The Books/Reading Thread

I was reading Three Faces of Fascism: Action Francaise, Italian Fascism, National Socialism by Ernst Nolte while I was riding the trains around Spain. I stopped reading it though, because I have a hard time getting through serious historical texts. Maybe it's the way historians tend to write, or maybe it's that they're constantly throwing discrete fact after discrete fact at you so that after a while it just becomes an information overload. I guess my thinking style is too abstract to really get a ton of enjoyment out of that sort of stuff.

So I've decided to start rereading this:

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This same thing happened to me when I was reading Hitler's War by David Irving flying to Hawaii last December. The fucking intro alone was a bear to get through, and after the first chapter I had to stop reading it and switched to some George Carlin. There's just so much information loaded into each and every page it was hard for me to concentrate that hard on a plane.
 
Ha! I definitely feel like I'm a slower than average reader. The proportion of my free time that I spend reading is seriously disappointing to me though.
I am a fast reader, which isn't necessarily a boon when reading more complex writings. It's great for burning through the Game of Thrones though. When I read fiction its more like a movie going on in my head, whereas a more technical script can't do that.

I also feel like I do not read enough. Just always so much to be done.
 
Read Jean Shepard's In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash. A few of the short stories in the book provide the basis for the film A Christmas Story. The book reminds me of home since I also grew up in North West Indiana.

Currently reading through Volume 1 of the Autobiography of Mark Twain. It is not a typical biography, it reads like a mixture of journal entries with anecdotes about interesting events, people and stories from Twain's life.
 
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I have a shit load of other history/classics things I'm part way into but these are the ones I'm aiming on finishing relatively soon.



Oh. I'm also about half way through this.

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It's pretty good I guess. And I love science fiction, both hard and soft (tihihihi), but I kinda lost all impetus, and it's not really the kinda book I can easily carry around for reading on public transport and shit so yeah. Might just give up on it for long enough that I forget most of what's happened and start from the beginning in a few years.




And this.


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SO MANY BOOKS. SO LITTLE TIME. And I'm a pretty fucking fast reader.





That looks pretty cool. He's definitely one of the more interesting emperors IMO.
 

Have you enjoyed the series? I finished the first two books and enjoyed them, but gave up on it unfortunately.

Oh. I'm also about half way through this.

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It's pretty good I guess. And I love science fiction, both hard and soft (tihihihi), but I kinda lost all impetus, and it's not really the kinda book I can easily carry around for reading on public transport and shit so yeah. Might just give up on it for long enough that I forget most of what's happened and start from the beginning in a few years.

It's worth it if you can push through to the end. It's not fabulously written or anything, but it's certainly a genre bender.
 
About 2/3 of the way done with ADWD. Is it just me or does it almost seem like George completely changed his mind over where he wanted the story to go in the last 6 years?
 
Have you enjoyed the series? I finished the first two books and enjoyed them, but gave up on it unfortunately.

Overall, yeah. I'm not really into fantasy but I've enjoyed every book. Some of them are definitely better than others (Deadhouse Gates, The Bonehunters and Memories of Ice are the best by some way IMO).

It's worth it if you can push through to the end. It's not fabulously written or anything, but it's certainly a genre bender.


Aye I read a few more pages earlier, will probably try do another hundred or so tomorrow. The closer I get to the end of a book the more compelled I feel to read it so maybe that will tip me over the edge.
 
Just received my edition of this symposium in the mail today:

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I was skeptical about it at first, but Eugene Thacker has an essay in it. He delivered a speech that I attended at UChicago, and I also have his most recent book, After Life. So I'm stoked to read what he has to say.
 
I don't get why everyone hates on him so much.


I mean, his band fucking sucks, but everyone is aware that he's a wordy and pretentious bastard with some pretty lulsy ideas so just... Don't watch interviews with him, or read his bullshit.


Or listen to his music. Cause Liturgy really are awful.