Author Topic: What are you reading?  (Read 551875 times)

dr.chimps

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #700 on: April 19, 2013, 03:19:40 PM »
Just finished 'Townie' by Andre Dubus III. A hyped memoir from 2011 I got on the remainder table. Pretty good. He nicely details his rough, AC/DC magic-marker-on-jean-jacket-upbringing. A wimpy son of an up-and-coming short-story/novelist, and absent father, he nicely describes growing up in various tough mill-town Mass. cities. The first 2/3rds of the book are really good, as our guy gets his shit together and decides to fight back, but the book falters when he decides to become a writer (like his dad!) and the road to doing so. No doubt he can now write - too bad he couldn't have polished that part of this book. 7/10

/recommended for mass-holes.  

Mr Nobody

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #701 on: April 19, 2013, 03:32:31 PM »
Arnold Encyclopedia of Bodybuilding.

Parker

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #702 on: April 20, 2013, 01:35:40 AM »
I will be reading this soon

calfzilla

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #703 on: April 20, 2013, 01:42:46 AM »
Serious question:  does anyone know of any good books about why Jews are so successful with money and what their methods are? 

The closest thing I'm aware of is The Monk and the Merchant.

Parker

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #704 on: April 20, 2013, 02:21:40 AM »
Serious question:  does anyone know of any good books about why Jews are so successful with money and what their methods are? 

The closest thing I'm aware of is The Monk and the Merchant.
Or you could go to synagogue...
Kinda simple, be frugal, keep your money in the family, in the community, and make shrewd business deals. Don't be wasteful or frivious.

Kahn.N.Singh

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #705 on: April 20, 2013, 01:07:03 PM »
I will be reading this soon


Parker, I just took a look at this book. I confined my focus to Wilker's discussions of Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Hegel. I've done reading on the so-called secularization thesis (for example, through engagements with, among others, Charles Taylor and Michael Gillespie). Although Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Hegel are, among others, extremely influential in the rise of secular liberal democracy, this is no groundbreaking secret. So I thought that if Wilker could acquit himself well in interpreting these notoriously difficult thinkers, the rest of his book might be interesting. Unfortunately, with regard to these thinkers the author has no idea what he's talking about. He puts forward the standard, blockhead reading of Machiavelli's Prince, and fails to note its more nuanced rendering, famously done by both Diderot and Rousseau, as a subtle critique of power in the guise of a guide for power (if the goal is to control the populace through coercion, fear-mongering, and rhetorical cunning, it's probably best to keep these strategies sub rosa). Wilker's treatment of Hobbes is just as bad. He fails to distinguish between law, license, liberty, and right (often conflating 'right' with the former terms -- an inauspicious exegetical sign). And his exposition of Hegel, though brief, exhibits major interpretive problems that would be too tedious to go into. These, albeit limited and localized, problems lead me to the conclusion that the book is less scholarly than polemical; and polemics is the last refuge of a dilettante. ;D

I'm sure you are aware of these much better books:




Parker

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #706 on: April 20, 2013, 02:24:02 PM »
Parker, I just took a look at this book. I confined my focus to Wilker's discussions of Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Hegel. I've done reading on the so-called secularization thesis (for example, through engagements with, among others, Charles Taylor and Michael Gillespie). Although Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Hegel are, among others, extremely influential in the rise of secular liberal democracy, this is no groundbreaking secret. So I thought that if Wilker could acquit himself well in interpreting these notoriously difficult thinkers, the rest of his book might be interesting. Unfortunately, with regard to these thinkers the author has no idea what he's talking about. He puts forward the standard, blockhead reading of Machiavelli's Prince, and fails to note its more nuanced rendering, famously done by both Diderot and Rousseau, as a subtle critique of power in the guise of a guide for power (if the goal is to control the populace through coercion, fear-mongering, and rhetorical cunning, it's probably best to keep these strategies sub rosa). Wilker's treatment of Hobbes is just as bad. He fails to distinguish between law, license, liberty, and right (often conflating 'right' with the former terms -- an inauspicious exegetical sign). And his exposition of Hegel, though brief, exhibits major interpretive problems that would be too tedious to go into. These, albeit limited and localized, problems lead me to the conclusion that the book is less scholarly than polemical; and polemics is the last refuge of a dilettante. ;D

I'm sure you are aware of these much better books:




yeah, I am aware of those books...

I haven't really read anything from Wilker, but from what you are saying, Wilker should "stay in his lane" so to speak.
I'm interested in this book due to what I see on a day to day basis.

FitnessFrenzy

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #707 on: April 21, 2013, 01:12:54 AM »
Ultramarathon man

- Charles Bukowski - Post Office

Roger Bacon

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #708 on: April 21, 2013, 01:53:08 AM »
Serious question:  does anyone know of any good books about why Jews are so successful with money and what their methods are? 

The closest thing I'm aware of is The Monk and the Merchant.

Jews, God, and History was pretty good.

Mr Nobody

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #709 on: April 21, 2013, 02:58:20 AM »
Ultramarathon man

- Charles Bukowski - Post Office
The Post Office a excellent book.

Radical Plato

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #710 on: April 21, 2013, 05:53:05 AM »
Serious question:  does anyone know of any good books about why Jews are so successful with money and what their methods are? 

The closest thing I'm aware of is The Monk and the Merchant.
Inheritance and Incest
V

Mr. Magoo

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #711 on: April 21, 2013, 06:07:45 PM »
How to Do Things with Words- by J.L. Austin

Purge_WTF

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #712 on: April 21, 2013, 07:15:03 PM »
The Rantings of a Single Male: Losing Patience with Feminism, Political Correctness... and Basically Everything by Thomas Ellis. Great read for Black Knights and other non-manginas.

kimo

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #713 on: April 24, 2013, 08:31:33 AM »
would like  to own theodore roosevelt book three by morris . i was alwasys fascinated by teddy roosevelt but somehow had a hard time with his biographers .

funk51

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #714 on: April 24, 2013, 10:13:02 AM »
the underground football encylopedia ::)
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Princess L

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #715 on: April 24, 2013, 07:25:21 PM »
I will probably start Moloka'i next week.

Compellingly original in its conceit, Brennert's sweeping debut novel tracks the grim struggle of a Hawaiian woman who contracts leprosy as a child in Honolulu during the 1890s and is deported to the island of Moloka'i, where she grows to adulthood at the quarantined settlement of Kalaupapa.
:

Parker

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #716 on: April 24, 2013, 09:54:23 PM »

Roger Bacon

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #717 on: April 27, 2013, 12:16:32 PM »
Anyone read Er ist wieder da?

I don't think it's out in English yet?


Mr. Magoo

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #718 on: April 27, 2013, 01:09:06 PM »
Table Talk: Essays on Men and Manners- by William Hazlitt

dr.chimps

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #719 on: April 30, 2013, 01:21:04 PM »
Just finished Jane Leavy's The Last Boy, a biography of Mickey Mantle. Mantle was a hero, back when we used to have heroes - not the celebrity trash/cash whore hybrids we have these days - and Leavy  looks at what made Mickey Mick. What she finds is not always pretty or bow-wrapped, revealing a physically gifted man with a badly damaged psyche who tried to be everything to everyone except himself and those closest to him. Mick was confusingly self-denying, self-absorbed and self-destructive - almost mythological in his hubris, his downfall and his redemption. Leavy's book is unequivocally biased, though not a hagiography, and it's non-linear narrative helps rather than hinders itself. I finished the book both impressed and saddened by the object man and, even more telling, I wished I'd met him. Recommended.  


Mr Nobody

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #720 on: April 30, 2013, 01:29:54 PM »
Just finished Jane Leavy's The Last Boy, a biography of Mickey Mantle. Mantle was a hero, back when we used to have heroes - not the celebrity trash/cash whore hybrids we have these days - and Leavy  looks at what made Mickey Mick. What she finds is not always pretty or bow-wrapped, revealing a physically gifted man with a badly damaged psyche who tried to be everything to everyone except himself and those closest to him. Mick was confusingly self-denying, self-absorbed and self-destructive - almost mythological in his hubris, his downfall and his redemption. Leavy's book is unequivocally biased, though not a hagiography, and it's non-linear narrative helps rather than hinders itself. I finished the book both impressed and saddened by the man and, even more telling, I wished I'd met him. Recommended. 


Mickey a strange individual but incredible genes, where can I get this book chimps Barns and Nobles?

dr.chimps

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #721 on: April 30, 2013, 02:54:27 PM »
Mickey a strange individual but incredible genes, where can I get this book chimps Barns and Nobles?
If you can find one still open, I'll bet you can. Look on the the remainder tables. Got my HC copy for $6.99 -%10.  

funk51

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #722 on: May 02, 2013, 08:15:51 AM »
total recall. :o :o :o :o :o
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Mr Nobody

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #723 on: May 02, 2013, 08:17:13 AM »
If you can find one still open, I'll bet you can. Look on the the remainder tables. Got my HC copy for $6.99 -%10.  
Thanks.

Jack T. Cross

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #724 on: May 11, 2013, 12:34:20 PM »


Lololol..surprised that none of you so-called Scots picked up on this Broons strip that was online.  Couldn't find the original, though (it is equally hilarious).

I've got tons of great Underground Comics, too.  Might make a thread on the E-board soon with some scans.