|
Lord Windy posted:I want to get back into reading after spending a year or so reading non-fiction technical stuff. At the moment I'm in a real political drama kick, with Madam Secretary and Designated Survivor being my favourite current shows. Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope MIrrlees The Irregular at Magic High School by Tsutomu Satō Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay e: a mysterious cloak posted:Looking for a good intro to philosophy. Never took philosophy in college and always sort of wished I had. Any good starting points? Plato's Dialogues BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 01:36 on Dec 3, 2016 |
#
?
Dec 3, 2016 01:33
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 21, 2024 11:29 |
|
|
Lawen posted:That's a bit like saying "looking for an intro to Science" but Simon Blackburn's Think is a decent primer on Western philosophy. Right, I knew that was a pretty broad and vague request, but I honestly don't know where to start. What got me interested lately is watching the Shelly Kagan courses on the philosophy of death and dying, which made me think about how we perceive time (and how real/unreal it is), trying to think about space beyond 3 dimensions... Again, vague. Think and The Story of Philosphy sound like good starting points, thanks! If you guys have any more ideas I'd love to hear them.
|
|
#
?
Dec 3, 2016 06:20
|
|
|
Read the Tractatus and then forget about philosophy forever.
|
|
#
?
Dec 3, 2016 16:16
|
|
|
Secret Agent X23 posted:You might want to take a look at The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant. I think it's a pretty good overview of Western philosophy through the years and probably a better-than-average starting point. If you have time and inclination, there is Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy
|
|
#
?
Dec 3, 2016 19:18
|
|
|
Has anyone read any good fiction books about hackers that are 1. set in the present or very near future 2. reasonably (preferably highly) accurate depictions. Kind of Mr. Robot, but in novel form. The only example I can think of that I've read that more or less fit my wishes was Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. I've read Ready Player One (it is really bad) and tried to read Daemon by Daniel Suarez (also found it to be bad and never finished it). I've also already read pretty much everything William Gibson has written.
|
|
#
?
Dec 3, 2016 20:27
|
|
|
quote:I need book recommendations for gamer boy who probably would have enjoyed the violence in a song of fire and ice, and definitely has enjoyed emo poetry and gangsta rap. I'm having trouble thinking of something that hits all these beats.
|
|
#
?
Dec 4, 2016 07:11
|
|
|
Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch?
|
|
#
?
Dec 4, 2016 09:06
|
|
|
Doom: Repercussions of Evil
|
|
#
?
Dec 4, 2016 11:32
|
|
|
there wolf posted:I'm having trouble thinking of something that hits all these beats. Anais Nin
|
|
#
?
Dec 4, 2016 11:51
|
|
|
Trying to get my girlfriend back into reading so this is going to be a weird post. She loved French author Marc Levy's If Only it Were True and its sequel enough to read both of them 3 or 4 times. Here's the Wikipedia summary: quote:Lauren Kline is a pretty, young, medical resident, completely devoted to her work in the Emergency Room of San Francisco Memorial Hospital. She worked round the clock dealing with patients until she got into a serious auto accident. As a result of the accident, Lauren went into a coma. She "woke" to awareness outside of her still comatose body, and was frustrated that she could not communicate with anyone. After a while, she chose to spend most of her time at her old apartment, where she is discovered by Arthur, the man who took over renting the place. Only he can see, hear, or touch her. After some initial disbelief on his part, they fall in love. She also loved the movies Me Before You and the French movie The Intouchables. She's also a fan of crime plots à la Sherlock (the BBC series, to be exact). Speaking of series she likes: Grey's Anatomy, Hart of Dixie, Reign, Suits, every vampire series ever made, and Chicago Med/Fire/PD. I don't expect to find a book that checks all the boxes, but I'm sure you guys will find something that fits the bill. It also has to be on the simpler side of literature.
|
|
#
?
Dec 4, 2016 14:59
|
|
|
goodreads groups excels at this kind of thing once you wade through all the harry potter and twilight fans. Biggest one for girls: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/41828-bookworm-bitches I have no idea where you are from but if she's Canadian then Louise Penny's Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series (Still life is the first) will be right up her street.
|
|
#
?
Dec 4, 2016 15:23
|
|
|
internet inc posted:Trying to get my girlfriend back into reading so this is going to be a weird post. My girlfriend doesn't read often, and loved Brain On Fire by Susan Cahallan, which would fit in with your girlfriend's interests.
|
|
#
?
Dec 4, 2016 20:06
|
|
|
After playing Uncharted 4 I am looking for a good history on the Golden Age of Piracy, but having trouble finding one. Anyone know of a good one?
|
|
#
?
Dec 4, 2016 22:51
|
|
|
a mysterious cloak posted:Looking for a good intro to philosophy. Never took philosophy in college and always sort of wished I had. Any good starting points? - Marcus Aurelius' Meditations was written 2000 years ago, but its lessons are as relevant today as they were then. It's more of a personal philosophy/self-help book; one man's take on how to view and react to events. Dominoes fucked around with this message at 23:46 on Dec 4, 2016 |
|
#
?
Dec 4, 2016 23:43
|
|
|
FlamingLiberal posted:After playing Uncharted 4 I am looking for a good history on the Golden Age of Piracy, but having trouble finding one. Anyone know of a good one? Captain Charles Johnson's A General History of the Pyrates is a roughly contemporary collection of biographies, and is basically the reason famous pirates like Avery and Blackbeard became famous. Or for a more modern history, The Republic of Pirates by Colin Woodard is pretty good.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2016 01:02
|
|
|
Can anyone recommend a book about birdwatching? I'm not looking for a guide, but something more like a novel featuring it or someone's travel log of their birdwatching experiences.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2016 01:44
|
|
|
The Grey posted:Can anyone recommend a book about birdwatching? I'm not looking for a guide, but something more like a novel featuring it or someone's travel log of their birdwatching experiences. The Peregrine, by JA Baker.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2016 01:59
|
|
|
H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2016 02:03
|
|
|
A human heart posted:The Peregrine, by JA Baker.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2016 02:27
|
|
|
The Peregrine is good
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2016 06:47
|
|
|
FlamingLiberal posted:After playing Uncharted 4 I am looking for a good history on the Golden Age of Piracy, but having trouble finding one. Anyone know of a good one? I'd recommend Charles Johnson as well, with the understanding that there's a lot of fiction mixed in with Johnson's history (pro tip: any scene where a pirate mournfully expresses regret for his crimes just before being killed is bullshit, and at least one pirate he writes about, Captain Misson, is completely made up). Unreliable or not, Johnson is where a lot of the popular imagery and tropes of pirates come from. If you want a more recent book, David Cordingly's Under the Black Flag is very good.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2016 07:04
|
|
|
Yeah, I'm aware of the Johnson book but my understanding was that a lot of it was heavily exaggerated
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2016 07:38
|
|
|
FlamingLiberal posted:Yeah, I'm aware of the Johnson book but my understanding was that a lot of it was heavily exaggerated In comparison to Uncharted 4, you mean? Sure, it's at least a little exaggerated and sensationalised, but there're court records available for many of the pirates discussed which largely agree with the biographies in the book, so for at least the first volume it's relatively reliable. The second volume is generally considered less reliable, and contains a few straight up fictional pirates, so it's less reliable but still worth a read. More importantly, that book is basically the foundation of our cultural idea of the Golden Age of Piracy, so if you want to understand that period it's pretty much essential.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2016 08:00
|
|
|
The Grey posted:Can anyone recommend a book about birdwatching? I'm not looking for a guide, but something more like a novel featuring it or someone's travel log of their birdwatching experiences. Maybe Howard Norman's The Bird Artist
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2016 12:02
|
|
|
A human heart posted:The Peregrine, by JA Baker. Oh wow I need this
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2016 17:57
|
|
|
This is a bit hard to describe as I'm not even sure exactly what I'm looking for. I want to get someone who is a total workaholic and planning to retire in a couple of years a book about....how to retire without going insane and dying within the year, I guess? Without being a cheesy self-help book. Maybe something that would give hobby ideas or a sense of what to do for someone who has done nothing but work for decades but will soon lose that. I've tried looking up retirement books, but it's all mostly retirement planning and financial advice, or eye-rolling self help books. Weird request, but worth a shot.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2016 23:44
|
|
|
if you haven't developed a hobby by retirement age you're probably going to die unfulfilled and unhappy within two years of your last day on the job, hth
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2016 00:24
|
|
|
The Grey posted:Can anyone recommend a book about birdwatching? I'm not looking for a guide, but something more like a novel featuring it or someone's travel log of their birdwatching experiences. Crow Country & Birders by Mark Cocker - The first is about rooks and birding on the Norfolk Broads, the latter is a collection of birding tales and a potted history of birdwatching The Running Sky by Tim Dee - Poetic nature writing by a British birder A Patch Made in Heaven by Dominic Couzens Corvus - A Life with Birds by Esther Woolfson
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2016 04:35
|
|
|
Enfys posted:This is a bit hard to describe as I'm not even sure exactly what I'm looking for. I want to get someone who is a total workaholic and planning to retire in a couple of years a book about....how to retire without going insane and dying within the year, I guess? Without being a cheesy self-help book. Maybe something that would give hobby ideas or a sense of what to do for someone who has done nothing but work for decades but will soon lose that. what makes u think that this person needs help with not dying of boredom?
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2016 05:16
|
|
|
Enfys posted:This is a bit hard to describe as I'm not even sure exactly what I'm looking for. I want to get someone who is a total workaholic and planning to retire in a couple of years a book about....how to retire without going insane and dying within the year, I guess? Without being a cheesy self-help book. Maybe something that would give hobby ideas or a sense of what to do for someone who has done nothing but work for decades but will soon lose that. Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2016 14:16
|
|
|
A human heart posted:what makes u think that this person needs help with not dying of boredom? I suspect I understand the original request, my father is also on the verge of retiring, and I do rather fear that he will go from having days (overly) filled with social interactions and constructive tasks to expanding his only real independent past-time of "sitting around the house" into his whole life before he realizes the issue. Very hard to get at with a book though.
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2016 16:21
|
|
|
Cybernetic Vermin posted:I suspect I understand the original request, my father is also on the verge of retiring, and I do rather fear that he will go from having days (overly) filled with social interactions and constructive tasks to expanding his only real independent past-time of "sitting around the house" into his whole life before he realizes the issue. Very hard to get at with a book though. I have that T-shirt. He's settled on arguing about climate change on the internet and annoying my mother. My mother's response was to turn the spare room into a reading room for him and now he's happily nested.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2016 08:41
|
|
|
Enfys posted:This is a bit hard to describe as I'm not even sure exactly what I'm looking for. I want to get someone who is a total workaholic and planning to retire in a couple of years a book about....how to retire without going insane and dying within the year, I guess? Without being a cheesy self-help book. Maybe something that would give hobby ideas or a sense of what to do for someone who has done nothing but work for decades but will soon lose that. It might be worthwhile to introduce him to books on subjects that are related to things you can do around your area. My father-in-law, while not retired, picked up fishing a couple years back because some magazine he reads said that the fishing near our area is great. Fast forward to now and he spends basically every waking free moment either fishing, chatting with his fishing buddies on the Internet/messenger applications, or playing with his various fishing tools. I think someone mentioned it in this thread, but you could get him some binocs and a bird watching guide. If he likes beer, get him a how-to-brew book. Just think about stuff that he's mildly interested in and try to parlay it into something he can actually do. I totally get what you are talking about though, my mother-in-law recently lost her job and is kind of lost without something to do. Good luck on that.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2016 09:24
|
|
|
learnincurve posted:Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch? I brought this one up, and it got thrown out for being too Assassin's Creed. They went with Ready Player One instead.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2016 09:46
|
|
|
Enfys posted:This is a bit hard to describe as I'm not even sure exactly what I'm looking for. I want to get someone who is a total workaholic and planning to retire in a couple of years a book about....how to retire without going insane and dying within the year, I guess? Without being a cheesy self-help book. Maybe something that would give hobby ideas or a sense of what to do for someone who has done nothing but work for decades but will soon lose that. Old Age: A Beginner's Guide has been getting some decent reviews.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2016 14:34
|
|
|
*Lights incense at the base of a shrine within The Book Barn, which I assume is a literal barn* Oh wise spirits of the Book Barn, please visit upon me recommendations for another Vonnegut book to read. I would also happily receive a non-Vonnegut recommendation based on the fact that I like him. *places basket of books at base of shrine* As an offering and to guide you in your infinite wisdom, I leave you these Vonnegut books that I have already read *the basket contains Cat's Cradle, Slaughterhouse 5, Slapstick, Bluebeard, Breakfast of Champions, and Player Piano*
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2016 15:42
|
|
|
alnilam posted:*Lights incense at the base of a shrine within The Book Barn, which I assume is a literal barn* Go thou and read Mother Night.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2016 15:51
|
|
|
alnilam posted:*Lights incense at the base of a shrine within The Book Barn, which I assume is a literal barn* Looks like you need Sirens of Titan, Hocus Pocus or Mother Night, all strong choices. You should also look into George Saunders.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2016 15:52
|
|
|
Mother Night, yeah
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2016 16:37
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 21, 2024 11:29 |
|
|
alnilam posted:*Lights incense at the base of a shrine within The Book Barn, which I assume is a literal barn* *shakes straw out of hair* When the V man comes up, I always recommend DeLillo's White Noise.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2016 20:10
|
|
