Now Reading

  On 8/19/2011 at 9:51 PM, Drix said:

Philip K. Dick - Valis

 

As always Dick is a great writer and I can't belive he wrote as many great books as he did in the states he was in when he wrote them. Another good one!

hey, me too!

  On 8/27/2011 at 8:26 PM, dese manz hatin said:

  On 8/27/2011 at 1:01 AM, m u st co n t r ol t h o 4 said:

Theodor Adorno's Minima Moralia (too depressing)

oh man seen. i'm re-reading dialectic of enlightenment for a paper at the moment. read the first chapter this afternoon, feelsbadman.jpg.

 

also, there's absolutely nothing wrong with reading introductions especially if you haven't studied philosophy in any form at least on college niveau (was the same for me). fuck reading adorno and the likes without any former training in the field.

 

edit: also sorry for double-post.

the Marx comic is by David Smith / Phil Evans. I'm not sure where I found it, maybe that aaaaaaaaaaaa site?

Well thanks for the support, it's disappointing when you want to find out more about something and it refuses to let you in but I'm not done with Adorno yet. I think I'm in love with the way he writes, it's just that the picture he paints is so bleak I can't really deal with it right now. Minima Moralia is supposed to be kind of easy to read, I think I'll look for a physical copy.

The Wittgenstein mini-book says that the guy didn't really care about not being familiar with the entire tradition and suggests that it might actually be good for you, as long as you work on your own ideas. Adorno used to told students to stop reading stuff he didn't like, something to the tune of "if you are going to waste your time reading so much stuff at least waste it with the authors that are right!" I use that to console myself.

A Soldier First by Rick Hillier

pt.1: The Knowledge of Freedom, ch.4: The World as Percept, pg.56

ch.6: An Evolutionary Leap "...so the work on island dispersal patterns and the statistical mechanics of this process will eventually, I think, play a role in modeling how life is dispersed throughout the galaxy." -TM, pg.119

  On 8/28/2011 at 2:50 AM, m u st co n t r ol t h o 4 said:

  On 8/27/2011 at 8:26 PM, dese manz hatin said:

  On 8/27/2011 at 1:01 AM, m u st co n t r ol t h o 4 said:

Theodor Adorno's Minima Moralia (too depressing)

oh man seen. i'm re-reading dialectic of enlightenment for a paper at the moment. read the first chapter this afternoon, feelsbadman.jpg.

 

also, there's absolutely nothing wrong with reading introductions especially if you haven't studied philosophy in any form at least on college niveau (was the same for me). fuck reading adorno and the likes without any former training in the field.

 

edit: also sorry for double-post.

 

 

the Marx comic is by David Smith / Phil Evans. I'm not sure where I found it, maybe that aaaaaaaaaaaa site?

 

Well thanks for the support, it's disappointing when you want to find out more about something and it refuses to let you in but I'm not done with Adorno yet. I think I'm in love with the way he writes, it's just that the picture he paints is so bleak I can't really deal with it right now. Minima Moralia is supposed to be kind of easy to read, I think I'll look for a physical copy.

 

The Wittgenstein mini-book says that the guy didn't really care about not being familiar with the entire tradition and suggests that it might actually be good for you, as long as you work on your own ideas. Adorno used to told students to stop reading stuff he didn't like, something to the tune of "if you are going to waste your time reading so much stuff at least waste it with the authors that are right!" I use that to console myself.

oh man yeah, Adorno was a complete jackass to his students (and a lot of his colleagues), but you will find the majority of intellectuals often are.

I highly recommend Marceuse-One Dimensional Man if you like Adorno's style and topics addressed. It is one of my all time favorite philosophy texts and probably the one Continental philosophical text Id recommend in a heartbeat.

Currently starting up Hegel's Philosophy of History. Slow read as usual.

yeah, the worst part is how he called the police on student demonstrations.

I'm pretty sure our priest teacher gave us a few lessons on Marcuse during high-school! Thanks for the recommendation

Gehen

Or, Thomas Bernhard Strikes a Pose

  On 8/27/2011 at 8:59 PM, doorjamb said:

  On 8/19/2011 at 9:51 PM, Drix said:

Philip K. Dick - Valis

 

As always Dick is a great writer and I can't belive he wrote as many great books as he did in the states he was in when he wrote them. Another good one!

hey, me too!

i swing back and forth on this. was dick going nuts (haha) or did he really experience something unexplainable by conventional logic?

that book is unexplainable by conventional logic and I love it so much.

I am reading Lovecraft and it is warping my mind.

h e l p m e

Just finished reading "Anathem" - Neal Stephenson.

Started up "In Search of Canadian Political Culture" - Nelson Wiseman. Since I feel like I know nothing about Canadian political culture.

2 days left of reading for myself - then it's on to school books.

  On 9/5/2011 at 2:03 AM, chenGOD said:

Just finished reading "Anathem" - Neal Stephenson.

Started up "In Search of Canadian Political Culture" - Nelson Wiseman. Since I feel like I know nothing about Canadian political culture.

2 days left of reading for myself - then it's on to school books.

I loved Anathem in an unhealthy sort of way. Neal's new one is out in 15 days; is being hyped as a "straightforward" "thriller."

Yeah, September is crazy for scifi/fiction! New Stephenson, Murakami, Philip Pullman, & Orson Scott Card. Also new Palahniuk but I never read his stuff

  On 9/5/2011 at 6:35 PM, baph said:

  On 9/5/2011 at 2:03 AM, chenGOD said:

Just finished reading "Anathem" - Neal Stephenson.

Started up "In Search of Canadian Political Culture" - Nelson Wiseman. Since I feel like I know nothing about Canadian political culture.

2 days left of reading for myself - then it's on to school books.

 

I loved Anathem in an unhealthy sort of way. Neal's new one is out in 15 days; is being hyped as a "straightforward" "thriller."

Yeah "Anathem" was great - really really enjoyable. I liked that the theme of the book was knowledge and our perception and acquisition of knowledge.

I doubt I'll have time to read his new one until next summer. :( At least it should be available at the library by then (as in not on hold or checked out)

New Murakami!!! Awesome

Palahniuk is usually good, you should check him out. Although I still haven't read "Fight Club" lol.

yeah, I meant "read" in the present tense. I've read Fight Club, Invisible Monsters, and a couple others (Choke?). I like his writing but it started to seem like the same story over & over to me. Not that it's really the same but I'd rather read Bukowski.

Re fight club, I like the movie better btw

Ah I see. Yes, his stories are fairly similar - but I like his writing style. Easy to enjoy. Good page turners, better than Grisham or Brown or what have you.

Celebrity / Culture (Ellis Cashmore)

A bit of history and how we learn our values / live vicariously through celebrities. They also function as our virtual friends and disposable products we make use of so in the end we are both victims and victimizers. It was quite aggravating to read in such detail how these people work as living advertisements for consumer society and we all for it (it is inescapable) but I guess that was the point.

My Last Sigh (Luis Buñuel)

Lessons on how to be awesome by the Spanish-French-Mexican master. I was very surprised to see how aristocratic and assholish the guy really was but I can't find a single fault in this. Surrealism = Pre-Internet trolling? Plenty of delicious anecdotes on some of the most famous artists / movies of the 20th century.

tell us something about it!

someone mentioned that name in that thread about austrians being horrible people and I spent like an hour reading about him

that was me

well bernhards writing-style is fantastic. he writes in a very stream of consciousness-ish (lol) manner with almost no paragraphs which sucks you into the subject and into the characters. his novels are mostly case-studies of somewhat eccentric, intellectual personalities, almost always from austria. so, apart from a very wide range of subjects (mostly very dark) a lot of his books also deal explicity with austria and its "fascist" or "degenerate" inhabitants, which often resulted in enormous scandals in austria. always producing plenty of lols.

  On 9/6/2011 at 3:26 PM, m u st co n t r ol t h o 4 said:

 

Celebrity / Culture (Ellis Cashmore)

A bit of history and how we learn our values / live vicariously through celebrities. They also function as our virtual friends and disposable products we make use of so in the end we are both victims and victimizers. It was quite aggravating to read in such detail how these people work as living advertisements for consumer society and we all for it (it is inescapable) but I guess that was the point.

this looks interesting im going to check it out

about Thomas Bernhard: that's very cool dese manz hatin, danke.

about Celebrity Culture: yes it is, it works like a compendium of research on the subject. If I wanted to annoy myself any further with this bullshit I would have a nice long list of books to read thanks to this.

Towards a Minor Literature (Deleuze & Guattari)

I was beating myself in the head with a D&G that exposes the oedipal complex as a totalitarian myth and promises a cure for depression / fascism and then the Internet told me to go with this instead. I'm on chapter five of nine and I think this is fucking awesome. Requires familiarity with Kafka as it offers a very exciting interpretation that pulverizes the writer's rep of being hopeless and pathetic. Lots of stuff on deterritorialization, assemblage, desire-machines, lines of escape and other fancy words.

+

+

@ M u st co n t r ol t h o 4 - good luck with that! (celebrity)

those would probably give me a heart attack!

The Ages of Extremes (Eric Hobsbawm)

I can't find the actual quote but something along the lines of how communism's failure was the most soul crushing tragedy of the 20th century made me buy this in minutes. My first history book. I'm starting the last third and so far I'm surprised it's so balanced coming from a Marxist historian because this makes capitalism look real good, maybe he's saving big bucks / twists for a grand finale? Can't wait. Oh yeah this is awesome.