Now Reading

Just finished Murakami's the Elephant Vanishes, which I quite liked.

Now reading this..

  On 2/9/2014 at 7:32 AM, zaphod said:

 

  On 2/9/2014 at 4:39 AM, Atop said:

 

Lovecraft's racism seemed more like a hatred of all people he didn't know, "the other" as you put it zaphod. I want to read S T Joshi's book 'I am Providence' to really understand him more and to see if there is any info on the writing of the Necronomicon, I want to turn that into a story by itself. Devious nerds trying to combat Christianity's and Judaism's grip on society. Sounds like a fun time to me.

 

there's an interview with joshi about weird fiction where he says this about lovecraft:

 

  Quote

Although he began as an extreme reactionary (an apparently sincere believer in monarchism, an opponent of democracy, etc.), his views changed significantly with the onset of the Depression, and toward the end of his life he became a moderate (non-Marxist) socialist. But there are elements of continuity all along the way. He once said, “All I care about is the civilization”—by which he meant a state of society whereby aesthetic expression could flourish and there was not radical inequality. He came to believe that capitalism could not ensure this state of affairs, and that his brand of socialism had elements in common with his old-time belief in aristocracy and therefore could bring about the “civilization” he wished for. Lovecraft was largely alone among weird writers in his racism and anti-Semitism (a trait he ironically shares with Eliot, whose literary and religious views he otherwise despised), but I think this largely had to do with his social conservatism—his belief in “tradition” as a bulwark against the existential meaninglessness that comes with an understanding of the immensity of the universe and of man’s inconsequence within it. Non-whites also served as a convenient scapegoat for the rapid social changes he saw occurring in his lifetime. But it is a sad fact that he didn’t really seem to “reform” very much toward the end of his life, even when he became a socialist. I think he simply shut up about the matter once he saw that his friends and correspondents didn’t share his views.

 

http://formerpeople.wordpress.com/2013/10/30/a-literary-history-of-weird-fiction-an-interview-with-s-t-joshi/

 

The great difficulty, for me, of owning a "complete" Lovecraft story collection is having to sort through early short stories like "The Street," which aside from being overtly racist is an absolutely horrible piece of fiction:

http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/s.aspx

Goddamnit, that's bad.

I started reading this book The Moment of Proof which is a math book but with interesting examples and applications. Enjoyable!

  On 2/10/2014 at 11:46 AM, lifeforce said:

 

  On 11/1/2013 at 3:42 AM, zaphod said:

i hope you guys aren't starting with kafka on the shore when you read murakami. it's probably his worst novel...

 

Really ?

Well I've got a lot to look forward to then with Murakami.

I've just finished reading it as my first Murakami novel and I loved it.

Bizarre, funny, engrossing and utterly fascinating.

 

i don't think zaphod's is a majority view. i would say it's my second favourite after Wind-up Bird.

learnpythonthehardway.org

and A casual vacancy, by the Harry Potter lady. Fun because I grew up in a small town. just like Pagford..

Mary Robinson - Gripping Doune.

Pretty interesting autobiographical read that puts many fears we have nowadays into perspective.

Herman Hesse - Steppenwolf

Loving it so far.

The Fatal Shore-M.Hughes

its about the colonization of Australia,written by an Aussie, its brilliant.Should be on every Britsh history reading list.

Planetary Omnibus- Warren Ellis & John Cassaday

Little Failure: A Memoir- Gary Shteyngart

Had a short trip to the Netherlands and read Murakami's Sputnik Sweetheart while traveling. Back to the history of mathematics now.

Alexei Sayle-Stalin Ate my Homework.

A nice quick read ,enjoyable,funny and unlike a lot of auto biographies,really well written.

http://www.alexeisayle.me/downloads/

link to first chapter.

Finished House of Leaves, not really sure what to think about it, not really sure i completely understood it. I liked some of the concepts presented in the book but i grew very bored of Johnny. Thought some of the unconventional page layouts were a little gimmicky

the night before I had my appendicitis surgery when I had the appendix pain, I was reading Stephen King's The Gunslinger. Then I forgot to go back and finish the book. I wanted to read the entire Dark Tower series. Now reading House of Leaves.

I was reading Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5 a few weeks back and was listening to the new Actress album on headphones and a beautiful thing happened.

Hi watmm I'm currently now reading Stanislaw Lem's Cyberiad, a collection of cautionary tech tales / scifi short stories.

  On 3/6/2014 at 10:36 PM, verticalhold said:

Hi watmm I'm currently now reading Stanislaw Lem's Cyberiad, a collection of cautionary tech tales / scifi short stories.

Just finished Solaris. What a coincidence, although I've never been a huge fan of short story collections.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

Lem's His Master's Voice was an amazing book for me, all the realism it felt like a documentary on first contact. I've got Fiasco somewhere in my bookshelves just waiting for the right moment.

Not heard of either of those, thanks

His Master's Voice is his most popular work after Solaris. It's like Sagan's Contact, but wrote in the most hard scientific way.

Cool, what I've read so far has been very whimsical so I welcome the change

Right now reading "Il cavaliere inesistente", or "El barón rampante", by Italo Calvino.

  On 2/11/2014 at 9:49 AM, Ron Manager said:

 

  On 2/10/2014 at 11:46 AM, lifeforce said:

 

  On 11/1/2013 at 3:42 AM, zaphod said:

i hope you guys aren't starting with kafka on the shore when you read murakami. it's probably his worst novel...

 

Really ?

Well I've got a lot to look forward to then with Murakami.

I've just finished reading it as my first Murakami novel and I loved it.

Bizarre, funny, engrossing and utterly fascinating.

 

 

i don't think zaphod's is a majority view. i would say it's my second favourite after Wind-up Bird.

 

Really? I thought it was Murakami's usual fare, but with a bit of coming-of-age cringe material (albeit under a bizarre form, that's true.)

I think my favourite's probably Dance Dance Dance but I read it when I was like 17 so I guess I'd be disappointed if I read it again. I don't know, there are a couple of infuriating things about Murakami. Like when he talks about 68 in Norwegian Wood in the most patronising way possible ("they didn't want to shut the university down, they just wanted some freedom"), talking about what essentially amounts to Japan's descent into sentimental nationalism and the most stupid form of capitalism as if it was just some nostalgic tale. There's an air of postmodern cynicism to what he writes, which is somewhat offset by the extraordinary (or emotional, in his more realistic stuff) things that happen to his characters, but which still leaves a bad aftertaste. On the other hand I like his descriptions of bored men being amused, and I like his characters being bored men, so I guess Murakami just wouldn't work without the whiff of pomo hopelessness, because that's the world we live in. I don't know. It's like accidentally realistic, despite the surreal stuff, especially Wind Up.

How good is his latest? Or his last few books, actually. Kafka was the last one I read.

I'm ~650 pages into The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton. It's crack.

Electronic and Experimental music: Technology, Music, and Culture

http://www.amazon.ca/Electronic-Experimental-Music-Technology-Culture/dp/0415896363

33 1/3 on SAW II

Who Owns the Future by Jaron Lanier

I'm currently reading Brief Interviews With Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace. The way this man emulates human speech is astonishing.