Unofficial What are you Reading Thread?

[Cain]

That's how it starts.  Then you're reading Infinite Jest and anything by Martin Amis.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

Finally finished Consider Phlebas, after a very extended period. My analysis of it stands: as a space opera, really good, but as a Culture novel, not nearly enough Culture in it.

Not sure whether to move on to Player of Games or the third Dune book.

[Bu🤠ns]

"It's Even Worse than it Looks" Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein

[themanwhocreatedjazz]

I recently finished reading Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, Pataphysician by Alfred Jarry, which is something I wholeheartedly recommend. I plan on reading Watt by Samuel Beckett next.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I recently started "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers", but I haven't gotten nearly as much reading done this break as I thought I would. It's pretty good so far, though.

[Brother Mythos]

After seeing this thread I realized I haven’t read anything of  ‘literary merit’, or ‘philosophical’, in quite some time, other than the Principia Discordia and related texts, of course. So, I started Notes from the Underground by Dostoyevsky.

Wikipedia states that this book is considered by many to be the first existentialist novel. But, since it’s also very short by Dostoyevsky standards, I decided to read it anyway.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

I'm about half-way through Player of Games, and we haven't actually gotten to the planet with the titular games yet. This author really likes to stretch out the beginning of every book.

About half-way through David Wong's Futuristic Weapons and Fancy Suits, which comes off like a slightly more gonzo version of The Peripheral thus far, with some satire over California Ideology folks on top of it.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Now that the term h as started again, I have no time for reading anything but the plethora of textbooks for my classes. However, the text for Behavioral Endocrinology is pretty interesting.

[Vanadium Gryllz]

I'm just starting Cosmic Trigger. I don't know what to make of it so far, but then again i'm only a few pages in.

I presume that many of you here have read it - what did you think? Does it still hold up?

It's been quite a long time since I have read anything longer than can be fitted into a comment form or a blog post so just committing to such a read feels a little daunting.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

Cosmic trigger is, in large part, Robert Anton Wilson's autobiography with swollen appendices. It documents what he did and what he was interested in during various points in his life. As a result, it's structurally different from his other nonfiction. (For instance, Cosmic Trigger II and III are basically essay collections, along with a lot of his later work, and Prometheus Rising is structured like a tutorial or textbook.) It generally works, in my opinion. Because it's an early work, it avoids a lot of the repetition that later works engaged in. It also seems to have mostly aged well -- the worst things about it that I can remember are related to treating a couple different academic works (The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind and The Sirius Mystery) with more respect than would even have been afforded them in the early 70s.

[Ziegejunge]

I recently finished reading Barry Sanders' (the professor, not the football player) Sudden Glory: Laughter as Subversive History.

Link: https://books.google.com/books/about/Sudden_Glory.html?id=w9VZAAAAMAAJ&hl=en

I felt like the following excerpt belonged here, what with the chaos, the disruption of closed systems, and the farting.



It's an excellent book that contextualizes laughter from both historical and mythological standpoints, and it contains some great etymology to boot. Highly recommended if you're into that sort of thing.

[DeusExMachina]

Flot faulk

[Brother Mythos]

I recently finished reading Barry Sanders' (the professor, not the football player) Sudden Glory: Laughter as Subversive History.

Link: https://books.google.com/books/about/Sudden_Glory.html?id=w9VZAAAAMAAJ&hl=en

I felt like the following excerpt belonged here, what with the chaos, the disruption of closed systems, and the farting.



It's an excellent book that contextualizes laughter from both historical and mythological standpoints, and it contains some great etymology to boot. Highly recommended if you're into that sort of thing.

Your book sounds interesting. But, I had no idea what the word ‘spirant’ meant. So, I looked it up and found this:

n.   See fricative.

adj.   Fricative.

Spirant … fricative … thanks, English majors. I mean, why did they stop there? Why didn’t they make ‘fricate’ a verb?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I finally got back around to picking up Patricia Churchland's "Braintrust", a treatise on the neurobiological roots of morality. Pretty cool, I love Churchland and her proper, reserved methods or tearing apart bad arguments.

[Freeky]

The Story of Stuff for my neighbor's college class about sustainability and social justice or something like that.  It's got some good points, some amusing anecdotes, and a lot of fallacies.  Even then, it's a learning opportunity, because I get to look up what kind of fallacy it is.