Books! What are you currently reading or just finished?

[speakerdamage]

up my alley - thanks for the rec. in a slightly similar postmodern crime vein, I would recommend Gabriel Blackwell’s Shadow Man: A Biography of Lewis Miles Archer. takes a character from Hammett, Chandler and MacDonald and totally deconstructs both him and the genre itself.

currently finishing Kelly Link’s Get In Trouble collection. most of the stories are very entertaining an I’m left wondering how she hasn’t been adapted for movies/tv yet (while a rather empty nostalgia-driven work like Ready Player One is).

next up is the last Denis Johnson collection, which is supposedly some of his best work. I can’t wait to read it but I’m also putting it off as long as possible since it’s the last new writing he will have graced us with (RIP).

[philmaguire]

I’m on the first chapter of Records Ruin the Landscape, and fell in love with Henry Flynt almost entirely for his description of elitist 1960s NY contemporary music concerts as ‘the debris of privilege’

[kirklandish]

It seems like I’m in the minority here. My favorite in the Three Body series is the first book. I felt the quality dipped a bit in the second book, but picked up in the third book (which has the most interesting conceptual elements).

I read all three in 2016-2017 and recently reread them in December. I definitely appreciated the second and third book more after a second run. There is so much great stuff in the first book and while it isn’t as ambitious as the next two, I think the writing and story are much tighter and have more emotional resonance (though the end of third book is great).

[Random]

And now for something a little different:

Uncertainty in Games

The analysis parts are interesting - where you find uncertainty in a wide variety of games that might seem to have little.

[_mark]

I enjoyed them all!

Actually just finished The Wandering Earth. Also good, but very much in the same vein:

Just started Austral by Paul McAuley.

[tashe]

Alright, y’all have inspired me to take my reading much more seriously this year. Last year I worked my way through some contemporary and classic fiction, as well as some philosophy – but a lot of it ended up being dropped before I could see it through.

Here’s my ambitious reading for the next 4-5 weeks or so:

The Condition of Postmodernity

Already about 50 pages into this one and loving it. This should work well with moving towards getting my Masters in Critical Geography.

Gödel, Escher, Bach

This has been on my to-read list forever, and I’m looking forward with pairing this reading with my first hands-on experiences with my own grid and beginning programming in PureData.

Bowl

My wife is in love with ramen, so I’m hoping this book can help us branch out into some other bowl-oriented vegetarian fare.

This thread, although gigantic, is one of my favorite to comb through for reading suggestions. My to-read list has exploded in the past few days!

[Zedkah]

Re: Mark Fisher’s Ghosts of My Life

Found my copy and had another dip into it…amazed that i had read it and completely forgotten it. Now the book is about 4 years old - and itself its a collection of earlier bits of journalism and blogging of the author. Loads of interesting things- like you say the burial stuff. (though I prefer Pole) Seems a lot about The Caretaker and The Shinning. He is quite astute but I wonder if that hauntology thing is a bit of an exhausted fad now? No one seems to have taken it any further since that time.Or is it like pyschogeography - a notion that once seemed a bit of a 60’s vanity (or crackpottish) came back with avengance with all that London writing etc… and now is completely mainstream.

[ps. love the euroboard table top]

[1234]

I’ve finished the book now, and have to say it was very inspirational reading - especially in regards to what I’ve been contemplating myself in recent years on how some (popular) music - and maybe most specifically electronic music - have lost it’s progressive path and narrative, and his arguments concerning this are really interesting imho. I really do not agree that the hauntological concept (or, to be fair, how he uses the Derrida ideas) is exhausted now, quite the opposite! (but that it seems to be a music genre these days is a bit phoney if you ask me - and kind of misses the point of the theory itself) I think it would do us musicians and artists good to get acquainted with these notions and reflect more on how our work is affected by the political time we’re so deeply entwined in (which basically this forum is REALLY good at). In this age of neoliberal populism I would say that this kind of cultural analysis is very important.

I’m about to dig into his follow up which focuses a bit more on sci-fi ( https://repeaterbooks.com/product/the-weird-and-the-eerie/), and am looking forward.

Unfortunately he passed away last year.

(Thanks for the table top shoutout! Diy ftw)

[Zedkah]

I think I was referring to Hauntology in respect to music journalism and the notion that it is a genre or trend. Could it become just another music word like shoegaze or is there another wave to come? with more bite perhaps.
In contrast am tempted to read this nostalgia thing as a bit of a flight from real politics. eg the focus group cd’s (which I like) or a bit sham (scarfolk council)
Of course other examples (Patrick Keiller films) are very political.Maybe there are some contemporary equivalents.
What I like about the discussion is that I don’t think there’s a final conclusion. I’m picking up on a different angle than you- not so much disagreeing. I’m certainly not suggesting you are wrong.

[sellanraa]

This arrived this week Just have gotten to the intro. I guess I’ll try to weave this into my tai chi and Bowie interview reading medley that I have going right now.

[oscillateur]

Alex McLean is the livecoding guy who was part of Dorkbot London, right ? I think I saw him perform when I presented something there for a christmas special event at least 12 years ago (before I started Dorkbot Paris so a looong time ago indeed). He’s been one of the first people doing livecoding that I know of, and that books looks quite interesting…

How’s the content of the book ?

[kieselguhrkid]

Themed reading as of late:

• “How Democracies Die” by Steven Levitsky and Dan Ziblatt. Interesting proposition of erosion of two key norms leading to the decline of openness in a democratic system: mutual tolerance and institutional forbearance. That is, democracy is a game that needs opponents to recognise legitimacy in each other and not organise the rule enforcers and makers against one another. Most examples stay away from obvious limit cases.

• “On Tyranny” by Timothy Snyder. Supposed lessons from the 20th century. Lazy, unreflective distillation of Arendt’s “The Origins of Totalitarianism” with absolutely nothing but trite bromides standing in for advice. Jumps right to limit cases and stays there. Mercifully, it is very short.

In progress: “Why Nations Fail” by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson. So far it is an interesting analysis centred around explaining why some nations found particular moments to thrive and others have spent centuries in poverty; why some systems of government persist and others fade. Trying to build an institutional based framework that gets rid of geographic and cultural answers.

In queue: “Capital in the 21st Century” by Piketty, “The Rise and Fall of American Growth” by Gordon, and “Why Liberalism Failed” by Deneen, “On Violence” and “On Revolution” by Arendt.

[infovore]

(yes, and the prime mover, I guess, behind TidalCycles).

[darwingrosse]

And interviewed here by a very charming (and good-looking!) dude:

[ddg]

[Angela]

Read Shirtless Bear Fighter and Prez over the past few days. Both are quite enjoyable. Shirtless Bear Fighter is probably the most absurd comic I’ve ever read (It’s like Naked Gun humor).

[crushthered]

I just finished A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami last night and started The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle today.

I have been reading Murakami for the past few years now, and anytime I try to read another author I can’t seem to enjoy their writing and long to go back to H.M. I sometimes worry that I’ll run out of things to ready by Murakami and I will be doomed to never read anything again

[speakerdamage]

Through Clenched Teeth

THROUGH CLENCHED TEETH is an anthology of lyric writing by some of today’s most exciting female-identified voices. The pieces are a violent rejection of patriarchal culture and coalesce around anger, resistance, otherness, and shock.
All proceeds will be donated to Planned Parenthood.

not much I can add to that. support.

[bfay]

This book has already been mentioned here, but I just finished House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. I loved it!

Much of the book is written in the style of an academic critical analysis, which describes a documentary about a strange house that is physically bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.

That documentary doesn’t actually exist, but the text constantly refers to sources that sometimes do exist, creating this unsettling feeling that the book is spilling over into the real world. The horror can’t be contained.

Reading through the book is a nonlinear experience; the main text directs you to footnotes, which can stretch on for pages and sometimes jump to other footnotes, or lead you to appendices in the back of the book. It’s crazy. It’s creepy. It’s disturbing. It made me depressed. It gave me an existential crisis. It also took some work to get through (I’ve been picking it up and putting it down since last October). But I highly recommend it!

[sofftdrugs]

watch out reading this, keep ya eyes open,

it’s full of codes and shortcuts, small translations that make all the difference, there are chapters of absolutely irrelevant nonsense too, it’s a book that’s like a puzzle.

is fun.

[sofftdrugs]

https://www.uog.edu/sites/default/files/maynard_lost-chapters-wind-up-bird.pdf
an important addition to that book,