what are you reading now?
Clinamenic
Binary & Tweed
Well originally I had the excerpt from that other one (don't know the translator) but then I found the Leonard version, liked it more, and bought it and read it primarily because I didn't like the idea of having on my website an excerpt from a book I haven't read. Beyond that, I was actually interested in the book itself, but the inciting factor was essentially the impulse not to be a poseur.
mixed_biscuits
_________________________
Well, that's basically @Mr. Tea talking to Clinamenic.
mixed_biscuits
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I found out today that De Rerum Natura is nature-is-mechanical filth. Avoid
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
I've not read Lucretius but there's a book I read by George Santayana about Dante, Lucretius and Goethe which I found interesting at the time and now can remember nothing about
Santayana Edition
https://santayana.iupui.edu › ...PDF
THREE PHILOSOPHICAL POETS LUCRETIUS, DANTE, AND GOETHE
Santayana Edition
https://santayana.iupui.edu › ...PDF
THREE PHILOSOPHICAL POETS LUCRETIUS, DANTE, AND GOETHE
Clinamenic
Binary & Tweed
Yeah it’s pretty maximally mechanistic here, even going so far at some points as to say that the soul itself is comprised of a sparse sort of colloid of atoms thinly spread throughout the body, and that when we die it’s because this configuration of soul atoms has lost its formation or something.
But much of the book was fascinating. At times he essentially describes gravity (albeit without any sense of general relativity), conservation of energy, recessive genes, various biophysics processes like photoreception and olfaction, and he even starts describing a theory of active inference, essentially - all just using very extensive (and often fallible) logic based on his observations.
shiels
_
I’m reading Yates eleven kinds of loneliness now he’s very good
woops
is not like other people
alright you lot for better or worse here's my reading log for this year.
The Killer Inside Me, A Hell of a Woman, The Getaway, The Grifters, Pop. 1280 - Jim Thomson (one after another)
Ticket That Exploded - WSB
England's Dreaming - Jon Savage
Vurt - Jeff Noon
The Heart of the Matter, The Human Factor, Loser Takes All, Our Man in Havana, The Honorary Consul, Dr Fischer of Geneva - Graham Greene (also one after another)
Nightwood - Djuna Barnes
Do Androids Dream etc. - PKD
Star Maker - Olaf Stapledon
All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing - Cormac McCarthy
What Would Lynne Tilmann Do? - Lynne Tilmann
probably a couple of boring 600 page biographies
loads of miscellania and poems like Borges' Dreamtigers for example
not chronological, I've left out anything i've forgotten (obviously) or didn't finish reading.
The Killer Inside Me, A Hell of a Woman, The Getaway, The Grifters, Pop. 1280 - Jim Thomson (one after another)
Ticket That Exploded - WSB
England's Dreaming - Jon Savage
Vurt - Jeff Noon
The Heart of the Matter, The Human Factor, Loser Takes All, Our Man in Havana, The Honorary Consul, Dr Fischer of Geneva - Graham Greene (also one after another)
Nightwood - Djuna Barnes
Do Androids Dream etc. - PKD
Star Maker - Olaf Stapledon
All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing - Cormac McCarthy
What Would Lynne Tilmann Do? - Lynne Tilmann
probably a couple of boring 600 page biographies
loads of miscellania and poems like Borges' Dreamtigers for example
not chronological, I've left out anything i've forgotten (obviously) or didn't finish reading.
craner
Beast of Burden
That would take Jenks about a week to get through
woops
is not like other people
yeah i almost added that he would destroy that list both on quantity and quality.
wild greens
Well-known member
Reading The Cloud Forest by Peter Matthiessen at the moment
Some great passages in here though think most of the places he's talking about have surely been travel-gentrified beyond belief by now
(American travel writer sails down eg Sargossa Sea towards South America in the late fifties)
Some great passages in here though think most of the places he's talking about have surely been travel-gentrified beyond belief by now
(American travel writer sails down eg Sargossa Sea towards South America in the late fifties)
IdleRich
IdleRich
I went to the picturesque town of Evora for a couple of days between Christmas and New Year. I had nothing to read for the journey and so I picked up something in the station called The Neighbourhood by Mario Vargas Llosa, someone I've never read before. The first chapter featured two women who share a bed lezzing up... and it's a bit "men writing naked women" with all of that "I looked in the mirror at my high perfect breasts and taut stomach which swelled out to form my succulent inviting buttocks" which I struggled to get into, but after that first chapter it develops in all kinds of different directions (in fact so far that chapter could have been totally removed without affecting the story) and I'm enjoying it, in fact I wish it were longer cos the end is already in sight and I like being in this world.
The one I read of his was like that too. There were two military guys, one telling a story to the other, and the one listening kept being like "Haha, yes! Nothing like sticking it in a beautiful woman!" or whatever. I suppose it made sense for the character though, even if Llosa's like that himself.
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Got a couple of Vargas Llosa's novels in the house but I don't like the look of them, but I did read a collection of his earliest short stories and they were great, especially one called The Cubs about kid who has a particularly tragic, emasculating let's say, accident.
The one I read was called Death in the Andes. It was alright, but dragged a bit and there was something clunky about it, perhaps due to the translation. I enjoyed hearing about the Peruvian folklore around this vampiric thing that feeds on human fat and the stuff about Shining Path though.
en.wikipedia.org
Pishtaco - Wikipedia
craner
Beast of Burden
He liked that guy who wrote about striking miners in Yorkshire too