Unofficial What are you Reading Thread?

[EK WAFFLR]

It's one of the greatest Norwegian literary works in history. I place Bjørneboe (his entire body of work) next to Knut Hamsun and Henrik Ibsen.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

Recently finished Revolution and Tradition, a collection of lectures at either York University or New York University (the book attributes each lecture to York University, but the introduction consistently says New York University) in 1970. Crazy mindfuck for me, because it feels like it comes out of a parallel universe; clearly all these people come from some academic tradition, but it's nothing I'm familiar with.

Moved onto Norstrilia by Cordwainer Smith. Aside from the introduction claiming that this is the only science fiction novel by Cordwainer Smith (it's not; I own a first edition of The Journey of Three Worlds to prove it), it's amusing, and it holds my attention better than most Cordwainer Smith short fiction has -- I was able to focus on The Rediscovery of Man only during lectures on data structures from a math teacher.

I recently finished Cosmic Trigger II and III, and Right Where You Are Sitting Now. The latter two Cosmic Trigger books are mostly a repeat of ideas covered in other books (along with a lot of shit about P2 and the Priory of Sion which appear to have been copied word-for-word into his conspiracy encyclopedia), but they have some fresh biographical information (and a lot of biographical information I've only heard in Robert Anton Wilson Explains Everything), so they are worth getting if you are interested in the man moreso than his ideas. He also talks at length about Orson Welles (or maybe I hallucinated that...), which led me to watch some films for what really shouldn't be the first time.

I'll probably be done with Norstrilia tomorrow, at which point I'll have to pick something else off the to-read stack. Currently it contains Liars and Outliers by Bruce Schneier, Life, Inc. by Douglas Rushkoff, Motherless Brooklyn and Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem, Empire of the Sun and Crash by J. G. Ballard. Alternately, I could finish A Canticle for Leibowitz, which I stopped at the second or third chapter a week ago, V or Gravity's Rainbow by Pynchon, both of which I stopped halfway-through more than a year ago, or The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, which I stopped halfway-through in December. Any recommendations, from that group?

[Oysters Rockefeller]

Gravitys Rainbow has such a cool concept(s), but is entirely too difficult to read. I quit about half way through about three or so years ago.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

Finished Norstrilia. It didn't feel "kiddy" like a lot of the other Cordwainer Smith stuff.

Also finished Motherless Brooklyn, which wasn't at all what I thought it was.

Working through Liars and Outliers now.

[dontblameyoko]

today finished A Wizard of Earthsea
tomorrow will (re)start The Princess and the Goblin

[Oysters Rockefeller]

In the middle of Jose Saramgo's "Death With Interruptions"
About the UK not having any more deaths, and how immortality would be shit. Also death is a nervous human woman within the context of the book. Its pretty good, but his style has this weird flow that makes it entirely too difficult to read at times.

Also reading this: http://nedroid.com/2010/01/relax-dont-do-it/
Excellent webcomic.

[Lenin McCarthy]

Now reading: The History of Bestiality by Jens Bjørneboe.

Read that at about the same time as you. Great stuff.

Currently reading The Family, the book Cain recommended in the Kony thread not long ago.

[hirley0]

(Read 101007 times)7:40-7:42PM pdt ordia > Literate Chaotic  4got read part SoRRy

[Juana]

The Borgias by Ivan Cloulas


edited for html fail

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I just picked up where I left off reading "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" because for some reason it seems to have a pressing and ever-increasing relevancy.

[Arim the Backwards One]

Reading 'The End of Mr. Y' at the moment, and it's pretty interesting. Even though the plot seems pretty cliché at the first glance.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

I've been reading The Sirius Mystery, and thinking to myself that Mr. Temple is not doing a very good job of supporting his argument -- most of which depends upon multilingual puns in dead languages. Finally, he ducked his head into Sumerian, with which I have a passing knowledge. In the offending passage, he took a section of the enumerated names of Marduk, claimed that nobody knew what "Nibiru" means, then claimed that because the count is 51 instead of 50, "Nibiru" should be merged with the next entry, "lord of the lands". Of course, the following entry is "Enki", which (as anyone who has looked at the ETCSL, read Sitchin, or glanced over the Simon Necronomicon, or read anything by Samuel Noah Kramer knows) means "lord of the earth". As anyone with a passing knowledge of Sumerian knows, "nibiru" is translated as "crossing place". Mr. Temple then goes on to claim that "nibiru" is a loan word from Egyptian "neb-heru", which he claims means "the ram of Horus", and uses this to "prove" that the legend of the golden fleece has its roots in Egyptian sun-worship. At this point, I said "fuck Robert K. G. Temple and fuck his broken etymologies" and stopped reading.

[dontblameyoko]

thinking to myself that Mr. Temple is not doing a very good job of supporting his argument -- most of which depends upon multilingual puns in dead languages.

sounds a little like Graves' The White Goddess

[EK WAFFLR]

As soon as I finish The History of Bestiality, I'm going to read one of my favorites. Bill Bryson. I haven't read DOwn Under yet, but I'm sure it'll be a hoot and a holler.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

I've been working my way through The ARRL Handbook, 71st ed., and trying to teach myself electronics from it. (I can handle digital electronics, because that's straightforward, but analog circuits and I have never gotten along.) The math in it is making my head spin (not because the math itself is difficult -- the most complicated thing in the equations thus far was a square root -- but because the chapter is written with the assumption that it is intended as a review rather than an introduction, as though plotting impedance on a polar coordinate plane and taking the imaginary term as radius was an entirely natural and intuitive thing to do...) Maybe I should supplement this with other materials...