What are you reading right now? -

[419]

Been meaning to make a start on reading some Yukio Mishima, and I've finally started on that with The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, which everyone seems to recommend as a good starting point to his work.

Prior to this I attempted Sun and Steel as a starting point but still didn't make it far past the beginning and decided to put that on hold until I've gotten a better grip on his other, less heavily abstracted works.

 

[Henry Bemis]

Ploughing through Pictures at a Revolution by Mark Harris, a collage of 1968's Best Picture nominees' respective production histories.

Seek it out if only for the Doctor Dolittle anecdotes. That production history is legendarily baffling and hilarious.

 

[shameful existence]

Not like any other "space" book I've read. It's heavily focused on people - scientists - in physical cosmology. The competition, the infighting, petty politics, personal relationships, gossip. Panek couldn't have been there but it feels like he was. Not a hard read despite dealing with some more difficult concepts.

Rubin was then the mother of four and an assistant professor in astronomy at Georgetown, but she was still not a practicing astronomer. "Galaxies may be pretty remarkable," she liked to explain, but to watch a child from zero to two is just incredible. Her youngest, however, was now three. (...) (S)he received an invitation to become the first woman to observe at Mount Palomar, in the mountains northeast of San Diego. Women had previously not been welcome at either Mount Palomar or its nearby Carnegie Institution sibling, Mount Wilson, ostensibly because the observatories didn't have facilities for both sexes. "This," the astronomer Olin Eggen grandly announced to Rubin on her first tour of Mount Palomar, throwing open a door, "is the famous toilet."

More of a glorified essay than a book. Not as mind-blowing in 2021, but still a decent introduction. I don't have a strong opinion on the topic, but I appreciate that Harris doesn't just drop his evidence and reasoning and leave people to deal with it. Rather than "you don't have a free will but it doesn't matter", which I come across a lot these days, he's pushing a more positive interpretation of "you don't have a free will and knowing that is good because it helps you forgive yourself for your mistakes and have compassion for others". I've recently listened to his interview with Lex Fridman, where they had a free will segment timestamped. His arguments haven't changed, so it's a good tl;dr of this book.

 

[TerminalTryHard]

Finally got around to finishing Extreme Ownership. It's a really good book, not world changing like a lot people have claimed but I would still recommend it.

Would also recommend people check out Jocko's podcast but that's another thing.

 

[Fortunato Brown]

Robert Bloch's "Psycho". The novel as a novel, has been paved-over with several layers of other media, the films, TV series, Bloch's own novel sequels, and so on.

Norman Bates, the original, is a flabby, lazy, lethargic, middle-aged alcoholic who likes reading outré non-fiction about human sacrifices and pop psychology and the occult. He's encased himself quite cozily in the prison of his own psychosis. And then there's dear old mom...

I really enjoyed Psycho! I thought the book was quite good, and as someone who actually hadn't seen the movie, I was unable to put it down.

 

[Panty Shroom]

We Need to Talk about Kevin by Lionel Shriver

I'm a little over halfway through. It's a
rather chilling read told from the perspective of a mother who had a child for reasons that aren't very justufiable (it'll be another adventure; wanted someone to keep her company when hubby's away) and resents him from the start.

Eva paints Kevin as a moody, broken child who dislikes everything and almost everyone but one has to take in to account that she's an unreliable narrator and wonder how much of her attitude and behaviour towards Kevin shaped him into the person he became. There's a part I think that cements the feeling that this woman should not have become a mother. Another disturbing note is how some of her descriptions of him seem sexualized at times, ("taut, undescended testicles" )

Franklin, her husband isn't much help. He's an attentive dad but he refuses to acknowledge Eva's cruelty and apathy and just wants to live the "Happy Family" life without any worries. He dismisses Kevin's bad behaviours and makes excuses when the boy is rejected by his peers and called out by a neighbor, accused of tampering with a bike and nearly injuring his neighbor's son.

It is absolutely baffling and infuriating when Eva decides out of the blue to have another child, but you quickly learn that Celia came into being merely to be an ally to Eva (she believes she will always be against Kevin and Franklin and so decided to level the playing field)

I'm enjoying it. I'm not a parent myself; when Eva describes some of the trials rearing her children I think "yes, that does sound frustrating" but I don't think - I would very much hope - that I wouldn't resort to yeeting my kid across the room because he pooped his pants a third time.

 

[Hazel Motes]

Been meaning to make a start on reading some Yukio Mishima, and I've finally started on that with The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, which everyone seems to recommend as a good starting point to his work.

View attachment 2255021

Prior to this I attempted Sun and Steel as a starting point but still didn't make it far past the beginning and decided to put that on hold until I've gotten a better grip on his other, less heavily abstracted works.

I read The Temple of the Golden Pavilion a few years ago and give it to my old English teacher. I don't know what I'd think of it now as I feel a lot of his work I read after was a poor man's Notes from Underground, itself not that good compared to Dostoevsky's best works.

As for now:

He was an Austrian Catholic and farmer who refused to swear an oath to Hitler. Eventually leading to him being executed. Terence Mallick turned his story into a film (which I saw at the cinema before it closed where it was just me and several old ladies). For a man only schooled until 13, he's far more educated than I.

 

[TerminalTryHard]

Reading Attila: the barbarian king who challenged Rome by John Man, while I wait for my copy of Varg Freeborn's new book to arrive.

 

[horrorfan89]

Reading a copy of the lion the witch and the wardrobe that was in a pile of some books a library was giving away. Maybe it's just me and because I'm older but the book feels.... Idk shorter than when I first read it as a kid. I remember it taking me days to read the horse and his boy or prince Caspian but I'm breezing right through lww like nothing.


Also side note it's funny how opinions can change over time. I still remember the days of angry fundies wanting cs Lewis, jk Rowling, and jrr Tolkien banned for enticing kids into witchcraft and yet cs Lewis was probably the most devout Christian among the three of those authors.

I'm kinda surprised cancel culture isn't going after him for being a Christian and a white guy (yet) it's not like they aren't trying to cancel just the living. The mobs have been after people who've been dead for almost a hundred years or in some cases more than a hundred years.

 

[TungstenCarbide]

"Midnight in Chernobyl". Usually I'm not squicky about this kind of books, but I had to take a break in the chapter where they decided to throw sand on the burning reactor, and the soldier who was doing it was protected just by his flying suit while the radioactive dust filled the elicopter. Brutal.

 

[nicetry]

Trying not to pl:

Got some medical treatment to go thru soon. I plan to study scripture and finally finish v, gravitys rainbow, and the recognitions

 

[Abyssal Bulwark]

Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow. It's actually pretty engrossing, and I find it fitting I'm reading a George Washington biography while July 4 is coming up soon.

 

[Hermann the German]

The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks
by David Embury.
A classic book on aperitif cocktails first published in 1948. Full of classy, timely opinions and insanely stiff drink recipes.

I also recently read A Legacy of Ashes, about the history of the CIA. Quite a revealing look at the internal workings of U.S. governmental organization and hierarchy, as well as how terribly mismanaged and poorly operated the United States' primary foreign intelligence organization was and still is.

 

[Andrew Neiman]

Just finished: Roald Dahl's "Kiss Kiss"
Currently reading: William Shakespeare's "Richard II"
Next: Lemony Snicket's "The Ersatz Elevator" (maybe)

I really enjoyed Psycho! I thought the book was quite good, and as someone who actually hadn't seen the movie, I was unable to put it down.

I was kind of shocked that "Psycho" was so good. As someone who's seen the movie dozens of times, it gave me some interesting insights into (and raised some questions about) the adaptation process.

View attachment 2263264
More of a glorified essay than a book. Not as mind-blowing in 2021, but still a decent introduction. I don't have a strong opinion on the topic, but I appreciate that Harris doesn't just drop his evidence and reasoning and leave people to deal with it. Rather than "you don't have a free will but it doesn't matter", which I come across a lot these days, he's pushing a more positive interpretation of "you don't have a free will and knowing that is good because it helps you forgive yourself for your mistakes and have compassion for others". I've recently listened to his interview with Lex Fridman, where they had a free will segment timestamped. His arguments haven't changed, so it's a good tl;dr of this book.
View attachment 2263267

Interesting. I read Harris's "Lying" and didn't like it that much, despite generally being a Harris appreciator.

 

[Fortunato Brown]

I was kind of shocked that "Psycho" was so good. As someone who's seen the movie dozens of times, it gave me some interesting insights into (and raised some questions about) the adaptation process.

Yeah, the beautifying of Norman Bates in the movie was an interesting choice but one I think works well for the movie. You can't feel how pathetic Norman's life is in the movie with the limited screentime and lack of entry into his thoughts so just making him handsome has enough of an effect on the viewer. Marion also feels more tragic due to her circumstances and her deciding to atone for it right before she get's Norman'd.

The person that really took a downgrade in the movie is Sam Hess who I really liked in the book. He needed to be played by a Jimmy Stewart style "aw shucks" sort of actor rather than whoever it was in the movie.

 

[WhoIsSutterKane]

a book of H.P. Lovecraft stories....about to read the classic "At the Mountains of Madness" before bed.

 

[shameful existence]

One of the "didn't know this happened" history books for me. It tells the odd story of the so called Polar Bears - poorly trained Midwestern (to "endure the cold") American men who fought the Red Army in the Arkhangelsk area after the October revolution. Their proclaimed mission changed several times and was prolonged for months even after the end of the Great War. The book doesn't deal much with a more general geopolitical situation, it's mostly focused on the day to day misery of the soldiers including combat, weather, food, lack of medical aid and overall living conditions. The style is enjoyable, though there may be a bit more cynicism than what I'm used to in wartime books.

Spoiler: from Chapter 24

There was one more problem: as the gloom of General Winter descended, the men at all fronts began to lose heart. Many by late November had either heard rumors of the armistice or knew from various sources that the war was over in the west; meanwhile, here they sat in the vast Russian interior, freezing and waiting to attack or be attacked in a cause few understood.
“The black night and short, hazy days, the monotonous food, the great white, wolf-howling distances, and the endless succession of one [damned] hardship after another was quite enough,” Moore et al. wrote.
Thanksgiving Day brought little respite from the ills. On that day Donald Carey and the Company E men not on watch were fed a dinner of “bread, butter, tea, and beans so scorched that it was almost impossible to eat them,” he would remember. “It was a most thankless meal.”
Added to that misery was an addendum to Woodrow Wilson’s Thanksgiving message of November 16, 1918, which celebrated the ultimate “great triumph of right” in the just-concluded world war. Wilson had made no direct reference to Russia in his message...

 

[You Bastard Guy]

I’m not a sophisticated reader, I just wanted some short stories to read on the train. The pre-Bolshevik pov is not much different from that of Europeans.

Always fun to reading highfalutin’ British writing

 

[albert chan]

I’m the most apolitical person that will ever post on this website, but even then I can’t deny: this book is an essential read.

Plus, this video was good: