The Tale of Genji - Royall Tyler translation
Which book are you reading now? Volume XI
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Kozmos
Jew Detective
Short stories of Ron Howard, the Conan chronicles. Delightfully un-PC.
I've been tinkering with my reading list (really a system of which work to read next). There were 4 problems that I have been trying to solve to get the system to work to my satisfaction and the tinker that put The Tale of the Genji to the top left a couple of those problems in place. While trying to solve one of those problems, I solved them both, but that knocked Tale of the Genji off the top because the tweak that put it there was removed. The new tweaks created a new problem which I solved. I think I have it where I want it now, though it will only last so long as a certain website stays maintained. If (or more likely when) the website stops being maintained, it will create one problem to be solved. That problem mainly is working in newer (post-2000) works to the rotation. It would not require immediate solving if the website stopped being maintained, just one that I would probably want to solve fairly quickly.
With all that being said, I am currently reading:
In Search of Lost Time - Marcel Proust, Enright translation
Although I have a number of business acquaintances that speak French without the aid of an interpreter, my reading is subjected to an English vice.
Is this any good? I had this for a couple of weeks but was never able to read it.
Zkribbler
Deity
Ron Howard as in little Opie Cunningham?
It's dense. You have to put in an effort as it's not exactly light reading and there is no 'plot' as there'd be in a book. I had to keep track of all the notes, many of which are useful. But it's highly informative- I had to take my time as I was mixing reading it with reading textbooks for uni. It really is worth reading if you're interested in it.
And in my edition the Etruscan city-states map and the Souther Italy & Sicily colonies one are in each other's place. Printers' mistake, to be sure.
But for a description of how it was to live in those times, I would suggest La vie quotidienne en Grèce au temps de Périclès (translated into English as Daily life in Greece at the time of Pericles) by Robert Flacelière. Dress, pottery, ceremonies, weapons, cooking, etc. are researched magnificently and I thought it to be lighter reading.
Kozmos
Jew Detective
Sorry, Robert E. Howard. I'm bad with names and memory in general. I blame the organic software.
Stupid. Meatbags.
Crush. Kill. Destroy. Crush. Kill. Destroy.
Prying into Amazing Grace, a biography of William Wilberforce. I'm not impressed with the author yet, considering his oh-so-professional description of Charles Fox as a "freak".
SS-18 ICBM
Oscillator
A History of Modern Morocco (suggested alternative title: Morocco's Modern Life) by Susan Miller.
Finished Animals in Translation: The Woman Who Thinks Like a Cow by Temple Grandin in 48 hours. Remarkable.
EgonSpengler
Deity
- Joined
- Jun 26, 2014
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Cibola Burn, by James S.A. Corey. It's sort of "firm" scifi (mixing hard scifi and science-fantasy), which I imagine could frustrate some people. It reads quick, and is good for passing the time on the subway.
It's the fourth in a series called "The Expanse"; if you're interested in checking it out, Leviathan Wakes is the first book. If you do get into it, the series is set to (a) continue for another 5 books, and (b) be filmed for SyFy, starring Thomas Jane and Shoreh Agdashloo and a bunch of other people I've never heard of.
It's the fourth in a series called "The Expanse"; if you're interested in checking it out, Leviathan Wakes is the first book. If you do get into it, the series is set to (a) continue for another 5 books, and (b) be filmed for SyFy, starring Thomas Jane and Shoreh Agdashloo and a bunch of other people I've never heard of.
JohannaK
Heroically Clueless
Read Stefan Zweig's Chess, a novella which is less about chess than it is about obsession. Having only read another Zweig novella (Twenty-Four Hours In A Woman's Life), I begin to feel that precisely obsession is a common theme throughout his work, if not necessarily the predominant one. Both were pretty light reads, gripping and very entertaining. Quite well-written too. I quite like Zweig.
JohannaK
Heroically Clueless
And on Christmas Eve I read Conrad's Youth, another novella (I'm seriously loving this Mini Modern Classics series by Penguin, brief enough to read in a day). This one was more interesting, even though I liked Zweig's best, possibly because the prose feels more modern and more sound (it is a translation whereas Conrad was a Polish writing in English. There's nothing wrong with his English, but something seems a bit off).
With Youth, you don't know exactly what you are reading if you frame it within a tragedy/comedy dichotomy as I, for some reason, was trying to do. It's an adventure story, with its bits of tragedy and its bits of such ridiculous tragedy it becomes comedy. Good read, very recommendable.
With Youth, you don't know exactly what you are reading if you frame it within a tragedy/comedy dichotomy as I, for some reason, was trying to do. It's an adventure story, with its bits of tragedy and its bits of such ridiculous tragedy it becomes comedy. Good read, very recommendable.
SS-18 ICBM
Oscillator
Almost finished with On the Map by Simon Garfield. It's about cartography, some history, various things such as satnav (of which the author is too critical) and the brain, and women needing an extra dimension on maps. My favorite section so far has to be the one on video game maps. Skyrim did have a pretty nice map. I'm just slightly disappointed Dwarf Fortress wasn't mentioned for its ASCII representations, considering the author had done a book on typography before.
SS-18 ICBM
Oscillator
A Little History of Philosophy by Nigel Warburton. The chapter illustrations have a familiar style, can't quite place my finger on it. Some philosophers seem to be scared of the complexity of the world (see Immanuel "it's morally wrong to lie to the Interahamwe about the Tutsis in your house because of the categorical imperative" Kant).
"What does it mean to be a good person?" tier
-Socrates
-Aristotle
-Voltaire
-Bentham
-Mill
-Marx
-Russell
-Ayer
-Popper
-Rawls
"What does it mean to be?" tier
-Plato
-Epicurus
-Descartes
-Locke
-Hume
-Sartre
-Wittgenstein
-Turing, Searle
"What does it?" tier
-Epictetus, Cicero, Seneca
-Boethius
-Machiavelli
-Hobbes
-Spinoza
-Rousseau
-Kant
-Hegel
-Kierkegaard
-James
-Nietzsche
-Arendt
-Kuhn
-Singer
"What?" tier
-Pyrrho (at least I finally found why Project Pyrrho is called that. Nice touch.)
-Augustine
-Anselm, Aquinas
-Pascal
-Berkeley
-Schopenhauer (Mr. Gautama called, he wants his philosophy back)
-Foot (I hate the trolley problem)
"What does it mean to be a good person?" tier
-Socrates
-Aristotle
-Voltaire
-Bentham
-Mill
-Marx
-Russell
-Ayer
-Popper
-Rawls
"What does it mean to be?" tier
-Plato
-Epicurus
-Descartes
-Locke
-Hume
-Sartre
-Wittgenstein
-Turing, Searle
"What does it?" tier
-Epictetus, Cicero, Seneca
-Boethius
-Machiavelli
-Hobbes
-Spinoza
-Rousseau
-Kant
-Hegel
-Kierkegaard
-James
-Nietzsche
-Arendt
-Kuhn
-Singer
"What?" tier
-Pyrrho (at least I finally found why Project Pyrrho is called that. Nice touch.)
-Augustine
-Anselm, Aquinas
-Pascal
-Berkeley
-Schopenhauer (Mr. Gautama called, he wants his philosophy back)
-Foot (I hate the trolley problem)
Lives of the Planets: A Natural History of the Solar System, Richard Corfield
Verarde
Pondering Wearing A Hat
Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson. Interesting so far. It's very well written. It seems to be about a pastor who knows he is about to die, and he is writing his memoirs to his seven year old son. I'll let you all know what I think of it when I'm done.
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