Now Reading

  On 5/22/2021 at 8:03 PM, Himelstein said:

  On 5/22/2021 at 7:49 PM, diatoms said:

                                                                         Nice bookshelf Himelstein & recommendation:)

                                                         Does that black book have the title LORD OF THE RINGS

                                                                                          without THE

No, but that would be awesome. Coincidentally, I did sell some random lotr books on eBay last year that had misprints in them somewhere from the 70s. They went for a decent amount, I can’t remember. Maybe the last thing I sold since the shutdown. But, yeah it’s small on there, it’s the abridged from right before the films came out.

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                                                                       Nice one Thanks

  On 5/22/2021 at 8:22 PM, Cryptowen said:

if you want an idea of what reading this book feels like just take a look at the only known photo of the man who wrote it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panagiotis_Kondylis

i found about 9 other pics of him doing a quick google image search  

  On 5/23/2021 at 2:19 AM, brian trageskin said:

i found about 9 other pics of him doing a quick google image search

i figured they were probably out there but i don't want to spoil my mental image of him as the kind of guy who would make his only official public photo one where he looks like the neighbour's dog was shitting in his flowerbed just slightly off camera

Devil In The White City 

I know. Late to the game. I feel like everyone read this ten years ago except me BUT I’m finally getting on it and it’s great. Kind of the perfect book for someone who can’t tell if they prefer fiction or non-fiction. I can see why DiCaprio snatched up the rights to develop this… which I believe is finally getting made as a series. 
It reads like a new season of True Detective set in the 1890s. 
Only 50+ pages in and I’m digging it.  

  On 5/22/2021 at 5:22 PM, dingformung said:

Anyone got any recommendations on beautiful looking books? Nice front cover, materials, illustrations, fonts, etc.? 

Damn, I totally forgot this drum machine book- everyone on this forum should have it on display in their house hahaha:

Edit- Fuck, nevermind:

https://reverb.com/item/35981178-beat-box-book-limited-edition-drum-machines-book?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=12293041906&utm_content=campaignid=12293041906_adgroupid=119218509524_productpartitionid=1169427563222=merchantid=265220883_productid=35981178_keyword=_device=m_adposition=_matchtype=_creative=497396046170&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIisG1s43g8AIVxRB9Ch1MxAROEAQYAiABEgK-FPD_BwE

Altho mine doesn’t have the cassette, so maybe it goes for cheaper. 

                                                                there's a werewolf novel by john steinbeck hidden away out there

                    https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/may/22/john-steinbecks-estate-urged-to-let-the-world-read-his-shunned-werewolf-novel

an original edition of MUFON? solid

Ivan Illich - Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health (reading this book post-2020 is a premium trashbear experience)

Brian Massumi - Parables for the Virtual (some parts are better than others, but it's cool that he predicted the far-right taking over pomo back in 2002)

Henri Bergson - The Two Sources of Morality & Religion (it good, first time reading Bergson in English)

Metamodernism. Historicity, Affect, and Depth After Postmodernism ed. by Robin van den Akker, Alison Gibbons, and Timotheus Vermeulen 

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/739721/pdf

Poems by Amparo Dávila.

Getting into poetry a lot these days. Any favorite work you like?

Song of Myself, 51
Walt Whitman - 1819-1892

The past and present wilt—I have fill'd them, emptied them.
And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.

Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?
Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,
(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.)

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab.

Who has done his day's work? who will soonest be through with his supper?
Who wishes to walk with me?

Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?

  On 5/24/2021 at 2:56 AM, Cryptowen said:

an original edition of MUFON? solid

I recently finished The Magus by John Fowles.

I bought this book many years ago on a gamble after reading the back and thinking it'd be good, and it had just been sitting on my shelf til now. very mixed feelings about it finally, leaning more towards the negative. firstly it's like 650 pages, and if a book is going to be that length, it better be solid and consistently engaging, which this definitely wasn't. I spent the first 400-500 pages thinking "I'm going to yeet this straight into the bin as soon as I'm done", then there's a major denouement subsequently and you start to think it's come good and that all the stuff leading up to this, while patchy and not fully compelling, was worthwhile. but then it just carries on being a loose mess for another 100 pages and ends with a whimper. the protagonist is a cunt, which is part of the point, but the supposed arc of his redemption is not really driven home.

ambiguity and unreality, multiple layers of meaning etc, are meant to be the major draw of this novel and the source of its rich imagery, but it seemed to me it was overindulged and drawn too loose to pack any actual punches. some moments of brilliance but overall far too long and boring, and too much wanky prose. I kept comparing this to another English novel also set on an island which managed far better economy of expression and was also more lush in its imagery: Lord of the Flies. this one doesn't stack up.

anyway if you're into edging and cuck porn, there may be something here for you.

https://taosemko.com/male-deer-exercise/

robot - hans moravec: this is like some kinda techno-utopian piece from 1999 by a science guy. first chapter is kinda dry as he's giving the history of robotics, but the rest looks more interesting. seems like he's going to open up into a more speculative analysis of AI development into a galactic cloud consciousness. getting some leroi-gourhan vibes

Methodology of Possession - James Ellis: @drillkicker you might like this one. dude recounts his experience of becoming disillusioned with his continental philosophy degree, encountering the work of NIck Land, and deciding to engage in home brew magic rituals that read kind of like a trip report. Halfway through, seems to be slowly moving from more literary to more theoretical territory

I've got like 100 pdfs I downloaded this summer I wanna start reading. I think the next one will be another book by Kondylis which seems to be a historical analysis of the emergence of Conservatism as a political ideology

@Cryptowenthanks for pointing that one out.  My goal at the moment is to read everything that influenced Land and everything influenced by him, both positively and negatively.  Right now I'm in The Machinic Unconscious by Felix Guattari.  It'll probably be a while until I move on from D/G.

  On 8/18/2021 at 1:44 AM, drillkicker said:

The Machinic Unconscious by Felix Guattari

been wanting to read this one specifically, thanks for the reminder

i hear logic of sense by Deleuze establishes a lot of important ideas. Some say it's on par with dif/rep

I also have a big stack of the works of Reich in paperback i wanna get started on soon. He was a clear influence on Anti-Oedipus, and imo a lot of his ideas are fairly interesting (if at times kinda outdated feeling). Freud as well is someone i wanna spend some more time on, have only read a couple of his works

https://web.archive.org/web/20141007023855/http://alternative-right.blogspot.com/2014/10/hyper-racism.html

taking hypotheticals existing within some timeless vacuum and granting them disproportionate significance like this results in ramblings which have little relationship to any reality felt by any individual or even any coherent group.  this fascistic nonsense of the worship of an idealized past before a hypothetical future homogenization of race represents nothing more than an intellectually dressed /pol/ nazi rant yearning to justify their fascistic emotions

Kind of meh. Concept is a standard quest trope in post-apocalyptic US that’s been broken into corporate enclaves. Some interesting possibilities, but it feels like half of the book was written by an edgy 16 year old. 
Anyway, easy read, good brain relaxant. 

Shit I think I unpinned this by accident.

Anyways - now reading

Decent but only about 80 pages in. Interesting dichotomoy in the two protagonists so far.

  On 8/18/2021 at 1:36 AM, Cryptowen said:

robot - hans moravec: this is like some kinda techno-utopian piece from 1999 by a science guy. first chapter is kinda dry as he's giving the history of robotics, but the rest looks more interesting. seems like he's going to open up into a more speculative analysis of AI development into a galactic cloud consciousness. getting some leroi-gourhan vibes

ha, read that like 20 years ago. I remember it made quite an impact on me at the time. I used to go around spouting AI/futurist type nonsense back then, and would use some of the ideas he put forward in the book as points for discussion. this was back in the days not too long after The Matrix was released, and AI was having its moment in the spotlight (coincidentally, peak IDM was around then as well lol). I was also like early 20's when I read it, and truly believed a lot of that stuff. now I'm middle aged, bitter, and hate computers.

  On 8/20/2021 at 9:48 PM, zero said:

read that like 20 years ago. I remember it made quite an impact on me at the time.

i'm definitely enjoying it more now that he's getting into the real speculative territory. His timeline for 21st century tech development felt fairly level-headed, but as with most things of this nature the timing feels way off in some regards (like a lot of what he's predicted regarding AI & 3d printing feels pretty on track, but he also predicted that by 2020 all-purpose helper robots would be a common feature in every household). the stuff that looks further into the distance is more interesting to me - when he starts talking about post-biological cyborg organism colonizing deep space & undergoing their own evolutionary process.

the one part where he seems to have been pretty far off the mark is wrt legislation & resource distribution. The picture he paints of the (then upcoming) 21th century is one in which corporations are kept in check by national governments, and the world peacefully moves to a kind of fully automated luxury communism. Seems he completely ignores the possibility of environmental catastrophe or resource depletion hampering the process, or of the 1990s neolibeal global village falling into ideological decay. At one point he even (quite literally) describes neofeudalism, only to immediately dismiss it with "that's clearly the absolute worst case scenario, and probably won't happen". I am open to the possibility that the rest of the century will actually balance out & things like UBI/effective environmentalism will be implemented, but at present that really doesn't seem to be the direction things are going

There's also the deeper philosophical question i get when reading material like this - should we be moving to a society based entirely around luxury & comfort? I'm not sure if I'm totally onboard with the idea of humans being able to freely control the weather, take pills to be fit, download extra intelligence etc etc. I'm not saying I'm neccessarily against these things either, just that my inner luddite comes out whenever I encounter techies promoting WALL-E futurism as the ultimate goal of humanity

"Fall, or Dodge in Hell" - Neal Stephenson.

20 or so pages in, and while I still love how detailed Stephenson is in his approach, there are occasionally times when I wish he would get to the point a bit more quickly. Still, a very enjoyable read.

  On 8/23/2021 at 6:06 PM, chenGOD said:

"Fall, or Dodge in Hell" - Neal Stephenson.

20 or so pages in, and while I still love how detailed Stephenson is in his approach, there are occasionally times when I wish he would get to the point a bit more quickly. Still, a very enjoyable read.

I'm a huge Stephenson fan, but I have to admit that Fall was circumlocutious trudging through story molasses at times. The Baroque Cycle is way lengthier, but it's oodles more fun than Fall. I did get through eventually, but I read a handful of other books in the interim.