Now Reading

  On 8/22/2015 at 4:52 PM, Leon Sumbitches said:

I started with the fifth Dark Tower book, for some reason. Great series anyway.

 

  On 8/21/2015 at 7:52 AM, doublename said:

 

 

The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen

 

Love this one. I've been reading the Carnacki stories lately, slightly similar vibe.

I just downloaded a bunch of those, can't wait to get into them.

Just finished Mind: A Brief Introduction, by John Searle. As it the title suggests it's a good introduction to the topic, written in fairly straight forward language (aside from a minimal sprinkling of the usual philosophical jargon), and it covers the basics and history of the philosophy of mind better than other books I've read on the subject. It is lacking in depth though, the sections at the end on free will and the sense of self are particularly lacking, though he admits as much himself. He also failed to convince me of his Chinese Room argument, which I'd read about in other books before. He only gives a few limited responses and dismisses them fairly quickly without much exploration (another slight flaw in a few other parts of the book). I'm not sure I agree with all of his conclusions in other areas as well, in particular I think he failed to distinguish his own conception of things from certain of the ideas he too quickly dismisses (materialism and epiphenominalism in particular), though this could be a failure on my part to recognise some subtle part of his argument, I dunno.

A good book overall though, and definitely worth a read if you're interested in this stuff.

Reading a translated copy of Catch 22. I was worried some of the humor was going to get lost in translation but the first chapter has made me laugh already so it's all good

  On 9/6/2015 at 3:58 PM, ThatSpanishGuy said:

Reading a translated copy of Catch 22. I was worried some of the humor was going to get lost in translation but the first chapter has made me laugh already so it's all good

Man, Catch-22's one of the few books I can properly laugh out loud at, so good

Finished House of Leaves. Would be curious to see some good literary critiques of the novel; only came across one or two decent ones online.

Also ran through Nathan Ballingrud's The Visible Filth... essentially just a short story, but a pretty grim and dark one. His short stories are great horror pieces like that generally.

did you like HoL?

Yeah, it was my first (and likely only) Danielewski book, but it was overall enjoyable; I'd fault it in the ways you'd expect a first novel, done in such an 'artsy' and sprawling way, to be faulted. It was a bit too long, tried a bit too hard, missed on some opportunities that could've taken the story elsewhere, and it definitely was a bit too high-minded. All that said, it was good, and I would surely recommend it for the right type of reader. And there's some really interesting and very intriguing aspects to the text that I'd love to delve into deeper than I can alone; the current forums (I haven't checked reddit yet...) seem to be dead, and at first glance, I didn't see much to warrant sifting through hundreds of 10 year old posts.

I get the feeling that not even Danielewski has made his mind on that book and just leaves it to the reader to make up his own interpretation

I finished Fifty Year Sword by him last week, it's pretty cool and can be read in under an hour.

On The Martian at the moment and finding it really dull, it's a month into him being stranded on Mars and he doesn't write about his loneliness, family, his loves, wanking, nothing, it's just a bloke moving things around and saying cheesy dad jokes.

  On 9/8/2015 at 11:26 PM, tec said:

I finished Fifty Year Sword by him last week, it's pretty cool and can be read in under an hour.

 

On The Martian at the moment and finding it really dull, it's a month into him being stranded on Mars and he doesn't write about his loneliness, family, his loves, wanking, nothing, it's just a bloke moving things around and saying cheesy dad jokes.

is it matt damon in the film? maybe the author had him in mind from the start

Yeah that's the one, Damon doesn't seem nerdy enough for the humour aspect of the book so hopefully they have changed it a fair bit. I just checked out the author and he does look like the kind of bloke who would write the story this way, goofy jokes and wise cracks. Maybe it'll improve, or maybe it's just not to my tastes.

Last 3% of Infinite Jest...almost there! For a book over a thousand pages long, it sure is compelling and doesn't feel like it's gone on longer than it should (although the explanation of the Eschaton game could have been cut by twenty pages and been fine imo). Not quite the 'next step in literature' hype had labeled it as, but definitely pretty goddamn good for a book this long to make sense, be entertaining and fulfilling.

Easier to read that Gravity's Rainbow, that's for sure. Then again, what isn't?

Terry Gilliam - Gilliamesque

http://gilliamesque.tv

  On 9/9/2015 at 1:44 AM, Rubin Farr said:

Terry Gilliam - Gilliamesque

 

http://gilliamesque.tv

http://gawker.com/correction-terry-gilliam-not-killed-by-hella-sick-vin-1729436846

  On 9/8/2015 at 12:59 PM, ThatSpanishGuy said:

I get the feeling that not even Danielewski has made his mind on that book and just leaves it to the reader to make up his own interpretation

Yeah, I really do think that's part of his intention with the novel; leave some aspects undefined to allow interpretation. That alone is interesting to me, but I'd be curious to hear which aspects are truly open and without direct correlation to any intended thread of meaning (Johnny/Johnnie, perhaps, as an example).

  On 9/8/2015 at 11:26 PM, tec said:

I finished Fifty Year Sword by him last week, it's pretty cool and can be read in under an hour.

 

On The Martian at the moment and finding it really dull, it's a month into him being stranded on Mars and he doesn't write about his loneliness, family, his loves, wanking, nothing, it's just a bloke moving things around and saying cheesy dad jokes.

I haven't looked at Fifty Year Sword; I did see that The Familiar is intended to be like 27 volumes and I'm just not interested into committing to a trek like that, honestly, especially since I'm a relatively slow reader. And I saw some various quotes of Only Revolutions being difficult to obtain and nearly unreadable for its bulk. I'm okay with some work, but if it seems like a daunting task just to read it, I'm going to be extra hesitant to pick it up.

  On 9/9/2015 at 4:04 AM, auxien said:

 

  On 9/8/2015 at 11:26 PM, tec said:

I finished Fifty Year Sword by him last week, it's pretty cool and can be read in under an hour.

 

On The Martian at the moment and finding it really dull, it's a month into him being stranded on Mars and he doesn't write about his loneliness, family, his loves, wanking, nothing, it's just a bloke moving things around and saying cheesy dad jokes.

I haven't looked at Fifty Year Sword; I did see that The Familiar is intended to be like 27 volumes and I'm just not interested into committing to a trek like that, honestly, especially since I'm a relatively slow reader. And I saw some various quotes of Only Revolutions being difficult to obtain and nearly unreadable for its bulk. I'm okay with some work, but if it seems like a daunting task just to read it, I'm going to be extra hesitant to pick it up.

 

I have Only Revolutions but had to call it a day a quarter of the way in as I had no idea what was happening, haven't got the patience really, if you find it cheap maybe give it a crack but I wouldn't spend big on it.

Finished Infinite Jest! And it turns out reading it a second time makes the early first chapters that read mostly nonsensical the first time around make sense! So that means another thousand pages to read! Again!

(Good though.)

Just finished A Feast of Crows, enjoying these a lot. Will be frustrating to grind to a halt at the end of the next one. Can't imagine how frustrating it must be to someone who started reading them in '96.

Now I've started on the new Barker, The Scarlet Gospels, while I wait for A Dance With Dragons to be procured for me.

It's already off to a good (and disgusting) start.

I'm going to be screwed when/if the next GoT comes out, it has been ages since I finished the last book and won't have a clue what's going on.

a friend of mine uses the xray feature on the kindle to follow the characters by name so she can remember who is who

Anarchism and Education by Judith Suissa

I'm always looking for unorthodox shit to try the classroom, hopefully there's something useful in here.

Tragedy & Hope

Was slightly dubious about this one due to what I read about it online, seems to be popular amongst right-wing conspiracy nuts in particular. It's gotten off to a good start though.

Finished Cities of the Red Night by Burroughs. It stays surprisingly cohesive for most of the book (though still difficult to follow), though the further you read into it the more it blurs and by the end little makes sense.

I read the 2nd in the 'trilogy' (The Place of Dead Roads) first which I didn't know much about at the time and it was hard as hell to make sense of anything (but still loved it).

This time around I knew more of what I was getting in to and it makes it a slightly easier read. I particularly liked the occult detective story portions of the book, which were also the most straight forward.

Burroughs is a mad genius for sure. Not sure if I'm ready to tackle some of his more cut up works (Naked Lunch etc). The first few pages of that just made my head hurt.

  On 9/12/2015 at 10:05 AM, QQQ said:

Finished Cities of the Red Night by Burroughs. It stays surprisingly cohesive for most of the book (though still difficult to follow), though the further you read into it the more it blurs and by the end little makes sense.

 

I read the 2nd in the 'trilogy' (The Place of Dead Roads) first which I didn't know much about at the time and it was hard as hell to make sense of anything (but still loved it).

 

This time around I knew more of what I was getting in to and it makes it a slightly easier read. I particularly liked the occult detective story portions of the book, which were also the most straight forward.

 

Burroughs is a mad genius for sure. Not sure if I'm ready to tackle some of his more cut up works (Naked Lunch etc). The first few pages of that just made my head hurt.

You might want to check out The Process by Brion Gysin.