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Cspam has threads about weed, cats, gardening, cooking, anime, magic and even (g*d forbid!) anarchism, but nothing about books. Talk about books in this thread. fiction, non-fiction, philosophy, history, art maybe even that shlocky and weirdly sticky romance book you found in your dead grandmother's night table. Talk about all the sex-pesty leftwing authors we hate love and love to hate, about how all western philosophers are racists and sexists. Try to contain your pretentiousness, or own it. Ask for suggestions, try to find the motivation to finish the book you've been 'reading' for the past year and a half. Be judged for your taste or your decrepit ideology. Maybe, at the end of the day, you'll learn something and manage to temporarily contain the existential dread and anxiety you've been feeling ever since you put on the glasses and first realised you're living in the dying years of an ideology and mode of production.
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Jun 26, 2021 17:00
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| # ? May 5, 2024 20:25 |
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I like to read OP. Currently reading the stormlight archive series, and at some point in the future I want to start on the Red Mars trilogy.
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Jun 26, 2021 17:01
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Also I thought we had a book club thread already.
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Jun 26, 2021 17:02
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 to lead by example, i'm gonna be the annoying guy at a party with a guitar playing wonderwall (but you know, when it comes to books) and start with capitalist realism by mark fisher. many leftists have understandbly criticised it for being incredibly depressing, for diagnosing a problem without offering a solution, for its repetitive method and prose (who knew neo-liberalism came in so many flavours!), for its hamfisted sub-zizek level pop-cultural analysis. but whatever its faults, i sincerely believe it is a uniquely engrossing and phenomenologically recognisable analysis of life in late capitalism. many of the chapters, in particular the one on hedonic depression, directly connected to my experience, to what i'd been going through. despite its occasionally too academic prose it is still very readable and, though i expect many of you've already read (and likely discarded) this book, i'd recommend it anyone who hasn't done so. it's a huge cliché, but it really opened my eyes dude. (click the picture for a surprise!)
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Jun 26, 2021 17:07
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AnimeIsTrash posted:Also I thought we had a book club thread already. book clubs are boring, restrictive and too much of a leftist cliché. this is just the pretentious chill out zone where you leisurely discuss whatever books you like. (also the boo
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Jun 26, 2021 17:10
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i'm reading Zen & The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance for like, the 5th time, because i can't stop thinking about it lately
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Jun 26, 2021 17:18
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I've been reading too much theory and otherwise stuffy nonfiction recently so I've been trying to dip back in to the sci fi I liked as a kid, and I know it's thrown around a lot but every fuckin sci fi author is a sex weirdo. Ringworld was pretty okay but then all the later books are about how the old guy protagonist (who is very charming and hot) rolls around the ringworld loving constantly because in the ringworld loving is how the semi-human (they're supposed to be like Neanderthals or w/e) tribes greet each other. Oh also there are no STDs so its very cool to do this, as the author explicitly mentions. So I gave up on that one and went on to Neverness, which I remembered as being good because it's a very unusual mythic sci-fi setting, and the first part of the book is a banger. The second part is about how the protagonist has a bunch of sex with his super hot big titty cousin, then he and his whole family turn themselves into Neanderthals (this again!) where his super hot big titty fully neanderthalized cousin has to gently caress a bunch of the other ape men for some extremely thin premise about getting ancient human dna. Had to give up on this one midway through. I'm currently reading The Greatship by Robert Reed, who thankfully seems to be at least a little bit normal. It's an anthology of short stories about a mysterious planet-sized alien derelict drifting in to the Milky Way and via sheer dumb luck was first boarded by humans which gave them the salvage rights based on a sort of pan-galactic tradition. They're mostly little slice of life stories about life on the ship or characters trying to figure out what the gently caress is up with this thing. It's pretty good (so far)!
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Jun 26, 2021 17:36
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Here are some good books I've read recently. Animal, Vegetable, Junk by Mark Bittman is the story of how industrial capitalist agriculture destroyed the world and how we would all be better off with decentralized socialism in food production. Doughnut Economics by Kate Raworth is about how unrestricted capitalism destroyed the world and how we would all be better off with sustainable socialism. An especially good read for her repeated explanations of how the mainstream field of economics is intellectually bankrupt. There's a great little anecdote about how no economics professor knows how to answer the question "right so how does the exponential economic growth graph end?" The Jakarta Method by Vincent Bevins is about how the United States spent the Cold War going around the world genociding communists and about how this genocide created the post-Cold War world of corrupt capitalism by making sure that all the idealistic communists who wanted to build a better world were either dead or cowed into submission by the threat of death. I'm currently reading Astra Taylor's Democracy May Not Exist, But We'll Miss It When It's Gone which is about the inherent contradictions and tensions in democracy, how democratic countries never live up to their claimed potential, and how we should probably have a much more expansive definition of democracy to include things like democratic control over our workplaces and the broader economy, not just voting every few years.
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Jun 26, 2021 17:44
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OP, there is already a books thread: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3844165
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Jun 26, 2021 18:00
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vyelkin posted:I'm currently reading Astra Taylor's Democracy May Not Exist, But We'll Miss It When It's Gone which is about the inherent contradictions and tensions in democracy, how democratic countries never live up to their claimed potential, and how we should probably have a much more expansive definition of democracy to include things like democratic control over our workplaces and the broader economy, not just voting every few years. ooooh, that sounds right up my alley. i've been reading a lot writing on democratic theory and the liberal democratic conception of authority (love the influence of liberalism in academia), but all these liberal writers have this completely idealistic and unrecognisable conception of what democracy actually is. looking at potential angles of critique i arrived at schmitt, benjamin, adorno and derrida but a more modern approach is exactly what i was looking for. thanks recommendation!
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Jun 26, 2021 18:00
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im on the net me boys posted:OP, there is already a books thread: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3844165 yeah i know but the last post was in may, nobody uses it and bookclubs drool. Πάντα ῥεῖ and the wheels of the revolution must be greased with the blood of its predecessors.
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Jun 26, 2021 18:03
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creative destruction but for book and history threads
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Jun 26, 2021 18:04
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anyway op i am sorry to report that it turns out books are an intelligence asset now: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/jun/26/project-cassandra-plan-to-use-novels-to-predict-next-war
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Jun 26, 2021 18:05
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vyelkin posted:anyway op i am sorry to report that it turns out books are an intelligence asset now: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/jun/26/project-cassandra-plan-to-use-novels-to-predict-next-war mein gott, is truly nothing safe from the relentless march of capital and militarism?
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Jun 26, 2021 18:08
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oscarthewilde posted:yeah i know but the last post was in may, nobody uses it and bookclubs drool. Πάντα ῥεῖ and the wheels of the revolution must be greased with the blood of its predecessors. the "book club" title isn't literal but whatever if people start posting in this one instead I'm here
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Jun 26, 2021 18:08
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My favorite checkhov story is Joy. It's about a guy who runs in the house screaming happily about how he got his name in the newspaper. Turns out it was because he got drunk and kicked in the head by a horse. http://www.online-literature.com/anton_chekhov/1103/ gently caress the story of the hero.
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Jun 26, 2021 18:18
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vyelkin posted:Here are some good books I've read recently. I was talking about the Jakarta method with a colleague just yesterday because he’d spent time in Indonesia. Anyway, I was talking about the individual experiences part and he says something like “if you want to read something that really puts the victims first you should read dikotter’s trilogy on China.” Anyway I started looking at them and the wrong people seem to really like them which obviously isn’t the end all/be all of the story but it has me pretty suspicious. Anyone read these? I’m actually pretty interested in a solid history of China in the mid 20th century but I’d prefer something that isn’t vastly one sided in any direction HashtagGirlboss has issued a correction as of 18:33 on Jun 26, 2021 |
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Jun 26, 2021 18:24
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I want to read more non-fiction but I don't want to get halfway into a history book and then find out oops the writer thinks that the east India company was good, actually Ive been commuting again recently and been getting back into mid century spy books cause they're quite easy reads. Eric ambler owns, never get sick of a well-meaning chap getting into a complicated situation with a worldly wise foreign type who knows more than he's letting on
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Jun 26, 2021 18:32
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the sex ghost posted:I want to read more non-fiction but I don't want to get halfway into a history book and then find out oops the writer thinks that the east India company was good, actually Yeah it’s hard (maybe impossible?) to write history that doesn’t have an angle and sell a narrative but you hate to read things that are just outright propaganda or completely batshit
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Jun 26, 2021 18:35
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mazzi Chart Czar posted:My favorite checkhov story is Joy. this is an accurate depiction of late imperial russians' relationships with newspapers
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Jun 26, 2021 18:36
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Jun 26, 2021 19:18
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he’s right
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Jun 26, 2021 20:11
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vyelkin posted:this is an accurate depiction of late imperial russians' relationships with newspapers Yea? Ah HA! I could tell this from his play "The Cherry Orchard," A play about rich people losing their mansion, but it being accurate in even his shortest of short stories . . God loving drat, I love chekhov. I figure some of you might get a kick out of this line, from the character Settembrini, in the book Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann "For literature was after all nothing else than the combination of humanism and politics; a conjunction the more immediate in that humanism itself was politics and politics humanism."
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Jun 26, 2021 20:26
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AnimeIsTrash posted:I like to read OP. Currently reading the stormlight archive series, and at some point in the future I want to start on the Red Mars trilogy. I was going to start stormlight archive but someone suggested I do sanderson’s mistborn series first?
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Jun 26, 2021 20:38
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recently read Ministry for the Future and I think the writer had some good ideas re: Children of Kali. But bad ideas around blockchain.
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Jun 26, 2021 20:41
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Demon Semen posted:I was going to start stormlight archive but someone suggested I do sanderson’s mistborn series first? I've read a bit of the mistborn series and I don't think it's necessary for reading the stormlight archive. That being said mistborn was some of Sanderson's earlier works and you can definitely tell Sanderson developed as an author as the stormlight archive series is of much higher quality than mistborn.
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Jun 26, 2021 20:50
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How about stormlight guyhive and it's just for the fellas.
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Jun 26, 2021 20:56
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Just finished The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin Currently reading Molecular Red by McKenzie Wark  In Molecular Red, McKenzie Wark creates philosophical tools for the Anthropocene, our new planetary epoch, in which human and natural forces are so entwined that the future of one determines that of the other. Wark explores the implications of Anthropocene through the story of two empires, the Soviet and then the American. The fall of the former prefigures that of the latter. From the ruins of these mighty histories, Wark salvages ideas to help us picture what kind of worlds collective labor might yet build. From the Russian revolution, Wark unearths the work of Alexander Bogdanov—Lenin’s rival—as well as the great Proletkult writer and engineer Andrey Platonov. The Soviet experiment emerges from the past as an allegory for the new organizational challenges of our time. From deep within the Californian military-entertainment complex, Wark retrieves Donna Haraway’s cyborg critique and science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson’s Martian utopia as powerful resources for rethinking and remaking the world that climate change has wrought. Molecular Red proposes an alternative realism, where hope is found in what remains and endures. and in closing, I highly recommend this book, The Ministry For The Future by Kim Stanley Robinson 
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Jun 26, 2021 21:18
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AnimeIsTrash posted:I like to read OP. Currently reading the stormlight archive series, and at some point in the future I want to start on the Red Mars trilogy. They cover a set number of pages/chapters every episode and eventually cover the entire series.
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Jun 26, 2021 21:21
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I'm reading blood meridian and then probably a people's history of the united States i highly recommend "a burning" which came out last year, it's a great fictional take on the effects of Hindu nationalism in modern India which is a terrifying thing overlooked by western news
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Jun 26, 2021 22:05
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Reading Harry Potter & the Philosopher's Stone
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Jun 26, 2021 22:11
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the only KSR i've read is "2312", which i enjoyed a lot even if the main protag is an annoying rear end in a top hat lots of fun ideas in that one
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Jun 26, 2021 22:18
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Aurora by KSR is one of my favorite books although Red Mars trilogy owns too.
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Jun 26, 2021 22:32
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Read Solaris by Stanisław Lem a year back and I've been going through his other works since. Highly recommend Solaris if you want something that's weird sci-fi unlike most Western stuff. I'm currently reading His Master's Voice which is fun so far. I have to admit I'm rather impressed at how good his general grasp of science is, whether it's information theory (a relatively new field in 1968 all things considered) or general math or physics. I say this as someone who's done some of each of those things in college, not professionally, but enough to generally be able to tell complete bullshit from things that are at least plausible. It's also surprising how it absolutely doesn't feel like it was written in the 1960s in the Eastern Block if you think about it from the view of the Western stereotypes of controlled information and people having no knowledge of the outside world; the story takes place in the US, and there's mentions of things like TV dinners, IBM computers, private investigators, and pseudo-scientific UFO-chasing grifters. All things that should have been completely unknown east of the Iron Curtain if you go by the usual Western understanding. Possibly one of my favorite thing so far is his observation, even back then, that meaningful books and information are being buried under a pile of complete bullshit. I mean, he's not the first to make that kind of observation, but he's pretty explicit about it and it's kind of amazing how prophetic it is for our modern era (although as far as predicting the future of mass media Walter Lippman's Public Opinion is still my favorite). Anyhow tl;dr Lem's great.
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Jun 26, 2021 23:01
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Demon Semen posted:I was going to start stormlight archive but someone suggested I do sanderson’s mistborn series first? Anime already answered this but they're unrelated. I would say just do Stormlight. I liked Mistborn but it is very juvenile, i mean that in it's really his first/earliest works and a bit janky amateur-ish YA-y, but it does do some cool things and if you like his writing with Stormlight you can go back and read it. fyi the first stormlight book is also a bit rough because it's a lot of setup/~world building~ poo poo, stormlight 2 really takes that and runs it with so much better
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Jun 26, 2021 23:05
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Lem is great, he has hilarious short stories about robot knights. If you're reading eastern european scifi, Andromeda by Efremov and anything by Strugatskis are 
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Jun 26, 2021 23:15
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The old failed reading group thread was sort of serving as a book discussion thread but it's been dead awhile now and I welcome a reboot. Currently reading Walking with Comrades about a journalist traveling for a bit with the Maoist rebels in India and the extremely hosed up poo poo being done to Indian people in the way of mining interests
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Jun 26, 2021 23:23
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Epic High Five posted:The old failed reading group thread was sort of serving as a book discussion thread but it's been dead awhile now and I welcome a reboot. Arundhati Roy owns.
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Jun 26, 2021 23:25
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Also lmao you were the guy who was upset that the naxalites were engaged in a war with the Indian state.
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Jun 26, 2021 23:25
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| # ? May 5, 2024 20:25 |
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oscarthewilde posted:
its real good OP, and for any failings it has it's the first work I've stumbled across that really laid out the case that capitalist enclosure is still roaring strong but it's focused on the perception of what is even possible. It's great to recommend to people for the same reason it's good to ask them stuff like "why are we boasting about going to the moon being the next big accomplishment when we did it 70 years ago with pocket calculators" or "if public libraries didn't exist today, do you think it would be possible to make them?"
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Jun 26, 2021 23:26
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