What books are you reading now?

[abasio]

You should try some true modern sci-fi then http://www.psynews.org/forums/public/style_emoticons/#EMO_DIR#/smile.gif

 

Peter F. Hamilton for example... great writer, but huge books, but some great space opera

Hi Dros,

Sorry for replying to something that probably predates us actually meeting.

I do actually love some space opera and I read a hell of a lot of shitty sci-fi but this guy is the worst writer ever.

[HappyHorse]

Charles Taylor - The ethics of authenticity

[Veracohr]

I recently delved back into an old favorite: the Dragonlance series.

 

It’s based on a D&D campaign from the 80’s and was more or less the first fantasy books I read. It’s not as sophisticated or immersive as more recent fantasy series but it’s been fun revisiting those characters.

[Tsotsi]

Just got my first Ursula Le Guin Book - The Left Hand of Darkness. Was trying to find The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas but couldn't find it so got this bad boy instead.

Pretty good fantasy world has been painted so far.

[psychedelic chipmunk]

Oh boy, I haven't read fiction for years. My favourite book, at least for now, has been Master and Margarita by Bulgakov.

.. but working on some details of homological algebra

[Wabax]

On 8/3/2020 at 5:41 PM, Psychedelic Superbeast said:

check out robert anton wilson and Frederick E. Dodson

Sounds good. Which one?

[Veracohr]

I’m reading Oathbringer, the third book of the Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson. Pretty interesting world, good story!

[Kombo*]

Reading Mona Lisa Overdrive have read Count Zero last will be Neuromancer in between have read enough books, this way works for me shaping the idea along with Movies - illustrations - videogames - own intuition and of course Music (Youth's album title rings the bell??!) Focusing Sci-fi this time

Asimov- Robots of Dawn, Spinrad- Agents of Chaos, Besher- Rim, Tom Clancys- Net force and Net force breaking point (almost irrelevant both), Thanasis Vempos- Five cracks on the Grid, A Clarke- Profiles of the future, Alfred Bester- Tiger tiger, Murdoch- Rise of the Robots and Williamson- Hell Cyberpunk thriller (both videogame novelizations), S Baxter- Ring, Orwell- 1984, going to read Bernard Lenteric- L'Ange Gabriel, Do Androids Dream, probably few others mentioned in this thread  

[the goa constrictor]

Drug Use for Grown Ups by Dr Carl Hart

He talks about going to a Boom Festival in one of the chapters too.

Good stuff (if interested in non fiction about drug usage)

[Trolsk]

Just finished reading The Immortality Key by Brian C. Muraresku. If you've heard about or read the book The Road To Elysius by Gordon Wasson, Albert Hoffman and Carl Ruck, you'll be interested in this book. The book is a bit too long, so if you're not deeply interested in the subject you can do with Joe Rogan interviewing Brian or Jordan B Peterson interviewing him.

Quote

In The Immortality Key, Muraresku explores a little-known connection between the best-kept secret in Ancient Greece and Christianity. This is the real story of the most famous human being who ever lived (Jesus) and the biggest religion the world has ever known. Today, 2.4 billion people are Christian. That's one third of the planet. But do any of them really know how it all started?

Before Jerusalem, before Rome, before Mecca—there was Eleusis: the spiritual capital of the ancient world. It promised immortality to Plato and the rest of Athens's greatest minds with a very simple formula: drink this potion, see God. Shrouded in secrecy for millennia, the Ancient Greek sacrament was buried when the newly Christianized Roman Empire obliterated Eleusis in the fourth century AD.

Renegade scholars in the 1970s claimed the Greek potion was psychedelic, just like the original Christian Eucharist that replaced it. In recent years, vindication for the disgraced theory has been quietly mounting in the laboratory. The rapidly growing field of archaeological chemistry has proven the ancient use of visionary drugs. And with a single dose of psilocybin, the psycho-pharmacologists at Johns Hopkins and NYU are now turning self-proclaimed atheists into instant believers. No one has ever found hard, scientific evidence of drugs connected to Eleusis, let alone early Christianity. Until now.

Armed with key documents never before translated into English, convincing analysis, and a captivating spirit of quest, Muraresku mines science, classical literature, biblical scholarship and art to deliver the hidden key to eternal life, bringing us to what clinical psychologist William Richards calls "the edge of an awesomely vast frontier."

 

[staffan]

I've just started reading Big Sur, Kerouac. Been on an American trip lately.  Burroughs, Bukowski and Thompson.

Maybe I go on with Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72 or something else. The Leopard and Total Chaos is tempting. Some Italian or French literature.  

[abasio]

I am currently in the middle of David Mitchell - The Bone Clocks

This is the type of book that is dangerous for me.

If I really get into a book, I will be thinking about it when I am not reading it. I will choose it over other distractions like games, Reddit, Psynews and doom scrolling.

If I really don't like a book, I will just give up on it and start something else.

My reading problem is when I get something in between: a book that's not bad enough to quit, but not good enough to be my first choice of entertainment.

The Bone Clocks is proving to be just that. It has enough in it that I am sure that it is leading somewhere, and will be good read, but I am just not connecting with the characters, the ideas, and the writing just does not draw me in, so I am left wanting to get through it as I am sure it is leading somewhere interesting but I just have no urgency to pick it up as it's just a bit crappily written, I don't care about the characters (YET?) their motivation or fates so when doomscrolling, tsum tsum or football game threads are a thing, what is there to make me want to go back to this story?

[kjn]

I haven't posted much here yet, but this is something I have to share.
I am currently obsessed by the books of Elena Danaan. Her first book describes the 100 extraterrestrial species involved with our planet. She writes that the species from Zeta Retucili are not friendly and what was the reason of the sinking of the Titanic.
In her second book she describes what happened after the Roswell crash in 1947.

These books are highly recommended if you are interested in UFO's

[Trance2MoveU]

Superb topic that for some reason I'm just discovering. Maybe should start lurking again.

Just finished The Devils by Joe Abercrombie and Empire of the Vampire as well as Empire of the Damned by Jay Kristoff. All were quite graphic and great reads. Highly recommend if you're into grimdark style of fantasy.

Currently reading Illusion by Paula Volsky about changing attitudes and how horrible exalted classes are to non-exalted. 

Anything to distract from my terribly disappointing country. I apologize and want to reassure you normal, educated Americans are not ok with what this fascist administration is doing.

[abasio]

15 hours ago, kjn said:

I haven't posted much here yet, but this is something I have to share.
I am currently obsessed by the books of Elena Danaan. Her first book describes the 100 extraterrestrial species involved with our planet. She writes that the species from Zeta Retucili are not friendly and what was the reason of the sinking of the Titanic.
In her second book she describes what happened after the Roswell crash in 1947.

These books are highly recommended if you are interested in UFO's

That sounds really interesting, I want to check her out. I'll put them on my reading list (although that's really long right now 🫠

[abasio]

11 hours ago, Trance2MoveU said:

Superb topic that for some reason I'm just discovering. Maybe should start lurking again.

Just finished The Devils by Joe Abercrombie and Empire of the Vampire as well as Empire of the Damned by Jay Kristoff. All were quite graphic and great reads. Highly recommend if you're into grimdark style of fantasy.

Currently reading Illusion by Paula Volsky about changing attitudes and how horrible exalted classes are to non-exalted. 

Anything to distract from my terribly disappointing country. I apologize and want to reassure you normal, educated Americans are not ok with what this fascist administration is doing.

I love grimdark fantasy and sci-fi

How is everything over there for the normal folks?

All I get to hear about sounds like hyperbole and I come away thinking it can't really be that bad, can it? Can it? 

[Trance2MoveU]

2 hours ago, abasio said:

I love grimdark fantasy and sci-fi

How is everything over there for the normal folks?

All I get to hear about sounds like hyperbole and I come away thinking it can't really be that bad, can it? Can it? 

Brother we are living in the land of a wannabe dictator. He is almost 80 years old and implicated in the greatest human trafficking operation in history. There is solid evidence that he raped underage girls, but his administration is actively covering it up in broad daylight because the media will not hold him to account. He has shredded the rule of law and the constitution. He is mind numbingly stupid thinking he's always the smartest guy in the room, fires anyone who gives him bad news, and has run our great economy right into the dirt.

We are currently living in a land where shootings are fairly frequent, a trip to the grocery store is becoming twice as expensive and half the populace is deluded by his cult like media propaganda. It's hard to rank the evil coming out of the White House, but I would say having a secret masked police force that has an unlimited budget snatching brown people off the street with no due process and nobody to stop them is particularly terrifying. 

And the people that are charged with upholding the law and protecting us? Sit on their hands cowed in fear and subservience. 

The economy is in the toilet, and they are rapidly destroying protections for the people with an ultra right wing Supreme Court that has given him immunity for his actions.

That said, I have no room to complain. I weep for the people of Gaza who are starving or the people of Ukraine who are  currently living under war by a mad man. Our country is struggling with the massive corruption, but currently I am well and still listening to psy. Most people in this country are appalled by the constant lying, deception, and cruelty by the current administration. 

And we are only 6 months in to a 4 year term.

But back to books, getting ready to start The First Law series by Joe Abercrombie. Heard good things! 

[abasio]

Wow! Thanks for the first hand perspective.

One thing that I have never understood, I just cannot get it through my head, and maybe it'd because I am not American, and from where I'm from, anyone that's "into" politics is a big loser that cannot get a girl to sit in the same room as him, and if a girl is into politics, she's a big loser who can't get a girl to sit in the same room as her  So while it amazes me that Americans can be so into politicians that they go to rallies, and make their favourite political "star" a big part of their personality like a tween girl and her favourite boy band, I still cannot understand how people feel this way about Donald Trump, who has the charisma of a tax audit, a room temperature IQ (not fahrenheit) and hair that looks like pubes. Even if he's a big old racist that agrees with all the things your big old racists think, wouldn't they be more ashamed to be associated with such a human toilet brush?

I've recently been reading about his trade deals, all these deals with short term benefits to the USA...him and his cronies I bet, feel like they're just going to push your trading partners away long term. Even when he's replaced long term, other countries aren't going to trust that 4 years later that replacement won't be replaced with Trump 2.0 

For a while, other countries are going to suffer through this, but they'll open up more trade with India, China and African countries and the USA will become a minor world player, with a shit tonne of nukes, now there's a scary thought. What happens when the country is washed up and relying on foreign aid AND has all these nukes. War war war. I'm sure someone has written a book about this.

 

Anyway back to books. The Bone Clocks that I am reading, the last chapter was pretty good because it involved who the story revolves around, Holly Sykes. The book started really well, as it focuses on her as a 16 year old. I was invested and read quite quickly. Then it moved to some story about someone really uninteresting and in the last part of his story he met Holly, then it was about her partner who was a war journalist and was not that interesting, now it's about another novelist who's life is intersecting with hers. It's just that all these people's stories are so boring, but hers sound interesting and I just want to get to that. Maybe I'm impatient, maybe David Mitchell just isn't a great writer.

[kjn]

Elena Danaan claims to be in real-live contact with some extraterrastrials. In her books she tells about her visits to Venus and Jupiter.
Sometimes the extraterrestrials tell her about events that will happen in our solar system, e.g. an earth-quake on Mars or a scientific discovery that will be made in a few weeks time. There is a website with these fact-checks https://thewebmatrix.net/elenadanaan.html .

As I wrote before the first book describes a lot of alien races complete with drawings. A lot of these are human, they look like us but with some minor of major variations. Some can be taller, others have slightly different facial features like wider eyes or a higher fore-head. The way a species look depends on a lot of factors. The power or the light of the sun or chemical elements that are present on a planet. There is a planet where people have a green tint because of the abundance of manganese.
Than there are also intelligent reptillian or insectoid species. The type of species does not say anything about their intentions. There are also hybrids. Humans with reptillian features or beings that are part insectoid and part human.

[abasio]

Does it read like a crazy woman wrote it? That description sounds like it's going to be less of a novel and more a series of rambling essays by a nut job. I must admit that a quick Google search makes me more inclined to go with my early prejudices. But if I am wrong, it looks like it could be a great read.