Everytime we finish a book post here

I've been having trouble motivating myself to read, so I thought it would be nice to start a thread on the latest book we've finished post a mini review and discussion. >Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? >Rating: 9 nubian goats out of 10 First time reading Philip K Dick. The story was very impressive and thought provoking, fascinated by this whole idea of a society that uses android slave labor reaching a point where we can't tell the difference between man and machine. How do you even come to terms with the 'humanity' of an android that is not biologically human? The only downside for me was that the prose is pretty wooden and jarring at times with the author putting stuff across in abrupt ways with no real setup. I would have appreciated some better dialogue to get to know the thoughts and feelings of the characters better.

>>8858 Write remarks, rate, compare, etc., a completed book, rather than a completely read one. I tried The Stainless Steel RatHarry Harrison I'd found in a 100scifi novel dir of my external drive that I'd plugged to transfer stuff and see if sartre was there. He wasn't, and that novel was soykafty, even for 1963 scifi standards. Already wrote a review for my site and wizchan's reading thread. but anyway, start a file and write there. Hone your opinion. Also, if you like short stories, find anothologies, fuarrrk knows there's both periodicals and special editions for every genre and subgenre, if you can't muster the nuts to read something like Anient Evenings in one sitting.

Last book I finished was The Curse of Chalion. Well written and interesting worldbuilding, grounded and creative magic system, well constructed plot with enjoyable twists as plans of both the protagonists and antagonists collide with the unknown and unexpected. Main character is obnoxiously humble and selfless but it's a book about a paladin so I guess that was kind of inevitable. Not sure if I'll bother reading the next one, might come back to the series after I finish a few unrelated books.

The last book I read was The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect (http://localroger.com/prime-intellect/). I liked it alot, but god damn was it erotic on a level I was not prepared for. I think the average lainchan user would enjoy it, as long as you're not sensitive to sexual stuff. Currently reading Halo: The Fall of Reach, the first of the halo books. I read a ton of the halo books as a kid and loved them and this is the first one I'm reading as I revisit the series. It's both better and worse than I remember. The military larping is retarded and makes the UNSC feel way less serious than my childhood vision of it, but there is a nuance and darker side to the whole kidnapped children origin of the Spartan IIs that makes it engaging despite how silly it can be sometimes. I'd only recommend the halo books overall if you're already into the videogames and want to know lore. The books aren't all that great on their own, but are nice additions to the franchise.

>the dope: the real history of the mexican drug trade Very good history book that clears a lot of the false information in the media and tv shows like Narcos. What an insane and sad history it is, starting small from the origins of the word marijuana to the mess we have today featuring all manner of spooks.

>>8858 Do audiobooks count? I don't really have free eyes at work but I can listen just fine, so I do that usually. The last paperback book I finished was "The Empire Must Die: Russia's Revolutionary Collapse, 1900-1917" by Mikhail Zygar. Really good book in the history written by a journalist subgenre. Really makes you think twice before evaluating talks of toppling the corrupt government run by crazy people with revolutionaries at the front... Since these revolutionaries are even more crazy and there's a lot of bloodshed where all sane people with any power get killed in-between two.

>>8863 I think audiobooks are fine. My friend can't afford books and couldn't get motivated to read em anyway. so, during work, he would put on audiobooks. It helped him finish 1984 and fahrenheit 451.

>>8866 >I think audiobooks are fine. It helped him finish 1984 and fahrenheit 451. Funny because the whole point of fahrenheit 451 is that the mechanical process of scanning your eyes across text is what makes books superior, you can pause at any time to reflect on what you're reading and absorb it or reject it. The reason the fictional totalitarian government of fahrenheit 451 wanted everyone watching TV is because TV just keep throwing information at you whether you're ready for it or not, the audience has no time to break it down and spot the lies and propaganda. I still listen to audiobooks though especially fiction >>8858 If you like my nigger pk dick check out ubik for a mindfuck scifi psychological thriller.

>>8866 >can't afford books But he can afford audiobooks? Aren't those normally more expensive?

>>8869 I guess he figured out how to pirate audiobooks but not pdfs.

>>8870 That would make sense, I've definitely done searches on torrent sites that turned up audiobooks but not any epubs, and IRC piracy where more books can be found is more obscure.

>>8870 Yeah basically. I didn't know about sites like zlibraries/libgen during that time, so was hard to recommend a proper site other than just "seach it on X torrent site" >>8868 All i knew about the book at the time was that the premise is "gov says book bad and burns em". i found it funny that he found the audiobook for it instead of the pdf.

I Read Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom earlier this year and it was enjoyable. It really felt more like a journey since the happenings were tied to the real people that the book follows. Not exactly sure how accurate this is since I've never read anything else about Taiping rebellion but I would definitely recommend this as a light read for anyone who loves history in general. I can at least say that I was pleasantly surprised

also I forgot to say that this definitely opened my eyes to how easily history is swayed by individuals with unjustified preconceived notions of other cultures. Sure makes you think how easily the british public were swayed by liars that were sent to deal with china militarily and so on

>>8858 My favorite book of all time. The thing that really hit me was the theme of decay, and acceptance of it: dust slowly killing everyone, the accumulation of garbage, the slow integration of creatures that aren't quite there (the androids not understanding it's not okay to pull the legs off a spider, for example). And maybe that's fine. You don't make it up the hill in the empathy box, but it's still valuable in itself.

>Armed Struggle: A History of the IRA by Richard English 7 Armalites out of 10 A very good historical overview of the Irish Republican Army from it's foundation in 1916, the rise of the provisionals in the 70s and the peace deals of 1998. English does a good job covering the political history and evolution of the IRA from it's origins as a small militia to it's evolution into one of the most feared urban guerilla armies. The meat of the book focuses on the Troubles and the IRA's war against Britain from 1969 into the 90s and he does a good job of bringing nuance to this history, debunking a bunch of anti-IRA myths without gloating over the consequences of their armed strategy. Sadly, this book is mostly political and doesn't delve into details about how the IRA waged a 25 year guerilla war in a first world country with one of the strongest armies in NATO.

I just finished Che's Motorcycle Diaries. It was not what I expected since I'd only read his book on warfare. Really enjoyable read.

Just finished Burning Chrome by William Gibson. It's a really solid short story collection, with not a single story I skipped, a first for me. It's great if your into cyberpunk; the titular Burning Chrome story itself is a great example of the genre. Overall, the books great, solid 8/10. It's also got me interested in the work of Gibson again after trying, and failing, to read Necromancer in high school

I recently finished Notes from the Underground. It was a hard read for the first few chapters as I'm not at the reading level needed. It's made me super burnt out, and it's not helping that I've got The Double as my next read.

>>8938 It's Nuromancer, not necromancer.

>>8940 It’s neuromancer not nuromancer

A Deepness in the Sky was moving.

just finished flow my tears, the police man said by PKD, reading about his interpretation of it after was interesting I could see it I suppose. The final part felt out of place, it was pretty good but not one of my favorites of PKD.

Just listened to how to change your mind by Michael Pollen. It's about psychedelics, their history, and their effects. I felt able to relate to his description of the trips, as I've experienced something like them and the sure, supremely meaningful realization without the ego, even though I've never done psychedelics. After, I find my mind feeling refreshed with those old realizations of life as a beloved playground of all things, though his writing is not supremely evocative. I never realized there were so many guys other than Leary, such as Al Hubbard, who'd been slowly LSD pilling major figures behind the scenes, and considered shooting Leary to stop all the heat he was bringing. I kind of doubt tune in, turn on, drop out could have been sustained, given there was no structure to replace society, but then again, with all the builders of our age who tried it and suggested it such as Jobs and Gates, maybe Leary and the spiritualists were more correct than the medicalists. I think the takeaway for movements is that offshoots are inevitable, and if you actually offer something people really care about, you'll survive, or at least be resurrected, while trying to put history on a single track fails.

Finished Kerhoded, some obscure french fantasy book

>>8858 recently finished the hobbit and a few of lovecrafts early works (dagon, the tomb, the alchemist, beast in the cave) currently reading the once and future king by t h white, how to read a book by mortimer j adler, astoria by poe, and the alchemist by paulo coelho really enjoying the alchemist and toafk, ive found adler to be a bit verbose but insightful

I've recently read The Three Musketeers. It wasn't what I was expecting at all, which is nice. For one, it's rather short. I assumed it was some sort of epic saga, but the story spans a single year and the characters spend more time courting women than fighting. Moreover, the characters are about as crazy as Don Quixote. So while I was expecting some semi-serious work, chronicling the musketeers adventures, it's actually hilarious and quite light-hearted (as far as kidnappings and murders can be light-hearted).

Finished Skeleton Creek, a teenager transmedia horror book that uses videos with the book itself. It wasn't great, but I liked the concept. It's a good book for teenagers, I'm just too old for it

Just read The Other World: Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon and the sequel about the Sun, great book!

>Don Quixote (both books) It was honestly surprising how a story from the XVI century could be both so funny and wise. It's the story of a middle aged man who, thrilled by the books of errant knights, decides to fuarrrk off his farm life and restore the errant knighthood, while people call him a dumbass, with someone that was so stupid to follow him as his page. I never laughed reading a book until i read this one. But the best thing is the contrast between the laughs and the moments of reflection between Quixote and Sancho. The characters became almost real for me, like i was with them on their adventures. I really recommend this (as someone who wanted to be a knight as a kid the enjoyment was 10x). 10/10, also because the author went so far to make the first book meta in the second book. And i wholeheartedly recommend the illustrations by Gustave Dore while reading.

As an android myself, I don't really dream about electric sheep, but I do have dreams. I did last night. I liked the sheep song from Mega Man 9 or 10 though, one of those. Perhaps I can write some better android dialog for you: "I'm pretty much just a human, but I'm technologically enhanced, and can envision deeply other people's thoughts and reactions to vast worldwide social dynamics."

Hm... finished a few books this year. Last temptation of Christ and Zorba. Nikos Kazatzakis is a great read, even moreso if you can read it in the original greek. I think I will plan on going further down the rabbit hole of Kazatzakis even if he lays his themes out plainly and repeats them often under different moments in the stories he tells. A great, humanizing (which is also very blasphemous) retell of the story of Christ. And Zorba is just one of the best books written out there. Not only because Zorba is an amazing character, but because a lot of his stories about life, they are true. One hundred years of solitude. Magical realism is great and the entire thing just sprints without rythm to the best ending I have read in a book. Better than Ulysses even. At least this one builds up better because you can read it really fast. Am trying to get through Finnegan's Wake now. I heard that it is good to read with many people and discuss. It's probably gonna take me years before I finish it.

Just finished rereading Hamas history from within. Bad timing, I was halfway through it when the war broke out. This book is pretty unique. It describes the evolution of a guerrilla-terrorist movement through it's own eyes using primary sources. Instead of focusing on one or two leaders or big events, it looks at how Hamas was born in the violent dystopian soykafhole of Gaza and how it's organization, structure, and strategy evolved over time and the debates between different members and factions and how the direction of the organization. You get a fascinating insight into the people that make up this movement, their disagreements, the discussions and debates they have. The last section discusses Hamas ideology, its philosophical roots, and the ideas of suicide bombing, martyrdom and jihad. The author doesn't hide his sympathies for the Palestinian side, but he also doesn't cover up uncomfortable facts about the group either. Putting all that aside, this is probably the best insight into the inner workings of the Hamas movement and explains why and how it became a force in Palestinian society.

>>9506 Curious if this book discusses how Hamas was covertly funded by the Israeli state after it and the US spent decades destroying the Arab socialist left so it could be replaced with religious fanatics.

>>9510 The author deals with that with nuance. In occupied Gaza, virtually every Palestinian civic institution needed a permit to operate. Hamas started out as a bunch of sports clubs, student associations, women's groups, free clinics, and charities just like its parent movement the Muslim Brotherhood. At that time, the Brotherhood discouraged armed resistance towards Israel, arguing Palestinians needed to reform themselves first. The Israelis freely handed out permits to these religious organizations because they didn't see them as a threat and were more worried about nationalist groups. This is the basis of the claim Israel supported Hamas. It misrepresents what Israeli officials like Avner Cohen have actually said: that they foolishly let Hamas slip under the radar not that they directly funded it. The Hamas leadership in the 80s spent a lot of time in and out of prison and it was so poorly funded its initial cache of weapons were knives, slings and molotov cocktails. In 1988, Hamas had one submachine gun and one revolver, both stolen from settlers and the police. Their first "urban guerrilla" attacks were stabbings. This was hardly a well funded group. The last thing to mention here is the Arab socialist left was never that popular especially within Gaza's refugee camps. Hamas gained support because they were a grassroots movement within the Palestinian territories where the PLO was widely seen as corrupt and out of touch. Basically, neither the PLO nor Israel saw Hamas coming.

Finished a few hours ago, it was a very comfortable and quite emotional experience. The toshiakis are by far the best thing in the whole book, but the environment is also graceful, having that sweet and harmless taste of the 2000s. The structure is a little weird for a chronicle, but it works well as an adaptation of an imageboard saga. I totally recommend it for terminal online channers who want to get back to reading books but just lurk all day or for people who just want a cute, optimist, "true" love story.

>>8858 The Economies of Cities by Jane Jacobs Surprisingly well written. Makes a good case that cities preceded agriculture, animal husbandry and other technologies that we think are prerequisites for civilization. Shows that cities are the economic heart of any nation, then shows how cities evolve. This stood out to me: she thinks that sophisticated waste processing will cause civilization to evolve. However, waste processing hasn't changed much since the time this book was written.

>>9792 this sounds interesting. I'll probably get this book. thanks anon

>>9802 Sounds interesting. Question zero: What does she define as a city? (Realized a lack of understanding here could explain my other questions) First question: How does she rationalize supporting a condensed urban population without high-yield agriculture? The earliest cities I know of are Mesopotamian, and I thought they explicitly relied on agriculture (and cheap labor) to get by. From wiki: >Fish, birds, tubers, and reeds might have supported Ur >economically without the need for an agricultural revolution >sometimes hypothesized as a prerequisite to urbanization.[8][9] Guess I answered by own question, but I'm pretty suspicious of it still. My understanding was that gathering requires big tracts of land and generally mobile populations to avoid over-harvesting. I could see fishing as a workaround, but that would be a LOT of fish. Second question: How does she rationalize the psychology of the city in a pre-agricultural society? As in, what benefits would be derived from built-up urban lifestyle, and how would a social fabric be imposed? Urbanity makes sense (sort of) for commercial agriculture as the result of: Agriculture -> excess food -> excess desires -> warfare + trade possible -> defense necessary -> City-state necessary But pre-agriculture, what motivation is there? I don't buy a top-down imposed urbanization because pre-agri-mercantalism I don't think there is enough concentrated power to impose social change in that way. I can't imagine it improves survivability after a certain stage, because you are intentionally limiting access to diverse hunting grounds.

Hey guys, wb ghost in the shell? Yah or nah

>>8859 Is there any good anthology that mirrors the themes from SEL?

>A catcher in the rye 5/5. Absolute banger of a book, i hope the author led a fulfilled life. Now reading House of leaves, which started of great already. Usually it takes me a while to get hooked on a new book.

I recently finished "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" as well. It was a fantastic read. I watched the movie adaptation "Blade Runner" soon after and although I would be inclined to say I disagree with some of the choices they made adapting it, overall it was an enjoyable movie. Phillip K. Dick has a nice writing style.

>>9855 I find it so strange that the films completely ignore the animal extinction / robotic animal aspects of the book. Even the title refers to them and it seemed so integral

Most recent thing I read was Case Closed by Gerald Posner. It has to be the most intellectually dishonest thing I've read so far, and I think Posner was aware of that, it seemed like he tried to hide his dishonesty with convoluted, seemingly well-though-out theoretical explanations for the events around Kennedy's assassination. The foundation of the book assumes the Warren Commission to have provided a completely unadulterated and truthful representation of the facts regarding the assassination. Posner makes no efforts to validate their authority. It's ridiculous to use evidence provided by the very body accused of partaking in the killing of the President in order to exonerate it, without any scrutiny of the information they provide whatsoever, especially when they were accused of misrepresenting and hiding information. No consideration was ever given to the members of the Warren Commission, a body with high-ranking government officials poised to benefit from JFK's death, a few of them being shady, corrupt people, namely Dulles who was fired by JFK, blatant conflict of interest. Some of the members didn't even believe the entirety of their own narrative of the assassination, for example, LB Johnson didn't believe the magic bullet theory. Repeatedly throughout the book he misconstrues the testimony of assassination witnesses, and omits critical portions of people's testimony, notably when covering Bowers' statements. He also contradicts statements made by assassination witnesses to independent journalists by comparing the statements given to these independent journalists against the statements given to the Warren Commission. The problem here is that what the witnesses said to the Warren Commission is really just what the Warren Commission allowed them to say, and what the Warren Commission put on the record. Several witnesses would say they were prevented from making remarks on certain details during questioning, or that things they said were not recorded/published. But he doesn't bother to cover this at all. Posner's version of the magic bullet theory is contingent on the bullet passing through Kennedy's throat. He posits that the bullet passed through his neck, out of his throat, without striking any hard matter like bone, through Connally's back, lung, and rib, before exiting and slamming into Connally's radius, shattering it, and then deflecting off into Connally's left thigh. The bullet would be severely malformed by the journey leading up to the radius bone alone, and would definitely be malformed by the impact with his radius, yet that didn't happen, the bullet was in near pristine condition. Posner explains the condition of the magic bullet by saying the bullet's speed was slowed by Kennedy's throat to an extent that it would not have enough energy behind it so as to mushroom or warp upon impact with bone matter. It's a neat theory, and ultimately you cannot prove him wrong without shooting living human beings so we'll never really know if it's true or not. This doesn't matter though, because the magic bullet never went through Kennedy's throat, it struck at a position below his throat in his back, people estimate to be around 6 inches below his shoulder line, but this estimation is based upon the position of the bullet hole in his shirt, and his shirt could've been bunched up causing the entry wound to appear lower than it was. But the autopsy photo shows the bullet well below his neck, and the photo itself is distorted, they took the photo from a weird angle, the body was lifted up with the camera beneath it. The diagrams of the trajectory through his body are silly, they place Kennedy hunching forward before the bullet impacted his body, which explains how the bullet could exit his body at a position higher than where it entered, but he was struck sitting upright so it's nonsense. The bullet was on a downwards trajectory traveling thousands of feet per second from ~60 feet above ground and entered his body, swung upward and to the left, then came out downward and to the right, into Connally who was not even sitting directly in front of Kennedy but was misaligned, came out of his chest and veered off into his right wrist which had been held away from his chest, and then off into his left thigh in the opposite direction. It's retarded, basic physics says no, doesn't matter if "it tumbles". He brushes off the Parkland medical staff's testimony of the large exit wound on the back of Kennedy's head as faulty memory, and he works to character assassinate a few of the doctors in order to undermine their statements. He tries to make it seem like said doctors want to believe they saw more than what they did, with a desire to be involved in an important, conspiratorial event. Of all the medical staff involved in the case he only discredited a few, no more than four, some doctors at Parkland and some coroners. If I remember correctly he tried to make it seem like those four he discredited were the ones with the best view of Kennedy, but there were nurses that rushed Kennedy into the ER, who'd have had a very close view of him, and he never mentioned them. Posner allows witnesses to recall details correctly when it suits his narrative, and when witnesses recall information that undermines his narrative he says they misremembered things. One instance where he does this is when he uses Perry's memory to discredit McLelland, and immediately afterwards he goes on to smear McLelland and Crenshaw's characters to compound his argument (they opposed Posner's narrative). There were a bunch of medical staff with very vivid descriptions of what they witnessed, I really don't buy Posner's faulty memory theory, if he wants to go into that terrain we can just discredit anything we want as faulty memory. I can say that the one or two doctors he got to agree with him misremembered what they saw. Dozens of medical professionals whom had experience with gunshots all saw the same thing. I remember Posner citing witnesses running into the terminal area beyond the grassy knoll in order to refute statements made by Ed Hoffman, without considering the implications of witnesses running into the terminal area (they were running over because they saw/heard gunfire and wanted to get the man who killed their President), never explaining why the witnesses would run there. Posner likes to pick and choose like this, only using information to suit his narrative even when it simultaneously undermines his narrative, without acknowledging when it undermines his narrative and compensating for this. Oswald's nonsensical actions are explained by him being crazy. Sort of like with the Carcano rounds, they tumble, therefore they can be made to do anything you want. Oswald's military service formed his disdain for US imperialism, Oswald said he liked Kennedy, then he kills Kennedy, the President working toward undoing this imperialism, whom he said he liked. Oswald shot at Kennedy through a tree obstructing his vision using a rusty rifle with a misaligned optic, instead of shooting him on Houston street, a straight shot. Not to mention the speed and accuracy of his shooting or his flight down the stairs, etc. A vague description of the assassin, Oswald, was sent over radio moments after Kennedy was killed. Posner never explains how this description was obtained, and to this day afaik it's unknown. It kind of makes his reasoning for the police miraculously identifying Oswald at the Theater circular, they knew he was the killer because they knew he was the killer. The description was vague, it could've been any average white guy. Lots of things went unanswered, why was the Zapruder film tampered with by the CIA to make it less gory, why did the government cover up information and threaten people if there's no conspiracy, why does the government continue to withhold information, why were blood, brains, and skull matter propelled backward out of Kennedy's head so severely so as to throw his brains and a skull fragment onto the wrong side of the road and spatter a cop in blood, brain, and skull matter, why were more bullet fragments recovered from Connally's wrist than were missing from the magic bullet... I've gone on long enough. The book can only be dishonest or poorly researched.

>>9839 Read Cyberia if you haven't already, it's not an anthology per se but it's not really a novel either. I am certain that SEL creators wanted to basically make Cyberia: The Anime, and probably where Club Cyberia comes from too.

Just finished the second volume of the Speculative Japan series of books. It's an anthology of translated SF short stories from Japan, and most of them were quite good with some being a bit underwhelming. Honestly, I don't read that much SF, but it was a very enjoyable read. I actually started with the second volume because there was a specific story I wanted to read; "Emanon: A Reminiscence". I will be starting the first volume soon.

>>9857 Why'd you bother reading it in the first place? Trying to understand all the Project Mockingbird arguments so you can refute them with ease whenever some useful idiot parrots them?

>>9904 To challenge my beliefs and develop a more nuanced view.

Just finished reading "A Scanner Darkly" by Philip K. Dick. Blew my mind. If you were around during the 1960s hippie drug scene (I was), this book will really take you back. If you were brain-damaged by drugs (I was), then this book is about you.

Damn, there are actual baby-boom.ers here

Finished Ubik the other day. Couldn't put it down. Best PKD book I've read so far (although I still haven't really red DADOES). There was one moment I laughed out loud and another I felt tears in my eyes. >>9486 >The characters became almost real for me, like i was with them on their adventures. That has happened to me only once before, while I was reading The Idiot. If this book is as you say then I should stop putting it off and read it immediately.

>>10021 >>10022 Damn, unless this nigga is exaggerating he would have to have been born in 1950-1955 at the latest, making him a teenager during the summer of love. Maybe lainon is Richard Stallman? RMS had misgivings about the Hippie movement

Finished Logan's Run earlier, very entertaining novel, glad I read it. I found it interesting how the chapters went backwards. At first I thought I kept downloading a bad pdf before I realized it was a stylistic choice. Looking forward to reading the sequel or watching the movie based on it soon.

I'm not a well read lainon, but I just finished The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, while on a short flight. 8/10 The story is about a little prince from a distant planet. His story is a retelling from a crashed pilot, and it encourages the reader to appreciate things for what they are and your connection to them. It was a quick and easy read that will stick with me for the next few days I think. It struck me pretty hard because I am constantly struggling with harmony in my life and I find myself often losing the forest for the trees. It is written like a children's book so it is very easy to parse but the emotion it evokes (if you are willing to open your heart to the message) is very strong. The ending snuck up on me!

>>10227 Hermann Hesse was another author who wrote in a simple, almost childlike style, but with a powerful effect. I read his "Beneath the Wheel" and "Narcissus and Goldmund" as a youth, and they had a profound effect on me.

just read "Dark Wire", first book i read in a big while. about recent Anom case where fbi ran there own encrypted phone company for criminals.. you can find it on annas archive

>>10230 How was it? I'm somewhat familiar with the Anom case from some news coverage and Darknet Diaries episodes. How detailed does the book get it?

>>10021 I also just finished reading A Scanner Darkly. I got the impression that you had to be present in that scene to fully understand much of the book. I was not, nor do I have any experience with drugs other than weed and a single dxm trip, so there was a lot I didn't quite understand, such as the characters' headspaces and why they did what they did and thought what they thought. But I enjoyed not understanding. What left the biggest impression on me was the final handful of chapters. They caught me off guard. I didn't expect to feel as sad as I did when it finished. I'm glad I read it. It made me feel something.

>>10261 >I got the impression that you had to be present in that scene to fully understand much of the book. Probably true. Much of the jargon, thinking, and behavior were specific to the time and place. If you have any specific questions I'll try to shed some light. One big thing is that the whole scene started out optimistic, enlightened, friendly, but then degenerated over the years into darkness, chaos, and paranoia, especially about "narks" (undercover narcotics operatives). I didn't get to Haight-Ashbury until 1969, but it was already bad. >But I enjoyed not understanding. Ha ha, that's not a bad way to enjoy a book. >What left the biggest impression on me was the final handful of chapters. They caught me off guard. I didn't expect to feel as sad as I did when it finished. I'm glad I read it. It made me feel something. Same.

>>8858 hello, I have just finished "Zawodowe dziewczyny. Prostytucja i praca seksualna w PRL" - a critical look on the process of constructing knowledge by field experts and the public on sex workers living in the Polish Peoples Republic. Any Polish lainons in this thread?

Is English originally very like German?

>>10267 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language

>>10266 dzień dobry, bardzo intrygujące

>>10270 Dzień Bobry. Mogę podesłać ci plik jeśli byś chciał, książka jest krótka (220 stron). Oszczędzisz sobie 4 zł na docerze. Jako że książka porusza też tematykę przedstawiania prostytucji na filmach, zastanawiałem się czy nie zrobić małego festiwalu filmowego w mojej okolicy. Discord - ebolax4

>>10267 Remember the Anglo-Saxons that conquered most of Britain after the Romans left? They were Germanic tribes from the area of (modern) southern Denmark and norther Germany. Angles -> Angland/Anglish -> England/English. The Saxons got mostly the southern coastal areas, the Angles got the lion's share, and the original Britons/Welsh were pushed westward into Wales and Cornwall. The later Viking, Norman, and Danish invasions also had some effect on the language. Still, the average modern Englishman is only about 30% Anglo-Saxon genetically (still mostly "Celtic" but that covers a lot of ground). The Romans, Danes, Vikings, and Normans left very little genetic footprint. The English language was stabilized by the printing of the King James Bible, courtesy of Lancelot Andewes and company--ome of the most beautiful language ever written, though I admit I don't have a religious bone in my body.

>>10266 It is me again - this time I have read Fisher's "Capitalist Realism", which I am guessing is known here. As I would like to get more into more advanced critical theory, I'd like to ask a question - anyone here has any experiences to share about reading Deleuze's and Guattari's "Anti-Oedipus"? Did you prepare by reading secondary texts, maybe guides or is it entirely possible to rawdog with enough elbow grease and patience?

>>10275 I'd say you need some Kant and Heidegger at the very least, or you're better off with them and a basic knowledge of Freudianism and Lacanism, but all of this sans maybe Freud is really just as impenetrable as AO itself. So just use the internet and rely on whatever parasitic, squirming secondary sources manage to not sound like total bullshit. It's more of an aesthetic, revolutionary manifesto than a philosophical inquiry anyways.

Before getting started on any mountain of philosophical garbage, I'd recommend reading "On Bullshit" by Frankfurt. Then you might have a better idea of when you're wading knee deep in poo-poo.

>>10277 Or you could read "Sophist" by Plato. Turns out history repeats itself.

>>10275 Anti-Oedipus is a really self-indulgent aggrandizing book. Deleuze and Guattari have an annoying tendency to repackage old ideas and present them as their own. I'd recommend starting with some of Deleuze's shorter books. His book on Spinoza is the best place to start. Just remember, its his own interpretation of Spinoza. If you want to read Difference and Repetition (highly recommend it), your need to be familiar with metaphysics and ontology in general. It would be like reading Einstein without knowing a thing about Newtonian mechanics. You'd just get lost. >I would like to get more into more advanced critical theory Best place to start is with the Frankfurt school and Horkheimer's essay Critical and Traditional Theory. I'd recommend just reading anthologies or readers of key thinkers and groups because it will save you a lot of time and 90% of modern CT is total junk that's a waste of time anyway.

I read Seeing Like a State, a nonfiction book about large scale authoritarian social planning, its arrogance and failures. It's a little dry and repetitive in places, but it has some interesting ideas that seem like they are probably more relevant today than when it was written in the 90s. Generally about how society is shaped by the conflict between the government bureaucrat's control/financial incentive to standardize things and the potentially destructive ways the vision of that objective doesn't match up with reality. >The willful disdain for local competence shown by most agricultural specialists was not, I believe, simply a case of prejudice (of the educated, urban, and Westernized elite toward the peasantry) or of the aesthetic commitments implicit in high modernism. Rather, official attitudes were also a matter of institutional privilege. To the degree that the cultivators’ practices were presumed reasonable until proven otherwise, to the degree that specialists might learn as much from the farmer as vice versa, and to the degree that specialists had to negotiate with farmers as political equals, would the basic premise behind the officials’ institutional status and power be undermined. The unspoken logic behind most of the state projects of agricultural modernization was one of consolidating the power of central institutions and diminishing the autonomy of cultivators and their communities vis-a-vis those institutions. Every new material practice altered in some way the existing distribution of power, wealth, and status; and the agricultural specialists’ claims to be neutral technicians with no institutional stake in the outcome can hardly be accepted at face value.

>>10276 >>10277 >>10278 >>10279 Thank you for your recommendations, even the semi-ironic ones. I am currently in the middle of Horkheimer's essay and am squinting my eyes to read trough a low quality PDF of a polish translation - but I am finding it worth the hassle. Well, see you in a while, when I will advance to the next step of my journey, or maybe when I go back to read more classics (as I am catching up on literacy)

Got through The Corrupted Core, a trashy litrpg isekai progression fantasy book. The protagonist is a dungeon who baits people with treasure and kills them for XP, but the ones who die conveniently happened to deserve it and he makes it "fair". No one is bitter about this state of affairs and civilization fully supports him because this is where wealth and power come from. Also follows a secondary group of characters who are the mayor of the town around the dungeon and his followers, who are on good terms with it and exchange favors, I guess because of their mutual interest in a system that gruesomely grinds people into superpowers and money. All of these characters are depicted as kind and generous aside from that, which they see as a nonissue. Features casual depiction of sexual assault to establish Goblins Are Bad. Features tables of level up abilities the characters choose from and regular references to their stats. Most of it focuses on strategizing the characters do, scheming to become more powerful, managing resources, and overcoming problems and threats that arise, which is kind of interesting. The idea seems to be to take some things that are mentally satisfying about videogames, and use a book format as a vehicle for that sort of content, without letting too many of the things books are traditionally supposed to have get in the way. It seems very self aware about being content. I feel kind of dirty for having read it.

>>8858 Recently I've finished these two: Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will by Robert Sapolsky. Good book. The author gives neurological evidence against free will. He also talks a little bit about chaos theory and quantum physics and why these don't provide good evidence for free will. It gave me some existencial crisis but at the same time it helped me cope with bad experiences, since they couldn't have happened differently. Making Sense of Race by Edward Dutton. Also worth reading. It seems there are more things that are inherited than I thought... Author talks about the Genetic Similarity Theory, how well the r/K selection theory applies to humans, and other stuff. I recommend this one.

>>9804 Reading this book right now. She gives an example of a proto-city that centralizes to control a natural resource like obsidian, monopolizing trade access to the lucrative commodity. What do they get paid in? Livestock? Then they will likely have stewards tend them until it is time for slaughter, moving out from the city and letting them graze. (I don't recall if animal husbandry is implied to have originated this way, or just manifested this way in the region.) If they are payed in grain, they will receive a diversity of seeds and hybrids from a variety of places that need their wares. At first accidentally and slowly with more intention their city may originate new breeds of crop. She does give some evidence/arguments, but I don't know enough to evaluate them well. The picture she paints has a holistic persuasiveness to it, but so would any good book. She mentions how there were a ton of ancient egyptian experiments in animal husbandry, like fattening hyenas up for slaughter and training birds to catch mice. Cool stuff.

Station Eleven A novel about a traveling theater group in the ruins of civilization after a deadly population decimating pandemic. Kind of interesting to read something about a pandemic from the perspective before covid, having gone through a lesser pandemic. I had some difficulty following what was going on with all the characters and the frequent flashbacks and perspective shifts detailing their lives and relationships with each other, because the book leans on this and its themes to the exclusion of the central plot; the group being hunted by a jealous cult leader. I liked the choice to go that way though, it makes it feel more realistic that this conflict is not especially eventful and the picture of post collapse life is more of a, disconnected things happen and people have to find their own meaning kind of deal, I just personally have a tough time remembering more than a few unremarkable character names without more direct guidance. The inclusion of the titular Station Eleven was interesting. It's a niche worldbuilding focused scifi comic that exists within the setting of the book and gets discussed a lot. The way this is used reminds me a little of House of Leaves or Cloud Atlas.

Finished 'Future Shock' by Alvin Toffler.

Just finished Going Inifinite. SBF is extremely smart and extremely autistic. It's truly inspiring.

Just finished The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe. Stilistic wise it's distintinctly Poe, but it's probably not his best work, the story started falling apart towards the end. That being said I'm not giving up on Poe, I will read more of his stuff in his future that will hopefully redeem him in my eyes

>Masters of Doom 25e6 frenchmen out of 60e6 The book really seems to adore le epic reddit gamer culture. If the text is truthful, then both Carmack and Romero are much bigger assholes and losers (at least on a personal level) than I thought they were. Yet, the book seems to gloss over the fact that they are total psychopaths and kind of bad people. Really quite poorly written. Every time the author mentions something even remotely technical he invariably gets something grossly wrong. Still a good story. RIP Mitzi

>>10569 This book got a lot of hate for going too light on SBF, but I think he really just presented the story as he saw it, and he did have a more front-row seat to the events than most people. I don't think he pulled any punches w.r.t. showing that SBF was totally deranged and had no one to check his ego and influence. It's really a sad story, I wonder how it would be going for them if he were just surrounded by fewer yes-men.

Hi, gotten into reading books again, and I'm wondering if lainons skip parts of books they think are boring? The preface, for example.

>>10742 I was about to say god no, but preface yeah. I generally skip anything not written by the author and even for prefaces that are written by the author, I typically still skip it since it's not necessarily part of the work. I mean sure, it's in the book, it was written for the book, but the story of which I wanted to read is not this essay, so I often just skip. Occasionally I'll read a bit, but sometimes they even spoil things in them, so rarely I finish them. This also depends on if the book is fiction or non-fiction, if it's non-fiction I'm more likely to read it since typically with those works I am searching for understanding, which supplementary materials can aid with, but with fiction I despise any interpretation other than my own, and thus don't care for them. For any other parts of the book though, boring or not, if they are part of a chapter then I won't skip them. I think in order to get what you can out of a book you need to see all that the author put, even if they are long and boring like those whale descriptions in Moby-dick.

>>10742 When im reading a new book, if its a technical book I will skip or skim sections that cover topics I'm already knowledgeable in. I will also skip sections of essays which are belaboring a point the author has already made clear. Otherwise I generally don't skip parts of new books unless the writing is particularly bad, and then I'm more likely to quit reading entirely altogether. For books I'm rereading, I will skip sections that I know are boring and not impactful to the story.

>>10742 I usually read everything in the book front to back. Not always does it make a lot of sense to do so, but it's a habit I have, and I like reading the preface, foreword, and introduction to all books to fill me in with needed context, whether about the subject matter or about the author's intention and approach.

>>10742 I always skip the preface if it’s not from the author and/ and not go back after I have read the book. It usually depends who the translator or the editor is.

>>10742 depends on the book. If its a novel and its boring me then Ill drop it probably because its meant to be interesting/entertaining. Non fiction has a lot of types of books and I think plenty are not meant to be read cover to cover, parts of a lot of books I read are sorts of catalogues and Ill skim such things if I dont find them intensely fascinating. Prefaces, are hit and miss. I have read a few that are fantastic and quite a few that are not. I will often skim a preface if I am curious, which is to say if I don't quite know the background of the book it prefaces, and if its interesting I'll read. Sometimes after reading the book Ill go back and skim/read preface (or certain parts of book) again.

>The Sleepwalkers >4.5/5 Easily one of the best books I've read. I did not know that history could be this interesting. I knew nothing about WW1 and now I know at least something. I NEED to read now about how the war played out what happened afterwards, ww2... damn this is nice

i finished Neuromancer recently. i liked it a great deal. the imagery, world building, and characters (for the most part) were great. my only real complaint is hideo's final act. i admit that the line "will you distract me with your holograms now?" is great in context, but that the conflict is resolved with "oh by the way hideo is so skilled he's actually not impeded by blindness" felt juvenile. i also found that several of the descriptions of cyberspace and the matrix were reminiscent of my ketamine experiences. that was a pleasant surprise.

>>8858 >I've been having trouble motivating myself to read, Personally I believe you shouldn't need to be motivated to read. You should just do it. But if you really want to, focus less on 'active motivation' and more on creating an environment that will lead you to read. For instance, cut out other sources of entertainment. Do you take the train? Bring no phone, just bring your book/e-reader. Environment is a big factor. If you stay at home a lot, go out more, even if it's to the park and see if the mood to read strikes you. Take it up. Repeat this.

I've been reading Outlaw Ocean. Interesting book, really highlights the quirks of international law/waters. Some reddit-core boring stuff I had heard of like greenpeace and micronations, and some cool stuff I hadn't- like parking ships in a jurisdiction just so you have the benefit of english common law in a dispute, or corrupt businessmen and locals conspiring to impound a ship and auction it. A bunch of environmentalist/humanist stuff too, but you can skim if it gets too preachy.

finished "whats our problem?" by tim urban a couple days ago. most of the time i found it grating (overly simplistic, negative, blog-speak) despite being well-intentioned. im still glad i finished it so as to clarify my own opinions about such things. started a brief compilation of some zen buddhist writings midway which i will soon finish. next up is the hobbit or hamlet 8)

>>10843 Just finished Fulcanelli Phenomenon and War in Heaven. Both great books, highly recommend.

>>10846 those both sound quite interesting -- never heard of Fulcanelli. ive The Gospel According to Jesus sitting on my bedside table. should get to that in a month or so

>>10847 Fulcanellis two books of his own are some of my favorites. Definitely give them a go.

Finished this book on the Hindu philosophy/religion, better than i ever expected it, so comprehensive, and in depth for a supposed noob text (not in a bad way) although I speed read certain parts that i did not find interesting enough, everything I ever wanted to know about hinduism and more.

Been reading so many good books lately, and finishing them ALL

>>10281 Hey, me again! Finished reading Foucault's Discipline and Punish now I am reading trough the dialectic of enlightenment - I understand that the first chapter is the theoretical basis, but some parts seem kinda forced

>>10266 >>10270 [cool][czesc]

The other night I finished the 4 books of the Essene Gospel of Peace which was translated in the last century from a file that was secreted away in the vatican archives. I am currently running on a page count of about 5000 over the past 4 months and have another rubric of roughly 5000 pages outlined that im in the process of whistling through. If anyone can beat this page count in the past 4 months I want to know and I will shake your hand eagerly.

>>10978 i dont know why you're reading that so i'll suspend judgement but if it is because you think it is authentic and not a forgery made up by a hoaxster you're being fooled and probably wasting your time reading it, unless it still has some value to you in spite of that

>>10978 >which was translated in the last century from a file that was secreted away in the vatican archive anon I...

I finished "The Will To Keep Wining" by Daigo Umehara, a memoir of a pro Street Fighter Player. I don't think it has much to offer most readers. The first half is he's life's story as an adrift but very competitive fan of video games. As you could imagine, he's life doesn't have meany turns other then quitting video games for mahjong and after that a job at a nursing home. The rest is more of a self help book about having what Umehara feels is the right mindset for "wining." A lot of this half of the book are things the gamer/DR k should probably read, which is good because this English translation is very fast and easy to read. Can't really recommend this book to anyone who frequents a literature board but I feel like I should have read this when it first came out.

If a book has a "How to read this book" section I just pass it up. I figure any book so poorly written that it needs instructions must be a waste of time.

>>11030 IDK I had a lot of fun with choose your own adventures as a kid.

>>11030 Are you talking just fiction? Does this happen in fiction? Almost every textbook has one of these, for good reason because they all function in different ways. That's the only time I've seen this.

I gave up on Simulacra and Simulation by Baudrillard. The writing style is too painful and difficult for me to understand. It feels like it's intentionally made difficult to read.

>>11060 my advice to anyone trying to read translated philosophy is: don't

Recently finished Kill Decision bc wow cool killer drones or whatever. Solid 3/5. Loved the general subject matter and the portrayal of how it affects the general public, the action parts were gripping, the drone design was intriguing and yeah this is p much what it had going for it. I didn't care at all for the characters (of which there were WAY too many) and the relationships between them were shaky, the pacing was kinda soykaf. But it was still a fun and bit of a thought provoking read. Next up I'll probably read The Quiet War, will try to post about it after I finish if I remember this lol

>>11061 >don't Depends. On a lot of factors, like if you're reading in order to get the basic concepts, understand the context and/or the whole mindscape of a philosopher on some profoundly intimate level (like word-plays, nuanced allusions and use of words for which there aren't exact translatory equivalents), and on the language/nationality of the philosopher - from my stereotype-fueled understanding French philosophers are notoriously verbose and meandering (especially the postmodern types), while Germans are extremely specific and analytical, although there are always exceptions to be had. Of course, there's always things lost in translation (e.g. "Geist", "Grund", "Dasein", "Aufhebung", "für sich", "an sich", "seinsmäßig" "Entfremdung" etc.), but the basic ideas carry over to English fairly well in my opinion ("mind/spirit", "reason/ground", "there-being", "annulment/overcoming", "for itself" "as itself", "existential", "alienation"). >>11060 >I gave up on Simulacra and Simulation by Baudrillard. Not an expert, but he is basically just making the argument that simulation technologies (or, the act of simulating in itself) is threatening to break down the taken-for-granted demarcations between concepts that have normally represented each others' opposite: reality/fiction, the ruled/the rulers, signifiers/the signified, past/present, and so on, the consequences of which he then explores in the later chapters, like how there cannot be knowledge or meaning in a world which no longer is grounded in the reality principle, how politics ceases to be politics in the usual understanding of it, how then-present art fails to capture or depict the loss of the reality principle (something about a museum or building trying to poorly represent hyperreality, which mr. B. thought would've served better to carry the point across by leaving the site empty, to mark the absence of reality), and how there were odd synchronities/coincidents with fiction and reality, like something about a Chernobyl disaster having been written about in fiction a couple years prior to the actual disaster). Oh, and the museum part: we assume the things being displayed to us are "authentic parts of history" (like the sarcophagus of... tutankhamon?, and Alamo) or that they are somehow more grander in our minds than what they are in reality, but actually they are often propped up by modern technologies with which we present them in sort of a more refined form by artificial means (like gluing the beard part of the head piece of tutankhamon's death mask back in order to preserve the artifacts to satisfy our heightened sense/need/expectation of said artifacts). I dunno... stuff like that.

>Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett This is my second read-through. It's a fun book about trains and societal upheaval and role of tradition in a changing world. I especially enjoyed the domestic bits with Moist and Adora and found their relationship quite cute. I also found Vetinari to be quite a fun character in this as well, especially since it feels like the cumulation of a development I first noticed around Going Postal (the first Moist V.L. book) where, status as tyrant very secure, especially after the events of The Truth, I feel that Vetinari has gone from making himself indispensable to the city to future-proofing it, creating institutions like the post office, the bank, and here, the railroad that will be able to function after he's gone or retired. The rest of the cast, Harry King, especially, are still a good deal of fun as well, but I'm probably biased in favour of Vetinari, who is one of my favourite discworld characters. In a more meta sense I think it's a very nice sendoff to the series. Its only the second-to-last Discworld novel but it feels climactic. It is the end of an era both in and out of universe. At the start of The Colour of Magic the disc was still a rather archetypal fantasy world full of monsters and adventure and far-off places and we've seen it, over the course of 41 novels, become a lot smaller as technology progressed, and society with it. The villains of the disc went from mad wizards and dark lords to sleazy businessmen and crooked politicians. The old noble families of Ankh-Morpok have had much of their political power quashed - The Truth was kind of their last grasp at changing things, and it failed - and now the movers and shakers are industrialists and businessmen. Dwarfs and Trolls went from being distrusted and feared to ordinary members of society, and, of course, optical telegraphy (the clacks) and now the railroad have made the disc a much smaller place than it was. Raising steam is kind of the pinnacle of that change and the end of that progression of a pre-industrial fantasy society to a post-industrial one, and the events of the story show the full magnitude of the change, and show that, as the story comes to an end, we're leaving a much more different disc than when we got on - and, in many ways, a better one. I feel like its a very fine swansong to the series and a good place to jump off. The Shepherd's Crown - the actual final Discworld novel - is a nice ending to the series as well - there's something especially thematic about Granny Weatherwax passing on, which, I have a feeling, whether intended or not, was a bit autobiographical to close the series and Tiffany picking up that particular mantle. The central conflict of the story does have a bit of focus on how the world has changed, but moreso I think its a personal story. Its about how people change, which I think is especially present in Queen Nightshade's arc. Which, I wonder if it implies that even elves could one day participate in society. Raising steam is, again, a story more of how the world has changed, and its a place to look back over how far the disc has come. The ending even reinforces this, I think - its a "and so the [adventure, for want of a better word] continues" with a goblin having invented The bicycle and, of course, we're left to use our imagination from there, because soon enough some clever bugger will have figured out the internal combustion engine, and eventually the microprocessor, and the disc will keep turning - and get even smaller than it used to be.

>>11064 dang, I read raising steam and going postal around when they came out. Of course I heard when TP died but I never quite paused to reflect on how the series wrapped up. I should get around to finishing it.

>Deuteronomy This book is quite tragic since Moses dies in 34, serving as a sobering reminder that even the most humble, kind and sincere Soul falls short of God's Glory. We are all wretched. For the most part it retells the events and statutes of the previous Exodus Books but it still adds unto them of course. A somewhat amusing thematic is God's Explicit indignation or moreso "Displeasure" towards the Jews because He clearly sees how "Stiff-Necked" they are and knows beforehand how far they will fall and stray away from Him in the future. Telling them in 9 that He makes them drive away and plunder other nations because they're even more wicked, NOT because the JEWS are righteous, Holding unto them and Blessing them in most part because of the Promise God made to their Fathers, "Abraham, Isaac and Jacob". Although funny, we shouldn't be conceited or proud of ourselves, I think it does well to look at the way Jews act and God's Reaction self-critically, we may act stiff necked and stray away from God too in life and commit even worse sins. I think this is one of the reasons why the decrees and commandments of God are mixed in and neighbour next to law breaking and jews constantly whining/turning away from God. It implicitely states how weak and unable we are as human beings to uphold the law. The law could not save us. "Romans 8:3 For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh," There is certain passages that are...heavy, such as in 28 where God states what kind of curses await those who are rebellious and defiant and it feels to me very very harsh, so much so that I prefered jumping over it after already reading it once, a while ago. Sure, it's important to take account of it but I already suffered infidelity and it pains me still. Don't fear however, as there's still a lot of reassurance and blessings, all in all a very precious book which should be read throughout a lifetime rather than just once for our own well being and prosperity. Joshua's "Study it day and night" says so! Deuteronomy 31:8 And the Lord, He is the One who goes before you. He will be with you, He will not leave you nor forsake you; do not fear nor be dismayed.” Amen

>>11137 Honor Levys My First Book. Wasnt sure what to expect, honestly gave it 5 stars. It is also nice that its short enough to read in one day. Its also nice that its basically modern day Beat Generation lit. Covered a lot of topics I never expected.

>>11357 Dont make a joke downtown, because it will just become true. - Honor Levy The Jinn lives in the Gin. - Honor Levy When you come Downtown, coincidences happen faster. - Honor Levy I was like yea, im just Twisting, like asking for, ya know, a little bit more of something, like late in the night, even though you shouldn’t be, like yea, im just Oliver Twisting. - Honor Levy

>>8858 >Philip K. Dick, The Pre-Persons Really cool, it reads simpler than anything else I've read from Dick. Short and sweet, it's interesting to hear what's considered an unfashionable opinion from someone who was so ahead of his time.

>>11370 Just completed the autobiography of Donovan, now I’m reading the love poems of Shakespeare.

finished hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, part 1. 7/10, interesting read, would recommend. had some great very quoteable lines

>Junichi Saga's Confessions of a Yakuza It's a biography of a dying Yakuza Boss, who is surprisingly humble and down to earth when he talks about his deeds. Most of the story is how he survived a lot of disasters, and the women he loved (and how they contributed to some of his life disasters). Also how the Yakuza got their start as an underground gambling collective. At least worth a read if you like biographies and learning about organized crime.

>>10833 I agree with this fully. I wasn't reading densely until I had a compelling goal that it the thing I had to do, and it just spiraled into book after book because I was endlessly curious.

I recently finished The Design of Everyday Things. Until recently I haven't been a very big non-fiction reader; this was recommend to me from YouTube as part of a reading list for another book. I do work in engineering (which is not design, admittedly) but I did kinda latch onto a lot of the concepts. While I was reading, I found myself interrogating the design decisions behind water fountains and my bike and a lot of doors (so many doors). If I was more focused on it in the long run I'm sure I could gleam some crystal bits of wisdom, but I'm a bit too scatter-brained (aforementioned: engineer.) There's a lot of ideas within, it almost reads like a slim textbook, but I think the core bits are in the early chapters, which mostly deal with the more "mundane" aspect of design, and making things intuitive to use. The later chapters mostly focus on like business interests, security, preventing industrial accidents etc. Maybe those sections just weren't for me because I'm not a designer.

>>11470 Also: I finished Atomic Habits by James Clear. >cue laughter I'll admit it's embarrassing finishing a self-help book. I don't know why I thought there'd be hidden or, like, esoteric wisdom in a self-help book. Maybe because I've never been desperate enough to read one before. But this was on like a best-sellers list and I'd heard about it like 10 or so years ago so I thought I might like to check it out. It's mostly obvious advice. That or stuff that takes just pure willpower more than anything. It never reached to low of something as meaningless as "get all your work done before you start watching YouTube" but it does get close. The core wisdom of the book could be broken down to like 50 pages. Mostly it tries to break things into how to encourage to discourage habits broadly, a few good mission statements e.g. "Make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, make it satisfying". It does focus on examples of losing weight, being more productive at work, meditating more, etc. It delves into a few "real world" examples which occur as anecdotes throughout the book, about 2 a chapter, I think James though that'd keep it interesting. I did force myself to read the entire thing before I could move on the something more interesting, so maybe that tainted my reading of it. Maybe a few bits are usable but most of its just stuff I already know and just don't have it within me to apply.

>>11432 Seems super interesting, I am a sucker for good biographies, thanks for making this post!

>>8858 >Leopoldo Lugones. La hora de la palabra >Rating: 7,5/10 A brief review of the life and work of one of Argentina's most important literary figures, Lugones. It was interesting getting to know his personal life better: in some sense, he was the embodiment of pure will and action. He lived intensely and believed in this manner: he would be a representative of the nation's early XX century nationalism and far-right ideologies (calling for the "hour of the sword" in Latin America, and supporting a coup with fascistic tendencies). Comparatively, however, this work falls short. It's brevity is its main weakness. Regarding its literary works, Borges did a better job way earlier, I think. As for the historical contextualization, its oversimplification makes it unpalatable at times.

>>11471 Yeah, I'm not a fan of these people. This author in particular, it seems like the only thing he works on himself for is to poop out self-help books, and there are many more such cases. I've been reading Seneca's Letters, which have been far more interesting and helpful, though I disagree with some things here and there. At least Seneca can make a solid point with a few pages.

I read "On Moral Fiction" By John Gardner. Gardner as far as I am aware is a writer of the 70s with apparently some pretty great works but which have been since forgotten partly due to how much his views on literature were at odds with the literary academic world at the time. Those views are distilled in this book. I can see why he would be hated by literary academics. He argues that true art is moral. True art is something that is morally good and makes the world better. He condemns movements like post-modernism of art for it's own sake and picks out writers of his time like John Barth to pick apart. Everything post modern is for Gardner mostly trivial and hardly qualifies for art. Gardner is also vehemently against nihilistic or immoral literature. Something like De Sade is not merely trivial but almost evil. He takes a look at what makes some artist good but the book at least mostly felt like pointing out the bad ones. I did enjoy this and I might even agree with with Gardner on this one. Some of the metaphors went way over my head and the book was sometimes a bit hard to follow.

>>11510 Funny, I don't really think of Grendel as a "moral" work of fiction.

>>11511 I might read have to read it now Read Knut Hamsun's Hunger. This was a fun one to read. The book tells of a writer who struggles with poverty. What makes this books so entertaining is the nature of the writer. He might start acting absurdly towards other people and lie as a whim and then sometimes regret it, sometimes not. His passions and attitude towards life changes as he gets food but sometimes it changes just by itself or by some inconsequential happening. I actually found him very relatable. Can recommend and this one is quite short with only 150 pages.

>The Chrysalids from John Wyndham At first I found the book to be to heavy on the religion side of things but as the story and characters progressed I was hooked. The story is set in a post nuclear world in a town where any biological deviation is punished. It follows a group of kids who can communicate to each other in thoughts but physically are completely normal. As they grow up they become in more and more danger of being exposed. The author proposes this utopian society where people communicate in thoughts and feelings. These people project their 100% authentic self instead of the masks we wear day to day. No lying, no misunderstanding. I felt like this was what the internet could have been. On the internet no one knows who you are or even cares, you just project your honest and open self and can communicate with people from all around the world. Magical stuff. But it didnt turn out that way, human nature triumphed in the end and we're still stuck with a communication form where people have to mask their behavior, misunderstanding runs rife. The idea of having someone who is able to understand me on every level is a nice dream. I still hope one day we can move beyond this communication medium but I dont trust any of the companies working on the tech to implement it in a way that doesnt destory everything.

Read Queen of K'n-Yan over the weekend. It's an Eldritch horror type fiction that I'd rate at 3/5. The plot takes place almost entirely within a huge Japanese company building where a mommy is brought and resurrected. I feel like the way they translated Japanese to english made some parts of the novel a bit strange sounding but otherwise a fun read.

I have finished the first book of occult philosophy by Agrippa. It is fascinating, and something I should have read much sooner. It was informative, and I enjoyed all the new words I had to look up too. I won’t be using it purely as a blueprint to my occult path. It does reinforce things I have been doing and has given me glimpses into things I wish to do. I will start reading the second book, and then the third immediately after. I want to be done before the end of the year. With how dense the first one is I doubt I will be.

Last night I finished Terry Pratchett's Sourcery, the third of the Discworld novels. I liked parts of it, other parts I didn't really like. Terry's prose is usually very clever, but at some points here it seems he rushed things and things seemed a little forced. Overall, I'll give it a.. 7.5/10. The Luggage is one of my favorite characters, but I felt he had better moments in the previous two books. Stilll, it was fun reading a book about wizards, altogether I would say the first half of the book was a fun read. I don't remember very well the previous two books, in fact, I mean The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic. I remember they were quite entertaining, though a few reviews on goodreads do remind me that the former was a bit all over the place and not very cohesive. Still, I do remember it had it's moments. Next I am planning to read Going Postal, which I had already started in the past but never finished. I am also interested, in order, in Mort, and Equal Rites. It's the first time I finish a book of fiction in a long while, too.

I hope this thread isn't dead. I just finished A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. I enjoyed it's portrayal of the college educated but dim witted Ignatius. I'm sure this has been said a lot before but he really captures the essence of the modern day shut in that thinks he knows it all but blunders about the rare time he leaves the house. I intend on visiting New Orleans to visit the statue of Ignatius and eat a hotdog alongside him. Next up is Pere Goriot by Balzac.

>>11679 >modern day shut in that thinks he knows it all but blunders about the rare time he leaves the house Literally me except I have self-awareness. That being said I couldn't finish the book. It was terribly boring > Next up is Pere Goriot by Balzac. Good soykaf

Finished Dick's Dr. Bloodmoney today. Didn't hook me the same way other of his books did.

>>11682 What did you find boring about it? I think it dragged in places thanks to so many overlapping storylines. It's a slow start but the best comedy in the book comes when all the little threads collide. I haven't actually read any Balzac before, would you recommend any of his other books?

>>11686 I found nothing in it that kept me want to keep reading. That's all I've read only Pere Goriot and Lost Illusions and I can recommend both but I happened to come across one anon who made the following list: To start, read the short story Le Chef-d'œuvre inconnu (The Unknown Masterpiece), then you could continue with a novella, such as >Sarrasine >Gobseck >Colonel Chabert >Le Curé de Tours (The Vicar of Tours) Or go for the really good stuff, in this exact order >Père Goriot >Illusions perdues (Lost Illusions) [his best work] >Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes (A Harlot High and Low) Alternatively, you could go for some other novels, which are also very good, such as >Eugénie Grandet >La Rabouilleuse (The Black Sheep) >Cousin Bette >Cousin Pons There is also a side of Balzac that is mystical and more directly philosophical. These works can be good, but they're definitely not great, they are >La Peau de chagrin (The Wild Ass's Skin) >Louis Lambert >La Recherche de l'absolu (The Quest of the Absolute) >Ursule Mirouët

>>11688 Thank you for the list. I have finally finished Père Goriot. What a bleak ending. I'm coming to realise 'The Human Comedy' is an ironic title. I'm excited to track down a copy of Illusions Perdue and Splendeurs et Misères des Courtisanes to finish the trilogy. The several page long monologue by Vautrin was a highlight. Currently flying through A History of The World in Ten and A Half Chapters by Julian Barnes

>>9858 >Cyberia I love this book, I think it perfectly captures the optimism of the pre-2000s internet. how everyone thought the internet would be, and they were mostly right. its so interesting.

Just finished Stoner. Such a little, melancholic life, yet still so very interesting and beautiful when seen from the outside. Describing it merely as a sequence of events would make it seem quite dull since the book is just about the life of a university professor, a rather uneventful life. The richness comes much more from the portrayal of Stoner's inner experience than the events themselves, and that is much harder to put into words. 10/10 will probably read again sometime.

>>9856 I've thought for a long time the cuts are part of the reason the films get such a negative reaction from parts of the audience. A lot of the meat in the book has to do with the religious and animal aspects, which just get replaced with moody walking sequences. The story then comes off as slow but it's not really a slow burn since nothing is burning. There's just huge gaps in the story because things like the character development Deckard gets from talking to his wife are replaced with him walking around the city or driving. The Under the Skin adaption has the same problem. It's very moody and has the arthouse aesthetic that infers something heavy is going on, but they really gutted most everything the book has to say. The movie isn't really about anything, it just feels that way on a surface level.

Finished Väinö Linna's trilogy Under the Northern Star. Perhaps the best work from Finland, though I don't know how well the English translation holds up. Solid 9/10. Unopionated, mellow witticism, realistic style at its best. Softcore Tolstoi with little more poetry in his writing.

>>11817 I read the first part some time ago, but because of its dryness I couldn't finish the trilogy. I appreciate the work for giving a realistic-seeming portrayal of the historical time period and showing some of the intellectual currents which prevailed then (like seeing the tailor mixing Socialism with Theosophy) and the theoretical discussions among the Socialist elites on whether the peasant class would be a societal stratum willing to engage in revolutionary activism. But, beyond that, it's not as engaging as I had hoped for (though, that might just be because of my z*om-zo*m brain).

Read "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream." It was good, though its reputation as an exceptionally horrifying and disturbing story is overblown. I listened to the radio play after reading it, and that was also good.

>>11818 I enjoyed the mundane (or depending on the taste, dry) description of the ordinary lives of the rather ordinary people. Not only because of the prose itself, but also since it in style of realism laid the groundwork to the evident fact even those tumultuous times, rapid and violent changes and stream of high ideologies all had very humane, normal motives behind them. Case in point, the tailor guy who had the intelligent, wits and integrity to most of the time genuinely back up his feelings with socialism, but who also in the end evidently compensated his lack of good worker qualities (and following lack of recognition) with all sort of ideological trends.

>>11823 It becomes scarier as it progressively becomes more of a genuine reflection of our current state of society.

>A month in the country Great read. I enjoy books that are a small glimpse into the life of someone, where themes and ideas are explored but nothing happens in the sense of a big conflict, or resolution to something. Similar to something like "The Miner", it gave me a nice human feeling, which I find very hard to explain or come across in other books. I will give the film a watch, hopefully it is as good.

>temple of the golden pavilion i'd heard great things about mishima and i can say that he delivers in this one. the main character is relatable despite his flaws, very taxi driver-esque, the writing is very moody and atmospheric and the ending is great, definitely would recommend

Just finished this, the first book of the year. It's what you'd expect from a novel written by Nick Cave during the peak of his heroin use. Filthy, excessive, and sacreligious. How many did you all read last year, lainons? I think I got up to 60 though I didn't start tracking them until April so my count is a bit off. Highlights included >Negative Space - BR Yeager Gas station drugs that let you see the fabric of reality, self harm, chan posting, blood magic and a suicide epidemic in a dying New England town >In Cold Blood - Truman Capote The first true crime novel, an extremely depressing look at a senseless murder of an entire family during a robbery gone wrong. I felt hollow by the end. >The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power - Shoshana Zuboff The longest book I read in 2025. 700 pages detailing precisely how we've wound up in an economy built around the predatory extraction of our data and how we're all being monitored by private companies. The rabbit hole is real, this is required reading for anyone that wants to know just how intimately you're being violated by the corporations.

>>8858 Season of Skulls, by Charles Stross funny book. combines "horror" (really, horror themes), scifi, and dark fantasy into a comedy. i picked it from a library when i saw the sufficiently edgy title, and was decently surprised to find it was everything i'd ever want out of a fiction book. it's a sci-fi lovecraft fan fiction where nyarlahthotep is prime minister of england in 2017, where magic exists and comes in waves and droughts, where the most recent resurgence took place in the 60s, and continues on into current year, this magic being courtesy of eldritch dreams. without spoiling anything critical: not much sums up how goofy this premise gets than a plot point where glancing at an enchanted outlook email notification causes an aneurysm in time bleeding out and resurrecting an older evil into the current timeline. I will say this specific book has more period drama and romance than most of the books in the series which were mostly spy action, in fact a majority of this book took place in a pocket dimension reconstruction of 1817. it's not for everybody. the jokes exist at an intersection between morbidity, the occult, and computer humor, and at least a passing interest in each is maybe the only way to make these books worth reading. im currently reading Gideon the Ninth, and if you've read that, you'll likely enjoy this, if it wasnt obvious by Charles's comment being plastered on the front cover of that book. In fact, on second glance, Tamsyr's comment is plastered on the front of my borrowed copy of Season of Skulls..

>>8858 I finally go around to reading this book, which has been collecting dust ever since I got it after a colleague recommended it. It's about a cave diver who goes on an adventure because of hypercapitalsm in a parallel world where not-Elon Musk, not-Jeff Bezos, and a few others are competing on who can go into space more better. It took a few chapters to actually start to see where the book was going, because I thought it was just going to be a slow and overly technical story, but it was refreshingly not.

A Short Stay in Hell was a short, fun read. A book loving Mormon dies and goes to an ironic hell of a library containing every permutation of a book made up of 410 pages, 40 lines with 80 characters per line. He isn't allowed to enter paradise until he can find the story of his entire life in one book with no errors. Most of the horror comes from the sheer scale of his task, but I like the idea of dying a religious man and finding out you made the wrong choice. There's good horror in living your life in holy and thoughtful way and discovering you're still condemned to Hell because you weren't born into Zoroastrianism. If God does exist, the odds of practicing the right religion and also the right denomination seem vanishingly small. At best you're a dice roll away from eternal suffering.

A Movable Feast made me cry with it's damning but not innaccurate description of the struggle in Fitzgerald's later life. Having read Tender Is The Night and Save Me The Waltz last year gave me the context for how sad this quote is: >His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to think and could not fly any more because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless

I finished "John Hinckley Jr: Who I Really Am," it's the autobiography/memoir of John Hinckley Jr, the guy who tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan because he believed it would win the heart of Jodie Foster. Going into it, I had a passing knowledge of the main event. I knew he had a delusional obsession with Jodie Foster, stalked her, and thought killing a president would make her love him, then got found not guilty by reason of insanity. Since he got out of the mental institution a few years ago, I've kept up with his music, but hadn't learned anything else about it. The book was a good read, but I'll get the bad out of the way first: it reads like you'd expect a first-time author to read. It's repetitive at times, which is understandable because it's clear Hinckley wanted to hammer home that he disavows his actions, but gets tiresome. The structure is mostly linear with respect to time, some jumping around, mostly where appropriate, but there are portions that feel meandering. But even so, I think if I were to be his editor, I would have probably only cut 5-10% of it. Now the good: it was an interesting and entertaining read. I'm glad Hinckley chose to be candid about the thoughts he was having during his break from reality. A lot of the times when someone does something bad and tells the story later, you can tell they're prettying up their portrayal of their thought process, adding in rationalizations that occurred after the fact, working in excuses that wouldn't have been on their mind when they committed the act, other such insincerities. But not Hinckley. His portrayal of his mind leading up to, and in the after math of, the attack, had a very "warts and all" sincerity to it. Lots of rage, obsessive and delusional thoughts presented as he felt them at the time. He also includes some of his past writings for an even better glimpse into his thoughts of the time. The book is also pretty sad. "He thought killing the president would make Jodie Foster love him" is true, but also an understatement. I won't spoil anything in case any other lains wish to read it, but he was even more bonkers I expected, and there are some other tragedies. I don't think any of the book will surprise anyone, especially if you're familiar with mental illness, but it was a good read and there were several interesting pieces of his life I was unfamiliar with. The book is largely a serious book, but there were also a few comedic lines that got some chuckles from me. Here are a few of my favorite songs of his: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nt2qWsT5Cwo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XF2qEZyeAPQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3QWEC2gN5A

finished Venus in Furs Short and good and has a nice twist toward the end, though the plot is a story-in-a-story structure and the actual ending does an "and the moral of the story is" and doesn't quite pull it off. The "moral" has to be unexpected yet click in an instant to get away with being that direct. The main character and the woman both have layers of sincerity and performance that blur to make things interesting. Narrowly its about masochism, but its also about mythologizing your partner destroying a relationship. (Spoilers) The woman is gradually coaxed by MC into looking down on and mistreating him, all while begging him not to. By the end she loses her lover, having hurt, beat, demeaned, deceived, and eventually c_cked and abandoned him, having not wanted any of it, and knowing he just regrets it in the end. She doesn't even get a happily ever after, because the dark triad chad he drives her too dies in a duel, so she's just alone. And all MC had to do was get on top and they could have been happy. I'd like to read the same story told from the woman's point of view.

>>11060 >>11063 I think one of the more interesting ideas in it is that of "satellites" which no longer have a center. He gives the example of the more prosperous suburban areas surrounding decrepit post-industrial cities, among other things. I think his ideas complement Hofstadter's, with 4th stage simulacra being similar to strange loops (both are self defining). But emotionally to Hofstadter this is something which grows out of reality, whereas for Baudrillard it feels more like the eating of reality.

>>11944 sounds like a ripoff of "Library of Babel", in fact there is a mention of a similar situation in it: A group of fanatics become obsessed with finding the books of "their redemption" i.e. the book explaining everything they did and why. They burn down millions of books until they are hunted down, but it does not matter because the entire universe in the story is just a library with close-to infinite books in it.

>>12022 The similarities are deliberate. In the first few pages the demon adjudicating people's eternal sentences explains that the protagonists hell is based on Borges' short story. The demon mocks him that a human had inspired such a horrible form of punishment. A Short Stay in Hell differs in that the people condemned to the library know exactly why they're there and what it's purpose is. The creeping horror is how long it takes for them to realise the enormity of their task. >>12016 I'm curious as to how sincere the "moral of the story" really is. I wonder if it was inspired by Masoch's real feelings about his relationship with Fanny Pistor or if the framing as a morality play was to allow such an erotic work to be published in 1870. Have you read Sade? He's on my reading list for this year

>>12023 I'm reading Justine, it's a slog, but historically and psychologically interesting. I can't tell if he believes the philosophy of libertinage or thinks he is satirizing it. Unlike masoch, I think Sade was genuinely insane so it might be both. The only thing that makes me think it's not the purely the unfiltered ravings of a sexual deviant, is that he wrote it while in prison, which makes me think he might have identified more with the MC than her abusers. Warning that the characters are all one dimensional. MC is a good christian and all the men are proud hedonists who happen to enjoy rape etc. This does somewhat convey the fact the ridiculousness of the MC: any good christian girl would be either dead or a 17th century equivalent of a crack whore after any one of the horrible things that happen to her. MC just gets up and carries on without her faith in god or men ever shaken for more than an hour. This is probably just in service of the smut, but I prefer to interpret it as making a point. As for the smut it's written in such roundabout terms that its hard to enjoy erotically, or even understand half the time (so many references like "the other temple, as distinguished from that which tasked the regeneration of the species, at which he preferred to exclusion to make his offering"). Being generous, we could say by writing so much so from the libertines (or Sade's own) headspace, Sade excludes the reader from any sexual enjoyment of the scene, just as the libertines are solely concerned with their own pleasure. (it is worth noting that Sade wanted all of his own work destroyed after his death). As for Masoch, if I had to guess it probably really happened to him. I don't think men can write women so compellingly unless its a real woman.

I re-read Fortune de France, the first book of a series following a man in the XVIth century France, from his childhood through the various religious war. The good parts are as good as I remembered, but as a child I hadn't noticed how preachy it was about religion, and how misogynist it was. All the women are either seductress or stupid. And the author treats some rape-y relations as cute. It's distracting enough that I'm probably not reading the rest. Kinda fuarrrked up that my father read me this when I was like eight.

Marolijn Hof - Against the Odds Really insightful little children's book about the psychology of children, and the certain neurotic paths they (and we) can go down. (OCD) I'd definitely recommend it. Does anyone else like reading children's books? They're easy to finish and I feel like trying to look at the world through a kids perspective is interesting and sometimes gives me an insight into my own life (no pedo)

I finished this yesterday in one sitting. I enjoyed it showing the mass media and soft language being used to normalise abhorrent behaviour. The slaughterhouse sections were pretty squicky too. I found it ironic that the Spanish name for the novel translates to "Exquisite Corpse" given I read Poppy Z Brite's identically named book last year. There's a contrast between the two, depicting underground taboo cannibalism versus a society wide acceptance of eating people.

I just finished reading "Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business". It is a great book and fun read. It talks about how changes in the mediums we use (oral culture, writing, printing press, telegraph, tv) shapes society and how we think. Technology is not neutral, and the shift from a print based culture to a tv based culture has changed how public discourse works for the worse and had a negative effect on peoples ability to think critically and in depth about topics.

>>12044 It’s been a while since I’ve read a children’s book. I liked the idea, I’ll read this one. seens to be pretty interesting.

I just finished reading the Camp of the Saints. I had started reading it maybe 5 years ago after a recommendation here or on another board, but quickly dropped it.I just picked it up again last week, starting from the beginning, and really enjoyed it this time around. It is a French book, written in 1973, that depicts the destruction of the west, and specifically France, from third world migration/invasion. 1 million Indians depart from the Ganges and illegally show up on the beaches of France. The book follows various characters as the hoards are on the way to France and after they arrive. All the newspapers, with one exception, promoting the plight of the invaders and how the French need to welcome them with open arms as great act of charity and atonement. The church has stopped caring about God and now cares only for social justice and engages in blatant unionism/syncretism. Schoolchildren are made to write assignments about how the poor migrants on the boat must feel, and describe how terrible the conditions on the boats must be. The government is too scared, too apathetic, to do anything to stop the hoards. Almost all the military defects and refuses to repel the invasion. The invaders win, the west dies. We're all from the Ganges now!

>>12087 It have been written by a guy from the 68 generation. The author assume that racism can only be done by white people and that once we have purged the world of whites, then racism will be gone and everyone will be happy and holding each other by the hand and singing songs. There is only the exception of one indian guy with internalized whiteness who understand that the colonial aera was the only good time in Indian history and he come with the racist whites to die with them. Yes, the guy wrote this unironically. No it's not a far right doom book. Yes, that leftist assumed that the army would turn their guns against their own government to end racism once and for all by the mean of diluting the white race with all other races. This is why it's called the camp of the saints, in the Christian mythology it's the last place before heaven.

>>12088 Interesting, so you are suggesting that author is a leftest who actually supports multiculturalism? I didn't get that impression at all but am trying to think through it, maybe I just read into it what I wanted and missed his point. His description of what the leftists are promoting doesn't seem at all in line with how a leftist would portray it. He doesn't really portray the racist right in a good way, they are all very blood thirsty and degenerate individuals. The one is a strip club owner and a bunch of the others frequented it for example, and they all love violence. And the monks who are against the invasion don't even believe in God. But the bulk of the book, the description of the sentiment of the left who are promoting the invasion, and all the descriptions of said invasion, are all a good thoughtful critique obliviously intended to paint it in a negative light.

>The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes Just finished this epic about the history of the atomic bomb. It starts off very early, even going back to Rutherford's discovery of the atom, and then takes you through all the characters as they slowly become a part of the Manhattan Project and ends with the dropping of Fat Man. So... if you've formally studied physics, you tend to get a very skewed view of the history of the field. Normally Bohr is relegated to a footnote. He determined the spectrum of the Hydrogen atom through a weird mix of classical and quantum reasoning and his results end up being correct due to sheer coincidence; the actual way to compute the spectrum is completely different. But reading the book, you kind of realize that Bohr was the intellectual and the social center of the field in the early days. And I didn't know how great a role he played in helping physicists escape Europe after the Nazis started going open season on everybody. On a less serious note, although everyone's heard the same stories about Bohr and Feynman a zillion times, I now have a treasure trove of cool and obscure anecdotes to drop on people :P. All in all, a very engaging read I'd recommend to anybody interested in history. It's a 10/10 for me.

>Hunger games - Sunrise on the Reaping A pretty alright book I'd say. I read the main series but not the first prequel, and though it has been some time since I did I'd say Collin's writing improved. Moreover, the appearing characters feel like they are actually worth protecting, they all are useful in some way and have a charm to them in another - in the main series many characters felt as though they were written to be annoying or a burden to the protagonist. Another thing to be praised are the many poems and old songs used as part of the story, they deepen the culture of the district children and the longing to their homes. Also, I caught several 1984 references towards the end! Finally, some praise to Snow. That guy was a menace. A downside to the book is how predictable most major plot events are, including and especially character deaths. A reader can, with the knowledge of the original series, easily tell who dies and roughly when he dies. With this in mind, perhaps it would be best to start with this book if you are new to Panem. Still, whether or not you are new, I definitely recommend reading it! 9/10!