The Books/Reading Thread

[Einherjar86]

been thinking lately about how amazing this is. definitely the most unique and fucked up work of epic fantasy i've read. i really need to dive into the subsequent quadrilogy; my dad reckons it might be even better, and this is his all-time favourite series so that's high praise.

Best fantasy series out there. The quadrilogy doesn't measure up to the trilogy (yet, anyway), but it's still really fucking good.

Traces of LOTR and Blood Meridian, how can you go wrong?

 

[no country for old wainds]

the final book in the quadrilogy came out last month if you aren't aware. i haven't read any of those yet.

 

[tagradh]

I didn't enjoy the sequel as much; but then again, seeing as Blindsight is one of the best science fiction novels since 2000, my expectations may have been a bit high...

Yeah, put off reading it originally cause people had said that kinda thing. Enjoying it as much as I did Blindsight so far (bout 20% in).

 

[Einherjar86]

the final book in the quadrilogy came out last month if you aren't aware. i haven't read any of those yet.

Yeah I've heard. I'm still working my way through the penultimate book (i.e. The Great Ordeal). Really fucking excited for The Unholy Consult though. What is the No-God, what's inside Golgotterath...? It's going to be some dark fucking shit.

 

[Dak]

The Three Languages of Politics by Arnold Kling. Small book, barely over 100 pages. Reasonably simplified synopsis of the difficulty in engaging in political discourse across political languages. Lots of references to authors I've either read (Haidt, Kahneman) or authors I am familiar with (Cowen, Sowell, Nisbet).

 

[EspaDa]

 

[Einherjar86]

Sexy time.

 

[Dak]

I love how the faces in that type of art seem disconnected from the bodies.

 

[TageRyche]

My review of the Stephanie Gayle novel Idyll Fears is being printed in Mystery Scene magazine. You can check out the review online HERE!

 

[TageRyche]

My review of the Adam Sternbergh novel The Blinds is being printed in Mystery Scene magazine. You can check out the review online HERE!

 

[Einherjar86]

Found a complimentary copy of this from HarperCollins in my department mailbox the other day. Sounds like it'll be good:

 

[Dak]

Generally speaking, if the names/dates/places were changed, it could have been written in 2015 instead of 1995. One thing I thought was interesting is that Sowell appeals to "systemic" explanations for inequalities while pointing out the Anointed ones at the time asserted intent. Now the Anointed make the same policy prescriptions but appeal to systemic explanations - which they still assume they understand, while Sowell pointed out that no one can grasp the entirety of the system (and that the Anointed repeatedly fail to understand opportunity cost).

 

[Einherjar86]

while Sowell pointed out that no one can grasp the entirety of the system

100% true. Of course, this is what "post-Marxist" postmodernists were saying in the 1960s and '70s

 

[CiG]

Are they the same people that simultaneously want to dismantle and do away with said system?

Because I have a feeling that's the underlying point, that people want to meddle or even destroy something which they can't even fully grasp to begin with.

 

[Einherjar86]

Certainly not! Jean-François Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard, Louis Althusser, all those Frenchies who declared so frustratingly that the global system is a mass of complications we can't possibly understand... none of them attended the protests of May 1968. None of them believed in the efficacy of popular revolution. They were resigned to a less destructive view of things, which alienated them from a lot of young academics at that time.

Despite the involvement of many of his students in the protests of May 1968, Althusser initially greeted these developments with silence. Later, he expressed an opinion similar to the official PCF line, describing the students as victim to "infantile" leftism. As a result, Althusser was attacked by many former supporters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Althusser#De-Stalinisation

 

[CiG]

Ah. Interesting!

 

[Einherjar86]

This happens to be one of the reasons why I get frustrated at right-wing diatribes against the Frankfurt School and subsequent academic leftisms (like TB enjoys posting). If anything, the Frankfurt School marks the point at which leftism actually began moving away from serious attitudes toward revolutionary praxis. Since the Bolsheviks, revolution hasn't been the intelligentsia's preferred mode of communiqué.

 

[CiG]

I've never paid much attention to the intelligentsia when it comes to topics like this, not because they don't have important things to say but because often they don't represent the actual bodies that make up any movement or ideology.

It's sort of like assuming film critics represent the general viewing audience.

 

[Dak]

Obviously those "Frenchies" had pedagogical difficulties if a frequent result of exposure to their ideas, even if indirect, is said "infantile" leftism.

 

[Dak]

Maybe one of the most interesting and pleasurable reads I have ever had.