What are you currently reading?

[BurtReynolds]

Let's see how far I get before I give up.

I read his Prolegomena and didn't find it that impossible, so maybe I'll make it. See you in 4 years.

[BurtReynolds]

I hate how most youtube videos or podcasts or lectures about him only touch on his ethics. I don't give a shit about ethics! Gimme those sweet metaphysics. I'll make my own ethics!

[Bammer]

each time i see rm fighting about Promising Young Woman, which i've not seen and likely never will, i think of this quite good novel. suzanne spent some time here and is cool, and dorothy is one of my favorite presses. anyway, i'm rereading it now.

The movie was … OK

[E.H. Ruddock]

[Malloy]

each time i see rm fighting about Promising Young Woman, which i've not seen and likely never will, i think of this quite good novel. suzanne spent some time here and is cool, and dorothy is one of my favorite presses. anyway, i'm rereading it now.

The movie was … OK

i should have said, in case it's not clear -- no relation between this book and that movie

[surfndestroy]

Getting back into more reading and less tv. Recent reads.....

Foundations series and a few others by Isaac Asimov - My kid is a huge fan of his and read it just so we could talk about them.

Brave New World - I had read it before but inspired by Bammer to read it again.

Heart of Darkness - Wanted to read the origin of Colonel Kurtz.

Dune - Read this many years ago but wanted to reread it before seeing the new version of the movie coming. Still working on this.

Would love to find a new sci-fi series. Any suggestions?

[Simple Torture]

Would love to find a new sci-fi series. Any suggestions?

I read everything released in the Expanse earlier this year. The final book (book 8, I think?) comes out next month.

[blueviper]

Getting back into more reading and less tv. Recent reads.....

Foundations series and a few others by Isaac Asimov - My kid is a huge fan of his and read it just so we could talk about them.

Brave New World - I had read it before but inspired by Bammer to read it again.

Heart of Darkness - Wanted to read the origin of Colonel Kurtz.

Dune - Read this many years ago but wanted to reread it before seeing the new version of the movie coming. Still working on this.

Would love to find a new sci-fi series. Any suggestions?

I just read The Sparrow (and the sequel, Children of God) by Mary Doria Russell

About a first contact with aliens but it's by a Jesuit party and questions about faith and communication between different alien races. They are pretty good.

[Simple Torture]

each time i see rm fighting about Promising Young Woman, which i've not seen and likely never will, i think of this quite good novel. suzanne spent some time here and is cool, and dorothy is one of my favorite presses. anyway, i'm rereading it now.

By "here" I thought you meant RM for a minute.

[BurtReynolds]

Heart of Darkness - Wanted to read the origin of Colonel Kurtz.

Hard for me to fully appreciate after watching Apocalypse Now.

[BurtReynolds]

Reread. The first 3 or 4 books are stunning. It gets pretty tedious after Satan fades into the background, but those first parts are foundational.

[Malloy]

each time i see rm fighting about Promising Young Woman, which i've not seen and likely never will, i think of this quite good novel. suzanne spent some time here and is cool, and dorothy is one of my favorite presses. anyway, i'm rereading it now.

By "here" I thought you meant RM for a minute.

a terrifying thought

[BurtReynolds]

[tragabigzanda]

Whenever there's active promotion on the part of somebody else, whenever I see somebody all dolled up for a fancy photograph and someone's handing out flyers or whenever there's active promotion for something like that, as an imposition on my day, I hate all those people and I want them to fail. I have a visceral reaction to advertising and promotion. There's just something about salesmanship that grates on me on a very base level and I react very negatively towards it. I want those people to suffer and I want their enterprises to fail.

[Simple Torture]

I finished the new Franzen this morning and it was...really quite good, actually! Freedom left a bad taste in my mouth, and Purity was entirely forgettable, but this was a nice return to what turned me on to The Corrections originally--deep and complex characters, rigorous plotting...it just feels like you can live in it. I was put off by the setting at first (early 1970s, stateside reactions to Vietnam play a big role), but it sort of fades into the background and it gets more concerned with the interiority of moral and ethical choices as opposed to making grand statements about the world. Worth the time if you've got it.

Next!

In a shuttered bedroom in ancient Italy, the sleepless Pliny the Elder lies in bed obsessively dictating new chapters of his Natural History to his slave Diocles. Fat, wheezing, imperious, and prone to nosebleeds, Pliny does not believe in spending his evenings in repose: No—to be awake is to be alive. There’s no time to waste if he is to classify every element of the natural world in a single work. By day Pliny the Elder carries out his many civic duties and gives the occasional disastrous public reading. But despite his astonishing ambition to catalog everything from precious metals to the moon, as well as a collection of exotic plants sourced from the farthest reaches of the world, Pliny the Elder still takes immense pleasure in the common rose. After he rushes to an erupting Mount Vesuvius and perishes in the ash, his nephew, Pliny the Younger, becomes custodian of his life’s work. But where Pliny the Elder saw starlight, Pliny the Younger only sees fireflies.

[The Argonaut]

Holy cow, that little write-up is stupendous

[Simple Torture]

Holy cow, that little write-up is stupendous

That was taken directly from the publisher's website, I don't want to pretend I wrote it.

[The Argonaut]

Holy cow, that little write-up is stupendous

That was taken directly from the publisher's website, I don't want to pretend I wrote it.

No, I know, but it's still great

[lennytheweedwhacker]

Dune

[epilogue]

Decided to read the second Dune book.

So far I really dig it. Love the thematic angle from which it kicks off. Excited to see how far down that path we go.