What are you reading right now?

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An audiobook about "the greatest Italian physicist since Galileo" and a man I had only known for the "Fermi Paradox" before. This deals more with his personal life and a path leading to the construction of the first atomic bomb. A fascinating figure due to his calm, moderate character. Managed to both succeed in and escape fascist Italy. I saw some people annoyed by what they thought was a lack of focus on the science in this, but it was just enough for me.

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This was an exercise in jargon-overload tolerance. Peeling the alien layers of buzzwords off, the story is as simple as a civil war biopic on assaulting a treacherous confederate fort, but in spaaAAaaaace. I don't know if I would want to go on to read the other 2 books of the trilogy because it just wasn't as "earth-shatteringly different" as everyone proclaimed it was. Good sci-fi war novel nonetheless.

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I've started reading The Myth Adventures series by Robert Asprin, due to recomendation of a friend. The series is so much fun!
It's super whimsical, creative, and the humor is top notch.
 
smallmilk said:
Right now I'm reading Robinson Crusoe. I'll probably finish it in a day or two.
A lot of older books have have fat in them that modern books don't, which can get boring sometimes. But it's not surprising since you had nothing better to do back then.

Idk if this is an appropriate thread, but lately I've been watching a lot of documentaries and videos about space and I'd like to know more about it. Does anyone know any good books about it that are beginner friendly? Or just have recommendations on how to start self learning something like that.
I'm not trying to be the next Hawking, I want to understand better.
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The lesser known sequel is also really good.

Crusoe changes and becomes a more funny character.
 
Puff said:
Another fucking Heinlein novel, because I just can't stop.
Double Star - Don't like it quite as much as his other stuff, but it's interesting and having the narrator be a pretentious jackass is surprisingly fun.

Anyone know any sci-fi I should grab after this? I'm running out of new good stuff from my favorite authors. I'm a big fan of the speculative stuff. Heinlein always seems to be trying to figure out an idea, not shove politics or solutions down people's throats. Cyberpunk setting stuff (like Gibson and Stephenson) is up my alley too.
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All Tommorows was a fun and short read. Kinda like Heinlein in that it looks at grand politics and embraces taboo for fun.
 
I'm going through The Old Man and the Sea. Frankly I'm surprised how much I like it. I remember hearing for years that it's a very dry story; it's just an old man going fishing. But that's kinda why I like it. There's a lot going on under the surface, like the idea of growing old and continuing to do what you love doing, even if everyone else is surpassing you. Hemmingway stated that he wrote the story without any specific theme in mind, that the reader's response is whatever they draw out of it. And I think that's why I find it so engaging.
 
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I recently finished a sorta biography on David Reimer, probably the cornerstone of gender ideology. It is called As Nature Made Him by John Colapinto.

To summarize: a Canadian boy is sent to the hospital's chopshop to get his dick snipped, and the doctor instead completely destroys David's genitals as an infant. His parents, horrified, try to seek help in the form of John Money: a pedophile quack that framed himself as a psychiatrist and academic. The parents decide to cut off their son's balls and raise him as a girl. David Reimer's first 18 years of life were unbearable torture where he was never told he was a boy, always felt like there was something wrong with him, he was abused by John Money during yearly trips to his clinics, he was made a social outcast, and grew to distrust his parents and everyone else around him. David is told he's a boy, decides to live as a man, marries a single mother of three by THREE DIFFERENT MEN, and then inevitably shoots himself in the head with a sawed-off shotgun.

It is essentially a refutation of tranny ideology. John Money, for more than a decade, used David Reimer as an example for his beliefs and many infants suffered the same fate as David because of it. Eventually, it came out that David was never comfortable as a girl but that hasn't stopped "the experts" from pushing the same shit on children now. I really recommend it because it's a bit of a red pill on how retarded academics are and the case of David Reimer should be brought up to dismantle anyone who tries to suggest children should "transition" by getting slice and diced and pumped full of hormones.
 
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Stuck Pooh said:
I've started reading The Myth Adventures series by Robert Asprin, due to recomendation of a friend. The series is so much fun!
It's super whimsical, creative, and the humor is top notch.
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I liked the comic he made with Phil Foglio too.
 
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This week I've been listening to the audiobook form of the novelisation of Alien: Isolation.
It is very good at explaining the place Amanda Ripley has in the needlessly vast expanded universe, whilst being equally as sensitive to the previously established lore as the game it is based upon is. There's a lot of times in the game where you overlook detail either by design or simply by play style (at least for myself in that second one), and the novel does a good job of better exploring them - although from memory of the game the pacing of the novel is slightly different as a result, sometimes ignoring half an hour to an hour of where the game had brilliant atmosphere keeping you slowly moving in fear where the novel just skips over it so that it can get to the next plot critical segment, although that is I suppose a result of the different forms of media so I can't much criticise it.
It is a good book, and the reader Sarah Mollo-Christensen does a very good job of voicing the various characters, managing to both be true to the game and how the original voice actors protrayed them whilst also being original in it in such a way that it's refreshing to not just hear the same experience as I had when I last (re)played the game.
Basically if you like the game to the level of sped I do, you'll probably like the book equally as much
 
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Not sure where to start praising this book, because there's so much (and I'm very picky about fiction). The wholesomest sci-fi I've ever read, suitable even for older children. The storyline is built in an old-fashioned way, there are no multiple realities, time travel (common in this genre) or wild twists - you only get development that makes sense given received information; the story has a deep, carefully constructed logic and it's not just the writer dumping shocking developments on readers. Very little propaganda (unheard of in most current bestsellers) and an excellent use of science (including its weaknesses in the hands of a man).
 
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shameful existence said:
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Not sure where to start praising this book, because there's so much (and I'm very picky about fiction). The wholesomest sci-fi I've ever read, suitable even for older children. The storyline is built in an old-fashioned way, there are no multiple realities, time travel (common in this genre) or wild twists - you only get development that makes sense given received information; the story has a deep, carefully constructed logic and it's not just the writer dumping shocking developments on readers. Very little propaganda (unheard of in most current bestsellers) and an excellent use of science (including its weaknesses in the hands of a man).
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The Martian left me sort of unimpressed with the quirky humour and characterization, do you think this book is better style-wise?
 
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HullDown said:
The Martian left me sort of unimpressed with the quirky humour and characterization, do you think this book is better style-wise?
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I didn't read either of the two previous books but I've seen some people claim Weir is growing as an author. There is humor but I'm not sure I'd define it as quirky... it's funny in an innocent way.
 
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It’s been about fifteen years since I read Stephen King, so I’m working my way through his good writing. I figure it comes to at least a dozen novels and a bunch of short stories, so I may be at it for a while.
Frankly, I think he deserved all the praise he got as a writer; at least, until he got clean.
 
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I hate freaking Spinoza. I'm trying to get some philosophy cred but I'm reading this guy and I just want to blow my brains out. I read this guy moved to the Netherlands so I dunno if this is in Dutch or Italian, but I hate this guy and all his run-on sentences:

For, by substance, would be understood that which is in itself, and is conceived through itself-that is, something of which the conception requires not the conception of any-thing else; whereas modifications exist in some-thing external to themselves, and a conception of them is formed by means of a conception of the things in which they exist. Therefore, we may have no actual existence apart from the conceiving intellect, yet the essence is so involved in something external to themselves that they may through it be conceived. Whereas the only truth substances can have, external to intellect, must consist in their existence, because they are conceived through themselves.

Therefore, for a person to say that he has a clear and distinct-that is, a true-idea of substance, but that he is not sure whether such substance exists, would be the same as if he said he had a true idea, but was not sure whether or no(sp) it was false (a little consideration will make this plain); or if anyone affirmed that substance is created, it would be the same as saying that a false idea was true-in short, the height of absurdity. It must, then, necessarily be admitted that the existence of substance as its essence is an eternal truth. And we can hence conclude by another process of reasoning-that there is but one substance. I think that this may profitably be done at once; and, in order to proceed regularly with the demonstration; we must promise:-

Lists like 4 principles you have to accept and goes back on the last eight rules then goes on:
Therefore, follows that, if a given number of individual things exist in nature, these must be come cause for the existence of exactly that number, neither more nor less. For example, if twenty men exist in the universe (for simplicity's sake, I will suppose them existing simultaneously, and to have had no predecessors), and we want to account for the existence of these twenty men, it will not be enough to show the cause of human existence in general; we must also show why there are twenty men, neither more nor less: for a cause must be assigned for the existence of each individual.
 
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comfysocks said:
I hate freaking Spinoza. I'm trying to get some philosophy cred but I'm reading this guy and I just want to blow my brains out. I read this guy moved to the Netherlands so I dunno if this is in Dutch or Italian, but I hate this guy and all his run-on sentences:

For, by substance, would be understood that which is in itself, and is conceived through itself-that is, something of which the conception requires not the conception of any-thing else; whereas modifications exist in some-thing external to themselves, and a conception of them is formed by means of a conception of the things in which they exist. Therefore, we may have no actual existence apart from the conceiving intellect, yet the essence is so involved in something external to themselves that they may through it be conceived. Whereas the only truth substances can have, external to intellect, must consist in their existence, because they are conceived through themselves.

Therefore, for a person to say that he has a clear and distinct-that is, a true-idea of substance, but that he is not sure whether such substance exists, would be the same as if he said he had a true idea, but was not sure whether or no(sp) it was false (a little consideration will make this plain); or if anyone affirmed that substance is created, it would be the same as saying that a false idea was true-in short, the height of absurdity. It must, then, necessarily be admitted that the existence of substance as its essence is an eternal truth. And we can hence conclude by another process of reasoning-that there is but one substance. I think that this may profitably be done at once; and, in order to proceed regularly with the demonstration; we must promise:-

Lists like 4 principles you have to accept and goes back on the last eight rules then goes on:
Therefore, follows that, if a given number of individual things exist in nature, these must be come cause for the existence of exactly that number, neither more nor less. For example, if twenty men exist in the universe (for simplicity's sake, I will suppose them existing simultaneously, and to have had no predecessors), and we want to account for the existence of these twenty men, it will not be enough to show the cause of human existence in general; we must also show why there are twenty men, neither more nor less: for a cause must be assigned for the existence of each individual.
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I'm sorry, but those are not run-on sentences.
 
comfysocks said:
I hate freaking Spinoza. I'm trying to get some philosophy cred but I'm reading this guy and I just want to blow my brains out. I read this guy moved to the Netherlands so I dunno if this is in Dutch or Italian, but I hate this guy and all his run-on sentences:

For, by substance, would be understood that which is in itself, and is conceived through itself-that is, something of which the conception requires not the conception of any-thing else; whereas modifications exist in some-thing external to themselves, and a conception of them is formed by means of a conception of the things in which they exist. Therefore, we may have no actual existence apart from the conceiving intellect, yet the essence is so involved in something external to themselves that they may through it be conceived. Whereas the only truth substances can have, external to intellect, must consist in their existence, because they are conceived through themselves.

Therefore, for a person to say that he has a clear and distinct-that is, a true-idea of substance, but that he is not sure whether such substance exists, would be the same as if he said he had a true idea, but was not sure whether or no(sp) it was false (a little consideration will make this plain); or if anyone affirmed that substance is created, it would be the same as saying that a false idea was true-in short, the height of absurdity. It must, then, necessarily be admitted that the existence of substance as its essence is an eternal truth. And we can hence conclude by another process of reasoning-that there is but one substance. I think that this may profitably be done at once; and, in order to proceed regularly with the demonstration; we must promise:-

Lists like 4 principles you have to accept and goes back on the last eight rules then goes on:
Therefore, follows that, if a given number of individual things exist in nature, these must be come cause for the existence of exactly that number, neither more nor less. For example, if twenty men exist in the universe (for simplicity's sake, I will suppose them existing simultaneously, and to have had no predecessors), and we want to account for the existence of these twenty men, it will not be enough to show the cause of human existence in general; we must also show why there are twenty men, neither more nor less: for a cause must be assigned for the existence of each individual.
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Spinoza wrote in Latin, and all English translations of Latin I ever saw sound spergy. Not going to argue that he was a great stylist, but even Cicero sounds a bit retarded in translation.
 
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