Rereading asoiaf. Finished A Game of Thrones. Its a lot faster when skipping all the descriptions of sex and food.
My cousin recommended Garth Risk Hallberg's City on Fire. Not my usual cup of tea but I went to the bookstore and it was front and center so I decided to pick it up. Just got back from vacay so haven't started it yet. Anyone read it?
I bought it, not started yet (nearly finished Anthony Beevor's D-Day) you actually read this? Its about 600 pages and the type is set pretty close - Jesus.Jay wrote:
I'll make a recommendation that dovetails nicely with this - Voltaire's Bastards by John Ralston Saul. It's a critique of scientific management and the consequences of reason without conscience as applied within the American economy and government. It was written in the early 90's and is slightly dated, but still worth a read.
Fuck Israel
His D-Day was ok. Cornelius Ryan was a much better writer. I really enjoyed Beevor's Fall of Berlin though.Dilbert_X wrote:
I bought it, not started yet (nearly finished Anthony Beevor's D-Day) you actually read this? Its about 600 pages and the type is set pretty close - Jesus.Jay wrote:
I'll make a recommendation that dovetails nicely with this - Voltaire's Bastards by John Ralston Saul. It's a critique of scientific management and the consequences of reason without conscience as applied within the American economy and government. It was written in the early 90's and is slightly dated, but still worth a read.
And yes, it's not even the longest book I've read this year This was: https://www.amazon.com/Thirty-Years-War … amp;sr=8-1 followed by https://www.amazon.com/Quest-Energy-Sec … =the+quest
Last edited by Jay (2016-10-12 18:41:32)
"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat
-Frederick Bastiat
I could hardly pick Beevor and Ryan apart TBH, maybe Beevor is a bit flatter and more repetitive, but that was the nature of the grind across Normandy.
Fuck Israel
- SuperJail Warden
- Gone Forever
- +640|3936
???The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2016 is awarded to Bob Dylan "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition".
what are you questioning?
a very spurious decisionKEN-JENNINGS wrote:
what are you questioning?
- SuperJail Warden
- Gone Forever
- +640|3936
I do like that Bob Dylan has not even acknowledged the award. Not only did the Nobel committee tarnish their own prize, the guy they gave it to won't even show up. Almost as bad as giving Obama the peace prize.
many writers, of much greater stature and far-reaching powers, have rejected or declined the prize. he's not scandalising anyone.
- SuperJail Warden
- Gone Forever
- +640|3936
Right now I am on
Oxford press book by Charles Lister an academic who is in contact with the leaders of many insurgent groups in Syria. He was a part of the process of getting groups to form a negotiating coalition. He is also on an ISIS death list.
Here is a New York Times favorable review
The book tracks the war from it's beginning in 2011 to September 2015 at the start of the Russian intervention. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the subject. It also goes into detail about the Assad's regime's part in promoting the insurgency in Iraq and getting many Americans, British, and other people killed there. I wish the Americans supporting the regime would read it and understand how big of a role Assad had in hurting the U.S. before they talk about how we should ally with him and Russia.
Oxford press book by Charles Lister an academic who is in contact with the leaders of many insurgent groups in Syria. He was a part of the process of getting groups to form a negotiating coalition. He is also on an ISIS death list.
Here is a New York Times favorable review
The book tracks the war from it's beginning in 2011 to September 2015 at the start of the Russian intervention. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the subject. It also goes into detail about the Assad's regime's part in promoting the insurgency in Iraq and getting many Americans, British, and other people killed there. I wish the Americans supporting the regime would read it and understand how big of a role Assad had in hurting the U.S. before they talk about how we should ally with him and Russia.
- SuperJail Warden
- Gone Forever
- +640|3936
What are you reading?
I have a week in Melbourne in December, recommend me some books.
Ideally
- Futurism
- Economic and/or Social analysis
Ideally
- Futurism
- Economic and/or Social analysis
Fuck Israel
- SuperJail Warden
- Gone Forever
- +640|3936
Maybe you can dazzle us with books about herbs and spices, superior mind.
The Age of Spiritual Machines by Ray KurzweilDilbert_X wrote:
I have a week in Melbourne in December, recommend me some books.
Ideally
- Futurism
- Economic and/or Social analysis
The Prize and The Quest by Daniel Yergin. First is a history of the oil industry up to ~1992, second is a continuation, with about half of the book devoted to energy diversification with renewable and alternative technologies. They are both very long.Dilbert_X wrote:
I have a week in Melbourne in December, recommend me some books.
Ideally
- Futurism
- Economic and/or Social analysis
Last edited by Jay (2016-10-31 14:22:12)
"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat
-Frederick Bastiat
- Superior Mind
- (not macbeth)
- +1,755|6909
I like most of what Ray Kurzweil has to say, but I feel like his obsession with attaining immortality by taking tons of pills everyday so as to preserve his body till it can be made machine kind of discredits him.KEN-JENNINGS wrote:
The Age of Spiritual Machines by Ray KurzweilDilbert_X wrote:
I have a week in Melbourne in December, recommend me some books.
Ideally
- Futurism
- Economic and/or Social analysis
OK, so here's my reading list for the next, um, while
Voltaire's Bastards
Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II
Engineering Mathematics, 7th ed - probably not going to take that on holiday actually, hopefully I'll get fired from my shitty job, or at least have an excuse to resign in a huff and have a chance to brush up on everything I only half learnt.
The Quest: Energy, Security and the Remaking of the Modern World
Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work
I might re-read the Elon Musk biography, and some Alfred Bester on the plane.
Voltaire's Bastards
Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II
Engineering Mathematics, 7th ed - probably not going to take that on holiday actually, hopefully I'll get fired from my shitty job, or at least have an excuse to resign in a huff and have a chance to brush up on everything I only half learnt.
The Quest: Energy, Security and the Remaking of the Modern World
Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work
I might re-read the Elon Musk biography, and some Alfred Bester on the plane.
Fuck Israel
why don't you intersperse all that factual stooge and argument making with something contemplative? i read a lot of non-fiction but i have to give it levity with books that are more about standing still for a minute, appreciating things, savouring an image or sentence. buy a 128pp slim volume that has nothing to do with the clamouring, chattering world.
one of the better books i've read this year is 'the peregrine' by j. a. baker. an unknown guy spends a few years following peregrines around essex and writing about them. it's a nature book but it's not really all that interested in 'nature writing', per se. just a man, alone, leaving the human world for a bit and trying to figure things out. try it. you might really like it. it's the sort of book that raises questions rather than makes arguments and presents answers. in any case, you can read it in an afternoon.
will be a damn sight better than drinking battery acid with elon musk's pietistic biography.
one of the better books i've read this year is 'the peregrine' by j. a. baker. an unknown guy spends a few years following peregrines around essex and writing about them. it's a nature book but it's not really all that interested in 'nature writing', per se. just a man, alone, leaving the human world for a bit and trying to figure things out. try it. you might really like it. it's the sort of book that raises questions rather than makes arguments and presents answers. in any case, you can read it in an afternoon.
will be a damn sight better than drinking battery acid with elon musk's pietistic biography.
Robins sang in a wood near the river, clear as spring water, fresh as the curled, crisped heart of a lettuce. Like the tinkle of a harpsichord, their song has a misty brightness of nostalgia. The wood smelt of bark and ashes and dead leaves. Circles of cold sky shone at the end of rides. A cock bullfinch squatted on a sagging larch twig. He stretched his neck up towards the twig above him, bit off a bud with a delicate snip and twist of his bill, and chewed it ruminatively. Then he hung his head downwards and snipped off buds from a lower twig. He was a red and black fatty, idly grazing, occasionally exerting himself to breathe out the husky 'du-dudu' of his song, fat dewlap gently quivering. He was like a munching bullock feeding on hawthorn leaves. But the pull and twist of his bill to break off a bud reminded me of a peregrine breaking the neck of its prey. Whatever is destroyed, the act of destruction does not vary much. Beauty is vapour from the pit of death.
Last edited by uziq (2016-11-04 03:22:33)
I set up my home library in three sections: reason, memory and imagination and read one book from each section in turn. Too much of one type of book burns you out in my experience.
"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat
-Frederick Bastiat
Sure, you're right.
I enjoyed Cry Wolf, A Kestrel for a Knave, Watership Down etc, I'll add it to my next list.
I enjoyed Cry Wolf, A Kestrel for a Knave, Watership Down etc, I'll add it to my next list.
Fuck Israel
those sound like quite cold and abstract categories, but sure, the idea is sound.Jay wrote:
I set up my home library in three sections: reason, memory and imagination and read one book from each section in turn. Too much of one type of book burns you out in my experience.
i generally tend to have a non-fiction/history/philosophy book on the go at the same time as a novel, or a play. then a book of poetry on my bedside table or in my rucksack or whatever. reading a poem or three a day can really embed lines and images in your head. reading non-fiction alongside other forms of writing and thought causes all sorts of unforeseen illuminations. i really don't understand people who say they see no point in reading novels or works of imagination: they present life in all its contradiction, messiness, chaos, muddle. there are no clear arguments or presentations: you get those from the non-fiction books you read alongside them. novels instruct you on feeling and intuition. i'm deeply suspicious of people who spend their entire lives rooted in textbooks, polemics and non-fiction.
also reading a shitload of non-fiction at once just causes a sort of saturation and overload for me. i take notes on books that i really enjoy or find interesting. but you can only keep so much high-level theory or argumentation in your head at once.
Last edited by uziq (2016-11-04 05:31:42)
i had a bit of a summer reading all sorts of bird and nature books. 'the goshawk' by t. h. white, 'the peregrine' by j. a. baker, 'h is for hawk' by helen macdonald. all pretty good and none are really about birds or birdwatching – something deeper, more profound. also read 'coming into the country' by john mcphee, his book about alaska. really fucking good. has a large segment in it with some prospectors, engineers, bush people, geologists, etc. that you'd probably like. he's also done a book about geology and deep time that sounds very interesting.Dilbert_X wrote:
Sure, you're right.
I enjoyed Cry Wolf, A Kestrel for a Knave, Watership Down etc, I'll add it to my next list.
The categories came through Thomas Jefferson via Francis Bacon
"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat
-Frederick Bastiat
side track, but I had a friend (who looked like that azn chick you were banging) who just doesn't read or watch anything fiction at all.uziq wrote:
those sound like quite cold and abstract categories, but sure, the idea is sound.Jay wrote:
I set up my home library in three sections: reason, memory and imagination and read one book from each section in turn. Too much of one type of book burns you out in my experience.
i generally tend to have a non-fiction/history/philosophy book on the go at the same time as a novel, or a play. then a book of poetry on my bedside table or in my rucksack or whatever. reading a poem or three a day can really embed lines and images in your head. reading non-fiction alongside other forms of writing and thought causes all sorts of unforeseen illuminations. i really don't understand people who say they see no point in reading novels or works of imagination: they present life in all its contradiction, messiness, chaos, muddle. there are no clear arguments or presentations: you get those from the non-fiction books you read alongside them. novels instruct you on feeling and intuition. i'm deeply suspicious of people who spend their entire lives rooted in textbooks, polemics and non-fiction.
also reading a shitload of non-fiction at once just causes a sort of saturation and overload for me. i take notes on books that i really enjoy or find interesting. but you can only keep so much high-level theory or argumentation in your head at once.
I thought she was the type of person who only watches documentaries or news and intellectual shiz.
mfw she watches the kardashians all the time.
