Thread: What are you reading?

I started to read my third book in German this time I'm giving a chance to Bram Stoker's Dracula, all in the name of language... Dean Koontz was fun to read and to have a better perspective about the use of the pronouns 'Sie' (felt a little bit uncomfortable because of I use its equivalent in Spanish to talk with people very distant in age) 'Du' and the simple past form.

OMGoodness!

I read a pre-quel to "The Bohr Maker" of Linda Nagata's (see last page) at the moment, which was the first book of her nanotechnology trilogy. It's called "Tech Haven" and I'm not quite sure yet, what this will come to mean, but I expected the title to rather be more mundane, than I do now. I just couldn't believe my eyes at 27% in - it's about dreaming!! She puts nice little interspersions like the below between chapters. It follows one featuring a quite special dream and is followed by "What is a dream?" I couldn't wait to post - but now I can't wait to read on where the remaining 74% will be going. As a prequel - it might explain how people came to nano-engineer "atriums" into their brains, where they can be visited by proxies called "ghosts", which are sentient entities on the basis of code, I believe, and they are supposed to come back and re-integrate into the main persona and transmit the experience gained from interacting in the other person's virtual reality, generated by this personal atrium. That's a main motive in "The Bohr Maker" - got to go on reading now!

LA.FLOW---LIFESTYLES "Multiple-Choice Quiz"

Question 1: What is a dream?

a: the mind at play

b: a mental exercise aimed at honing the brain's efficiency in processing sensory information

c: the world's oldest form of virtual reality

d: all of the above

This is beautifully put - she's going to be one of my favourite authors it looks like. I also read "Limit Of Vision" and really liked it - but I need to read on now!

Got the Hofstadter "Surfaces and Essences", but didn't start yet...

About a quarter of the way through Dresden. It's a really great series. I am also catching up on a bunch of bundles I hope to publish in.

I've just finished "Silber- Das erste Buch der Träume" (in english: Silver - The first book of dreams) by Kerstin Gier. It is a mystery book but also about typical teenager thoughts. The dreams are like shared dreams. They inspire me.Now I'm reading the second book of the trilogy

A Brief History of Cultural Marxism and Political Correctness pt 2 by Jefrey D. Breshears (PDF)

Extremely revealing - this lays out things that I had suspected for some time but had been unable to find affirmation of until I suddenly thought "How about a web search for History of Cultural Marxism??!!" Political Correctness, Postmodernism, Muticulturalism - these are all Cultural Marxism - designed by the Frankfurt School and brought to America because the very freedom they were seeking to destroy allowed them to spread their radical Left-wing propaganda. And this explains exactly how their theories were used to co-opt both feminism and the civil rights movement in the 60's, as well as how they've undermined art, popular music and mass media. Extremely eye-opening.

EDIT:

Didn't notice that was part 2. Here's part 1.

I started the Hofstadter - but while I had really quite some major grey cell strain to understand Gödel Escher Bach long time back, all the math esp., even while I really like math - this one is a bit slow-going. The first third at least is very easily followable, also makes a lot of sense - but I'm waiting for it getting a bit more fascinating. As written above "Surfaces and Essences" is about how we think - about analogies and categorisation and in a novel way.

In the meantime I read "The Anvil of the World" by Kage Baker, and I can really recommend it. Fantasy - a nice and very entertaining read - a good mood instigator!

What I'm at now is "Lock In" by John Scalzi and it's great - it really is. I would recommend to read the prequel, see above first.
A scenario, which makes it credible for people implanting artificial neural nets into their brains - people who suffer lock in after a virus infection and in the multiple millions.
They have their "liminal spaces" - a personal virtual reality, in which they can be visited by others with a net, an agora - like a forum but also virtual reality - and they have androids, which they steer by these nets - and - they can integrate, meaning ride the body of another person, who also had the disease, but came out of it only with "modified" brains without lock in, they also have these nets.
A lot about consciousness of course - but it's a crime thriller as plot line.
Great book!

Crime and Punishment

A lot of Thomas Sowell books lately. He's an economist and is well versed in politics and government and seems to be a classical liberal. The thing I really dig is that he does real research and examines political policies in terms of what actually happened when they were instituted. This is something today's liberals refuse to do, even though there are mountains of evidence showing just how poorly their interventionist policies have fared each time they've been tried.

Black Rednecks and White Liberals - corrects the myriad fallacies about slavery and race relations in the US.

Dismantling America - He always plays fair - Republicans are also partly to blame for the sorry state America is in these days.

A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles - Lays out the 2 very different basic world views that have always opposed each other politically and in every other avenue of human discourse, which almost but don't quite align with today's liberal and conservative parties. Extremely enlightening - no wonder it's so hard for liberals and non-liberals to communicate effectively! Some of the most important words and concepts in human understanding actually have entirely different meanings and connotations depending on which side of the divide you're on. This one is a pretty tough slog - very complex sentences unlike most of his books. I find it taxing to read but extremely rewarding.

The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy - Followup to ^ with lots of real-world examples of the essential failure of liberal intellectuals to understand reality and demonstrating their tendency to ignore facts and evidence and instead bask in utopian visions and a false sense of moral superiority. It isn't that he just hates liberals, he's actually very balanced and in fact was a liberal for many years. But being a realist he couldn't continue to ignore certain facts about liberals and their policies. Also explains that there's absolutely no risk involved for intellectuals whose ideas fail - nobody grades them on success or failure, they're just allowed to keep being intellectuals regardless.

Economic Facts and Fallacies - An eminently readable book breaking down the essentials of economics so anyone can understand them.

The subject matter is heavy, the writing style is hilariously potent. H. Rap Brown was a civil rights activist - chairman of the SNCC and (for a time) a high ranking member of the Black Panther Party. The man is currently spending life in prison for allegedly shooting a man... the very same man who claims that the authorities pressured him to incriminate Brown even though he wan't anywhere near the scene when he was shot.

Some footage:

Outliers: The Story of Success

I'm most of the way through Otherland Vol 1 by Tad Williams and am really liking it.
I also just started reading On Such a Full Sea by Chang Rae-Lee. It is good so far, with a mysterious air. Sometimes the author annoys me by launching into extended metaphors where they don't add any value.

Red Rising by Pierce Brown
A friend sent it to me in the mail for my birthday, otherwise I may have never picked it up. I'm really enjoying it though, I'm not even finished and I already bought the second book.

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
Probably one of my favorite books. I would sometimes just pick it up and read a few pages when I'm bored or when I'm cooking etc

Originally Posted by Amurehna

Red Rising by Pierce Brown
A friend sent it to me in the mail for my birthday, otherwise I may have never picked it up. I'm really enjoying it though, I'm not even finished and I already bought the second book.

I bought that after reading an article on it. Sounds like a decent read.

I'm nerding it up most nerdantly with my first ever Star Trek novel It's the first book of the Dominion War series, covering the role of Picard's crew in the war. I've been going back and watching random episodes of Voyager and TNG over the last couple months, and when I finished up my re-read of the Mistborn trilogy I decided to dip into the pile of Trek books on my hard drive. It's obviously not high literature, but the characters and themes are consistent with the TV series (moreso than any of the TNG movies, actually), so it's basically like having extra episodes of TNG with an infinite effects budget

I've also been listening half-heartedly to The Life of Pi--I think I got it for a dollar or two from Audible at some point. My impressions so far are not positive. It seems like an exercise in symbolishness (the literary equivalent of truthiness), trying hard to give the impression of being meaningful without actually having content. But it is useful as a sleep aid.

I read Oryx and Crake a bit ago, too, and that was quite good.

Currently I'm back in classic sci-fi land reading Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. Quite good thus far, though a bit more disjointed than I'm used to (Of course I expected as much given the time scale of the story.) After I finish these books (likely soon as I read frequently) I'll be starting The Road by Cormac McCarthy, a post-apocalyptic story recommended to me by a relative.

I just finished the Malazan Book of the Fallen series by Steven Erickson not half an hour ago, and I have to say it is by far the greatest work of literature I have ever seen. No joke. Its not for everyone but if you read through it you will understand. I don't know what to do now lol, I'm torn between the satisfaction of finishing and the disappointment that I have finished, so no new books lol. Ah well, he has other books in the same universe I will check out.

Finishing up Penpal which was a noSleep story, Blindsight, and Black Mercury this weekend.

Originally Posted by BlairBros

I just finished the Malazan Book of the Fallen series by Steven Erickson not half an hour ago, and I have to say it is by far the greatest work of literature I have ever seen. No joke. Its not for everyone but if you read through it you will understand. I don't know what to do now lol, I'm torn between the satisfaction of finishing and the disappointment that I have finished, so no new books lol. Ah well, he has other books in the same universe I will check out.

It's been a while since I had that feeling. Probably the most satisfying thing I've read in the last year was book two of the Stormlight Archives, but I won't be finishing that series for a couple decades, if ever. Malazan is on my radar and I even started to start it (yeah ) once or twice, but switched to something else instead.

I finished up Maplecroft about a week ago and it was good--definitely worthwhile if you enjoy Lovecraftian horror told with a bit of ironic detachment and dark humor. Now I'm reading Peter Clines' second Ex book, Ex Patriots. They're page-turners with compelling (if blatantly derivative) characters. The premise of the series is that superheroes started appearing a year or two before the zombie apocalypse (or zombocalypse, as Clines would have it). When the shit hits the fan in LA, they start a survivors' compound at Paramount Studios. It sounds like an obvious attempt to cash in on several trends at once, but the characters, pacing and action are all well done.

I also read Firefight not too long ago, Sanderson's second full superhero book. Read back-to-back with Ex Heroes (the first Ex book), the two couldn't be more different. I wasn't much impressed with Steelheart, but Firefight left me excited for more hero books from Sanderson. I'd rather have more Stormlight, but whatever keeps the man happy and writing.

I just finished "Daemon Hall"

I forgot who it was by since I threw out the cover. Now it's just a coverless black book. XD
And for some reason is doesn't say the author on the title page inside the book. -_-

Originally Posted by MeannCat

I just finished "Daemon Hall"

I forgot who it was by since I threw out the cover. Now it's just a coverless black book. XD
And for some reason is doesn't say the author on the title page inside the book. -_-

It's by Andrew Nance.

On-topic: I just finished reading A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby, and now I'm reading Pitch Fever, also by him. As a ManU fan.. it's funny. Also very insightful.

I finally found myself in the mood for the next Recluce book, The Order War. A lot of Modesitt's books are tedious in the first act, most satisfying in the second, and just good enough in the third, but this one actually had a pretty good payoff. I'm in for at least two more Recluce novels, but I tend to need a breather between Modesitt books.

Currently, I'm listening to the audiobook of The Bees, which is damn good. Think Watership Down, but with bees. I'm also reading Joe Hill's license plate book (N01fS-niner-something). He writes a lot like his dad, which is not a bad thing. Locke & Key was brilliant, and I've never read any of his non-graphic novels before.

Speaking of comics, I'm also a few books into Garth Ennis' The Boys, and checking out the new Kevin Eastman TMNT books, and a Lost-but-with-high-shoolers-and-possibly-a-point book called The Woods. I signed up for a Scribd 3-month trial after they started carrying comics, and while the Android app is rather crap, the selection is quite good.

Currently it's Carl Jung - Man and his Symbols and Nisargadatta Maharaj - I Am That.
Also very like Kurt Vonnegut.

The Bees and N0S4A2 were both quite good. I'm currently reading The Martian, which is hard to put down. Having a piece of fairly hard science fiction be such a runaway bestseller restores my faith in humanity a bit. I'm also listening to the Southern Reach trilogy on audio. It's very Lost-ish, including that reviews suggest the ending doesn't resolve much of anything.