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What real world fiction should I read if my favorite fantasy work is Perdido Street Station, specifically because of its vivid sense of urban life, all the neighborhoods and architecture and depictions of crowded, lively places, the sheer density of history and culture?
FPyat fucked around with this message at 19:48 on Feb 2, 2020 |
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Feb 2, 2020 19:37
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Are there any fiction books that discuss DMT trips?
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Mar 30, 2021 14:11
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I am frustrated by the fact that what seems to be the most technical book on the Apollo program is written by Charles loving Murray. Is there any alternative if I'm curious about the rocketry and computing and engineering?
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May 31, 2021 13:08
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kaesarsosei posted:Bumping this because I am actually interested in books like but for any wars. Ostkrieg: Hitler's War of Extermination in the East spends much of its pagecount on Hitler's decision-making.
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Oct 31, 2021 01:43
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What authors most successfully write scenes that are convincingly dreamlike?
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Dec 25, 2021 16:28
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Are there any fun books on the 100 BC - AD 100 period of Roman history that are more detailed than Tom Holland's?
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Jan 25, 2022 13:33
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buffalo all day posted:Are you looking for nonfiction, or I Claudius? I'm primarily curious about Caesar and Octavian.
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Jan 25, 2022 16:52
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I'm interested in reading nonfiction that paints a vivid picture of everyday life in the global south. It's not a dealbreaker if it's by a white guy who's relaying the experiences of people he talks to while abroad. It can involve war and atrocity and governmental repression, but the focus has to be on how it affected normal people.
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May 17, 2022 00:38
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Kvlt! posted:That's half the world. Are you looking for books about specific places or one book covering the entire global south? Any single country or region, 1800 or after.
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May 17, 2022 12:45
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Any books by economists studying people's personal finances?
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Jun 4, 2022 03:22
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I want anthropology books studying industrialized societies. I have a number of books that are in the ballpark, but are not written by trained anthropologists.
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Jun 15, 2022 15:34
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Meaty Ore posted:Just looking at my bookshelf (I got my BA in Anthropology two years ago and kept all my books) there's After the Rescue: Jewish Identity and Community in Contemporary Denmark by Andrew Buckner, Voyages: From Tongan Villages to American Suburbs by Cathy A. Small, Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood by Anastasia N. Karakasidou, After Revolution: Mapping Gender and Cultural Politics in Neoliberal Nicaragua by Florence E. Babb, Many Tongues, One People: The Making of Tharu Identity in Nepal by Arjun Guneratne, The Hold Life Has: Coca and Cultural Identity in an Andean Community by Catherine J. Allen, and The People of the Sierra by Julian Pitt-Rivers. Bear in mind that "studying industrialized societies" is incredibly broad; given the modern global economy just about any contemporary society you'll be looking at will be industrialized to some extent, and you'll likely want to narrow your search to a particular issue or subculture within a broader society which interests you. For instance, one of my professors did his dissertation on Quakers in Scotland; two other books I have similarly look at subsets of American society: Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street by Karen Ho and Of Two Minds: An Anthropologist Looks at American Psychiatry by T. M Luhrmann. More general, overarching ethnographies attempting to cover the entire breadth of a society are terribly passé nowadays, and you probably won't find any such books covering modern, complex societies. Thank you very much. If I would narrow it down, the US and South Korea are the countries that are of the most personal relevance to me. Some of the books on my shelf that are the kind of non-anthropological study that are of interest to me are Working by Studs Terkel, the memoirs of China written by Peter Hessler, and In America: Travels with John Steinbeck by Geert Mak. I guess what I'm getting is that anthropology is in the popular imagination associated with finding lurid details about "exotic" peoples, and I would rather see that lens turned upon the familiar. FPyat fucked around with this message at 04:55 on Jun 16, 2022 |
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Jun 16, 2022 04:52
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Transformed by Bill Slavin is a great complement to the Macaulay book.
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Jun 19, 2022 20:09
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Other than Notes from Underground and Crime and Punishment, I want books about misanthropes, that transfix me with how strongly and convincingly the main characters express their disdain for other people.
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Jun 19, 2022 20:12
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CapnAndy posted:Anyone got some history recommendations about how interesting things got built? I just finished Disney's Land and Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution, and both of them disappointed me for the same failings -- a bad reliance on "a thing had to be done and nobody knew how and it looked really hard, but then it got done" narrative without covering the interesting bit of how they overcame those challenges, and in failing to include really obviously important bits (Disney's Land skips right from the monorail in 1959 to Walt Disney dying without mentioning the 1964 New York World's Fair at all, like inventing audio-animatronics and motherfucking It's a Small World isn't pertinent somehow, and Dogfight gets apparently distracted or something and veers off its narrative to discuss media moving to digital distribution, which is a)completely not the loving point and b)hilariously dated given that the book was written in 2013). By contrast, I really loved Losing the Signal, and Devil in the White City is one of my all-time favorite books. The Great Bridge, David McCullough
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Jul 9, 2022 10:55
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I want to know about everyday life in communist Eastern Europe outside of the Soviet Union and East Germany between 1960 and 1990. Oral history, personal memoir, sociological study, all are good.
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Jul 11, 2022 23:05
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Manager Hoyden posted:If someone read House of Leaves and loved the Navidson Record part but rolled their eyes to the point of injury at the Johnny parts, what other books should they read? Read literary criticism of books you like. There's some compiled in books, such as in Norton Critical Editions, but most of it you'll have to search for on JSTOR.
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Jul 23, 2022 01:35
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Luigi Thirty posted:I'm trying to start reading more genre fiction to The Scar by China Mieville is a nautical fantasy adventure with the coolest sword ever. My ask: Watching Better Call Saul made me realize that I don't know of any good fiction or nonfiction books with lawyers making cool clever maneuvers or arguments. I guess I could try some John Grisham,.
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Jul 26, 2022 03:55
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Any military fiction written by someone who served on board an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer?
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Aug 5, 2022 18:58
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I'm in search of books about finding dignity and beauty in life while doing uninteresting minimum wage drudgery. Does Convenience Store Woman fit this description?
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Oct 21, 2022 16:02
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Any fun pop non-fiction about hotly contested theological issues? Emphasis on the ideas themselves and not the political ramifications of the religious controversy.
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Nov 30, 2022 05:01
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Sounds excellent!
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Dec 1, 2022 04:43
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It's quite the random topic, but I'm curious to read a book, fiction or nonfiction, that's about Model United Nations.
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Dec 17, 2022 03:32
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What are some good prison books in non-totalitarian societies?
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Jan 3, 2023 12:43
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I'd like to read a novel plotted with a wonderfully intricate level of cause and effect, where actions' consequences keep on compounding and combining in sensible ways that surprise me.
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Feb 6, 2023 18:21
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Teach posted:You could try Walking On Glass by Iain Banks. I enjoyed it, and it's a short mid-80s read. I read about it in one of the critical overviews of Banks' work I read. Did sound charming.
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Feb 7, 2023 00:37
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Being There sounds delightful, thanks.
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Feb 7, 2023 01:57
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Are there any cases of writers effectively emulating the experience of deja vu in fiction?
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Feb 9, 2023 16:43
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I really want to read compelling accounts of being disillusioned/deprogrammed from a belief system.
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Feb 27, 2023 00:30
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I liked the space battles in House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds on that front.
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Mar 8, 2023 21:52
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Is there anything to read if I'm feeling nostalgic for The Blues Brothers/Smokey and the Bandit/shows like Magnum PI? Car chases are not necessary.
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Mar 22, 2023 05:47
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Hiaasen's YA fiction was a constant presence in my childhood so I guess I'll try his adult works.
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Mar 22, 2023 09:34
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I want to read someone's collected essays and articles, hopefully with at least a few penetrating book/movie reviews, maybe even music reviews.
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Apr 24, 2023 13:37
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Is there a book where the writer gives thoughts and analyses on every piece Beethoven/Mozart/Bach composed? It's great that I know of such books for the Beatles and David Bowie, to enliven my listening experience.
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May 1, 2023 01:08
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I'm curious to read anything on the art of translation, with considerate thoughts about the differences between languages. My translator relative recommended I look at her copy of the Translation Studies Reader. Also, any fun one volume histories of movies and/or television? FPyat fucked around with this message at 08:53 on May 4, 2023 |
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May 4, 2023 07:55
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If I want to read one Steven Millhauser collection what would I want to pick? I like stories with a Borges-like bent.
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May 11, 2023 15:27
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I tried looking for a book about Halliburton but it turns out they're still around.
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Jun 17, 2023 13:27
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The Unsubstantial Air: American Fliers in the First World War was dang fantastic. As well as the difficult training and combat, the book conveys a lovely sense of the romance of getting to sail off to France for the first and only time in your life, visiting Paris on furlough.
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Jun 23, 2023 06:50
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The Half-Made World is a neat otherworldly western with demonic locomotives and guns. Don't let that be a turnoff, the author makes it work.
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Jun 30, 2023 07:23
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| # ¿ May 3, 2024 18:37 |
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boquiabierta posted:100 pages into House of Leaves and I think I'm throwing in the towel. I'm not into it at all and not finding it at all scary. Kinda disappointed I didn't even make it as far as any of the weird formatting stuff (unless you count the constant footnotes/endnotes and font changes). The great draw of the book for me is the expeditions that are reminiscent of climbs up Mount Everest. Great imagery worth reading for.
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Jul 14, 2023 08:39
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