Arms and the man; Candida by George Bernard Shaw.

Playwrights, one of the best of this literary genre.

Finished 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. I liked it. Always been a sucker for a drawn-out love story. Only skipped a bit toward the end. Could have skipped a lot because so much is drawn out and recounted but for some reason I just like his writing. About halfway through I read 1984 because it was mentioned a few times in the story and I thought it might deepen the aesthetic or offer some insight. Not necessary, I think.

Currently reading Triton by Samuel R. Delany — Jamal

Just finished it. Totally great. Better than Nova. Not exactly difficult to read—on the contrary, it’s great fun, even though the prose is … nuts—but quite difficult to get a grip on, because the ideas, themes, and explorations (social, sexual, political, psychological, metafictional, and “metalogical”) are multilayered and go off in all directions.

A clue to how mad it is is that the book as a whole, Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia (a reference to Le Guin's Dispossessed), actually consists of the main narrative novel, called “Triton: Some Informal Remarks toward the Modular Calculus, Part One,” and two integral appendices, one of which is entitled “ASHIMA SLADE AND THE HARBIN-Y LECTURES: Some Informal Remarks toward the Modular Calculus, Part Two.”

A re-read might be required before I review it properly. For now: a tragicomic Foucault-inspired science fiction work of brilliance about a miserable guy who doesn’t realize he’s an asshole. A+.

———

I recently read Robert Holdstock’s Mythago Wood, supposedly a work of sophisticated eldritch fantasy. Abandoned it half way through. D-.

I have things to say about [1Q84] — Jamal

Oh?

I hesitate to share my opinion while you’re still digesting a book you enjoyed. That can be a real drag.

But ok, we’re all grown-ups here. Here’s what I said when I read it:

I just read 1Q84 and after the first book of the three, which was compelling and fascinating, it seemed to just fall flat, dominated by (a) mundane activities--which can be described interestingly in fiction but not here--and (b) the dull, bloodless thoughts of the main characters, especially Tengo. I can happily live with a main/point-of-view character who is evil or contradictory (or breast-fixated), but not with a boring one. He's the most boring fictional main character I can remember. In the third book, no sooner does the increasingly likeable and interesting Ushikawa begin to liven things up than he gets caught by Fuka-Eri's gaze and becomes as boring as the others, just before getting killed off. — Jamal

My estimation of it has gone way down since then.

None of the characters were particularly interesting, or novel anyway, if you’re familiar with Murakami’s work. They’re very similar to characters in some of his other books, and in fact the character of Ushikawa is in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

I think there’s some truth to the idea that a person can get stuck in an alternate world or a cat town and it takes some kind of ordeal to escape.

Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False
by Thomas Nagel

Catriona: Being Memoirs of the Further Adventures of David Balfour at Home and Abroad
by Robert Louis Stevenson

G.W.F Hegel by Stanley Rosen - Yale University Press 1973

A great book elucidating Hegel's system.

Currently reading Triton by Samuel R. Delany — Jamal

Just finished it — Jamal

Then I started reading it all over again. I don’t think I’ve ever done that before.

Coming up next…

Joanna Russ, We Who Are About To…
Olga Ravn, The Employees: A Workplace Novel of the 22nd Century
Anna Kavan, Ice
Jody Scott, Passing for Human
David Ohle, Motorman
Stanisław Lem, Memoirs Found in a Bathtub

I recently noticed that Naomi Klein had published a new book, Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World, which centres around her experience of being mistaken for Naomi Wolf for many years, something that began to cause her a lot of trouble as Wolf descended towards batshit crazy. I’m quite curious about it, because for years I’ve avoided Klein’s books, like No Logo, on the basis of this very mistake.

The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky.

Stanisław Lem, Memoirs Found in a Bathtub — Jamal

:up: Let me know what you think.

You've never been called a bellicose bumpkin?

You've never been called a bellicose bumpkin? — Janus

I'm sure that someone must have.

Essays in Experimental Logic
by John Dewey

Tao Te Ching
by Lao Tzu

The Dream Cycle of H. P. Lovecraft
by H.P. Lovecraft

I’ve discovered the book I’ve been wanting to read for decades: The Pythagorean World: Why Mathematics is Unreasonably Effective in Physics, Jane McDonnell. The bad news is that even the Kindle edition is AU$109.00 and the hardcover $128.00 - specialist academic text, I guess but seems to offer the kind of objective idealist philosophy I’ve always sought after. ‘This work defends the proposition that mind and mathematical structure are the grounds of reality.’

PDF available here:

https://libgen.is/search.php?req=jane+mcdonnell&lg_topic=libgen&open=0&view=simple&res=25&phrase=1&column=def

mate you’re a champion. Averse as I am to IP violations, here my curiosity outweighs such scruples. Thanks a ton.

Perhaps man-made IP violations are simply aberrations of the mind-math matrix of reality that birthed them. :brow:



:cheer:



:cheer:

I'm currently reading Ocarle Night by Paul Auster. I seem to remember @Jamal being an Auster fan, but not of this one. So far so good, but it's my first foray. It helps that I live a 20 minute walk from the neighborhood it took place in. *call back to me freaking out about people knowing where I live*

No worries, I figure that if you would not be prepared to buy the book then to acquire it for free and read it does no harm to the author and they at least enjoy the benefit of having their work read. If you love the book enough you may even subsequently buy it or recommend it to someone who will buy it.

Totally get that. Author is a young Australian researcher, this is her PhD thesis, published as a book. I found it via another really interesting article I’ll share soon. BTW - you might check out this blog, Critique of Pure Interest, by a Dutchman with a lot of reading under his belt and a keen insight into non-dualism.

Cheers, will check it out...

I'm currently reading Ocarle Night by Paul Auster. I seem to remember Jamal being an Auster fan, but not of this one. — Noble Dust

I said I don’t remember it, not that I didn’t like it.

It helps that I live a 20 minute walk from the neighborhood it took place in. — Noble Dust

:zip:

I said I don’t remember it, not that I didn’t like it. — Jamal

Aha; my memory is famously bad.

It helps that I live a 20 minute walk from the neighborhood it took place in.
— Noble Dust

:zip: — Jamal

Let's all put it behind us, eh? And by us I mean me. Sorry mate, for being a dick. I said it before. Feel like we're still there. My fault.

What? Oh that. I’d forgotten all about it. Totally haven’t been seething with resentment for the last few fucking months.

Ok ND, I agree to be friends with you again, on condition you never mention my geographical location.

British (is that the biggest umbrella? Can't remember) humor, I cannot read. I can hear it, though.

Btw, I don't know your geographical location, but I have a few educated guesses.*waits for banishment*

Ok, I’ll try responding again, this time earnestly: thanks ND and it’s all cool :cool:

British (is that the biggest umbrella? Can't remember) — Noble Dust

Scottish, Welsh, and English people are all British, but only one of the three groups is English.