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What are you currently reading?


Caligari

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On 2/6/2021 at 9:22 AM, Ldlelee said:

The Lathe of HeavenĀ by Ursula K. Le Guin

One of my all-time favorites!

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Purple Red Panda

Just started The Female Quixote by Charlotte Lennox.

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22 hours ago, SocialMorays said:

One of my all-time favorites!

It's so good! I think it's going to be one of mine, too!

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everywhere and nowhere

Tomasz Szymon Markiewka - "Language of Neoliberalism. Philosopy, politics, and media"

The author is a philosopher, specialist in philosophy of politics, and the book is highly academic (although still written in a way which aims at making it accessible for non-experts). Hence it is also much more descriptive than judging, still the author doesn't hide his critical opinion about neoliberalism and shows, for example, how extremely often do neoliberals use the word "freedom" - when it is still only one possible understanding of freedom, and, even worse, one which is trying to present itself as "natural" and "common-sense"...

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tonibolognaJTV

I've been readingĀ The Spirit Catches You and You Fall DownĀ byĀ Anne Fadiman for one of my college courses. Very interesting book about the Hmong culture.

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everywhere and nowhere

Ha-Joon Chang - "23 Things They Don;t Tell You About Capitalism". A critique/debunking of free market myths.

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Currently reading The Rise of Kyoshi by F.C. Yee and The Cruel Prince by Holly Black. I like the writing styles but I've been busy with moving and haven't had a chance to read much lately

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imnotafreakofnature!

A Boy And His Dog At The End Of The World by C.A. Fletcher - really good so far

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I've been reading some Rudolf Steiner. The latest was really short, almost a pamphlet: The Education of Children from the standpoint of Theosophy.

Ā 

I agreed with a lot of it, in what I think *should have happened* in my childhood, my style of philosophies. But devastating in how my childhood was pretty much the complete opposite of this positive attitude towards child rearing. Devastating like uggggh, in my gut. I honestly wonder if the parental units read this and said, hey let's do the opposite to really screw her up!

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Forest Spirit

My mum has been listening to "QualityLand" by Marc-Uwe Kling (in German, read by the author) and I've listened to most of it as well.

Highly recommend it! It's imo really well written satire and just super funny esp. when you understand all the references and plays on words. Need to check out the rest of his work

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everywhere and nowhere

Tim Crane - "The Meaning of Belief. Religion from the Atheist's Point of View"

I myself deeply support tolerance and can't stand those noisy atheists who will attack and jeer at everyone who dares believe in the existence of more than the material world. So a point of view like Crane's is refreshing in showing that no, sorry, people won't en masse worship Science and therefore the only respectable choice is tolerance.

I like how he shows that there is such a thing as "religious temperament" - that someone may consider themself a seeker or even an atheist and still have it and another person may consider themself a religious person, but lack this kind of sensitivity. But despite this, what I don't like is his very little attention to non-organised forms of religiosity and spirituality. And I - although this already steers far from the book - have come to the conclusion that organised religion is always secondary to spiritual experience. And then both formal religion and rationalism reinforce the point of view than an "average person" cannot possibly have spiritual experiences, until they indeed start believing that dogma is their only route to the holy...

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everywhere and nowhere

Barbara Engelking - "Dear Mr. Gistapo [sic!]. Denunciations to the German occupation authorities in Warsaw and the region in 1940-1941". It's an academic historical-sociological study, based on preserved anonymous denunciation letters to the Gestapo and Nazi German police (the title comes from one of such letters, obviously written by a very simple person with poor knowledge of not only German names of institutions, but even Polish spelling). 255 letters were preserved because they were intercepted at the post office - there were cases of even post employees without any ties to the underground who destroyed denunciation letters instead of delivering them, in order to protect others, but in this case it was probably the work of an organised resistance group which also tried to follow up the leads - to warn the people against which denunciation letters were written, to try finding the author and giving them a serious warning (or something more serious - about 2500 people were executed by the underground for collaboration with the occupant)... There were, unfortunately, also cases where the occupant realised that someone must be intercepting letters and managed to find the people responsible, who were shot or sent to a concentration camp...

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Black Tourmaline

The Torah (continually).
Rabbi Yonah of Gerona's "Shaarei Teshuvah".
Saadia Gaon's "The Book of Beliefs and Opinions".

The Zohar (continually).
Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh's "The Hebrew Letters: Channels of Creative Consciousness"

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Forest Spirit

"Hunden fra Baskerville", aka my second book in Norwegian. Luckily found three older, free ebooks that have been modernised wrt spellingšŸ‘

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"Psycho Killers In Love" by C.T. Phipps

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everywhere and nowhere

Mariusz Janicki, Wiesław Władyka - "Brother without a brother. Where does Jarosław Kaczyński lead Poland"

As the title shows - an in-depth analysis of the strategy and ideology of PiS (Law and Justice), the currently ruling party in Poland. Although to some extent I'm disappointed, because the book largely consists of previously published articles rather than a cohesive analysis.

Still, I side with the authors in that - after PiS had already ruled in 2005-2007 - I never forgot its anti-democratic character. I always realised that it's a party not willing to accept democratic rules and limitations, a party which doesn't recognise any authority other than its own, and that if they are "attacked from all sides" - then only because they first attack everyone else. Unfortunately, the warnings fell on deaf ears...

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spencexists

Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys, The Moscow Rules by Jonna and Tony Mendez, and The Invisible Orientation: An Introduction to Asexuality by Julie Sondra Decker. All are amazing.

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Blue eyes white dragon

I'm rereading Treasure IslandĀ 

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I'm juggling a few, but mainly The Mask of Cthulhu. I swear August Derleth was the ultimate H. P. Lovecraft fan, I mean, he technicallyĀ made a businessĀ off of fanfics.Ā 

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10 hours ago, Skylord said:

I'm juggling a few, but mainly The Mask of Cthulhu. I swear August Derleth was the ultimate H. P. Lovecraft fan, I mean, he technicallyĀ made a businessĀ off of fanfics.Ā 

I haven't read any of his Lovecraftian works, but some years ago I read a bunch of his Sherlock Holmes Solar Pons stories.

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a little annihilation

technically Doctor Sleep although I haven't picked it up in a while because I haven't in the mood for reading

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Black Tourmaline
14 hours ago, Skylord said:

H. P. Lovecraft

Miskatonic University is apparently based on what is now University of Lowell right nearby where i live...i liked the short stories very much as a youth, especially Pickman's Model, but i read most of his stuff bitd...also the band H. P. Lovecraft is very good ;)

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Damnitsam1989

I'm re-reading The House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewsky and it's companion book The Whalestoe Letters.

Ā 

The book was a mind fuck the first time around over 10 years ago and it's verrrrry interesting going into it knowing how it pans out. Plus all the related theories, and cyphers (I'm not the best decoder). It's a very complicated read, and I've gone in this time with a note book, post-its, and page markers, I will defeat this monster.

Ā 

I've been interested in his other works but was sortov intimidated by this one....

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everywhere and nowhere

Patrick Philips - "Blood at the root. A racial cleansing in America"

It's a story of Forsyth County in Georgia, where, after a lynching in 1912, for decades the community was kept entirely white and Blacks risked even their life just by entering.

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everywhere and nowhere

I have already finished the previous one (in fact, it's very well written, I rcommend it, although it's obviously a "heavy topic") and have started another one:

Matt Taibbi - "Hate Inc. Why Today's Media Makes Us Despise One Another"

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