My dad had me read this when I was a teenager. I think I'm going to read it again.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lathe_of_Heaven
My dad had me read this when I was a teenager. I think I'm going to read it again.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lathe_of_Heaven
Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel!
-Raskolnikov
^ weird that you posted that right before I was posting this... the titles could be in the same series
I'm reading The Forge of God -> Anvil of Stars by Greg Bear again. It's about Berserker Von Neumann machines attacking the solar system and eating Earth (the second book is about the children who escaped earths destruction being sent out to seek retribution, hunt down the creators of the probes in accordance with galactic law).
Enders game
Ender a clear LII?
Ohohoh, off topic: I found a grafiti somewhere that read "no lie can live forever" that made me laugh
Darwin's Radio
scifi book about a retrovirus that induces rapid speciation hitting humanity. the first part was a bit rough to read, lots of names to confuse and heavy on the genetic jargon, but after the half way point, when it becomes more about describing shit hitting the fan, I'm hooked into it.
Last edited by bg; 08-29-2014 at 03:50 AM.
the books here were borrowed and recommended to me. i just finished hunter s. thompson gonzo papers vol 2 generation of swine. i wasn't familiar with a lot of the politicians and events that he talked about so a lot of the facts started blurring together. i finished reading it because of his funny way of describing things and the stories he had (are they actually true)? i'm curious now to read something else like fear and loathing that i could follow better.
today i started beatrice sparks go ask alice. i haven't expected to like it from what ive heard about it. and im not any more impressed after starting it because the writing is really bad and its painfully obvious that its a fake teenage diary written by a clueless adult. but as i read more it has sort of a kitschy appeal and i actually find myself wondering what will happen next, like in a soap opera kind of way.
Loved The Road. Enjoy!Originally Posted by Spider
Let the Dead Bury Their Dead by Randall Kenan
The White Mountains by John Christopher
Reading "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy... don't really know what's going on yet, but it has this sort of postapocalyptic feel, which is exciting
If you havent already you should read the MaddAddam trilogy by Margaret Atwood.
I love this series. It is end of the world, dystopian, etc...
The second novel in the series, The Year of the Flood, is the best imo.
Also, if you cry when reading books, you will definitely cry when reading this series.
In other news I am currently reading a book entitled Boy, Snow, Bird. I am on page 121 and so far it is pretty good. The character development is really starting to come along. I love the guarded nature of the main character. In many ways she reminds me of myself.
Everything interests me but nothing holds me.
I did not like this book in the least when I read it back in high school. My best friend was -obsessed- with it and insisted I read it as we are, or were, both really big into reading. From the get go I could tell it would leave me unimpressed. I agree entirely with your comments on the writing style. It all seems incredibly forced. I know a bunch of other people who have read the book and like it, a few even call it their favourite. You are the first person I have come across who does not love the book.
Also, if you like the suspense that is happening in Go Ask Alice you should try reading Swamplandia. I had had the book for years (I have this big problem with buying books...) and finally picked it up and started reading it when I saw the title on my current reading list. I finished it about a week ago. You think that you know how the story is going to go and the plot is going to develop and there is so much suspense and you start doubting whether or not the plot is going to go in that way, etc... etc... the way that the author drew out the suspense was wonderful. The book is not especially dramatic which also impresses me in regards to the author actually being able to build the suspense. Once you start this book and get about half-way through you do not want to put the book down.
I also really love the message that Swamplandia gives and the perspective that the story is told through. The character development was awesome and I clearly cannot sing enough praise so I am just going to end this recommendation now and stop the gushing and verbosity.
If you decide to read it, let me know what you think of it!!
Everything interests me but nothing holds me.
finished reading operators and things by barbara obrien last night. it was really excellent. i highly recommend it to pretty much anybody here who is interested in psychology or the unconscious.
its a memoir by a woman with schizophrenia who experienced a breakdown in which she traveled the country guided by the voices in her head. she later recovered by herself, enough to lucidly describe what she went through. in some ways it reads like a mystery or sci-fi kind of book because of the drama and intrigue created by the "characters" she describes. so its compelling just for that.
the most interesting thing to me was that her illness seemed to grant her more insight into the workings of the mind than a healthy person could have. because there was a blurring in the line between her conscious and unconscious and she had more direct access to the workings beneath the surface. there was a lot of symbolism in what she heard and saw that could be translated into metaphors about how the brain works. like the voices that talked to her were capable of "removing the latticework" in her head, which was described as a layer underneath the skull containing built-in habit patterns. her conscious mind was a "sandy beach" and the unconscious was "waves crashing on the surface." she was immersed into an awareness of these things and describes them as they actually "existed." i felt like i got a first-hand account of what the mysteries of the mind really contain. in a way that i could never get from only reading theoretical material.
finished the 2nd book of the series, and ehh... it was an engaging read, but it never did get posthuman really, just some kids who communicate with glowing color changing freckles and mind fuck scent glands. i was dissappointed (but still enjoyed it, i guess)
Last edited by bg; 09-08-2014 at 08:26 AM.
starting this...
City at the End of Time
... finishing this (for the 2nd time after some damn good 10 years) : Kate Chopin, The Awakening.
The Manuscript Found in Saragossa...probably in my top three fave publications for 1815 so far
i finished bukowksi's ham on rye this morning. i hesitated to read it because ive enjoyed his poetry and the more i learn about his personal life the more i think he's a dick, which ruins it a little. he's still a dick, but one with a little more color and nuance now, lol. he talks about growing up around the great depression and wwii and he had a pretty shitty childhood and was under a tremendous amount of pressure to be strong and macho. i felt for him a lot when he talked about being covered in hideous boils as a teenager. he talks about promoting nazi ideology in college because.... it amused him, even though he didn't agree... ? and i wondered if maybe there was a little whitewashing there but i guess some people get their kicks in odd ways.
im in the middle of kurt cobains journals. i saw it on a shelf at a bookstore years ago and it seemed disrespectful to me but for some reason i didnt feel bad about buying it when i came across it again a few weeks ago. maybe because of the time that has passed. some of it is uninteresting to me like the grocery list kind of stuff but other parts suck me in, especially when he's talking about himself or declaring rules about the world. i have been reminded of @rat1 a lot while reading it. he drew some comics that are pretty good. some of the stuff is crossed out and you can still see the words underneath and you wonder why he decided against it.
i just started sagan's demon haunted world but i'm not far enough in to say anything about it.
downloaded all the hunter s thompson stuff... sick of scifi for a bit, and i've never actually read his writting.
Last edited by bg; 09-24-2014 at 01:02 AM.
finished the demon haunted world but i don't know what to say about it. the biggest thing i took from it was the importance of free thought to democracy and a free life. i'm not really sure why taking an oppositional stance to belief is necessary (but i think sagan wouldnt consider himself oppositional...though his attitude seemed patronizing..."these idiots can be forgiven, they are just human, but if they really knew better they would be skeptics...") he does make a really good case for putting money and efforts into science that isn't directed specifically into developing weapons and technology.
next on the list is hesse's peter camenzind.
Bukowski is overrated, I think a part of him is that he makes other folks feel a bit better about being less messed up vs Bukowski. Now that James Franco is making a movie about this book, may the long overdue transmission of his works into hipster obscurity and "So over it" commence.
1Q84 is probably Murakami's worst book and best book. It's impossibly pretentious and formulaic yet it is his most sincere and heart-wrought. It is his most romantic book, perhaps most autobiographical and likely most hopeful. It's the simplest of story done well.
I feel most reviews of this book bugger it up with the typical "trend" and "whore" of literary criticism and literary pretense, yet the story is simple, but clothed in the most colorful of outfits. The story itself is very pretentious, crafted to appeal, yet from my reading of it I felt it was an angry pretense, "This is what you want... This is what you will get... May you choke on it..."
I think this latent angry pretense drives the story at a pace that otherwise would have been meandering and turgid, it gave it energy and desperation which are emotions that shakes pretense's britches.
I highly recommend reading this book to the end. It is the simplest possible story.
peter camenzind was good. similar sort of themes to other herman hesse books ive read but it didn't have as strong an impact. still impressive.
as i lay dying had some funny, ironic moments but for the most part was kind of boring and confusing. my favorite character was the young boy. my mom is a fish
just finished girl with the dragon tattoo. i liked it. i sort of want to watch the movie now but just looking at the actors i know it won't be the same as it was in my head. it was simple...it didn't make me think about anything except the plot itself. but engrossing. actually, now that i think about it, one thing it got me thinking about was how the protaganists used unethical means to bring down bad people. but it was the only way they could have done it. and somehow it was ok? Fi, i think. i suppose the star was lisbeth salander, but i wasn't all that impressed with her. i really liked blomvkist.
just started burroughs last words. so far, i go between reading the same lines over and over and not being able to make much of them and being struck by how his way of writing is similar to mine when i don't try to make my thoughts cohesive (not flattering myself; i mean style, not quality). makes me wish i could have met him. so far...drugs and cats. drugs and cats <3
Today I'm reading The Inferiority Complex and Paranoia Readdressed: a Study with the Implicit Association Test by Moritz and von Collani (2006). It's about couvert self-esteem vs. explicit self-esteem. I don't really recommend it unless you're after something dry and drastic.
Faust Part 1 by Goethe
ἀταραξία
I'm deep in book debt. Soon I'll be having nightmares of all the books I haven't finished, chasing me and trying to incorporate me into their pages. I'm currently reading The Talisman, but still want to finish 1Q84. I also just bought two new books today with a gift card: The Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft and The Greek Myths, by Robin Waterfield.
i just need a few days of solitude to catch up. The trouble is getting it.
The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker (finally after all these years of hearing/reading about it)
Toilet/Light reading material.. A Dictionary of Symbols (so much fun) and Starting Strength (great for technique and Rippetoe is a funny man)
ἀταραξία
Book "What the heart wants"
In search of true happiness our mind through logic and intellectual reasoning calculates a passage and steers us through the rocky reefs of our existence. The direction it sets however completely disregards and is often at odds with the internal and infallible compass which is our heart.
Writer: George Czaus
fb2: https://docs.google.com/uc?export=do...l9OVzBuOFpjNkE
epub: https://docs.google.com/uc?export=do...TZ5TUhZWS0yMTQ
mobi: https://docs.google.com/uc?export=do...ThFbTBOTnE3Q1U
pdf: https://docs.google.com/uc?export=do...y0zNWxMTGY5VW8
doc: https://docs.google.com/uc?export=do...0NkQ2lZcmZUcnc
Collected works of Yeats.
ἀταραξία
Vladymir Nabokov
Despair
I just finished 2 A.M. at the Cat's Pajamas by Marie-Helene Bertino.
It was cute.
The People Inside by Ray Fawkes - my first graphic novel. I liked it.
I love the themes that Fawkes went with. I also love the whole concept
and the stories he chose to share and tell and relate. It vaguely reminds
me of The Rules of Attraction meets Love Actually in graphic novel format.
Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Murakami. I am a big
Murakami fan. This is one of my favourite novels by him. If you havent
read this one yet and you like his work I definitely suggest it. A lot lighter than
1Q84 but just as fascinating. I just love the concepts and worlds he creates
oh so much and how he plays on the human condition and how it evolves in his
novels.
Everything interests me but nothing holds me.
So right now I'm reading City of Thieves by David Benioff ... some sort of rewriting of the classic Bildungsroman in a Russian WW2 context - Leningrad 1941, when there was almost no food to be found and ppl ate pigeons and their pets.
On the New Year's Eve night onion covered in drops of oil plus bread was a feast. A group of young folks see a German parachutist falling from the sky. He was dead and they are caught looting. And thus Mr. Lev Beniov, the protagonist, ends up in prison for one night, then in a Russian colonel's mansion. The famine was so harsh, that eggs were luxury. So the young dude and a companion are sent on a journey to get the holy Grail for the wedding of the colonel's daughter -- aka to find and steal a dozen eggs. Otherwise the woman would have been damned to have a wedding with no cake.
So far I love the ironic take on the coming-of-age story and the tragic-comic combo.
I was reading Diary of a Mad Old Man, which is about this elderly japanese couple who each keep diaries of their increasingly bizarre sexual adventures with each other, which they each suspect / hope the other to be reading.
For example, the husband keeps drugging the wife and fucking her in her sleep, which she enjoys a lot, but he is never quite sure if she is actually asleep or just pretending. He also enlists a friend to help take nude photos of her while she is drugged, she's extremely upset when she finds them but you feel from her diary she actually is a little turned on.
It sounds terrible but it's actually kind of sweet.
Then I had to return the book to the library and never finished.
recently finished derrida's The Gift of Death and Literature in Secret. both are pretty much existential musts that deal mainly with the transposition of god throughout several schools of thought, and how a dialectic is created that sustains an inner connection to the divine, which is what ultimately renders death both as something inwardly apprehended and given from without, something I found rather resonant. now I'm reading zizek's Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism, which is pretty cool... his logic is pretty uniquely divergent for someone who's never tripped acid.
Last edited by strrrng; 02-11-2015 at 07:34 PM.
4w3-5w6-8w7
Just finished
The image is bigger than life, lol.
A while ago I started reading a book on How to Look Logical Using Lubricants and Penis Extensions
A young writer on his way to maturity (I think he's 34 or so if I recall his short bio correctly) suggests a revolutionary take on Jungian typology. The style is not at all scientific though ...more like a bunch of essays between freethinking and stream-of-consciousness. There's an undercurrent of drama running through it that made my day earlier this week. Only read a few pages (quite long and spasmodic...but they had a weird pulsating quality that made me scan them). Later I got bored...
"I don't want to post on this forum because this is personal and I'm a very private person, but I would like to share this with you here. I've always had an active, vivid imagination as a boy. I lived in my own world to say the least. I was put in art enrichment classes when I was seven because I showed a talent in art. By the time I was in fourth grade I developed a keen interest in science and by junior high I was taking advanced math, science, and art classes. I also loved putting together models, puzzles, taking things apart and putting them back together. As an adult, I've done mechanical work on my cars, remodeled parts of my house."
"I'm trying to tell you. I use Fi in a neurotic fashion. This is something that is immediately relevant to our discussion. The more someone says that I am Fi dominant, the more I resist being recognized for Fi being a strength, which is classic Role. It is something I don't want to be recognized for. My ego likes solving problems and being recognized for my ability to do so. The excess personal and emotional demands make me more neurotic. As long as they aren't excessive, I'm alright."
"I don't really like to talk about my feelings, unlike what I see so many Fi doms doing online, although I certainly have a lot of emotion. Maybe it's because I've gotten well past that adolescent angst. I never talked about my feelings then either, never wanting to burden anyone with them. I didn't have a computer at all until I was in my early twenties and I used to bottle everything inside. I never even liked talking about myself. Now it seems that's all I do. Ever since I've stumbled upon typology. Sometimes, it feels like it's just been a fucking curse."
Wow, you really are Fi. Thanks for demonstrating what actually being Fi entails.
For some reason, I thought that Fi dominants would be the most emotionally mature of all(ethical rationality). All I see online is hyperreactivity and emotional volatility.
"ethical rationality" means being consistent in what you value&like, among other things.
I find it hard to spot any personal affinity for the style and ideas in the book in question. I don't expect you to have a grasp of my (aesthetic or intellectual) preferences ...you probably need more examples to understand. So here they are. You are free to have your own assessment of the book though, if you get to read the whole thing ...why are you making such a fuss.
Good, then why are you reading me though the lens of socionics? I've worked on myself long before I stumbled onto MBTI. The strength of socionics is also its weakness. The fact that people can use all IEs makes for a very muddled theory. How can you tell someone else is using a function and has a preference for that function? As far as I can tell so far, it is entirely subjective. There really isn't a standard, and if anything there exists double standards with regards with some types over other types. The only person who knows their preference is the person being typed, so don't tell me what my preferences are. You have no clue. (....)
My "weak" logic? I don't even know what that means. It sounds denigrating though. I argue with doctors and nurses all of the time if there is something I don't want to do, but mostly if what I don't want to do doesn't make sense. I use subjective logic. (...)
I went into medical technology so I could have income to pay off my student loans. I didn't really know that I would have to deal with a chaotic schedule for so long and that I would be dealing with difficult people directly when I signed up. I really just wanted to look at cells under a microscope and live a simple life, giving myself lots of free time to pursue my various interests. At first I wanted to be a doctor, but it wasn't something that I was driven to be. My grades sucked too. I loved taking college classes for the sake of learning and not for my GPA. I've always just wanted to learn and know things. Because my grades were low, the options for grad school were limited, and I would've preferred going to research, but the pay was really low, which wouldn't have helped my loan payments any. I was quite interested in stem cell research, but I was also very interested in immunological research.
In my current job, I am supervisor of the chemistry department, so I oversee calibrations, quality control, inventory, maintenance, correlations, and training. I am also a generalist, so I work in hematology, blood bank, and urinalysis. One of my stressors at work is having to draw blood, which I would rather not do. I would much rather focus on impersonal side of the job. But, sometimes I do like to volunteer to draw blood. I just don't like having to be forced to do it. One of my goals is to get out my current lab and specialize in either cytogenetics or flow cytometry. That way I can focus on mastering a specialty that I find interesting and not have direct patient contact or work odd hours that place great stress on my family and myself. That is a few years down the road though.
Last edited by Amber; 04-03-2015 at 09:03 PM.
I received an email that fans were disappointed after they learned their book was edited. One replied by stating that it "was if the words were cherry picked to skew the reader in a biased way." So, by popular request, I released its unedited version as quickly as possible. Be warned, it actually is quite boring.
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