Weekly "what are you reading" Thread #62

I tried some 40k slop and got bored, I'm gonna try Fabrico's recommendations - clearly I'm an uneducated caveman compared to you guys

Reading Learning Vocabulary in Another Language because I'm thinking of learning another language (I probably won't though). I like reading stuff from other fields though.

Just finished reading Letters From a Stoic by Seneca. Could essentially be summarized that you should live a modest life while wisdom-maxxing as much as possible because the only thing worth overdoing is philosophy. Well, his definition of philosophy is to help teach people to live their lives in a wise and stoic way. a life of moderation and acceptance of the situation you're in. He spends a good chunk of his time dabbing on grammar nerds, philologists, rhetoricians and Epicurus (rival school). The three former because they're "philosophers" who lost their way, the latter because they think the purpose in life is to be happy. In some letters he gives vibes of a proto-Ted Kaczynski, claiming that everything was better before they had luxury, and you lived with a more spiritual mindset. He also dabs on neurodivergents, liberal arts and STEMlords (geometry, specifically). Claiming they are min-maxxing into useless knowledge while you should be experiencing and learning a wide variety of things, most especially philosophy.

Now I'm reading the bible, NRSV edition which is a scholarly one. Tried reading KJV in parallel too but I got ESL-filtered. Just got through the five books of moses.

Finished The Hundred Years' war book, pretty good info on the war but felt a bit general as well as the first book of the Powder Mage Trilogy. It's a fine read but nothing more. I've become more adverse to stories that have massacres and violence as I've stop reading the second book. It's a war novel but i've just got tired of the violence from comics that it spilt over to literature.

Does anyone recommend any fantasy novels? Tried WoT and didn't like it and Brandon Sanderson gets passed around a lot.

R Drama dot net

Ive read Underground by Murakami and then No Country For Old Men.

Underground was a recommendation from someone on here, probably a year ago or something. I really enjoyed it, I thought it was so depressing but also really uplifting. I want to read more by him but Ive heard mixed things about his fiction.

No Country For Old Men was great. It took me a minute to get used to McCarthy's writing style, but once I did I couldnt put it down. Its better than the film, I can take Chiguhr more seriously when he doesnt have that silly haircut.

Im reading, or trying to read, The Divine Comedy currently. Ive read the introduction and the first canto but I havent had motivation to read this week.

I was reading a biography on Henry Green, got to where he wrote Blindness, realize I hadn't read it, read Blindness, and am now back in the biography

I am also reading a book of interviews of Edward Gorey. I pick it up, read one, and put it down to read something else

This about pasta from the July 1986 issue of The Atlantic. Don't even need a subscription, just click the PDF, they can't stop you

Rare & Lovely Dolls: Two Centuries of Beautiful Dolls by John Noble, and oh boy did it ever live up to its title

Reading Shattered. It's about the night Hillary Clinton lost the election. Obama had to call her to make her consneed lol

"Chaos: Making a new science"

I'm still in The Melkite Church at the Council and Barangay. I have a very fun post that @sneedman will recoil in fright from stemming from the latter title but I'm lazy.

Just started reading The Three-Body Problem (I know, a bit late to the party with this one), I'm at the part where we learn of the incoming Trisolaran invasion. I'm really digging the book so far but I still can't get over Ye replying to the warning message. I know she's nihilistic and angry at humanity for her dad's death and all the abuse she suffered and it's an act of rebellion but fricking heck, she straight up doomed her entire species to possible extinction and for what? Personal grievances? The possibility that the Trisolarans might be a peaceful civilization who will solve the chaos on Earth and all of our problems even though we just got a message from one of their own telling us to avoid contact with them? I'm enjoying the book but Ye's and Mike's characters are a bit infuriating even if I see what they're supposed to portray.

The second book is called The Dark Forest so I have an idea of where they're going with the plot so a question for dramatards. Do you think it's a good idea to make contact with alien civilizations? On that note, do you think we shouldn't have sent the golden disc within Voyager-2? Personally, I think it was an unnecessary risk even if there's almost no way an alien civilization could find us through the diagrams on the record. Thank God for whoever decided we should use pulsars as reference points.

Finished All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy. KINO book. Makes me wanna marry Mexican ladies.

I've been reading this for the past 2 weeks. Some days I read 30 pages, some days I read up to 80. It's 900 pages total (excluding acknowledgements, bibliography, glossary, etc), so I'm only about halfway done. I intend to hunker down and read at least 70 pages each day to finish sometime next week

It's good, though it's very dense . It details a lot of the historical context behind Kissinger's opinions and tries to show how his world view shifted throughout his life. I'm finally at the point in his life where he begins to find his own voice and publish papers or articles with unique, semi-controversial opinions. For example, in the early 1950s he says "local wars" with the looming threat of nuclear force would better subdue the Soviet Union than "containment," which he felt had proved ineffective and would lead to all out war being needed to stop the spread of communism

I'd recommend it as long as you're genuinely interested in Kissinger and have a good attention span

the camp of the saints

its like ... my origin story...

My gf bought me one of the 500 signed copies of library at mt char from a scalper, so I'm enjoying that book again thoroughly.

Also she reads my posts; hi honey!

Finishing up A Farewell to Alms by Gregory Clark.

Definitely a more unique ( ) approach to the history of economic development then most !neolibs would argue.

i read slaughterhouse five over the weekend, i liked it alot

i didnt expect the book to mention david irving

John Varley's Gaea Trilogy with a trickle of Don Quixote on the side.

I'm actually sorta' amazed at how well Don Quixote holds up. Like there are modern day Alonso Quijanos everywhere. Thinking about it, such people probably existed for all of human history to be honest, and there probably will be so long as there's a human race.

I stopped reading Hyperion because it sucked. I'm currently reading Golden Son and it's decent.

Pete the Cat: Pete at the Beach.

It's OK, but gets repetitive after the 15th time. Then comes back strong during the 20th when you've given in.

Call of Cthulhu 7th edition, pulp cthulhu alternate character gen. I'm going to be running it for a couple of different groups starting with one of the pregen adventures then move onto Horror on the Orient express. I'm pretty excited about it like a proper nerd tbh. I love me some cthulhu mythos and strangely enough I actually enjoy running it vs playing it as a tabletop RPG.

Mostly packing today since I'm moving into a dorm tomorrow but I'm gonna bring A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich with me idk what it's about but my dad got it for me bc it's one of his favorite books

Since I'll be gone for some time I was also gonna bring some more stuff. Already have A Confederacy of Dunces and Catch-22 on the list but wanna hear any recommendations you might have. Nothing that makes me homesick pls

Bible on john for a bit then back to OT

Hamlet isn't long but its really really really hard okay.

I got Night Shift by Stephen King a few months ago during vacation (it's a short story collection), and just read "Children of the Corn," cool idea for a plot

I'm pretty sure they made that into a movie, anyone know if it's decent?

Still reading the Culture series, I'm onto Surface Detail and after that it's only The Hydrogen Sonata and I'll be done. Surface Detail is probably my third and a half favorite so far, after Use of Weapons, The Player of Games, and the bits of Excession that aren't wasting time on humans... but again, "favorite" is a strong word to use for any of the books.

Look to Windward was genuinely terrible. It's entirely boring, nothing happens, and everything that does happen is immediately subverted into making no difference.

Matter is similarly pointless, and is all the worse for being an actual doorstopper of a book.

Perhaps I've been spoiled by Gene Wolfe.

What I think my main problem is is that he's created this really interesting world with all manner of things to explore, and then he spends his novels steadfastly refusing to explore the meaningful things and instead writes crappy pulp novels that didn't need the setting to begin with and frequently actively work against it because he's trying to go way down the tech levels and tell a boring politics story or a gay politics story or a r-slurred politics story and the politics are always so small and petty and meaningless in the face of a post-scarcity reality.

Also, the more of it I read the more I'm convinced Banks is a male feminist. Every single SC agent we've been introduced to is a woman with a male drone attendant to do all the heavy lifting. The women are always described physically with emphasis on the most erotic part while men don't merit anywhere near as much of an examination.

With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa

Finished Sunlit Man leaving me finished with Cosmere stuff until Stormlight Archive 5 comes out in December. Looking for another shorter Fantasy series in the meantime

Farseer trilogy. Love it.

Abou 80% finished with Journet to the end of the Night by Celine.

I didn't like the first couple chapters but it got a lot better. Celine is amazing at describing how loathsome most people are

There's also many quotes but it's hard to paraphrase/translate them without messing up how striking they are.

read the house of spirits by isable allende just for how popular it was , what a fricking boring book. and thats all i have to say about that

I just finished Southern Gods last night, overall I enjoyed it even though I'm not a big fan of cosmic horror stuff. 1940s Arkansas turned out to be a fun time and location to explore some horror stuff and it was really dark which I enjoyed, but I'm kinda iffy on the ending. That's kind of par for the course in horror though, not many really stick the landing imo.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.