ITT: What did you read?/Books thread

tofuDWU

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I know, I know, reading books is antiquated but for those who still do, what was the last book you read?

I'll start. I read "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick and "In the Miso Soup" by Ryu Murakami in the past few weeks. I'm currently 2/4ths through "The Elephant Vanishes" by Haruki Murakami. I'm probably going to start "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" by Milan Kundera once I'm done that.

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Oh, and as an afterthought, a few of my favourite books I've ever read are "Norwegian Wood" by Haruki Murakami, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" by Hunter S. Thompson, and "American Psycho" by Brett Easton Ellis.

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So, what do you guys read?
 
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Kolph

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Last book I read is Yukio Mishima's The Temple of Dawn and I really need to finish it after my studies are over.
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Last book I read is Yukio Mishima's The Temple of Dawn and I really need to finish it after my studies are over.
I really liked Mishima's Golden Pavilion, haven't gotten around to The Temple of Dawn yet though. I also read (half) of his Confessions of a Mask, but didn't care much for it and ultimately dropped it.

As far as Japanese literature goes, my favorite is No Longer Human by Dazai (an author who Mishima notoriously hated, mostly because he despised how relatable he found him to be).
 
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Kolph

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I really liked Mishima's Golden Pavilion, haven't gotten around to The Temple of Dawn yet though. I also read (half) of his Confessions of a Mask, but didn't care much for it and ultimately dropped it.

As far as Japanese literature goes, my favorite is No Longer Human by Dazai (an author who Mishima notoriously hated, mostly because he despised how relatable he found him to be).
Isn't Temple of Dawn and Golden Pavillion the same or am I mistaken?

I've heard of No Longer Human, wasn't the author part of the short-lived Japanese communist party? Give me a summary what's it about again as I know it's quite controversial in terms of content, even Junji Ito did manga on it.
 
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DeathToMicroWaves

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the city bleeds gold is one of my all time favs
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Isn't Temple of Dawn and Golden Pavillion the same or am I mistaken?

I've heard of No Longer Human, wasn't the author part of the short-lived Japanese communist party? Give me a summary what's it about again as I know it's quite controversial in terms of content, even Junji Ito did manga on it.
Yeah, Temple of Dawn and Golden Pavilion are different books.

No Longer Human is essentially an autobiographical story of the author. He did participate in the Japanese communist party, although he was hardly a believer. He actually thought communists were myopic and stupid (he expresses this opinion in the book), but he enjoyed participating in rebellious activities. His whole life was controversial, but what makes the book so great is that he writes in a way where you can't help but sympathize with him. If you are the type of person who feels alienated from your own society, you'll probably really relate to parts of the book.
 
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Kolph

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Yeah, Temple of Dawn and Golden Pavilion are different books.

No Longer Human is essentially an autobiographical story of the author. He did participate in the Japanese communist party, although he was hardly a believer. He actually thought communists were myopic and stupid (he expresses this opinion in the book), but he enjoyed participating in rebellious activities. His whole life was controversial, but what makes the book so great is that he writes in a way where you can't help but sympathize with him. If you are the type of person who feels alienated from your own society, you'll probably really relate to parts of the book.
Huh so it will appeal to the majority of this forum then haha. Sounds good I'll look into it, at first I thought the author was a massive leftie due to the commie shit which put me off but I'll give it a look now, thanks.
 
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AvocadoJelly

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Osamu Dazai was definitely up there. Man tried to commit double suicide with three different women and failed twice. Imagine convincing three different women to commit suicide with you.
Regarding Mishima: Dazai was like the opposite of Mishima. There is a (possibly apocryphal) story of Mishima going to see Dazai. Dazai was at a bar getting drunk (for he was an alcoholic) when Mishima showed up and seated himself in front of Dazai. Mishima was a teetotaler so he refused any drinks Dazai's drinking buddies offered him. Mishima sits across from Dazai and tells him straight up that he despises his books. Dazai doesn't even look at him directly; he turns to his companions and says, clearly he cares enough to come and tell me this. Mishima fumes for a second but says nothing, and then gets up and leaves. Even so I enjoyed the Sea of Fertility and Forbidden Colors (Forbidden Colors is hard for a lot of people to get through because the characters wear their misogyny on their sleeve. I borrowed it from my university library and someone had written notes on it. On a library book. And it pointed out the most obvious things).

In any case, I read a lot of Borges. He's one of the few authors I actually enjoy anymore. I enjoy Pynchon too. I was reading Lot 49 the other day. Not a book, but I read Ibsen's The Wild Duck a couple of days ago. Because of Borges I got into Chesterton; The Man Who was Thursday is pretty good. And James Joyce's stuff-- I've acquired a taste for Joyce. I'd say read Dubliners which is a short story collection if you don't want to slog through Ulysses or Portrait (or God forbid, the Wake). If you don't want to read the whole of Dubliners I'd say read Araby and The Dead.
Speaking of short story writers, Tagore is great too. Punishment is a story of his I liked. Ok one last one for me-- Kipling's The Finest Story in the World-- I enjoyed that one.
 
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s0ren

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I'm reading The Philosopher, the Priest, and the Painter: A Portrait of Descartes, by Steven Nadler. Nadler has written two pretty well-known biographical and intellectual histories of Spinoza. This book takes a very different approach which is interesting, telling the history of the famous portrait of Descartes, historically credited to Frans Hals. Has been a good glimpse into the Dutch Golden Age and Flemish painting, two things I'm not well-versed in, through something I'm very familiar with the scholarship on, Descartes. A very novel interdisciplinary history.

On the topic of Murakami, I've read Kafka and 1Q84. Any recommendation for which book of his I do next @tofudidntwakeup ?
 
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I know, I know, reading books is antiquated but for those who still do, what was the last book you read?

I'll start. I read "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick and "In the Miso Soup" by Ryu Murakami in the past few weeks. I'm currently 2/4ths through "The Elephant Vanishes" by Haruki Murakami. I'm probably going to start "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" by Milan Kundera once I'm done that.

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View attachment 10687

Oh, and as an afterthought, a few of my favourite books I've ever read are "Norwegian Wood" by Haruki Murakami, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" by Hunter S. Thompson, and "American Psycho" by Brett Easton Ellis.

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So, what do you guys read?
This is an exciting thread. I haven't read many books this year, but these are the ones I have read part of:
The Forty Days of Musa Dagh by Franz Werfel (a very long book recommended by a close friend, someday I'll return to this)
Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman (plan on diving into this very soon)
Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert
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I've finished these books this year:
The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
Dune by Frank Herbert

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I only got back into reading within the past couple years. I didn't read for pleasure in college, and after going through a rough patch in my life, reading was a very useful outlet when needed. Some of my favorite books have come out of this, but I will also include all-time favorites as well (with the exception of Silmarillion because my copy has a lame cover, all of these are nearly the same editions I own):
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Awakening the Buddha Within by Lama Surya Das
The Marvelous Clouds by John Durham Peters
The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien
How It Is by Samuel Beckett

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I've heard wonderful things about Haruki Murakami's work and have yet to delve into it. As for Hunter S. Thompson, I have to agree with you on your pick! I read that back in high school, before diving into a couple more of his books (all equally bizarre or dense with information). Thanks for starting such a lovely thread, have a great day everyone.
 

Jade

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Been reading this book recently and I find it very interesting. It's easy to think of plants as not having consciousness, but the info here makes me think that they do have a consciousness, but due to how far removed we are from them biologically, it's so alien that we can't understand it very well.

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Collision

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Through most of the last month I read Asimov's Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation back to back. I didn't really have a good reason to be reading them. I just found myself transfixed by the cover of Second Foundation. I also finished reading Elric of Melnibone a couple of days ago. Before that I was trying to read Neal Stephenson's new book (Termination Shock) but I think his previous one (Fall: Or Dodge in Hell) soured me on this one. It's a little depressing because prior to Fall I had enjoyed pretty much everything I'd read by him. I might give it another try but it's tempting to just read more Elric novels.
 
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Jade

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Through most of the last month I read Asimov's Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation back to back. I didn't really have a good reason to be reading them. I just found myself transfixed by the cover of Second Foundation. I also finished reading Elric of Melnibone a couple of days ago. Before that I was trying to read Neal Stephenson's new book (Termination Shock) but I think his previous one (Fall: Or Dodge in Hell) soured me on this one. It's a little depressing because prior to Fall I had enjoyed pretty much everything I'd read by him. I might give it another try but it's tempting to just read more Elric novels.
oh man, I read the first foundation book as a kid. I was I think 8 or 9 at the time so I didn't understand all of it but I still thought it was awesome. I read the prequel "Prelude to Foundation" also, which I understood even less and I remember not liking it as much, probably because not as much happened in that book as the main series.
 
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Collision

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Just finished this one. I've been reading it on and off for about a year. Thought I'd talk a bit about it since I recommended it in another thread. The book covers McGrath's various travels around the world to try and figure out the personal computers, the internet, and millennials. I'm not sure exactly when she conducted the various interviews in the book but I suspect it would have had to have been between 1993 and 1995 (the book was published in 1997). I think McGrath ultimately draws the correct conclusions about the internet, Silicon Valley, and sexual relationships with people 10 years younger than you but she takes about two thirds of the text to get there. Still it's a nice nostalgia trip. It's funny thinking about how much has changed since the early 90s and how much hasn't.
 
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LostintheCycle

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I haven't read recently whatsoever, so I'm gonna dig into some stuff I read when I was 12-13 when I was actually motivated to read books.
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Robert Cormier appealed to me when because dark stories were a novelty for twelve year old me. He was introduced to me by my English teacher who had taken a particular liking to me, and she would lend me and buy me his books even after she stopped being my teacher while I was still at that school. I remember these two books most, The Chocolate War, and After The First Death. The first is about a secret society at an all-boys school, the second is about two terrorists who hijack a bus of school children. I don't know how they'd hold up now, it may be good to revisit them. I think I read The Chocolate War at least three times, After The First Death once or twice.
 
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Pacing Tape

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I tend to be a bit off again and on again with reading, but I recently realized that both of my favorite authors are satirists who write books that take a turn into left field from your initial expectation and most often provide some pretty solid moral or at the very least have a commentary to make. Those two authors being Kurt Vonnegut and James Morrow, the last of their books that I read would be Mother Night, an odd story that I have difficulty describing beyond an imprisoned Nazi recounting his life and feeling remorseful and accepting his nearly inevitable, grisly fate. The part of the story that most interested me however, was something I only recently fully realized. The protagonist is almost wholly inactive in pushing his life forward. There's some pretty crazy stuff that happens to this guy, and he seems to have an odd combination of bad and good luck, or at least weird shit just keeps happening to pop up around him, all the while he instigates almost none of it, and is more or less thrown around by other people's agendas and whims. In any case, it's a fantastic book, although The Sirens of Titan remains my favorite Vonnegut, which I highly, highly recommend.
The second recent read of mine, at least from this pair of authors, is the City of Truth by James Morrow. It's a little more simple, and seems to take some level of inspiration from Aldous Huxley's A Brave New World in it's premise and setting, but focuses on the simple, yet infinitely interesting premise of "What if no one said anything but the absolute truth?" The story paints this fascinating picture of a man driven to desperation by his son's illness and the awful, cold, and callous honesty of those around him. The book is a great read and I highly recommend Morrow. He tends to focus a lot more on religion than Vonnegut, and takes a great deal of care in creating these odd and thought provoking scenarios that the reader is dropped into without much explanation, instead being made to figure out the workings of the world as you go on.
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ghermann

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I've just finished reading "Sympathy For The Devil" by Kent Anderson and its sequel, "Night Dogs". They follow Hanson, a former college student turned Green Beret, through his journey through the Vietnam War. The second novel explores his attempt at "reintegrating" into post-war society. They're both really good books.
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