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What are you reading these days?
What are you reading currently? Fiction or non-fiction or poetry, any genre, any language! Tell us what you're reading, and talk about it a bit.
What are you reading currently? Fiction or non-fiction or poetry, any genre, any language! Tell us what you're reading, and talk about it a bit.
Finishing up the Dispossessed for Tildes book club
I started Song of Achilles and Beloved by Toni Morrison
I'm about a quarter of the way through The Stand by Stephen King, both listening to the audiobook during work and reading the paperback whenever I have a moment and I cannot put it down. I don't think I've read much King aside from Night Shift but I can tell that's about to change.
I am surprised no one recommended this to me during covid, or maybe they did and I just wrote it off. Either way I'm glad I'm finally reading it. I feel like I'm playing catch up reading books I should have been reading all these years.
This is a great book! Enjoy! Trashy is a treasure.
Thank you! I believe I was introduced to him today, and I got good vibes. All the characters so far have been so interesting. I was worried I wouldn't be able to keep up with all of them but I'm doing so just fine.
It's not my usual kind of book but this is book number 14 for me this year which is about 12 more than I read last year so I'm just ingesting everything I can at this point trying to stay off my phone.
I always thought of King as Pet Sematary and other 'scary' books, but in reality, most of his books are nothing like that.
I've only read a handful of his books, but The Shining, 11.22.63, End of Watch, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, and Cujo are all great without that horror aspect I thought all of his books had.
I didn't finish The Stand. I was out-pandemic'd at the time. :)
It's a slog, but very captivating. As soon as I start to get bored something interesting happens. I'm barreling through it by reading and listening to the audiobook at the same time. It's first time I've ever done something like that, although kind of necessary for me at least with a book this long.
I'll have to read more of his stuff, I definitely want to read The Shining. A friend recommended The Stand so I fast tracked it on my list. The only other book I have is Night Shift that I got in high school and loved the short horror stories, Children of the Corn was in it, that's the only one I remember. Wild stuff, I really want to read his On Writing book, I've been reading a ton this year and I'm nothing short of inspired to try taking a crack at writing something interesting.
I loved On Writing! Its a quick read, too. I'm going to read Stand by Me next, I think. He should do a crossover,
The Stand by MeThe Body.. hmm.I mean, the shining is a horror novel for sure.
it isn't scary like IT or Pet Sematary, though -- at least for me. :)
I've been trying to finish a re-read of The Dispossessed for the book club, but also have escaped into other books lately.
Over the past few weeks I've listened to:
-Translation State (Anne Leckie): Enjoyable overall, but I felt like the ending could have been maybe a bit more solid. Fantastic narration by Adjoa Andoh, especially her take on various characters' accents.
-Scanner Darkly (PK Dick): I saw the movie many years ago, and figured I'd give the book a whirl. What a trip. The narration style does a great job of pulling the reader into the main character's frame of mind, not just describing it. On top, Paul Giamatti's voicing of the audiobook was a real treat, and brought the characters alive.
-Storm Front (Jim Butcher): Easy and fun. Some of the descriptions are a little cheesy, but it's not meant to be high-brow literature. I've borrowed the second in the series and have been dipping in an out of it.
I'm near the end of A Way of Kings! (Stormlight Archive book 1 from Brandon Sanderson)
I very much like Sanderson as a person and an author, but I didn't always connect with his work. I definitely enjoyed reading, but didn't feel drawn to go back. (Elantris is actually my favourite? pre-stormlight) I was first introduced when he finished Wheel of Time, and honestly felt like he did a great job. He was handed someones lifes work, and handled it so well. It might not have been perfect, but I'm not in the habit of expecting perfection. I'm so happy it was finished, and finished well.
I think "world building" is what I always missed from Sanderson, but he really seems to find some of that in Stormlight Archive. And he's had over 10 years of growth since the release of this book. I'm so invested now!
Finished The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan. It felt like half of it ended up being about debunking aliens (abductions, UFO sightings, crop circles, etc.), which was pretty boring to me. The book used a lot of reason and logic to defend reason and logic, and I feel like that kind of approach won't work on most people. Pointing out flaws in logic and providing supporting data just doesn't work if the other person already has a strong belief about something. There was one section that mentioned having empathy and trying to understand the other person's personal situation that I was initially excited to read, but it was pretty short with limited practical advice. I basically didn't disagree with any of it, but I felt like it had low practical value. I think most people who would bother reading this book are probably already pretty accepting of science, reason, and education, and I didn't feel like it made me any better at advocating for those things or better at using reason to evaluate my own views.
I also just finished Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss. It was interesting enough to get through quickly, and the advice seems actionable without generally seeming to be too manipulative. I think empathy, mirroring, and maybe labeling seem pretty easy and actionable. Some of the rest I think would need some practice. I kind of breezed through the book, so I feel like I'll have to read this one a few more times to really internalize its messages.
Thinking about starting The Dispossessed to catch up to the book club, but I might be a bit late to the party.
I liked the Voss book as well, although I found his constant self promotion tiresome.
Maybe, I’m too harsh with this but I find people who constantly self promote to be both incredibly boring and often not able to live up to their boasting.
As you can imagine, I really struggled with Voss’ book.
Yes, I can relate to that
I would love to hear what you had to say about Dispossessed, but you could also pick up Project Hail Mary. @cfabbro just posted about Dispossessed.
you and @CunningFatalist might like Voss' masterclass. It isn't perfect, but it was nice to see some of the approaches instead of just reading.
A colleague of mine says that she liked it very much. But I'm not that much into negotiation, it was more like a one-time fun read for me
that checks out. learning negotiation has come in handy with work stuff but also minor things like negotiating a mobile plan with loyalty and retention.
I'm reading Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States, by James C. Scott, recommended by @fefellama. So far I'm still on the introduction! Got through a couple of pages this morning but had to look up swidden, corvee and polity. I think once I get my brain in gear I'll enjoy learning about this. Why on earth did people form cities and states when it's so much easier, healthier and more enjoyable to be a hunter/gatherer? Maybe I'll soon know more.
"The Story of B" is a novel that looks at your question, if you're interested. I haven't read anything else by that author (Daniel Quinn) but apparently "why didn't we just keep hunting/gathering" is like, his whole jam lol. B was fun though; a bit more preachy than I was expecting, but made some rather compelling points. Worth recommending given the context.
Cool, thanks for the suggestion.
Glad to help!
If it makes you feel any better, I just had to look up those terms as well, lol. It's been a few years since I last read it but I don't remember it being too dense. Definitely academic but nothing insurmountable.
I ask myself the same thing. The book does a good job of explaining the 'how', but I remember liking how the author suggested that maybe forming civilizations wasn't the best thing for us as a species. Like it's such an integral part of our everyday lives that it would be hard to imagine a world without organized society (other than maybe some post-apocalyptic scenario). But it's pretty interesting to think how things might have turned out different if we hadn't banded together and developed agriculture.
Would human beings be better off? Or would we suffer without the benefits that civilization brings (like technological advancement and reduced scarcity of resources)? Or would life be too different to even compare the two scenarios?
I've been wanting to start reading Kathleen DuVal's Native Nations because it describes a kind of alternative history taking place in the Americas prior to European arrival. Apparently, indigenous Americans rejected urbanization and returned to a hunter/gatherer life style after a long period of centralized government lived in cities.
It's easy to view the life we live as the logical conclusion of an inexorable process, but maybe it's not. Other people in a situation similar to our own found a way back. Maybe we will too.
I started reading The Arrest by Jonathan Lethem. I like it, but I feel like the author is somehow writing himself into the story as the extremely boring main character. For example, the titular event wherein all tech stops working is never explained or explored, but can't tell if this is an event that the author has no desire to spend time on, or if the main character is ignorant and unconcerned about why the world just stopped. Is this intentional artistic license or Journeyman's general unconcern with the world around him? Or is this Lethem's unconcern with the event at the center of his character's lives?
If anyone has answers, please share.
I have recently finished reading "How to" by Randall Munroe, author of XKCD web-comic.
If you like XKCD, you should definitely buy his books. I read through What if and How to so far and both are great. You wouldn't believe how you can approach answering normal question like "How to dig a hole". It is very refreshing read, you won't get bored and actually learn along - for example he very roughly estimates a formula for how far a person can throw an object and this formula corresponds with real life results quite well. The same goes for high jump where he lands a few percent off.
I don't know about other translations but in Czech one the translator went as far as recalculating some of the examples so that Czech readers can reference it to our country/life. And included some notes of his own.
I have looked into the "Thing explainer" as well, which is illustrated book where Randall Munroe explains things by using only 1000 of most used (English) words. This books is once again translated to Czech (amd other languages), which added quite a challenge to translator. You can't use 1000 of most used Czech words as his would need rewriting basically the whole book. But you can't translate it word for word as this would add up to more than 1000 words (after translation). Translator actually used 1000 words to translate the book, all of which are written down in the book as well as a word frm translato on how he approached this problem. I don't need to say that this book is also awesome!
Going back through Philip Goff's book Galileo's Error, which is an accessible introduction to the arguments for panpsychism intended for a wide audience. It's shockingly compelling and has further shaken my confidence in materialism. Before being introduced to Goff's work I dismissed panpsychism as new age bullshit, but the arguments are strong and hard to dismiss.
If I may, what's one closely held supposition that Galileo's Error made you question or reassess and how would that reassessment change the way you view the world or your relationship to it?
Thanks for the question!
This book has caused me to reassess just how radical the physicalist position is (physicalism is the belief that the mind is entirely explained by underlying physics, which doesn't seem controversial on the face of it.) For physicalists like the late Daniel Dennett, physicalism entails the belief that consciousness must be an illusion.
I don't have my mind made up. Ultimately, I take the Hard Problem of Consciousness (which shows the contradictory implications of emergent theories of consciousness) seriously. So if I'm going to remain a materialist, I'll need to bite the bullet on consciousness being illusory, or go with one of the other options (David Chalmers' property dualism, or panpsychism in this book's case), both of which allow me to continue to be a fully pro-science naturalist, though not a materialist necessarily.