droid

Well-known member
Surveillance, the nature of identity, stories within stories, mystical resonance, the chamber of Isis, reality/unreality...
 

CORP$EY

no mickey mouse ting
The Big Short, Michael Lewis

It's okay, but a little dry and a lot of the financial stuff goes over my head (... worryingly it seemed to go over the heads of most of Wall Street too).

I tried to read 'Liar's Poker' by him a while ago, got totally stuck trying to understand the financial stuff - and one of the virtues of that book is apparently that he made the financial stuff comprehensible to the average joe.

Really liked 'The Undoing Project', though. He's a good storyteller.
 

luka

Well-known member
im reading a book craner recommended on here years ago
may '68 from revolution to ethics by julian bourg.
it's good so far but im not sure i'll necessarily read the the whole thing this time around.
 

luka

Well-known member
Here in Czech Republic, two names keep coming up in conversation: @jordanbpeterson and @PatrickDeneen
12:22 PM - 14 Mar 2018
 

vimothy

yurp
american catholic, teaches at notre dame. wrote a book recently that got a lot of reviews called why liberalism failed
 

you

Well-known member
Can't remember half the stuff I read. But if I can't it isn't worth recommending, I suppose.

This Is Memorial Device by David Keenan is excellent. Thoroughly enjoyable, and addictive. Just a delicious book I wanted to live in (I think Kim Gordon said that first) and wanted more of. It really brought back my younger years, driving around to practice studios and meeting mates of mates and swapping mini-discs and constantly fretting (geddit) about where my guitar was.

The Cut by Anthony Cartwright is great. Nicely organised and humble-length. It focuses on character rather than come down on any side of the Brexit or North/South issues. It sparked a new avenue of thought for me.

Tom Perrota. I've read a lot by this guy. He comes across as a white-male-writer-douche. Fellatio features far too much in his books. But they are great products. Close to airport-lit but they hit the spot. A guilty pleasure.

Christopher Priest. Read a few of his recently, adore all of them. The Slip-Stream Anthology is worth a dip into too.

The Shining by King. You've all seen the film. The book is still worth reading.

Tony Tulathimutte's Private Citizens is really funny - a nice riff one the house of mirrors pessimism of identity politics and precariat ensnaring capitalism.

That's all I can recall at the mo.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
Agree about Memorial Device. I think that and Viv Albertine's Clothes Music Boys have been the best music books I have read over the last few years.

2018 so far for me:

  1. Fyodor Dostoyevsky - The Idiot
  2. Cyrus Bozorgmehr - Once Upon a Time in Shaolin: The Untold Story of Wu-Tang Clan's Million Dollar Secret Album, the Devaluation of Music, and America's New Public Enemy No. 1
  3. Gary Budden - Hollow Shores
  4. Chris Kraus - After Kathy Acker: A Biography
  5. Victor Pelevin - Omon Ra
  6. Stefan Szczelkun - Improvisation Rites: From John Cage's Songbooks to The Scratch Orchestra's Nature Study Notes - collective practises 2011-2017
  7. Sol Yurick - Metatron
  8. p.m. - bolo'bolo
  9. Elizabeth Carola - Hot and other stories
  10. Jean Richards - I Haven't Had So Much Fun Since My Leg Fell Off: The North London Civil Servants Strike 1987/88
  11. Emma Goldman - Living My Life
  12. Rhian E Jones and Eli Davies (eds) - Under My Thumb: Songs That Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them
 

luka

Well-known member
the idiot is good. i really like it. the idiot and quixote are representatives of the vision out of step with history.
unable to find any purchase on the world. jesus had he missed his cue. there's a kind of rudderless quality to them
that's linked to the absence/successful sublimation of sexuality. i was always think of this picture.

01c6328c4f8c9d94d5f26eac08717265.jpg
'noli me tangere' almost flinching.
 

droid

Well-known member
I still dream by James Smythe is a really wonderful, touching piece of sci-fi concerned with AI and memory. Not hugely dissimilar to Kim Stanley Robinson's Aurora except without all the spacey stuff.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
That is some impressive reading John. That looks like the list of a man with a commute. What do you make of Bolo Bolo at this remove from its writing? I read that in the 90s and I think recently got read of my copy, when I sadly realised they weren't going to come into existence very soon.

2018 for me has been:

Ghosts of the Tsunami - Richard Lloyd Parry. Excellent book about the disaster. The accounts of ghostly possession are terrifying.
Psychodynamic Techniques - Karen Maroda. Deep like the mind of Farrakhan
Most of an extremely dry book about counselling and the law
A Burglars Guide to the City - Geoff Manaugh. Not as good as I was hoping.
Into that Darkness - Gitta Sereny. Up there as one of the most harrowing things I've ever read yet compelling.
Goodfellas - Nicholas Peleggi. What it says on the tin.
Pursuit of the Millennium - Norman Cohn. A useful guide to what's going on in the Labour Party in 2018.
Always Coming Home - Ursula K Le Guin. Amazing! A completely realised vision of a paradisal alternative society disguised as a collection of ethnographic texts.

... currently on the home straight of Black Swan - Nassim Taleb. It's good but he sounds quite punchable.
 
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