Unofficial What are you Reading Thread?

[Cain]

Ugh yeah, Yudowsky does tend to treat nu-atheist Silicon Valley libertarianism with more than a dash of transhumanism as a kind of "political default".  Throw in the meta-contrarianism and what is essentially hipster ideological reasoning and it quickly goes beyond trite and into annoying and hypocritical.

I did like Thinking Fast and Slow, but I've not read Intuition Pumps yet.  That will definitely go on the list.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

Of the various things I've read focusing on heuristics, biases, etc., Intuition Pumps is the best.

[Cain]

So, apparently, all of Brandon Sanderson's books are actually located in the same metaverse.

Ugh.  This means I'm going to have to read them all.  Again.

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

I'm reading The Golem and the Jinni, a novel about two supernatural creatures making their way in early 20th century New York City

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I read a bunch of books while I was gone, but nothing particularly worth talking about except that they all had threads of "dysfunctional parental relationship" which pushed all sorts of emotional buttons for me and made me do a bunch of introspection about why I tend to be super paranoid about being clingy, and pre-emptively push people away when I get an inkling of possible impending rejection. In short, I tend to start to distance myself as soon as I feel a strong attachment, which sends a mixed signal to the person I am attached to, which generally serves as some kind of sabotage mechanism for the relationship. Basically because my mom rejected me a lot, and played a whole bunch of fucked-up emotional games with me, and so as an adult I am afraid of being vulnerable and showing my emotional needs because I'm conditioned to think that intimacy will come with a price blah blah blah.

I also read Euclid's Window, which was pretty good but disappointing in some ways after reading God's Equation. I really think that all  things considered, if you're going to read a book about the geometry of space, God's Equation is the better book, even though it really doesn't go into string theory at all and Euclid's Window does, albeit in a very unsatisfying way.

Now I'm pondering whether to start Schumm's Deep Down Things, or Churchland's Braintrust.

[Bu🤠ns]

About to wrap up Mieville's The Scar....in love with this seris so damn much.  I also have a side book called The Worst Hard Time -- about the Dust Bowl with stories by the few remaining survivors who remembered.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

Finished The Unnoticables by Robert Brockway. A lot of interesting ideas in that, and it supported my general position that it is never a waste of time to read a horror novel written by a Cracked columnist. It's about angels -- sort of. It takes the Madoka Magica angle on angels.

About halfway through Ian Banks' Consider Phlebias, which is billed as the first Culture novel but centers almost exclusively around non-Culture-societies and only really has a handful of Culture characters, most of whom appear only once. Maybe Banks expected them to be a bit player for a one-off novel and then later on decided they were the most interesting thing about that universe? I'm looking forward to The Player of Games, since that's billed as the second and seems to actually feature the Culture. (The writing is competent -- not Gibson-level stunning prose, but not PKD-level drudge either -- and what we get to see of the universe is generally interesting; the plot is twisty enough to be interesting too. But it feels like we're not looking at the most interesting thing going on in that universe at that time, which has to be at least the second or third rule of storytelling.)

[Cain]

The Player of Games isn't bad at all.  I personally preferred Use Of Weapons, though I did read the series a while ago.

[Nast]

My favorite Culture story was The State of the Art, because it features the planet Earth and lols were had. Followed by Player of Games, and then Excession. Player of Games of good; I read it twice.

I really like Banks' ideas, but sometimes his writing style gives me a headache.

[Da6s]

I bought ready player one in the Chicago airport before my flights back from basic. Binged it in 2 days, something that hasn't happened with a book since Snowcrash.

Reading meditations by Marcus Aurelius currently. I had planned to read it in boot (friend had sent me it printed off in a letter), but that didn't really pan out as intended. Also found a nifty website chock-full of public domain books for download in any format your heart desires. Going to make my way through a lot of older stuff on my quest to be moderately well read.

I'll also add an obligatory plug for the foundation series by asimov. Finished it a few months ago, easily secured itself a place in my top 5 of all time. Can't recommend enough.

I tried to finish mists of avalon again, but goddammit do I loathe Guinevere chapters. Can't finish that book . it's more of a feat than cryptonomicon was. Dunno when I'll ever go back to it.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I bought ready player one in the Chicago airport before my flights back from basic. Binged it in 2 days, something that hasn't happened with a book since Snowcrash.

Reading meditations by Marcus Aurelius currently. I had planned to read it in boot (friend had sent me it printed off in a letter), but that didn't really pan out as intended. Also found a nifty website chock-full of public domain books for download in any format your heart desires. Going to make my way through a lot of older stuff on my quest to be moderately well read.

I'll also add an obligatory plug for the foundation series by asimov. Finished it a few months ago, easily secured itself a place in my top 5 of all time. Can't recommend enough.

I tried to finish mists of avalon again, but goddammit do I loathe Guinevere chapters. Can't finish that book . it's more of a feat than cryptonomicon was. Dunno when I'll ever go back to it.

I tried to read that once, but it was so boring that I actually died.

[Cain]

Hey now, writing conventions have changed quite a bit since Marcus Aurelius' time.

[Meunster]

Im reading more Camus. Call me a pleb but hes one if my favorites.

[Da6s]

Also found a nifty website chock-full of public domain books for download in any format your heart desires. Going to make my way through a lot of older stuff on my quest to be moderately well read.

For anyone curious, here's the site mentioned above: http://manybooks.net/authors.php

[Cain]

Im reading more Camus. Call me a pleb but hes one if my favorites.

Camus is pretty dope, even if he can't quite compete with Heidegger, Satre et al when it comes to the theoretical philosophy.

I recommend Kierkegaard next.  Similar ideas, even better writer.