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Thread: Official Book Thread

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    Psychology of Personality: Readings in Theory.

    https://archive.org/details/psychologyofpers00saha

    - Good advanced text on the nature of personality. Even contains a section on Jungian psychological types.

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    My first Turkish science fiction.


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    Magister Ludi is always a good bet.

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    I just finished Household Gods by Judith Tarr and Harry Turtledove, about an attorney and recently divorced single mother who gets sent back in time to a town in what’s now southern Austria during the reign of Marcus Aurelius. I’d never read either of them before, and I usually don’t like historical fiction, so I was surprised at how well-written this was – up until the ending.

    She goes through some terrible things throughout the book — her lover and daughter die; she gets raped; she watches another woman get raped; she sees soldiers being killed; she comes close to starvation. This is all very traumatic to her, and the way this changes her view of the world is written convincingly and with an obvious amount of care put into conveying it. But then she returns suddenly to her modern life and all this characterization is immediately lost. It’s very jarring; almost like “Haha, I’ve sure learned my lesson about thinking the Romans lived better than us! How lucky I am to be living in a time where Germans don’t sack my city and rape my neighbors and kill their husbands as I watch helplessly! Man, how wild was that!


    As I said, the rest of the book was fantastic. Whichever of the two didn’t write the ending I want to read more of, because they’re very talented. And whoever did write the ending ought to be ashamed of themself.
    Last edited by FreelancePoliceman; 07-22-2021 at 04:08 AM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by FreelancePoliceman View Post
    I just finished Household Gods by Judith Tarr and Harry Turtledove, about an attorney and recently divorced single mother who gets sent back in time to a town in what’s now southern Austria during the reign of Marcus Aurelius. I’d never read either of them before, but this was really well-written— up until the ending.

    She goes through some terrible things throughout the book — her lover and daughter die; she gets raped; she watches another woman get raped; she sees soldiers being killed; she comes close to starvation. This is all very traumatic to her, and the way this changes her view of the world is written convincingly and with an obvious amount of care put into conveying it. But then she returns suddenly to her modern life and all this characterization is immediately lost. It’s very jarring; almost like “Haha, I’ve sure learned my lesson about thinking the Romans lived better than us! How lucky I am to be living in a time where Germans don’t sack my city and rape my neighbors and kill their husbands as I watch helplessly! Man, how wild was that!


    As I said, the rest of the book was fantastic. Whichever of the two didn’t write the ending I want to read more of, because they’re very talented. And whoever did write the ending ought to be ashamed of themself.

    I think there is a tendency for science fiction authors to get lazy sometimes. I mean, the author is already cruising the galaxy and passing through the past and future, what more do the readers want?

    For an early take on this problem, read Alfred Bester's 5,271,009.

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    From: The Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail (2021) by Ray Dalio

    Seems like a very interesting book, that I expect to gain many insights from.

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    Man, I've been going down some really strange rabbit holes lately.




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    Been reading Robert Aickman’s short stories. Many have made a strong impression on me.

    I think he was ILI, incidentally. ILIs’ writing always has a certain je ne sais quoi.

    I also found an anthology of Elron Hubbard’s science fiction at a used bookstore and browsed through it. His writing style in scifi is apparently just as obnoxious as it is on religion.

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    Quote Originally Posted by FreelancePoliceman View Post
    Been reading Robert Aickman’s short stories. Many have made a strong impression on me.

    I think he was ILI, incidentally. ILIs’ writing always has a certain je ne sais quoi.

    I also found an anthology of Elron Hubbard’s science fiction at a used bookstore and browsed through it. His writing style in scifi is apparently just as obnoxious as it is on religion.
    L. Not El.

    L. as short for Lafayette, his first name. Lafayette Ronald Hubbard. Not The Ron Hubbard.

    Try reading it for real, many fans of Battlefield Earth are not followers of Scientology. Fear is another great one as well as Typewriter in the Sky. The Mission Earth series is brutal, not for a weak stomach, but if you can handle it, it's amazing.

    I'm currently wrapping up reading Ole Doc Methuselah, kinda like a Flash Gordon esque episodic novel, each chapter a new story. I like it but it's real old school. Fun fact, the funds for LRH to research, write, and publish book Dianetics came from the sales and earning aquired from the book Ole Doc Methuselah, which was written for that very purpose.

    FYI, if you were reading an anthology, you were likely reading an edition of Writers of the Future, which is a collection of short stories from contest winners, of which is held and published in LRHs name and honor, but nothing is written by him in that series.

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    Quote Originally Posted by BILLY View Post
    L. Not El.

    L. as short for Lafayette, his first name. Lafayette Ronald Hubbard. Not The Ron Hubbard.

    Try reading it for real, many fans of Battlefield Earth are not followers of Scientology. Fear is another great one as well as Typewriter in the Sky. The Mission Earth series is brutal, not for a weak stomach, but if you can handle it, it's amazing.

    I'm currently wrapping up reading Ole Doc Methuselah, kinda like a Flash Gordon esque episodic novel, each chapter a new story. I like it but it's real old school. Fun fact, the funds for LRH to research, write, and publish book Dianetics came from the sales and earning aquired from the book Ole Doc Methuselah, which was written for that very purpose.

    FYI, if you were reading an anthology, you were likely reading an edition of Writers of the Future, which is a collection of short stories from contest winners, of which is held and published in LRHs name and honor, but nothing is written by him in that series.
    As far as what I was reading: it was quite a large book, so I’m not sure if it was a collection of short stories or entire novels. But you might be right.

    I’ll add him to my backlog of ebooks since you insist he is in fact more talented at writing sci-fi than creating New Age religions. シ

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    I read a LOT of sci-fi and I've probably read a few stories by L Ron Hubbard, but they were entirely forgettable.

    What I do remember about him was a story by another author who was talking to him at a party about how sci-fi writers could make more money, and L Ron said that if a guy wanted to make some real money, he'd start a cult.

    Shortly after that, the Church of Scientology was born.

    I know this was just a coincidence, but it certainly doesn't look very good.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Adam Strange View Post
    I read a LOT of sci-fi and I've probably read a few stories by L Ron Hubbard, but they were entirely forgettable.

    What I do remember about him was a story by another author who was talking to him at a party about how sci-fi writers could make more money, and L Ron said that if a guy wanted to make some real money, he'd start a cult.

    Shortly after that, the Church of Scientology was born.

    I know this was just a coincidence, but it certainly doesn't look very good.
    That quote is widely attributed but never proven. No one can find the source of that other than he said she said.

    Try reading Mission Earth. It's the craziest sci-fi story I've read, a lot of scenes are insanely brutal and shocking in how casual the brutality is to the characters. The first book will piss you off though with how you'll be screaming for the main character to hurry up and just leave the goddamn planet already but, spoiler alert, he doesn't leave until the exact end of the book. Omg I wanted the villain to just kill him so badly with how that was pissing me off lol.

    If you read his pulp fiction and find that forgettable, just remember, it's pulp fiction. The point is to type out as much words as possible for a cheap and mildly entertaining story. Definitely don't hold his full novels to the standard of his pulps, which aren't bad if you like pulp, but is very dated and an aquired taste.

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    The Four Agreements is one of the really good books I've read. I'm now reading Attached and it's helping me realize a lot of things I didn't have a full understanding of.

    I also really love Rick Riordan's books, he wrote one of my favorites series Percy Jackson, and I also love the Kane Chronicles.



    Last edited by Aquamarine; 08-09-2021 at 05:22 PM.
    Chronic "grass is always greener" syndrome




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    @fatgurl

    I read the Percy Jackson books when I was a teenager and liked them for what they were. But I always felt a certain disappointment that the author only ever repeated mythology, and didn’t add any dimension of his own except to Americanize them. The gods especially are caricatures; there’s not even a hint of a second dimension with them. That’s egregious in the case of Dionysos.

    The Kane Chronicles...well, the gods had to be characterized better since there was so much less material to work with, but on the whole I thought that series was worse. I don’t remember it very well, but I remember being disappointed that when the siblings became avatars of Isis and Horus, they didn’t develop more incesty thoughts as the Pharaohs apparently did. I thought that would make the books much more interesting. Lol.

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    Well, I just finished Moldavite: The Starborne Stone of Transformation.


    Right now of this second, I am reading some of Caught in the Web of the Criminal Justice System: Autism, Developmental Disabilities and Sex Offenses. And soon need to complete reading the biography on Stanley Hall by Dorothy Ross..

    I never much was a reader, but for projects I am working on with adolescence and also making the world more fair for people with autism, I have some required reading..
    I am in my head; not society.

    Yes, that is who I am, hence the bold am.​ Also, a brain angel. (But Zelda's incarnate too).


    My thoughts align with action to succeed what needs…


    Dragons:

    Babies, click them to make them grow up into Kara’s Dragon Museum





    My favorite adult Museum Exhibits

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    I do recommend Moldavite, the stone, for anyone who has Aspergers and has difficulty being in the world.. I recommend people read book on criminality and sex offenses in regards to autism to people into psychology and who want better understand of autism, and then the G. Stanley Hall biography for wanting know the founder of adolescent and child psychology, as well as what adolescence historically has defined as.
    I am in my head; not society.

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    My thoughts align with action to succeed what needs…


    Dragons:

    Babies, click them to make them grow up into Kara’s Dragon Museum





    My favorite adult Museum Exhibits

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    I think the book on autistic criminality and the book on Stanley Hall most would pique interest of enneagram 5 cores, and also maybe 9's. If 8's want to see true justice and protect vulnerable people, then they should read the autism one.
    I am in my head; not society.

    Yes, that is who I am, hence the bold am.​ Also, a brain angel. (But Zelda's incarnate too).


    My thoughts align with action to succeed what needs…


    Dragons:

    Babies, click them to make them grow up into Kara’s Dragon Museum





    My favorite adult Museum Exhibits

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    I also the other day picked up Megha Majumdar's novel A Burning, yet have not yet opened its content.
    I am in my head; not society.

    Yes, that is who I am, hence the bold am.​ Also, a brain angel. (But Zelda's incarnate too).


    My thoughts align with action to succeed what needs…


    Dragons:

    Babies, click them to make them grow up into Kara’s Dragon Museum





    My favorite adult Museum Exhibits

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    ^ This is hilarious.

    A group of libertarian debate-bros literally took control of a New Hampshire town. And in the process of establishing their anarcho-capitalist utopia, they basically ran it into the ground. Essential services ground to a halt and the town was eventually overrun by bears.



    Interview with the journalist: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-polit...ngoltz-hetling

    By pretty much any measure you can look at to gauge a town’s success, Grafton got worse. Recycling rates went down. Neighbor complaints went up. The town’s legal costs went up because they were constantly defending themselves from lawsuits from Free Towners. The number of sex offenders living in the town went up. The number of recorded crimes went up. The town had never had a murder in living memory, and it had its first two, a double homicide, over a roommate dispute.

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    Quote Originally Posted by xerx View Post


    ^ This is hilarious.

    A group of libertarian debate-bros literally took control of a New Hampshire town. And in the process of establishing their anarcho-capitalist utopia, they basically ran it into the ground. Essential services ground to a halt and the town was eventually overrun by bears.



    Interview with the journalist: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-polit...ngoltz-hetling
    The Barnum or Forer effect is the tendency for people to judge that general, universally valid statements about personality are actually specific descriptions of their own personalities. A "universally valid" statement is one that is true of everyone—or, more likely, nearly everyone. It is not known why people tend to make such misjudgments, but the effect has been experimentally reproduced.

    The psychologist Paul Meehl named this fallacy "the P.T. Barnum effect" because Barnum built his circus and dime museum on the principle of having something for everyone. It is also called "the Forer effect" after its discoverer, the psychologist Bertram R. Forer, who modestly dubbed it "the fallacy of personal validation".

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    I got halfway through the thread and I got impatient, so IDK if this was already said.

    The classics are still pretty good.

    Jane Austen's writing is comfy AF. ex: Pride and Prejudice

    O Henry's short stories. ex: The Gift of the Magi

    Ernest Hemingway is good but may be an acquired taste. ex: The Sun Also Rises

    William Faulkner. Ex: The Sound and Fury

    Virginia Woolfe. Ex. Mrs. Dalloway


    More modern authors could be Cormac McCarthy. Ex: Blood Meridian
    The Barnum or Forer effect is the tendency for people to judge that general, universally valid statements about personality are actually specific descriptions of their own personalities. A "universally valid" statement is one that is true of everyone—or, more likely, nearly everyone. It is not known why people tend to make such misjudgments, but the effect has been experimentally reproduced.

    The psychologist Paul Meehl named this fallacy "the P.T. Barnum effect" because Barnum built his circus and dime museum on the principle of having something for everyone. It is also called "the Forer effect" after its discoverer, the psychologist Bertram R. Forer, who modestly dubbed it "the fallacy of personal validation".

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    Katrina Raphael's crystal trilogy.. I read the last one first, The Crystalline Transmission, now I am reading Crystal Enlightenment.
    I am in my head; not society.

    Yes, that is who I am, hence the bold am.​ Also, a brain angel. (But Zelda's incarnate too).


    My thoughts align with action to succeed what needs…


    Dragons:

    Babies, click them to make them grow up into Kara’s Dragon Museum





    My favorite adult Museum Exhibits

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    I hope this book is as good as it sounds lol

    Robert Greene



    The 48 Laws of Power





    From the Back Cover

    THE BESTSELLING BOOK FOR THOSE WHO WANT POWER, WATCH POWER, OR WANT TO ARM THEMSELVES AGAINST POWER . . .
    A moral, cunning, ruthless, and instructive, this piercing work distills three thousand years of the history of power into forty-eight well-explicated laws. As attention-grabbing in its design as it is in its content, this bold volume outlines the laws of power in their unvarnished essence, synthesizing the philosophies of Machiavelli, Sun-tzu, Carl von Clausewitz, and other great thinkers. Some laws require prudence ("Law 1: Never Outshine the Master"), some stealth ("Law 3: Conceal Your Intentions"), and some the total absence of mercy ("Law 15: Crush Your Enemy Totally") but like it or not, all have applications in real-life situations. Illustrated through the tactics of Queen Elizabeth I, Henry Kissinger, P. T. Barnum, and other famous figures who have wielded -- or been victimized by -- power, these laws will fascinate any reader interested in gaining, observing, or defending against ultimate control.
    ♓︎ 𝓅𝒾𝓈𝒸𝑒𝓈 ♓︎ 𝓅𝒾𝓈𝒸𝑒𝓈
    ♍︎ 𝓋𝒾𝓇𝑔𝑜 𝓇𝒾𝓈𝒾𝓃𝑔 ♍︎

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    Quote Originally Posted by aster View Post
    I hope this book is as good as it sounds lol

    Robert Greene



    The 48 Laws of Power





    From the Back Cover

    THE BESTSELLING BOOK FOR THOSE WHO WANT POWER, WATCH POWER, OR WANT TO ARM THEMSELVES AGAINST POWER . . .
    A moral, cunning, ruthless, and instructive, this piercing work distills three thousand years of the history of power into forty-eight well-explicated laws. As attention-grabbing in its design as it is in its content, this bold volume outlines the laws of power in their unvarnished essence, synthesizing the philosophies of Machiavelli, Sun-tzu, Carl von Clausewitz, and other great thinkers. Some laws require prudence ("Law 1: Never Outshine the Master"), some stealth ("Law 3: Conceal Your Intentions"), and some the total absence of mercy ("Law 15: Crush Your Enemy Totally") but like it or not, all have applications in real-life situations. Illustrated through the tactics of Queen Elizabeth I, Henry Kissinger, P. T. Barnum, and other famous figures who have wielded -- or been victimized by -- power, these laws will fascinate any reader interested in gaining, observing, or defending against ultimate control.
    If you like Power, definitely read his book Mastery. That was my favorite of his books, though I haven't read Seduction or the 50 Cent one.

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    Quote Originally Posted by BILLY View Post
    If you like Power, definitely read his book Mastery. That was my favorite of his books, though I haven't read Seduction or the 50 Cent one.
    I haven’t started on it yet, but I actually have both on hold for the audiobook on my Libby app through my library! They both look extremely interesting, definitely!
    ♓︎ 𝓅𝒾𝓈𝒸𝑒𝓈 ♓︎ 𝓅𝒾𝓈𝒸𝑒𝓈
    ♍︎ 𝓋𝒾𝓇𝑔𝑜 𝓇𝒾𝓈𝒾𝓃𝑔 ♍︎

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    I've read the 48 Laws of Power but I prefer The Prince by Machiavelli instead. It has timeless lessons in it.

    I think the 48 Laws of Power has a too cynical a view on relationships with others.
    The Barnum or Forer effect is the tendency for people to judge that general, universally valid statements about personality are actually specific descriptions of their own personalities. A "universally valid" statement is one that is true of everyone—or, more likely, nearly everyone. It is not known why people tend to make such misjudgments, but the effect has been experimentally reproduced.

    The psychologist Paul Meehl named this fallacy "the P.T. Barnum effect" because Barnum built his circus and dime museum on the principle of having something for everyone. It is also called "the Forer effect" after its discoverer, the psychologist Bertram R. Forer, who modestly dubbed it "the fallacy of personal validation".

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    @FreelancePoliceman, you've expressed an interest in antiquity before, so I thought you might be interested in this radical take on debt in early Mesopotamia.

    https://michael-hudson.com/2019/04/t...s-their-davos/

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    Quote Originally Posted by Adam Strange View Post
    @FreelancePoliceman, you've expressed an interest in antiquity before, so I thought you might be interested in this radical take on debt in early Mesopotamia.

    https://michael-hudson.com/2019/04/t...s-their-davos/
    I'll read the longer PDF you sent me sometime soon, but I finished reading this article. I'm curious; what did you find interesting or radical about this?

    Personally, I'm not really impressed. It's obvious the author isn't a historian, and I didn't see anything groundbreaking in the article. There were a few oversimplifications and generalizations, like when he asserts figures like Lycurgus or Moses were completely invented figures.

    I see though on his Wikipedia page he's an economist who supposedly studied Marx, which makes statements like "[Rome] worked by looting and stripping other societies. That can only continue as long as there is some society to loot and destroy. Once there were no more kingdoms for Rome to destroy, it collapsed from within. It was basically a looting economy. And it didn’t do more than the British colonialists did: It only scratched the surface. It didn’t put in place the means of production that would create enough money for them to grow productively. Essentially, Rome was a financial rentier state" unforgivable for how simplistic that is. When aristocrats bought up land and acquired slaves or coloni, what was this if not a system of production of surplus wealth? And I'll grant that Rome largely destroyed and depopulated the west, but how and why did it destroy the west but not the east? Or how did the cities, roads, and infrastructure the Romans built contribute to their societies' destruction? I'm not saying these questions can't be answered, but I suspect he doesn't do this in his book, and he doesn't in the article.

    Then they say:

    JS: This has all been forgotten, both in the United States and in England —

    MH: Let’s say, expurgated from the curriculum.

    JS: Worse than forgotten!
    So, again, most of what he's saying seems to be really basic stuff. So it bothers me that he takes a tone like he's discovered some lost knowledge or come up with a radical new theory or something. Yeah, schools don't teach anything about the ancient economy, but that's because education in the West is, generally, garbage, and schools don't teach much at all, especially wrt history or the humanities. Most people don't even know who Lycurugus was; that they don't know or care what ideas on debt relief were or weren't attributed to him isn't surprising.

    The Ancient Economy by Moses Finley might interest you by the way. Fantastic and accessible to the average reader; presents what's become more or less orthodoxy in academia.

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    Quote Originally Posted by FreelancePoliceman View Post
    I'll read the longer PDF you sent me sometime soon, but I finished reading this article. I'm curious; what did you find interesting or radical about this?

    Personally, I'm not really impressed. It's obvious the author isn't a historian, and I didn't see anything groundbreaking in the article. There were a few oversimplifications and generalizations, like when he asserts figures like Lycurgus or Moses were completely invented figures.

    I see though on his Wikipedia page he's an economist who supposedly studied Marx, which makes statements like "[Rome] worked by looting and stripping other societies. That can only continue as long as there is some society to loot and destroy. Once there were no more kingdoms for Rome to destroy, it collapsed from within. It was basically a looting economy. And it didn’t do more than the British colonialists did: It only scratched the surface. It didn’t put in place the means of production that would create enough money for them to grow productively. Essentially, Rome was a financial rentier state" unforgivable for how simplistic that is. When aristocrats bought up land and acquired slaves or coloni, what was this if not a system of production of surplus wealth? And I'll grant that Rome largely destroyed and depopulated the west, but how and why did it destroy the west but not the east? Or how did the cities, roads, and infrastructure the Romans built contribute to their societies' destruction? I'm not saying these questions can't be answered, but I suspect he doesn't do this in his book, and he doesn't in the article.

    Then they say:



    So, again, most of what he's saying seems to be really basic stuff. So it bothers me that he takes a tone like he's discovered some lost knowledge or come up with a radical new theory or something. Yeah, schools don't teach anything about the ancient economy, but that's because education in the West is, generally, garbage, and schools don't teach much at all, especially wrt history or the humanities. Most people don't even know who Lycurugus was; that they don't know or care what ideas on debt relief were or weren't attributed to him isn't surprising.

    The Ancient Economy by Moses Finley might interest you by the way. Fantastic and accessible to the average reader; presents what's become more or less orthodoxy in academia.
    @FreelancePoliceman, yes, most of his ideas are not that radical, but the things he says are not widely known in the States.

    And I have Finley's book, and I agree that it's pretty good. I read it about twenty years ago. It's probably worth a re-read.

    Actually, I remember that he said that the economies of ancient tribes were gift economies which transformed to barter economies as (IIRC) the chiefs became less important and the average citizen became wealthier. I'm a bit fuzzy on that, though. As I said, it deserves a re-read.

  31. #471
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    I’m re-reading some stories by Raymond Chandler. He’s one of the few writers whose writing gets better as I get older.

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    I'm reading The Wheel of Time... I read the first three books in three weeks. I decided I didn't wanna spend all my time reading and getting burnt out so I lowered the pace considerably and now I've been stuck at the 4th for a month. Turns out that things are progressing really slowly so unless you read 100 pages a day nothing really happens. It's just a bunch of walking. Walking to new cities. Characters walking in hallways to talk to other characters about which city to walk to. Then they walk back and have a change of mind so they gotta walk some more.

  33. #473
    Will we start over, or circle the drain crazymaisy's Avatar
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    My son got the first 9 Wheel of Time books. I have some of them now, I've been stuck with 1/4 of the first book still to read since January. It didn't help that I watched the 1st season of the Amazon show with that son while I started the first book.

    I kept calling out missing or wrong things. Overall, because he read them earlier last year, he wasn't as picky as me. LOL

    I picked up the book a couple of weeks ago, and just couldn't get into it. Walk walk walk is right.
    Maisy
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    "And one peculiar point I see,
    As one of the many ones of me.
    As truth is gathered, I rearrange,
    Inside out, outside in, inside out, outside in,
    Perpetual change"


    Yes - The Yes Album - from "Perpetual Change" (written by Howe and Squire)

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    I was organizing my library and came across a book that I’d bought a long time ago, based on a quick perusal. The book is called Flight Without Formula, by A C Kermode, and looking at it now, it’s the most Te book I’ve ever seen.

    It purports to explain how an airplane flies, and does so remarkably well without having a single formula (that I can find).

    I’m pretty sure that Kermode must have been LIE, just based on the clear explanations, absence of Ti formula, and his practical writing style.

    There aren’t many books that I’ve found which were written by LIEs, and I think it’s interesting that I was interested in the book before I even knew what an LIE was.

    I can open the book to any page and find a clear and entertaining explanation of one phenomenon or another, which is very much not the case when I am reading books which were written by other sociotypes.
    Last edited by Adam Strange; 07-03-2022 at 01:13 PM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by crazymaisy View Post
    My son got the first 9 Wheel of Time books. I have some of them now, I've been stuck with 1/4 of the first book still to read since January. It didn't help that I watched the 1st season of the Amazon show with that son while I started the first book.

    I kept calling out missing or wrong things. Overall, because he read them earlier last year, he wasn't as picky as me. LOL

    I picked up the book a couple of weeks ago, and just couldn't get into it. Walk walk walk is right.

    I have read so much science fiction and fantasy that I’m now asking my friends for recommendations, and one guy handed me the first Wheel of Time book and said it was the greatest book in the world.

    I got about three pages in and dropped it as terminally boring, uninteresting and incomprehensible.
    Now I’m doubting his competence.

  36. #476
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    Quote Originally Posted by Adam Strange View Post
    I was organizing my library and came across a book that I’d bought a long time ago, based on a quick perusal. The book is called Flight Without Formula, by A C Kermode
    I've been meaning to read that & another book from 1916, by Commandant Duchêne, with the same name. Kermode also wrote a book about flight with formulae.

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    I got an old copy of The Book on Medium by Allan Kardec in a thrift shop. It's older than I am.
    Sounds like a fun adventure.

    I also saw a new recent edition of The Spirits Book by the same author in a book shop, this spiritism thing seems to be getting popular again.

  38. #478
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    Quote Originally Posted by Cataclysm View Post
    I'm reading The Wheel of Time... I read the first three books in three weeks. I decided I didn't wanna spend all my time reading and getting burnt out so I lowered the pace considerably and now I've been stuck at the 4th for a month. Turns out that things are progressing really slowly so unless you read 100 pages a day nothing really happens. It's just a bunch of walking. Walking to new cities. Characters walking in hallways to talk to other characters about which city to walk to. Then they walk back and have a change of mind so they gotta walk some more.
    I read through the first seven books in a few months and then read 8 and 9 over the next ten years (because they were ridiculously slow and boring) then picked up 10, which was also boring, and 11, which is not as good as people say. 12,13,14 were better but never quite recaptured that magic from the first 6 or so.

    I got in the habit of reading only the first sentence in a paragraph or even skimming the chapter to see if it looks like anything interesting happened. This is the only way I got through books 8-11.

    If you don't like 4, you're not gonna like the rest of it. 4 is considered the peak by many.

    Those books are also notorious for being slow burners with a huge payoff at the end of each book.

    This is apropos of nothing, but Feast of Crows in Game of Thrones was similarly hard to get through. It may be that all (most) fantasy series have a slow point.

  39. #479
    Will we start over, or circle the drain crazymaisy's Avatar
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    I have had all the Song of Ice and Fire books, but found A Dance With Dragons tiresome, couldn't get past the first page, try and try as I might, it came out so late and sits there since that first day. Unread.

    Feast of Crows I had no problem reading, just as the previous books in the series.

    I don't have all the books in my house right now, a couple seem to have gotten into storage somehow.

    I want to re-read from the beginning and see if I can then get through Dance With Dragons though.

    I like binging books, so I have to have the time and no pressure and the right mindset to actual want to read any novel.

    I have dropped off from the massive reader I used to be. I have gone into not reading any fiction phases before. FWIW I have been trying to force myself to read, that 1st Wheel of Time book bogs me down. Before that, lots of stuff I was reading that my hubby reads too, I just lost interest in the latest since like 2017 and have major backlogs if I ever want to catch up.

    I like information books, don't have enough of them. At least the internet is an aide for that.

    I read all the then current Dirk Pitt Numa books (Clive Cussler) in 1998 when I was pregnant with my IEI daughter. I love the first several books, and want to read them again, but hubby either buried them in storage or got rid of them. So sad. Good memories.
    Maisy
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    "And one peculiar point I see,
    As one of the many ones of me.
    As truth is gathered, I rearrange,
    Inside out, outside in, inside out, outside in,
    Perpetual change"


    Yes - The Yes Album - from "Perpetual Change" (written by Howe and Squire)

  40. #480
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    “At Home in the Universe”, by Stuart Kaufman.

    Purports to be “The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity”, but is really just three hundred and twenty one pages of elaborately presented and insight-free flatulence.

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