im about halfway to 3/4 through the 3rd book of Dune now.
im about halfway to 3/4 through the 3rd book of Dune now.
Right now I'm reading House on the Strand by Daphne du Maurier and I'm really struck by how similar her style is to mine in a way I've never seen, lol. Not sure if that's good or bad.
someday the grapes will be wine
and someday you will be mine
EII-Ne 2w3 - 9w1 - 7w8 so/sx
Just finished 'keep the aspidistra flying' by George Orwell. I liked it and was debating between 3 and 4 stars on goodreads but went with 3 because it felt like beating a dead horse sometimes and the ending was a little too easy and neat (i could see that being part of the satire though). It's about a guy who wages war against the 'money god' by quitting his good job and refusing to be successful and then is completely miserable and blames lack of money for all of his problems. I may have sympathized with him more than i was intended to, I'm not sure, even though i thought his choices were clearly foolish...he would blame money for things like being obnoxious with his friends or having writers block and id think 'i can see that' (when perhaps i was supposed to think it was stupid). But this was my favorite excerpt from the book:
"He wondered about the people in houses like those. They would be, for example, small clerks, shop-assistants, commercial travellers, insurance touts, tram conductors. Did they know that they were only puppets dancing when money pulled the strings? You bet they didn’t. And if they did, what would they care? They were too busy being born, being married, begetting, working, dying. It mightn’t be a bad thing, if you could manage it, to feel yourself one of them, one of the ruck of men. Our civilization is founded on greed and fear, but in the lives of common men the greed and fear are mysteriously transmuted into something nobler. The lower-middle-class people in there, behind their lace curtains, with their children and their scraps of furniture and their aspidistras — they lived by the money-code, sure enough, and yet they contrived to keep their decency. The money-code as they interpreted it was not merely cynical and hoggish. They had their standards, their inviolable points of honour. They ‘kept themselves respectable’— kept the aspidistra flying. Besides, they were alive. They were bound up in the bundle of life. They begot children, which is what the saints and the soul-savers never by any chance do.
The aspidistra is the tree of life, he thought suddenly."
http://www.amazon.com/Keep-Aspidistr.../dp/150289159X
Presently reading "The Cuckoo's Calling" by Robert Galbraith (J. K. Rowling alias). It's good. The main character seems LIE/SLE, he makes me think of Adam a lot. Overall I'd say the characters are Ni/Se and maybe more Gamma as, IMO, the main character has strong Te, low Fi, more in an Te lead way. I could be wrong.
What type is J. K. Rowling? I think I had seen ESI some places on this forum. Anyway, overall, do you think writers often create characters of their quadra or characters they could fancy IRL? I think so.
Finished ‚The Art of Loving‘ by Erich Fromm. I think what draw me to it, was the question of your capability to love. I think, I felt a resonance with loving as something active, as a expression of will, a decision. I mean ... I sometimes wondered. I never really felt open when it came to ... you know ... love as feeling, this whole goey goey whatever. I think deep down, I guess, I never understood. But I understand to decide. When I read it, the parts about producing, about giving, about making this your decision and owning your decision, I think maybe .. yeah I felt more a connection to it. I mean, I can never help with these books/these kind of things. Is it juts some nice ideal, that nobody can ever reach, all just nice theory and talk?
I think that was, why I just can’t connect with ... some of the fuzzy-fuzzy talking. Idk, these kind of things, when I just think people are just rambling or whatever. It’s always this feeling of getting irritated. I mean I just don't like it when I get the feeling it's too romanticized. It doesn' feel real/realistic to me. I can understand the content, but it leaves me cold. I feel no connection to it. I feel, I can understand somebody who shows things through his actions, through his decisions, because that’s the testing stone and all the talk in the world means nothing, if yeah... there is nothing really giving, producing. It's difficult to put into words for me. It's more like you just feel it when sth. strikes a chord with you. I think some parts did and and they were interesting for me therefore:
Last edited by Moonbeaux Rainfox; 03-18-2016 at 06:46 PM.
Wrapping up Troubled Sleep (Jean Paul Sartre) soon. Recently started Eichmann in Jerusalem (Hannah Arendt) and Herculine Barbin (Michel Foucault).
dune done. not sure what's next, but i'm thinking either The Dark Tower or The Stand again. (leaning towards The Stand)
Last edited by bg; 03-09-2016 at 01:22 PM.
Lol @ dumbass @suedehead reading such difficult authors like foucalt and arendt, i think i made it about five pages into one of her books once.
Probably the best books I've read recently were the autobiography of malcolm x and the god of small things by arundhati roy.
I'm currently reading shampoo planet by Douglas coupland and confused about why he's such a popular author because i think it's all so contrived and second rate..but its an easy breezy read and I'm not far enough in to write it off.
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
Great book!
I tried reading God of Small things, couldn't read it, I could appreciate it as something different but couldn't do it... teach me how!
I started reading Slaughterhouse 5. I never read it and somebody said a character in it reminds them of me.
Finished The Trial (Kafka). Recently started these:
The History of Sexuality (Michel Foucault)
Pulp (Charles Bukowski)
The First Man (Albert Camus)
Finishing Thomas Hobbes' "Leviathan" turned out to be a chore, but I did it. Now reading Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead". I'm five chapters in and, contrary to my expectations (and personal opinion of Rand's philosophy), it is quite enjoyable.
„Man can do what he wants but he cannot want what he wants.“
– Arthur Schopenhauer
Finished recently:
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Hunter S. Thompson)
Pulp (Charles Bukowski)
Herculine Barbin [as far as I'm concerned] (Michel Foucault)
The First Man (Albert Camus)
Currently reading:
Caligula and Three Other Plays (Albert Camus)
Justine (Marquis de Sade)
Frankenstein: or the Modern Prometheus (Mary Shelley) - just finished the prologue, which is probably the most resonant piece of prose I've ever read.
“My typology is . . . not in any sense to stick labels on people at first sight. It is not a physiognomy and not an anthropological system, but a critical psychology dealing with the organization and delimitation of psychic processes that can be shown to be typical.” —C.G. Jung
thinking about reading Neal Stephensons books next (at least his cyberpunk stuff), for some reason i never tried him.
I liked "Snow Crash" and its follow-up "the Diamond Age" the best. After that, he became famous and his editors stopped editing his stuff for brevity and plot direction, which his stories sorely need.
If you want to see what he did when his unbounded imagination was teamed with a disciplined author who believed in plot, read Interface, by Stephen Bury (more recently attributed to Stephenson and George). Stephenson wrote it with his uncle, and it reads like a novel, rather than a drug-crazed party.
i should just start reading them to find out, but how does he compare to Gibson and Sterling? They have always been my main cyberpunk staples/favorites besides some more one off authors in the genre.
I'm a fan of PKD so drug-crazed writing doesn't really bother me as long as it has good dialogue, cool themes, and something that sinks into your backbrain to simmer away after you're done
Last edited by bg; 04-30-2016 at 06:50 PM.
I just finished reading Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine.
Otherwise known as, "Introverted Sensing: The Book".
[...]
JP Sears said it is an essential reading http://www.creativegrowth.com/bradshaw_shame%201.pdf
Anything by Robert Greene. The book Ronda Rousey wrote.
LSI-Se 836 Sp/Sx
I just started reading this: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8...ackwash-of-war
kind of trauma porn. but very engrossing. i was thinking of ashton when i started it this morning.
Last book I was reading was Francis Bacon's Novum Organum. It is rather tedious in places, but a significant work.
Improving your happiness and changing your personality for the better
Jungian theory is not grounded in empirical data (pdf file)
The case against type dynamics (pdf file)
Cautionary comments regarding the MBTI (pdf file)
Reinterpreting the MBTI via the five-factor model (pdf file)
Do the Big Five personality traits interact to predict life outcomes? (pdf file)
The Big Five personality test outperformed the Jungian and Enneagram test in predicting life outcomes
Evidence of correlations between human partners based on systematic reviews and meta-analyses of traits
Just finished Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Still digesting it.
I'm a bit into reading Lolita now. I felt nervous about reading it, afraid that I would empathize too much with the main character and it would fuck with me, but that hasn't been an issue so far. the way he describes his internal struggles and desires is human and sympathetic independent of the subject matter but I don't see him as fatalistically compelled by nature to make the decisions that he does, so it hasn't impacted me in any moral crisis sort of way. he expresses more clarity about the source/nature/psychology of his desire than I expected, and the passages reflecting that are pretty interesting. the prose is sparkly, musical, engaging, I really like it.
I'm only about 90 pages in atm so maybe there's still a shitstorm coming for me.
“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.”
― Anais Nin
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is a very good book (albeit in script form). It has some surprising characters appearing in it, which gives extra depth to the other seven. I cannot say anything else without it being a spoiler.
Improving your happiness and changing your personality for the better
Jungian theory is not grounded in empirical data (pdf file)
The case against type dynamics (pdf file)
Cautionary comments regarding the MBTI (pdf file)
Reinterpreting the MBTI via the five-factor model (pdf file)
Do the Big Five personality traits interact to predict life outcomes? (pdf file)
The Big Five personality test outperformed the Jungian and Enneagram test in predicting life outcomes
Evidence of correlations between human partners based on systematic reviews and meta-analyses of traits
A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped The World by William Bernstein is a splendid book.
Improving your happiness and changing your personality for the better
Jungian theory is not grounded in empirical data (pdf file)
The case against type dynamics (pdf file)
Cautionary comments regarding the MBTI (pdf file)
Reinterpreting the MBTI via the five-factor model (pdf file)
Do the Big Five personality traits interact to predict life outcomes? (pdf file)
The Big Five personality test outperformed the Jungian and Enneagram test in predicting life outcomes
Evidence of correlations between human partners based on systematic reviews and meta-analyses of traits
Started reading a thousand splendid suns by khaled hosseini last night and its hard to put down. On da verge of tears every other page ;_;
Currently reading: Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder
By Nassim Nicholas Taleb
I had 2 books in the last week, that really really resonated with me. I’m not reading much, because it really has to really catch me, otherwise I cannot finish a book.
(I’m also not reading a lot of what people would consider ‘high quality’ literature. I love other books much more. Honestly I gained more things from them.)
Also I’m not really a sucker for stuff, coming from this angle… omg do this for growth and development etc. I have a deep seated hatred for this narrative.
Like with these articles, things 'developed people' do or you have to do to tick of more boxes or to fit into a mold (10 things you should do to… whatever).
An impression you might get at first, with this antifragile stuff. But that was not really what catched my curiosity, because good ol’ robustness is fine with me.
I actually really liked the parts about randomness, about ‘predicitions’, about complexity (the first 1/4 of the book) and later parts about not quantifiable knowledge.
Or parts about simplicity (parts that striked me about a more natural way of going about making decisions). Also funny parts about procrastination, 'flaneur'. Like how
he could articulate, how I feel about some things. I really resonated with that. But later on there were parts, were I thought… idk… things became a bit too 'high' for me.
Like parts where it might came across to me as idk … too philosophical, technical and these were paragraphs were I kinda drifted. Were I would also see it differently.
That’s where I have to admit I read it as skipping some parts and stopping at some that interested me more. But just my opinion. It’s still one interesting book.
Last edited by Moonbeaux Rainfox; 11-24-2016 at 10:59 PM.
I just picked up a couple of books from the LIIbrary.
I had to admit the titles themselves intrigued me:
Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Familiy and Culture in Crisis
The Hidden Life of Trees- What They Feel, How They Communicate
I haven't read them yet, I'll let you know if there is anything interesting in them.
LII-Ne with strong EII tendencies, 6w7-9w1-3w4 so/sp/sx, INxP
Red Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle again. Equally if not more impressed this time around.
I just finished A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 1) by George R. R. Martin and Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer.
I quite liked A Game of Thrones. I haven't seen the show and wasn't planning on reading it, but I was stuck at work with my husband one day and he had a copy lying on his desk. Now that I've read the first one I'll probably continue with the series at some point.
I enjoyed Into the Wild, but liked the movie more (LOVED the movie). The book did help to clarify Christopher McCandless's motivations and give more insight into the family dynamics, which were essential in the story.
One of my favorite books
A list of books I've been reading semi-recently, of those I give 10 out of 10. I decided to omit fiction books, which I don't tend to read so many of in any case.
Arts
David Dubal: The Essential Canon of Classical Music
Michael Schmidt: Lives of the Poets
Marilyn Stokstad: Art History
Economics
Charles Wheelan: Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science
Economics & History
Thomas Piketty: Capital in the Twenty-First Century
Economics, History, Philosophy, Politics
Matt Ridley: The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves
History
David Abulafia: The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean
Juliet Barker: Agincourt: Henry V and the Battle That Made England
Robert Bartlett: The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization, and Cultural Change, 950-1350
Robert Bartlett: England Under the Norman and Angevin Kings, 1075-1225
Jacques Barzun: From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present
Susan Wise Bauer: The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome
Susan Wise Bauer: The History of the Renaissance World: From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Conquest of Constantinople
Susan Wise Bauer: The History of the Medieval World: From the Conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade
Piers Brendon: The Decline and Fall of the British Empire, 1781-1997
Norman Davies: Europe
Norman Davies: Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe
Norman Davies: The Isles: A History
Modris Eksteins: Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age
Robin Lane Fox: The Classical World: An Epic History from Homer to Hadrian
Tom Holland: Forge of Christendom
Tom Holland: Persian Fire
Tony Judt: Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945
David Kennedy: Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945
Ian Kershaw: ******
Ian Mortimer: The Perfect King - The Life of Edward III
Michael Prestwich: Plantagenet England 1225-1360
David Reynolds: America, Empire of Liberty: A New History
Hew Strachan: The First World War
Jan Swafford: Beethoven
Barbara Tuchman: A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century
Barbara Tuchman: The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914
Joyce Tyldesley: Hatchepsut: The Female Pharaoh
Odd Arne Westad: Restless Empire: China and the World Since 1750
Toby Wilkinson: The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt: The History of a Civilisation from 3000 BC to Cleopatra
History & Economics
William Bernstein: A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World from Prehistory to Today
Ian Morris: Why the West Rules—for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future
History & Science
Cynthia Stokes Brown: Big History: From the Big Bang to the Present
Bill Bryson: A Short History of Nearly Everything
Richard Holmes: The Age of Wonder
Steven Johnson: Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation
Philosophy
Simone de Beauvoir: The Second Sex
Carl von Clausewitz: On War
David Deutsch: The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World
Mark Twain: Letters from the Earth
Poetry
Lucretius: On the Nature of Things
Ovid: Metamorphoses
Shelley: The Complete Works
Psychology, Philosophy
Steven Pinker: The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
Science
Theodore Brown: Chemistry: The Central Science
Neil Campbell: Biology
David Halliday: Fundamentals of Physics
Elaine Marieb: Human Anatomy & Physiology
Science, Astronomy, Philosophy
Carl Sagan: Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Sociology, Psychology, Philosophy
Steven Pinker: The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
If I was to recommend just a few of these, I would suggest the "Philosophy" books, for being particularly mind-expanding. The Steven Johnson book (Where Good Ideas Come From) I felt I could have classed under "Philosophy", and would highly recommend it (although I would highly recommend any of these books - but most of them are fairly self-explanatory about their subject area, and thus you are likely to know if it is of any interest ). The books listed under the Arts and Science categories I found to be exceptional in their respective fields - most of them are textbooks (i.e. for university curricula) and appear in many editions, of varying cost. I would also recommend Ian Morris: Why the West Rules—for Now as a good general book about history and economics (and as a good companion, William Bernstein's A Splendid Exchange), and also Jacques Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence.
The Clausewitz book is ostensibly about military strategy, but I think it has wider interest. Similar perhaps to Machiavelli's The Art of War, but I think it is greater than that.
The Joyce Tyldesley book Hatchepsut: The Female Pharaoh is more than just a biography, it covers a whole period of Egyptian history.
The Norman Davies book "Europe" is quite an abrupt title, so I should mention it is an excellent history of Europe.
Last edited by Socionics Is A Cult; 01-31-2017 at 05:47 PM.
Improving your happiness and changing your personality for the better
Jungian theory is not grounded in empirical data (pdf file)
The case against type dynamics (pdf file)
Cautionary comments regarding the MBTI (pdf file)
Reinterpreting the MBTI via the five-factor model (pdf file)
Do the Big Five personality traits interact to predict life outcomes? (pdf file)
The Big Five personality test outperformed the Jungian and Enneagram test in predicting life outcomes
Evidence of correlations between human partners based on systematic reviews and meta-analyses of traits
Caution: Personality may emerge somewhat changed (!)
House of Leaves
The Wasp Factory
Satan Burger
What Do You Care What Other People Think?
Nausea
The Metamorphosis
The Strange Library
The Book
Kafka on the shore
Infinte Jest
I just started memories, dreams, reflections by carl jung. I'm not sure how interested I am in his life and I'm nervous about his writing style but I wanna give it a shot and see what gleaming rocks of insight I can pluck out.
I just finished reading Stephen king's lisey's story. I hadn't read a Stephen king novel in years and didn't know if he'd still do it for me, but it was cool. even kind of romantic. I liked how the alternative universe (boo'ya moon) reminded me of the territories in my favorite novel of his - the talisman - and then he even referenced the territories once. (I want to re-read the talisman now.)
before that, it was the bell jar, which I was embarrassed to read because I thought it was for emo teenage girls but it was actually fantastic, whether it is or not (I wouldn't know - it spoke to me, but I am kind of an emo teenage girl.) I gave it 5 stars on goodreads, which I rarely do.
before the bell jar, it was the lord of the flies (sort of a short classics kick)- also solid. a little heavy on the environmental detail for my sensibilities but the last 1/3 had me riveted, and you know, thinking about the Depressing Take on the Human Condition.
i'll round it out w/ the one that I didn't like so much, and read before the lord of the flies. bookcase by john marshall tanner. it was a mehh (decent I guess) suspense story (the answer to the puzzle was a mystery to me but I'm not hard to mystify). but the main character and the 15 female characters who were there for no other reason than to show what a fuckin stud he was annoyed me. (15 might be exaggerating)
@lungs I thought The Bell Jar was fantastic when I read it many years ago - I also give it 5 stars on goodreads!
Improving your happiness and changing your personality for the better
Jungian theory is not grounded in empirical data (pdf file)
The case against type dynamics (pdf file)
Cautionary comments regarding the MBTI (pdf file)
Reinterpreting the MBTI via the five-factor model (pdf file)
Do the Big Five personality traits interact to predict life outcomes? (pdf file)
The Big Five personality test outperformed the Jungian and Enneagram test in predicting life outcomes
Evidence of correlations between human partners based on systematic reviews and meta-analyses of traits
The decile ranges of goodreads ratings based on the average ratings for the 1000+ books in my Canon of Humanity ebooks thread (I actually have it at 1150 on one of my goodreads shelves but that will not exactly tally for various reasons):
10 stars >4.20
9 stars 4.20 (6 books out of 11), <4.21
8 stars 4.08 (actually 4.09, 3 of 14), <4.09
7 stars 4.00 (22 of 22), <4.01
6 stars 3.94 (actually 3.95, 1 of 13), <3.95
5 stars 3.87 (actually 3.88, 6 of 13), <3.88
4 stars 3.81 (actually 3.82, 6 of 24), <3.82
3 stars 3.74 (11 books of 12) <3.75
2 stars 3.66 (11 books of 21), <3.67
1 star 3.51 (3 books of 6), <3.52
(I worked from the bottom, so for example, there were 112 books with ratings <3.51, plus 6 books that had a rating of 3.51. I went with the score that was closest to the decile mark).
Improving your happiness and changing your personality for the better
Jungian theory is not grounded in empirical data (pdf file)
The case against type dynamics (pdf file)
Cautionary comments regarding the MBTI (pdf file)
Reinterpreting the MBTI via the five-factor model (pdf file)
Do the Big Five personality traits interact to predict life outcomes? (pdf file)
The Big Five personality test outperformed the Jungian and Enneagram test in predicting life outcomes
Evidence of correlations between human partners based on systematic reviews and meta-analyses of traits
I recently read Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Fooled by Randomness, and give it a 10 out of 10. I think it is far better than his more well known book Black Swan.
Improving your happiness and changing your personality for the better
Jungian theory is not grounded in empirical data (pdf file)
The case against type dynamics (pdf file)
Cautionary comments regarding the MBTI (pdf file)
Reinterpreting the MBTI via the five-factor model (pdf file)
Do the Big Five personality traits interact to predict life outcomes? (pdf file)
The Big Five personality test outperformed the Jungian and Enneagram test in predicting life outcomes
Evidence of correlations between human partners based on systematic reviews and meta-analyses of traits
Reading The Rabbit Hunter by the Lars Kepler duo. I have a man crush on the protagonist.