Which book are you reading now? Volume XI

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Close to finishing Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. Too much to talk about, certainly a book I want to have for my personal collection someday.
 
Close to finishing Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. Too much to talk about, certainly a book I want to have for my personal collection someday.

Oh man, I remember that one. We had to read some sections from it for Philosophy class in high school. Can't remember a thing nowadays, though it was very interesting. More than Plato, at any rate. I really dislike Plato. I often say he's the "philosopher from Candyland".
 
Aristotle, 8 lectures on Physics :\

About copper being amorphous prior to the enteleology of reaching some set form in a statue.
And hopefully more interesting things in books #3 and #6, because there the subjects are the notion of infinity, and Zeno's paradoxes.

Actually some sentences in the first book are pretty stylish. When he goes on about differences between examinations in general, and things like examining the examination of something being examined, etc. :smoke:
 
The Penguin Book of Gay Short Stories. Some are better than others, all are pretty interesting. Edited by David Leavitt and Mark Mitchell.

Also Time to Wave Goodbye? by Xavier Sala i Martín. A book comparing the current situation of Catalonia within Spain with that of an independent Catalonia. Mostly an economic analysis, since he is an economist, and also because it is about the safest thing to compare. Book is obviously going to be extremely dated in just a couple to five years, if Catalonia achieves independence. Otherwise it may linger for a bit longer.

And, since I love reading a bajillion books at the same time, I started both Life & Times of Michael K. by J. M. Coetzee and Lawrence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. On top of that, I have to read Sally Morgan's My Place and I want to read some books by Derrida and Barthes I borrowed from the uni library.
 
Tristram Shandy, I know well. It was originally published in two volumes, though. And if I had my time again I'd read each volume separately, leaving a year or two between them. Together, back to back, as they're generally published now, it was a little too much of the same sort of thing in one go, for my taste.

It is very funny, though.

It's the only "autobiography" I know of which begins two weeks before the hero's birth, and ends 5 years previously! (iirc)

I'd have thought it's quite a hard read for a non-native speaker, though, Mr K? It's early C19th anyway, isn't it?
 
I believe not, Beatrice. Or rather, Mr. B. It was published between 1759 and 1767, this being the late 18th Century. Not so wrong, then. I must say it is among the low priority books since a) it is rather long and b) it is actually of my property. Most of the others I borrowed from the library, and then when I read any that are mine I tend to read short books first to make it all more agile.
 
Finished Space as a Strategic Asset by Joan Johnson-Fresse.

About to start Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. Oh boy, here we go...
 
Pynchon is a lot of fun if you give up on trying to understand everything.

I don't know, I'm pretty sure that adenoid passage was supposed to mean something.

Guy also seems to like really long sentences.
 
Annihilation, by Jeff Vandermeer - 4/10

I just didn't get it. This book gets some good reviews, but it didn't intrigue me, inspire me, thrill me, or terrify me. It elicited almost no reaction at all. It's well written, I suppose, it goes down smooth, but I couldn't discern one character from another, and I would have a hard time telling you what the plot is. It's the first in a trilogy, so maybe all three are meant to be read at once - it is pretty short - but after finishing this one, I didn't run right out to get the second.

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City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett

I've only just started it, so it's too soon to give it a rating, but this may be one of my favorite books of 2014. I'm a sucker for good world- and character-building in fantasy novels (if I never read another Tolkienesque sword & sorcery story, I won't shed a tear), and Bennett seems to be in step with China Mieville, Philip Pullman, Neil Gaiman. Of course it could all fall apart in the second half, but so far I'd recommend City of Stairs to anyone who likes alternative fantasy.

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Annihilation, by Jeff Vandermeer - 4/10

I just didn't get it. This book gets some good reviews, but it didn't intrigue me, inspire me, thrill me, or terrify me. It elicited almost no reaction at all. It's well written, I suppose, it goes down smooth, but I couldn't discern one character from another, and I would have a hard time telling you what the plot is. It's the first in a trilogy, so maybe all three are meant to be read at once - it is pretty short - but after finishing this one, I didn't run right out to get the second.

Annihilation_by_jeff_vandermeer.jpg

Too bad, I just bought it. Hopefully I like it better.
 
IMHO high fantasy could use some climbing down the stairs.
 
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