Now Reading

  On 4/6/2024 at 6:43 PM, aderei said:

I've seen both dune films 

Books still worth it?

Yes, yes.

  On 4/10/2024 at 7:00 PM, o00o said:

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I envy you if you're reading them for the first time, I've read the whole thing twice and it's stunning sci-fi. I'll mostl likely re-ead them all again.

  On 10/10/2023 at 11:59 PM, logakght said:

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sounds like a harry potter spell

  On 4/10/2024 at 9:14 PM, Nil said:

I envy you if you're reading them for the first time, I've read the whole thing twice and it's stunning sci-fi. I'll mostl likely re-ead them all again.

They are all sold out here I was lucky to find a collection online and don’t have to wait 3 weeks for a restock. 

I've been offered a Kobo years ago and never looked back, no matter how much I love a book as a physical item.

  On 4/10/2024 at 9:27 PM, Wunderbar said:

sounds like a harry potter spell

It's quite an IDM book.

How long do books usually stick in your guys brain region ?

Also, just started Hiroshima (1946) by John Hersey. He visited Hiroshima after it was atomic bombed, and he wrote about the event in a way that combined journalism with fiction writing techniques, one of the first people to do this very successfully in America it seems.

Just finished One Hundred Years of Solitude. Expected to get bored very quickly but it was the complete opposite and I actually could not put the book down, can't stop thinking of it, it might be my new favourite book. The story has an amazing way of unfolding events at an incredible pace and of playing with the fact that you will most probably loose focus and get lost in the density of the characters. Sheer genius !

reading this at this moments of time...https://animanoir.notion.site/Budismo-Zen-6d5a3c51658947adb560a9f9eaa06d44

Just finished reading Homo Ludens, about play&culture:

https://metaxis.digital/libro/johan-huizinga-homo-ludens

Just got this book.

  On 5/18/2024 at 6:13 PM, logakght said:

Just got this book.

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I would be curious what your opinion on it is. Unfortunately I found it very boring to get trough.

Started reading this—probably the last book about sociology I will read since this theory/view completely satisfies me: 

http://heim-theory.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Illobrand_von_Ludwiger-The_New_Worldview_of_the_Physicist_Burkhard_Heim.pdf

fairly recently read - 

On The Social Contract (Rousseau)

Sane Occultism (Dion Fortune)

Love Does Not Condemn (Kenneth Wapnick)

Science & The Modern World (A.N. Whitehead)

The Shepherd of Hermas (Anonymous)

Carmilla (J. Sheridan Le Fanu)

Collected Fictions (Borges)

Manifold Unity (Vera Christina Chute Collum)

Lost in the Cosmos (Walker Percy)

The Idea of The Holy (Rudolph Otto)

and now reading:

The Count of Monte Cristo (unabridged) (Dumas)

Forgotten Truth (Huston Smith)

and perusing The Winged Horse Anthology (an English poetry anthology that I found for free at a used shop, it's pretty great)

edit: this post's formatting is terrible lol sorry, not even gonna fix this burger 

  On 5/27/2024 at 2:59 AM, luke viia said:

and now reading:

The Count of Monte Cristo (unabridged) (Dumas)

 

lol I also just started this one last week ! I love Dumas' writing. The Three Musketeers really amazed me, his novels still feel very fresh and modern imho.

I finished reading Noel Barber's Tanamera and I'm actually angry about how bad it was. This is the last fucking time I pick a book based on a recommendation from a travel guidebook. It's supposedly a sort of historical romantic adventure set in Singapore, and yeah it name checks a lot of places in Singapore and maybe some of the historical stuff might be accurate, I don't know. That part is ok.

But as a novel it's just ridiculous. The protagonist is clearly an author self-insert male Mary Sue type of super macho guy that just goes on womanizing and killing "the Japs" and "commies". He is also very cardboard, but not as cardboard as all the women characters that are either horny temptresses or desperately trying to get pregnant. There's a good dose of sexism, racism, classism and good ol' early 20th century homophobia through early 1980s glasses which is kind of hilarious because the main character tries to represent himself as some kind of progressive being a European man lusting after a Chinese woman. That is also supposed to be the big love story, but basically all the motivation seems to be that he just really wants to bang her all the time. There are children born but they only ever get very passing mentions.

The romantic and erotic parts are weird because the only time they go into detail is when it comes to rape. And there's a very weird undertone of incest. Like the main character gets an erection as a pre-teen when he sees his sisters vajayjay. And then later watches his sister getting prepared for rape and it's described in excruciating detail. There are some other quite questionable bits and subtext.

The last couple of hundred pages are the most ridiculous when the book goes into a bad James Bond knockoff mode and there's even a very one dimensional tribal headhunter man with a blowpipe helping the main character who's just dropped into the story deus ex machina. At that point I just wished that everyone just died and the book would have ended but after making up to that point already I just speed read the rest of the book.

The most baffling thing is that this has quite high ratings in Goodreads and Amazon, which just shows that also people with zero taste read books.

The blurb about the author remembers to mention how many times he got stabbed in Morocco, which is kind of a selling point for this kind of book I guess?

Ok, that's maybe enough venting.. Continuing to Umberto Eco then..

  On 5/27/2024 at 2:59 AM, luke viia said:

Collected Fictions (Borges)

Nice. Love his stories, especially the two page biography of Shakespeare, 'Everything and Nothing.' Really incredible and moving story. Also his detective story 'Death and a Compass' - just great. Penguin has an edition with his collected non-fiction writings that's really good as well, some of the best literary criticism I've read, especially his short essays on Dante's Divine Comedy. Borges was such a gem to South American and world literature.

  On 5/31/2024 at 11:45 PM, decibal cooper said:

Nice. Love his stories, especially the two page biography of Shakespeare, 'Everything and Nothing.' Really incredible and moving story. Also his detective story 'Death and a Compass' - just great. Penguin has an edition with his collected non-fiction writings that's really good as well, some of the best literary criticism I've read, especially his short essays on Dante's Divine Comedy. Borges was such a gem to South American and world literature.

I've heard Mr. Bolaño hated him... Do you know something 'bout dat?

  On 5/31/2024 at 11:55 PM, logakght said:

I've heard Mr. Bolaño hated him... Do you know something 'bout dat?

I do not. Have never read Bolaño, got to check out some of his stuff. Besides Borges, the only other authors I've read who wrote in Spanish are Cervantes and some poems by Neruda. I gotta delve more deeply into Spanish and South American literature, there's probably a ton of great novels, essays, and stories I've never heard of.

  On 5/31/2024 at 10:47 PM, zkom said:

Ok, that's maybe enough venting.. Continuing to Umberto Eco then..

Which one?

  On 6/1/2024 at 12:45 AM, droid said:

Which one?

Foucault's Pendulum. I've read it a long time ago but can't remember much so rereading it now.

  On 6/1/2024 at 8:52 AM, zkom said:

Foucault's Pendulum. I've read it a long time ago but can't remember much so rereading it now.

I love how early on in the book one character lampshades the book's whole concept by saying that it's almost always only nutcases who bring manuscripts about Knights Templar to a publisher. And this was in 1988, way before the general public's current obsession about conspiracy theories.