What are you reading right now?

[glass_houses]

I just finished The Housemaid and The Housemaid's Secret by Freida McFadden on Kindle Unlimited. Glad I only rented them and not bought them outright. They're entertaining enough to keep your interest for a few hours, but they're pure popcorn, once you start thinking about them critically you realise how preposterous they are. But in the end the goodies won and the baddies were punished, and sometimes it's pleasant just to escape for a while.

I have a couple historical true crime books that arrived the other day that I should get a start on, but that kind of feels like work right now. Maybe I'll read some more popcorn novels instead and chill out.

 

[YourFriendlyLurker 2.0]

Finished No longer human by Osamu Dazai a couple of days ago. Really liked it overall, moreover I think what the protagonist experienced becomes more and more relatable nowdays with the bloom of autism and mental problems around. In this regard, I think Dazai was genius predicting the future more efficiently than any futurologists could. Besides, the whole thing is autobiographical, which adds a bitter flavour to reading. The only thing that left kinda unclear for me was the root of the whole "situation", since Dazai wrote it a bit like "shit happens", which is even more terrific because well, yes sometimes shit happens without a reason at all.

 

[Commander X]

Aberration in the Heartland of the Real by Wendy S. Painting, a heavily researched dive into Timothy McVeigh's life and the Oklahoma City bombing. Not a conspiracy nut book, but a well researched collection of narratives, inconvenient facts, inconsistencies and incoherent lies that complicate any attempt to bring forth a clear depiction of what actually happened on April 19, 1995.

Painting is the only researcher who has investigated all of the public files available about the case, including the defense team's internal memos/research housed at UT-Austin and additional American terrorist docs housed at St. Bonaventure.

She really performs an exhaustive autopsy on the media hype and hoopla and the stew of contradictions that led to the creation of the public image of Timothy McVeigh, lone wolf bomber.. She defines the five “narrative types and recurring depictions” of McVeigh in various media: the Lone Wolf, the Pack of Wolves, the Closely Watched Pack of Wolves, the Guilty Agent, and the Experimental Wolf. McVeigh did it, she has no doubt of that, but a lot of doubt about the exact circumstances was kicked up by the investigators and news media themselves. She examines all of the theories and doesn't bend the knee in favor of one or another. All of the pieces Painting has assembled are interesting and in many cases disturbing.

 

[Commander Shepard]

Just finished Joe Abercrombie's Age of Madness trilogy. Have a real love/hate relationship with his work and need more, but I'm not interested in the other series he's working on right now since it's mostly described as young adult fiction.

Anyways, I like to dip back and forth from fiction to history/non-fiction/biographical so now I'm halfway into Napoleon: A Life by Andrew Roberts.

 

[World Famous Quasi Payer]

Aberration in the Heartland of the Real by Wendy S. Painting, a heavily researched dive into Timothy McVeigh's life and the Oklahoma City bombing. Not a conspiracy nut book, but a well researched collection of narratives, inconvenient facts, inconsistencies and incoherent lies that complicate any attempt to bring forth a clear depiction of what actually happened on April 19, 1995.

Do you have any recommendations for Waco itself?

I'm a little over half way through Jeff Guinn's book on Waco. Someone else on the farms posted about it. I've soured on it because Jeff just casually brushes over Vicki Weavers death and leaves out that she was holding an infant at the time of her death. Or the fact that Vicki was not the intended target and FBI snipers shot at a fleeing man and a sixteen year old girl after shooting another man in the back. If he so easily leaves that very important fact out. I have to ask what else is he leaving out?

I get it's a book about Waco and not Ruby Ridge, but what happened at Ruby Ridge directly influenced Waco and McVeigh later. McVeigh even gets a bit in the book about him being there at the Waco siege.

 

[Hazel Motes]

Do you have any recommendations for Waco itself?

I'm a little over half way through Jeff Guinn's book on Waco. Someone else on the farms posted about it. I've soured on it because Jeff just casually brushes over Vicki Weavers death and leaves out that she was holding an infant at the time of her death. Or the fact that Vicki was not the intended target and FBI snipers shot at a fleeing man and a sixteen year old girl after shooting another man in the back. If he so easily leaves that very important fact out. I have to ask what else is he leaving out?

I get it's a book about Waco and not Ruby Ridge, but what happened at Ruby Ridge directly influenced Waco and McVeigh later. McVeigh even gets a bit in the book about him being there at the Waco siege.

The one the TV series is based on is great, though totally sympathetic to Waco and Koresh. Not that I am complaining, I am totally sympathetic to them as well. One thing to note is not everyone thought he was the Prophet but believed what he was doing was good anyway. The Branch Davidans are another reason why I love you Americans so much. These are real people, hoarding guns and reciting Bible verses, telling the Feds to fuck off.

For Ruby Ridge, the book co-written by Randy is great. If you are willing to spend the money, you might even find an autographed copy on eBay.

As for me, I have been reading Pascal. If you like Nietzsche's personal style (his entire form is knocked off from Pascal) but prefer a pro-Christian stance, then Pascal is for you. I am a doubter type so writers like Tennyson and Pascal appeal to me more than others. I can't say for how long though. The more I read, the more I realise how fruitless this is in discussing.

I read CS Lewis' The Abolition of Man when travelling down the country. I haven't read much Lewis, but I enjoyed it. His writing is clear and crisp, Oxford English style, and I can see why he appeals to so many. So quotable and I love a man who venerates the Tao.

I also re-read Forster's The Machine Stops. Best dystopian work ever, better than Brave New World and 1984, fite me IRL:

Few travelled in these days, for, thanks to the advance of science, the earth was exactly alike all over. Rapid intercourse, from which the previous civilization had hoped so much, had ended by defeating itself. What was the good of going to Peking when it was just like Shrewsbury? Why return to Shrewsbury when it would all be like Peking? Men seldom moved their bodies; all unrest was concentrated in the soul.

It is funny, since I cannot stand anything else by Forster. One day I may go through his novels, purely because I love this work so much, but I struggle to move past the first chapter of any of them.

 

[Ferdinand Bardamu]

The tin drum, and Crime and Punishment

 

[shameful existence]

A fun alternative hypothesis about the origin of the Moon, which more less accepts known facts but arrives to a wildly different conclusion. First published in 2005, aged better than alt-science books typically do. If nothing else, it highlights how unique Earth's moon is, how coincidental and unlikely its size, distance, mass and make-up are, how much it shaped life on the planet and how surprisingly weak and fine-tuned the generally accepted origin story is. If you're not triggered by the very hypothesis that the Moon might not be natural, I highly recommend this book; the most interesting part of it isn't even the conclusion. I'm enjoying it a lot. It's also short.

 

[GatorAids]

Just finished Fall of Hyperion. I'd give it a 9/10.
+Really cool events and imagery
+Fight scenes
+Sols story was really good
+Most of the twists/revelations were cool

Spoiler: Spoiler

-What the fuck even happened with the Shrike exactly? Gets turned into crystal and shattered by the power of friendship? This part legit confused me
-How did nobody think that the technocore wouldn't be some giant floating RGB gamer PC out in space?

I'm gonna start something tomorrow but I'm not sure which to pick. I've got Empire Of Silence which I've heard is either great or slow and boring. Carrion Comfort which I've heard is great but I can't stand it when stories go on about muh ebil nazis, don't really wanna start it if it's just whining about muh jewerinos. The Book Of The New Sun which sounds really interesting and Endymion which I've heard extremely mixed things about. Open to recommendations or shilling of your favorite in that list.

 

[glass_houses]

I just finished The Housemaid and The Housemaid's Secret by Freida McFadden on Kindle Unlimited. Glad I only rented them and not bought them outright. They're entertaining enough to keep your interest for a few hours, but they're pure popcorn, once you start thinking about them critically you realise how preposterous they are. But in the end the goodies won and the baddies were punished, and sometimes it's pleasant just to escape for a while.

I have a couple historical true crime books that arrived the other day that I should get a start on, but that kind of feels like work right now. Maybe I'll read some more popcorn novels instead and chill out.

To continue on from my last post, I decided to just keep snacking, as it were, and read another book by McFadden called 'The Inmate'. Barely forty pages in, I was trying to square the main character's clear raging stupidity, the plot's blindingly obvious contradictions and ridiculous anachronisms with the tons of glowing reviews it'd received on the Amazon. I had such a visceral dislike to what I'd read so far that I decided to check out the few critical reviews. Well, it turned out that the main character is even more stupid than she'd first came across as, the entire plot just relies on a constant stream of coincidences and the bad guys' psychic abilities to know exactly what her next stupid mistake would be years in advance, and there was no such thing as forensic evidence ever.

I will not continue the book and I will not read anymore of the author's books. A stupid character is fine in comedy, or even someone who is deliberately written as just not bright, but in a 'serious' thriller about a supposedly smart character who's basically the embodiment of that scene from Scary Movie... no.

 

[${Sandy}]

Im like 2/3rds of the way done with the Devils Hand by Jack Carr. Its the 4th book of the terminal list series, I really recommend those if you like action stuff and conspiracies.

I intend to start reading more soon so Im going to finish that book and after that I plan on reading The Dune series and also getting some books on ancient history. I also plan on re reading the bible because I have been an atheist since I was a teenager but I want to do some reading and reconsider my position now that Im older.

 

[Quijibo69]

I only do audiobooks because I can do it at work, right now I'm listening to The Curator by Owen King. My convinced that Stephen King's sons just write shit. I'm almost in the middle of the book and I don't know what time period it is or alternative history. Worst line so far is something about "museum wax workers of all shapes and sizes just like the town" like anyone asked or cared.

 

[Commander Shepard]

I only do audiobooks because I can do it at work, right now I'm listening to The Curator by Owen King. My convinced that Stephen King's sons just write shit. I'm almost in the middle of the book and I don't know what time period it is or alternative history. Worst line so far is something about "museum wax workers of all shapes and sizes just like the town" like anyone asked or cared.

Probably lack that Stephen King secret weapon, cocaine.

 

[regginknurd]

"Cows" by Mathew Stokoe. It's pretty edgy and cringe, super simple (almost reads like "The Road" my Cormac McCarthy in a stripped down sense), but it's basically just a book that's gross for the sake of being gross. Not a fan, but will complete and lament that I wasted time reading it.

 

[glass_houses]

"Cows" by Mathew Stokoe. It's pretty edgy and cringe, super simple (almost reads like "The Road" my Cormac McCarthy in a stripped down sense), but it's basically just a book that's gross for the sake of being gross. Not a fan, but will complete and lament that I wasted time reading it.

I've had that one cued up on my Kindle for yonks but have never got around to it. Let us know what your thoughts are when you're done.

Rereading Nightpictures by Rod Jones. It's been one of my favourite books since I randomly picked it up secondhand many years ago. Two very damaged people decide to commence a relationship of intense, meaningless sex but gradually start talking about the things that haunt them when they're alone and awake late at night- their Nightpictures- and find themselves forming emotional connections that they never thought they were capable of, or even believed were real. It's based in Venice, amongst a tiny community of disenfranchised expats from many different countries and cultures, but the narrator is Australian and that is a familiar voice in the exotic. Ambiguity, the frailty of memory, and the lies of omission are major themes. You never know who, if anyone, is telling the truth.

Spent a decent amount of money on a copy of The Pajama Girl Mystery by Richard Evans. The Pajama Girl was a famous murder victim in 1934, New South Wales. There's been a lot of interest in the case for many, many years, but I've never read any account of it that really rang true for me. Evans' book promises that he spent a great deal of time investigating primary sources and documents, as opposed just reading what the newspapers of the time said. I'm a couple pages in and it's looking promising.

 

[Felis Meanis]

Are there any books out there that unironically details jewish involvement in american foreign policy; specifically in regards to 9/11? The dancing israelis and Larry Silverstein are almost too "good" to be true.

Unpublished books are completely fine too (I imagine that the subject matter would never be accepted by a mainsteream publisher), even in PDF-format. I'll just ineptly convert them to EPUB/KEPUB.

Please disparage me with Internet stickers, by the way.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

View attachment 4918958

A fun alternative hypothesis about the origin of the Moon, which more less accepts known facts but arrives to a wildly different conclusion. First published in 2005, aged better than alt-science books typically do. If nothing else, it highlights how unique Earth's moon is, how coincidental and unlikely its size, distance, mass and make-up are, how much it shaped life on the planet and how surprisingly weak and fine-tuned the generally accepted origin story is. If you're not triggered by the very hypothesis that the Moon might not be natural, I highly recommend this book; the most interesting part of it isn't even the conclusion. I'm enjoying it a lot. It's also short.

http://www.gregmatloff.com/Edge%20Science%20Matloff-ES29.pdf

This is a good work of similar crackpot astronomy by a guy arguing, as thought experiment more than as his confident belief, that stars could be regarded as their own form of life with consciousness and willful behavior, as well as the predictions an experiment would need to bear out to give evidence for/against that theory.

His argument mostly comes down to criticizing the whole dark matter concept as insufficient (filler that we take for granted just because its been repeated so often) and analogizing the magnetic fields around a star to the magnetic fields we see associated with brain activity, suggesting that stars could possibly use jets of their own emulsions to steer themselves (like a herd) to try to cannibalize other stars (he believes binary systems are too common) to get the mass to achieve supernova.

 

[DocAwe]

Punching through "Crime and Punishment" right now.

 

[GatorAids]

Around chapter 20 of Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons. It's supposed to be horror but it's unintentionally (intentionally?) a comedy. It goes into so much jewish dick sucking that it's like the 'Jews Rock' sketch from World Peace. The line where a Mossad agent says that Israel would never dream of being a leech on the American tax payer made me bust a gut. The psychic holocoaster battlechess game also made me laugh.

If I didn't know better I'd think it was written by some /pol/tard and they just swapped the nazi and jew characters and sent it to a publisher for a laugh. Get this, there's a group of sadistic people with immense power who subvert society. They hate people who aren't part of their tribe, are behind multiple famous assassinations and disasters, use the US government as a puppet, have a pedo island, own Hollywood and the banks, and whose weakness is being found out. It's up to the jews to stop them!

 

[Drunk Smurf Lore]

Around chapter 20 of Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons. It's supposed to be horror but it's unintentionally (intentionally?) a comedy. It goes into so much jewish dick sucking that it's like the 'Jews Rock' sketch from World Peace. The line where a Mossad agent says that Israel would never dream of being a leech on the American tax payer made me bust a gut. The psychic holocoaster battlechess game also made me laugh.

If I didn't know better I'd think it was written by some /pol/tard and they just swapped the nazi and jew characters and sent it to a publisher for a laugh. Get this, there's a group of sadistic people with immense power who subvert society. They hate people who aren't part of their tribe, are behind multiple famous assassinations and disasters, use the US government as a puppet, have a pedo island, own Hollywood and the banks, and whose weakness is being found out. It's up to the jews to stop them!

I love Hyperion but I have to skip the constant lengthy sex segments about a ripped arab warrior fucking some jewish girl who gets younger every day because of time plague. Dan Simmons needs to stop writing sex. It always comes across as weird and cringe.