Which book are you reading now? Volume XIII

[yung.carl.jung]

I don't think that Kafka underrated himself, though. He often joked about his stories being far better than the competition (eg in a letter, iirc to Milena, he says as much about his own story, which didn't win first prize ).

Anyway, he praises his work in other letters (eg the Metamorphosis and the Judgement, to Felice). He also had a very high opinion of (iirc) The Penal Colony, as well as chapters of Amerika. Not sure about The Trial/The Castle, but maybe those notes were lost. There is at least one note where he speaks favorably of the Trial, although in a defensive tone.

He also had no issue writing to his publisher in favor of (printing?) Max Brod's novel, clearly from the point of view of one accepting (albeit silently) that it wasn't good.

PS: Salman Rushdie is not a writer. He is a hack who became known due to Iran persecuting him

true, he did think highly of many things he wrote

 

[EnglishEdward]

I have just finished

The Rig

by

Roger Levy

which is a well written and gripping Sci-Fi
book written by a British dentist.

 

[Josu]

Ended Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson

About to start The wheel of time, whole series in row, by Robert Jordan

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I've been listening to an audiobook on The French Revolution while I move and unpack. It's pretty wild stuff. Unfortunately I can't focus on it as much as I'd like and have missed a lot of details but it's quite interesting.

I finished it and man it was a confusing time. At the end, the author argued that the revolution didn't really end until the fall of the 3rd Republic which was a unique perspective. Basically he argued that the turmoil caused by the revolution continued reverberating until that time.

 

[rah]

“Miss Temptation” by Kurt Vonnegut
By: Kurt Vonnegut
Published: October 24, 2011

I always worry about books published years after an Author's death. I wonder if it was really finished of if some heir found a draft lying around that the author wasn't happy enough with so didn't publish it earlier.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I always worry about books published years after an Author's death. I wonder if it was really finished of if some heir found a draft lying around that the author wasn't happy enough with so didn't publish it earlier.

Like the To Kill A Mockingbird 'sequel'? Although it came out right around the time she died, it only came about as her failing health allowed people around her to take advantage of the situation and publish work that she clearly never intended to see the light of day.

 

[AmazonQueen]

Another thing to watch out for is after a writer becomes famous (wins the Booker or whatever) publishers reissue their back catalogue.
Some authors improved over time and that first novel that was remaindered may not be as good as you're expecting.

 

[JohannaK]

JM Coetzee definitely has a solid back catalogue going back to his first novels. Read Waiting for the Barbarians.

 

[Kyriakos]

I know of the poem, which going by wiki the book is titled from.
Still won't bother with the book, though

 

[Synobun]

Book 3 of The Expanse sucks so far. 180 out of 1400 pages done and I can barely muster the motivation to try and speed through it. Blahhhhhh

 

[cardgame]

I always get sad when a book is poorly edited because I feel like the author was let down.

In that case, it's entirely the author's fault since they won't go back and correct errors until they finish the book - it's a web fiction, like Worm. Also, ontopic, I finished its current length yesterday and am now reading Winterson's Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit

 

[CurtSibling]

https://www.worldswithoutend.com/lists_horror100.asp

A splendid and recommended read for anyone wishing to extend their scope of horror and gothic books.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Book 3 of The Expanse sucks so far. 180 out of 1400 pages done and I can barely muster the motivation to try and speed through it. Blahhhhhh

That was one of my least favorites as well. It really suffered from the generic anti-hero bad guy tropes that are prevalent in this series. Also, I was extremely confused about who was who in this book because the TV version (which I saw before I read the book) omitted one major character altogether and pushed forward another character that isn't prevalent in the books until like book 7 so.

In that case, it's entirely the author's fault since they won't go back and correct errors until they finish the book - it's a web fiction, like Worm

Hmm I just thought editors made the changes. I didn't realize the authors had to go back and actually make the changes themselves.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I started re-reading The Martian while my desktop PC was being a PITA. I love the humor in this book.

For tonight, I have to get back to 'Three's Company.' I stopped last night in the middle of the episode where Mr. Roper saw something and took it out of context.

"Okay" Venkat said, "Explain to me how a single windstorm removed our ability to talk to Ares 3."

"So four independent communications systems became one, and that one broke." Morris finished.

Venkat pinched the bridge of his nose. "How could we overlook this?"

Chuck shrugged. "Never occurred to us. We never thought someone would be on Mars without an MAV."

"I mean, come on" Morris said. "What are the odds?"

Chuck turned to him. "One in three, based on empirical data. That's pretty bad if you think about it."

 

[Synobun]

Hmm I just thought editors made the changes. I didn't realize the authors had to go back and actually make the changes themselves.

Unless the author's trad pub, they're in control of all changes. They can relinquish control to the editor, but no editor would make changes themselves unless they have good contract protections in place. A lot of writers are personally attached to what they write and aren't willing to give up control unless it comes with prestige.

 

[Takhisis]

Rereading "The Road to Serfdom" by F. A. Hayek.
https://ia801606.us.archive.org/18/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.46585/2015.46585.Road-To-Serfdom_text.pdf

http://revver.com/video/10904/ In the 1940s, Look Magazine made a comic strip of Hayek's classic book 'The Road to Serfdom'. Hayek went on to win the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1974. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road... Hayek's central thesis is that all forms of collectivism lead logically and inevitably to tyranny, and he used the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany as examples of countries which had gone down "the road to serfdom" and reached tyranny. Hayek argued that within a centrally planned economic system, the distribution and allocation of all resources and goods would devolve onto a small group, which would be incapable of processing all the information pertinent to the appropriate distribution of the resources and goods at the central planners' disposal. Disagreement about the practical implementation of any economic plan combined with the inadequacy of the central planners' resource management would invariably necessitate coercion in order for anything to be achieved. Hayek further argued that the failure of central planning would be perceived by the public as an absence of sufficient power by the state to implement an otherwise good idea. Such a perception would lead the public to vote more power to the state, and would assist the rise to power of a "strong man" perceived to be capable of "getting the job done". After these developments Hayek argued that a country would be ineluctably driven into outright totalitarianism. For Hayek "the road to serfdom" inadvertently set upon by central planning, with its dismantling of the free market system, ends in the destruction of all individual economic and personal freedom. Hayek argued that countries such as the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany had already gone down the "road to serfdom", and that various democratic nations are being led down the same road. In The Road to Serfdom he wrote: "The principle that the end justifies the means is in individualist ethics regarded as the denial of all morals. In collectivist ethics it becomes necessarily the supreme rule." http://www.mises.org/books/TRTS/

I fully agree with the above.

I think that one of my major objections to Hayek (still haven't started on the book, see below) is the fact that Margaret Thatcher based her economic programme on his book (see here) and he never disowned that, even when the socioeconomic carnage wrought about by her government was evident.

I finished up Hrolf Kraki's Saga by Poul Anderson this afternoon. It is Poul Anderson's attempt to retell the Norse saga of Hrolf Kraki in 'modern' prose. Enjoyable enough as I love the setting of Dark Age Scandinavia and the more realistic sagas, but well over half the book consists of setting up the plot for Hrolf Kraki and giving just about every named character an adventure backstory. Unless you are interested in the setting or are a big fan of Poul Anderson, given the book is fairly rare, it probably isn't worth your effort tracking down.
For a much easier to acquire saga that gives some sense of Poul Anderson's adaption, there is HR Haggard's Saga of Eric Brighteyes which is in public domain and free online.

I've done a bit of neo-vikingism myself. Clare Barroll's The Iron Crown is an OK read even if (published in the 1970s) it does feature a lot of projected racism (e.g. in 1040s Constantinople there's ‘yellow’ Tartars and so on) that sounds horribly dated.
It also shares a problem with the alleged masterpiece of Argentine gaucho literature, ‘Don Segundo Sombra’, which is the fact that it constantly throws physical, sensorial descriptions of more or less everything. In a real saga you'd never have descriptions of clothing, materials, smells, comparisons between sounds and birds, etc. unless for some reason it was relevant to the plot. The novel's plot gets bogged down and distracted away from all the time. But as an immersion technique it does work.

https://www.worldswithoutend.com/lists_horror100.asp

A splendid and recommended read for anyone wishing to extend their scope of horror and gothic books.

Someone get Dr. @Kyriakos here, it's an emergency.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I'm reading Cold Storage by David Koepp.

Science-based horror?! The first half is pretty excellent and fun. I expect the rest will continue in this vein.

 

[abradley]

I think that one of my major objections to Hayek (still haven't started on the book, see below) is the fact that Margaret Thatcher based her economic programme on his book (see here) and he never disowned that, even when the socioeconomic carnage wrought about by her government was evident.
{Snip}
.

Wasn't living in Britain before Thatcher was PM but did a lot of traveling in and out going to different jobs, it was a mess:

...
Nurses and ambulance drivers were on strike. Old people’s homes and schools were closing. The railways were not running. The electricians’ union marked the approach of Christmas 1978 by taking both BBC One and BBC Two off the air. The country was left with just ITV, to watch (the electricians waited until August 1979 to switch off ITV for 75 days).

More seriously, rubbish was piling high in the streets, creating a health hazard. The most potent metaphor of national decay was in Liverpool. There, a factory was being turned over to storage space for the dead because members of the GMWU union were picketing the cemeteries. Contingency plans were made to bury the city’s rotting corpses at sea.

It is worth recalling what Britain was like before the advent of Thatcherism.
...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/po...ever-forget-the-chaos-of-life-before-her.html

Britain was a mess, the Brits I worked with said so and I agreed. If she based her economics on Hayek it's proof positive his advice works.

 

[Arakhor]

And she turned the country into a different sort of mess.

 

[Kyriakos]

I think that one of my major objections to Hayek (still haven't started on the book, see below) is the fact that Margaret Thatcher based her economic programme on his book (see here) and he never disowned that, even when the socioeconomic carnage wrought about by her government was evident.

I've done a bit of neo-vikingism myself. Clare Barroll's The Iron Crown is an OK read even if (published in the 1970s) it does feature a lot of projected racism (e.g. in 1040s Constantinople there's ‘yellow’ Tartars and so on) that sounds horribly dated.
It also shares a problem with the alleged masterpiece of Argentine gaucho literature, ‘Don Segundo Sombra’, which is the fact that it constantly throws physical, sensorial descriptions of more or less everything. In a real saga you'd never have descriptions of clothing, materials, smells, comparisons between sounds and birds, etc. unless for some reason it was relevant to the plot. The novel's plot gets bogged down and distracted away from all the time. But as an immersion technique it does work.

Someone get Dr. @Kyriakos here, it's an emergency.

I am not a doctor, just another patient in literature's insane asylum.
Re immersion and descriptions of random stuff not related to the plot, there is always The portrait of Dorian Gray, which is a mess, despite its towering central metaphor to which it owes its immortality.

It is interesting that Borges kept mentioning all things gaucho - including that book. If you ever watch the movie "Santa Sangre" (I watched it yesterday...), it can be noted that the gaucho and other maucho ( ) types were the equivalent of "hands" in that movie for Borges.