What are you currently reading?

[№56]

Finished up Tristram Shandy last week. It's a deeply weird book, hard to read in places (mostly due to 18th century innuendos and cultural references that don't make sense without footnotes) but also incredibly funny in others, and surprisingly affecting overall. Despite being a proto-postmodernist "anti-novel" that goes out of its way to waste the reader's time, it's got a lot of humanity to it. The characters are both ridiculous and lovable. I won't go into detail here, since I want to try writing about it in-depth for my site, but I would definitely recommend it if the summary on Wikipedia makes it sound entertaining.

I've also been working through the Flashman Papers via audiobook at work. I wasn't expecting to enjoy an adventure series about a guy who's an unrepentant coward, liar, and all-around bastard, but it turned out to be a lot of fun. Flashman's cynical commentary on 19th century British history is really funny and his complete lack of morals ends up making the action scenes more exciting. Everyone expects the good guy to win in the end in these kinds of books, when the main character is not a good guy anything can happen. It also helps that while Flashman doesn't have much of a moral compass, the author does. Definitely recommended to anyone who's interested in history, has an edgy sense of humor, and doesn't mind some gratuitous (but funny) sex scenes.

 

[MySpace Tom]

I finished reading Timothy Leary's "Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out" which I wanted to check out since Leary was a huge advocate for dropping acid and was allegedly a fed. The main message of the book is that people shouldn't knock acid until they've tried it, and that dropping acid may make you feel like a god. The advocacy is really heavy-handed and no real drawbacks are mentioned

The title, which is also a phrase associated with Leary, is annoying because it's apparently a list that's out of order. The right sorting is:

Drop Out
This means basically opting out of social interactions or events that you may feel expected or obligated to attend. Broadly, this includes things like school or work, but could also be more specific, like dropping a major or stopping a career path

Turn On
Drop a shitload of acid

Tune In
After you're high as a kite, try to orient yourself through meditation and await revelations

I can already envision parodies of this book where someone swaps out acid for other things like booze

As I was getting through it, I was kind of wishing I was reading something by Gregory Bateson or Douglas Hofstadter instead

 

[幽邃森林]

I picked up Blood Meridian as my next book after finishing Wizard and Glass from the Dark Tower series.

Wizards and Glass is a much needed world builder for the Dark Tower series, but I found the pacing a bit slow at times. That's ok because it's Stephen King's first foray in writing a romance and the ending was worth the slow pacing in the middle of the book.

Blood Meridian is quite a change. I can see how the way McCarthy writes dialogue would read more naturally, but it can backfire if one loses track of who's saying what. The novel is exceptionally articulate, with a plethora of new words to add to one's vocabulary. This combined with the dialogue necessitates multiple passthroughs of some pages, but the new words that I am learning make it satisfying. I'm on a part where Judge Holden is making more of an appearance and am curious on how dark of a corner this novel will turn towards.

 

[cyphernoir42]

Ask the dust by John Fante. Really good book if you're a Bukowski fan

 

[Jill Stingray]

been inactive for a while. the last two books i read were one hundred years of solitude by marquez and don quixote by cervantes. old as shit but loved both.

reason i haven't been reading is because i'm going to be self-publishing my first novel fairly soon. god this shit is so much work lol

 

[Lamoa]

The labyrinth of the spirits - Carlos Ruiz Zafón. It's the last book in the series (Cemetery of Forgotten Books). Have liked them all quite a lot, this one is no worse than the rest. Would recommend, although I think it's worthwhile to read in it's original form, so I'd say this is more oriented to any other spanish speakers.

 

[MySpace Tom]

Yesterday I finished reading The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man by Marshall McLuhan. It covers how typographic print ultimately shaped society in unnoticeable, yet significant ways

Basically, the printing press made it possible to standardize languages that are based in phonetic alphabets. Printed text defined and shaped a lot of spelling and grammatical rules, so language was able to become more refined, yet more restricted as a result. Since printed material was made widely available, it created the notion of the public, who are the masses that receive the material

Reading itself also went from externalization, where it was previously orated to an audience, to internalization, where people not only read silently, but also internalize the rules of the printed language, which imposes all kinds of rules on basic concepts and thought in general. These rules ultimately ended up forming abstract notions such as nationalism which can't be possible without typed language

The book is organized into a series of relatively short passages rather than large chapters which was pretty nice. I also wish I read King Lear, Finnegans Wake, and Don Quixote before starting this book since they are cited pretty frequently throughout it (coincidentally too since Jill's post from earlier today mentions Don Quixote)

Also, despite being originally published in 1962, the book was already anticipating a post-literacy society where printed words would become less relevant as things became more electronically-based in the future. So it really gives some food for thought about how college students today aren't prepared to read books since they are more accustomed towards reading shorter texts or watching videos online

Overall, I enjoyed The Gutenberg Galaxy and would suggest it for anyone who is interested in linguistics or technology's role in shaping society

 

[Slumber]

Finished reading Riding The Iron Rooster by Paul Theroux, a very good book indeed. It catalogues his journeys by train through china in '86. A very good lens (imo) because he records lots of back and forth dialogue between him and the various chinese populace and officials he runs into. Now I'm onto Bogart, a book that details the life and death of Humphrey Bogart, a famous actor from the 1940s.

If you don't know Mr. Bogart then you should get on it.

 

[UltramarineWeather]

Under the Yoke by S. M. Stirling.

Shit's weird in a good way, activates your neurons a bit like Starship Troopers does, though it's simultaneously more extreme (à la Might is Right) and less soapbox/preachy. Basically, what if the WW2 world was conquered by Sparta 2.0? The good and the bad, through a large dose of vae victis!

Finished it and wrote a review. Should probably add some kind of trigger warning for the thin-skinned R*ddit-boys.

Will probably follow with The Stone Dogs soon.

 

[UltramarineWeather]

Starting to re-read the whole Garrett P.I. series, so I wrote a review for the first volume. Hopefully this can convince some people to try it, because I think this author and even more this series is criminally underrated!

 

[Anto]

I'm currently on Mike Ma's Harassment Architecture. For those who (somehow) haven't read it, it's essentially the intrusive thoughts put down on paper:

Manic NYU students in ugly H&M sweatpants, staring into their twenty-dollar minimalist salads, sitting uncomfortable at rustic wood tables (artificially banged up by crafty Chinatown merchants). Every new dent is another twenty-five dollars onto the asking price. Not a single smoothie shop CEO bothers to argue. They love the look and even write pridefully about it in their Moleskine day journals. What fucking faggots. A city of queers buying anything that looks like it came from a tree because they haven't actually seen one in a lifetime. Did you know the trees in Central Park are made of ultra-dense recycled plastics? That's why they don't break, even when some sand creature sets off explosives on passing joggers.

It has no story. It's just the stream of consciousness from an absolute lunatic, and that's what makes it beautiful.

 

[UltramarineWeather]

I'm currently on Mike Ma's Harassment Architecture. For those who (somehow) haven't read it, it's essentially the intrusive thoughts put down on paper:

It has no story. It's just the stream of consciousness from an absolute lunatic, and that's what makes it beautiful.
View attachment 144659

Sounds lovely, but it might get a bit repetitive without story, methinks.

 

[youtherthyf]

am between the witcher: the last wish(the first book, a collection of short stories) and laban el asfour(bird milk) by yosef elqaeed. a romance about an affair in rural village from 1994.
written in egyptian arabic as opposed to the usual standard arabic.

 

[angertard]

It seems like every book I've read by David Graebner has at least one moment where it knocks my socks off and further sends me spiraling and bouncing off the ground like a stone skipping off the surface of a lake and I try to reorient myself in the air or slow my motion but nothing seems to work even when my legs move so quickly in a circle that they resemble spinning silver wheels I continue on my trajectory until I slam into a wall and then I slump against it and my tongue lulls out of my mouth and a spark chases a fox chases a chicken in a circle above my head.
I've read Debt: the first 5000 years, On Kings (with Marshall Sahlins) and The utopia of rules.
Debt was the best, even though I had already been exposed elements of the core thesis (barter economies rarely/never happened, some post-colonial countries are considered indebted because they liberated themselves from slavery) it still surprised me with stuff like how the Greeks considered slavery to be a misfortune like getting robbed, not a matter of superiority/inferiority. He makes some really good points to the effect that "honor" is what you get when you steal someone's dignity from them. I don't know if this is something Graebner is especially good at because I haven't read much sociology/anthropology before, but I really like how he introduces such alien but comprehensible societies in the course of making his points. I don't know if I really buy the whole kaboodle where he gets into Keynes == jubilee or interpretations like that. It would be interesting to contrast the theories he has with the popular populist/libertarian critiques of the bankers.
On Kings is just a lot less of a single thesis thingy and more exploratory although I guess it is papers with points that I should maybe have paid more attention to. I just like the shiny stuff like the idea that a barbarian, wild society and a civilized society could mutually use each other in ritual revitalization of their elites. A lot of the good stuff in these books is the narration of how ritual works in these societies, things like how a society can transition between seasonal egalitarianism and hierarchy. Or it was interesting how a king can be a "holy monster" who proves himself outside moral constraints by (ritually imitating) things like cannibalism, incest and defilement of corpses.
The utopia of rules wasn't as interesting as I hoped, but it is way shorter. It did point out that people lower in societal hierarchy are tasked with more anticipation of the needs of their superiors. A really interesting perspective. It also led me to Rebecca Solnit's book A Paradise Built in Hell which hopefully should describe not just "people doing good in hard times" but also the expansion of their imaginative horizons and maybe some more surprising stuff?

I think I will reread all of these books, which is good enough for them to earn my recommendation.

 

[upanddown-cursive]

"Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's crusade for free software" by Sam Williams.
It's an interesting book and I wanted to read it for a while, but never got around to actually sit down and do so, until now. It's fun to read and there is a lot of hidden tidbits about Stallman's biography, one wouldn't find anywhere else.

 

[Cyb3rTr4sh]

Rounding the bases on this bad boy:

John A Keel is my favorite wierdo from the sixties who wrote about crytpid/ufo/entity encounters and his love child Mothman. This book has had some of the best and wildest reported encounters I have never heard about connected to the Mothman sightings and beyond.

I also like this because he is one of the first to connect poltergeists, cryptids, and UFOs under one umbrella through the story of a family who encountered all of them at the same time out in Ohio in the 60's. Plus the art on the cover it amazing, done by Frank Frazetta a freakin legendary fantasy artist. Just gaze upon the intrepid cryptid hunter facing down a horde of monsters

 

[Trapachap]

I'm currently reading Breakfast of Champions by Vonnegut. I've been making my way through all his big novels before going into his deeper cuts.

 

[STEKInon]

Currently halfway through Catch-22

Having done a 9-month mandatory military service, this book is honestly the most accurate piece of literature that I have read on life inside of a military camp. In three words.

Everybody. Is. Retarded.

It honestly is just like that, from having to patrol an entire camp in the dead of night and sleeping into the reclined seats of my co-patroller's parked car with a loaded gun in my chest, to people just driving trucks into ditches and other's coming into the camp high and completelly incompetent command, it is just like that. Our commander was a guy who watched looney tunes while the kitchen brought him his lunch, some 50+ year old who went around the same way the generals do in Catch-22.

I usually disline American literature, but this one seems really well written. The sneaky way the sadness just suddenly breaks through the humor is very well appreciated and I also like how Catch-22 (the circular logic concept) applies to many more things other than the ability of a pilot to fly the bomber. I like how supernatural events get grounded in reality as the narrative continues, even when I think that Hundred Years of Solitude is probably in my top 5 of all books read.

Also I dropped the Song of Achilles about halfway through. I got tired of having Archilles' feet described to me for the 100th time in 20 chapters, Jesus Christ we get it Patroclus and Achilles are gay. This whole book started so well, with simple yet vivid descriptions of the places Patroclus is in and when it reaches the Skyros arc it just becomes awful.

 

[joypistols974@aol.com]

I'm on my way to reading the main Irvine Welsh bibliography now, having read:
The Trainspotting Series, namely:
-Skagboys
-Trainspotting
-Porno
-The Blade Artist
-Dead Man's Trousers
Short Stories:
-The Acid House
-Ecstasy

And currently reading Filth, a standalone novel.

I must say I absolutely fell in love with Welsh's writing, maybe partly due to the fact that I'm to the British Isles what a weeabo is to Japan and to the sheer exoticity of his use of Scots dialect and his way of transcribing accents through writing. My favourite books were Skagboys, Trainspotting, Porno and Filth. I feel that Welsh somewhat lost the plot a bit on the Blade Artist and that the short stories are sometimes underwhelming, especially in Ecstasy. They make for enjoyable reading, but never attain the kind of lifechanging quality of books like Trainspotting.

Now for short reviews:
Skagboys was great because you can just see the events unfolding that will signify the descent into madness that is shown in the sequels. All the laddies are there, albeit in a tamer and younger form than they will become. There's an exhilarating feeling to be experienced as a reader as you already know what's gonna happen but can't help being charmed by their first encounter with drugs. The backdrop of northern soul and scooter culture is excellent and you can just feel how Welsh knows exactly the Scottish zeitgeist of the Thatcher 80s. The first chapter about the miners' strike is a surprising introduction that gives a lot of depth to Renton's dad as a character.

Trainspotting is the big one, you just have to read it. It's complete with the very well known "choose life" monologue. Spud is a way better character than in the film, as all others are. Sick Boy is particularly fun to me, but he'll very soon be even more

Porno is the novel where I understood that Irvine Welsh was a special author to me. It's the third book I've read from him and upon delving into the gang's story after the events of Trainspotting, where Sick Boy really develops into a shagger extraordinaire and meets his demise because he finally falls in love, I could really feel that I couldn't let go of the Trainspotting series. The two other volumes have rode that wave albeit less convicingly.

If you saw the films (and I guess you did), please do check out the books as they're better than their adaptations. No one writes filthiness like Irvine Welsh.

Some final thoughts about Filth:
It's crazy good. Dead good. Read it. Its crassness is sublime.

 

[Kaf_Kaffiend]

"The Man-Eating Myth" by William F. Arens, published in 1979 - it goes into detail on the long, long history of colonizers use of exocannibalism and endocannibalism accusations against native peoples as a way to justify the taking of their land, like they were making these barbarians "human" again, "civilizing" them. Fascinating read and has a respectful approach to explaining endocannibalism to people who may not understand the cultural importance it had hold.

Also, Michael Crichton's, "The Andromeda Strain." I don't need to explain The Andromeda Strain.