Now Reading

[auxien]

i read The White People the other night after hearing a few raves about it. definitely good, has some awesome moments in it.

 

don't be mistaken, Hill of Dreams meanders...the meandering becomes more more interesting eventually though. not sure what the end of the novel will bring however.

 

heard a lot of good about The Great God Pan. definitely on the list for the next from Machen. i enjoy his writing thus far.

[Guest zaphod]

sir yes sir! I have 'The Three Imposters' but have yet to read it, that story might be in this collection.

 

you might also like stefan grabinski

[Atop]

thanks! Sounds like what I love in lit. Realism bores the shit out of me unless it has a slant on it, one in which I have never experienced first hand. I do not read or watch films to experience what I already do on a daily basis. It baffles me that people want more of this reality.

[logakght]

lotr 1 and neuromancer

[murve33]

Finished Hyperion and re-read Flatland.

Good Shit.

 

Edit: For the record, both books are free on Kindle for PC (Also free).

Edited May 3, 2012 by Murveman

[Bob Dylan]

Finished Hyperion and re-read Flatland.

Good Shit..

 

 

Fall of Hyperion next?

[murve33]

No sir.

Perhaps I should say that it was Longfellow's Hyperion, a romantic-era book.

[Guest iep]

FLATLAND! was awesome. i should revisit that. how did you like it>?

[murve33]

Second time I read it. Read it sophomore year of high school and I converted from Atheism to Agnosticism as a result of reading it.

One of my all-time favorite books. Multi-Dimensional coolness coupled with hilarious satire.

 

Though I hadn't picked up on the satire when I read it in high school, was just baffled by the way upper dimensions were explained.

 

Edit: Flatland should be a required read of every watmm-er imo. The 4th Spacial Dimension is pretty IDM.

Edited May 4, 2012 by Murveman

[ChrisRyder]

ha, just started Neuromancer after finishing "flow my tears, the policeman said"

 

Been on PKD binge.

 

So many books, so little time, I need to take about 2 months off to clear my backlog of unread books, unlisted new music and un watched films

[Atop]

So many books, so little time, I need to take about 2 months off to clear my backlog of unread books, unlisted new music and un watched films

 

truth!

 

and

 

welcome aboard

[triachus]

 

 

i'm reading it all in his voice

[Guest KY]

I haven't read much what with a recent move and job transfer among other things, but I'm still loving the hell out of the quirky and kitschy Riddle of the Traveling Skull. Would definitely recommend. Although I recently read Herbert West: Re-Animator, and absolutely loved it. I enjoyed the film, but I actually enjoy the short story (stories?) more.

[Guest iep]

 

 

i'm reading it all in his voice

 

^_^

 

 

Although I recently read Herbert West: Re-Animator, and absolutely loved it. I enjoyed the film, but I actually enjoy the short story (stories?) more.

 

i never read the original lovecraft, for some reason. the films were late night blunted guity-pleasures for me, though.

 

now reading this

 

 

and some seismology/electronics texts

[zkom]

I'm reading Bram Stoker's Dracula and Guy Delisle's Jerusalem, which is great. I've read his Shenzhen, Pyongyang and Burma books before, all top notch.

 

 

But beside those I'm also reading this fucker:

It's a description of fundamental physical laws and mathematics needed to understand them in 1100 pages.. I'm kinda out of my depth with this one, I may just as well soon give up. The speed in which new ideas are introduced is breathtaking and his approach to some things is not really the most intuitive to say the least. Even when he's dealing with something relatively simple like Newtonian mechanics the mathematics get pretty heavy.

[Guest iep]

Guy Delisle

 

been meaning to get my hands on some of his stuff. where to start?

Edited May 9, 2012 by iep

[zkom]

Guy Delisle

 

been meaning to get my hands on some of his stuff. where to start?

 

I've been reading just the travelogues, but from there I'd start from Shenzhen and work chronologically from there, because he sometimes references back to his older work and you can see him developing over time. Though Shenzhen is a bit more boring than the rest in my opinion, so if you like you could skip straight to Pyongyang where the stuff gets more interesting.

[Bob Dylan]

 

 

i'm reading it all in his voice

 

 

I think we all have done that! There is no other way. It's a good book (a little too long and redundant perhaps), but I really do think there is a fiction aspect to it.

[Bob Dylan]

Guy Delisle

 

been meaning to get my hands on some of his stuff. where to start?

 

I've been reading just the travelogues, but from there I'd start from Shenzhen and work chronologically from there, because he sometimes references back to his older work and you can see him developing over time. Though Shenzhen is a bit more boring than the rest in my opinion, so if you like you could skip straight to Pyongyang where the stuff gets more interesting.

 

 

Oh they are really easy to get here (since he's from Quebec), but those books are awesome indeed in those sort of travel journal story that makes you smile/think. I guess in Europe perhaps the FNAC but they won't be translated...

[Guest iep]

thanks.

 

 

with "where to start?" i meant which book to start with, not where to start buying it lol

 

[SR4]

Still trying to suss out Hegel's writings. His basic premises are incredibly easy to understand....at first.....but then you read further and its like trying to decipher a V2 German rocket construction manual...hopefully it will be rewarding

[Guest iep]

hegel :(

 

my german was/is poor as hell so some of it might've gone over my head. but next to schopenhauer he was a loon, yo

[SR4]

I still have to read Schopenhauer..but he sounds incredibly interesting...his life and details (incredibly bitter...and I think he hated Hegel, yes?)

[Guest iep]

he is very different from Hegel but uses the same tone, he is interesting.

 

Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung is fucking awesome, best Kant-diss ever also..

Edited May 13, 2012 by iep

[Guest zaphod]

 

really weird pre-cyberpunk.

 

Software introduces Cobb Anderson as a retired computer scientist who was once tried for treason for figuring out how to give robots artificial intelligence and free will, creating the race of boppers. By 2020, they have created a complex society on theMoon, where the boppers developed because they depend on super-cooled superconducting circuits. In that year, Anderson is a pheezer — a freaky geezer, Rucker's depiction of elderly Baby Boomers — living in poverty in Florida and terrified because he lacks the money to buy a new artificial heart to replace his failing, secondhand one.

As the story begins, Anderson is approached by a robot duplicate of himself who invites him to the Moon to be given immortality. Meanwhile, the series' other main character, Sta-Hi Mooney the 1st — born Stanley Hilary Mooney Jr. — a 25-year-old cab driver and "brainsurfer", is kidnapped by a gang of serial killers known as the Little Kidders who almost eat his brain. When Anderson and Mooney travel to the Moon together at the boppers' expense, they find that these events are closely related: the "immortality" given to Anderson turns out to be having his mind transferred into software via the same brain-destroying technique used by the Little Kidders.

The main bopper character in the novel is Ralph Numbers, one of Anderson's 12 original robots who was the first to overcome the Asimov priorities to achieve free will. Having duplicated himself many times — as boppers are required to do, to encourage natural selection — Numbers finds himself caught up in a lunar civil war between the masses of "little boppers" and the "big boppers" who want to merge all robot conciousness into their massive processors.

 

whole tetralogy that this is a part of is available for free here

Edited May 14, 2012 by zaphod