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What'cha Reading?

Lark

Active member
Joined
Jun 21, 2009
Messages
29,569
Can anyone recommend me some reading material which is like the TV show Ozark? Or breaking bad?

I've heard that Grisham writes some corporate or white collar crime thrillers which are a little like it but I think of him as the lawyers writers and writing, I'm kind of interested in novels which could deal with moral philosophy or moral psychology.
 

CitizenErased

Clean Slate
Joined
Jan 5, 2016
Messages
552
I just finished reading Dark Matter by Blake Crouch, and I absolutely adored it. It's about parallel universes and travelling from one to another (for if you're interested).

I'm generally not attracted to 21st century writings, but this one was the exception. Now to catch up with my 300-item list of "sci-fi/fantasy classics" I've never got the chance to read. I've started Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and a friend is torturing me to start the Dune books. Let's see how it goes.
 

PumpkinMayCare

𝓛ιкєтнє𝓓єνi lмαу
Joined
Mar 2, 2017
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so/sp
Hello Kitty must die by Angela S. Choi.

Has anyone read it as well? Any thoughts?
 

Kas

Fabula rasa
Joined
Apr 22, 2015
Messages
2,554
I just finished reading Dark Matter by Blake Crouch, and I absolutely adored it. It's about parallel universes and travelling from one to another (for if you're interested).

I'm generally not attracted to 21st century writings, but this one was the exception. Now to catch up with my 300-item list of "sci-fi/fantasy classics" I've never got the chance to read. I've started Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and a friend is torturing me to start the Dune books. Let's see how it goes.

I agree. Next aren't equals to the first one. But the first book with the creation of the universe and social/political nuances is excellent.
 

Frosty

Poking the poodle
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Apr 6, 2015
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sp
ALMOST done with the orient express. On page 322/388. So close- so close to the mystery being solved and THEN getting to watch the movie. Its legit.
 

Littleclaypot

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Feb 8, 2017
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Britain After Rome: The Fall and Rise, 400 to 1070 by Robin Fleming. Reading it for research for a paper but it's actually pretty amazing.
 

Tellenbach

in dreamland
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Oct 27, 2013
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"The Man With the Beautiful Voice" by Lillian Rubin. Therapists have some wonderful stories to tell and this book has seven rivetting case histories such as this one involving a 39 year old woman who reverts back to an infantile stage of development:

Although I fretted and fumed, that in fact is what we did for months. Twice a week Eve came in, curled up in her corner, and sat without speaking. Occasionally she'd raise her head and look at me with eyes that seemed to be pleading for something. But if I spoke, she quickly buried her head again. I couldn't tell at first if she took comfort from my presence next to her, since she made sure there was at least a foot of physical space between us.
 

Tellenbach

in dreamland
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Oct 27, 2013
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"The Patient Who Cured His Therapist and Other Stories of Unconventional Therapy":

One of the stories involves a woman who ignores the outside world but carries on conversations with herself in gibberish

'Stallbig. Fraymore ball duff mon ling, doo. Desimore. Banadore lymink shraboleen. Dorf.'

Not one of her phonetic concoctions amounted to a word, not even mistakenly. She had created a language specific to her isolation, and so specifically for her isolation that she had assiduously avoided even an accidental swipe at any combination of vowel and consonants someone else might understand. I listened for more, and I got more. It was remarkable. She could talk paragraphs of what anybody else would consider nonsense syllables. I didn't think there could be that many nonsense syllables.
 

Tellenbach

in dreamland
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This one's way out there, but it's so fascinating: "Other Lives, Other Selves: A Jungian Psychotherapist Discovers Past Lives".

The period of gestation from conception to birth is therefore one of the most important in the overall scheme of the formation of personality. Not only is the fetal consciousness an uncritical observer and recorder of all the mother does, thinks, and feels, but it is also engaged in a sort of deep rumination over all the still-unfinished business of other lives. The contents of these ruminations will constitute his or her ongoing karma post natum. These two streams of consciousness, unmediated by any discriminatory ego, form the matrix of the personality later to emerge.

This guy thinks that our personalities develop at the fetal stage as a result of the interplay between the mom's thoughts and feelings and unfinished business from past lives.

Not just single thoughts but whole scenes between mother, father, doctor, and others are likewise imprinted in the unconscious of the fetus with the effect of reestablishing patterns that are later often to become debilitating complexes. A woman whose husband drunkenly abuses her during pregnancy may think or say 'He's disgusting. WHy doesn't he leave me alone? I hate sex like this'. This leaves a residue for later confusion and disgust around sexuality in the unborn child's unconscious.
 

Tellenbach

in dreamland
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Oct 27, 2013
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"Tales From a Traveling Couch". A retired therapist decides to visit former patients to see how they've fared.

I have seen therapy work. I have seen people pierce their delusions, throw off their obsessions, conquer their phobias. Again and again I have seen a person release himself from a desperately unhappy life and learn the language of an alternative one. Over the past 35 years I have seen this particular miracle happen hundreds of times.

But does it last? Do the changes hold? Or when my back is turned, does it all unravel? Does the power of those hundreds of thousands of hours that preceded therapy reassert itself and take back all that we have fought for?

Great book.
 

Madeleine

New member
Joined
Aug 21, 2017
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4w3
I've been reading "The Turn of the Screw" by Henry James.
It's a slim volume, but I've been at it for what it seems ages now.
His style is prose is hmmm.....an acquired taste, perhaps?
Still, I can't leave any book unfinished. So, I'm still at it. :D
 

Lark

Active member
Joined
Jun 21, 2009
Messages
29,569
I just got through the year of reading dangerously, it was alright, I wouldnt read it a second time
 

Tellenbach

in dreamland
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Creatures of a Day and Other Tales of Psychotherapy. This one's not as interesting as the others but it's still entertaining.

From Paul's chapter:
I was stunned. Paul was now 84 now. He must have begun working on his dissertation in his mid-twenties, 60 years ago. I had heard of professional students before, but 60 years? His life on hold for 60 years? No, I hoped not. It couldn't be.

From Ellie's chapter:
Whether I will live a long time or a short time, I'm alive now, at this moment. What I want is to know that there are other things to hope for besides length of life. What I want to know is that it isn't necessary to turn away thoughts of suffering or death but neither is it necessary to give these thoughts too much time and space. What I want is to be intimate with the knowledge that life is temporary. And then, in the light (or shadow) of that knowledge, to know how to live. How to live now. Here's the thing I've learned about cancer - it shows you mortal illness and then spits you back, back to the world, to your life, to all its pleasure and sweetness, which you feel now so much more than ever. And you know that something has been given and something has been taken away.
 

deathwarmedup

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Dec 6, 2012
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Wuthering Heights. Haven't been so absorbed in a book of fiction since I was a teenager.
 

Red Ribbon

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May 14, 2017
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I'm reading Stephen King's "It" I really like Stephen King's works though I haven't read that many.
 
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