To discuss your weekly readings of books, textbooks and papers.
I'm currently about to finish Cortázar Los Premios (The Winners).
So this group or Argies are on board of a ship called “Malcolm”. They're told on the second day the Malcolm is heading to Japan and that the Stern is quarantined due to a Typhus outbreak, and that the captain himself is sick. Most passengers think that's bullshit and one of them, Carlos López (a high school teacher) wants to make use of force (they have a couple of guns lmao) to pass through the officers as they wont let them telegraph to Buenos Aires and are held recluse in their part of the ship. Carlos is in love with a crazy redhead, Paula, who's traveling with an architect Raúl, everyone on board thinks they're married (it's set in the late 1950s after all) but they're not, nor are they sleeping together, just sharing the cabin as Raúl is gay. Paula is a pretentious train wreck but a funny character regardless, all the foids on the ship believe she's some nymphomaniac slut who's going after their husbands and sons.
There are some creepy gay themes on the book.
There's Felipe: a 16 year old boy from an upper middle class family, he's López's student (López thinks he's dim witted). Felipe is attracted to Paula who obviously dismisses him as he's just a boy, through his POV we find out one of his best friends at school is either gay of bisexual and that he's a bit attracted to it. The book has too many descriptions of Felipe taking showers, looking himself naked in front of the mirror, describing his pool speedos, etc.
There's Raúl, a closeted homosexual as mentioned before. He lusts for Felipe, on the first meeting with Felipe, the latter tells him that traveling with his parents and sister sucks to which Raúl says: “I wished you were here all alone” at some point Felipe invites Raúl to his cabin then takes a shower with the door open (no homo he thinks) Raúl watches him bath, tells him he has a great body. Then he dresses up and Raúl starts touching his hair to Felipe tells him to stop. Raúl believes Felipe will punch him but instead Felipe is scared as the cabin door is locked and starts crying. Raúl leaves and later tells Paula who's like: “are you crazy? He's just a child!” 
Then there's Bob, a sailor, he befriends Felipe, gets him drunk on his cabin and r*pes him.
Other interesting characters are Claudia, a recently divorced woman traveling along her son Jorge and an neurodivergent old friend Persio. Persio has a bunch of soliloquies across the book, typically at the end of a chapter (not all chapters though). Claudia is attracted to Medrano, López's friend, and is also concerned that the whole typhus things is bullshit.
I'm wondering about the end now as the crew of the ship is incredibly hostile and who's behind the whole “crusier lottery” as many if these characters knew each other before winning the tickets (an astonishing coincidence).
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I'm reading Rendezvous with Rama. Just found out that Dennis Vinillvouou, or however you spell his name, is set to direct a movie based on the book
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Crazy that it took so long for such a genre defining book to be adapted. At least afaik there aren't any shows/movies made from it yet
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Im reading
Im listening to
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im reading this thread
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Very dramapilled book, OP.
I'm reading Kyoto: A Cultural History as I may be going to the anime homeland later this year.
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Currently reading "Roadside Picnic" - I've seen the stalker movie but have never played the games. The book is pretty kino.
Also reading a ton of papers on rewrite languages and E-unification.
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I really liked the book, think I'm going to do a reread before I do a rewatch of the movie. The movie was alright, but I'm pretty
when it comes to cinematography and shit.
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I'm finishing Tales from the Couch by an old retired shrink who mainly started working in the 70s, Bob Wendorf. Good Reads reviews ree about him using terms common in that time (like r-slurred) and suggesting being gay might be not a big deal, but also not psychological normal. Also many complaints about him physically describing women patients and not caring about noting if they're hot; although he describes men's looks as well and isn't a horn dog about it so whatever.
In other words, it's like having a coffee with an old school shrink who enjoys going over old cases and never got the latest software updates on tweeting class social acceptability. Its interesting.
What I found most interesting is that he was working at the height of the Multiple Personality Disorder and recovered memory fads, and seems very much caught between understanding it was a social contagion—but also wanting to believe his MPD patients were displaying genuine suffering and that he helped them. IMHO where he drops the ball is never reflecting on how providing therapy for non-existent conditions could actually be hurting his patients by reinforcing false realities, avoiding true underlying causes, and reinforcing family separation based on delusion, etc.
Still, I have never heard from a shrink actively involved in those fads try to defend them, and it's a very interesting peak into the mindset which allowed concepts like recovered memory to thrive. Kinda fascinating for that alone.
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I've known more coherent downies.
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The Shining. About halfway in and I get why King hated the movie.
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I loved the movie, why did he hate it? A friend of mine recommended me The Shining but I never gave it a try, I read IT and thought it had some good parts but waaay too much filler.
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From what I understand, Jack Torrance is a self insert of King and his substance abuse issues. And it's pretty clear in the first half of the book he loves Danny and Wendy a lot despite being an alcoholic with a temper. There isn't a single moment in the movie where I believed Nicholson has an ounce of love or warmth towards Wendy and Danny. He just seems like a psychotic butthole who has always been wanting to kill them. So King didn't like seeing himself portrayed that way. I love the movie though, don't really care how accurate it is to the book.
The only other King books I have read are The Dark Half(forgettable) and Salem's Lot(very enjoyable).
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I've been reading most of Christopher Buehlman's books and they've been pretty good so far, but I just finished The Necromancer's House and there was just a lot of shit I didn't like. It was in a more modern setting than the others of his that I've read, so a lot more political references. The main love interest is also in AA with the main character and she's also an ex-con because she went to prison for fricking one of her students and it's never challenged or anything, in fact towards the end it shows that she is completely unrepentant for her actions, and would seemingly do it again if she could get away with it and this is never challenged by any other character. Also, since she's a lesbian (and seemingly a
) and the main character is a dude there's not really a chance for them to stay together.. unless our main character somehow ends up in a female body, which feels like a whole butt thing is all frickin wrong but 
For the most part it was simple and had some fun ideas, but that shit really bugged me and when I try to look for reviews where people bring this up it's only wokoids pissed about the lesbian thing, which I agree also seems dumb and wrong, but the libertarian shit bugs me way more.
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At no point in your rambling, incoherent post were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone on this site is now dumber for having read it. May God have mercy on your soul.
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Finished Zeroville on Monday and currently reading some Sergei Dovlatov and Woodcutters. Remember to use your public libraries instead of wasting your wagie bux on books, you'll need them for donating to the site
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Just read "Solaris." I really loved the premise and the character interactions. I'll admit to skimming the 10 page scientific descriptions of the ocean, but I think it was important that they were in the book. The author needed to impose a sense that this place was real and truly alien, instead of just "uh weird ocean." Sort of like how Moby Peepee has all those long bits about whaling.
Also this is probably missing the point but I thought the troubled dead girl with freak strength was pretty hot. I took the book as paranormal romance with an inevitable tragic ending. RIP
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Ghost
Story 
- Peter 
Straub.
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Gonna finish my reread of A Dance With Dragons probably by Monday then I'm going onto the Sun Eater series.
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