What book are you reading, ιf' - Iff you read books

[JollyRoger]

 

[Hygro]

I just finished all of Leviticus in the King James bible for some random reason not known to me. I was thinking I chose Leviticus because it was one of the books in the Torah that I don't really remember except for Genesis and Exodus which of course name most of the beginning roots of many ancestral people while Exodus has Moses and the liberation of the Israelites from Egypt. Leviticus, the third book however, talked about a lot of ways that the priests used to atone for their sins without a Jesus Christ. I'm pretty sure people still do atone for sins without Jesus the way it's written in Leviticus.

I don't know anyone who atones for the prescribed sins per Leviticus, let alone follows such laws. It's banishment, animal sacrifice, and execution. There are all these weird types of sins, and key is not only sacrificing the right animal the right way for the right sin, but doing it in the Tabernacle, where the high priest and his family get to eat the sacrifice. Leviticus describes a legal-economic system regulated through religion centered around the tabernacle, with ownership and debts amortized across 49 year jubilee cycles. It's a grind of a book, most of describes the tabernacle and what animal to kill where and how its aroma does or does not please God, but its a pretty comprehensive code.

Genesis details the origins of The World, the People, and the Ancestors of Moses and the People of Israel etc. It proves God's power and and who wins and why. Exodus is kind of like, the same but instead of the birth of a world and a people its the birth of a nation and its unity. It shows how circumstance leads to Moses via God into leadership, and then actions to rules to a constitution of sorts and then more rules and laws. The end of Genesis and the beginning of Exodus is a pretty clear demarcation of prologue -> chapter 1. But Exodus bleeds into Leviticus pretty gradiently, the entire back 20 pages of Exodus could have been in Leviticus, or all of Leviticus in Exodus.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Galaxy sized capitalism meets alien life! Halfway through and its is going strong.

 

[reddishrecue]

I don't know anyone who atones for the prescribed sins per Leviticus, let alone follows such laws. It's banishment, animal sacrifice, and execution. There are all these weird types of sins, and key is not only sacrificing the right animal the right way for the right sin, but doing it in the Tabernacle, where the high priest and his family get to eat the sacrifice. Leviticus describes a legal-economic system regulated through religion centered around the tabernacle, with ownership and debts amortized across 49 year jubilee cycles. It's a grind of a book, most of describes the tabernacle and what animal to kill where and how its aroma does or does not please God, but its a pretty comprehensive code.

Genesis details the origins of The World, the People, and the Ancestors of Moses and the People of Israel etc. It proves God's power and and who wins and why. Exodus is kind of like, the same but instead of the birth of a world and a people its the birth of a nation and its unity. It shows how circumstance leads to Moses via God into leadership, and then actions to rules to a constitution of sorts and then more rules and laws. The end of Genesis and the beginning of Exodus is a pretty clear demarcation of prologue -> chapter 1. But Exodus bleeds into Leviticus pretty gradiently, the entire back 20 pages of Exodus could have been in Leviticus, or all of Leviticus in Exodus.

IMHO, I don't know anyone that would use animals for atonement either and on the tabernacle for sacrifice with a high priest like it is described in Leviticus. Anyhow, I have kept reading lightly and finished the book and am reading Numbers now but less since I've been busy with life and other forms of entertaining things that keep me busy. I have read it, but I don't feel that focused anymore like I used to read Leviticus. As I read it this time, I have so many things going on in my head at the same time that it keeps me difficult to really get what Numbers was talking about. I got up to chapter 8 but don't really recall.

 

[Josu]

Ended The Road by Cormac McCarthy. 4/5

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

Reading The Lion and the Unicorn, a collection of short stories by Richard Harding Davis

“If I were to tell them the things you have told me,” he said warningly, “if I were to say I have seen such things—American property in flames, American interests ruined, and that five times as many women and children have died of fever and starvation in three months in Cuba as the Sultan has massacred in Armenia in three years—it would mean war with Spain.”

He's got his priorities right

Good story though

“You are like a ring of gamblers around a gaming table,” he cried wildly, “who see nothing but the green cloth and the wheel and the piles of money before them, who forget in watching the money rise and fall, that outside the sun is shining, that human beings are sick and suffering, that men are giving their lives for an idea, for a sentiment, for a flag. You are the money-changers in the temple of this great republic and the day will come, I pray to God, when you will be scourged and driven out with whips. Do you think you can form combines and deals that will cheat you into heaven? Can your ‘trusts’ save your souls—is ‘Wall Street’ the strait and narrow road to salvation?”

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

Finished The Lion and the Unicorn. Some 4-5 short stories. There is one good story, the others are readable but not really impressive. The last one isn't even a story, just an involved preamble that abruptly stops in the middle.

Reading Death in the Dusk, an obscure yet celebrated murder mystery by Virgil Markham, famously difficult to find until Project Gutenberg uploaded it for free some months ago. I'm in the first chapter, and it's difficult swimming. The narrator is overly descriptive and dramatic about everything that's happening right now. The first chapter is a mess. How does the narrator meet these house-party people? What are they to him, or him to them? How does he know the identity of the girl named Millicent? How does he and everyone else know Parson Lolly? In the first memorable part of the book the narrator and another character watch a mysterious person walking in the glade, and the narrator concludes that the person is too short to be Parson Lolly. This is the first mention of the parson. Why should the walker in the glade be Parson Lolly? And why should we care? We don't even know who that is yet.

It's that sort of book

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

Reading Death in the Dusk, an obscure yet celebrated murder mystery by Virgil Markham, famously difficult to find until Project Gutenberg uploaded it for free some months ago. I'm in the first chapter, and it's difficult swimming. The narrator is overly descriptive and dramatic about everything that's happening right now. The first chapter is a mess. How does the narrator meet these house-party people? What are they to him, or him to them? How does he know the identity of the girl named Millicent? How does he and everyone else know Parson Lolly? In the first memorable part of the book the narrator and another character watch a mysterious person walking in the glade, and the narrator concludes that the person is too short to be Parson Lolly. This is the first mention of the parson. Why should the walker in the glade be Parson Lolly? And why should we care? We don't even know who that is yet.

When a character finds a bloody weapon instead of immediately setting out to find the victim or apprehend the perpetrator they spend an inordinate amount of time wrangling about terms and saying the same thing over again in slightly different ways

 

[dusters]

Finished "The mathematical experience", a book on philosophy of mathematics, written in 1970s America.

Written(finished) in 1979, it was a time mathematicians got paid just for scientific work. No obligatory teaching for professors, no begging for grants, science for science's sake.

Sounds like a fairyland to me. In Latvia, in past 30 years, almost nobody gets paid for doing pure mathematics. Universities pay if you teach and for some mathematicians teaching is pain in the rear.

I love the logical structure of the book. It ends by saying that both Platonists and Formalists have their credit, and math is both created and discovered.

In USSR 1960-1980 was the golden age as well, there were no wars nearby, economy wasn't great, but it wasn't bad either and, for the most part, status-quo wasn't changing rapidly. Cold war didn't affect
civilians as much as consequences of WWII in 1950-s when so many men have been killed and it took time to repopulate the land.

I teach math and some math books for school children from 1970s are indeed really good. Our most famous mathematician/teacher who was USSR-wide famous came from that era as well.

***

The fact that my university in year 2025 has so many books from 1970-1990s is proof that Uni can't afford newer books. American universities, it seems, simply donated these books to University of Latvia at some point in early 2000s.

***

Math is beautiful, but in current Latvia nor mathematicians, nor average artists can feed themselves with their call. They usually go to business, be it marketing, banks, foreign companies where wages are a bit higher, risk analysis. They can be lucky and land in engineering field where mathematical physics plays a big role, but usually they just try to teach, no matter how much they despise it, just to remain professors of math.

This summer a lecturer from Maryland visited me in University of Latvia. He is a PhD student, but he is also forced to teach. He told me that situation in 2025 USA is better, because private companies/corporations fund pure math in fields of their selection and it's not that bad.

He called situation in Latvia bleak.

***

Some professors, however, aren't that bad at teaching and they are happy to have a tenure. Tenures give some stability at least. The problem is that the professors who like teaching are a minority.

Still today at 2025 there is a lack of lecturers for undergraduate students, because if you aren't a professor, but a lecturer, you get paid little. Undergraduates are bread and butter in Universities, so the situation is dire indeed. There are people who love math, people who like teaching, people who are good at math, people who are fine with having a mediocre standard of living. These 4 circles have to interlap to get the ideal professor.

 

[Josu]

Ended Beneath the Mask: Understanding Adopted Teens by Debbie Riley. Good book, however it did not teach me nothing I didn't already know.
Started The Godfather by Mario Puzzo
Also started 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann

 

[Broken_Erika]

Author Robert Munsch is approved for MAID, but his daughter clarifies he's 'not dying'​

Munsch revealed his dementia diagnosis in 2021 and also has Parkinson's disease​

He first said it years ago: the stories will be the last to go.

And now, prolific and iconic children's author Robert Munsch — beloved for his stories about a plucky princess named Elizabeth, about Mortimer's bedtime protest song, about a little boy whose mother will love him forever — is saying that even though the stories still remain with him, he's slipping away.

In an interview with the New York Times, Munsch says he has decided on a medically assisted death, also known as MAID, after previously being diagnosed with dementia and Parkinson's disease. He applied and was approved shortly after his diagnosis, he told the publication.

But as tributes to the author started pouring in, his daughter, Julie Munsch, hopped on social media Tuesday to clarify that her father isn't dying.

Julie Munsch thanked everyone for their well wishes, but in a post shared on the official Robert Munsch Facebook page she emphasized that her father is still doing well and isn't going to die "anytime soon." He made his choice to use MAID five years ago, she wrote, and added that people should beware of clickbait.

• 'The stories will be the last thing to go': Robert Munsch on his legacy as one of Canada's great storytellers
• 80 things you might not know about beloved Canadian storyteller Robert Munsch

"My father is NOT DYING!!!" she added.

"My dad is doing well, but of course with a degenerative disease it can begin to progress quickly at any point."

While Munsch, 80, says he hasn't set a date, he told the Times he can't wait too much longer. Under Canadian law, the person receiving MAID must still "have decision-making capacity."

"I have to pick the moment when I can still ask for it," Munsch explained. "When I start having real trouble talking and communicating. Then I'll know."

'I can't write'​

Since publishing his first story, Mud Puddle, in 1979, the Guelph, Ont., writer has sold more than 80 million copies of his books in North America alone. His stories have been translated into 20 languages, including Anishinaabemowin, Arabic and Swedish.

Among his many well-known books, some of the most popular include The Paper Bag Princess (1980), Mortimer (1983), Love You Forever (1986), Murmel, Murmel, Murmel, (1982), and many more. Munsch has written some 75 books, all of them beloved.

In 2021, Munsch told CBC's Shelagh Rogers that he had ongoing dementia.

"I can't drive, I can't ride a bicycle, I can't write. So it's been really whittling away on who I thought I was," he told CBC at the time. "My stories, strangely enough, are all there. The stories will be the last thing to go, I think."

In the New York Times profile, he shared that he was later diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, and spoke candidly about the toll the disease has taken on him. He hasn't written anything since 2023, when he penned Bounce!, Munsch told the Times. He's frail, which has isolated him from the children who inspire his work.

He says he wonders if he'll be "a turnip" in a year's time.

"I can feel it going further and further away," he said in the lengthy profile, describing how he used to think and write.

Munsch's longtime publishers — Annick Press, Scholastic Canada, and Firefly Books — shared a statement on Instagram Monday after the New York Time's profile came out. In it, they offered their "profound gratitude" to Munsch for opening up and giving this update.

"As proud publishers of Robert Munsch's beloved books, we are grateful for all the stories he's shared, including his own," they said in the post. "We love you forever."
https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/robert-munsch-maid-1.7634927

 

[Birdjaguar]

If we are lucky, children's books will remain analog for a long time. Holding a book, holding a child and reading a story are one of the best things a parent can do.

 

[bene_legionary]

Started The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo because it's been too long since I read anything yet alone Scandinavian noir which I am apparently a sucker for.

I know the author has some history to him, but I'll try not to let that affect my reading.

 

[Birdjaguar]

John and Paul by Ian Leslie. It is the story of how John Lennon and Paul McCartney grew into writing the songs that made the Beatles famous. Much of the story is about how individual songs were structured, put together and sung in ways that were both new and unlike what had been done before. The music lingo about chords and harmonies is complemented by the details of the events around the how and when songs were written. As someone who who woke up one morning in late 1963 to my radio alarm clock to hear "I want to hold your Hand" for the first time and was flabbergasted and captured, the story behind the group is compelling. As each chapter unfolds, I get to play the music talked about and put it all in context.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Yesterday I finished reading

"The Yard"

by

Alex Grecian

copyright 2012

It is a well written police story set in the time of Jack the Ripper
albeit featuring three different set of murders and murderers.

 

[bene_legionary]

Finished The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, interesting but drawn out ending. Do I keep looking for more Scandi noir...?

 

[JollyRoger]

 

[Ordnael]

Finished The Butlerian Jihad, the first part of the Legend of Dune Trilogy by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson.
Interesting read made more interesting by the times we are living with LLM/AI models evolving into something we might loose control of.
I find it curious almost prophetic, on the nature of what's written regarding what gave origin and control to thinking machines, that this book is anchored on a 1965 novel's notes and side stories left behind by Frank. Even when Brian and Kevin released The Butlerian Jihad in 2002 our understanding of what form AI might take was still very foggy.

 

[thetrooper]

Finished The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, interesting but drawn out ending. Do I keep looking for more Scandi noir...?

Yes. Try the Jo Nesbø series about Harry Hole*

*read as long o, even longer than in English.

 

[Josu]

Finally I was able to end Wind and truth by Brandon Sanderson.
Terrible. Once I was in love with Sanderson's books, I officialy break up after reading this book.
At the end of the book Dalinar says to Wit something like "After so many visions, I can not say what is relevant and what is irrelevant". It's a perfect description of the book, with so many chapters with visions in the spiritual kingdom that are an absolutely pointless. Adolin, Kaladin and Szeth's plot is ok, the rest of the book is a nonsesne and is closer to a debate about the ends justifying the means that an a fantasy novel.


Started Rob Roy by Walter Scott