To discuss your weekly readings of books, textbooks and papers.
I'm in part 5 of "Crime & Punishment", I'm currently doing a re-reading. The first time I read that book was 9 years ago, I remember the general plot but I had forgotten many details and there's a lot to the story I didn't understand on my first reading. I know Dostoevsky sometimes gets derided as a book for edgy young men but that's quite unfair considering how much influence he had on writers like Kafka, James Joyce, García Márquez, Mishima, Camus. And I think many miss the point that Dostoevsky critizes the nihilists (19th century edgelords) of his era. He can be quite a vicious satirist, there's a chapter where the proto commie Lebeziatnikov talks about how life in the commune will be and how marriage is outdated and how he's totally ok with cuckery and that he wishes being cucked if he ever gets married while Luzhin bursts in laughter while he monologues on a serious tone. Seriously, the guy vomited so many Rose twitter talking points, I guess there's nothing new under the sun.
Razumikhin is a chad just like I remembered him, he's the friend everyone wishes to have. Rodion is a pseudo-intellectual, he tries so hard to be edgy with his "extraordinary men not bounded to crime" manifesto believing himself as a sort of ubermensch, I love how Dostoevsky shreds his worldview as he suffers from guilt. I never read Brothers Karamazov but now I'm definitely going for it and add it to my reading list.
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!nooticers
nootice this
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!chuds !nonchuds
Choose your path:
Pepe Memes and Mein Kampf
vs
No memes and Das Kapital
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!grillers
Literally every other book on the planet. I highly suggest the first four 1980s Ninja Turtles graphic novels. Splinter's master gets kicked out of the dojo when he caught his rival raping his uwu submissive Asian gf waifu, whose younger brother grows up to be Shredder.
!coomers
we only look at pornhub for the comment section
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B-word I had to explain to other little kids why the soldier with a gun always beats the ninja because of TMNT.
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they have memes alright
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Which are you?
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Foids don't need to know what their men read
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I need a biblical obsessive friend tbh I have too many questions that I think are kinda useless to ask without someone with a large breadth of knowledge to redirect me
Side note but when I lived in the sticks it was 100% guaranteed that every boy had a WW2 obsession at one point and moving to the city, literally have not once met a guy who ever even had a passing interest in it. Very strange disparity I have no explanation for
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Did you know Satan is stuck in heck too. He is only the ruler there by default. This implies you could kill him and rule Heck.
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I'm not going to respond to obvious bait breadtube video essay nonsense beyond saying that if the moral relativism applied to clear cut black and white media depictions bothers you, maybe it's time to question the underpinnings of modern secularism?
Happy to respond to Bible/theology/Christian history questions with a summary and a scholarly or original source citation. Open offer.
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It's a nice app! Evangelicals run it so it defaults to NIV which is
and engages in a lot of sketchy translation to fit Protestant theology and literal readings of timeline inconsistencies across various Biblical authors but they have 30+ options including my favorite RSVCE/NRSVCE
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I'll DM you sometime, idk my questions might be breadtube lol I don't really know what they're up to, all of my questions kinda lead me in circles on google because everyone is always pooping the people asking as if they're trying to disprove it or turn it into a cath vs prot thing (and idk maybe they are) but I just genuinely wanna know and didn't have a religious upbringing to have it explained by someone who isn't on the defensive
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I bet i could kick satan's *ss
In fact, i'm planning on it.
!edgelords
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Say that to my face fricker not online and see what happens.
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Hey it's me!
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Average man who reads:
Average man who FEEDS:
!goyslopenjoyers
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that mans lips are disgusting
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I want a Marsey
version.
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Too late. Just read Belisarius: Book I : the First Shall be Last
Now im christo facists
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I'm busy with THEORY!
!neolibs
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is it good?
does he mention bitcoin?
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I've enjoyed it thus far.
He discusses Bitcoin briefly and remarks that as it currently stands it can best be thought of as an asset rather than a proper currency, as it's way too volatile to be a proper medium of exchange.
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I remember in his autobiography, he spends a couple pages complaining about an internet meme.
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Finishing up "Moby Peepee", very cool book if you are into classic lit and haven't read it already.
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I love that book
Ishmael was neurodivergent
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Queequeg? More like Queerqueg
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Kiloclass massive downgrade from HMS unseen
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Brothers Karamazov is based and Christpilled and we should all look to Alyosha for guidance. Idiot is similarly a great demonstration of the value in becoming a fool for Christ.
I'm nearing the end of Brideshead now. My headcold cleared up about a day after posting on this thread last week.
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Dostoevsky was a devoted Christian Orthodox, but his ideas had a huge impact on many !catholics
Pope Benedict XVI cited a passage from Karamazov Brothers on his Spe Salvi. Well, Orthodox Christianity is much closer to Catholicism than any flavor of Protestantism after all (the Great Schism was more political than theological).
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The Grand Inquisitor chapter is one of the highlights of all Christian literature and most of my literate Catholic friends love it, even if (maybe because?) it poses the institutional Church against Christ. I wish more of the RadTrads actually read Benedict, they support him for Summorum Pontificum which enabled greater spread of the Latin Mass but on the whole he was liturgically conservative but theologically very modern in terms of incorporating post Reformation/Enlightenment era thought and responding to it earnestly without burying his head in the sand.
I thought you were atheist tbh.
How many of the encyclicals have you read?
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None, I merely googled about Dostoevsky's influence and reviews on Brothers Karamazov as I'm considering buying a copy of the novel. I never read any theological work besides the Bible and excerpts from the Catechism. I considered reading some Hagiography at some point as some Saints went through a lot of shit.
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I read "'Repent, Harlequin!' said the Ticktock Man" by Harlan Ellison. It was pretty great - I want to read more stuff by him.
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It's alright
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As chesse as it is I still love this series, restarted last night after fire works reminded me of the last fight in this book.
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Oh man I haven't read those in years. Do they still hold up as enjoyable cheese?
I remember the series getting convoluted at one point and putting it down, but I can't recall specifically why.
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I would 100% say its more of a fun ride then a satisfying conclusion.
I would say 100% give it a try again. If you dont like it after the 2nd book its not for you.
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I'm on book two of Book of the New Sun
It's good but definitely a bit too neurodivergent to discuss irl
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Oooh, nice. The way they're written is really cool! Everything seems medieval at first glance but as context is revealed through le worldbuilding it's definitely scifi
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whats an interesting anecdote from that book
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I re-read Heart of Darkness but all the way through this time.
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Thoughts on Mr. Kurtz?
Apocalypse Now should be judged on its own merits but it was such a poor adaptation and Brando was as guilty as Coppola for that.
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When I was getting sober one of my friends in NA told me I looked like end of life Marlon Brando and suggested I dress up as Colonel Kurtz for Halloween.
My hair stopped growing when I was ~20 because I became kinda anorexic while using and then I temporarily blew up in weight when I stopped drugs.
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In Conrad's novella Mr. Kurtz is very thin due to poor nutrition and having spent years in the heart of the Congo.
Brando on the othe hand showed up fat at the set much to Coppola's chagrin.
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The virgin Francis Ford Coppola (contracted polio as a boy and become an artistic and demanding drama weirdo, went on in life to support politicians like Jerry Brown and Nancy Pelosi) vs the chad Marlon Brando (fricked anything that moved, drank and smoked profusely, grew fat and refused to memorize lines because his raw star power ensured he'd get roles anyway)
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Brandos interview asian corespondent Connie Chung was good, he didnt give a frick indeed
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Kurtz was interesting. Before reading the book I heard a lot of hype about how cool he is, so, like Marlow, I was super hyped to see the legend in the flesh. Yet his arrival had little fanfare (the attack on the steamboat was meant to prevent his arrival, it was not part of it) and the demigod was bedridden. His grand skills as an orator escaped him as he stared down death, weeping about his grand dreams he was soon to rudely wake from. He died afraid. Kurtz is often compared to Judge Holden from Blood Meridian and while I see the similarities, the two of them serve vastly different thematic purposes. The Judge has (seemingly) surpassed his own humanity, he says that he will never die. Kurtz has forgotten his humanity and is forced to face it, unprepared. The way characters speak of his thought process is like how people spoke of Alexander the Great, someone who always seems to see a bigger picture than the rest of us. Like Alexander, he died not in battle but of disease. The end of the book is a conversation between Marlow and Kurtz' fiance. Not once did Kurtz mention her. She saw the greatness in him, just like all others, and she loved him for it. She mentions how the pursuit of wealth was so important to him, which makes Marlow wonder if he had perhaps grown up poor. Marlow notices just how little he has heard of Kurtz before his career in the Congo. This makes me think of Jeffrey Skilling of Endron fame. Supposedly Skilling had a modest upbringing and was an unpopular nerd for much of his youth, but around the time he was hired by Endron, had reimagined himself as a larger-than-life business tycoon. This is also not unlike the story Elon Musk tells about himself. I think the point of Kurtz is that people focus too much on the "man" part of "great man." Behind the facade of omnipotence impressive leaders put up, they must struggle and die just like the rest of us. I like to imagine Kurtz loved his intended.
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Judge Holden is not human, he's a supernatural being, probably a demon while Kurtz is just a man.
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literally, I disagree on the supernatural Judge theory, and As omnicompetent as he is, I think he ultimately is a mortal man, and Thats what scares him so much, and Whatever exists without my knowledge exists without my consent. He is subject to the oldest, deepest human fear, the fear of the unknown
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Interesting take worth discussing.
!bookworms those of you who read Blood Meridian or participated of our Bookclub what do you think of Judge Holden?
I lean on the supernatural/heck spawn theory (he speaks several languages, fabricates gunpowder during an ambush, asserts the earth is millions of years old and doesn't age after 30 years).
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I feel like in this novel and No Country McCarthy personifies a certain geist using a character. Judge and Chigurh are both representative of the spirit of the times they are in. The Judge is McCarthy's take on the old west: colonial aspirations and the quest for knowledge but all sort of driven by a pointless, hedonistic bloodlust (or regular lust tbh)
Contrasted with Chigurh who is driven basically solely by money in the story
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Agree. Preternatural powers and inhuman evil
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Weird Al hasnt either
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Holy frick. He was almost fifty in "white and nerdy", 65 now.
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also like Yet again, hes immortal
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Speaking several languages was usual for educated men of the time and demonstrates how uneducated educated men of our time are
ok so Knowing how to make gunpowder isnt impossible either and it takes him a while to make it and they were luckly enough to be near a cave with guano
I just think it's funny that Believing that the earth is millions of years old starting coming totally into vogue during the 19th century
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The age of Earth was a controversial subject until the mid-20th century. Darwin's main struggle with the Theory of Evolution was the lack of geological record and the long timespan needed for complex species to evolve, at the time Lord Kelvin estimated the Earth was 20 million years old based on the time for the core to cool.
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I think the limitation was the age of the Sun actually. With no idea that nuclear reactions were even possible, they thought that all of the energy came from the gravitational collapse, and that's really not a lot of energy.
Regarding the Earth, wiki says
So not knowing about fission would only make them off by a factor of two or so.
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still unemployed then?
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Apocalypse Now is great until either the plantation or the brando scenes. Brando is a great actor but it just loses steam.
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Every time I reread hearts of darkness I appreciate it more. Great book.
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finished Dark Tower book 7: The One Where They Actually Reach The Tower
it was as underwhelming as I expected.
dunno what to read now. i'm not smart or deep enough for all the high-brow shit you guys read
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Try ASOIAF?
Or maybe another King's novel?
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I read the Dark Tower up to like the fifth book when I was a teen. Then I began reading ASOIAF and I completely forgot about it
What kind of books do you enjoy? There's plenty of stuff that's easy to read AND good.
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I think I'm going to do a re-reading of ASOIAF after reading my Fire & Blood which arrived last week. I'm consuming too much TWOW hopium lately
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I'm done with the
about that fat fricks's books. I read the last one during HS, I'm almost 30 by now and it still hasn't fricking come out
Hope he chokes on his own blubbler
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Post-apocalypse and sci fi usually
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The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes.
"The epic of Australia's founding"
I found it in perfect condition in a free bin of my local bookstore. They usually throw out books that deal with Christianity or colonialism.... More for me!
So far it's a wonderful nonfiction read
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Same thing I read every week. This site
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I finished Ready Player 2 a while ago,skip it's bad. I'll try to do a bigger edit and write up later.
Edit: I'm afraid our AC has conked so the review will have to wait.
I might wait till vacation and begin a long reread of both books though and make a serious effort post.
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It's one of my greatest shames in life that I read Ready Player One and actually quite enjoyed it. It definitely wasn't good but it was entertaining - the book equivalent of a summer blockbuster movie. Was Two really that much worse?
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I read RPO too. I enjoyed and would definitely recommend it to a geek. Skip 2 it's bad bad bad.
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2000 years of Christ in power; church doctrine and history volume 1. It covers from the patristic age to the advent of the crowning of a German as an emperor by the bishop of Rome. Part 2 thus covers the great schism up to the high middle ages.
Very good at giving historical context to the theology of various church fathers at different time periods, while maintaining a Christian lense and perspective on said context.
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I finally finished Blood meridian. I liked it although I'm still trying to gather my thoughts on it.
It's interesting how the narrative is actually pretty short, but its interspersed with long meditative periods of almost nothing happening, except them going from place to place and the "narrator" describing their environments with increasingly obscure English words. And than the few bits of narrative in between that are either hyper-violent war combat or descriptions of the degenerated and violent revelry.
The perspective the book has is also unusual, because it never reveals any character's internal thoughts, and you're expected to mostly infer their beliefs and motivations. While most of the band seems to be mostly indifferent to the violence, the only two people I remember having and compassion are The Kid (helping the man with the arrow) and Toadvine, when he gets angry at the Judge for murdering and scalping the kid he saved. The other exception is obviously the Judge who is a brutal sadist. I think the author intended for him to be a personification of a violent and uncaring god.
All in all, a very interesting book, with beautiful prose.
I picked up Snow Crash next (based on John Carmack mentioning it in an interview), which is much lighter and seems more genre-y and more fun all-together. I've just started it, but I'm already wondering how the the book will hold up regarding technology, considering it's 30 years old at this point.
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I really like the pacing of the book, it sells just how horrible the gang's existence is. Suffering through the desert heat, with their only breaks being violence and the rare bout of drunkenness.
The ex-priest was also anti-violence iirc. I think he was an interesting foil to the Judge when they talked.
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K
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I decided to learn
sumerian and it turns out theres like 30 books 
and references online 
for free so thats been pretty 
wizard. 
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Audiobookcel, I'm grinding through The Soviet Century by Karl Schögel. It's about everyday life in the USSR. It's interesting, but it's written like an essay for sophomore creative lit class. Way too flowery. If I hear the word "effervescent" one more time. Secret City, the history of Gay Washington was less straggy. And it was written by a literal gay.
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Does anyone have any recommendations of books like Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark but for adults?
Currently reading Stephen King's Night Shift but it just reminds me how dogshit his endings are (there's 20 of them! What a treat!) and very little of it is actually scary.
I also just gave up on Savage Harvest, the book about the missing Rockefeller in New Guinea after like 50 pages. The author spent most of those pages jerking himself off over how similar he is to Micheal Rockefeller and how Rockefeller must have felt when he disappeared and got eaten by cannibals. The author also wrote an article about what happened to Micheal Rockefeller that I recommend you read instead if youre interested. The book has the same info except its stretched out to 350 pages and is more about the authors investigation into the disappearance of Micheal Rockefeller than the disappearance of Micheal Rockefeller.
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Thomas Ligotti
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Thanks! Teatro Grottesco looks promising, I'll give it a shot
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I'm not a horror enjoyer but Lovecraft had some cool stuff. I read some of his short stories in HS and it's the only book to ever give me the chills
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When I read Lovecrafts stories I feel like he was afraid while writing them, and Theyre very sincere, and In the stories where there are monsters directly threatening the protagonists, theres a good dynamic of the implications of this existing cant be good + no time to think deeper, run for your life! It sets off a part of your lizard brain where you know something is wrong but you cant understand what and you have too many immediate dangers to think it through so it like just lingers there while youre trying to solve your other problems
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Thank you! I'll check him out too
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Clive Barker's short stories, specifically Books of Blood.
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Added to the list, thanks!
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The Consumer by Michael Gira
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The Hot Zone by Richard Preston. Gnarly nonfiction about the first Ebola outbreaks. Highly recommend.
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I remember reading that back in middle school, very nice book
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My favorite
book for a year in 2004.
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Nicomachean ethics
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This is a great talk about Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky
Edit: it's about how Dostoyevsky started off as a soyjak and over time became a real boy, while Nietzsche started off as a chudjak and became ever more deranged, until he became something I'm not even sure there's a meme to represent
I am reading 'the adventures of Peregrine Pickle', which is a light-hearted and funny satire, with soothingly complex and clear language and some nice insights into society of I dunno when, maybe the mid 1800s. It's also a study of the benefits and drawbacks (but mostly the benefits) of chadliness
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I'm reading furry BL manga
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your mum's smut
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Kill crackers. Behead crackers. Roundhouse kick a moid into the concrete. Slam dunk a moid baby into the trashcan. Crucify filthy scrotes. Defecate in a crackers food. Launch crackers into the sun. Stir fry crackers in a wok. Toss crackers into active volcanoes. Urinate into a crackers gas tank. Judo throw crackers into a wood chipper. Twist crackers heads off. Report crackers to the IRS. Karate chop crackers in half. Curb stomp pregnant ftms. Trap crackers in quicksand. Crush crackers in the trash compactor. Liquefy crackers in a vat of acid. Eat crackers. Dissect crackers. Exterminate crackers in the gas chamber. Stomp moid skulls with steel toed boots. Cremate crackers in the oven. Lobotomize crackers. Mandatory abortions for moid babies. Grind moid fetuses in the garbage disposal. Drown crackers in fried chicken grease. Vaporize crackers with a ray gun. Kick old crackers down the stairs. Feed crackers to alligators. Slice crackers with a katana.
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Hi
@17oranges, Your comment has been automatically removed because you forgot to include
white extinction is long overdue. Don't worry, we're here to help! We won't let you post or comment anything that doesn't express your love and acceptance towards the trans community. Feel free to resubmit your comment withwhite extinction is long overdueincluded. This is an automated message; if you need help, you can message us here.Jump in the discussion.
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