• You are currently viewing our forum as a guest, which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our free community, you will have access to additional post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), view blogs, respond to polls, upload content, and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free, so please join our community today! Just click here to register. You should turn your Ad Blocker off for this site or certain features may not work properly. If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us by clicking here.

What'cha Reading?

CitizenErased

Clean Slate
Joined
Jan 5, 2016
Messages
552
The amount of reading material for school this semester qualifies as "college rape" (one 200/500-page book per weekday).

Besides that, today in the subway (my "leisure" reading time) I've started Les Mots et les Choses by Foucault (in French and Spanish is "The Words and the Things", in English I believe it's The Order of Things).
 

Lady Lazarus

Permabanned
Joined
Jun 30, 2014
Messages
2,148
MBTI Type
INFJ
Enneagram
9w8
Instinctual Variant
sx/sp
I finished A Midsummer Night's Dream today and I now know I am in a way that Old Nedar's Helena.
East of Eden was very recently begun on that closing. There is good promise there it would so far seem.
 

Frosty

Poking the poodle
Joined
Apr 6, 2015
Messages
12,667
Instinctual Variant
sp
Ive got to re-read the odyssey...

:shocking:

I... Its. Its not THAT bad. Maybe Ive gained the taste for it after... So many long, odyssey free- wonderful years.
 

SearchingforPeace

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 9, 2015
Messages
5,711
MBTI Type
ENFJ
Enneagram
9w8
Instinctual Variant
sx/so
Just finished The Trap by Sir James Goldsmith. Written almost 25 years ago, it was so predictive of our world today.

Well worth the read, with very insightful words on topics ranging from globalization, factory farming, to nuclear power.

Sir James was a billionaire and a politican, among other things. Various YouTubes are available from him as well. Dead almost 20 years, almost like a voice from the grave....
 

Jaq

Remember, Humanity.
Joined
Apr 14, 2011
Messages
3,032
MBTI Type
ENTP
Enneagram
379
Instinctual Variant
sp/sx
Read This Side of Paradise as I begin a venture into the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald. I also have a short story collection of his thanks to the true wonder that is a library card. :)
 

EJCC

The Devil of TypoC
Joined
Aug 29, 2008
Messages
19,129
MBTI Type
ESTJ
Enneagram
1w9
Instinctual Variant
sp/so
Dune, by Frank Herbert.

Which, I have learned, is just as great as everyone says it is. It's a classic for a reason.
 

SearchingforPeace

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 9, 2015
Messages
5,711
MBTI Type
ENFJ
Enneagram
9w8
Instinctual Variant
sx/so
Dune, by Frank Herbert.

Which, I have learned, is just as great as everyone says it is. It's a classic for a reason.

Brilliant.

It highly influenced me as a child. I adopted the Bene Gesserit mantra as my own "there is no pain. there is no fear" at 12 or so, which I see now as a huge issue since it allowed me to create a world of denial.

the second book was pretty good as well. I didn't enjoy his other sequels as much, but the contemporary authorized prequels are pretty interesting as to how the universe developed.....
 

SearchingforPeace

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 9, 2015
Messages
5,711
MBTI Type
ENFJ
Enneagram
9w8
Instinctual Variant
sx/so
The Failure of Laissez-faire Capitalism by Paul Craig Roberts, one of the leading figures who developed supply side economics and was a fixture on the WSJ editorial page back in the 80s.

Mr. Roberts explains in simple basic terms how supply side economics was used to provide cover to many things it was never intended to do and why globalization has been destructive to the US economy.

A harsh critic of US foreign policy, he also provides a harsh criticism of the national surveillance state and neocon imperialism.

And he backs it all up with data. It is a short book (175 pages) and powerful.

His stark figures on job creation are just brutal (we supply 10 years worth of necessary college grads in just 60% of a single year's graduating class, for example).

Well worth the read, especially for anyone who still believes in the magic of the free market....
 

Hawthorne

corona
Joined
Jan 8, 2015
Messages
1,946
MBTI Type
INTP
Enneagram
5w4
Instinctual Variant
so/sp
An excerpt from Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Enrenreich. The middle-class author "experimented with poverty" for three months and these are her stories.

I was shocked by the sense of unwanted intimacy. A few hours ago, some well fed butt was straining away on this toilet seat, and now here I am wiping up after it. For those who have never cleaned a really dirty toilet, I should explain that there are three kinds of shit stains. There are remnants of landslides running down the inside of toilet bowls. There are the splashback remains on the underside of toilet seats. And, perhaps most repulsively, there's sometimes a crust of brown on the rim of a toilet seat, where a turd happened to collide on its dive to the water. You don't want to know this? Well, it's not something I would have chosen to dwell on myself, but the different kinds of stains require different cleaning approaches. One prefers those that are interior to the toilet bowl, since they can be attacked by brush, which is a kind of action at a distance weapon. And one dreads the crusts on the seats, especially when they require the intervention of a Dobie as well as a rag.

I've never been one for toilet humor but this part cracked me up.

edit: it got better

Or we might talk about that other great nemesis of the bathroom cleaner - pubic hair. I don't know what it is about the American upper class, but they seem to be shedding their pubic hair at an alarming rate. You find it in quantity in shower stalls, bathtubs, Jacuzzis, drains, and even, unaccountably, in sinks. Once I spent fifteen minutes crouching in a huge four person Jacuzzi, maddened by the effort of finding the dark little coils camouflaged against the eggplant - colored ceramic background but fascinated by the image of the pubes of the economic elite, which must by this time be completely bald.

this is totally my style of journalism.
 

Lark

Active member
Joined
Jun 21, 2009
Messages
29,569
I'm stuck at the moment, I finished my non-fiction and fiction reads of the moment, Brian Aldiss' book about a time travelling Dracula, which wasnt that great actually when I think about it but I just had to finish it hoping it would get better before it ended (it didnt really), and Reclaiming the Sane Society, which was a collection of essays in tribute to or on the themes of Erich Fromm's books and writing, it was interesting, I like to always have something Fromm related to read, though now I'm caught, I've got a ton of books, like enough to fill a house but none compellingly calling out to me at the moment.
 

Tellenbach

in dreamland
Joined
Oct 27, 2013
Messages
6,088
MBTI Type
ISTJ
Enneagram
6w5
The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control

Everything you've ever wanted to know about the Stanford Marshmallow experiment. The author's been studying this topic since the 60s. The book discusses various strategies for delaying gratification and also why this ability is important. I'm only on Chapter 2.
 
Joined
Apr 24, 2016
Messages
1,659
I'm currently reading The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov and I'm also half way through Dostoyevsky's The Idiot, but I have been stalling on it for a long time now. I need to get back on it.
 

Mal12345

Permabanned
Joined
Apr 19, 2011
Messages
14,532
MBTI Type
IxTP
Enneagram
5w4
Instinctual Variant
sx/sp
Only 23 pages left to read in "Designated Targets," the second book of John Birmingham's Axis of Time trilogy (or quadrilogy counting the short story) of "what-if" speculative history. He did a good job in terms of hard, cold facts. It's not a hero's tale, it's just a speculative, educated guess based on historical knowledge (of which Birmingham possesses a great deal). I've already read the last book and so I know the ending, not that it's very surprising that the allies win WWII (again). The Japanese were too hidebound in tradition to take advantage of future tech, and the Germans just didn't have what it takes to build an A-bomb in time. The Italian fascists didn't have anything to do in these novels.
 

Abendrot

one way trip
Joined
Sep 2, 2016
Messages
600
MBTI Type
IntJ
Enneagram
85X
Instinctual Variant
sx
Only 23 pages left to read in "Designated Targets," the second book of John Birmingham's Axis of Time trilogy (or quadrilogy counting the short story) of "what-if" speculative history. He did a good job in terms of hard, cold facts. It's not a hero's tale, it's just a speculative, educated guess based on historical knowledge (of which Birmingham possesses a great deal). I've already read the last book and so I know the ending, not that it's very surprising that the allies win WWII (again). The Japanese were too hidebound in tradition to take advantage of future tech, and the Germans just didn't have what it takes to build an A-bomb in time. The Italian fascists didn't have anything to do in these novels.

These are always fun, but I can't imagine a plausible scenario in which the axis wins.
 

Abendrot

one way trip
Joined
Sep 2, 2016
Messages
600
MBTI Type
IntJ
Enneagram
85X
Instinctual Variant
sx
The Rule of Empires - Timothy Parsons
Heidi - Johanna Spyri
Germinal - Emile Zola
Rise and fall of the great powers - Paul Kennedy
Notes from Underground - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
 
Top