Social What are you currently reading?

[arrall]

In the past couple weeks, two of my favorite reads have been Battle Royale by Koushun Takami and Choke by Chuck Palahniuk.

Battle Royale is a very easy read for a novel that's over 600 pages. I got through it in a couple days. It's the novel that the Hunger Games (poorly) ripped off and it has been cited as a huge inspiration by the creator of Squid Game.

I loved Choke so much that I got through it in one sitting. There's something about Palahniuk's writing that makes me simultaneously find it fascinating and hilarious. It's a good book, but if you don't like dark humor then I'd suggest steering clear of it.

As for right now, I'm currently reading Dostoevsky. I'm on Crime and Punishment, and next up is The Brothers Karazamarov. After that, I'll probably move on to some Tolstoy.

"Breakfast of Champions" by Kurt Vonnegut is a good one. I never really got into his stuff that much but I remember that book being in my parent's book collection when I was a kid, reading it and enjoying the book's sense of humor (and Vonnegut's attempts at illustration lol)

I finally got around to reading Vonnegut last summer. I read Breakfast of Champions, Slaughterhouse Five, and Cat's Cradle (the latter now being one of my favorite books of all time.) There's nothing quite like a book that simultaneously gets you to laugh your ass off and rethink the way that you live your life.

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by patrick süskind

I read the first 100 or so pages of this years ago and never finished it. Everyone keeps recommending it to me, so I'll have to give it a full read soon.

 

[Nas47]

In the past couple weeks, two of my favorite reads have been Battle Royale by Koushun Takami and Choke by Chuck Palahniuk.

Battle Royale is a very easy read for a novel that's over 600 pages. I got through it in a couple days. It's the novel that the Hunger Games (poorly) ripped off and it has been cited as a huge inspiration by the creator of Squid Game.

I loved Choke so much that I got through it in one sitting. There's something about Palahniuk's writing that makes me simultaneously find it fascinating and hilarious. It's a good book, but if you don't like dark humor then I'd suggest steering clear of it.

As for right now, I'm currently reading Dostoevsky. I'm on Crime and Punishment, and next up is The Brothers Karazamarov. After that, I'll probably move on to some Tolstoy.


I finally got around to reading Vonnegut last summer. I read Breakfast of Champions, Slaughterhouse Five, and Cat's Cradle (the latter now being one of my favorite books of all time.) There's nothing quite like a book that simultaneously gets you to laugh your ass off and rethink the way that you live your life.


I read the first 100 or so pages of this years ago and never finished it. Everyone keeps recommending it to me, so I'll have to give it a full read soon.

Tried to read "The Brothers of Karamazov",but could not finished it.Too.....heavy like style.must try"Crime and punishment"

 

[arrall]

Tried to read "The Brothers of Karamazov",but could not finished it.Too.....heavy like style.must try"Crime and punishment"

I can understand that. I first started it many years ago while on vacation. Even though I liked it, I just never picked it back up once I got back. It's still sitting on my shelf to this day.

 

[Robi]

Games You Can Play With Your Pussy> Ira Alterman and Hardcore Zen>Brad Warner

 

[hydroazuanacaine]

In the Emergency Room, Jane goes to the counter with their insurance information and the police report and explains that her husband was involved in a fatal car accident the evening before and appeared disoriented at the scene.

“That’s not what happened,” George bellows. “The fucking SUV was like a big white cloud in front of me, I couldn’t see over it, couldn’t see around it, I couldn’t help but punch through it like a cheap piece of aluminum, like a fat fucking pillow.

 

[neversickanymore]

I dropped brothers and have no interest in picking it back up. Crime and Punishment is really good imho

 

[hydroazuanacaine]

The fruit has been placed with care, just so: the woody stem down and the star of the calyx up. The skin mustn’t touch that of its neighbour. They must sit like this, lightly held by the wooden groove, a finger width from each other, over the winter or they will spoil. If they touch each other, they will brown and sag and moulder and rot. They must be preserved in rows, like this, separate, stems down, in airy isolation.

 

[JTemperance]

I'm reading a book titled 1997: The Future that Never Happened. It was written by Richard Power Sayeed and published in 2017, just in time for the 20th anniversary of Tony Blair's election.

Each chapter of the book deals with a major event that happened in the UK during the year 1997 (at least in part), but the basic focus throughout is on New Labour and how it was implicated in all the year's events. They range widely in nature, from the Stephen Lawrence inquiry to Britpop to Princess Diana's death to the Spice Girls.

I lived through these events as a sentient being, but I wasn't well-informed at the time and, more to the point, I'm from the USA, where international news is only visible in the glare of a bombing campaign. So given my low awareness of them, I've really been enjoying the author's explication of these events and how they played out.

As far as his argument, there is a main thesis that he hammers home repeatedly in each chapter, which is essentially this:

• The year 1997 saw various egalitarian or progressive movements (anti-racism, feminism, anti-monarchism) incorporated into the mainstream of British culture by elite actors -- quintessentially Tony Blair and the top echelon of New Labour -- who served their own interests in doing.
• This, in turn, opened up a broader audience for these movements' protest messages but, at the same time, it watered down the radical nature of their critiques to the point that they no longer insisted on transforming society.

It's hard to argue with that, IMHO, but at times he assigns too much power to nebulous entities like "the culture," which appears to act on its own initiative to defang movements of social protest. And although his need to reiterate the thesis gets overly didactic at times, it's a very well-written book overall. His insights are basically right, I think, and they do illuminate the era.

 

[neversickanymore]

Paradise Lost Milton

 

[neversickanymore]

The Violent Bear it Away Flannery O’Connor.. just started


True North
The Ancient Minstrel
The Road Home
The Woman Lit By Fireflies
Returning to Earth

All by Jim Harrison

enjoyable UP binge there

 

[snortyjones]

In the time that you spend reading something offline (which seems to be an all too small fraction for myself), what is it?

I must admit that I am not an avid reader of fictional works. However, after my wife and I watched Gone With the Wind, she convinced me to begin the Bible-long novel Scarlett. We enjoy reading in bed in our red lamp lit room before we sleep. Thus far, it is a delightfully descriptive work of the immediate post Civil War era which I am thoroughly enjoying.

So, Bluelight, what page-turner are you under the influence of lately?

#1 Bible , #2 Carl Gustav Jung Man and His Symbols , #3 Charles Bukowski , #4 Hg wells History of the World volume 1 - 3 , # 5 Nikola Tesla Biography.

 

[December Flower]

There's a bunch of people who post multiple books here, I'm getting curious.
Are you such slow readers? Are you starting the books and never finishing them(that's not reading, that's doing nothing)? Are you switching between the books? Are you aware that this is a very inefficient way of learning? Has someone ever told you that it's super dumb, and makes 0 sense? Just finish a fucking book already.

I've got a good book on basal stimulation, which i'm reading atm.

 

[Skorpio]

Are you aware that this is a very inefficient way of learning? Has someone ever told you that it's super dumb, and makes 0 sense? Just finish a fucking book already.

Reading books can be done for pleasure as well as learning. I will sometimes read multiple books especially if I'm not absorbed in one, i will read others while making my way through the slower one.

I feel the phrasing of this answer is needlessly insulting.

 

[neversickanymore]

There's a bunch of people who post multiple books here, I'm getting curious.
Are you such slow readers? Are you starting the books and never finishing them(that's not reading, that's doing nothing)? Are you switching between the books? Are you aware that this is a very inefficient way of learning? Has someone ever told you that it's super dumb, and makes 0 sense? Just finish a fucking book already.

I've got a good book on basal stimulation, which i'm reading atm.

Mine are all finished unless noted.

Why do we have multiple subjects simultaneously taught to us if it’s inefficient?

 

[December Flower]

Mine are all finished unless noted.

Why do we have multiple subjects simultaneously taught to us if it’s inefficient?

I don't know I never paid attention
Maybe this is another one of these "NT day-to-day" things were I'm assuming wrong,
but for me personally there is 0 gain in stretching my attention to multiple books.

School had no point for me, especially. I learned by myself, because school keeps switching the subjects,
did not help me at all. They went on /w English class or w/e and I was still facing a Math problem, dunno.
I assumed this was the same for everyone, because there's not many people that are very good at school.
And the next issue: how much do you still know from school?
This multiple subject binge-learning is completely fucking useless and not good for keeping the info you have acquired long-term.

 

[December Flower]

Reading books can be done for pleasure as well as learning. I will sometimes read multiple books especially if I'm not absorbed in one, i will read others while making my way through the slower one.

I feel the phrasing of this answer is needlessly insulting.

Only if you let yourself feel insulted, because I certainly didn't mean to insult you, I was asking genuine questions, because I.don't.understand.the.concept. I think it's dumb to learn in a way where I've entirely forgotten the information a few years later.

I'm not even telling you to do it differently, I was asking for the reason - now I know. It's for "pleasure", even though that's even weirder. Why waste all that precious pleasure not even learning efficiently?

My general issue was with the reading speed. I'm not sure how it is even physically possible to read so many books at once, since 90% of books take only a few hours to finish, if even that long. I'm just curious, sorry if that was insulting.

 

[MydriHaze]

The Tower Struck by Lightning, by Fernando Arrabal.

The story turns around a chess game between two world champions, you even got the visual play-board of the score (which is inspire by a legendary Kasparov game if i don't say bullshits). Soon it turns out into a spy/thriller shit like McCarthy-anarcoco-witch-hunt where one of the players, computered/establishment-indoctrinated, suspects the other to be part of an anarcho-terrorist organisation which kidnapped a corrupt politician, while left-wing radicalists are still struggling with a hot context in western europe

 

[JTemperance]

In the Emergency Room, Jane goes to the counter with their insurance information and the police report and explains that her husband was involved in a fatal car accident the evening before and appeared disoriented at the scene.

“That’s not what happened,” George bellows. “The fucking SUV was like a big white cloud in front of me, I couldn’t see over it, couldn’t see around it, I couldn’t help but punch through it like a cheap piece of aluminum, like a fat fucking pillow.

I was impressed enough with that little snippet to Google search it... "May We Be Forgiven" by A.M. Homes? Was the whole novel good?

 

[hydroazuanacaine]

^yeah. a solid iteration of the sarcastic, deadpan protagonist floats through a bizarro series events trope.

let me know what you think if you get around to reading it.

 

[neversickanymore]

All the Light We Can Not See Anthony Doerr