What are you reading?
 

I couldn't update the old one so here we are. Discuss what novels, textbooks, your sibling's diaries, comic books, religious litany and scientific journals you're reading.

I picked up a copy of The Horrors and Absurdities of Religion by Arthur Schopenbauer. I've been trying to get into more Philosophy literature but find the majority of them so stuffed with dry overly verbose allegory I get bored a few chapters in, promise myself to pick it up again and forget why I wanted to read them in the first place. I'm dedicated to finishing The Horrors though, it's much more accessible and the presentation so far (a discussion on the viability and problems with moral permanence of religion between two Philosophers) has proved very novel and engaging for a philosophy flopper like me.

I'm also TRYING to read The Sickness Unto Death & Fear and Trembling, by Soren Kierkegaard. Wonderfully written but dense and dry as can be, it's got a lot of repeating and retelling of the binding of Isaac that goes from interesting to just bizarre in how often it's regurgitated anew. I'm still getting the hang of Philosophical writings, but it takes some pretty serious dedication not to be bored to tears.

I recently read through volume 1 of The Walking Dead. I thought it was great. The art was very visually pleasing and the characters seem much more believable than on the TV show. I'll definitely pick up volume 2 if I see it.

I'm halfway through Terry Pratchett and Steven Baxter's The Long Earth. It's pretty good as a piece of Science Fiction - they have posited a change in the world and fully-thought through the consequences of that change. It's just a bit hard to care because there isn't really all that much of a narrative so far. It just flits back and forth between a whole bunch of different characters without focusing enough on any one of them.

Che Guevara's Motorcycle Diaries has been in my hands for most of the past few days. I was at one point envious of his and Granado's journey, but so far, he's burnt his foot on a cylinder, contracted a virus, accidentally killed three animals (including somebody's pet which he shot in panic, believing it to be a puma) and shit out of a window while having trouble with diarrhoea. I think the English Lakeland is best suited to me.

If audiobooks count, Dark Tower Volume 7 and The Fellowship of the Ring. Fellowship is amazing in that it takes them FOREVER to get to Bree! Tom Bombadil is a bit like the LOTR version of Chuck Norris so that's always fun. The songs are good at first but some of them go on far too long. If it was a book I'd just skip over it but with an audiobook it can be a pain to fast forward past those parts. Overall though it's fantastic. Some scenes play out completely differently.

I don't think I can live up to AlexFili's passion for literature. Bye.

Agatha Christie's The Body in the Library, just finished Terry Pratchett's Witches Abroad as well.

Finished Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore, which I kind of got and kind of didn't get and reading Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay which is really excellent and charming for a litfic.

Nice idea for a thread Mac. Anyway, I need to finish my "The Valley of Fear" book from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and "Murder in Mesopotamia" from Agatha Christie. But my main book these days has been "Early Concrete Constructions in Germany - A Review with Special Regard to the Building Company Dyckerhoff & Widmann" from Knut Stegmann, great book of simple, but effective, engineering.

EDIT: It's nice to see someone who reads Agatha Christie..their a rare kind, as far as my experience goes.

I'm reading The Yiddish Policeman's union by Micheal Chabon. He has a very information packed writing style that I keep getting kinda lost in, forgetting what he was talking about in the first place. He also uses a lot of non traditional words for things like 'suitcase', 'door' and 'pants'.

Would those words in fact be traditional if you spoke Yiddish?

Ted Chiang's Stories of your Life and Others - fantastic Science Fiction ideas.

I've been in the process of reading Terry Pratchett's Snuff for several months now. I haven't touched the damn thing since at least September. I don't want to start it again because I'm close to halfway through, but I don't want to continue and have no idea what's going on.

The worst part is that I'm on holiday, which means I'm generally arsing around the house all day doing nothing. I could have read it 10 times over since I finished my exams.

Friend got me a copy of 1984 to read because he says anime subtitles don't count
s'alright so far

I've been slowly rereading Spawn. We've got the first 100 or so issues and I've always loved the series, so whenever I'm not preoccupied with something else I have my face buried in the comics. The longer I read it though, the more uneasy the art style is on my eyes. At least it sets the atmosphere well, I guess.

I've read/got that. Where are you up to, if you want a recap?

Me and my father are both fans of her, my father being the biggest fan among us two. He has everything she has written and every TV series from her books.

I still need to start on the second part of The Hunger Games. First part was awesome, might safe the second for this years summer vacation. Books are good on planes.

I don't remember. That's the problem.

I actually think it's been sitting unread since July/August and I've done a year worth of maths subjects since then.

Not even a page number? Christ, man, buy a bookmark.

I got up to the bit with the bit before I got bored.

I disliked the sudden characterization swerve for Wilikins.

maybe terry forgot his old personality

It's not like he actually had much of an old personality, but Goddamnit he did not act like a more dangerous Dark Knight Alfred.

House of Leaves, on and off for the last year. The book is infuriating and stupid, but it's one of those things that I committed to and I have to see it through to the end.

For those of you who are unfamiliar, the book is several different narratives layered on top of each other; it's a book about a guy who wrote a story about a movie about a haunted house. The haunted house parts are entertaining and well-written, though all the fake footnotes are more annoying than clever, and I learned after the first two chapters to just skip them.

The fictional character who is transcribing this story about the haunted house is named Johnny, and his story is a secondary narrative detailing how his transcription is turning his life upside down. These are the parts of the book that induce severe bouts of eye-rolling and page skimming, because they're written in a way that borders on blunt sexual escapism. I'll read three pages about this haunted house full of tenebrific, non-euclidian hallways containing untold horrors, then a jarring tonal shift as I'm treated to yet another chapter about what bar skank Johnny last boinked in explicit detail. I'm supposed to believe that every girl this guy meets, no matter who they are, wants to fuck him; a complete stranger? Then it's paragraph after paragraph of just pure porn.

It's dumb, and the writer better be going somewhere with it, because I'm getting sick of reading five pages of totally unnecessary wankery just to find that one little hidden detail that actually pertains to the main story. It's like eating an entire box of cereal in one sitting just to get the shitty little plastic prize at the bottom. Over and over again.

I was going to buy House of Leaves once, then I got to the checkout and it was £25 and then I didn't buy House of Leaves.

It was a deep, philosophical and moving experience.

Just read a summary online. This is one case where the experience is better when compressed.

Truly deserving of the title 'modern classic' then.

I swear to God I thought that thought without a shred of sarcasm.

That's actually pretty disappointing to hear. I'd been looking forward to the day I'd get a chance to read it, but that doesn't sound like something I'd enjoy in the slightest.

I really liked Snuff.

House of Leaves is a pile of shit that was probably a lot cooler to read in it's original form of disjointed chapters and handwritten notes and sketches that the writer would spread around the internet. It got way more praise than it deserved, probably because all of the hidden details and lengthy footnotes appeal to the complexity-lust shared by the kind of people that play games like Myst or follow Homestuck.

I like complexity and cleverness when it's done right, and when the driving narrative isn't stupid as fuck. Not quite the case here.

Think I'm gonna finally pick back up Catch 22. That book was hilarious from the 100 or so pages that I actually read.

I figured out how to read only The Navidson Report parts of House of Leaves and feel all the better for it. Like Sekto, I really truly tried to give it a shot but ultimately Johnny's perspective is pretty much meaningless beyond implying maybe he's possibly crazy AND that he's only fucking the same girl over and over and doesn't remember it, or something like that.
The parts that are actually about the exploration of the house are really great little horror vignettes and the author should have just told the story through those.

I read that around nowish last year. I did the same thing and can tell you it's worth giving another go.
Probably, but much of the Yiddish he uses stands out a bit better and flows into the dialogue to explain itself pretty easily. These words just seem like flowering up the first few chapters.

Do the parts with Johnny actually resolve to anything significant, or can I totally skip them? Because I'm only like a third of the way through, and I'm already sick to death of his part of the story.

I thought they were interesting. The book is a purposeful clusterfuck of boring weirdness. I liked it for that, but I definitely won't read it twice.

I get that. It just got so much praise, so I was expecting it to be more.

There’s a bit more to Johnny’s story than what Mac describes. I wouldn’t say it’s anywhere near as interesting as the exploration of the house, but there’s something to it.

THE DETAILS OF YOUR DEATH SENTENCE THAT'S WHAT!

Just kidding, I'm reading Doggie Daycare Murder.

http://img2.imagesbn.com/p/978075821...1_s260x420.JPG

I thought we scared you away.

I started reading The Society of The Spectacle by Guy Debord. My friend purchased it in a fit of raucous philosophical angst after he discovered our local Chapters (corporate bookstore chain) had stocked only the barest and most shitty of the Philosophy section, with gems such as
FINAL FANTASY AND PHILOSOPHY
BREAKING BAD AND PHILOSOPHY
CIGARETTE SMOKING AND PHILOSOPHY
THE ZEN ART OF MOTORCYCLE REPAIR
THE ZEN ART OF COOKING CRYSTAL METH
etc...
It's pretty much exactly what I need to read right now so that I'll stop purchasing stupid garbage. Abrupt marxist criticism of obsession, addiction and dependency on a self-improving utterly autonomous media entity coagulating our senses with an entirely separate world for us to consider and judge our decisions from that, though completely synthetic and within our own minds, dominates our decisions and basically makes every assumption a conclusion before we consider it.

Semi-related: Television fucking sucks nowadays.

You thought wrong sir, please don't hurt me!