So.

[wolven7]

What books are you reading?

Not for school, unless what you're reading for school is also actually engaging you. Text books only open up, for me, in discussion.

Right now, I'm reading Revelations by Raven Black, on the recommendation of hametsunosaturn. Why this, instead of any of the myriad other books I have to read? Because it's short, and I should be finished it, soon.

Sorry for all the weirdness, lately, but I'm trying to keep my brain working, and I don't know who's getting what.

Just trying to find a level, again.

Comments

[nausved.livejournal.com]

I'm reading "The Evolution Explosion" by Palumbi for my Evolutionary Biology course, but it is extremely engrossing.

The section I'm reading now is also very, very frightening. The only book I've read that was scarier was "The Hot Zone" by Preston.

It's making me seriously consider going into disease ecology--the only real hurdles being that I hate looking through microscopes; they trigger my motion sickness, and my eyelashes are too long for looking through eyepieces comfortably.

[ego-likeness.livejournal.com]

The Hotzone is really good.

Another good book along the same lines is
"The coming plague" by Laurie Garrett

[wolven.livejournal.com]

That seems like it would be a real impediment to getting any work done.

I think epidemiology might be one of the scariest things in the world.

[ego-likeness.livejournal.com]

The Road, Cormac McCarthy
The Third Policeman Flann O'Brien
The World Without us, Alan Weisman
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, Umberto Eco
Rotten, John Lydon

Recently finished

Cell, Stephen King

On the list to read
Mistakes were made but not by me, Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson
The Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb

[wolven.livejournal.com]

How was Cell? I've been meaning to pick it up, but after finishing the Dark Tower cycle, I haven't been able to pick up anything else of his. It seems... wrong, you know?

[draquani.livejournal.com]

A Cruel Wind by Glen Cook. It's a collection of his Dread Empire series. Very interesting so far, but then I enjoyed his gritty Black Company series.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Interesting. What do you like about them?

[bluesummers.livejournal.com]

Brad Warner's Sit Down and Shut Up. His previous book, Hardcore Zen, is a brief exploration of his experiences with the Soto school of Zen Buddhism through a lifetime of bass-playing and kaiju-film-making. This one is a look at Dogen's Shobogenzo. I was lucky enough to see Warner speak shortly after I got here and picked up his new book straight from him.

The other day I finished Jose Saramago's Blindness, a fantastic novel; an apocalyptic sci-fi by way of Kafka or Borges in which everyone in a city except for one woman is suddenly struck blind. Very few paragraph breaks and no character descriptions or names, but very real people and situations throughout.

Waiting their turn on the shelf: Camus, The Plague; Didion, Run River, Hofstadter, Göder, Escher, Bach.

[bluesummers.livejournal.com]

Er, Gödel, that is.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

I highly recommend the latter.

<u>Secrets of Xen'drik</u>

[raidingparty.livejournal.com]

... and a dozen others that have bookmarks in them, but I haven't the slightest whether they count or not because I last read them before moving.

Just finished V for Vendetta. And Player's Guide to Pathfinder, but that's another maybe since it's fewer than 15 pages.

Re: <u>Secrets of Xen'drik</u>

[wolven.livejournal.com]

V's always a good read.

[momentai.livejournal.com]

The Sound of the Mountain by Yasunari Kawabata. It's a tale of how Alzheimer's in an old man exerbates the problems in a small Japanese household. It explores unrequited love, forbidden temptations, and the meaning of aging.

I started re reading Death Be Not Proud by John Gunther. It's his memoir of the time during his teenage son's losing battle with brain cancer.

I have yet to finish The Illuminatus Trilogy, House of Leaves, or Naked Lunch,/u>, and I doubt I will anytime soon. I have lost intrest in the Iluminatus, I can't find a mood to read House, and Lunch is written in the same fashion as Trainspotting, so it is nearly incomprehensible.

After I finish the Mountain, I might read American Gods or a Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto as I love any insight into japanese culture that I can absorb.

[bluesummers.livejournal.com]

American Gods is highly recommended. I haven't read Kitchen, but I read Yoshimoto's Amrita a while back and enjoyed it. Read any Haruki Murakami?

As for Naked Lunch, my advice is to set it down for a while and come back. Its episodic nature makes it really forgiving for going at it in bursts, and in fact I think I absorbed more of the point behind it taking it a bit at a time than all at once.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

I had to wait three years between my first attempt and my last attempt to read The Illuminatus! Trilogy. But I love that book.

[teididh.livejournal.com]

All other reading has been suspended (really rare for me, as you might recall) while I dwell in the hermitage that is Harry Potter Book 7.

I finally caved and downloaded it in .lit today.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Still haven't read past the first one...

[hametsunosaturn.livejournal.com]

Qi's Book Of General Ignorance "Everything you think you know is wrong."

Or, well, I intend to be reading it. Just like the show it was modeled after (Qi), it basically points out all the things that people typically believe to be true, but aren't.

For example: Thomas Crapper invented the manhole cover, the bathroom shower and the ballcock, but he did not, in fact, invent the flush toilet!

Baseball was invented in England, as was the guillotine.

Camels store fat in their humps. Not water.

It is, actually, quite interesting. :P

How're you enjoying Revelations?

[wolven.livejournal.com]

I haven't been able to read enough of it, yet, to say. His descriptions are a little... You can tell where he's inserting his own self-image.

But, so far, so good.

[sadistic-apollo.livejournal.com]

Heretics of Dune


oh and how does all the pent up discontent this year feel to you?

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Hm. Still haven't finished that.

Pent up and discontented, but not wanting to really change it, for whatever reason.

[unknownbinaries.livejournal.com]

I posted it on mine, but here goes:

Recently finished Gaiman's Interworld and Francesca Lia Block's I Was A Teenage Fairy.

Working on Satan Burger by Carlton Mellick III.

Next in line:
Twilight Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko
Yogas of Dream and Sleep by Tenzin Wangyai Rinpoche
Longing for Darkness: Tara and the Black Madonna by China Galland
Sea of the Patchwork Cats by Mellick III as well.
Vodoun Gnostic Workbook
The Holy Kabbalah
a rereading of Promethea and greygirlbeast's Daughter of Hounds.

I'm missing about as many as I've listed, too.

I'm...I don't want to kill it but I'm in a damned good Working place.

[cailement.livejournal.com]

After finishing Neil Gaiman's Interworld (sqwee), I've just started on Terry Brooks' Genesis of Shannara, Armageddon's Children. Post-apocolyptic, and pretty good 20 pages in. I bought it because of the publisher's reviews "if you have never read Terry Brooks, this is a great place to start" and I though, "okay."

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've never read any Terry Brooks, either... Hm.

[elioraceit.livejournal.com]

started over with harry potter so i can read the last one with competence. i'm on "the goblet of fire."

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Good luck.