The books we are reading

#61

We read them in series chronological following the official reading guide wheel.

So we did the witches/tiffany before because that series starts before the industrial series.

It’s a really interesting way to read.

Cheers,
Jayson

#62

We just read them as they came out, well at least the last half of them. I did not know about him until around 2000.

#63

We started in early 2017, following each series in order as they appear on this chart.

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We’ve read about 20 to 30 pages every night at bed time.

Cheers,
Jayson

#64

I’ve been wanting to read this for years, and my lady finally gifted me a copy of it for xmas. Cracked into this beast last night and spent a few hours getting the first 50 pages down or so, It’s fucking addicting.

This will be a “lifetime” book to finish and study, but I now understand why Wallace got so much praise for this. His writing style is unlike anything I’ve ever read before.

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#65

I’m at that point where I have too many good books to read, so before bed I sort through them and then realize that I can’t make a decision and just go to sleep.

Curse the digital medium

#66

I’ve been reading idmf more than I read anything else…fuck my life.

#68

I recently re-read an old childhood favourite: Alan Garner’s The Weirdstone of Brisingamen. It’s children’s fantasy, but there’s a lot of horror elements to it, and I’m pretty sure the breathless 40-page spelunking section is the cause of my ongoing mild claustrophobia.

Now I’m reading Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose. It was originally partly as research for a personal project, but now I’m intrigued about the complexity and brutality of medieval monastic politics.

#69

The Name of the Rose is one of my all time favorites. Great story, great literature, great historical set piece. Just a juggernaut of a book.

#70

I started Tale of Genji yesterday. Was doing a lot of Dickens before that. Jumping back 800 years in history, it’s interesting how the perspective of writing changes. Of course, I’m reading a translation from last century, so a lot of the style is what I’m used to, but what I mean is that this is (widely considered) the first novel (or oldest surviving) and, going from Oliver Twist back to this, you can really tell that it was written by an upperclassperson before things like The Enlightenment or The Rennaissance or philosophers like Voltaire (granted, this is also from eastern society, so that stuff wouldn’t figure into their society very much until after WWII).

How so? Zero mention of the common classes of society. So far (and I’m only about 1/10th of the way through it), it’s just princes, generals, and courtesans running around making political moves. No merchants, no farmers, no tradesmen. Nothing. Oh, the author knew these people (at least some of them) existed, servants have been referenced in passing (though only very rarely directly, we’re just supposed to assume their existence because certain actions would be impossible without them) and commoners have been mentioned as the state that a failed courtesan would have to wander the countryside in. But they haven’t figured into the story so far at all. And I’d be surprised if they did. My guess is the novel was such a novel concept at the time that authors didn’t need to go looking for a larger set of more diverse characters that would come to be needed to tell new stories in later literature, but we’ll see.

#71

I enjoyed The Name of The Rose very much, too. Same for Foucault’s Pendulum, Numero Zero and (a bit less so) Baudolino.

#72

It’s fascinating… the ideas in Sci-fi have morphed over the years, as times changed the variety of premises and story lines gets very rich, it’s a much bigger genre than I thought… and I’ve read a ton of sci-fi over the years. :books::alien:

#73

Oh, man yeah.

This is what I love about it. It almost always feels like the time in which it was written. There are some exceptions, of course. Some books (like Alfred Bester and Asimov) spring to mind as being way ahead of their time.

I love SF most for what it can say about the real world, as an unbridled thought experiment.

#74

In general I always have a book of Emil Cioran close to where I sit.

These times I read Strategy, written by Sir Basil Liddl Hart and Discourse of Voluntary Servitude by Etienne de la Boétie.

After these two, I’ll return to my Lovecraft habits.

#75

Been reading this. Dude’s lead a pretty interesting life.6cb19aef620348a4eae5b16f1fbe13af

#77

And you made post number 5. Fnord.

Of course, you posted for me to come see it, because…

…I recently finished THE HISTORICAL CHRONICLES OF THE ILLUMINATUS. I sat on it, and reaading in general, for about three years, and finally felt like I wanted to read it…and I realized it was about me.

(In '94 a chap said to me in some ‘deep’ conversation, “You should read THE ILLUMINATUS…”, and he gave it to me. I had seen it in a bookstore in '91, but passed on it because the back cover description made it seem pretty tame…and I read mainly hard SF…)

#78

Everybody poops is a classic…

@The_Excession just read the plot summary of the excession…on wikipedia looks interesting…

I dont read much scifi…I tried reading the andromeda strain…it was too boring…dune is way too long…tbh most scifi is too out there and allegorical too relate to…honestly I dont read as much as I should…the naked lunch couldn’t find a copy on the net and from what I hear it’s like reading a book written by some dude on lsd…

The only book I really liked was the zombie survival guide by max brooks…its basically like journal entries of multiple characters perspective of how all hell breaks loose and human civilization falls apart because of gross incompetence and a lack of preparedness at the behest of zombie outbreak…even though its fiction I really liked the humanistic element of people doing what they can to survive in all the choas…and them pulling together to rebuild some semblance of civilization and adapting to the current situation.

#80

@bfk

Fiction means fantasy, but people in general prefer Fantasy of some sort(s), whereas SF (as meta intoned) reaches beyond the familiar, and speaks to relatively few. The world provides opportunity for experience, incorporation, and transcendence. Most people by their nature get stuck in the first, occasionally…if they feel inclined…engage in the second, and rarely embody the third.

In short, people want to know about people - as did I until I knew what I needed and wished, and carried onward, as my nature embodies.

In any case, if you feel compelled, you might try anthologies. Scads and scads of short fiction written by most in the field.

@xSANTAxDURSTx

I have long told people to learn their bodies before anything, and have found great fitness in body-weight calisthenics (mainly bear crawls and crab walks fore and aft, hindu push-ups, and free squats) solely the last seventeen years. Breath and diet preclude training, though, and have allowed my body to remain largely un-changed the last few months with only a couple-minute session of medium-pace bear crawls and crab walks once a day or three.

#81

I have enjoyed a few short stories by isaac asimov i believe there was one about trying to solve the problem of a dying sun if I recall correctly.

#82

… and about the future. Sci-fi has an amazing ability to both imagine and guide us into the future.

#83

@bfk : I don’t recall reading that story. I liked Asimov (two fave shorts: The Last Question, and, The Billiard Ball, both in THE EDGE OF TOMORROW I picked up as teen in the late 80s, the cover you know, and I was neck deep in anime, having come from Transformers, Robotech, etc…), but quickly moved on to larger pastures in David Brin, Greg Bear (in particular BLOOD MUSIC, p1985 and The Singularity event to look forward to - I DO), Gregory Benford, Stephen Baxter, the majority of Peter F. Hamilton’s adult fiction (though his latest universe seems a step backward, and I closed the first book less than two-hundred pages in…), some others… Iain M. Banks wrote in long, tangential-seeming phrases. I recommend him to those with the odd interest and attention span, and appreciation for dark-ass Scottish humour.

~

@1roomstudio : SF. Sci-fi is Fantasy in space. Definitions, yo.