▲bodantogat12 hours ago
[-] I mostly read science fiction and fantasy, and I’ve just started Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It follows a scientist sentenced to a prison camp on a planet teeming with bizarre lifeforms. So far, it hasn’t drawn me in the way Children of Time did, though I’m only about a quarter of the way through.
reply▲bodantogat10 hours ago
[-] Oh and also listening to an audiobook - Mythos by Stephen Fry. Liking it so far.
reply▲mattmanser10 hours ago
[-] I loved some of his fiction, but haven't got past the first chapter of that book.
reply▲Civilisations by kenneth clark - an art critic tries to understand western civilization through the "book" of its art.
reply▲I read The Whispering Mountain by Joan Aiken and was struck by similarities to Pratchett, for instance the part where the main character heroically defeats monsters in a wood by using knowledge gleaned from an old encyclopedia that he carries everywhere, and how he
ſpeakſ like thiſ when reading aloud from it, and the part about underground camels in Wales. It references The Far-Distant Oxus at one point, which I want to read (a pony adventure story written in 1937 by teenagers).
(I know the long s wasn't really used at the ends of words, that was just a hurried example.)
Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy. As with some of his other work, the punctuation can be a challenge and the prose can sometimes border on the ponderous, but I'm enjoying it. Currently about half way through.
reply▲Listen to the audiobooks. They help distinguish which characters are speaking.
reply▲wara23arish14 hours ago
[-] reading Blood Meridian now, honestly it just flows for me.
I grew up reading arabic and sentences are just feel longer so maybe thats why Im not struggling with it.
A Reading of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit by Quentin Lauer
Augustine's Confessions
Last fiction: Nice Job by David Lodge
reply▲whatamidoingyo17 hours ago
[-] I'm reading The Inner Citadel by Pierre Hadot for the second time. It's full of gems.
reply▲jorisboris20 hours ago
[-] Just finished Casino Royale by Ian Fleming
reply▲Have you read any of John le Carré's books?
reply▲How did you like the book (compared to the movie)?
reply▲jorisboris14 hours ago
[-] I like the old world charm
The book was written in the 50s, its way slower than the movie (though still a short read). Some things from the movie plot are the same
I love details like how difficult it was to get something communicated across a border only 75 years ago
kapilkaisare15 hours ago
[-] Simmons, Dan. The Terror
I'm about 50 pages in, and am entranced with the prose.
Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefèvre (1923)
reply▲kratom_sandwich23 hours ago
[-] How do you like it?
reply▲I'm 3/4 through it.
It's been quite entertaining to read how he went from picking off bucket shops to going bust on Wall Street and how he proceeded from there. Old-fashioned writing that goes straight to the point.
His art-like approach to speculation is refreshing after spending time on /r/quant. I cannot say if any of his high-level speculation wisdom hold water anymore, though.
Would recommend!
"Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History", about our first civilisations.
reply▲Post Soviet Britain by Abby Innes. Excellent so far (70 pages in).
Crossing the Unknown Sea by David Whyte. Also excellent. Nearly finished it.
Currently: Moby-Dick and Termination Shock. (That the former gets brought up a lot in the latter is a coincidence.)
reply▲On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy D. Snyder
reply▲Ideaflow: The Only Business Metric That Matters, by Jeremy Utley
reply▲I'm favoriting this for later.
reply▲“How Can I Help” by Linda Hand
reply▲constantinum15 hours ago
[-] War and peace - third attempt
reply▲It's really good. A story that still pops into my mind occasionally today. As a Brit I'd never really thought about Napoleon's invasion of Russia. The retreat in the book is evocative and really left an impression.
But I read it when I had far more free time than now.
Rereading
Bliss by Peter Carey after opening a 45 year old box o' books from a back shelf in the shed.
It's a red pill fable for marketing directors (and other threads are pulled).
Later adapted for film, it saw 400 viewers walk out on it when screened at Cannes... most likely when the fish hit the floor. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifR7tsVT_-Y