Minivan Enthusiast
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jul 6, 2022
Back issues of the Journal of Business Ethics. I hate my life.
What are you reading right now?
- Thread starter AtroposHeart
- Start date
- Joined
- Nov 4, 2017
"A Moveable Feast," which is interesting, hilarious, and poignant. Next, "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction."
Did you get to the gay sex scene with Harry Potter yet?
Fortunato Brown
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jun 11, 2021
Seems like Turtledove is best when he abandons the direct allegory and goes super wacky hence why his book about crazy Boers time travelling to give Robert E Lee AKs is still his best book. I'm going to try this one out because it genuinely sounds interesting.
- Joined
- Nov 15, 2016
Just finished Billy Summers by Stephen King. He was obviously aiming to do the Richard Stark thing here and kind of succeeded. There's some very well crafted action scenes, some intriguing plot ideas, nice references to other King novels, all unfortunately buried under an extreme case of diahrrea of the keyboard. Monologuing characters, weird pointless plot meanders even a main character that seemed to have not a whole lot to do. And as is usually the case with King, the ending was a slobbery incoherent mess. I'm not quite sure what a Stephen King editor does at this point, but it can't be much.
3/5, don't regret reading, but will not read again.
As an aside, I swear four years of Trump gave King brain damage somehow. Every villain remarks about how much they like Trump, and those who like Trump who aren't villains are idiots. Not sure how often it happened, but it seemed to be happening a lot. The final boss/ultimate baddie was even a child molesting/family murdering stand in for Rupert Murdoch. It was quite blatant. King might as well have called him by his real name it was so obvious.
3/5, don't regret reading, but will not read again.
As an aside, I swear four years of Trump gave King brain damage somehow. Every villain remarks about how much they like Trump, and those who like Trump who aren't villains are idiots. Not sure how often it happened, but it seemed to be happening a lot. The final boss/ultimate baddie was even a child molesting/family murdering stand in for Rupert Murdoch. It was quite blatant. King might as well have called him by his real name it was so obvious.
- Joined
- Jan 31, 2021
Studying for a certification for my professional career. That's fun.
Also studying and taking courses for ham radio for licensing. This material is actually interesting and seems like a unique hobby as long as I don't get too autistic about it. Also pretty useful knowledge to know.
Also studying and taking courses for ham radio for licensing. This material is actually interesting and seems like a unique hobby as long as I don't get too autistic about it. Also pretty useful knowledge to know.
- Joined
- Jan 30, 2021
Obama is or was the liberal messiah. Meant to usher in new age of prosperity by enacting permanent liberal rule. Obama represented the end of the fight for racial equality. With Hillary representing the end of the sexual one. Trump killed that dream with a smile on his face. And it took the democrats fielding another old bland white guy to deny trump the 2020 election. Something that was never supposed to happen again. King is lashing out in the only way he can.
The Guns of Avalon is the second book in the Chronicles of Amber series. It picks up right up after the end of the first book. We once again see the world through the eyes of Corwin, prince of Amber. As he seeks to overthrow his brother from the throne of Amber. This time the story takes place in, as the title says, an arthurian legend. Of course it doesn't stay there, but I won't spoil the story.
I very much enjoyed this work. Thought it was rather short. However I'm not sure if thats down to my own desire for more or a reality of work. I do enjoy the way he does battle scenes. It feels more in line with an ancient historian's recounting of a battle and less a movie blockbuster. I've already moved onto the next book in the series, Sign of the Unicorn.
Fortunato Brown
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jun 11, 2021
That's so annoying, what a way to pointlessly date your book. If you want to get political, don't explicitly talk about politicians in your book. Just shows King word vomits whatever comes to his mind.
- Joined
- Mar 17, 2022
I'm finishing up Bram Stroker's Dracula and it has been bit of a bear. The fragmentation I to different journal entries makes it such that I can read maybe ten pages at a time. I used to be able to easily read 150-200 pages a day, 20 plus pages in one sitting. Also, I hate that van Helsing's dialogue is not conjugated properly. Just describe a heavy Dutch accent and then proceed to write and spell with correct grammar and spelling (van Helsing's dialogue is correctly spelled as far as I recall but some of the statements of workmen testifying as to Dracula:s machinations with the boxes of diet are not).
Not sure what I will read next. Has anyone read Willi Heinrich's Cross of Iron (das Geduldige Fleisch auf Deutsch). I have read reviews stating the English translation is poor. I could probably read it in German although I suspwxr there may be specialized vocabulary that twill slow me down.
Otherwise I will probably re-read Honoré Balzac's Lost Illusions. I read it a long time ago and have a very faint memory of what it is about. Usual French decadence in a Parisian setting from the caffeine feind. I do recall an exotic Jewish being a love interest or paramour of the protagonist....
Not sure what I will read next. Has anyone read Willi Heinrich's Cross of Iron (das Geduldige Fleisch auf Deutsch). I have read reviews stating the English translation is poor. I could probably read it in German although I suspwxr there may be specialized vocabulary that twill slow me down.
Otherwise I will probably re-read Honoré Balzac's Lost Illusions. I read it a long time ago and have a very faint memory of what it is about. Usual French decadence in a Parisian setting from the caffeine feind. I do recall an exotic Jewish being a love interest or paramour of the protagonist....
- Joined
- Aug 6, 2021
Just finished a surprisingly good nonfiction read: The Balkans: Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804-2011. I was expecting something a little boring, but it proved to be engaging across two centuries of history (except for the post-Yugoslavian chapters, which got tedious). It does a good job of explaining how what were basically the hicks of Europe spark so much trouble with the rest of the continent, showing how batshit things can get in the Balkans (looking at you, Albania), and why outsiders fucking around in the region always have it coming back to bite them in the ass.
TLDR: quit shaking the Balkan beehive, they're beyond redemption
TLDR: quit shaking the Balkan beehive, they're beyond redemption
WonderWino
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2019
Eye of the needle, the chrysalids and the novel version of star trek 6 (which actually explains some things which make the movie make alot more sense, like how gorkon expected to be assassinated, suspected general chang would be involved (which is why in the movie he calls out asking where he is - which was poorly explained in the film, and how the 'look' he gives the two assassins in the seconds before they shoot him was intended to indicate he recognized the weapons being used as 'burning phasers' which were banned by the federation and would not have been used had it been a sanctioned act and realized kirk was not responsible for the attack. read the novel version before you watch the movie and you'll get alot more out of it)
The chrysalids is a weird book and isn't entirely consistent or logical about some things considering the context (like how nobody seems to be aware there was a nuclear war that caused the world to be a mutated mess, nobody knows radiation exists and thinks everything mutated is some kind of divine punishment because only two books survived from before the war - the bible and some anti mutant propaganda book. You'd think that the ancestors of the people who were alive at that point would have known what happened and passed down at least basic information about the fact a nuclear war had happened and some warnings about radiation, if only by oral tradition. The lack of that just kind of makes the whole religion side of things come off as bizarre and forced like the author couldn't come up with a way to set up the premise of the story without handwaving that knowledge away
Eye of the needle kind of drags on and doesn't really make a whole lot of sense in a few parts. Particularly when it comes to setting up the last third or so of the book. That said, it is infinitely better than that shitshow of a movie they made based on it back in the 80s. That one was nearly cartoonishly nonsensical in comparison
The chrysalids is a weird book and isn't entirely consistent or logical about some things considering the context (like how nobody seems to be aware there was a nuclear war that caused the world to be a mutated mess, nobody knows radiation exists and thinks everything mutated is some kind of divine punishment because only two books survived from before the war - the bible and some anti mutant propaganda book. You'd think that the ancestors of the people who were alive at that point would have known what happened and passed down at least basic information about the fact a nuclear war had happened and some warnings about radiation, if only by oral tradition. The lack of that just kind of makes the whole religion side of things come off as bizarre and forced like the author couldn't come up with a way to set up the premise of the story without handwaving that knowledge away
Eye of the needle kind of drags on and doesn't really make a whole lot of sense in a few parts. Particularly when it comes to setting up the last third or so of the book. That said, it is infinitely better than that shitshow of a movie they made based on it back in the 80s. That one was nearly cartoonishly nonsensical in comparison
DarkSydeHyde
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Mar 1, 2020
Working through Alastair Reynolds' "Revelation Space". "Black Company" was good. AFAIK it was inspiration for Myth games series. I can see the influence.
Weeb Slinger
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Sep 4, 2019
I have H.V. Morton's The Ghosts of London on the go, among many other things. It is a book of essays concerning London anachronisms that have survived into the present day (present day in this case being 1939, a few days after war was declared with Germany, when Morton wrote the eponymous opening chapter for the book).
So far, I have learned that, on the 29th May, it was once customary for boys to garnish their jackets with oak apples. Any boy who they encountered without this adornment was lashed across his bare arms and legs with stinging nettles while being declared a traitor. This is how people entertained themselves before the Internet, it seems. The tradition dates to when King Charles was on the run from the Roundheads and hid one night in the boughs of an oak tree. While the practise appears to have died out, I suppose it is possible that it lingers at places like Eton.
Morton had an eye for a good anecdote and wrote very engagingly, whether his focus was on the past or the present. His other books of London essays; The Heart of London / The Spell of London / The Nights of London (all long out of print for some reason) provide insights into life in the capital during the early decades of the 20th century and are full of fleeting human moments - a group of gentlemen attempting to recover a child's balloon from the rafters of a tea room; a woman among gaggle of well-wishers, who have gathered outside a society wedding, calling out to the bride "Good luck, dear." Of course all of these people are long dead and who knows what became of them. Morton goes on adventures - he attempts to establish the location of a brothel that is said to have been frequented by Queen Elizabeth I (on Cardinal Cap Alley, adjacent to the current incarnation of The Globe Theatre in an area formerly known as 'The Stews'. The alley is still there but gated and on private land. The brothel, if it ever existed, is long gone). He travels with a colleague, who he clearly regards as a cad and unworthy of the woman he is to marry, to what was then the outskirts of the city, to view a staked-out plot of land where this man plans to make a home. Morton was a bit of a fedora-tipper when it came to women and prone to sentimentality in general. His accounts were of their time and occasionally deviate into broad racism. In an essay titled 'White and Yellow', a policeman ask a Chinese man whether he "smokee opium?" Though in the same piece, the officer remarks that those Chinese men who marry English women seem to treat wives better than white men do.
Morton's social history of the city - In Search of London - is also recommended.
So far, I have learned that, on the 29th May, it was once customary for boys to garnish their jackets with oak apples. Any boy who they encountered without this adornment was lashed across his bare arms and legs with stinging nettles while being declared a traitor. This is how people entertained themselves before the Internet, it seems. The tradition dates to when King Charles was on the run from the Roundheads and hid one night in the boughs of an oak tree. While the practise appears to have died out, I suppose it is possible that it lingers at places like Eton.
Morton had an eye for a good anecdote and wrote very engagingly, whether his focus was on the past or the present. His other books of London essays; The Heart of London / The Spell of London / The Nights of London (all long out of print for some reason) provide insights into life in the capital during the early decades of the 20th century and are full of fleeting human moments - a group of gentlemen attempting to recover a child's balloon from the rafters of a tea room; a woman among gaggle of well-wishers, who have gathered outside a society wedding, calling out to the bride "Good luck, dear." Of course all of these people are long dead and who knows what became of them. Morton goes on adventures - he attempts to establish the location of a brothel that is said to have been frequented by Queen Elizabeth I (on Cardinal Cap Alley, adjacent to the current incarnation of The Globe Theatre in an area formerly known as 'The Stews'. The alley is still there but gated and on private land. The brothel, if it ever existed, is long gone). He travels with a colleague, who he clearly regards as a cad and unworthy of the woman he is to marry, to what was then the outskirts of the city, to view a staked-out plot of land where this man plans to make a home. Morton was a bit of a fedora-tipper when it came to women and prone to sentimentality in general. His accounts were of their time and occasionally deviate into broad racism. In an essay titled 'White and Yellow', a policeman ask a Chinese man whether he "smokee opium?" Though in the same piece, the officer remarks that those Chinese men who marry English women seem to treat wives better than white men do.
Morton's social history of the city - In Search of London - is also recommended.
Jarolleon
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Mar 23, 2019
African Kaiser by Robert Gaudi, about Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck's exploits and the others involved in the East Africa Campaign in WW1. This author may be a modern Herodotus (though I will have to get around to actually reading The Histories to confirm this, of which there is apparently an Enoch Powell translation) with the number of tangents and wacky anecdotes, and some thinly disguised (and quite based) boomer fist-shaking at modern trends. He does it quite well, the tangents are almost always interesting and the writing style reminds me of something from the mid 20th century in a good way. Here's one passage, in which it's revealed that Muslims had femboys back in the day:
And one other quote I remember writing down
He wouldn't have to deal with it for long, because when he made them leave the camp followers behind for a risky battle in 1914 the Arabs mutinied and got shot by the Askaris
And one other quote I remember writing down
Last edited:
- Joined
- Oct 4, 2020
Reading "Enuchs and Castrati: a Cultural History" by Piotr O Scholz.
Holy crap, I had no idea so many empires used castration as a way to subdue the populace, to keep docile slaves, and to punish prisoners. It's a great book for a lot of reasons, particularly if you're not familiar with ancient history.
In the end, it comes to this: Castration Is Slavery. It also discusses how various enuchs in history tuned into power-hungry tyrants (sounds familiar?) as they were able to get close to seats of power (they got close to various emperors and empresses because they were not considered a "threat" to royal dynastic lineages).
It also illustrates how so many mainstream ancient religions pushed androgyny and castration, and tried to sell it as some kind of "higher plane of existence"-- not dissimilar to modern Transhumanism.
Seriously, how can you argue with ancient accounts of crippled eunuch armies? It's not as if they had some "transphobia" motivation. They rightfully called it barbaric and crippling as a practice.
Various famous figures made huge fortunes off selling castrated slaves.
It blows a ton of holes into the whole gender-fluidity bullshit that is being pushed on us "little people" lately.
Holy crap, I had no idea so many empires used castration as a way to subdue the populace, to keep docile slaves, and to punish prisoners. It's a great book for a lot of reasons, particularly if you're not familiar with ancient history.
In the end, it comes to this: Castration Is Slavery. It also discusses how various enuchs in history tuned into power-hungry tyrants (sounds familiar?) as they were able to get close to seats of power (they got close to various emperors and empresses because they were not considered a "threat" to royal dynastic lineages).
It also illustrates how so many mainstream ancient religions pushed androgyny and castration, and tried to sell it as some kind of "higher plane of existence"-- not dissimilar to modern Transhumanism.
Seriously, how can you argue with ancient accounts of crippled eunuch armies? It's not as if they had some "transphobia" motivation. They rightfully called it barbaric and crippling as a practice.
Various famous figures made huge fortunes off selling castrated slaves.
It blows a ton of holes into the whole gender-fluidity bullshit that is being pushed on us "little people" lately.
- Joined
- Apr 15, 2021
Just finished The Neutronium Alchemist, the second book in Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy. Compared to the first book which I talked about earlier I enjoyed it a lot more. The first book was just soooo much worldbuilding, hundreds and hundreds of pages of it. Granted, the strength of the plot in the second is using that as a solid foundation, but it's much more fun when events are constantly happening. It is also so much less horny then the first book, which is probably the horniest book I have ever read... and this is coming from someone who has read more most of tat coke'd out pervert Stephen King's books.
Speaking of King, The Neutronium Alchemist has so many sub-plots the only book I've read I can compared it to is The Stand. The book cuts between like 20+ individual or groups on either side of the threat of humanity being completely taken over by human souls from a hellish empty purgatory that is the afterlife who possess humans to escape and are usually compelled to continue the process with new souls, including some figures from history like Fletcher Christian as a good guy and Al Capone as arguably the primary antagonist. The connected plots of all these random places all over the universe interconnect in really satisfying ways, and you never really now which two are going to collide. Now that the factions are set interesting things are happening everywhere and there is too much action and desperation for the author to graphically describe sex. The deeper mysteries of the hows and whys of the unexplained events have had precious few bread crumbs but are very interesting and I am looking forwards to the explanations in the final book The Naked God.
As a side note, a surprising amount of people in this tread have read Reynold's Revelation Space series which is what I read before this series (posted about it way, way back myself). While vastly different in some ways, there are others in which the universes are very similar and I think you'd like Night's Dawn if you liked Revelation Space... just keep in mind each of Hamilton's books are twice the length of their Reynolds counterpart.
Speaking of King, The Neutronium Alchemist has so many sub-plots the only book I've read I can compared it to is The Stand. The book cuts between like 20+ individual or groups on either side of the threat of humanity being completely taken over by human souls from a hellish empty purgatory that is the afterlife who possess humans to escape and are usually compelled to continue the process with new souls, including some figures from history like Fletcher Christian as a good guy and Al Capone as arguably the primary antagonist. The connected plots of all these random places all over the universe interconnect in really satisfying ways, and you never really now which two are going to collide. Now that the factions are set interesting things are happening everywhere and there is too much action and desperation for the author to graphically describe sex. The deeper mysteries of the hows and whys of the unexplained events have had precious few bread crumbs but are very interesting and I am looking forwards to the explanations in the final book The Naked God.
As a side note, a surprising amount of people in this tread have read Reynold's Revelation Space series which is what I read before this series (posted about it way, way back myself). While vastly different in some ways, there are others in which the universes are very similar and I think you'd like Night's Dawn if you liked Revelation Space... just keep in mind each of Hamilton's books are twice the length of their Reynolds counterpart.
- Joined
- Dec 29, 2013
Starting the Gotrek and Felix chronicles for the first time. No idea why I never read any of the Warhammer Fantasy books before because they seem exactly up my alley.
- Joined
- Sep 29, 2021
Still trudging through The Rise & Fall Of Communism by Archie Brown. It's an interesting book, but i have a tendency to derail into Wikipedia binging far too often. Earlier today i was going to read the chapter on Cuba but ended up reading about Meyer Lansky and the jewish mob for like an hour and a half. The connection being that Lansky lost a shitton of money when the commies took over.
- Joined
- Mar 17, 2022
After finishing Dracula I had set out to rereading Kate Chopin's The Awakening but I think I am going to tap out. It concerns ame that I remember NOTHING from having read it before years ago. It is an influential work as a proto-feminsit novel going a nod of approval to a middle.class woman who abandons her husband and children for a fling then driowns herself..
Whereas Madame Bovary paints the husbabd as a complere buffoon and makes some salient commentary about the discrepancies between class and native born merit, I find these characters insipid and unsympathetic. I am likely to drop this and just read the cliff notes after having read the plot summary and go on to o re-reading Lost Illusions. Lost opportunity cos and all that. Still given what a reprehensible narrative this is, it may be worth reading to know one's enemy. Many feminists adore this book. A society in which mothers routinely leave their husbands and children for spurious reasons will invoke the law of unintended consequences in ways we are only beginning to now understand
Whereas Madame Bovary paints the husbabd as a complere buffoon and makes some salient commentary about the discrepancies between class and native born merit, I find these characters insipid and unsympathetic. I am likely to drop this and just read the cliff notes after having read the plot summary and go on to o re-reading Lost Illusions. Lost opportunity cos and all that. Still given what a reprehensible narrative this is, it may be worth reading to know one's enemy. Many feminists adore this book. A society in which mothers routinely leave their husbands and children for spurious reasons will invoke the law of unintended consequences in ways we are only beginning to now understand
- Joined
- Feb 18, 2021
- Joined
- Jul 16, 2021
Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe series. No one writes bloody action sequences better, and the Napoleonic Wars are the perfect setting for him to place a bloody action protagonist doing bloody action stuff. I'm on the 7th book, and I'm having a great time. After I finish the series, I'll watch the show. I hear Sean Bean nails it, and I like his acting.