The Books/Reading Thread

[unknown]

fantastic. will soldier on and see what there is to see

 

[Cronopio]

I've heard that V. is tough, and not his best work.

One good place to start with Pynchon would be The Crying of Lot 49, from what I've heard.

 

[Einherjar86]

I really don't understand how you read so fucking much...and I though I read so fucking much...

I just read my first Christopher Marlowe play "Doctor Faustus" and it's everything I dreamed it would be. Short and excellent.

I recall Marlowe's Faustus as being really good. Goethe's wears me down...

I don't always read the books I post in their entirety. Lots of the nonfiction I read is for research purposes, and there's an art to extracting what you need versus reading the whole damn thing. So, for instance, Wilder's book on the French imperial state is nearly 300 pages long. I'm not going to read the whole thing, but I'm going to read the portions on colonial humanism and Négritude because they're important for my work.

The Crying of Lot 49 is supposed to be an excellent and quick read. It's on the schedule for this summer.

 

[Einherjar86]

Got a couple philosophy texts from Verso (they were having a sale; everything 50% off):

 

[Einherjar86]

I picked up some FREE books from my department over the past few weeks. The building is being redone so all the faculty and grad students have to move out for the summer. Pain in the ass, but that means that a bunch of professors totally purged their bookshelves of unwanted material, so I got a bunch of good stuff:

...and the Complete Works of Oscar Wilde. Sweet.

 

[viewerfromnihil]

That work by Hayek looks very appealing. I'll have to pick it up.

With the semester winding down, I'm finally getting to some books that have been waiting on my desk for a few months:

I'm considering jumping on Marx's Das Kapital, but I'm not sure if I have the attention span to do it.

 

[Einherjar86]

Freud and Kuhn are spectacular, and you picked two seminal texts; enjoy! I've never been a huge fan of Schopenhauer, but he's worth reading. I'm not familiar with the other two, they sound interesting though.

 

[Dak]

All BO's stuff plus the Hayek book look interesting. I am familiar with Clausewitz but not directly from readings. He is still supposed to be as relevant as Sun Tzu for the most part. Coincidence in the subject matter of the first posting on both posts?

 

[viewerfromnihil]

@Ein: Thanks, I've been looking forward to picking up Kuhn's book since last summer when a footnote led me to it. I tackled Schopenhauer's World as Will and Idea(or presentation, as my translation denoted it), but got bored with it 200 or so pages in. Essay on the Freedom of the Will is really brief, like 60 pages, and was the work that put him on the map, from what I've heard, so it should be a fun read. You may like Berger and Luckmann's work. I'm not sure if I would call it ground breaking, but it was important. The term "social construction" was coined in it.

@dak: Somewhat, I just started reading Kuhn's work yesterday, but my excitement over seeing Ein's work of Hayek prompted me to post. That's how my foreign policy professor spoke of Clausewitz. He called it one of his favorite books, just behind The Art of War and The Landmark Thucydides (he's a retired Coast Guard Captain, so all of his favorites are along the same line) and gave me a new copy for free.

 

[Addo_Of_Nex]

 

[Einherjar86]

Nice! I had to read The Second Sex for a course a couple semesters ago. It's really good.

I'm a bit torn on feminist theory in general, but Beauvoir is a landmark scholar for sure. To be honest, I find Judith Butler's work a bit more interesting, but I'm probably one of the only grad students in my department who does. Most people find her annoying and her theories ultimately stagnating.

At any rate, both Beauvoir and Butler are polarizing figures.

 

[Addo_Of_Nex]

I've read it before, and it's a bit of a mixed bag, albeit a really important one. Take the first chapter on biology, for instance. The whole section could be truncated to about one-third its length and preserve every underlying point that's being made. It happens throughout the book numerous times.

I really need to read some Judith Butler, as I'm only familiar with her from digital encyclopedias and other scholars responding to her. Any particular text you'd recommend to start with?

 

[Einherjar86]

I'm only familiar with Gender Trouble and Bodies That Matter. There's another feminist critic named Toril Moi who took Butler to town in a book called What is a Woman? Bodies That Matter is something of a response to Moi's critique. You might find Moi of interest; she's of the opinion that we don't really need much feminist theory after Beauvoir, and combines Beauvoir's feminism with a Wittgensteinian conception of language and identity.

 

[The Ozzman]

Reading now:

 

[Einherjar86]

I actually really like The Eye of the World; good fantasy novel that. Wasn't a fan of the rest of the series, quit after the third book.

 

[Manic Ferocity]

Recently finished Gardens of the Moon and The Children of Hurin. Both were fantastic. I will probably start A Storm of Swords tonight.

 

[Master_Yoda77]

Ozzman: you just went up from "total faggot" to "kinda faggot" on my list with that post. Keep it up, and I may put you on my "non-faggot"

 

[crimsonfloyd]

My reading partner and I chose a fairly light read for our last quarter's reading assignment. Definitely a fun read with a lot of interesting thoughts on how to spread ideas, habits and trends.

 

[Cronopio]

 

[Einherjar86]

I've had 2666 on my bookshelf for years now. I really need to read it.