Unofficial What are you Reading Thread?

[minuspace]

"The reason I Jump"
/The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-OldbBoy with Autism
_Naoki Higashida

The man is a post-deconstructuralist Genius

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

I'm reading Cold Print

[Cain]

Reading Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower.

Definitely one of the best books on the history of Al-Qaeda out there.  Dispels a lot of myths, especially the self-serving ones spread by Bin Laden of his involvement in certain terrorist attacks (Black Hawk Down, the Khobar Towers etc), the Arab Mujahideen in Afghanistan (mostly worthless rabble) and of his wealth...most of which was confiscated by the Saudis when he was expelled.

It also illustrates in great detail the amorphous and mostly imaginary status of Al-Qaeda before 1998, and the key role of Ayman al-Zawahiri as the "brains" of the jihadist alliance.

And most interestingly, it paints Michael Scheuer, the head of the CIA's Alec Station and author of Imperial Hubris as a complete fucking lunatic.  He was arguing for using cruise missiles to eliminate Bin Laden while he was staying with donors in the Emirates.  The CIA and FBI estimated there would be upwards of 300 civilian casualties, but Scheuer didn't care.  He wanted Bin Laden dead, no matter how much collateral damage was caused.

Of course, this was the man who has subsequently said America needs to be nuked by terrorists to be saved from being nuked by terrorists, so this isn't entirely unsurprising.

[Bu🤠ns]

Ghost in the Wires --  My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker by Kevin Mitnick

It's fun--it's kinda of a How-to-Social-Engineer-the-phone-company-in-autobiography form...but it's fun.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

Ghost in the Wires --  My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker by Kevin Mitnick

It's fun--it's kinda of a How-to-Social-Engineer-the-phone-company-in-autobiography form...but it's fun.

That's a pretty good one. Mitnick isn't a bad writer (although I realize it was coauthored). My only problem with it was that it repeated a lot of stories found elsewhere, and didn't add a whole lot of 'new' / unpublished content.

[Wisa1]

Finally attacking Jung in the flesh via the "Modern Man in Search of a  Soul"  collection.
Barely a dozen pages left however, any suggestions as to which of old CeeGee's books I should attack next?
or maybe I should just head straight for The Collected Works.

[Lenin McCarthy]

Reading The Philosophy of Boredom by Lars Fr. H. Svendsen.
A pretty interesting and witty essay. It doesn't really come up with any solutions to escape boredom, but it provides some insight and a vocabulary to discuss it with and that is pretty neat.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I just started "When It All Comes Down To Dust" and "You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up".

[Bu🤠ns]

Ghost in the Wires --  My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker by Kevin Mitnick

It's fun--it's kinda of a How-to-Social-Engineer-the-phone-company-in-autobiography form...but it's fun.

That's a pretty good one. Mitnick isn't a bad writer (although I realize it was coauthored). My only problem with it was that it repeated a lot of stories found elsewhere, and didn't add a whole lot of 'new' / unpublished content.

I started Art of Deception and quickly found that out also.  Personally I preferred hearing the techniques in a narrative form rather than in the 'how to' form.  It flows much better that way.

GitW was a good story--I enjoyed it a lot

[Bu🤠ns]

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://inktank.fi/10-sci-fi-novels-thatll-change-look-world-forever/&strip=1

of all the books in this list, what would PD recommend?

1. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell (1949)
2. Solaris, Stanislaw Lem (1961)
3. Never Let Me Go, Kazua Ishiguru (2005)
4. The Passage, Justin Cronin (2010)
5. I, Robot, Isaac Asimov (1950)
6. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood (1985)
7. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein (1959)
8. Flowers for Albergon, Daniel Keyes (1966)
9. Flatland, Edwin A. Abbott (1882)
10. Blindness, Jose Saramago (1995)

[Cain]

I, Robot.

Asimov's the best writer in that list who I've read.

[LMNO]

Solaris is a bit dry, but has some pretty good stuff in it.

[hooplala]

Flatland gave me strange ideas of how to imagine space in the universe(s).

[Junkenstein]

Subject matter of "A handmaids tale" was interesting, but I couldn't stand the style.

I'd second Asimov, and Orwell naturally. Both have tons worth reading.

[Bu🤠ns]

Thanks, folks!