What Book Are You Currently Reading? (2.0.)
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  What Book Are You Currently Reading? (2.0.)
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Author Topic: What Book Are You Currently Reading? (2.0.)  (Read 43288 times)
Filuwaúrdjan
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« Reply #475 on: March 04, 2023, 10:28:59 AM »

I've recently read Dorothy L. Sayers's Gaudy Night (and somewhat surprisingly, perhaps, for the first time) and Kazuo Ishiguro's An Artist of the Floating World. Both are novels characterized by a high level of moral seriousness and I would cheerfully recommend the pair of them, though would note that, despite the apparent framing, Gaudy Night is not a detective novel in the conventional sense at all.
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Brother Jonathan
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« Reply #476 on: March 19, 2023, 10:38:01 AM »

I've been reading Vermeule's Common Good Constitutionalism. I don't really agree with all or most of it, but it is interesting. He does seem to present his ideas in a less polemical form then he tends to online, which I guess is only to be expected, but every now and again that tendency shows through, particularly when Vermeule is railing against Libertarians.
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HillGoose
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« Reply #477 on: March 19, 2023, 02:05:54 PM »

I've become obsessed with game theory recently and it's created an interest in nuclear strategy, so I'm currently reading "On Thermonuclear War" by Herman Kahn.

Great read, a little dated but still worth it.
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Benjamin Frank
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« Reply #478 on: March 20, 2023, 04:29:07 AM »
« Edited: March 20, 2023, 04:44:56 AM by Benjamin Frank »

Started reading Freakonomics again, mostly to reply to the podcast If Books Could Kill.

What got me about the 10 minutes of their podcast on Freakonomics that I've listened to so far was that they claimed to be against 'airplane books' that are meant to seem academic and smart but that really just promote lazy thinking or anti intellectualism, but in the 10 minutes, they did nothing but make sophomoric comments and referred to the book as 'neoliberal' which could not be more lazy in thinking or anti intellectual.
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Mr. Smith
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« Reply #479 on: April 09, 2023, 06:35:31 PM »

The Greatest Generation, Tom Brokaw,
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Secretary of State Liberal Hack
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« Reply #480 on: April 10, 2023, 03:20:47 AM »

Started reading Freakonomics again, mostly to reply to the podcast If Books Could Kill.

What got me about the 10 minutes of their podcast on Freakonomics that I've listened to so far was that they claimed to be against 'airplane books' that are meant to seem academic and smart but that really just promote lazy thinking or anti intellectualism, but in the 10 minutes, they did nothing but make sophomoric comments and referred to the book as 'neoliberal' which could not be more lazy in thinking or anti intellectual.
Yeah that podcast realy rubbed me the wrong way, they don't realy make too many strong points against the books they argue. It's a real shame because I love podcasts and articles that take down pesudo-intellecutalism.
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President Punxsutawney Phil
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« Reply #481 on: April 10, 2023, 03:47:09 AM »

The Greatest Generation, Tom Brokaw,
That's a good book.
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Brother Jonathan
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« Reply #482 on: April 16, 2023, 12:08:53 PM »

Mr. Sammler's Planet by Saul Bellow and Intruder in the Dust by Faulkner
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HillGoose
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« Reply #483 on: April 22, 2023, 04:07:39 PM »

Currently attempting to get back in touch w/ my spiritual side, so I am reading Tzavaat HaRivash.

Very insightful read.
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PSOL
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« Reply #484 on: May 28, 2023, 07:08:46 PM »

Finished Infinite Jest and what I can say is that the author could have written a good novel had he not gone insane with the gimmicks; the footnotes and the convoluted plotlines. His prose is actually good and there’s something vital he wants to say on the relationship of the family towards current self-personhood and the stress of academia, but it’s buried under heaps of bull•••• in an attempt at humour and melodrama.

Still, this is leagues better than anything written by Thomas Pynchon whose entire collection is just absolute trash. There’s nothing redeemable in his convoluted nonsense and his magnum opus is just turgid and there’s absolute proof of that given the jokes and sex scenes lose any sort of effort 230 pages in of a ~700 page book. There’s no better place for such awfulness but the trash and any sort of awards given to this waste of paper shows the dire state of American literature under late stage capitalism.
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Battista Minola 1616
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« Reply #485 on: June 04, 2023, 08:02:10 AM »

I have started reading a novel by Italian historian Alessandro Barbero called Alabama. The book is about an extremely old poor white Confederate veteran who is interviewed by a history college student and recounts his war experience.

Finally finished this. It was a fascinating read, which paints a very effective picture of the brutal world these people inhabited, interspersed by the visceral emotions the college girl (who seems to be torn between Southern roots and her current Northern milieu) variably feels.
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Brother Jonathan
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« Reply #486 on: June 04, 2023, 09:20:34 PM »

Currently working on Walker Percy's The Moviegoer and Bellow's Humboldt's Gift
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John Dule
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« Reply #487 on: June 05, 2023, 03:59:42 PM »
« Edited: June 12, 2023, 08:00:45 PM by Better Ron Than Don »

I've been reading The Count of Monte Cristo this summer. It's spectacular so far. After two years spent in the doldrums of legal language, I have been craving flowery romantic prose and adventure.
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Mexican Wolf
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« Reply #488 on: June 14, 2023, 07:18:20 PM »

Just started reading The Upper Tanana Dene: People of this Land by William Simeone. So far I've only read the introductory essay, but I'm learning some pretty interesting things. For instance, the Dene extend the concept of personhood and agency to all living things and consider animals non-human people. So, for example, the term grandfather is used for both humans (tsay) and grizzly bears (neettsay).

I also find it interesting that due to the relative inaccessibility of their traditional lands and the difficulty of navigating the Tanana River, the Upper Tanana people experienced minimal effects of American colonialism until the completion of the Alaska Highway.
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Mechavada
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« Reply #489 on: June 22, 2023, 01:25:47 PM »

Just finished listening to the Gulag Archipalego by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.  Pretty jarring scary stuff tbh.  Like it's crazy how fast holding a view the government disagrees with became more criminal than actual crimes like robbery, property destruction, and even murder.  And how, after denouncing capital punishment during the Tsarist years, the Bolshevick regime instituted a capital punishment regime that saw official executions skyrocket.

"It can't happen here."  They always say.
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John Dule
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« Reply #490 on: July 07, 2023, 12:07:27 PM »

I've been reading The Count of Monte Cristo this summer. It's spectacular so far. After two years spent in the doldrums of legal language, I have been craving flowery romantic prose and adventure.

Just finished it last night. Might be my new favorite book of all time.
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Battista Minola 1616
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« Reply #491 on: July 08, 2023, 01:02:18 PM »

I just finished The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, or in other words, the answer is forty-two.
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Mr. Smith
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« Reply #492 on: July 08, 2023, 05:38:22 PM »

The Rise of Kyoshi...in a bit of an ATLA mood currently.
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Mexican Wolf
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« Reply #493 on: July 08, 2023, 06:45:41 PM »
« Edited: July 08, 2023, 06:54:11 PM by Mexican Wolf »

Almost finished The Upper Tanana Dene: People of This Land (just reading through the appendices now). The firsthand accounts of elders written in both Upper Tanana and English were fascinating and very informative.

My favorite chapter was about the Upper Tanana's potlatch traditions of hosting parties and sharing numerous gifts between clans to promote societal wellbeing, though I imagine it would've been very difficult to keep up with the restrictions afterwards:

"After a potlatch, the host was once subject to a number of restrictions. For 100 days he could not sleep with his wife; he could not eat meat from the heads of animals but had to subsist on soup made of animal fat. He had to suck drinking water through a swan-bone tube and not cut meat lest he get blood on his hands.... For shorter periods, the host was not to extend his legs when lying down; when sitting, he had to keep his arms folded over his hands." (125)

I also enjoyed the discussions of how the Upper Tanana viewed harming or abusing animals or wasting any part of a hunted animal as injih (taboo or bad luck) and what methods the different clans used to show respect to the animals they hunted and the ones they didn't. They also considered it injih to speak directly about animals or brag about hunting:

"It is injih to make explicit plans because that is considered bragging and could lead to reckless behavior. It also disregards the animal's autonomy and equality. In this regard it is injih to say 'my moose' or 'my animal' because humans do not own animals and it also suggests an unwillingness to share...
'Boy say, 'I kill moose today!" Man say, "Injih!" Say instead, "Maybe today, I see moose."'" (21)

All in all, I'm very glad there's such a detailed account of the Tanacross and Upper Tanana people out there like this book.
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Mexican Wolf
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« Reply #494 on: July 17, 2023, 07:34:12 PM »
« Edited: July 17, 2023, 07:57:07 PM by Mexican Wolf »

Just read The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich while spending the weekend attending a wedding in a BRTD precinct.

Gotta say I wasn't expecting a novel about a group of Ojibwe tribal members fighting against Congress's proposed termination of reservations and assimilation of Native Americans in the 1950s to have a subplot where one of the protagonists gets roped into performing as Babe the Blue Ox in a water tank at a seedy nightclub in Minneapolis while searching for her sister.

I've always loved Erdrich's control of multiple perspectives to fully flesh out her characters, settings, and the real world history that inspired them, and the novel was a great reading experience.
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bagelman
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« Reply #495 on: July 25, 2023, 12:44:43 AM »

I've been reading The Count of Monte Cristo this summer. It's spectacular so far. After two years spent in the doldrums of legal language, I have been craving flowery romantic prose and adventure.

Just finished it last night. Might be my new favorite book of all time.

Also the most recent book I read. A true classic, and a gateway to the very foreign society of 19th century France.
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Sol
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« Reply #496 on: August 13, 2023, 02:47:48 PM »

Just read The Moviegoer. Excellent and very existential book, and one I think forum dwellers might especially like. Binx Bolling's narrative voice reminded me of Xahar lol.
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Хahar 🤔
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« Reply #497 on: August 13, 2023, 04:55:34 PM »

Just read The Moviegoer. Excellent and very existential book, and one I think forum dwellers might especially like. Binx Bolling's narrative voice reminded me of Xahar lol.

Well, I can't think of a more pleasing way to have a book recommended to me than this.

I don't read a great deal of fiction, but a little while back I was at the library and sitting near the short story section and my eyes alighted on a nondescript volume: the collected short stories of Elizabeth Bowen. I didn't know who she was, but I kept thinking about that and so I took it out when I was at the library yesterday.

Bowen was a modernist with conservative politics, which is surely the best combination for coming up with prose that I care for. That she was a member of the Irish Ascendancy doesn't seem all that important, at least from what I've read: the characters are rich enough to have domestic servants and the action takes place somewhere in Britain or Ireland, but identity is not really the important thing here. What are important are the psychological insights: this is a book full of stories where nothing really happens in terms of plot and passages that you have to read back over to understand, but the emotional insights are so clear and feel so meaningful to my own existence. I woke up this morning eager to read more.
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Sol
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« Reply #498 on: August 13, 2023, 06:59:19 PM »

Just read The Moviegoer. Excellent and very existential book, and one I think forum dwellers might especially like. Binx Bolling's narrative voice reminded me of Xahar lol.

Well, I can't think of a more pleasing way to have a book recommended to me than this.


Trigger warning: In a book which is otherwise highly specific geographically, Percy has many of his characters come from an unspecified "Feliciana Parish."
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Aurelius2
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« Reply #499 on: August 14, 2023, 02:17:16 PM »

Just read Stegner's Angle of Repose. Breathtaking.
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