aweonao
To discuss your weekly readings of books, textbooks and papers.
@Aevann can you
pls
As you know the book club is back. I already read the Metamorphosis a few months ago so I'll just check my notes for the single discussion thread.
I started reading "Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan 1979-89" by Rodric Braithwaite (former Bong ambassador to Russia) which is about the Soviet-Afghan war 
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Lately i've been reading a lot of:
White extinction is long overdue
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I don't think I'm gonna finish my Harry Potter reread. It's been fun but I really need to read something more interesting soon...
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Like Harry Potter fanfiction?
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Currently reading "will of the many", it's pretty good so far but only about 15% in.
Finished "Throne of Glass" by Sarah J Maas, it is one of the worst books i've read but I learned it was her first book and she wrote it between the ages of 16 and 26, It still sucks but with that I feel like a lot of the issues I have with the book are forgivable.
Also as a joke we are reading parallel paradise, a manga, and it's interesting.....
(^ mfw I'm dying)
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I just finished reading Starship Troopers
It was nowhere near as fascist as twitter led me to believe
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Heinlein wasn't a fascist. The Federation in ST is a weird militaristic-libertarian mix.
Yes, service guarantees citizenship, but there wasn't anything else there which resembles an authoritarian dictatorship.
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Yea I was making a joke about shitlibs crying about the movie and how it was based on a fascist book.
There was zero fascist themes in the book at all, and the social commentary (and dunking on communism) was pretty much the status quo for 1959.
I liked it
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That's mostly Paul Verhoeven's fault. He didn't read the book and wanted to make le brilliant and subtle Triumph of the Will parody.
So now Redditors go like "DID YOU KNOW STARSHIP TROOPERS IS ACTUALLY A SATIRE, CHUDS ARE SO DUMB SEEING THEMSELVES AS THE FEDERATION, DAE THEY'RE THE BAD GUYS AND BUGS ARE GOOD"
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I love that movie so much
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Their society is strictly less authoritarian than le wholesome countries with compulsory military service, but the "media literacy" crowd doesn't seem to cry about Switzerland being a fascist dystopia
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You should read about the three Anglotard-Afganturd wars which were far more thrilling. It was an classified omega level diplomatic kekmate by all sides
Author:Jonathan Lee
Author: Thomas Barfield
For the third one, you should read only ops books ( https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/afghanuno/130/ ) . If you want the political backdrop, you have to dig further than the great game preludes of the first two.
(This one had even more shenanigans with the Germans planning to fund a Jihad
to make the muslims across middle east and south asia mad at the Bongs and rise up in rebellion via sending money, ships and arms to them.)
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where the red fern grows.
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I started reading Malcolm X biography and it's pretty kino especially the part where he talks about how women like being treated like shit, how he got his white girlfriend to take money from her husband and give it to him, and then later got her involved in his burglary operation.
Then he goes on to mention how one of his friends couldn't get women because he was too nice to them
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I am still reading The Satanic Verses, the dreaminess of the scenario is very pleasant to read. The large intelude from the perspective of historical Mohammed was captivating.
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Yeah I read it. Somehow in my mind it was going to be this obnoxious slow slog but it was really misty and dreamy. Reminded me a bit of Murakami but South Asian. The Mohammed thing was super cool too. Highly recommend.
I think a good way to tell if Murakamicels actually like it or just have yellow fever is whether they like The Satanic Verses.
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Red pill me on that book and Salman Rushdie. I know that the muzzies went
because of it.
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Its a very nicely written magical realism book that has a character who while falling from a plane turns into a physical angel while another turns into a physical devil, the physical devil has repeated dreams about the historical Satanic Verses from a godlike perspective and is the one to whisper them into his ear. Muzzies went apeshit because they like to pretend the Satanic Verses aren't a real story. Rushdie is one of the more important magical realism authors in anglophone fiction, if you're interested in the style he is quite essential.
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Also, how easily readable is "Afgantsy"? It's an interesting subject to me, but I've found some military history books such as Richard Frank's "Downfall" pretty hard to get through
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I started to read the book yesterday so I'm still very early on it.
The first chapter is titled "The Road to Kabul" and the author covers a summary of Afghan history from the 1700s up to the 1970s (the Anglo-Afghan wars, Tsarist Russia's interests and expansion through Central Asia, the modernization attempts by the Afghan monarchy and the deals with the Soviets) but I would say it's pretty straightforward despite not being pop-history.
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Thanks. I'm not so
that I can only read pop history.
But the extremely dry and technical prose of some military history books is a bit intimating to me.
I'll give this a read later this year
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Oh I get that, that's why I picked the book written by a British diplomat which will be more politically oriented over the dry textbook written by the Russian military as a case study. Books by Military historians are famous for being extremely dry.
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I may have not read anything for the last 8 months, but new year new me
Anyways I'm starting this year by reading Nick Harkaway's Angelmaker, which is okay so far, despite feeling very dated to its early 2010s release (actually feels like 2005 lol)
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I couldn't read shit between August and December, it wasn't due to lack of time or anything I just had a blockage and didn't feel like it, it happens.
Now
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Thanks, actually makes feel a lil better to see it's not just me
I do wish I would stop doing this, I'll read like a book every week or two for the first few months of the year, but then I'll just stop for no easily identifiable reason.
There's so much I need to read before I die
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Nuclearshill genuine question, how do you manage to read shit so quickly lol. It's like a different book every week. Meanwhile I have been reading Odyssey for like half a year at this point
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If you read an hour or two a day (without distraction ) you will probably get through 500+ pages a week
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This doesn't account for me being r-slurred
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I just mentioned I didn't read shit for almost 4 months, you can even check the threads for those months where I don't mention reading anything. Then on December I re-took "Metropolis" and recently finished it this week.
Normally I take around 1 week to read a 300 pages book and around 2-3 weeks for a 500-600 pages book
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Ok
I also wanted to mention I really love Metamorphosis, one of my favourite books
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Delet rdrama, or read on your phone instead of skimming Reddit/Twitter/TikTok/etc
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I'm just about finished with the Fellowship of the Ring, which has been excellent. I really align with Tolkien's philosophy on the importance of the language you use to think about and discuss things. Its disappointing how much of his phrasing has been co-opted and reduced to "this guy is so spooky, we won't even say his name."
I just started Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe. I read it as a young man and enjoyed it, so I'm curious to see how it holds up after another decade of life experience.
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That's school literature here in Germany and often chosen by teachers. Due to that it's hated by everyone I know who read it (cause they had to read it for school).
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It inspired a bunch of copycat suicides, very German to make it mandatory reading.
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It has a similar vibe to Catcher in the Rye and I imagine it is assigned by teachers and hated by students for all the same reasons.
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finished The Fall by Camus, pretty interesting
though I read most it late at night and now can't find a passage that's stuck in my head
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Still reading the Gor series, it's such enjoyable pulp and making redditors (derogatory) seethe is fun too
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You strags keep posting this when I'm asleep
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Shattered Sword about WW2 Battle of Midway mostly from the perspective of the Japanese aircraft carriers / navy. Recommended by Drachinifel (autismo navy YouTuber) as a must read
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Just finished two arms and a head. Thought the author was a peepee and a pretentious butthole.
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Apparently he was a pretty normal dudebro before the accident, not the biologically perfect philosopher king poet warrior he claimed. But hey, he was crippled almost as severely as possible, I figure he's allowed to cope in weird ways.
I liked the book for so brutally calling out the weird lies and fetishization of disabilities in activist circles. Disabilities aren't so fun when they aren't the made up ones like chronic fatigue.
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Yeah he acts like he was gods gift to the earth before the accident. I understand that he's upset and he even calls out how bad this book is probably making him look several times but it was still a difficult read for me.
I did find the stuff about activists a bit interesting but his lack of ability to see things from other people's perspectives wasn't a good trait. In his mind it seems anyone who disagreed with him was obviously completely wrong and he was just different than other disabled people. He completely dismissed anyone who said yeah it sucks but if you try it is possible to find happiness as being just too different from him and not possibly understanding what he was going through as opposed to people who may have struggled with his same thoughts and feelings.
I thought the part where he was building up courage to actually kill himself was very interesting though. It's interesting how scared he was of it and how he found even the idea of some methods so appalling even though he spent the whole book talking about how gung ho he was to do it.
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lmao
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I finished the 3rd Legend of Condor Heroes book, which is the last translated into my language (German). I think a 4th English book is still available, but I'll wait for a German version.
I think in Chinese there are 12 books and media mentioned it as "The Chinese LotR" and initially was published in the 50s.
It's set in 12th/13th century China and has follows a Kung Fu fighter. Apparently the later books are about later generations, but that hasn't happened yet. Disagree with the LotR comparison, cause an overarching goal ("destroy the ring") is completely missing and you just follow the guy on a ride.
Overall I enjoyed it, I'd say a big part of it was that it is a different experience to Western books and obviously heavily influenced by Chinese culture.
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I've paused my reading of Quo Vadis and started reading a ln called "Zilbagias the Demon Prince", due to some influence from
@ponyblaze reading a ln. The setup is similar to Code Geass with the reincarnated prince trying to work against his race to save humanity. Another note, the violence and evil from the demons reminds me of Overlord, which I stopped paying attention to it due to it. I just want the demons genocided at this point.
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peepee and balls
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god dam crashes, the website is slow, the crashes are appearing more frequently, the amount of problems is increasing... we need an app.. even if it has problems I don't care the website is super slow and I can barely stand waiting...
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