Unofficial What are you Reading Thread?

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You guys exist. You're fine, doing the best job meaty beasts full of puke and bones can do.

HIMEOBS does not exist, and is being lazy. Otherwise this bot would have filled the forum with ass before anyone noticed.

[Cramulus]

I'm just wrapping up Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. I really enjoy this guy's perspective -- on the surface, it's about colonizing mars, but really it's a novel about political ideas. Robinson loves asking "Why is it easier for us to imagine the apocalypse than the end of capitalism?" And more materially, how could you begin a society without capitalism? How do you keep it from being subsumed and transformed into capitalism?

[Juana]

Reading Making Thinking Visible for work. Possibly the only book I've ever gotten from a professional development meeting that was worth a damn.

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Reading Making Thinking Visible for work. Possibly the only book I've ever gotten from a professional development meeting that was worth a damn.

I like the title. Got a quick summary of the concepts?

[Juana]

Reading Making Thinking Visible for work. Possibly the only book I've ever gotten from a professional development meeting that was worth a damn.

I like the title. Got a quick summary of the concepts?

We don't even think about *how* we think, but we need to, because learning follows thinking about concepts WITH material. It's got a bunch of different activities for kids to do that involves making the way they think visible (think pair share, etc.). I used a lot of what I read for an activity Thursday and Friday, and I think it worked? Time will tell

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I finally got the time, energy, and opportunity to start to read The Grand Dark.

It’s weird, reading it. It smells like interwar Poland. There’s a certain atmosphere to it that hovers in the space between the Strugatskys, Laird Barron at his most insightful and restrained, and (of all things) a piece of web-fiction called Twig. Some films that keep coming to mind are Inland Empire, Dark City, Brazil, but it’s doing something VERY different.

There’s a wound that won’t close hovering just beneath the surface, and I have only just started the fucking thing. I would still be reading it but I hit an early point that made me sit back and think whether I liked it or not. Fuck.

This is probably going to be one of my all time favorite works, up there with Laird Barron’s Swift to Chase.

EDIT: Hair past the midpoint and I think that THAT is it for tonight. What the good golly fuck. Good thing I have tomorrow off as well.

[Cain]

That's about where I am. I'm hoping with the upcoming holidays I'll have the time to finish the rest of it off.

[Cain]

I would have gotten further, but I got distracted by Forge of Darkness.

[Doktor Howl]

I finally got the time, energy, and opportunity to start to read The Grand Dark.

It's weird, reading it. It smells like interwar Poland. There's a certain atmosphere to it that hovers in the space between the Strugatskys, Laird Barron at his most insightful and restrained, and (of all things) a piece of web-fiction called Twig. Some films that keep coming to mind are Inland Empire, Dark City, Brazil, but it's doing something VERY different.

There's a wound that won't close hovering just beneath the surface, and I have only just started the fucking thing. I would still be reading it but I hit an early point that made me sit back and think whether I liked it or not. Fuck.

This is probably going to be one of my all time favorite works, up there with Laird Barron's Swift to Chase.

EDIT: Hair past the midpoint and I think that THAT is it for tonight. What the good golly fuck. Good thing I have tomorrow off as well.

It's a slog at first, but right about page 200 it starts to take off.  Cain is going to like this as well.

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I woke up and finished it.

Nothing prepared me. Nothing could have.

I have to reread this a few times I think. Fuck.

[Doktor Howl]

I woke up and finished it.

Nothing prepared me. Nothing could have.

I have to reread this a few times I think. Fuck.

Yeah, the scene from the factory raid forward was the cat's ass. 

[Cain]

So I finally finished Fall of Light, meaning I can get back to The Grand Dark.

I will say, despite the uncertain start with the potential return of the omnipresent judging voice from Toll the Hounds, it quickly became a lot better. As a prequel there is of course an inevitability to the course of events, but things still keep changing in often unexpected ways. Draconus' legendary cruelness is anything but. Urusander's inability to control his own Legion's crimes while trying to embody a principle of justice. Hood is still himself, but before he took the Throne of Death, younger and brash. Ardata and T'riss were lovers. K'rul is coming across as a more coherent version of Shadowthrone, with a reluctant Cotillion in Skillen Droe.

About the only character who hasn't really changed much at all is Anomander, which is probably fair given the kind of character he is.

For my part, the absolute best bit of the book is where Mother Dark is confronted by her own high priestess about her silence, her reluctance to speak and guide her followers. The smackdown given is incredibly brutal, incredibly forthright:

'I offered you all an empty vessel, or so you imagined it. I was witness, then, to your varied ways of filling it. Yet what was hidden within, which none of you chose to see, is now displaced, and now, perhaps, must be considered dead.' She raised a thin hand. 'Are you eager for a list of prohibitions? For prescribed positions and holy ordinances? Am I to tell you the way to live your life? Am I to lock doors, draw close shutters? Am I to guide you like children, with all the maternal needs of a mother upon whose tit you will all feed, until your dying day? What words do you wish from me, Emral Lanear? A list of all the deeds that will earn the slap of my hand, or my eternal condemnation? What crimes are acceptable in the eyes of your goddess? Whose murder is justified by your faith in me? Whose suffering shall be considered righteously earned, by virtue of what you judge a failing of faith, or indeed sacrilege? Describe to me the apostate, the infidel, the blasphemer – for surely such accusations come not from me, but from you, High Priestess, you and all who will follow you, in your appointed role of speaking for me, deciding for me, acting in my name, and justifying all that you would do in your worship of your goddess.'

'From faith,' replied Emral Lanear, 'do we not seek guidance?'

'Guidance, or the organized assembly and reification of all the prejudices you collectively hold dear?'

'You would not speak to us!'

'I grew to fear the power of words – their power, and their powerlessness. No matter how profound or perceptive, no matter how deafening their truth, they are helpless to defend themselves. I could have given you a list. I could have stated, in the simplest terms, that this is how I want you to behave, and this must be the nature of your belief, and your service, and your sacrifice. But how long, I wonder, before that list twisted in interpretation? How long before deviation yielded condemnation, torture, death?' She slowly leaned forward. 'How long, before my simple rules to a proper life become a call to war? To the slaughter of unbelievers? How long, Emral Lanear, before you begin killing in my name?'

'Then what do you want of us?' Lanear demanded.

'You could have stopped thinking like children who need to be told what's right and what's wrong. You damned well know what's right and what's wrong. It's pretty simple, really. It's all about harm. It's about hurting, and not just physical, either. You want a statement for your faith in me? You wish me to offer you the words you claim to need, the rules by which you are to live your lives? Very well, but I should warn you, every deity worthy of worship will offer you the same prescription. Here it is, then. Don't hurt other people. In fact, don't hurt anything capable of suffering. Don't hurt the world you live in, either, or its myriad creatures. If gods and goddesses are to have any purpose at all, let us be the ones you must face for the crimes of your life. Let us be the answer to every unfeeling, callous, cruel act you committed, every hateful word you uttered, and every spiteful wound you delivered.'

[minuspace]

I made it about half way through the "Three Body Problem" trilogy. Must say I kinda preferred the first book: maybe the translator, or the conditions under which I was reading it. It's Dantesque, trying to get through something like "The Dark Forest" with someone called "No Brain" practicing their beats and rhymes right next to you all day long. I am now however well versed on the exploits of one "Nipsy Hustle"

[Juana]

The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins by Anna Tsing. Dense in places and there's a few things I'm sort of side eyeing, but overall it's very good. Also re reading these two as an adult: Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl for work and picked up Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising series over break. So far, both books are holding up well.

[LMNO]

I'm reading "Lovecraft Country", which is like "Cuthulu in Jim Crow Chicago", and it's great.