What are you currently reading?

[Amaruψ]

The Fall of the Ottomans

 

[average rodent]

I am currently learning to read :)

 

[ducon]

Finished:

 

The levee is built against Elinor’s agreeent. There is more Lovecraft in this second book (a murder, a haunted house, a deep one but not in the ocean).

 

Now:

Edited October 16, 2023 by ducon

[HeatedChocolate]

Got my grubby mitts on some stuff from my dad's bookshelf.

• Some compilation of the works of Edgar Allen Poe
• Dante's Inferno
• Dune
• The Silmarillion

I think I'll start with Inferno, Poe seems to be the kind of book you'd break out occasionally, Dune is long and I've tried to read the Silmarillion more times than I can count. He's also got some of the Song of Ice and Fire books. If Martin comes out with the others in my lifetime I think I'll read 'em.

[P_A_Z]

 

 

[Garlichead]

Finished reading Kim. Started reading The Duel by Joseph Conrad.

[SPACEDETECTIVE]

Fate Stay/Night and Blood Meridian

 

Quite and interesting combo.

[Guff dotD]

On 4/2/2023 at 3:34 AM, ducon said:

 

Topology tells us a lot about how a T-Shirt has 3 holes (not to be confused with openings.)

 

[ducon]

5 hours ago, Guff dotD said:

Topology tells us a lot about how a T-Shirt has 3 holes (not to be confused with openings.)

 

Maybe:

 

Finished:

How Saruman is defeated and the One ring is entering Mordor.

 

And finally:

[Aaron Blain]

I finally got around to getting some Michael Moorcock in epub/pdf format so I can enjoy it while I'm going about my business, or falling asleep at night. I find text-to-speech extremely soothing.

 

I'm jumping around in Elric/Corum/Bastable. It's such a trip revisiting some of these for the first time in 20 years. I've changed so much as a person, and so much of these books went over my head as a teenager. It's a strange feeling revisiting the most mind-expanding literature of my teens, and now being painfully aware of how much my worldview has diverged from Moorcock's, but he's still firmly my all-time favorite fiction author.

[ducon]

Read:

 

A strange guy, maybe one of the last who were involved in all sciences, even if he did not master them all.

He worked on logic, game theory, nuclear weaponry…

 

Next one is:

 

Finished:

 

Is the best part is after the fall of Sauron?

 

Now:

Edited October 26, 2023 by ducon

[LadyMistDragon]

Fluids by May Leitz

 

[Lila Feuer]

[ducon]

Read:

 

The 1929 crisis wiped men, the old fart died, characters are getting older, are leaving Perdido.

 

Now:

 

One of the two daughters of Elinor is like her mother, not the other one. The similar women are solving problems the same way: fhtagn!

War is bringing fortune to the Caskey family.

 

Now:

 

They found oil in a swamp and are now very rich.

 

And finally:

 

Finished:

 

Another giant who worked on a lot of domains: logic, geometry, calculus, even physics that he mathematized.

 

Now:

 

This genius was bullied because she was a woman and jewish. Anyway, she had a lot of beloved (platonic) students and an original way to teach.

 

Then:

 

I heard about his work in economics but not his work in pure mathematics… and that he was such dick.

 

Now:

Edited November 19, 2023 by ducon

[Rudolph]

Read most of Kenichi Sonoda's Gunsmith Cats. It was... interesting? Not sure I would recommend it, however.

 

On one hand, it feels like an improvement over something like Tsukasa Hojo's City Hunter - which has a similar premise, i.e. a gun-toting bounty hunter who fights crimes in a modern urban setting - in the sense that the protagonist here is not a "lovable" pervert and her relationship with not just her business partners but other women is a lot healthier and believable. As far as female protagonists go in mangas, they are pretty fun and memorable, and the art manages to make them look cool without sexualizing them.

 

On the other hand, it quickly becomes apparent that the titular Gunsmith Cats are all actual teenagers, which becomes a problem when the mangaka starts drawing them naked or scantily-clad - which just feels utterly unnecessary. I came to expect gratuitous panty shots and the occasional nudity from mangas, but here the author could have easily avoided the creepiness by making his female characters to be fully-grown adults - which would have been perfectly believable, given how common it is for petite women in their 20s and even 30s to come across as much younger than they really are, especially in mangas. Plus, there is the fact that the protagonist runs a successful gun shop and comes across as highly-experienced when it comes to both shooting and driving - which is not what you would expect from someone who is only 19.

 

And then, the mangaka decided to give the protagonist a recurring arch-nemesis in the form of a pedophile lesbian dominatrix mob boss (!) who keeps a harem of mind-controlled scantily-clad underage girls who are explicitly made to be her sex slaves and he really liked to remind the readers about it. Granted, "Riding Bean", the OAV that the manga is a spiritual continuation of, did feature a pedophile lesbian villain as well, but that part was mostly alluded to and it was definitely not depicted in a downright pornographic manner. 

 

So... yeah. Not sure I am going to keep reading after that. :S

Edited November 20, 2023 by Rudolph

[EraserheadBaby]

[EraserheadBaby]

@Guff dotD  does a plate have a hole in it?

[LadyMistDragon]

The Broken Kingdoms by NK Jemisin

 

 

[ducon]

Finished:

 

A very good book about Greek and Nordic mythologies but the stories are a bit too short in my opinion.

 

Now:

[smeghammer]

Alternating between Harry Potter (first one so far)  Discworld (currently Witches Abroad) to my kids, and this:

 

 

for work.

[ducon]

Finished:

 

Finally, Elinor dies and rain comes back.

An excellent series of 6 books, relating the rise and fall (or maybe not) of the Caskey clan during about fifty years (from 1920 to 1970).

Homosexuality, feminism, monstrosity, social relations, racism, are also in these books.

 

Now:

 

Finished:

 

He proved a very few theorems but seminal theorems. Beware, his theorems are about syntactic proofs (eg proven by machines), not semantic proofs (eg proven by a human).

 

Now:

Edited December 12, 2023 by ducon

[ducon]

Finished:

 

Good book about the guy that influenced 2000 years of mathematics. Actually, we know nearly nothing about him: the book mainly talks about his Elements.

The bibliography is a bit weak: nothing about the latest French translation of the Elements (by Vitrac) or even Heath’s translation, and Liu Hui’s Nine chapters are translated in French.

 

Now:

I knew that she worked hard but I did not know that mathematicians supported her… but not enough to give a job.

 

Next:

I vaguely knew his name but in fact, he created modern statistics and synthetic theory of evolution (Darwinism+Mendel theory) and he was a dick.

 

Then:

Edited December 27, 2023 by ducon

[P_A_Z]

texts on the heritage oral and written of the Indians of North America, in order to give a clarification on their history and the sustainability of their culture.

[Jello]

I'm currently reading Mein Kampf. I started reading it when I was a teenager, got about halfway through and put it down, because I was sick of reading Adolf Hitler's narcissim and hatred. But I figured I'd pick it up again, and once again, I'm sickened by his narcissim, but now that I'm a couple of decades older I can appreciate it for what it is. The well thought out, clearly planned, and well orated ideals that would lead him to become Chancellor and then Dictator of a country.

 

It's scary, because in 1925 he clearly knew what he wanted Germany to become, and then he went for it. And an entire country got behind him. I think it's very, very prescient in our current times. When a megalomaniac son of a bitch clearly tells you what he wants to do, he means it. And there are people that will get behind them.

[ducon]

I tried it too (pdf found somewhere on the internet) but I put it down too after about ten pages: it was so awfully written.

[Jello]

I agree, it's a very hard read, and it is poorly written. He was far better at making speeches than writing a book, and after starting it again I was about twenty pages in and I thought to myself "Why am I reading the autobiography of a genocidal maniac?". My answer to myself was "Why shouldn't you? This is an important text, this shows how people can be convinced that the killing of others is better for their nation."

 

And yes, after reading every meandering paragraph comprised of ten or more sentences, I think to myself "I'm reading the words of Hitler. A man who killed millions of people". And that's humbling, and disturbing. When I'm reading the text, I just feel like I'm reading some diatribe of a rambling lunatic, and then I let the Holocaust sink in. 

 

It's a hard read, but to me, it's important that I finish it. And I think everyone should try, because it's a textbook to genocide, and it's a textbook on how to create a sense of nationalism and patriotism that overwhelms our innate desire to be decent human beings.

 

Edit: I should've included the quote from the introduction on the back of my copy of the book, because it sums up my feelings on why people should read it:

 

"Here in the pages of Mein Kampf Hitler presented the world with his dark vision for the future. Years would pass before he attained the power to realize that vision, but Mein Kampf's existence denies the free world the excuse of ignorance. We dismissed him as a madman and we ignored his wretched book; the result was a tragedy of unprecedented proportions. This is yet another lesson to take from Mein Kampf: the lesson of vigilance and responsibility, of not closing our eyes to the evil around us. Since World War II, our societies have taken promising steps in this regard. It is our responsiblity to ensure the continued progress of that civilizing trend."

 

-Abraham Foxman

Edited December 28, 2023 by Jello

[LadyMistDragon]

Ship of Destiny

 

 

[ducon]

My wife owns this book, it’s in my backlog.

[hybridial]

Spoiler

 

Sequel to Cult of the Spider Queen by the same author, enjoying it so far. 

[ducon]

Read:

 

No, he did not burn ships with parabolic mirrors but he was the first actual modern scientist (using mathematics for science and engineering).

 

Then:

 

A genius between Galileo, Descartes and Newton, and Leibniz (Huygens taught him mathematics).

 

And now:

 

Finished:

 

Rousseau and Hobbes? Both are wrong. Origin of inequality? Wrong question. End of history? Bullshit. Liberal democracy is the finest political organization? Bullcrap.

 

Then:

Edited January 8 by ducon