson, and Accelerando by Charles Stross, or even older stuff like Dune. Recommendations appreciated. >>1200 >>1483 Sorry to necro this topic but do any other english readers have trouble getting into light novels because of the horrible translations? Sometimes I'm just in the mood for mindless crap but the fan translations, while bearable in manga, are fuarrrking insufferable when you're reading full paragraphs. I honestly can't tell if I hate light novels as a genre, just haven't read a good one yet, or if the bad impression is just due to the translations.

>>1607 Maybe it's because light novels are designed for adolescents while mangas have a wider age range and are more popular outside Japan. They probably don't shell out the big bucks on translators for something as niche as light novels for anglophones.

>>1516 >I'm honestly a bit dissapointed, it's not a book that will take you on an adventure narrated by a war veteran it feels more like Ernst Jünger just tells you how things are going on on the front. This sounds like your expectations completly ruined what you got. Stahlgewitter is an edited diary of Jünger and it tries by no means to paint war as harmless. It does the complete opposite, showing the most dreadful pictures imagineable. And among these burned fields is Jünger, a man every prussian would have been proud of. He is (or was) exactly what those old war mongers wished for, what nazi germany tried to copy in their men, Nietzsches Übermensch and so on.

>>1608 Makes sense. So the whole genre is kind of like western YA fiction then? That's kind of what I assumed but I didn't want to write it all off immediately.

>>1599 >>1598 I loved the manga, but I haven't read the original novel or seen the anime. One of these days I'll get around to both.

>>33 Going through this book right now and although it's pretty dense with the information, gets to some rather powerful conclusions. It's the first book I've read on the impact of General Intelligence, and it pretty much hits all the gut-level suspicion I've been having. I'm really enjoying it and will make sure to recommend it to friends!

>>33 I remember reading it and thinking it rested on some pretty naive assumptions about the nature of artificial intelligence, consciousness, "self", and evolutionary behaviour.

>>24 I picked up a physical copy of Meditations recently, since it's an old Western work. It's not _quite_ starting from the greeks, but it's small and it was what I had access to in physical form. My internet usage patterns shot my attention span to hell, so I thought a small book would be a good way to get back into the habit of reading longform stuff and not using any kind of screen. After that I'll probably jump forward and read some Pratchett, Gaiman, and Gibson.

CURRENTLY READING: >>>>>>>>Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy A book about a horrible time and place. The style keeps everything at a distance, stops the horror feeling exploitative, keeps it beautiful. >>>>>>>>>The Book Of Numbers - Joshua Cohen Fictionalised (and metafictionalised) account of Zuckerbergish dude's rise to power. Frustrating. Increible in style, but disingenuous to it's characters. >>>>>>>>>>The Soft Machine - William Burroughs A druggo's wordsludge as prose-poem. Drifts in and out of comprehensibility.Proudly "degenerate". Seems relevant to Lain, very abstract and cyberpunk. Also reading Baccano novels in Jap, but very slowly. Anyone here wanna exchange Skypes to talk about books?

>>1713 >skype just hang around the lainchan.org mumble. I'd go on there but no mic atm.

I've started reading The Complete Cosmicomics and I'm enjoying it quite a bit. I had a feeling that I would, and I'm glad to see I was correct. I think I'm really going to like his other books as well, I already ordered 3 more

Currently reading "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values" I recently bought "The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution 1945-1957" and am looking forward to reading that. Anyone have non-fiction history book recommendations?

>>1909 Last historical thing I read was 1776, by David McCullough. Pretty gripping account of the beginning of the American revolutionary war. I never realised it was such a clusterfuck, with Washington being driven half out of his tree by idiot officers and hillbilly soldiers, having to be restrained by his own men from charging the enemy lines alone, and scribbling DO OR DIE over and over again like Jack Nicholson in The Shining.

I don't read a lot of books, but I just finished a period of my life that had me commuting a lot I took that time to enjoy the first of the Witcher novels and I'd like to get into the second that I own, I just don't really have the environment that strips me for options and encourages me to do so

Almost finished "The society of the spectacle" by Guy Debord. A pain in the a** to read, but really insightful. Started reading "The Prince" by Machiavelli . I find it pretty interesting! What he's trying to communicate is pretty easy to understand, a bit basic too maybe? But it never hurts to get your wakeup call once in a while.

I have been binge reading Cormac Mccarthy. I finished the road, sunset limited, no country for old men and currently reading blood meridian. soykaf's quite metal if you ask me. cormac mccarthy society has been hosting surprisingly civil and insightful discussions so I'm hoping to hop on to whatever discussion dealing with interesting symbolism or idea. Also reading towards a new socialism to see what is the deal with all my friends talking and watching Cockshott's video.

>>34 The idea is as old as the concept of Maya in Advaita, which is an interpretation of an even older text called Vedanta. It was first propounded by Shankara and later appeared in the works of Immanuel Kant.

I'm currently reading Energy: A Beginner's Guide by Vaclav Smil, because I've got it as a birthday present. It's basically a compilation of facts about how different kinds of energy affect your daily life. It's alright read, but I can't say that I've learned something that I didn't know before.

I'm reading Crash by J. G. Ballard. I read some of his his short stories a few years ago. I kinda feel like his time is passed. I'm enjoying Crash, but I don't feel like his stories, or crash, are prescient. They feel very of their time. I see people all the time saying that Ballard was so predictive, but it really doesn't resonate for me.

Algebra: Chapter 0 It's a fantastic textbook, perfect for self-study at the intermediate level

>>2232 I've recently read 'Norwegian Wood' by Murakami. I appreciated it a lot, especially parts with Naoko and the whole concept of secluded clinic for 'mentally ill'. I think this book describes depression in a great way. Bottomless pit. Although I don't like few things about it: Why there was so many sex scenes and why was they so literal? I feel like this topic is too exploited in modern literature. Every god damn book written after 1960 have to have at least one fuarrrking 5 page description of a handjob. It's like: "x, y, z are no longer shocking, hmm, yeah!, let's turn my novel into a soft core porn, it will sell better, publishers will love it!" My second concern: how was main character able to have such expensive night life when he only worked two evenings in a week? I don't even have money to buy girl a drink. At the moment I am reading Valis by my favorite sci-fi author Philip K. Dick, it's totally fuarrrked upside down and inside out. Gnosticism is very interesting. I really like concept of Demiurge, because it merges two concepts which I could combine together in any way before: * the God (or gods) are in fact good and rational * the world is fuarrrked up and irrational If you don't know gnosticism you are probably thinking how the fuarrrk is this even possible. That's because Creator of our universe (Demiurge) is not the real god. Demiurge is too selfish, he even told us that Thou shalt have no other gods before me But what if there was more than one god? According to gnosticism our goal should be to free ourself from materialistic cage via theophany which can be accessed by acquiring secret knowledge (or any knowledge in general). Real god/gods is/are pure wisdom, rationality and non-chaotic being/beings, settled up "one level higher" than our universe. It's like Demiurge was VirtualBox, Real God was Host and we are a poor linux binary trying to accomplish sandbox escape to the host. Feels good Position Independent ELF. I hope you are dynamically linked mates. It was a very simplified description of main concept of gnosticism. It's very mystic and in fact eclectic and very open, as it incorporates concepts from christianity, neo-platonism and other religious and philosophical systems. I can't say anything more because I haven't finished it, but as far it was a good lecture.

I'm reading a heartbreaking work of staggering genius by dave eggers. it really is a heartbreaking work of staggering genius. I don't even want to say too much just I highly recommend it.

anna karenina this book thicc

>>2235 I read Norwegian Wood recently too, and had pretty much the same feelings about it about the sex scenes. I really liked Midori's personality above all other characters, thus I enjoyed how the story ended, overall it was a great book. I prefer it to 1Q84, there was no fantastic things going on Norwegian Wood, and that made me relate better to the characters. I am currently going through book 6 of Spice and Wolf. I am used to read books with medieval setting, but the main character being a merchant is something novel to me. I also enjoy how the church is pictured in the books, with lots controversial politic and monetary goals. So far it was very entertaining.

>>241 Just finished The Illiad, and I'm now reading The Odessey. They're pretty fun, although they're are some parts that drag in the Illiad.

>Recently finished The Quran >Currently reading Beowulf, The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake, and an aquaculture textbook >Want to read I have too many books I want to read right now so I'll give you 3: No Longer Human, Monkey, and The Definitive Book of Body Language

reading "The Many Colored Land" by Julian May Already read this "Saga of Pliocene Exile", and the "Galactic Milieu" trilogy when I was younger. The Exile story arc is about a bunch of social rejects who opt-out of the future's psychic evolution of mankind, where aliens intervened to help humanity not blow itself up, brining tons of new tech and a more "civilized" government run by benevolent humans having advanced mind-powers. Those that reject the brave new world have found an escape in a one-way time portal to the rugged Pliocene Epoch. The author researched the old legends from all the world and wove together a revised history of the world explaining the fantasy myths via a more SCI-FI approach. The entire series has almost every sci-fi trope but doesn't overdo it. Eg: Time travel exists, but is only one way and only works on one small place in the universe, in the basement of a French Chalet. "The Intervention" books take place in the Cold War, have psychic spys and a noir murder mystery that haunts the rest of the series into the far flung tech future. There's a cyber-punk with mind powers using forbidden tech to takes on the entire galaxy; Men & Women evolving into gods, etc. Now that I'm older and have been initiated into the occult I'm rereading the books. Indeed, much occulted wisdom is found therein. It seems that like most Great Works this author is actually several people going by a single pseudonym. Classic "Avatar" creation, to elevate the achievement of a single soul above the ordinary man... it's how all "genus" is created in your world. The true geniuses are never widely known public figures. "Julian May" - Julian calendar was shifted, May used to be the ancient "new years". May's eve even features prominently in the book. Ah, I just love the good old name-games. The book is steeped in the occult, esoteric messages and allegory abound. Those with eyes to see and ears to hear will like the cultural commentary about today's world & our potential future(s). However, even without the occult to add additional layers, it's a great series of books. I'm getting much more out of it this time around. However, sometimes the hidden alchemical and etc. references are a bit "loud", almost screaming out at the reader to the point of distraction. It's usually around these parts where some much more subtle and more deeply occulted things are referenced...

Currently reading Spring snow by Yukio Mishima. The start was quite minimal but now the book has picked up and I'm getting hooked, the one intimate scene I read was so well written, I was sucked into it and it felt just like reality for the duration of me reading it. This is why books are such a good form of entertainment. Trying to read all of Mishima's main works at the moment, loved confessions of a mask and quite liked the sailor who fell from grace with the sea (what a title).

>Recently finished Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World I love Murakami's style and this novel became one of my favorites. It has little cyberpunk elements and an interesting story that makes me enjoy it very much. Ficciones Gotta love Jorge Luis Borges narrative, his subtle fiction helped by his great writing melt perfectly in the reality. A nice variety of short stories that is recommended to everyone. >Currently reading A Wild Sheep Chase The complex and unconscious by Carl Jung (not sure if this is the title in english)

>>24 I'm currently reading DUNE, afterwards I'll continue reading H.P. Lovercraft complete works. There's a whole list of /lit/ I plan on reading. The following are some books I plan on reading. How to prove it, complete works of Edgar Allan Poe, Logic the laws of truth, starship troopers, the decent of man, the body electric, life 3.0, nietchzsche, and much more...

>>2264 > DUNE Don't skip the Appendix. It's basically a deconstruction of greater "meme magic". The sequels are also pretty good, not a fan of the newer stuff not writer by Frank Herbert. (pic unrelated)

>>2264 >The descent of man The Darwin book? There's a few books with the same name I think.

>reading will finish "a confederacy of dunces" this weekend since i don't have to work, its the story of a neet with a masters degree who is forced to get a job by his mom, some of it is cringey, but overall a funny book >will read next already read a few pages into it, but "hagakure", a book written on samurai morals and way of thought, some of the ideas are appropriate to lains >will read later "epic of Gilgamesh" been putting it off for close to a decade now, read the first chapter and then had other things to do

>currently reading ``Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'' - Just finished chapter 6 and damn did it get heavy. I'm still trying to figure out if you can really define people as either classical or romantic, as it seems we look at different things with different lenses. Definitely a chapter to re-read. >what you'd like to read ``Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes'' - I want to get into greek literature. Am going by pic related.

>>2447 >Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance damn, now I want to re-read that book

I finished Dune, liked it very much but I dont have so much time to read the rest of the series and due to my curiosity I have read everything regarding future events in series on wiki. Now I need to read Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment for school and the beginning was really boring for me.

>>2536 I recently read "Extension du domaine de la lutte" by Michel Houellebecq. It was thought provoking. I don't recommend it to anyone struggling with depression, I literally wanted to vomit when reading parts of it. Currently I am reading "The Elephant Vanishes" by Murakami. Pretty solid except that it is sometimes oversexualized (I had same problem with Murakami's Norwegian Wood)

>>2538 I really enjoy Murakami's short stories, much more so than his novels. "The Second Bakery Attack", and "Barn Burning" are both great. If you like those short stories make sure to check Raymond Carver's work like Cathedral. Murakami only started writing after becoming infatuated with Carver. Here is a link to that story http://www.giuliotortello.it/ebook/cathedral.pdf And here is one more short story that I always enjoyed along side Murakami called "Lately some of us have been threatening Colby" by Donald Bartheleme http://jessamyn.com/barth/colby.html

>>2539 Yeah, "The Second Bakery Attack" and "Barn Burning" are my favourite at the moment (I am at the middle of the book, so a few more to go, it might change). I will check cathedral and Bartheleme if I will not forget, thanks!

I just started Le Mort d'Arthur; it's a lot easier to read than I was expecting.

>currently reading: Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Nietzsche. and it's kicking my ass. i may just be a smoothbrain but i can't really make heads or tails of it. seems like any decision Zarathustra makes he ends up thinking better of later. and i'm fairly sure Nietzsche isn't teaching defeatism and a "might as well not do anything" attitude, from what i've heard of him. anyone know what i'm missing? also any recommended reading for when i get through Zarathustra? (Maybe something more suited to a fúcking retard) pic might as well be me

>>2597 Reading Zarathustra without knowing anything about Nietzsche beforehand is the worst thing you can do and, sadly, what pretty much everyone fuarrrking does. Go find some introductory book to Nietzsche, there are lots, then read something like The Birth of Tragedy or The Twilight of the Idols.

>>2598 >Insinuating that Nietzsche is supposed to be understood and not felt

>>2599 t. someone who didn't understand Nietzsche. Before Zarathustra, I would read Beyond Good and Evil and the third Untimely Meditation, "Shopenhauer as Educator": https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Schopenhauer_as_Educator

>>2598 >Go find some introductory book to Nietzsche... Any suggestion?

>>2600 Come on anon, the syphilitic madman was all over the map and most of his ideas boiled down to absurdum. Knowing all about the context for his soykaf is important for understanding the zeitgeist that permeated the 19th century on, as well as modern western thought, it is true. But contextualizing his work isn't useful for understanding the work itself, which was always more about feeling than thought. He was more artist than anything else.

>>2601 The Stanford Encyclopedia is a good place to start for all things philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/ Kaufmann is the "classic" secondary source intro to Nietzsche. Though lots of scholarship has happened since him, he's the one who popularized Nietzsche and saved him from the misconceptions about his ties with fascism and anti-Semitism. >>2602 I agree that feeling plays a part in his work. Because he wrote in aphorisms, had stylistic, complex prose, and often employed irony and sarcasm, it's more difficult to pin down exactly what he was saying. But I don't think that because his style is idiosyncratic means there is nothing to understand. He has plenty of arguments that can be summarized in a straight, logical fashion (see SEP article above). Saying things like "implying he is supposed to be understood and not felt" is obscurantist and pretentious, in my opinion.

Reading Crime and Punishment right now. What other classics should I put on my reading list? I think I want to alternate between fiction and non-fiction, will probably look into finding some general overview of philosophy next.

>>2609 Oh don't get me wrong I wasn't saying he is all style and no substance (though I think he more than occasionally comes comes close). Only that in my opinion, his work is best taken in without extensive contextualization or latter scholars attempts at deciphering and pinning down "his" exact meanings. Taking an academic approach to reading Nietzsche the first time robs the work of an important emotional dimension I think. Just my opinion though, and admittedly I'm not the biggest fan of Nietzsche and his fast and loose continental philosophy.

I've been watching a lot of films that are based on Philip K. Dick novels. I'm just wondering how the books hold up and if anyone highly recommends them or just thoughts on them in general?

>>2614 how the books hold up? the movies are okay but the books are much better. there was never a movie that lived up to the book's hype (with only a handful of exceptions). i would definitely recommend picking up among others Ubik, Paycheck, The Variable Man, The Unteleported Man, and Second Variety. he wrote a lot of short fiction so it's easy to go through his stories quickly

>>2614 >>2617 My personal favorite book so far has been A Scanner Darkly. Haven't seen the movie, so no idea how it compares.

>>2619 I liked the movie. I felt Dick's paranoid methy style came through surprisingly well.

>>2620 schizophrenia and meth sounds like the worse kind of hell

>>2619 The movie is quite good. If you will like it you should also give a try to 'Walking Life' by same director (AFAIR Richard Linklater)

>>2987 meth withdrawals and use can be a direct cause of psychosis, more readily than most hallucinogens truth be told.

>>2987 If I may interject, the worst kind of hell is autism and schizophrenia.

Six Silent Men; series about LRRP Rangers in Vietnam. If you're into military nonfiction it's a must read. These guys were decades ahead of their time. The Special Forces Project DELTA, the LRRP's, and their spiritual successor, the LRSU/LRSD's, taught us valuable lessons about asymmetrical warfighting that I feel like the US STILL does not fully appreciate. If you want to know why we keep losing our fuarrrkin wars, read this book. These guys did it right.

Just finished reading Justine or The Misfortunes of Virtue by Sade. Honestly the book became a repetitive in its descriptions of S&M/Violence, but I suppose that was the point. By the end sexualized murder and logical morality were normal. Maybe I'm giving him too much credit, but maybe his greater point was on desensitization. Also, I got the impression that by her actions of submission, however she rationalized it, those dominant figures became like a god withrespect to Justine, becuase of her virtuousness. Overall I don't think his arguments were that great but a few good points made. I'm reading Theives of State now.

>>3102 Whoops, I meant logical amorality. Also Thieves of State is by Sarah Chayes. This may be unrelated to /lit/, but does anyone know of any books on Control/Systems Theory, be it of tech or societies?

J R by William Gaddis

Arrowsmith by Sinclar Lewis. I’ve been getting into social realism lately.

'Visions of Mughal India' - an anthology of European travelogues set in Mughal India, 16th/17th century, compiled by William Dalrymple in between the whining about heathens and the minutiae of early modern commerce, some pretty interesting perspectives on India at a time when it was a superpower. you may be surprised that 400-500 year old Europeans were not uniformly racist/elitist towards foreigners, there's a great degree of awe/wonder at the splendour of Mughal architecture and the nobilitiy's dress. and a bit of fantasy (a Russian horse trader claimed there were kingdoms of intelligent monkeys ruling Indian forests)

>birthday gets I'm reading a variety of stuff at the moment but some of them are Borges' Ficciones, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, and The Summer Book by Tove Jansson.

Reading Crime and Punishment. Just finished part I. Felt awful when Raskolnikov killed old lady's sister. With all the violent happenings recently, I just felt really off. The book itself is pretty good. I love late 19 century St. Petersburg setting. This city is an embodiment of depression yet manages to be beautiful at the same time.

>>3136 There are still places there drenched with that spirit, not dead shots of the past but as alive as depicted by the man.

I recently finished American Psycho, which I honestly didn't enjoy at all. I'm not really fascinated by insanity. or rich wall street types, for that matter. I think the author could have easily made the story novella length without cutting anythign of value out. I also read Gone Girl (Flynn) recently, which was honestly rather fun. The scheming involved was impressive, which made me respect the narrator a fair bit while utterly despising her. Right now I'm nearly through a collection of Anton Chekhov's short stories. I think I've found a new favorite among the giants of russian lit- Chekhov has that realism angle to his work that reminds me of Giovanni Verga. I insert here a quote of his that delights me. "Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress." I wish he were alive today. I wonder what he'd choose to write about this decade? I'm going to try and read Heidegger next, but I'm a little intimidated, to be honest. If I get stuck I might try reading "Can Life Prevail" by Linkola, instead. I suspect his style would bemore palatable to my plebeian sensibilities. Eventually I plan on tackling "With Fire and Sword" by Sienkiewicz, bc muh sarmatism.

It took me a while to realize that genre fiction is better than most literature, which is really just genre fiction for alcoholics. Especially ones who like to read about europe without thinking of themselves as a european supremacist, hence why they never read history, but instead read french existentialists or russian poets.

Guys, please give me your opinion, what else can literature offer me, besides maybe a basic appreciation of some surface level allusions in popular culture? There are no noble truths in literature. Nor are there noble lies. Yes, I appreciate some of the lies and truths, but it's all beyond me. I am not one of those great men of the world.

>>3176 a good book makes you feel.

I just finished reading Asimov's Foundation trilogy, it's pretty great. I was also in the middle reading House of Leaves, but I think I'll hold off on that until I can get a physical copy because holy fuarrrk that book's formatting is eye rapingly hard to read on a computer.

>Last Meditations, Marcus Aurelius >Current Seven Pillars of Wisdom, T.E. Lawrence >Next Either Dragons of Eden, Carl Sagan, Johnny Got His Gun, Dalton Trumbo, or Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer R8 / sugg pls. I'll do some of my own later

Reading Lissagaray's Histoire de la Commune de 1871. As a leftist, it is really frickin cool, but you kinda need to hace a good grasp of what was going on at the time and who was who in the government/military/leftists circles.

>>3178 House of Leaves is one of the only books I needed to use more than one bookmark to finish (the others were Dhalgren and Pale Fire). If I'm not mistaken, an early version of the book was online as a hypertext before there was a novel, which should be apparent from the unconventional layout of the book.

>>3176 Entertainment, unless you don't enjoy reading.

Just finished Orlando by Virginia Woolf, which was a pretty funny and lighthearted book considering the subject-matter. I am currently reading Hyperion.

>>3158 "With Fire and Sword" <3 >>3178 Foundation was awesome, I liked the concept of Psychohistory a lot (I am a little autistic about CS and history). I just finished "Down and Out in Paris and London" by Orwell Pretty decent Orwellall. I didn't liked the fact that there is dissonance between Orwell's biography and book's plot. I mean that when you read the book you think that he had no choice but to live as plongeur or vagabond, but in fact he could ask his family for money anytime and his vagabond travels trough England happened only during spring and summer as he spent rest of the year in his family home. You can think that he was made to experience poverty, but in fact it was rather his choice to 'try it' (and I respect him for this). One thing I find interesting about this book is that I no longer think that today poverty is the same as before ww2 poverty (I am speaking only about developed world). I am currently reading 'Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage' and gosh, it hit me hard. I have developed this concept of 'resonance': you have some feelings and thoughts but you are not sure how to express them. Then you read this one book and it contains exactly what you have been 'almost thinking' about. Then you know that you weren't the only person with such problems and that they are in fact common (which is a nice feeling overall). So for me Murakami's book describes anxiety perfectly. This feeling of not being 'good enough' and 'interesting to other people'. But I just started the book (I am about page 70 or 80). I feel that this one might become my favorite by Murakami, which means a lot as I love his style.