Fun Stuff > ENJOY
Reading this summer
Bayley:
I have so many books I have to read for next semester and I haven't even started on them. I've been in a very philosophical mode this summer; if I don't stumble across at least one previously unconsidered kernel of wisdom (or at least food-for-thought) each day I feel like I'm wasting time. I've been meaning to read Mrs. Dalloway and Lolita and Walden and People's History of the United States and a million others, but so far I've read:
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (I picked up Lila but I haven't cracked it yet). This man reconciled me with my crazy thoughts and made me feel sane again. Aaaand then halfway through the book I again felt crazy. I swear, aligning too much with this man's mind can have schizophrenic effects. End up feeling so open to everything, looking for deeper meaning in a non-mythologically based world can really make you feel nuts. My personal experience at least.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Skip Dawkins, son. I guess it's hard to talk about Nietzsche at all unless I have the person I'm talking to in front of me, because I'm quite new to him and I'm sure I'd sound like a fool. Either that or the person wouldn't have read him and would have some preconceived notion about what an asshole he was. Though I have a much higher confidence in the intellects of this message board. Reading this after Zen made me feel sane, and then bitter and misanthropic, and then hermetic. I wanted to buy a motorcycle and live on a fucking mountain. And then I finished it and felt like I had a great deal of new power over my own life, and again managed to love the world.
Maybe I let the things I read affect me too much, but that's kinda how I like to roll. Complete absorption, completely coming over to the author's way of thinking. And then I finish the book, get a little distance and look at it a bit more objectively. I remember in the first portion of The Stoic by Seneca he wrote a letter to a student of his talking about how the student shouldn't jump around to too many authors, but instead stick on one for a while and really allow yourself to understand their worldview before moving on to another. I thought it was wisdom.
Now workin on Beyond Good and Evil. Looove it.
Last thought to anyone who's read Nietzsche: Do you notice some sort of social aversion to talking about the man? In my perception it almost seems like he's danced around. We can talk about eight hundred authors who are clearly disciples of him, but for some reason bringing him up is almost a faux pas, like it's something that should be kept very much to yourself, because it's so personally revealing. Or something. I dunno. Response?
wesleyv:
so far this summer I read:
ayan rand - atlas shrugged/ can become tedius when she describes how great her characters are but there's enough interesting things going on to warrant this rather large book.
david sedaris - when you are engulfed in flames/ perfect summer read, very funny.
dbc pierre - vernon god little/ lot of people dont like this one but I thought it was a nice satire and can definitely recommend it.
then I started readin david mitchel's ghostwritten but it was a missprint so I send it back and while waiting for a new copy I decided to read 2 small books
jay mcinery - story of my life/ really got into this, was only dissapointed by the ending. for fans of "rules of attraction"
kurt vonnegut - slaughterhouse five/ very good read and interesting structure but I guess I just expected a little more after reading the reviews.
now I got my new copy of ghostwritten so i started reading where I left off. So far it's quite good. especially the tokyo chapter, reminded me of "murakami" novels.
idiosyncratic:
--- Quote from: Bayley on 17 Jul 2008, 16:30 ---...I've been meaning to read Mrs. Dalloway and Lolita and Walden and People's History of the United States and a million others, but so far I've read:
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
Maybe I let the things I read affect me too much, but that's kinda how I like to roll. Complete absorption, completely coming over to the author's way of thinking. And then I finish the book, get a little distance and look at it a bit more objectively. I remember in the first portion of The Stoic by Seneca he wrote a letter to a student of his talking about how the student shouldn't jump around to too many authors, but instead stick on one for a while and really allow yourself to understand their worldview before moving on to another. I thought it was wisdom.
Now workin on Beyond Good and Evil. Looove it.
Last thought to anyone who's read Nietzsche: Do you notice some sort of social aversion to talking about the man? In my perception it almost seems like he's danced around. We can talk about eight hundred authors who are clearly disciples of him, but for some reason bringing him up is almost a faux pas, like it's something that should be kept very much to yourself, because it's so personally revealing. Or something. I dunno. Response?
--- End quote ---
I highly recommend Lolita. I really enjoy Vladmir Nabokov's writing. I also really enjoyed his memoir Speak, Memory. I hope you get around to reading it eventually. Also, I was really pleased to see that someone else has read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Not many people that I know around here have read it much less heard of it.
As far as Nietzsche is concerned, I really enjoyed the philosophy class that I took that was centered entirely around his works, but I too noticed that there seem to be a lot of preconceived notions of him and his works. I think that Nietzsche is probably one of the more misunderstood well-known philosophers (well-known meaning that most people have at least heard of him but not necessarily read anything by him, and "God is dead" is quoted out of context so frequently it makes me a little sick), and because I doubt that there are a significant number of people that are willing to put in the work to understand Nietzsche better, the misconceptions are a standard that is pretty well unavoidable. I suppose I just don't have a lot of confidence in the majority of the public to care enough about something to understand it. Anyway, in my experience the people that are most averted to talking about Nietzsche's philosophy are those that do not properly understand him and those that are content with thinking that he was a bad person. Anyway, I am sorry if that was incomprehensible. I have been up all night working, so my brain is quite fuzzy at the moment. :)
I wouldn't worry too much about becoming so involved in the things that you read. I am very similar in that respect, and I always viewed it as being a positive thing. I suppose I kind of feel that one needs to get to know the book before one can fully comprehend it, and what better way to do so than to become emotionally attached/involved?
Book I am reading now: Letters from the Hive: An Intimate History of Bees, Honey, and Humankind by Stephen Buchmann, Banning Repplier.
I am really enjoying this book. I am a dork and I love my bees, what can I say? :) Even if you are not a beekeeper, I recommend this book. It is rather poetic, and those little insects have more an effect on our lives than you may think. Here is a link to the google book search page: http://books.google.com/books?id=Z_Z4AAAACAAJ&dq=letters+from+the+hive
The Albatross:
--- Quote from: Oli on 07 Jun 2008, 17:56 ---
The Acid House by Irvine Welsh
I love summer reading.
--- End quote ---
I love you.
I didn't know anyone really knew Irvine Welsh. Although, I do believe Glue is his best novel.
Dissy:
I am so pissed right now. I literally wait well over a year (something like 15 months since I actually purchased it on Amazon) for this book (Fearful Symmetry for anyone who wants to know the title). Let me explain this book a little bit. This book is the latest in a series (or a "reboot) of DS9, a tv show that ended in 1999. Back to the book. It advances the story by a minuscule amount. Most of the information in the first half of the book is obtained directly from 2 episodes of the show. There is a 20 page portion that attempts to fill in a gap that doesn't get fully explained until well over 100 pages into part 2. Then we get the cliffhanger. 140 pages in, the story is over. Part 2 is to paint the new villian as a tragic picture. Oh, but lets throw in references to America's "occupation" of Iraq, and compare them to the Nazis. GREAT, way to win over an audience. We get a couple of references to episodes from the show, they explain why our new villain is so twisted (the villian from the show would regularly rape and beat the new villian) The suspence builds (not really) and builds to the point where we end the novel 8 months before it began. So, I'm sitting here waiting for 15 months to be told, "wait longer."
Okay, admittedly, the book is well written (its the authors first published novel, and she got a lot of pointers from two of my favourite authors), and as a stand alone (with a little bit more info) it would hold up faily well. But, as part of a series, especialy following the previous one, I want more. More Story, more action. Break the Villian's past into segements that begin each chapter, a couple paragraphs to 2 pages at the beginning of each one, and attack the story.
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