Whatcha reading?

[Angrist]

GRR Martin needs to kick his own butt and finish A Dance With Dragons.

[Vampyr]

Originally Posted by Angrist

GRR Martin needs to kick his own butt and finish A Dance With Dragons.

For realz.

[Fyacin]

Just requested the first of that series from the library, can't wait.

Also recently finished "Sun of Suns" by Karl Schroeder. Pretty good.

[KillerGremlin]

Originally Posted by manasecret

I just finished The Elegant Universe. It's about string theory. Professor S, something you'd might be interested in.



That one is from around the mid- to late-nineties, so it's a bit out of date especially considering the fast pace of string theory, or M-theory as it is known now. So I am on to Greene's sequel of sorts, The Fabric of the Cosmos. Hopefully they've figured out some of the stuff they hadn't yet figured out by the time Elegant Universe was published.

String Theory might suck the big one if they don't find the Higgs Boson with the CERN.

[Acebot44]

Lets try this again

This is the last book I finished reading



And it was my least favorite Vonnegut book thus far. Supposedly, besides Slaughterhouse-Five, Cat's Cradle is his most well known book but meh, I don't know why.

Now, I'm flipping through the short stories in



and



Here is my favorite paragraph from the Bukowski book:

"And speaking of shit, constipation has always been a greater fear to me than cancer. (We'll get back to Mad Jimmy. Listen, I told you I write this way.) If I miss one day without shitting, I can't go anywhere, do anything -- I get so desperate when that happens that oftentimes I try to suck my own cock to unclog my system, to get things going again. And if you've ever tried to suck your own cock then you only know the terrible strain on the backbone, neckbone, every muscle, everything. You stroke the thing up as long as it will get then you really double up like some creature on a torture rack, legs way over your head and locked around the bedrungs, your asshole twitching like dying sparrow in the frost, everything bent together around your great beer belly, all your muscle sheathes ripped to shit, and what hurts is that you don't miss by a foot or two -- you miss by and eighth of an inch -- the end of your tongue and the tip of your cock that close, but it might as well be an eternity or forty miles. God, or whoever the hell, knew just what He was doing when He put us together."


...anywho, Sedaris seems to be liked by everyone these days and I'm just starting to appreciate his book that I'm reading. We'll see how the rest goes.

[Bond]

Acebot, if you like Sedaris you should give This American Life a listen.

[The Germanator]

I've seen Sedaris live and listened to almost all of his books on audio tape, which I really think is the way to go because his delivery is so damn funny. I really want to read his new book, When You are Engulfed in Flames

[Bond]

Germy, did you see him on the TAL tour or a solo act of his?

[The Germanator]

Just a solo act. He read some stuff at the Grand Opera House in Wilmington, DE to a sold out crowd. It was pretty fun.

[BreakABone]

Originally Posted by Acebot44

.

Just wanted to say was a fan of the new avatar.

[Bube]

Hmm.. I just finished The Call of Cthulhu last night.

Can't decide if I should start reading Atlas Shrugged or Alice's Adventures in Wonderland or Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque or The Divine Comedy.

[Professor S]

Originally Posted by Bube

Hmm.. I just finished The Call of Cthulhu last night.

Can't decide if I should start reading Atlas Shrugged or Alice's Adventures in Wonderland or Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque or The Divine Comedy.

I wouldn't read Atlas Shrugged until you've read The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand's earlier book. Atlas Shrugged is arguably the "more important" of the two, but I believe that The Fountainhead is the better piece of fiction as a novel. Atlas Shrugged is more of an objectivist parable (statement of philosophy) than anything else and I believe it even has a 30 page monologue in it but don;t quote me as I read it a long time ago.

If you've never read Rand before, be prepared for her flawless protagonists. She always tried to portray her protags as the ideal to be strived for, and not a reflection of the reality of human flaws.

[Bube]

Originally Posted by Professor S

I wouldn't read Atlas Shrugged until you've read The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand's earlier book. Atlas Shrugged is arguably the "more important" of the two, but I believe that The Fountainhead is the better piece of fiction as a novel. Atlas Shrugged is more of an objectivist parable (statement of philosophy) than anything else and I believe it even has a 30 page monologue in it but don;t quote me as I read it a long time ago.

If you've never read Rand before, be prepared for her flawless protagonists. She always tried to portray her protags as the ideal to be strived for, and not a reflection of the reality of human flaws.

Yeah, I heard that her characters are flawless. I don't know how I'd react to that before I've read it though.

From what I've read of her thoughts on objectivism, it seems that the philosophy itself thrives on flawless people. So it's not really surprising.

But damn! I searched high and low to find Atlas Shrugged, now you're telling me to go to the ends of the earth for The Fountainhead!

[Teuthida]

Originally Posted by The Germanator

I've seen Sedaris live and listened to almost all of his books on audio tape, which I really think is the way to go because his delivery is so damn funny. I really want to read his new book, When You are Engulfed in Flames

Started listening to the audiobook of When You are Engulfed in Flames recently. Enjoying so far. Never read or heard his other stuff before. Just saw him on The Daily Show promoting this book.

[Professor S]

Originally Posted by Bube

Yeah, I heard that her characters are flawless. I don't know how I'd react to that before I've read it though.

From what I've read of her thoughts on objectivism, it seems that the philosophy itself thrives on flawless people. So it's not really surprising.

But damn! I searched high and low to find Atlas Shrugged, now you're telling me to go to the ends of the earth for The Fountainhead!

Go to Amazon. You'll find it pretty easily along with her philosphical works.

As for Objectivism, I think its been widely misinterpreted and even purposely so in history by socialist intelelctuals in our university system. Its not really about being perfect, but that we should always attempt to try and strive for perfection. It is in that effort that we grow.

To read the basics of her philosphy, it is more about recognizing reality, and therefore it flaws and triumphs, and controlling feeling because feelings distort and confuse a proper analysis of reality. Like the name, it is about objectively viewing the world; not concentrating on what should happen, but dealing with what will happen and operating in that realm. Part of this is the recognition that we will never be perfect, but we should always work towards it, because the myth of the perfect can inpire a better good.

Like any philosophy, it is written by a flawed person and can contradict itself at times, but when compared to works of her contemporaries, like Also Sprach Zarathustra and The Communist Manifesto, Rand is the most balanced intellectual ever to walk the earth.

I'm also not an Objectivist, as by Rand's own definition, if you don't believe in everything she wrote, you are not an Objectivist, and I don't. But I'd have to say that of all the modern philosophies, I agree with objectivism the most. And she was an atheist, and I am not.

I'd recommend reading the Wiki on Objectivism and then decide whether you'd want to read more about it. At the very least its an interesting read. Her writings on Rational Self-Interest is especially interesting.