What are you reading right now?

[Dragged Into Sunlight]

I'm late but I love that book. There's one passage that stuck with me, about how the language for mental retardation keeps changing because the old terms become politically incorrect. Tell us what you think when you finish.

I liked the whole deal where

Spoiler: spoilers

Charley, at the peak of his IQ, still has leftover resentment and self-esteem issues because he's aware of what he was. I found the entire second half where he's on the decline to be fucking heartbreaking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Awakenings_(book)

Even sadder when you realize something like that actually happened back in the 60s

 

[Greedy Fly]

Was that a lowpoint of his writing and did he change as a writer?

I think peak Tchaikovsky is the Children of Time series, which is really just three books of ruminating on the workings of hypothetical aliens and the nature of consciousness. Compared to that, Shards of Earth is a more standard sci fi adventure anyone could write: a ragtag team of misfits fighting spooky warp aliens (strains of Warhammer 40k? Not a franchise I'm familiar with but I know he's also written for it). He's not a particularly "literary" type of writer; the content of his writing usually appeals to me but his prose is just normal.

 

[Jewthulhu]

Rounding out my reading of the "golden age" nuclear theorists.

Finished "Strategy in the Missile Age" by Bernard Brodie (which you can get for free from RAND). Brodie's most unique in that he was the "first," that is, one of the first theorists to really dig into the question of nuclear strategy, and start to contextualize it as a deterrence problem rather than a warfighting problem. However, like may "firsts," while the ideas were novel, they often lack the depth that later writers gave them. My reading was perhaps spoiled by reading Thomas Schelling first, whos work on nuclear deterrence theory is much more fleshed out and insightful. The book also suffers from the later chapters being on the economics of nuclear deterrence, which horribly dates it. That said, I did really enjoy the first few chapters, which covered the evolution of the idea of strategic bombing.

Currently reading "Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy" by Henry Kissinger. Written while he was still just an analyst, before he became notorious as National Security Advisor.

 

[Circus peanut]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Awakenings_(book)

Even sadder when you realize something like that actually happened back in the 60s

Oliver Sacks’ books have really amazing accounts of his case studies. Highly recommend.

 

[AnOminous]

Asimov is the last person I would've thought wrote a Bible commentary.

He did a lot of commentaries, notably including Shakespeare and Milton. He mostly doesn't do typical literary criticism, but uses his encyclopedic knowledge to explain the factual underpinnings and historical context of the work with footnotes as voluminous as the works themselves.

His Paradise Lost was particularly useful because that book, while readable, has a lot of topical and cultural references which wouldn't be familiar even to a reasonably literate modern person. Similarly, he could simply explain what Shakespearean phrasing meant and what was being referenced.

I'd strongly recommend his commentaries especially when reading something out of your zone of familiarity.

Reading Norwegian Wood, very good.

Have you all seen this awful article? https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/against-high-brodernism/

There it is.

David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest (1996) is rather too mainstream and easily read.

I can stop reading now. (Actually I just control+Fed for it because I knew just from the fucking faggot-ass title that some pretentious douchenozzle was going to dis David Foster Wallace.)

 

[Jonah Hill poster]

I’m reading old video game strategy guides relating to the first three Grand Theft Auto games of the console era (PS2, XBOX, GameCube, etc.) and it’s a lot more informative when it gets detailed about hidden items within said games.

It makes me wish strategy guides made a comeback, not specifically just for the digital era.

 

[Skyline Enthusiast]

Going through the Fafhrd and The Gray Mouser books again. Fritz Leiber is much easier to read than most other fantasy authors and as much as I like Conan, Robert E. Howard's writing gets too dense to read casually imo.

 

[LordOfZhbagva]

I'm going through A History of the Arab Peoples by Albert Hourani. It's a very ehhh book. It is too politically superficial, too focused on recent history and too focused on theology, literature, poetry and such things. And while I get it, such things are important to include aswell, I frankly don't care about them, let alone individual poets and their works. And not only do I not care about them, I get disappointed in the author when he prioritizes such things over political history, to the point where the work fails to convey the political developments beyond the broadest of strokes. Funnily enough, the work went in the completely opposite direction to the one I expected. I thought it'd focus too much on the political side and leave everything else vague. I'm not sure I recommend Hourani's history and I think I'll just get multiple other works to fill in the pre-modern gap left by his work.

I'm also going through History of Bulgaria by a group of Bulgarian authors (A. Pantev, C. Georgieva, D. Petrov Popov, I. Baeva, I. Bozhilov, K. Kosev) and I'm frankly disappointed in it. It's too modern centric, too subjective and too selective in what it presents. Political figures that held less modern political views are either sidelined or simply not presented in full light. Modern nationalist goals are projected onto political views from millenia ago and actions are justified or judged by modern standards.
An example of this is for an example the presentation of the Bulgarian joining of the war in 1330's as "Bulgarians defending Macedonia from Serbian expansion", ignoring both the fact that Macedonia was in that period in complete Byzantine control and had been for some 50 years and that the war was a continuation of a clash between two sides which had supported opposite sides in the Byzantine civil war 2 years before (Serbians had supported Andronikos II, who had lost, while the Bulgarians backed Andronikos III, who had won and subsequently signed a military treaty with the Bulgarians).
Then, there is, for an example, Zveno, a group of officers and assorted elites who sought unification of Bulgaria with Yugoslavia. The book presents them as a pseudo-fascist movement, which, they may have been, but it justifies their cooperation with Yugoslavia in the opposite direction - rather than them being a Yugoslav integralist movement which eliminated IMRO (a paramilitary organization seeking Bulgarian expansion into Yugoslav held Macedonia through armed struggle), it presents Zveno as a group that eliminated IMRO and as a consequence of that, tightened its relations with Yugoslavia, while never once stating or presenting Zveno as a Yugoslav integralist movement (which it very much was).
All in all, I have probably missed a lot of similar choices made by writers, but am disappointed in the book. I'll probably finish it, or at least get past the early communist Bulgaria before putting the book down (as it goes all the way up to 2001), but I do not recommend it.

And after this pair of "just good enough to read" books, I'll probably pick up The history of Romania by Ovidiu Pecican (I'm hoping he'll be much more professional than the Bulgarians) and The Stars of Eger/Eclipse of the Crescent Moon by Geza Gardonyi.

I'm very eager to get to Geza's work, as the first work of his I read, Slave of the Huns, was amazing. A premier piece of historical fiction about a Roman slave-turned scholar-turned Hunnic horseman which had probably the best written battle I've read as of now, only comparable to Ralph Peters' Red Army when it comes to battle scenes.

 

[Trimalchio]

Re-visiting George MacDonald's Phantastes; I read his Lilith a few months ago. The style is very old fashioned now, but I enjoy this kind of pre-Tolkien fantasy. Some pretty heady ideas under the surface too, mostly from German Romantic philosophy.

 

[Valiko Zizandari]

I'm halfway trough Tolkiens The Two Towers. My only goal is to finish the series before december since my father insists on watching all the movies back-to-back around christmas / new year.

It's very good, and I'm looking forward to reading the silmarillion. But the language is a bit difficult, so reading it can take some time. It's not that any of the words are alien to me, just the sentence struckture. If you want to read books with difficult words, check out Lovecraft.

While George Orwells two most famus books are well known, I really want to recomend his short stories, as well as Days In Burma.
I'll also like to recomend All quiet on the western front by Remarque, as well as his other books.

 

[The Feline Solution 2]

Reading Norwegian Wood, very good.

Have you all seen this awful article? https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/against-high-brodernism/

The only good Murakami novel. Excellent book.

 

[Rustle]

The only good Murakami novel. Excellent book.

I liked it at the start but then I thought the new girl was kind of cringe and now a lot of really awkward writing in this middle part that I'm at now. Still good moments.

 

[Old King Koaleamos]

Leigh Brackett's Starmen of Llyrdis

It's a '50s Brackett Space Opera that isn't tied to any of her wider settings. The tale's a very well-executed "weird fiction" mystery turned space opera. It's nothing that new. A daredevil man finds mysterious people who ask of his heritage. He gets involved and finds out he's of an alien race, the only one that's ever been able to survive space flight. What does he do? He tries to prove it, goes to their homeworld, gets involved with conspiracies and in the history of these people. It's all a rollicking tale that could easy be expanded upon. Brackett writes a rather short and compelling novel that can easily be expanded upon. These "starmen" really want to maintain a monopoly on spacefaring travel. So much so that they'd kill the protagonist from finding the long lost secret of their physiology. How they handle this is a neat if quick write up.

It's a straightforwardly told tale, but Brackett's adeptness at action, description, and momentum-building ensures a polished and engaging story. Again, it's wonderfully made vanilla ice cream. Fortunately, it's also in public domain. So you don't need to go too far to find it.



That's two SF things back to back. I kinda want to finished Heart of Darkness before I read Silverberg's Downward into the Earth.

But I also want to try adding a sort of "private-eye" work to my TBR. I guess I'll pop open Chandler's "The Long Goodbye" sooner or later. I know I'm still chipping away at the Complete John Thunstone volume and the first volume of Louis L'Amour's works. And the Retief! Volume and The Greatest Hits of Ellison. Fucking hell.

If there's 5 SF books I want to get through in the latter half of this year that I haven't mentioned already, it's

• Dune
• Neuromancer
• A Canticle for Leibowitz
• Inverted World
• Solaris

I'll definitely finish the rest of the Dying Earth books. If possible, I'll try to get into Stand on Zanzibar before the year ends.

 

[Croco]

I can stop reading now. (Actually I just control+Fed for it because I knew just from the fucking faggot-ass title that some pretentious douchenozzle was going to dis David Foster Wallace.)

On page 50 right now, been reading IJ, the trade paperback with the blue sky cover. This will be attempt 2. Going in completely blind is one way to do it. I tried a few years ago and it was just too confusing. Having analyzed, with resources, the first two chapters to get my feet on the ground, am able to appreciate what I'm reading actually. After the whole book is done, there will be a whole new study to undergo to actually figure it out on a deeper level. I'm definitely not clever enough to understand the layers on layers of fractal symbolism on my own.

 

[Sooty Soot]

I got some stuff in my backlog like Camp of Saints but currently it's Boris Berezovsky: Godfather of the Kremlin as recommended by @Soyjack Pinhead in the Russian SMO thread, I'm a big sucker for media relating to the 90's in Russia and how unabashedly terrible they were when juxtaposed to the 90's in America.

 

[Sneed on Cloud 9]

At the moment, I 'm reading the King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers.

 

[souschef]

"What the Buddha Taught" by Walpola Rahula

 

[TheArtilleryman]

The Fellowship of the Ring, finally. I like that Frodo is much older and wittier than the movies portrayed. Movie Frodo was the least interesting member of the party.

 

[Big Miss Steak]

At the moment, I 'm reading the King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers.

That one's on my bookshelf, how are you liking it so far?

 

[hiringmayhem4]

Read the first part of Fahrenheit 451 and I gotta be honest, that's it? Hope the rest of the book justifies how popular it is.