Author Topic: What are you reading?  (Read 549882 times)

Coach is Back!

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1350 on: July 02, 2017, 07:40:37 PM »
You tell 'em, Coach!



Damn, you libs just can't get right. More proof why you lost everything.

The Ugly

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1351 on: July 02, 2017, 08:02:50 PM »
Damn, you libs just can't get right. More proof why you lost everything.

Agreed. Books are totally lib, bro.

(Except that big one with the angels and demons and Disneyland in the sky. Because magic is for really, really smart people on the Right.)

Coach is Back!

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1352 on: July 02, 2017, 08:25:27 PM »
Agreed. Books are totally lib, bro.

(Except that big one with the angels and demons and Disneyland in the sky. Because magic is for really, really smart people on the Right.)


It was insinuated that I was a republican. I'm not. Try to keep up.

Meta-physical

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1353 on: July 03, 2017, 12:11:37 PM »
It was insinuated that I was a republican. I'm not. Try to keep up.

Dear Coach,

Can you recommend me some more of your favourite books, please? I've just finished The Arrogance Of Intellectuals and it was a real page-turner.

ratherbebig

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1354 on: July 03, 2017, 02:38:52 PM »
how the hell is this thread 55 pages? surely it cant be about what youre reading?

Taffin

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1355 on: July 03, 2017, 04:20:27 PM »
He didn't? 2061 and 3001 both have his name on them.

Sorry, I was half asleep, I (think) I must have meant the follow ups to Rendezvous with Rama - the one's he co-wrote with Gentry Lee - apologies

Would you recommend them?  2061 and 3001 I mean?
T

Kahn.N.Singh

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1356 on: July 05, 2017, 06:03:13 AM »
Damn, you libs just can't get right. More proof why you lost everything.

What, Coach? I'm on your side, and am not a soft-headed lib (yuck :-X).

dr.chimps

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1357 on: July 08, 2017, 01:35:44 PM »
Reading 'True Confessions' by John Gregory Dunne. I saw the movie years ago, and kinda knew he was Joan Didion's dead hubby but never read anything he wrote. Wow. Police/Corruption. Politics. Religion. California society. All of these elements are interwoven with two, alternating, fraternal voices - priest and cop. Both voices are tonally distinct and amazing. The author just does not drop the ball. This is as good as it gets.

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1358 on: July 08, 2017, 11:46:37 PM »
Just read Bertrand Russell's The Problems of Philosophy. I'll need to re-read parts of it and take notes in order to fully grasp it, though. Now starting Robert Dahl's Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition.

The Ugly

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1359 on: July 11, 2017, 12:45:10 AM »
It was insinuated that I was a republican. I'm not. Try to keep up.

Google "non sequitur."

Just looks scary, I'm sure one of them footballer kids could help walk you through.

  

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1360 on: July 31, 2017, 02:31:35 PM »
Now starting Arend Lijphart's Patterns of Democracy and John Hersey's Hiroshima. My aim is to significantly reduce my 'to be read' pile by the start of October, but I'm really falling behind due to gin and sluts.

Audioslave

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1361 on: August 03, 2017, 10:29:38 AM »
Just finishing "The Reaper" right now. Not terribly well written but a good story.

dr.chimps

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1362 on: August 05, 2017, 11:23:23 AM »
Read Katherine Boo's 'behind the beautiful forevers.' Superb. Kind of  non-fiction/fiction account of a Mumbai squat. Wow.

Also, Louise Penny's 'How the Light Gets In.' Kinda of a poor Quebec procedural. 5/10 on the Connelly/Rankin scale.

Meta-physical

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1363 on: August 30, 2017, 03:39:40 PM »
I've recently picked up a copy of Intellectual Impostures (also Fashionable Nonsense) by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont. I've been meaning to buy it for quite some time now. It was first mentioned to me after I argued against various absurd feminist analyses that had somehow managed to find print in academic publications, and though I don’t believe this book directly addresses that, it should provide me with a greater understanding of how gibberish occasionally manages to pervade academia.

On a related note, has anyone read anything by Slavoj Žižek and would they recommend doing so? He appears to have some fervent supporters but I simply cannot stand listening to him speak. The little that I have heard seems to be a mixture of slobbering, sniffing, and needlessly redefining words, but I wouldn't really want to write him off without engaging in his work.


Conclusion: This is an excellent book. Sokal and Bricmont quite brilliantly, and often humorously, dismantle the ambiguous texts of some of France's most famous thinkers. As I began reading, I hoped that the book wouldn't leave the reader coming away with the view that all complex or seemingly inaccessible writing should be dismissed as verbose rambling - and indeed it didn't. They explicitly state this much in their epilogue and take great care to highlight exactly what it is that they are attacking: the misuse of scientific terminology and the implementation of deliberately obscure language to mask the vacuity of the writer's analyses (an 'explicitly political' concern is listed by Sokal in discussing his original parody, too).


Audioslave

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1364 on: September 03, 2017, 02:56:36 PM »
Just listened to Kevin Hart's audiobook. He made that HILARIOUS. Highly recommend.

Kahn.N.Singh

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1365 on: October 03, 2017, 02:53:05 PM »
OK, after last year's debacle, let's try this again.

2017 Nobel Prize in Literature: Announced on Thursday.


Who ya got?

1. Pynchon
2. Delillo
3. Roth
4. Kundera
5. Rushdie
6. Atwood
7. McCarthy
8. Byatt
9. Murakami
10. Oates

The Ugly

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1366 on: October 03, 2017, 07:38:51 PM »
OK, after last year's debacle, let's try this again.

2017 Nobel Prize in Literature: Announced on Thursday.


#7

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1367 on: October 04, 2017, 03:24:13 AM »
OK, after last year's debacle, let's try this again.

2017 Nobel Prize in Literature: Announced on Thursday.

What, no Springsteen or Neil Young?  :D

Tough call! If I had to bet then I'd narrow it down to either 1,2, or 9. I'll go with Murakami. Rushdie is probably still viewed as 'too popular', and (to my shame) my awareness of many others on the list is solely through various newspaper book reviews.

Primemuscle

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1368 on: October 04, 2017, 04:38:07 PM »
I'm reading about Jeremy Iron's 400 year-old Irish castle Kilco.





Kahn.N.Singh

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1369 on: October 05, 2017, 04:28:41 AM »
#7

What, no Springsteen or Neil Young?  :D

Tough call! If I had to bet then I'd narrow it down to either 1,2, or 9. I'll go with Murakami. Rushdie is probably still viewed as 'too popular', and (to my shame) my awareness of many others on the list is solely through various newspaper book reviews.

It's Ishiguro. I'd have preferred TU's or MP's picks, but at least it's not Carole King or the Hamilton librettist. 

Taffin

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1370 on: October 09, 2017, 02:43:23 PM »
I'm reading about Jeremy Iron's 400 year-old Irish castle Kilco.

The piece in Vanity Fair?  A great read, despite its engendering a wee bit of 'Castle-envy'   ;)

Thanks Prime, I'd never have come across that article otherwise.
T

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1371 on: October 12, 2017, 02:01:34 PM »
Rereading The End Of History And The Last Man. Can't really be bothered. Thrown in some Percy Shelley for a bit of bedtime serenity.

illuminati

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1372 on: October 12, 2017, 02:06:41 PM »
Picking up the pieces
By Paul Britton

Was the 1st forensic psychology profiler in the UK

dr.chimps

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1373 on: October 12, 2017, 03:17:35 PM »
James Ellroy's 'Blood's a Rover.' Bought it years ago - same cocaine narrative as his earlier  'The Cold Six Thousand.' Not bad. Great conspiracy stuff/novel stuff but people looking for a best-of read will be farked; the smart will be entertained. 

The Ugly

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1374 on: October 12, 2017, 08:20:07 PM »
Anyone read Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation? Sci-fi, 195 pages. Alex Garland's (Ex Machina) already adapted it, in theaters February next year. Trailer looks promising, figured I'd read it first.