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[delphonso]

Got hung up on Tolkien's Beowulf scholarship...
Speaking of dry, I've reignited my interest in coding so have been spending most of my reading time reading documentation on languages and various tutorials.

A bit less dry, but still dry: I read all the books from Morrowind (honestly after "the last days of the 1st era", it's much more enjoyable.)

Gonna try to read something a bit more enjoyable just to make progress on my goals. I'm still doing alright, overall.

Re: Solzhenitsyn (sp?), I read one of his books in university, perhaps it was Gulag Archipelago? I have also been meaning to revisit his work.

[Arx]

Finished LOTR on Tuesday evening. Solid stuff.

Dropped by the bookshop while on an errand today and found a great sale on a bunch of SF/F, so I have two Alistair Reynolds novels, one by Gemmell, and another book in a series I need to restart from the beginning to add to the pile.

[Travis Bickle]

Just finished The Reign of Christ the King: In Both Public and Private Life by Michael Davies.



It was a short but good read explaining how Christ’s kingship extends beyond being a private matter for individuals and into the affairs of states. Governments have the responsibility to uphold God’s moral law and to assist the Church in her work. Draws heavily on various Papal Encyclicals from Leo XIII, Pius X, and Pius XI which I’ll have to read at some point.

[Jimmy]

Anybody else a fan of rational fiction?

Perhaps it's just a fad from a few years ago, but I enjoyed the trip down that particular rabbit hole. I enjoyed Eliezer Yudkowsky's take on Harry Potter and the community it generated.

[Arx]

I've heard very few good things about Yudkowsky himself, I must confess. My stance on rationalist fiction would be that as long as it's fiction that's rational it's fine, but if the rationality gets in the way of the story then it's bad. I actually think some of the grandest stories are those where the reader can't figure everything out, because it draws from a rich fictional history that isn't info dumped at the reader. And also people aren't rational in reality.

So I guess I'd have to say I don't really care? A good story is a good story, and that's about as far as I go a lot of the time these days.

[Frumple]

Yeah, MoR and the lesswrong stuff is/was kind of a raging tire fire from what I noticed. Community definitely didn't live up to the conceit, at least, and got stuck in with some pretty rancid shit, though I forget details at the moment. Been years since I registered that mess as anything other than "avoid" in my mind.

I think I read most of the fic at some point, at least, but never actually finished... interesting enough concept but the execution just got progressively worse, iirc. It's been a while and I don't expect to reread it, heh.

Occasionally run into "rational" fics of one sort or another, but I honestly can't recall any really standing out as particularly notable, right now. Folks certainly try and it's not an outright deal killer of a proposition, in any case. I'll give the stuff a shot, if not actively seek it out.

E: ... anyway, TMNT thing has been read. Was neat... ish? Weird in places, like the part raph just straight up shot a dude in the head, or the part where donnie turned around and revived said dude while, uh, reprogramming their brain to be a good cyborg catboy instead of an evil one so they could collaborate to nuke an oncoming world killer asteroid. It, um. Was a thing.

Definite upside, though, raph totally did punch hitler right in the face, so hey. also hitler's brain (just the brain, in a jar, with robot limbs) was running around trying to kill people but. look, it was odd, alright. Just take your mutant turtles punching nazis and be happy with that.

Also raph's girlfriend or whatever apparently wasn't the major TMNT fox chick, but a... different one? Really similar character design, but not the same one, it seems. Eh.

[Vector]

If I remember correctly, Less Wrong ended up completely exploding over trans-related issues (and possibly also racism?). When I was young(er), I thought Methods of Rationality was neat because of the wild conversations some of the protagonists had, and the elevation of Hermione to a protagonist. I laughed regularly while reading it, which was basically all I wanted.

At this point, as the youth say, it's pretty cringe. I like hard sci-fi as much as the next person, but Greg Egan is a lot better at it.

Update in next post.

[Vector]

It's actually been quite a while between my updates! I'm surprised. Books I finished since the last conversation:

The Only Good Indians - Stephen Graham Jones
x+y: A Mathematician's Manifesto for Rethinking Gender - Eugenia Chang
American Prison - Shane Bauer
The Warrior's Apprentice - Lois McMaster Bujold
The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water - Zen Cho

EDIT: Mediocre: the dangerous legacy of white male America - Ijeoma Oluo also read as of April 15.

Spoiler: Goal (click to show/hide)

My goal for 2021:
- 12 books of either enjoyable fiction or educational non-fiction. If I read a book and I don't either learn much or enjoy it, it doesn't count. I want to push myself to open my horizons more instead of just mechanically reading through things.
- The Great Chinese Classics I haven't finished yet: Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, the one based on Water Margin, The Scholars.
- 6 books in languages that aren't English. Manga counts as a third of a book.
- 4 math books, cover to cover, that aren't required for class.
- 4 books on education theory.
- 4 books on prison/carcerality.

Personal modification:
Finishing books I started in 2020 or earlier is OK.
I'll keep track of the other things I finish in a separate list.

Progress:

Spoiler: 12 Awesome Fiction/Nonfiction Books, 2/12 (click to show/hide)

Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome - Joy DeGruy
In Defense of Looting - Vicky Osterweil

Spoiler: Great Chinese Classics, 0/4 (click to show/hide)

-zip-

Spoiler: Non-English Language, 0/6 (click to show/hide)

-zip-

Spoiler: Unrequired Math Books, 0/4 (click to show/hide)

-zip-

Spoiler: Books on Education Theory, 1/4 (click to show/hide)

We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom - Bettina Love

Spoiler: All About Prison, 3/4 (click to show/hide)

Are Prisons Obsolete? - Angela Davis
Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms - Maya Schenwar & Victoria Law
American Prison - Shane Bauer

Spoiler: Other books, 9/0 (click to show/hide)

Dragon Republic - RF Kuang
The Burning God - RF Kuang
Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, and Me: A Graphic Memoir - Ellen Forney
Empire of Wild - Cherie Dimaline
Permutation City - Greg Egan
The Only Good Indians - Stephen Graham Jones
x+y: A Mathematician's Manifesto for Rethinking Gender - Eugenia Chang
The Warrior's Apprentice - Lois McMaster Bujold
The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water - Zen Cho
Mediocre: the dangerous legacy of white male America - Ijeoma Oluo

Of this batch, the most interesting book I read by far was American Prison, which featured an undercover reporter working as a guard in a US prison. He had also been imprisoned for two years in Iran, along with his wife, beforehand. Chapters alternate between describing the history of US prisons and the author's day-to-day experiences. I liked this book because I felt he generally did a good job of keeping his conclusions out of the story: the writing was compelling, and he traces a clear line between economic systems that turned slavery into convict leasing. I would definitely recommend this book for anyone who has some interest in learning more about US prisons.

Both The Warrior's Apprentice and The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water were what they used to call "romps." Although the former is a space opera and the latter is wuxia fiction originally written in English, they are both fundamentally of the same genre -- heist novels. I recommend both to people who generally like pulp.

Note that Warrior's Apprentice refers to trans characters using the pronoun "it" in both narration and dialogue, which I didn't like at all, but, well, it's an old book and I don't think that the author meant ill.

I went ahead and finished x+y and The Only Good Indians, kind of on principle, since I was interested in the authors' perspectives even if I didn't fully understand them. I neither recommend nor don't recommend them.

EDIT: similar for Mediocre: the dangerous legacy of white male America. Very clickbaity title, but it clarified some historical pieces for me.

Next up ... borrowed a bunch of books by Svetlana Alexievich ... and a bunch more pulp novels.

[Caz]

That is many books. Well done

I haven't read anything, more than 3 lines on a book and I can't concentrate. Keep skipping the lines when I read. Or reading them over. Meh.

[Arx]

Solid stuff!

I read through Dark Prince by Gemmell. Didn't realise it was the sequel to a prior book, but IMO that probably made it a better read because it meant the characters had richer more developed history! (you might be able to tell from this and my last post that this is something I really like in books) On the whole though I'd rate it as a solid meh. I don't regret reading it or anything but it's very... genre-y blood and guts action fiction, with an unusually thick veneer of Greek history. I picked it up partly because it had a recommendation from Brent Weeks and I adore the Lightbringer series, but to be honest big parts of it felt to me like Weeks but worse (Gemmell is of course an older author so it's possibly an odd comparison, but there it is). It's left me craving a fantasy story with more grounding in personal reality and less glorying in... well, general glory.

I think I shall make an effort to finish the other half of The Scramble for Africa now. If after that I'm in the mood for sci-fi I'll crack open one of the Reynolds, if I'm looking for fantasy maybe The Hobbit, and if I feel like Literary I think I'll go for Mda.

[chaotic skies]

Gonna try and finally read that Electronics for Dummies book I've had sitting around since I moved. That's it, anything else I'll either way over or undershoot.

As for just general discourse, anyone have some longer books or book series they can recommend? Personal preference is for science fiction/fantasy but I'll read almost anything

[Vector]

The Witcher series is somewhat long, not too long, and I absolutely loved it (fantasy). I also like the detective novel series by Jussi Adler-Olsen, Department Q.

And the Vorkosigan series, of which The Warrior's Apprentice is the first "true" entry, is very long and very well-loved science fiction.


Thank you for the appreciation, all. I have some other, more interesting education theory books on hold now too, and no longer owe the public library hundreds of dollars >_> So I am looking forward to more pleasant reading soon.

[Caz]

How can you owe a public library money?

[Vector]

late fines,

or if they think you lost like 10 books,

[Caz]

>_> that is many books