The Books/Reading Thread

[Vimana]

Atlas Shrugged.

 

[Dak]

The Diamond Age

 

[Einherjar86]

Blindsight, by Peter Watts.

It'll slay your soul.

And it's available for free here:

http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm

 

[uhhhhmmmm4]

To everyone looking for an incredibly interesting read- Godel, Escher, Bach: an eternal Golden Braid by Hofstadter.

Nuff said.

The Brothers Karamazov is great.

House of the Dead is great nonfiction. Dostoyevsky is great.

 

[Vimana]

I was going to read that before, but I forgot. I'm adding that to my cart on amazon.

 

[uhhhhmmmm4]

I was going to read that before, but I forgot. I'm adding that to my cart on amazon.

Read what?

 

[Carpe Mortem]

Been reading bits and pieces of Robert Jay Lipton's "The Nazi Doctors"

Goddamn geniuses should have been handed a stock of pedophiles to repeatedly breed and experiment on, not punished.

 

[juxtaposed girl]

Thanks for all the recomendations guys, il be sure to check out the synopsis' for them and see where i can get them from and check out the free link. I have an e-reader but much prefer real books, its the smell of freshly printed words that has a certain " something" lol

 

[Vimana]

Read what?

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid.

 

[unknown]

The Diamond Age

ooo yeah. That or Snowcrash

 

[Einherjar86]

I recently read some excerpts from Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man. For those enchanted by Herrnstein and Murray's The Bell Curve, this will hopefully dissolve some of that text's more presumptuous claims, particularly those that involve hereditary IQ:

I have often been frustrated with the following response to this admonition: 'Oh well, I see what you mean, and you're right in theory. There may be no necessary connection in logic, but isn't it more likely all the same that mean differences between groups would have the same causes as variation within groups.' The answer is still 'no.' Within- and between-group heredity are not tied by rising degrees of probability as heredity increases within groups and differences enlarge between them. The two phenomena are simply separate. Few arguments are more dangerous than the ones that 'feel' right but can't be justified.

 

[Kara-Shehr]

Anyone ever read Infinite Jest before? If so can I please get your thoughts on it? I'm thinking about reading that or The Count of Monte Cristo. I'm leaning more towards The Count because I'm not sure if I can be engaged with satire for that long.

 

[unknown]

while I haven't read Infinite Jest, I've read some of DFW's nonfiction work and absolutely loved it. From what I've read and seen, Infinite Jest can be tough going but seems to be required reading for pompous fixed gear bike riding English majors

 

[Master_Yoda77]

So it begins again...

 

[Vimana]

I'm starting to love The Interpretation of Dreams. Twice in a row Freud analyses his dreams to find he disparages others to avoid the idea that he might have done something wrong and/or be incompetent and so far he doesn't seem the least bit bothered by it or to even consider that it's a problem.

 

[Einherjar86]

The dream of Irma's injection?

 

[Vimana]

That one, and the dream where he's being considered for a title of an assistant professor and he attaches negative qualities he doesn't want to believe he has to another person so he can simply believe that he would only get rejected for being Jewish.

 

[Kara-Shehr]

while I haven't read Infinite Jest, I've read some of DFW's nonfiction work and absolutely loved it. From what I've read and seen, Infinite Jest can be tough going but seems to be required reading for pompous fixed gear bike riding English majors

I've pretty much gathered the same things. From what I've heard its a good novel but it's just really damn long and hard to digest. I'll probably try it out and if I don't seem to like it I'll just say fuck it.

 

[Einherjar86]

There seem to be, in my experience, two groups of people:

People who have read Infinite Jest but not House of Leaves, and...

People who have read House of Leaves but not Infinite Jest.

I've never met anyone who has read both; and people in each camp seem to be almost religiously adamant about how good their respective novel/novelist is. I'm in the latter camp; but while I'm a huge fan of House of Leaves, I really want to read Infinite Jest someday. It's just not at the top of my list.

 

[unknown]

sounds about right