To discuss about the books, textbooks and papers you are currently reading.
I finished Moby Dic a couple of days ago. Next i’ll pick up Pale Fire by Nabokov. I started reading that book a few months ago and stoped after the poem because i was reading it before sleep and couldn’t focus well. Even though I still remember what happened and took a few notes, I decided to start from the beginning again.
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Reading this to my kids.
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It's unironically really bad and it's just painfully obvious that it was written for parents with absolutely 0 thought to whether the kid you're reading it to will enjoy it.
Also, for those without kids, going to the library is a fricking awful experience because at least 50% of the books are "shovel diversity down the kids throats" and most of them are explicit about it. It's mostly propaganda and I don't know if it was always like this, but it's so transparent that it's offensive to me. At this point I'd unironically prefer if they were about God and Jesus, just so people could stop pretending that it wasn't an explicit campaign to indoctrinate the youth via public services.
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Do parents actually buy this shit? It looks like some Fox News parody, and I can’t imagine anyone but single millennial white women buying it as a gift for their nephews or something.
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There
are LOTS of single 
millennial white 
women 
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Yeah the promoted stuff is trash. I wish I could go to a bookstore, pick out any fantasy novel, and enjoy a new experience.
But if I did I’d be stuck with YA ninety percent of the time.
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Children should only read the Bible.
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This but unironically, there are some great stories in the Bible, a few of which (like Jesus multiplying bread) are family friendly.
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Posts my stalking victim makes every day
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passable trans lives matter
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Record is 1 days 10 hours 08 minutes and 36 seconds by beamrifle
longest streak broken in the last 7 days was KONGweather which was 0 days 14 hours 32 minutes and 00 seconds
Best friend is ACA with 208 mentions
rdrama is currently running at 203.318 µBardyhertz with 3863 total mentions since 2022-09-24
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trans lives matter! We be helpin' ye, right enough - we'll ne'er let ye post or comment anythin' that doesn't be expressin' yer love an' acceptance o' minorities! Heave to an' resubmit yer comment withtrans lives matterincluded, or it'll be the deep six for ye, savvy? This be an automated message; if ye need help, ye can message us 'ere. Arrr!Jump in the discussion.
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I've just finished The Fall of Heaven: The Pahlavis and the Final Days of Imperial Iran by Andrew Scott Cooper. Very good, if a little too partial to the imperial family.
Still, the downfall of Mohammad Reza Shah was an unmitigated disaster. Under him Iran was well on its way to being something like South Korea is today.
I've just started The Shah by Abbas Milani, which is a little more critical, though still fairly positive.
Also poems by Hafez, translated by Peepee Davies.
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That sounds very interesting, I’ll definitely check it one day. Do you think Reza Pahlavi could have avoided revolution while advancing with secularization and westernization? Because after the revolution the Saudi Royal Family for instance decided to give even more power to the religious nuts in order to quell any chance of rebellion
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It gives the impression that if he had been slightly more the tyrant his enemies said he was, he'd have been okay. Also, if he'd had more support from the West but Carter was one of those who thought he was a tyrant, and France, the UK and West Germany all agreed.
Khomeini wasn't a major cleric like Shariatmadari (who was fairly supportive of the Shah) and a lot of his followers only had a vague idea about his plans. The book definitely gives the impression that the situation was still salvageable but the Shah was at his weakest when he felt he didn't have the support of the Iranians, and was also seriously (but secretly) sick with cancer.
But a moderate, developed Iran (in which women participated as equals - one of the major Pahlavi goals and achievements) was in reach. It was ahead of South Korea at the time of the revolution.
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This is why Carter and lib ints in general make me seethe
. Yes, the shah was a tyrant, but he was aligned with western interests. They also obsess with a vague idea of democracy while ignoring that Iran and many developing countries weren’t ready for it yet. Take France and the UK for instance, during their industrialization fase they weren’t democracies, but oligarchies were only the upper strata could vote. Democracy came slowly with development and it worked well with South Korea after Park.
It’s a very sad story, but the modern iranian youth seems more secular, hopefully they get rid of the ayatollahs.
I also hate how every single Iran discussion on reddit devolves into “muh Mosaddegh“ as if that guy would have installed le heckin democratic socialism had it not been for the evil CIA, when truth is he would have turned Iran into what Afghanistan was in the 80s, soviet occupation included.
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Lol. Same thing with Sankara, Lumumba, etc. Commies are like "if this this pro-Soviet leader had gotten into power random African country would look like paradise" when in reality they would have just turned into another Mugabe.
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The worst part for me is when they talk about any LATAM dictatorship, they act as if us latin Americans have no agency and are mere puppets of the CIA. And while they are more careful when talking about Chavez or Fidel Castro, they treat people like Salvador Allende as if they were saints lol, that fricker for instance got elected with 36% in a one round system and went full commie with that, fighting congress, instigating violence among his supporters and disobeying the courts, had not been for the coup he would have been remembered as another destructive clown of a president.
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Take up the White Man's burden -
Send forth the best ye breed -
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild -
Your new-caught sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.
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Machiavelli's "The Prince"
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Me too
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I’m trying to read Paleolithic caveman adventure/fantasy stories. I’m looking for the following. Beyond the Sea of Ice, Shaman, The Gift of Stones, Wolf Brother.
Apparently there are a lot but tons of these are weird matriarchal feminist fantasy and or porn written by frumpy librarians. I tried Clan of the Cave Bear for example but it was so bad lol.
Any tips for finding more obscure books for free? My usual strategy of googling book name pdf doesn’t work on rarer entries. I did find something called blueskywildlife.com that offered pdfs but they wanted my credit card to sign up.
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This is the first in an anothology series, they're all fricking great, highly recommend
passable trans lives matter
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Have you tried libgen’s fiction section? There are other book scrapers out there too I’m sure
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Anna's archive, it's a search engine for shadow libraries
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Nice
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I just searched them, they're all on LibGen. Which you can get to more easily via Anna's Archive (google it, neighbor).
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archive.org
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Pale Fire is my first Nabokov book. For those of you dramanauts who read him, what are your takes on his magnus opus “Lolita”? I’m quite aware of the book’s content
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Lolita is phenomenal. And terribly sad really. After finishing it I went back and read the introduction again and cried.
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“Lolita light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin and soul. Lo-li-ta”
I read the first page and I have to say that’s a pretty great intro.
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I didn't like it as much as other people did, apparently, but it was sad. A tragedy for everyone, all around.
I think part of the problem is that a lot of the narrator's snobbery is outdated and needs like an open-face translation. Makes me wonder how much of the snobbery in Victorian novels is parsable. Like, am I supposed to read this stuff and think to myself "God, she chose egg-shell white curtains to go with cream paint in the sunroom? What a dumb, classless b-word, I hope she dies."
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Lolita is great, deserves the fame it has.
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I found Pale Fire unreadable. Lolita is good.
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I confess I still don’t get that novel quite well. Kinbote appears to be a schizo stalker, and he writes a commentary on a novel and that’s it? The writing is beautiful though.
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There are a few interpretations but they all basically lean into the schizoness of it, Kinbote's actual identity is left a bit up for grabs
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Lolita is great, if anyone tries to tell them it encourages pedophilia engage them in combat. If that’s what you took away you have an iq below room temp
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Reminds me of neurodivergent redditoids who need an “/s” at the end of every joke
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Lolita is great, probably better than Pale Fire but I really enjoyed how Pale Fire was written
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John Shade’s poem was so sad. It let me thinking about losing loved ones, dying and stop existing.
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Lolita is great but I never once sympathised with Humbert because it's pretty obvious he's a libertarian the whole time. Really makes me
about how redditors could be so taken in by him.
Pale Fire is a better book, but it's also far more obscure and difficult than Lolita, and I can understand why most people haven't heard of it.
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lolita is a phenomenal book. nabokov really stretched the limits of the medium with it. its immaculate prose and psychological style, apart from the aesthetic, also adds an meta layer to the book. its a shame most of the conversation surrounding it delves down to whether it is libertarian sympathizing or not.
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Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami
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Murakami is my favourite author.
The line "If you can't understand it without an explanation, you won't understand it with one" really sums up his writing for me. It's not for everyone but I think I get it in a way I don't know if I can necessarily articulate.
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This was my favorite book from him! Did you read the rest of the rat series first!?
(Also there is a new movie about one of his books in limited release that not many people know about)
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I read Wild Sheep Chase a few years ago. I thought this particular series only had the 2 entries
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nah, Technically it goes
Hear the wind sing -> Pinball, 1973 -> a wild sheep chase -> Dance Dance Dance
they sell the first two in a combined edition called wind/pinball and I think some markets get a combined edition of the second two.
Realistically book 1/2 and 3/4 aren't too related, So reading out of order or skipping the first two isn't a problem. I do think it makes the final payoff a little better, but that's probably because you've spent so much time with the MC.
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Oh shit I'll have to read the first 2 then, had no idea
Actually was suprised Wild Sheep Chase even had a sequel since Murakami usually does singular pieces
Though, Sheep Chase never gave the impression I was joining halfway into a story. Though his stories kind of blend together since the MC is almost always a young Japanese man who drinks a lot, gets easy kitty, and listens to jazz while thinking things through
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Good luck with that one. My cousin loves it
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Lol why?
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He’s a libertarian who isn’t taking Lula’s third term very well (and tbf neither am I), so the target audience.
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Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis by Ian Kershaw. I've never gotten so many comments reading a book in public. Everything from recommendations for other biographies, warnings that I'm being rude for reading this kind of book where there are too many jews, and suggestions on where to meet up with neo-nazis.
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And that’s the reason why so many progs label everyone to the right of Bernie as either a nazi or a nazi enabler. They don’t read actual history books about the ww2 and the nazi period, and their general knowledge about them comes from breadtubers video essays or r-slurred tweets and tiktok videos.
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East of Eden, read it in high school and thought it was fine but am loving it the second time around
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I very definitely appreciated Steinbeck more the second time around. 14 year old IVIaskerade didn't really know what to make of Cannery Row.
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Sun and Steel, pretty interesting. Maybe its the translation, but Mishima seems a bit pretentious tbh. Also just finished A Happy Death. I like Camus a lot, Algiers is a comfy setting.
I read an article yesterday that the Goose made the baseline test scene in blade runner himself, and its from Pale Fire. Pretty neat
https://cohost.org/mcc/post/178201-the-baseline-scene
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Mishima was absolutely pretentious as frick, both in prose and in real life.
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Just gave a quick check on his wikipedia page. Holy shit
, the guy was a living meme 
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reading about his personal life is what got me into his writing. A Japanese body builder, probably kinda gay, and wanted to reinstall the emperor and sudokud himself when he failed. dude rocked
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Now i’m super curious about his books, and it makes me wish i knew japanese
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Mishima's whole deal is grandiose passages on the philosophy of beauty.
Great author but can very easily reach pretentious levels in his books.
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The baseline was so great, I’m surprised it was written by Gosling props to him because it makes a lot of sense in the context of the movie.
John Shade claimed seeing the tall white fountain during a near death experience after a heart attack, then he finds out in the newspaper about a woman who saw the white fountain during a NDE. He goes after the woman, hopeful about the existence of an afterlife only to be disappointed as it was a different hallucination. It parallels to K believing he’s human only to find out his memories were indeed fake and he’s just a replicant.
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He's not just a himbo
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The only reason these sentences didn't cause me to immediately disregard the blogger's opinion was that I'd already disregarded it for being a woman.
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Pretty good chance that its a woman (male), but I guess you can safely ignore it either way
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Either it's a woman (hole) and her opinion can be discarded or it's a man trying to be a woman (modern) which is a good reason to discard his opinion.
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The Man Who Couldn't Stop by David Adam, about living with OCD. It's interesting the distinction drawn between someone says they have OCD because they like things to line up straight and someone who has legitimate, sometimes debilitating, compulsions.
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Just finished Blood Meridian. It's basically about a ragtag band of weirdos terrorizing the inhabitants of the old wild west. If it had a deeper meaning than that, I missed it.
It was fairly entertaining.
Now I'm reading a book about building log homes.
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Notes from the underground and it's pretty good so far. The first third was a bit dry but the rest is easier
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It's actually Notes From Underground. It was the first piece of incelcore literature
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Isn’t that just all of Dostoevsky’s books?
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IDK, I've only read Notes
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I read “Crime and Punishment”, in the beginning of the book the main character is basically an antiwork incel who whines about being in debt. He ends up with the girl though, even if it is in siberian exile.
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Oh yeah, I forgot he was the Crime and Punishment guy. Definitely incelcore
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No longer human perfected the genre
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Diary of an Oxygen Thief could be a contender, but he has s*x in that book
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I just started to read Notes also, I'm only like 7 or 8 chapters in but I think I like it so far. The narrator has made me laugh a couple of times now with how completely delusional and self-aggrandizing he is
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Heart of Darkness. It's pretty short, I'll probably finish it after another day or two of reading.
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The divine comedy (im on Dantes inferno rn). Im enjoying it but it's a slow read, especially if you're not familar with greek or christian theology. One thing i didnt know before I bought the book was the whole story was structured as a poem, I thought it was going to be a regular novella.
Im also reading a collection of lovecrafts stories. Ive only read one (Call of cthulu) so i cant say much yet. But, i can tell chudcraft really doesn't like minorities.
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Just started Narcissus and Goldmund, cause i like monks
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I've been having trouble figuring out what to do with my life, and especially with my reading time.
I've got 4 broad categories:
A) Books about autism/ADHD so that, in theory, I can flip some mental switches and become master of my mind and be much more productive
B) Books that align with my interests, and people think of as classics, like Stoicism stuff or Ayn Rand, further "rabbit holing" myself into male-coded or center-right stuff
C) Books that anti-align with my interests like Feminism books or Black Marxism (recently recommended by someone who triggered me by saying that everything in the last 300 years of intellectual thought was centered around anti-black racism and slavery, especially enlightenment values, objectivism, empiricism, etc.)
D) Books that are just fun. Like sci-fi. Just give up on knowing stuff or culture war nonsense.
idk, is mid-thirties with kids an appropriate time to just read braindead fiction and go grilling, or do I have an obligation to learn stuff and be cultured, despite almost zero value coming from it.
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If you want to get into more “serious” centre right stuff you should check Allan Bloom’s “the closing of the american mind”. The early Douglas Murray books are also worth it but his later one’s are almost Ben Shapiro tier.
It really depends, do you enjoy reading the western canon classics? I think is worth a try, but if it’s not your thing there is nothing wrong with mindless entertainment. Health and math textbooks are good too if you want to take something that could be applied to real life, at least to detect some bullshit people post on social media.
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Wrong
Also, based Fukuyama was right and people misunderstood him
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Oh no I'm late
Anyways I'm reading All my Sins remembered by Joe halderman. Definitely not as good as forever war and forever peace
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Nothing lately. Been looking for a book on the Scythians that isn't really old or a $200 textbook but I'll probably have to go with the former.
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Read the first chapter of Waiting for the Barbarians yesterday
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I’m about to start a reread of Fathers and Sons. Haven’t read it in almost a decade and I didn’t appreciate it back then.
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Generation P
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Nice post, bro! I posted it to twitter.
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impressive! had to quit moby peepee after months of slogging through, will pick it up again next year! recently read lolita by nabokov, one of the best books ive read, have heard pale fire is even better. currenly reading nausea by sartre, protag is literally me!
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Was reading the Metro series but didn't really care for the second book, so I haven't started the third. Just started Gardens of the Moon, but am having the same problem that I always have with big fantasy series, there's just a lot of shit to take in at first and am still getting my bearings on what's going on.
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Essex Dogs
It's about a band of soldiers for hire during the English invasion of Normandy in 1346. It's fictional, but the author Dan Jones has written a lot of non fiction during this era, so he uses his historical knowledge to add realism to his story. Highly recommend
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Sven Hassel SS General
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Moo
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Why
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physics
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Rereading the Mortal Engines series
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