What book(s) are you reading?

[chronovore]

Just finished Gibson’s The Peripheral. For once the ending was straightforward and easily followed, but I felt let down somehow. The world building is superbly realized. Everything felt quite believable, though the further along setting’s tech seemed like it was more advanced than it should have been, considering The Jackpot. Hopefully that’s all obscure enough that it doesn’t need a spoilertag.

Anyway, I liked it a lot and plan to read it again soon.

Started The Lies of Locke Lamora; on a side note, though I think this is a book that Cormacaroni gave to me, I apparently bought the eBook at some point, and I’m reading it on a borrowed PaperWhite. This thing is pretty great to read books on, both size- and page-appearance-wise. So far LLL is proving to be a solid piece of medieval low fantasy infused with enough dark-humor to keep me engaged.

[MrAngryFace]

[Eric P]

[chronovore]

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How is Seconds?

[Joe Molotov]

Black Wings of Cthulhu 3? More like Black Wings of Mehthulhu 3.

The first two collections were good, but this one feels like Joshi's scraping the bottom of the barrel. A couple of try-hard stories (wow, a whole 15-page story written in sentence fragments, such artsy, so fartsy!) and several stories that should have tried harder.

One story was about a guy and his wife that were going on a vacation in China while they considered whether to adopt a Chinese baby. Their tour guide tells the guy that he's found out that Fishmen are taking over China and that the Three Gorges Dam is being built for them to have a breeding ground and the reason it's so easy to adopt a Chinese baby is because the Fishmen are trying to spread their fishiness to other continents. The next morning their tour guide has vanished. Then the man has to poop in a squat toilet and a fishman crawls out and grabs his leg, but he escapes and goes back to America. THE END. Yeah, it's hardly Shadow Over Innsmouth, is it?

[chronovore]

Immortality, Inc. - Robert Sheckley's 1958 novel is almost as entertaining for its past-riddled future as it is for the ideas it was actually written to encase. There is some interesting speculation about relationship between mind, body, and soul, and a several passages about how proof of an afterlife might change society.

Unfortunately, I was unable to entirely focus on that, and was happily and amusedly distracted by how many of Sheckley's then-present elements made it into his future. Sure, I understand that "future" SF is commonly used as an observation platform to show us our present-day situation, but many of the slips felt unobserved, subconscious. This is not meant as a shallow criticism, but rather to praise the book as an example of period SF.

The world building is interesting, though considering the premises, I came to different assumptions how things would have actually developed. Of course, my framing is based on my own present-day assumptions, so even the dissonance caused by my disagreement with the conclusion became  a source of interest.

[MrAngryFace]

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How is Seconds?

Most excellent.

[Kara]

omg Teffi is so good y'all.

3 page short stories that make you sensibly chuckle several times.

[chronovore]

The Lies of Locke Lamora is pretty awesome so far.  It's an origin story interspersed with a heist, in what appears to be a even-more-analogous-to-Europe-than-average fantasy setting. The era does appear more Renaissance than medieval, and somewhat focused on the family wars of Venice. It's got me hooked.

[Joe Molotov]

Joshi's other Cthulhu anthology from 2014 (actually he did three, but the third one is super-limited and sells for stupid money, so whatever). It was also not very good. The stories were mostly all like retellings of At the Mountains of Madness, or a sequel to From Beyond, or it's an original story but we'll name drop every prominent family from Arkham history and I just wasn't really feeling it. I was about ready to once again return C to his eternal slumber, but instead I picked up



This was a pretty good collection, themed around dark majicks. The stories were...eh, a bit on the safe and predicable side, but still solid. There was one story I liked about humans being destroyed and dogs inheriting the earth that was cute, although it kinda fumbled the ending (well, it is a Lovecraft tribute anthology after all).

[benjipwns]

The Author's intro has all these caveats and self doubts, which is actually in my opinion the best way to tackle theory in history, so hopefully this is decent up until the part where fascists like FDR become "liberals." In the first ten pages or so he chides American conservatives for (in short) making "liberal" an epithet while not realizing their "support" of American tradition is support of liberal principles so bonus points.

Then will move onto:


Might have posted this one before but I never actually got around to it. So, fingers crossed.



With the first two blurbs being from Charles Krauthammer and Juan Williams, how can I not?

[benjipwns]

Also a bunch of comics (as usual), currently about 2/3rds through Mark Waid's Irredeemable/Incorruptible.

[Joe Molotov]

A horror anthology, from the author of Zombie Sharks with Metal Teeth. I've read the first few stories. It's okay, it's pretty spooky, but it's not quite grabbing me yet. After Books of Blood, I need something more transgressive.

[Kara]

Also a bunch of comics (as usual), currently about 2/3rds through Mark Waid's Irredeemable/Incorruptible.

Irredeemable gets amazingly fuckstupid.

[jakefromstatefarm]

In the first ten pages or so he chides American conservatives for (in short) making "liberal" an epithet while not realizing their "support" of American tradition is support of liberal principles so bonus points.

Isn't this just semantic drift? Not even big L liberals in America today follow Classical/Enlightenment Liberalism to a tee.

e: I should contribute

reading this:


and this:


the first one's a trip. It's dated, it's dry, and it's dripping with authorial bias but it works. It's also slow as fuck, covers the period between 450-680 and he doesn't get to Chalcedon until 150+ pages in .

I'm finding the second one to be a really nice case study in the formation of national identity. Three parts: First centers around Vilnius, you watch different movements/parties/armies march back and forth and interpret/re-interpret the legacy of the Grand Duchy, culminating in ethnic cleansing. Second part is Galicia/Volhynia, same deal but with Austrians this time and a heavier emphasis on Nazi collusion, also way sadder (I'm at the part in 1943 where the OUN is burning down churches with people inside them because celebrating Christmas on Dec. 25th is a surefire way of identifying yourself as a Roman Catholic Pole ). Thrid part deals with, presumably, nascent national movements in the SSRs, national determinism, and what the author interprets as the realization of Mickiewicz's original intention, Poland's integration into the EU in 1999 .

[chronovore]

Also a bunch of comics (as usual), currently about 2/3rds through Mark Waid's Irredeemable/Incorruptible.

Irredeemable gets amazingly fuckstupid.

Weird; we /have/ a comics thread. It would be nice to see something other than peeps bitching about mainstream Marvel/DC canon fuckery.

I read the first volume of Irredeemable and enjoyed it, but didn’t feel like there was a reasonable end-game in the works, and wasn’t sure how far it would go. I sure liked the idea of Superman (or God, really) finally becoming so fed up with the requests and prayers and thankless hours, only to become a bratty, rage-driven, entitled despot.

But, along those lines, I like Kirkman’s Invincible better. There’s hints of an impending horror and bleakness, but deals more handily with the nature of an all-protective god/father figure revealed as abusive and flawed.

[Kara]

It loses a lot of steam at one point. If it didn't go 2001 on you at the end (that's not a spoiler), it'd be an utter disaster.

As for my absence from Comic-Bore, I learned a long time ago that being the kind of consumer who seeks out comics based on how ridiculous they are puts me out of step with your average internet comic fan so I keep to myself in the shadows and occasionally emerge to drop truth bombs like "Daniel Way's Deadpool is the best Deadpool run" so I can watch the galaxy burn.

[chronovore]

It loses a lot of steam at one point. If it didn't go 2001 on you at the end (that's not a spoiler), it'd be an utter disaster.

As for my absence from Comic-Bore, I learned a long time ago that being the kind of consumer who seeks out comics based on how ridiculous they are puts me out of step with your average internet comic fan so I keep to myself in the shadows and occasionally emerge to drop truth bombs like "Daniel Way's Deadpool is the best Deadpool run" so I can watch the galaxy burn.

Nice. I have no interest in Deadpool, other than LOLing at the mess they made of the in-joke in that first Wolverine movie. Still, as a fan of the old Lobo comics, I guess I understand heartfelt investment in the ridiculous.

Your win, sir.

[benjipwns]

I just mentioned those in here instead of comics thread because the first few volumes were in my stack of books on the table nearby.

I have no idea if Irredeemable's romantic subplots are supposed to be serious or satirical. And the intergalactic fuckery had me wondering if Waid had a stroke and the artist didn't bother to confirm that's what he wanted drawn.

Isn't this just semantic drift? Not even big L liberals in America today follow Classical/Enlightenment Liberalism to a tee.

Did you mean Europe? I think most big L liberal parties there are far closer to old skewl liberalism than the Democratic (or Republican) Party. Even in places like Sweden and Denmark. They just are realistic about the status of the social welfare state. (And even less concerned about that in somewhere like Estonia.) Though they (like the socialist parties) all have the bonus of being able to be more "pure" and still govern in short-term coalitions unlike the two-party system.

I was just talking about how American conservatives have managed to make that semantic drift stick to where when they characterize Democratic positions to an extreme socialist position they still tirade against it as  liberal when what they're imaginary defending is closer to liberalism for the majority of its life as an ideology. (And thus, Americans in polls are loathe to call themselves liberals.) As I've gotten farther into the book he better demarcates conservatism, liberalism and socialism as the three ideologies he feels most other modern ones can stem back to. With liberalism having "won" to the point that nearly all parties in modern democracies are liberal. America being the outlier where "liberalism" is treated as a separate thing that looks more like socialism.

And the author just gets in a little dig about that against American conservatives (presumably reading the book) which I like to do to them as well from time to time. (I know, you're shocked.)

[Kara]

Where does Christian democracy factor in to this? Feel like we're talking about a Europe where France is in its third instead of its fifth republic.

[Kara]

Also, if we're talking about haut liberalism, Estonia should be nowhere in the conversation. Denying people citizenship exclusively because of their parentage is about as illiberal as you can get.

[benjipwns]

Is Christian Democracy neither Christian nor democracy? Discuss. (Or see the next issue of The Economist for my cover story.)

Also, why does France get to count all their Republics/Constitutions as separate states? It's like giving them occupation zones after WW2.

Also, if we're talking about haut liberalism, Estonia should be nowhere in the conversation. Denying people citizenship exclusively because of their parentage is about as illiberal as you can get.

Wasn't talking about the country as a whole, but they have some of the most old skewl liberal parties that regularly wind up in government amongst European nations.

Russia did too for like three weeks back in the 90's.

[Kara]

I think you're falling into the trap of overvaluing economic policy in defining liberalism with Estonia.

There's also the fact that it has fucked up national identity politics, so if you don't care about that your only realistic voting choice is Reform. Post-nationalism isn't an exclusively liberal position.

Imo German speaking countries provide a better example. Germany's FDP was a kingmaker forever until they turned stupid and Switzerland's was far more influential on its country than that.

[benjipwns]

All of Eastern Europe has fucked up national identity politics. And I don't think they ever haven't in my 300+ years on this Earth.

But still I think my original point remains that liberal parties exist in Europe to an extent not in the U.S. You can pick Reform or FDPs or VLD or Venstre or VVD or FP and much more easily squeeze what looks like classical liberalism in whole out of them than you can with either the Democrats or Republicans. Especially when they're governing. They're much more willing to make peace with the social welfare state and pick at it around the edges while focusing elsewhere. My picking out of Estonia was because it hasn't had that cemented consensus so it was easier to see the liberal party itself as heading governments. (In part because Estonians don't want Russians to do anything but leave.)

If there's any focus on economic liberalism I'd argue it's because social liberalism has won so extensively by also dominating the social democratic parties that economics is the only place liberalism has any competition. (Though it seems to be good at using this relationship to convince socialist parties to implement liberal economic reforms, like in Scandinavia in the 90's, etc. )

Christian democratic parties in most countries seem more like they're "holding the line" or "slow things down" more than "throw it into reverse" like the social wing of the Republican Party. "Another metaphor."

In the end though, all of this will be remembered as the pre-BA period and mostly ignored by future historians.

[jakefromstatefarm]

Did you mean Europe? I think most big L liberal parties there are far closer to old skewl liberalism than the Democratic (or Republican) Party. Even in places like Sweden and Denmark.

Oh definitely, I'm just saying that the definition of what liberal is has changed through time (and, now that you mention it, geographically as well). It just seems like an odd appeal to tradition/equivocation to chide American conservatives because they denote things like the social welfare state/a large(r) federal involvement in the economy/believing in science as 'liberalism' when they themselves exemplify what 'liberalism' has meant to people in the past.

With liberalism having "won" to the point that nearly all parties in modern democracies are liberal.

I mean yeah, the idea of a democracy in post-1789 Western society doesn't really allow for anything that doesn't resemble classical liberalism in some way. By definition it treats things like civic participation, market capitalist economies, empiricism, progressivism and enfranchisement (for those with political capital) as foregone conclusions.

I was just talking about how American conservatives have managed to make that semantic drift stick to where when they characterize Democratic positions to an extreme socialist position they still tirade against it as  liberal when what they're imaginary defending is closer to liberalism for the majority of its life as an ideology. (And thus, Americans in polls are loathe to call themselves liberals.)

yeah this kind of boogeyman effect is interesting. In effect, the exonym has a lot more to do with defining what the proximal group isn't than what the actual group they're calling is. One that I find illustrative is the use of 'pagan'; it conjures up general ideas relating to vague polytheistic beliefs, taboo and atavism but it's really just a tool to denote what is and isn't socially acceptable behavior for a certain worldview, it's a relative term that only means "not Christian." No concrete religious systems fall under the term 'paganism,' no one throughout history has identified themselves as a 'pagan' without intentionally using it in contrast with the Christian Church. Liberal occupies that same space in contemporary American political discourse, albeit much less intensely. Idk where I'm going w/ this, just what I've been thinking about.

[Kara]

Here's a theory I think you might like benji.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

(Because it blames the state for everything.)

[close]

What are the two primary state formations in Europe? The medieval monarchy (e.g. UK, Spain, Belgium) and the, pardon my loaded phrasing, volk länder (e.g. Italy, the FYRs). What do these two formations have in common (besides being the predominant formations in Europe)? They were created by a group (whether it be a royal family, or a "nation") and exist solely to perpetuate that group. They are, for all intents and purposes, ideologically neutral. This is why, for example, breakthroughs in the welfare state happened in Imperial Germany under noted champion of the proletariat, Otto von Bismarck, or former subsidiaries of the CPSU could simply rebrand themselves as social democratic parties and win elections. Even in Poland.

What type of state formation is the United States? It's not a medieval monarchy and while we have a volk, the state wasn't created to perpetuate that volk per se, though there have been almost perpetual attempts by that volk to curtail the entrance of other volks to their reich. What's left, then? The ideological state. I don't really think the U.S. was created as a liberal state, but its foundational ideology was steeped enough in Enlightenment thinking that I'll call it proto-liberal. This is why liberalism thrived here for so long and, for the most part, the country could weather global crises without french kissing fucked up ideologies. The nation was itself an ideology, either it was revised or the state had to be discarded.

Why then does liberalism thrive more in Europe now than it does in the United States? Because liberalism is the ruling order after the ideological war between two ideological states concluded and to survive our two primary state formations in Europe are forced to embrace it. Why is it rather moribund in the U.S.? Well, because one of those revisions along the way was to embrace imperialism, and you can't really run a liberal empire. (See also: Third French Republic.)

I blamed the state for everything AND basically argued that dialectical materialism is a true science like Marxism-Leninism. And they say you can't have your cake and eat it too.

[jakefromstatefarm]

ethno-nationalism plays a much bigger role in European mass politics than the US *source: anything that happened on the continent between 1917 and 1947. Americans have methods of distinguishing volk for political reasons but those are by and large leftovers from 18th-19th c. racial theory that have been perpetuated in order to justify institutional marginalization of minority groups, it isn't quite the same as the mythologization/national determinism you see in nascent European political movements. My favorite example of that is how common linguistic fetishization is among hyper-nationalist Eastern Europeans; it seeks to reify national destiny by grounding it in an easily understood cultural demarcator when those cultural distinctions are really just the products of geopolitical happenstance to begin with, and are completely fluid. Oh and also something about how genocide is a given and cultural homogeneity is a necessity, because I have to throw in something about how nation-building is the real spectre haunting Europe.

[benjipwns]

I've heard the US as an ideologically founded state theory before and I think it works as you outlined. I think when a lot of people complain about how the US doesn't have "real left-wing" parties, it's ignoring both the electoral system and also this concept. The U.S. has always been politically a battleground measured in inches like WW1. So any movement to the "left" or "right" has been a long slow evolution instead of a "lurch" or whatever. It takes a third party to basically upset this, the Republicans did it in the US (though they adopted mostly Whig positions on non-slavery so little changed) and Labour did it in the UK. European (and elsewhere) politics and systems have been more prone to "sweeping" revolutions even legally. The checks and balances thing also plays a role, a Communist Party elected today couldn't change everything in the US in one term, a Communist Party elected in many other countries could easily change all sorts of laws and programs and so on overnight. Hell, liberal and conservative and fascist parties all actually have done this not too long ago.

I mean when we talk about privatizing or abolishing something government run in the U.S. even as "liberal" as we are comparatively it's nothing compared to how it's happened in some parliamentary countries where it's done like the next day except for the paperwork. (Even less so in places like Russia or Vietnam where they have real people's democracy.)

What about this. The U.S. as a massive corporate merger. The other colony corporations were all usurped by colonial states before decolonization, and the US was merged not as a singular pre-existing colonial corporation but as 13 competing corporations wishing to divest themselves from a dominant shareholder.

former subsidiaries of the CPSU could simply rebrand themselves as social democratic parties and win elections. Even in Poland.

This is one of my favorite things in the post-Soviet countries. Especially when it's the same people who were just Party Secretary getting elected praising multi-party democracy and social freedom. 

Oh definitely, I'm just saying that the definition of what liberal is has changed through time (and, now that you mention it, geographically as well). It just seems like an odd appeal to tradition/equivocation to chide American conservatives because they denote things like the social welfare state/a large(r) federal involvement in the economy/believing in science as 'liberalism' when they themselves exemplify what 'liberalism' has meant to people in the past.

I think it's odd that "liberal" was seemingly willfully chosen as the epithet, was like "socialist" too harsh until recent years or something? Too confusing with "communist" which would be pro-Soviet and thus anti-American? Especially when you're going to ascribe basically socialist positions to the "liberals" in order to denounce them.

ethno-nationalism plays a much bigger role in European mass politics than the US *source: anything that happened on the continent between 1917 and 1947.

I think the source would be more like "forever." One of the factors in WW I was this because of simply how the Austrian-Hungarian Empire was setup at that point due to centuries of events. 

Hell, the prior three centuries or whatever where everyone fretted about a unified German state.

[Kara]

Aside from obvious peculiarities in translating French into English versus German, there are so many one liners in Les Justes that I keep checking the cover to make sure I'm not reading Brecht.

For you history dorks, one of the characters says something like, "the SR cannot do without discipline!," which is of course utterly hilarious. :spiridonovacry

[Crash Dummy]

nlrb are having a sale: http://www.nybooks.com/books/wintersale/ the international shipping is a piss take though

[Kara]

nlrb are having a sale: http://www.nybooks.com/books/wintersale/ the international shipping is a piss take though

Conquered City for seven bucks.

[Joe Molotov]

My summer reading series is going to be "Cheap Sci-Fi Paperbacks That Have Neat Cover/Titles" (at least until I decide to replace my e-reader)

“My dear,” he said lightly. “You must allow me the privilege of a certain quaint hypocrisy. A gentleman never does his nut in the presence of a lady.”

[Kara]

Newsfeed pls.

[Crash Dummy]

"A gentleman never does his nut in the presence of a lady" 

[chronovore]

Just finished the first Xenowealth book, Crystal Rain, by Tobias S. Buckell. It was quite good after the first 30%, and by the end it was quite hard to put aside. I’ll probably pick up the next book soon.

I’m having trouble with the audiobook version of Naked Lunch. The reader is fantastic, and does a wonderful job, but Burrough’s prose is so detail rich that I feel I’m missing a good deal by letting someone else read it to me at their own pace. There’s the additional weird discomfort caused by listening to drug junkie homosexual rape porn at the gym while trying to focus on one’s workout. All of the various clenching required becomes disconcerted from an odd diffusion of focus.

[benjipwns]

Took a break from longer stuff to get this hundred pager out of the way (especially since somebody sent me a piece he wrote for Hillsdale College that was basically promoting the book and I happened to have it):


So this book is what half of PoliGAF thinks PD is meets AiA meets "Town Hall columnist and Fox News contributor*." Thomas Sowell's version was better.

I really started skimming after his diatribe about how the Warren Court and the Left in general have turned the entire justice system in favor of the criminals and how it's a tragedy that Obama and Congress lowered the crack sentencing disparity especially since people like Charlie Rangel wanted it in the first place!

Also his book is going to be really dated with all the George Zimmerman and Trayvon references. I mean, it already is.

There's some solid stuff but nothing you can't get in a lot of other books, especially considering how much he goes to Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell, you could just read their books, especially since they're better writers and acknowledge that it's not a "liberal" attack on blacks but an attack on civil rights for everyone. But I have to give him props for talking about Firing Line, though he didn't mention they're available now on Amazon, just that Hoover posted the transcripts. Seeing Thomas Sowell argue with the angry old white lady or weird german professor who didn't understand how to ask questions over affirmative action while everyone wears bad early 1980s is disco over?!? fashions is better than reading his fawning description.

Best part is him talking about all the times he's been pulled over or detained for not committing a crime but being in white neighborhoods. And then he justifies it based on crime statistics. While wondering why he was targeted considering the music he played in his car was De La Soul and Talking Heads, not Ice Cube and Chuck D. 

Also when he quotes from one of those crazy papers where the person is all "math is a racist social construct created by Europeans to keep down the blacks" that winds up basically insulting by saying that "blacks tend not to 'think' but instead to 'feel' and 'react' because of their tribal and natural world roots disconnected from modern unnecessarily complex society." I always like those.

And The New Jim Crow is a hard-left attack on an orderly criminal justice system. And the drug war has nothing to do with incarceration.

He starts off with a bit of history of De Bois vs. Washington's competiting views, coming back to them like two more times. He really should have framed the entire thing with that, but he drops it for good after the last third becomes bashing Obama for everything book #3000. Also affirmative action is holding back asians and whites.

Overall though I have to give the book a massive thumbs down because the second endnote is to Mediaite.

*Just looked at back of the jacket "Jason L. Riley is an editorial board member of the WSJ ... and a Fox News Contributor." 

[benjipwns]

Also, Incorruptible/Irredeemable ended stupid as fuck.

I blame the Congressional Black Caucus.

And Steve Youngblood.

[Dickie Dee]

I'm going through King Leopold's Ghost

Hard to stop reading since it's so well written, but jeeeez it's wearing me out.

[Steve Contra]

Everything is sort of there on the cover about the book.  Once he finds his narrative footing it's a fascinating read.  I just got through the six day war.

[Crash Dummy]

one of those crazy papers where the person is all "math is a racist social construct created by Europeans to keep down the blacks"

i now know this is a real thing people say :'(

[Fifstar]

Thai Food by David Thompson



The bible of thai cooking

[chronovore]

A Good and Useful Hurt, Aric Davis: Bought on sale, I had no idea this was going to veer into paranormal territory, so it was kind of nice when stuff that seemed like it should be real turned out to be real. I thought it was solely going to focus on strange social issues faced by the body modification and ink crowd, but then a serial killer is just sorta stuck in the mix. The best thing about the book are the brief introduction stories for tragic-but-ancillary characters, each of which has been just overwhelmingly engaging.

[benjipwns]

Did another looting of my publicly funded library (THAT SHOULD NOT EXIST) with stuff of varying interest.


Only one I started so far, got me interested in the title of his other book "Mr. Market Miscalculates" since the first half of this book has been all about how bankers suck and tried to game the system with no regard for a bubble bursting or what post-war conditions might look like.



I literally have no idea what this book is about in terms of position/narrative but I liked its cover:


And then the fair and balanced section of the loot:

[Joe Molotov]

Read the first few stories. I decided to save 'The Mist' for last, since it's the longest. After that there's several meh-ish juvenilia, but 'Mrs. Todd's Shortcut' (that he wrote for Redbook, of all places) was pretty amusing.

[benjipwns]

From The Forgotten Depression:

In 1919, [U.S. Steel President "Judge" Elbert H. Gary] had faced down the Steel Workers Organizing Committee and come out on the winning side of a three-month strike. Mrs. E.H. Gary, invited to become an honorary member of the Women's Steel Striker's Auxiliary of Gary [, Indiana, named after Elbert] in November 1919, telegraphed her regrets. To reporters she explained, "I am entirely in sympathy with the stand Judge Gary has taken against the steel strikers, not because he is my husband, but because it is the only right stand to take if we do not want to get in the grasp of the Bolsheviki and have labor override the country with unreasonable demands.

 

[Kara]

Half of the top ten steel producing companies in the world are arms of the CPC.

[benjipwns]

Re: a bill to do public works during downturns

Another critic, Senator Harry New, Republican of Indiana, demanded what business the federal government had in trying to override the biblical injunction that seven lean years would follow seven fat ones.

[Raban]

I've been reading lots of books, I'll try and keep my blurbs short

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides was recommended to me by a friend as research for potential approaches to a novel I've been in the process of writing over the past few months (re: gender roles) but it wasn't remotely useful in that respect. If you want to read a real, human, account of a trans-person, steer far clear of this book. That said, it was still a very fun read. It's a huge historical epic involving generations of a Greek family in the 20th century and the stories of struggle, emigration and love you'd expect to find within. Luckily, it did inspire me to consider a different perspective for my novel, and gave me the confidence to expand the story beyond just a single character. Overall worth reading, but don't expect more than a very agreeable, made-for-TV drama that just so happens to feature an intersex character.


The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler was a book I simply could not put down. It might not be saying much that it took me an hour to finish because it's so short, but I don't typically marathon read. This book has been on my to-read list for a very long time and I'm glad I did. However, like many classic works of art that one arrives at long after its creation, the experience is weakened by one's exposure to its ubiquitous influence on the subject. Still a fantastic read, and I plan on checking out the HBO production.


I had found this book and the one previous at a dollar-used-book-store and thought, as a huge fan of Jon Stewart that I might enjoy it. I was mistaken. Naked Pictures of Famous People is a very strange and ultimately pointless book. I realized that I often have trouble enjoying comedy books, simply because without timing and delivery, jokes simply don't have the same punch that they do when conveyed through a person. It was an interesting read, nonetheless, as it is a book that parodies or alternately satirizes pop culture figureheads of the time (the Hanson family, the Kennedys, Gerald Ford) by mock second-hand accounts or correspondence.

The other book I got was Haruki Murakami's 1Q84 but I haven't even read the first page for fear that such a large book will probably consume my free time for quite a while.

[I'm a Puppy!]

Re-picked up Pillars of the Earth.

I'm on the fence. It's really quite readable, but the author keeps falling into the same tropes over and over again.

"Oh noes! The Cathedral is in danger! What will we do?!"
<some clever political wrangling occurs combined with deus ex machina>
"Yay! We can continue on the Cathedral!"
<rinse and repeat>

I'd give up on it but I'm already hundreds of pages into it and I'm invested in finding out what happens.

[Kara]

Skim yo. Life too short to unintentionally read bad book (sic.).

[Joe Molotov]

Where should I start with DeLillo?

[Kara]

Underworld, then stop.

[Joe Molotov]

Well, I did like Kate Beckinsale in the movie.

[jakefromstatefarm]

benji was right this whole time

tl;dr: incentivized by taxation and conscription, liberalizing, centralizing institutions create road maps of 'legibility' for their subjects/land/resources that, out of administrative necessity, are laughably oversimplified in their depictions of systems of human design but not human intention (:hayekcry)


Flashback!

spoiler (click to show/hide)

http://www.thebore.com/forum/index.php?topic=42089.msg1953556#msg1953556
http://www.thebore.com/forum/index.php?topic=42089.msg1953611#msg1953611

The legislative imposition of permanent surnames is particularly clear in the case of Western European Jews who had no tradition of last names. A Napoleonic decree "concernant les Juifs qui n'ont pas de nom de famille et de prenoms," in 1808, mandated last names⁵⁹. Austrian legislation of 1787, as part of the emancipation process, required Jews to choose last names or, if they refused, to have fixed last names chosen for them. In Prussia the emancipation of the Jews was contingent upon the adoption of surnames⁶⁰. Many of the immigrants to the United States, Jews and non-Jew alike, had no permanent surnames when they set sail. Very few, however, made it through the initial paperwork without an official last name that their descendants carry still.

footnotes refer to Le nom: Droit et historie by Anne Lefebvre-Teillard and Names: Medieval Period and Establishment of Surnames by Ribert Chazon in the Encyclopedia Judaica (along with a snip about Aryan-Semitic naming differentiation by the administration during the Reich), respectively

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Kara, peep how enthused the pronunciation dude for Juif is
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Juif

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[Madrun Badrun]

restarting Malazan, cause I forgot too much shit

[Joe Molotov]

I'm just gonna read some more Stephen King for now. I'm starting to get a hard-on to read The Dark Tower. I've started it twice but never made it past Book V.

But hey, Sony's taking another stab at the series too.

[Kara]

Gunther Grass has been dead a week and no one told me.

I found out that Gunther Grass died on 20 April.

[Joe Molotov]

"[Warren] Harding was a handsome bimbo--I'm sure sorry he had the good luck to get clear of this beastly planet."
~H.P. Lovecraft

[milchs evil twin]

Raymond Chandler - The Lady in the Lake (This is really fun).
Something really dry about the history of Roma people in Europe and the origins of the racism they face.
Some shit about Machine Learning.

[I'm a Puppy!]

Finished reading that damned "Pillars of the Earth" first time in a long time I hate read a book. But at least it's done. I'm really perplexed as to how in the world it is as popular as it is.

Started Arthur C. Clarke's 2001. It started magnificently. Then it fell into the Asimovian trap of spending more time tell the reader how than what.