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Just finished:

Under the Banner of Heaven by John Krakauer. It's an exploration of Fundamentalist Mormons, the history of the Mormon church, and the murder of a woman and baby. Quite an interesting read.

Currently reading:

King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hoschild. It's a history of the colonization and exploitation of the Congo by the titular king and his cohorts. Only about 20% in.

Recently:

Spillover: Animal Infection s and the Next Human Pandemic by David Quammen

Dreamland: The True Take of America's Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones

Also slowly working on The Gormenghast Trilogy, but I may have bit off more than I wanted. I feel like I enjoy historical and non-fiction books much more these days. Most of the fiction books I've attempted lately have failed to hold my interest.

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49 minutes ago, navybsn said:

Just finished:

Under the Banner of Heaven by John Krakauer. It's an exploration of Fundamentalist Mormons, the history of the Mormon church, and the murder of a woman and baby. Quite an interesting read.

 

Read that a while back. Krakauer knows how to captivate with relatively well known topics. I am fascinated by cults and religion from a purely economic standpoint. Basically you can come up with an idea, essentially requiring no capital investment, and people are willing to exchange everything they own up to and including their actual lives for it. Market forces dictate that there will always be psychopaths and a bunch of moronic followers. Religion and cults makes the drug trade look pretty tame as far as risk, input and return on investment. 

So that reminds me guys, there's going to be a comet. Its really a UFO that will take us to heaven. I only ask you give me all of your money and property, and then I am going to have you drink cyanide to hitch a ride. Sound good? Make the check payable to Hugarino and I'll reserve your seat. Thanks!

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Alright, I'm in you crazy bastard as long as you promise there will be goats on the UFO.

I had no previous experience with Krakauer, but I've since added Into Thin Air to my list. I really dig his style.

Religion in general and especially cults fascinate me too. I just can't see how people can put their heads in a place where any of it makes sense. I've known plenty of very religious people in my time, many of them Mormon. They seem like very reasonable intelligent people. Drill in a bit to what they believe with little actual thought and the perspective changes drastically. Hard to take anyone serious that can't think their way out of an easily opened cage.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 4/27/2021 at 8:43 AM, navybsn said:

Just finished:

Under the Banner of Heaven by John Krakauer. It's an exploration of Fundamentalist Mormons, the history of the Mormon church, and the murder of a woman and baby. Quite an interesting read.

Currently reading:

King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hoschild. It's a history of the colonization and exploitation of the Congo by the titular king and his cohorts. Only about 20% in.

Recently:

Spillover: Animal Infection s and the Next Human Pandemic by David Quammen

Dreamland: The True Take of America's Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones

Also slowly working use massage office chair The Gormenghast Trilogy, but I may have bit off more than I wanted. I feel like I enjoy historical and non-fiction books much more these days. Most of the fiction books I've attempted lately have failed to hold my interest.

Recently with a friend at work we discussed the question of which books are better to read - professional or fiction. We came to the conclusion that at a certain period of life every book is good, so I started reading Master and Margarita Bulgakov again, and the next one will be Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

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I just finished Neal Stephenson's Fall (or, Dodge in Hell). I loosely sort of knew it would be a follow-up to Reamde. I didn't realize it would wrap up pretty much everything from Cryptonomicon and the Baroque Cycle books too. I liked Reamde but I didn't feel as much of an attachment to the characters as I did with the other books, and I was surprised to see them become the vessel for the big conclusion. It was great; a sprawling epic with a lot of big ideas, different people having all kinds of different experiences in weird surroundings, converging and overlapping plot lines written in different narrative styles, funny, dark, sad, engaging. Classic Neal Stephenson. I was happy to read it, happy to see something on this scale come together again after his last few self-contained books. But I also didn't realize it would be the end when I started it. I've re-read most of his books a few times over the years, and now I feel like I just had to say goodbye to some old friends. Enoch Root gave a straight answer to a simple question. Still processing.

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It has taken me over two years (probably nearer to three) but I finally finished off Orlando Figes' "The Russian Revolution - A People's Tragedy".  Hard to take it all in after such a lengthy time of consumption but it is the only book I have read that shows the catastrophe of Bolshevism in explicit enough detail to truly show its horrific impact on the Russian people.  The upshot being of course that what they ended up with under Lenin, Stalin etc wasn't all that different to the Tsarist regime.

I have read a ton of stuff already on Lenin and co as individual leaders, characters, personalities so it was fitting to read the flip side of the coin and not have the author feel like they were admiring these frankly flawed individuals.

Turn of subject for the next read - Helen A. Guerber "Tales of Norse Mythology"

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  • 2 weeks later...

Been reading Jed McKenna. Terrible new age fiction, but nihilist fiction that shits on everything. I've been mainly fascinated with Alan Watts for many years but that left gaps. Now understanding feels complete. Fuck inner peace, what I have inside now is total war. I was not born, I do not have parents, I am not human and I don't live on planet earth. Question the validity of everything. 

Perhaps there are better books on nihilism around that I could have read, but I never knew which ones and have pretty much read fuck all books over the past 10 years. 

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 5/22/2021 at 5:06 PM, MacabreEternal said:

It has taken me over two years (probably nearer to three) but I finally finished off Orlando Figes' "The Russian Revolution - A People's Tragedy".  Hard to take it all in after such a lengthy time of consumption but it is the only book I have read that shows the catastrophe of Bolshevism in explicit enough detail to truly show its horrific impact on the Russian people.  The upshot being of course that what they ended up with under Lenin, Stalin etc wasn't all that different to the Tsarist regime.

I have read a ton of stuff already on Lenin and co as individual leaders, characters, personalities so it was fitting to read the flip side of the coin and not have the author feel like they were admiring these frankly flawed individuals.

Turn of subject for the next read - Helen A. Guerber "Tales of Norse Mythology"

macabre eternal sir, that book sounds interesting,maybe a future book for me to read, well done for finishing it,

the following might interest you assuming you have not read it. im half way through life and fate by vasily grossman, relative off lloyd who knows😁 its bit like war and peace with world war two setting, its writer was a jew who was on front line as journalist for there red star paper and very popular at time as he wrote very patriotic articles,he was reporteding at all big events of the war from41 onwards, in his notebook he was writing the less good stuff that could get him killed if it was published, years later he wrote this book and he doesn't hold back with his views re nazis and russians re the war which makes it such a interesting read, these views got him in trouble with russian authorities when he attempted to get it published, it was seized by the kgb but he had secret copies of the book which were eventually smuggled out of the country,

  i really should make an effort to finnish it as its very interesting read. 

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I've been reading the Murderbot Diaries series by Martha Wells. A friend loaned me the first four novellas. I think the first one won Hugo and Nebula awards for novella, so it's well thought of. I enjoyed them as a light summer time read. The protagonist is "murderbot" - a sort of human-cyborg construct with, basically, god like powers to interact with it's environment, and it likes to watch soap operas. So that's kind of hard to relate to. But when the books are doing this sorta detective story thing, it's not bad.

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  • 5 weeks later...
5 hours ago, blaaacdoommmmfan said:

yeah its more punchy than the films, the films were a bit long, should have been two imo. have you read silmarillion. or what evers its called😁

The films could have been one, without all the extra stuff they crammed in. I like them ok if I turn off my brain and just watch them as a Tolkien-related fantasy adventure mishmash. I wouldn't introduce someone to The Actual Hobbit through them.

I recently reread Reamde, just to see if there was anything I missed that connected it to the Neal Stephenson Extended Universe, but I didn't pick up on anything... weird. Also a book called The Dragons Of Babel by Michael Swanwick, which was fun. Poking at fantasy novel tropes throughout. I wasn't sure exactly what it was pointing at until the end made me laugh out loud. Good times.

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Wow, I was dismayed to read just now that Roberto Calasso died last week. The English translation of his The Marriage Of Cadmus And Harmony was really important to me when I was younger. An extremely well-informed examination and retelling of Greek myth, the kind of book that made me feel smarter and more knowledgeable while I was reading it. The other book of his that I read was Ka, which was the same sort of examination of Indian myth. Also excellent. I'm feeling the need to revisit them now.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 8/2/2021 at 4:42 AM, FatherAlabaster said:

The films could have been one, without all the extra stuff they crammed in. I like them ok if I turn off my brain and just watch them as a Tolkien-related fantasy adventure mishmash. I wouldn't introduce someone to The Actual Hobbit through them.

I recently reread Reamde, just to see if there was anything I missed that connected it to the Neal Stephenson Extended Universe, but I didn't pick up on anything... weird. Also a book called The Dragons Of Babel by Michael Swanwick, which was fun. Poking at fantasy novel tropes throughout. I wasn't sure exactly what it was pointing at until the end made me laugh out loud. Good times.

im with you re the Hobbit films they are better with your brain switched off, think thats what you were saying, imo i still think theyd have made a good duo of films.  the book is better imo

glad you liked dragons of babel by Michael swanwick.

if you like fantasy comedy have you read any terry Pratchett's discworld books. there laugh out loud imo

 

On 8/2/2021 at 9:16 PM, FatherAlabaster said:

Wow, I was dismayed to read just now that Roberto Calasso died last week. The English translation of his The Marriage Of Cadmus And Harmony was really important to me when I was younger. An extremely well-informed examination and retelling of Greek myth, the kind of book that made me feel smarter and more knowledgeable while I was reading it. The other book of his that I read was Ka, which was the same sort of examination of Indian myth. Also excellent. I'm feeling the need to revisit them now.

books noted down. christmas or birthday presents for certain family members 👏👏👍

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reading a book will probably be on my list of things I'm laziest to do! but a few months ago I got a job to paint the walls of the city library in my city, during break I started to look at some books that were around me! there's a book titled "Orang-orang Biasa" by Andrea Hirata! after seeing the cover, I don't know I'm interested in reading it.. since then I have started to be a little interested in reading other books!

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  • 1 month later...

I'm reading Clive Barker's Abarat. I was asked a few months back if my bookshelves had anything suitable for teeangers, it's a tough ask given most of the books there are either horror, crime or bios, but then I remembered both Stephen King and Clive Barker wrote books for their kids years go. King's isn't a bad story although it's length is about the only thing that would stop it being suitable for younger kids. But Barker's Abarat is a brilliant 3 book series written for his daughter, who was at the time 9 years old, but it's more than just a kids book. It's proof a good author can write horror for both kids and adults.

 

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On 7/3/2021 at 11:14 AM, MacabreEternal said:

Birthday haul threw up Classical Antiquity in Heavy Metal Music from a selection of contributors/editors who aim to demonstrate how the ancient Greek and Roman world is represented in heavy metal.  Guessing Ex Deo will be here somewhere then? 

I finished this.  A bit heavy going in places.  Took me a while to get my head around the concept of "Classical reception" before I could fully explore the more contemporary issues around perceived representations of nationalism and globalisation (for example).  Not convinced it was all that well fleshed out in terms of evidence but the section on Nile was pretty interesting.

Back to Tales of Norse Mythology now.

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