What are you filthy heathens reading atm?

smokingman

Just finished "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance " for the 17th time. A book that directs a lot of my life; kinda know what the bible baskets feel on that one.

Pherekydes

Just started One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich again.

daithi1970

Just finished the Oh my God Delusion by Ross o Carroll Kelly, just started The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins















See what I did there:pac:

Canis Lupus

Sarky wrote: »

Aw, that's a shame. I loved I Am Legend, cracking vampire apocalypse book with some brilliant ideas.

Read it, it finished, I was like... wtf, there's tonnes of book left then realised it was just a short story in a book of short stories. Very unimpressed as it was a cracking read up till then.

MagicMarker

Started on "The Passion Of The Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View" by Richard Tarnas. Very good so far.

Justin1982

There is a new book coming out soon which I think will be of interest to any filthy heathen who is curious about the ultimate real reason why they or anything else actually exists.

Its about "The Mathematical Universe Hypothesis" which was first suggested by MIT Theoretical Physics professor Max Tegmark in the 1990's. Its kind of taken off in the last few years in the Theoretical Physics community having gone through all the various different criticisms that scientists can throw at it.

The Hypothesis itself claims that the entire universe, everthing and anything, is nothing more than a giant mathematical structure. Its the only consistent scientific explanation for the existence of the Universe that doesnt end up with you asking "But where did this come from?" or "But who created the thing before the thing?" or "But what came before the Universe before our Universe?". Some of you may be familiar with theories of everything like String Theory. Thing is that even if String Theory (or any of its competitors) is proved correct in the future, it still leaves gapping holes in our understanding of the universe like "Why String Theory as a fundamental theory?"

And yes I have to admit that it actually sounds more whacky than believing in Gods and giant Elephants with 6 arms but its built on sound science. Even if The Mathematical Universe Hypothesis is proved wrong, that result itself will make for absolutely amazing science and tell us a huge amount about our Universe.

ShooterSF

swampgas wrote: »

Have just read "Ready Player One", and having finished it, have started reading it a second time. The most fun book I've read in ages.
Amazon Reviews Here

For anyone remotely geeky who grew up in the 80s, this is an absolute gem.

Picked this up on your recommendation and reading the amazon reviews. Finished it in 3 days and it is the only thing keeping me sane on a 6 day work week. Thanks! Great read.

Kivaro

ShooterSF wrote: »

Picked this up on your recommendation and reading the amazon reviews. Finished it in 3 days and it is the only thing keeping me sane on a 6 day work week. Thanks! Great read.

Thanks for the heads up on this one; the reviews are excellent.
I just Amazoned it, so it's on the way.

DazMarz

Just started reading Blackwater: The Rise Of The World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army by Jeremy Scahill.

Excellent so far. Well worth a read for anyone who isn't disgusted enough at the United States' foreign policy. This will just push you over the edge.

Travel is good

Some great recommendations here, thanks everyone. I love Christopher Hitchens & Richard Dawkins. I just read "Arguably" & "Hitch 22" by Hitch, and "Unweaving the Rainbow" by Richard Dawkins. I just finished "Rogue States" by Noam Chomsky, that was interesting.

I'm just about to start "The Wasp Factory" and "Crow Road" by Iain Banks, but I see there are some more good Banks books recommended here.

My current book is "Umberella" by Will Self, finding it a bit hard going, I've found that with other Will Self books, but I'll persevere. It's all one long stream of conciousness, no chapter breaks or paragraphs or anything!

MrPudding

Travel is good wrote: »

Some great recommendations here, thanks everyone. I love Christopher Hitchens & Richard Dawkins. I just read "Arguably" & "Hitch 22" by Hitch, and "Unweaving the Rainbow" by Richard Dawkins. I just finished "Rogue States" by Noam Chomsky, that was interesting.

I'm just about to start "The Wasp Factory" and "Crow Road" by Iain Banks, but I see there are some more good Banks books recommended here.

My current book is "Umberella" by Will Self, finding it a bit hard going, I've found that with other Will Self books, but I'll persevere. It's all one long stream of conciousness, no chapter breaks or paragraphs or anything!

If you like Hitchens read Mortality.

MrP

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Currently reading On Another Man's Wound by Ernie O'Malley and also Dead Drunk: Saving myself from alcoholism in a Thai monastery by Paul Garrigan.

human 19

Strumpet City

Just started 'No God but God'.

crazy cabbage

Just bit the bullet and bought 'Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid'. Seen some brilliant reviews on the internet. Anyone here read it and what did they think?
Also bought Ender's Game seen as there has been so much hype about it here.

Haven't been reading in the last while because of work but looking forward to getting stuck into these two.

Corkfeen

crazy cabbage wrote: »

Just bit the bullet and bought 'Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid'. Seen some brilliant reviews on the internet. Anyone here read it and what did they think?
Also bought Ender's Game seen as there has been so much hype about it here.

Haven't been reading in the last while because of work but looking forward to getting stuck into these two.

I have Godel, Escher, Bach sitting on my shelf but it's currently just looking very imposing. Shall finish off The Shining and work out if i'm willing to start it...

crazy cabbage

Corkfeen wrote: »

I have Godel, Escher, Bach sitting on my shelf but it's currently just looking very imposing. Shall finish off The Shining and work out if i'm willing to start it...

robindch

crazy cabbage wrote: »

Just bit the bullet and bought 'Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid'. Seen some brilliant reviews on the internet. Anyone here read it and what did they think?

I bought it shortly after it was first published and found it one of those books that's impossible to classify.

I'm not sure it succeeds in its aim of describing cognition and consciousness and how they can arise from inanimate matter, but as "a metaphorical fugue upon minds and machines", the work is thought-provoking, profound, brilliant and essentially flawless.

Was reading Thinking fast and slow
Currently reading http://www.danpink.com/books/drive

robindch

crazy cabbage wrote: »

Also bought Ender's Game [...]

...which is appearing on screens in October.

Unfortunately, there have been calls for a boycott of the film on account of Card's unhealthy views of his non-heterosexual fellow-citizens. So Card has asked that people forget that he spent years fighting against marriage equality and instead, show him "tolerance".

PopePalpatine

Well, there's always the high seas. :pac:

MagicMarker

I finished "The Player of Games" last night. I enjoyed it but there's one thing bothering me.

Why did

Mawhrin-Skel try and blackmail Gurgeh? Was it to force him to go to the Empire? And why did he pose as Flere-Imsaho?

I just don't see the significance....

DapperGent

MagicMarker wrote: »

Why did

Mawhrin-Skel try and blackmail Gurgeh? Was it to force him to go to the Empire? And why did he pose as Flere-Imsaho?

My impression was that SC selected Gurgeh as the person (or one of the people) they wanted to be the Culture participant in the Azad tournament before the novel even began. There was never anything wrong with Mawhrin-Skel and it was just there to manipulate Gurgeh into agreeing to go. The blackmail I think had two purposes firstly (and most importantly) to get him to agree to go and secondly for him to understand what it was to be in real jeopardy.

His entire life is at stake if his cheating is revealed and he clearly states that he'll kill himself if it comes out, this (unusually for a Culture citizen) allows him to empathize better with a civilisation like Azad where life is tenuous and suffering is everywhere and arbitrary.

Having already successfully manipulated Gurgeh once and knows him well I guess it is a natural choice for the role of manipulating him throughout the tournament using the completely different (officious grating) personality of Flere-Imsaho. Showing him the reality of Azadian life at the right time, getting him to start speaking Marain again at the right time etc.

Turtwig

Started Ender's game, sort of. Reading the intro bit by Card and his theories on how his book captures a reality is a little absurd. It's unfair obviously of me to completely it diss it offhand but I just find it strange. The golden rule of fiction is that it's the only place where the world and actions of the characters has to make sense. If one was to write a book that reflects a reality, especially that of the psychology of gifted children and/or war pilots, then it would very likely be a boring unintuitive mess.

DapperGent

Card is an astounding fúcktard, the vast majority of his books suck and the totality of his opinion writing sucks. Ender's Game is a great read though as are select few of his other stories, my advice would be to just confine yourself to the book. It doesn't have the philosophical weight some people (including Card) think it has but it's just a great story.

I remember watching an interview with Neil Young and he was discussing his inability to answer a frequent question he gets which is along the lines of "How did you manage to write those songs?/Where did the genius come from?" or some variant. He says that he really doesn't know and that he was a different person then. That's how I think of Orson Scott Card, whoever wrote Ender's Game is 1985 and Speaker for the Dead in 1986 isn't around anymore, there's just some self-regarding crank who writes an embarrassing amount of crappy sequels.

MagicMarker

DapperGent wrote: »

My impression was that SC selected Gurgeh as the person (or one of the people) they wanted to be the Culture participant in the Azad tournament before the novel even began. There was never anything wrong with Mawhrin-Skel and it was just there to manipulate Gurgeh into agreeing to go. The blackmail I think had two purposes firstly (and most importantly) to get him to agree to go and secondly for him to understand what it was to be in real jeopardy.

His entire life is at stake if his cheating is revealed and he clearly states that he'll kill himself if it comes out, this (unusually for a Culture citizen) allows him to empathize better with a civilisation like Azad where life is tenuous and suffering is everywhere and arbitrary.

Having already successfully manipulated Gurgeh once and knows him well I guess it is a natural choice for the role of manipulating him throughout the tournament using the completely different (officious grating) personality of Flere-Imsaho. Showing him the reality of Azadian life at the right time, getting him to start speaking Marain again at the right time etc.

Thanks for that, makers sense alright!

I've now moved on to "All the King's Men" by Robert Penn Warren. A book I've been meaning to read for a long time.

swampgas

robindch wrote: »

...which is appearing on screens in October.

Unfortunately, there have been calls for a boycott of the film on account of Card's unhealthy views of his non-heterosexual fellow-citizens. So Card has asked that people forget that he spent years fighting against marriage equality and instead, show him "tolerance".

Andrew Wheeler at the Guardian makes a point about tolerance today: link.

It's a film I'd like to see, but I'm with the boycott crowd on this one.

MagicMarker

Just finished Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke. Excellent book. Stargate Universe ripped it off too.

smacl

DapperGent wrote: »

Card is an astounding fúcktard, the vast majority of his books suck and the totality of his opinion writing sucks. Ender's Game is a great read though as are select few of his other stories, my advice would be to just confine yourself to the book. It doesn't have the philosophical weight some people (including Card) think it has but it's just a great story.

I thought Ender's Game was nowhere near as good as Speaker for the dead, or probably even Xenocide, but the series drifts off after that. Just finished the Ender's shadow series which were very readable but nothing special. Read the Game of thrones series earlier in the year, where the first book was entertaining and each subsequent book got progressively worse. Card has his flaws, but there's much worse out there.

Sad to see Banks pass on a few months back, love much of his stuff, and unlike many here would put The Wasp Factory on top of that list, followed by Complicty and the Crow Road. Other good recent reads for me include The Boxer Rebellion and Khartoum, both of which turned out to be more compelling than much of the fiction I've read. Also had to digest a fair number of maths and programming books, which were way more mundane.

Aenaes

What happened this thread?

Emma by Jane Austen. Roughly half-way, it's not a book I can read quickly but I expected that. It's quite enjoyable

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Slouching Towards Kalamazoo by Peter De Vries. Hitchens recommended this in one of his articles. It's fantastic. Very humourous.

Turtwig

Aenaes wrote: »

What happened this thread?

Emma by Jane Austen. Roughly half-way, it's not a book I can read quickly but I expected that. It's quite enjoyable

Reading pace was cut to 5 mins per day.

Just to pre-empt bluey's inevitable snipe. :pac:

Jernal

Jernal wrote: »

Reading pace was cut to 5 mins per day.

Just to pre-empt bluey's inevitable snipe. :pac:

Damn :cool:

MagicMarker

Another Country by James Baldwin. I love it.

Turtwig

bluewolf wrote: »

Damn :cool:

It was either that or ban you from this forum and hope you wouldn't appeal it. I tossed a coin.

Corkfeen

Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut,been a big fan of him for years. He can be so subtle in his comedy, admittedly the phallic tombstone wasn't subtle.

pauldla

Just finished Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga by Hunter S Thompson. Read it years ago, but unfortunately it's the kind of book that gets borrowed and not returned. Now I have it on the Kindle, so it's MINE FOREVER (laughs maniacally, runs from room).

The Black Oil

Currently listening to an audiobook of Sam Harris's The End of Faith. There seems to be something wrong the end of chapter 4, the file seems to stop mid sentence and skip straight to chapter 5. Bought it from iTunes, so it's legit. Not sure if I can report it or get it fixed.

He certainly puts Islam under the microscope, anyway.

smacl

Currently reading Blown away for Good. Readable enough insight into the dodgier aspects of Scientology, but not exactly earth shattering.

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Starting Unacknowledged Legislation by Christopher Hitchens.

pauldla

Idly picked up Huckleberry Finn the other day and I'm now about half way through it. I haven't read it since I was a kid, but it's amazing how much of it is still fresh in my memory. Twain was a good one.

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pauldla wrote: »

Idly picked up Huckleberry Finn the other day and I'm now about half way through it. I haven't read it since I was a kid, but it's amazing how much of it is still fresh in my memory. Twain was a good one.

I need to read this again.

Currently reading Benjamin Franklin's autobiography. It is brilliant.

SmilingLurker

[-0-] wrote: »

Currently reading Benjamin Franklin's autobiography. It is brilliant.

Good book. Read it on holiday last year.

Just finished The Quarry by the late Iain Banks.

Gbear

I've mostly finished Ben Goldacre's most recent book Bad Pharma. You'd obviously suspect that there's nefarious goings on in the world of the pharmaceutical industry, and there clearly is.
But he raises more interesting issues about the more passive failings in regulation that aren't necessarily outright criminal but more subtle biases and also the degree to which the culture of society as a whole isn't conducive to having a well running medical industry.
Even if you went into it with the most pessimistic expectations of the pharmaceutical industry it'd still be a pretty shocking read.

I also recently got a big load of Discworld books that I had previously lost so I read The Fifth Elephant, Guards Guards, Feet of Clay, Men at Arms, Interesting Times, Carpe Jugulum, Small Gods (possibly my favourite of the whole lot), Monstrous Regiment and I could be forgetting another, over the past month.
With the onset of his illness Pratchett's writing has understandably lost some of it's sheen and that's without taking into account that he's been writing them for over 20 years and he's just released the 40th Discworld book, so staleness was inevitable. But the older books are just so bloody brilliant.
Next on my shopping list is the "Death" storyline.

I've also started Dr David Nutt's book "Drugs Without the Hot Air". After that I'm looking forward to Biographies of Nikola Tesla and Werner Heisenberg. Plenty to be getting on with.

MrPudding

SmilingLurker wrote: »

Just finished The Quarry by the late Iain Banks.

I quite enjoyed that.

MrP

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Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Second time reading it.

pauldla

[-0-] wrote: »

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Second time reading it.

Read it years back, I wasn't that impressed actually, but I think I was expecting something a bit different. Must try it again.

pauldla

Read this a while back, and started it again recently while sitting at the table waiting for my tea. Very well written and informative.

Bannasidhe

Just finished Terry Pratchett's Rising Steam...gods, I miss Granny..:(

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pauldla wrote: »

Read it years back, I wasn't that impressed actually, but I think I was expecting something a bit different. Must try it again.

It's not as good as 1984 but it did pave the way for it. Huxley taught Blair.

Now reading John Moriarty's Dreamtime. A wonderful, wonderful book.