What are you reading?

Yakoob on 24/5/2015 at 06:34

Quote Posted by faetal

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
.

Reading that now and it is indeed great tho at page 600 getting a bit burnt out on it, might need to take a break for a bit.

faetal on 24/5/2015 at 09:18

Quote Posted by van HellSing

Most recently I finished Echopraxia by Peter Watts. Not as good as the phenomenal Blindsight, but still enough good ideas to make it worthwile.

I read both of those books recently. They were cool and definitely cool and I liked the scientific slant, given that a lot of hard sci-fi just pornifies Scientific American articles whereas these books referenced a tonne of really interesting articles and worked their substance into the stories well. That said, I think I've gone off of sci-fi to an extent because it all seems to feel very similar after a while.

faetal on 24/5/2015 at 09:58

Quote Posted by Yakoob

Reading that now and it is indeed great tho at page 600 getting a bit burnt out on it, might need to take a break for a bit.

There's a very long meandering section which takes place in Rome - if you're past that, the excitement builds from there.

Yakoob on 28/5/2015 at 02:51

Quote Posted by faetal

There's a very long meandering section which takes place in Rome - if you're past that, the excitement builds from there.

Yea I just finished that and the Count just met Mercedes so things are hopefully gonna get real interesting!

I also started reading (http://www.amazon.com/The-Power-Now-Spiritual-Enlightenment/dp/1577314808) The Power of Now, which is about mindfulness and self-improvement. While I like the messages within, I dislike some of the metaphors (like pain-bodies taking us over to accelerate the negative energy fields) and how, if we don't all "cure" our negativity, the mankind is doomed.

What's worse, the author comes off with a bit of an arrogant "better-than-thou" tone. The book is structured in a question/answer format as if the author was talking with you, but half the time it feels like he's talking at you, especially when he repeats himself ("why don't you get it yet??? JUST LISTEN.")

nicked on 28/5/2015 at 06:04

Recently read (http://www.amazon.com/Perdido-Street-Station-China-Mi%C3%A9ville/dp/0345459407) Perdido Street Station after hearing about it in a number of places.

It's a great book; very descriptive and with an easy writing style. Despite being just as enormous as most fantasy doorstops, it flies along at a fast pace, with interesting (if not entirely sympathetic) characters, a world bursting at the seams with raw imagination, and masterfully-written descriptive action.

My only complaint was that it didn't really seem to have much of a message; I kept expecting a moral punchline that never came. Not that it needs one, just seemed to be set up that way but never quite came through.

Regardless, highly recommended for anyone who wants an imaginative fantasy novel.

demagogue on 28/5/2015 at 10:17

I'm reading linguistic theory books because I want to contribute, or at least follow the development of, an open source AI project to get a bot talking. Hudson's Word Grammar is turning out to be the important one because it's apparently one of the few that's actually constructed in terms of implementing in an AI architecture (e.g., linguistic categories are put in terms of networked nodes in a database, and activating them or retrieving them when you need them). But it's still missing the part where volitional action can act in the database space IMO. So that's what I'd want to add to the project ideally, you know, if I had an extra 48 hours per day to do every project I dream about.

As for fiction, I just finished reading Andy Weir's The Martian, about an astronaut on a Mars Mission getting left behind and surviving until he can get rescued, soon to be released as a movie in November I think, starring fucking Matt Damon of course... Directed by Ridley Scott.

Now reading Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist. In principle I like magical realism as a genre, but in practice it falls a little flat with me. Maybe it's because our culture is so glutted with magical realism in every movie and tv show and game these days that I can't see it with the fresh eyes people must have had when it was still this new & revolutionary way to look at the world. I think real fantasy is more our bag now. And even that is starting to wear thin. It's still a charming book. Don't get me wrong.

Queue on 28/5/2015 at 14:19

I recently tried that one myself, after having bought it years ago, and could make it only about a quarter-of-the-way through The Alchemist before throwing it in the trash. It started out charming - I loved its simplicity - but I realized rather quickly it is what people who don't understand literature read to feel literary; and couple that with a message that itself (this quasi-New Age bullshit that the Universe will take care of you, if you follow your heart and dream) is such complete and utter garbage, I couldn't take it anymore and gave up.

I'm currently rereading Vonnegut's collection, Welcome to the Monkey House, just to take a little break from all the Jim Thompson novels I've been devouring.

demagogue on 28/5/2015 at 21:32

Dude, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eqCaiwmr_M) Bill Nye begged to differ at the exact moment you posted that. The universe is telling us something!

Just kidding, +1 to everything you said. I think I'm generous to books because I'm a diplomatic & generally nice guy with a tolerence for fluffy bullshit. But TBH I'm skeptical & don't like when video game universes care too much about me, to say nothing of the actual one.

Queue on 28/5/2015 at 23:07

Leave it to Amy Schumer, that whore, to bewitch Bill Nye. She should be burnt at the stake like it's Salem all over again.

The scariest thing about that video is, there are truly people who think like that. Why the Universe hasn't killed them all is the only "mystery of life" to me.

Thirith on 29/5/2015 at 08:59

I saw a simply done stage production of The Alchemist that worked quite well, because it had the necessary lightness of touch and didn't insist on its silly New Age message. I then read the novel and had exactly the same reaction as you, Queue. Coelho aims for The Little Prince-like depth-in-simplicity and instead achieves the fiction equivalent of motivational posters of the worst kind. Bleh.