/hob/ - Hobbies

>>67270
Lmao, confirmed for not entering or learn how to use the site, filtered hard.

>>67213
>Kael Otto Paetel - The National Bolshevist Manifesto

I saw the non-Russian name, and I was like oh yeah I forgot about the original 1920s NazBols.

> In 1975, he died in Forest Hills, Queens, in New York City.[5]

so random, isn't that where Spiderman is from?

ESSENTIAL /NEET/ BOOKS.

>>67281
Why do I need a book to tell me that work sucks and that I should slack off and leech off the system?

Some of my favorites:
H.P. Lovecraft
Clark Ashton Smith
Joris-Karl Huysmans
Leon Bloy
Valeri Bruiysov
Georges Rodenbach
August Derleth
William Blake
Frank Belknap Long
Robert Bloch
Joseph Beaumont
Thomas Heywood
Joshua Sylvester
Michael Drayton
George Chapman
Dan Simmons
David Hume
Kant
Schopenhauer
Fernando Pessoa
Greek Magical Papyri
Agrippa
Henry More
Ralph Cudworth
Henry Vaughan
Paracelsus
Mahabharata
Puranas

>>67282
I believe the point is to try and argue against people who push wageslave propaganda

>>67281
I've read none of these except the Bertrand Russell one, but this is a topic I should explore further. One other thing I did read years ago was David Graeber's "Bullshit Jobs", with some interesting-but-sometimes-sloppily-reasoned musing about the nature and future of work.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-bullshit-jobs

Any good poetry that is wiz-related?

>>67289
Leopardi appeals to the Cioran crowd

https://www.bookcaps.com/chapter-summaries-war-and-peace

I'm thinking about reading Tolstoy's War N Peace, but I only want to read the historic philosophical chapters, not the drama.

It seems most of that is concentrated into the 2 epilogues.

But if there are any other chapters scattered throughout please recommend.

>>67298
Hell I tried taking that one head-on, only got thru the first 10 chapters and thought all the aristocrat wank was mad cringy.
>>67285
But I also started re-reading this and it's considerably more antiwork-pilled in a general sense than I remembered, and probably WAY more than how I was describing it.

>>67305
I once read it at the library in a few days, just by skipping over the story and only reading the history. Its free on audible, but I cant just skim it in the same way on audio. i'd need to know what chapters to go for.

>>67199
I am against of following such lists to be honest. why? best answered by alberto manguel:

>“How are readers to be guided by these entrusted spirits to find their way in the ineffable reality of the wood?

>Systematic reading is of little help. Following an official book list (of classics, of literary history, of censored or recommended reading, of library catalogues) may, by chance, throw up a useful name, as long as we bear in mind the motives behind the lists. But the best guides, I believe, are the reader’s whims – trust in pleasure and faith in haphazardness – which sometimes lead us into a makeshift state of grace, allowing us to spin gold out of flax.”

this quote has been proved right so many times in my life as my favorite books have been almost always products of fluke and many times I have been bored to death by many "classic" books and walked away with nothing.

>>67307
great books of the western world the list done by mortimer j adler, he did release that in a series encyclopaedia you can download the reader versions. there you dont need to read a specific book rather you can look up the subject of interest and read everything on that subject that all those important authors and works have to offer.

that is the reasonable and useful way to use a reading list, but its only useful when the reading list is composed and done up with a lot of work and effort like that mortimer j adler collection.

also much better way for a lot of wizards because you dont need to read a 'whole book' its just ok i can read a bit about this particular topic today and i might read a bit about what one particular author had to say on that one topic then go onto others.

> Journey to the End of the Night, Louis-Ferdinand Céline

What is the night? What night is Céline talking about? The night is this current world we live on, this zeitgeist.

In this work, Céline takes the reader through all the horrors of the XX century. At not little important moment in history he was placed: he fought at WW1 at the french side; the final collapse of the old european world, the end of the colonial empires, the triumph of America and the "americanization" of the globe.

In this semi biographical work, Ferdinand Céline through his alter ego Ferdinand Bardamu, narrates in first person his own life and his experiences across the world.

Without thinking much about it, Bardamu ends in the trenches at WW1. Obviously it is not needed to remark that this was hell and war did a number on Bardamu's mind. In Bardamu own words: he was deflowered by war. The experience left him with an immense hate for anything bellicose. There are various scenes that I would like to highlight here:

- A conversation that Bardamu has with a man in a war hospital. This man tells it clearly: when the State kindly whisper to you ear inviting you to join war, that's because they are going to turn you into cannon fodder

- In a conversation Bardamu has with Lola, an american succubus he is dating, he confesses to her that he is utterly afraid of coming back to the front, he is a coward. After that moment, Lola is disgusted with him. All her affection was founded on Bardamu's supposed manliness and will to die fighting. Once he reveals the true, he is worthless for Lola.

- Something that Bardamu or another soldier says: The succubi and the children will keep on living while them will just be buried and forgotten like poor wretches. But he wants to live no matter what.

What's Céline moral of the fable? Sure, the sacrifice of men was needed in order for humanity to advance. But what did the sacrificed men get ? nothing, they are expendable. Céline himself does not want to follow the same path willinglly and finds the sacrifice of war as utter madness

After the turmoil of the war, Bardamu goes to colonial Africa, hoping to "make it" there. What did he find there? An immense jungle devouring the little sprouts of civilization and the poor native people. The colonial empire is filled with corruption and is composed of degenerates and thieves. There is nothing there. The civilizational enterprises of the West are only ready to be devoured by the jungle.

Bardamu next stop point is the shinny New York. Will he make it there perhaps? No. The big metropolis is alienating and suffocating. He is alone among the crowds, dazzled by the neon lights, torturated by the never ending bustle. Besides, Bardamu is poor and unemployed, it doesn't work for him and he moves to Detroit.

At Detroit he found a Ford industrial plant and the atmosphere is bleak again. The factory is ugly and sordid. Céline depiction of the ugliness of the factory is brilliant. At there, man is reduced to a tool and of course that slowly kills human spirit. The workers find some confort in mindless consumption and prostitutes. At Detroit or at New York, I don't remember exactly, Bardamu rants this:

>The worst part is wondering how you’ll find the strength tomorrow to go on doing what you did today and have been doing for much too long, where you’ll find the strength for all that stupid running around, those projects that come to nothing, those attempts to escape from crushing necessity, which always founder and serve only to convince you one more time that destiny is implacable, that every night will find you down and out, crushed by the dread of more and more sordid and insecure tomorrows. And maybe it’s treacherous old age coming on, threatening the worst. Not much music left inside us for life to dance to. Our youth has gone to the ends of the earth to die in the silence of the truth. And where, I ask you, can a man escape to, when he hasn’t enough madness left inside him? The truth is an endless death agony. The truth is death. You have to choose: death or lies. I’ve never been able to kill myself

The whole order of things for the lumpenproletariat is soul crushing.

At the end, Bardamu returns to parisian suburbs to work at there as a doctor. Paris is no longer the "City of Light". The suburbs are ugly and decadent. They stink, they are always noisy. His work as a doctor, exposes him to the pettiness of the suburbs dwellers. Of particular interest in the section of the book are the case of abortions Bardamu has to take care of. The descriptions are visceral and gruesome. Céline writes without qualm about "bloody vaginas". Why does Céline talk about abortions in modern suburbs and write descriptions so visceral ? My guess is that he is trying to say that all this mess we are all into, this excruciating path to death, to night, all the lofty ideals and dreams are just the product of a stinky bloody piece of flesh. At some cementery is Paris, Bardamu has an Epiphany. He laments the dead, he sees them flying over Paris with all his lofty goals and ideals but where are they now?

Céline/Bardamu travel is one of disenchament. He can't find anything truer than death and he laments that. From war to the decandence of the poor neighborhoods, he can only taste different flavors of the futility of existance, the devaluation of men and the failure of all human projects and ideals.

I can't end this without mentioning the great style of Céline. Even If you find this work so depressing, you can find value in its literary merits. He uses a casual language, the slang of the parisian prole and he achieves a very pleasant to read cadence in his prose. The work is also teeming with beautiful and thought provoking quotes, you could literally quote the whole book.

>>67327
We ain't in the XX century anymore, outdated book.

>>67329
Obvious bad joke/troll post but anyway, Céline is more relevant now than ever. I will also read his "spiritual successor" in the near future: Houellebecq

>>67331
i read whatever in a psychiatric ward. it was a good book. there is a movie too.

>>67388
The problem with the Bible is passages such as the counting in Numbers, and the same thing is done in some latter books as well. Also, did you read a Protestant/Jewish Bible? 1 and 2 Maccabees are books that rival any epic, even modern, but they are used only by Catholics and the Orthodox, I recommend you check them if you haven't already. Some of the Orthodox also use 3 Maccabees which is not really a Maccabees book, but it's nice as well, and to me it feels quite Lovecraftian.

>>67390
Nice, I think the Deuterocanonical are some of the best. There's a compilation called "The Grand Bible", you can find it in archive.org if you are interested, has probably all such ancient religious books ever translated.

>>67390
The Book of Enoch is good I read it, my interpretation is they predicted Jesus and our times in it.

Bad news is I bailed on Oscar Wilde (most likely during The Ghost of Canterville).
Good news is I finished another Murakami book (after the behemoth that had 1% to do with 1984 despite the title), First Person Singular.
It's all right.

>>67435

Damn, I bailed on 1984. It was too slow and too long.

Check After Dark also by Murakami if you haven't read it yet. It was a short and decent read.

>>65114

If graphic novels count:

1. The Lord of The Rings
2. The Name of the Rose
3. The Invisibles Omnibus by Grant Morrison
4. Watchmen by Alan Moore
5. History of Rome by Indro Montanelli

If graphic novels don't count:
1. The Lord of The Rings
2. The Name of the Rose
3. History of Rome by Indro Montanelli
4. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
5. Diplomacy by Henry Kissinger (1200 pages brick about the history of the XX century told in an interesting way)

>>67439
>If graphic novels count
Please talk about them in the comics thread if you're feeling like it.

>>67437
>1984
>too long
are you retarded?

>>67447
theyre talking about 1Q84 which is 3 volumes. i found it tedious too and stopped in the 2nd part

The logical conclusion to NEETdom, what a visceral book.

>>67437
It was certainly not for all tastes (there was even a part with a dead goat that reminded me of a reverse beautiful darkness by Vehlmann and Pommepuy) but the dude does leave a few memorable things here and there.

I'll consider After Dark. If nothing else there are bits and pieces in both of his books that are the closest thing to inspiring these past few years.

> Poemas de Alberto Caeiro, Fernando Pessoa

Alberto Caeiro is one of the many heteronyms Fernando Pessoa had. This guy lacks refinement, he doesn't follow the classical forms of poetry, he is not fancy. Quite the opposite, his poetry is simple and straightforward. But that does not demerits his genius in any bit, Caeiro's poetry is pure mysticism.

In a sudden rush of inspiration one night, Pessoa claimed that Alberto Caeiro's words came upon him and he couldn't stop writing. From this frenetic session of writing came the perhaps most famous Caeiro's poem: the Keeper of Sheep.

Caeiro's poems express both the bewilderment at the mistery of reality and the reassurance that cames from simply being and rejoicing in God's creation without thinking or making questions. The precision and tenderness of Caeiro's words touch the mistery of being; Caeiro brings the unspeakable to the reader.

In this case I have nothing more to say, poetry speaks by itself

>>67467

An extract from the Keeper of Sheep:

There’s metaphysics enough in not thinking about anything.

What do I think about the world? I don’t know what I think about the world!
If I became sick I would think about it.

What is my opinion of causes and effects?
What have I meditated in regards to God and the soul
And about the creation of the world?
I don’t know. For me, thinking about it is closing my eyes
And not think. Drawing the shades
Of my window (that has no shades)

The mystery of things? I don’t know what a mystery is!
The only mystery is having people who think about it.
Whoever is in the sun and closes his eyes,
Begins ignoring what the sun is
And thinking many things filled with heat.
But opens his eyes and sees the sun,
And cannot think about anything,
Because the sunlight is worth more than the thoughts
Of all philosophers and poets.
The sunlight doesn’t know what it does
And because of that it doesn’t make mistakes and is common and good.

Metaphysics? What metaphysics do those trees have?
The one that makes them green and bodied with branches
Giving fruit when its time, which doesn’t makes us think,
Us, that don’t know they’re there.
But what better metaphysics that the one they have,
Which is not knowing for what they live
Nor knowing that they do not know it?
“Intimate constitution of things”…
“Intimate meaning of the Universe”…
All this is false, all of this doesn’t mean anything.
It’s incredible that we can think about these things.
It’s like thinking about reasons and ends
When the morning rises, and on the side of the trees
A vague and lustrous gold loses itself to the darkness

Thinking about the intimate meaning of things
Is added, like thinking about health
Or taking a glass to the water of springs

The only intimate meaning of things
Is that they don’t have any intimate meaning.

I don’t believe in God because I never saw him.
If he wanted me to believe in him,
I have no doubt he would come talk to me
And would walk through my door
Telling me, Here I am!

(This is maybe ridiculous to the ears
Of someone, for not knowing what it is looking at things,
Does not understand one who talks about them
With the way of talking that noticing them teaches.)

But if God is the flowers and the trees
And the hills and the sun and the moonlight,
Then I believe in him,
Then I believe him all the time,
And my life is all of it but a prayer and a mass,
And a communion with the eyes and by the ears.

But if God is the trees and the flowers
And the hills and the moonlight and the sun,
Why do I call it God?
I call it flowers and trees and hills and sun and moonlight;
Because, if he made himself, for me to see him
Sun and moonlight and flowers and hills,
If he appears to me as being trees and hills
And moonlight and sun and flowers,
It’s because he wants me to know him
As trees and hills and flowers and moonlight and sun.

And for that I obey him,
(What do I know more about God than God itself?),
I obey him by living, spontaneously,
Like someone who opens its eyes and sees,
And I call it moonlight and sun and flowers and trees and hills,
And I love him without thinking about him,
And think about him by seeing him and hearing him,
And I walk with him all the time

What defines gothic, is it just an offshoot of romance with some macabre and death sprinkled in even if remotely. Does something like Parfum count as a gothic novel? What are some gothic novels besides the big ones like Wuthering Heights, Frankenstein, anything by Poe, The Monk, et cetera?

>>67513
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_fiction
you can start by reading the wikipedia first
and here's a chart with gothic books

Going to start reading philosophy. Are Plato's dialogues a good start? I watched a summary of the pre-socratichs

>>67521
>>67521
Why read some irrelevent, outdated philosophies from some uptight aristocrat when you can instead experience the world for yourself, ponder it, come to conclusions about why things are what they are and how they ought to be, and then record these ideas? Reading philosophy is just entertainment for those who can't reflect. Philosophize for yourself instead.

>>67522
Plato was a virgin

>>67524
So was Elliot Roger but it doesn't change the fact that his rich boy delusions and status-related butthurt is all a crock of whiny horse manure

>>67525
Yeah but Elliot Rodger would hate being platonic friends, but Plato founded it

Ive been reading what the unwashed masses call fine literature. Stormlight Archive book 4 Rhythm of War

>>67527
I've tried many times to read Rythm of War but I couldn't finished the first couple or chapters, even tougu I read all the tree before, but this one is slog to read, 20 pages of Kaladin trying to fight the Parshendin or Shallan having a personality disorder. The first book was kino as fuck.

Just discovered him, while looking for books similar to Cioran

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Disquiet

>>67549
I'm surprised you found him through wikipedia instead of wizchan, we've been talking about this guy for 6 or 7 years in these threads at this point.

>>67550
well tbh I'm mostly into nonfiction philosophy not literary novels, so I mostly ignored all fiction books. But this book seems more like a stream of consciousness like Cioran

I had no idea

>>67551
I hope you enjoy the book, it's one of my favorites.

What do we think of it?

I'm reading Sherlock Holmes

>>67549
“Freedom is the possibility of isolation. You are free if you can withdraw from people, not having to seek them out for the sake of money, company, love, glory or curiosity, none of which can thrive in silence and solitude. If you can't live alone, you were born a slave. You may have all the splendours of the mind and the soul, in which case you're a noble slave, or an intelligent servant, but you're not free. And you can't hold this up as your own tragedy, for your birth is a tragedy of Fate alone. Hapless you are, however, if life itself so oppresses you that you're forced to become a slave. Hapless you are if, having been born free, with the capacity to be isolated and self-sufficient, poverty should force you to live with others.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

One of my favorite books now, it compelled and congealed out of me emotions I wish to not fully feel by the end of it. I had to get a physical copy since there wasn't a PDF I could find for free.

I have recently finished "King Solomon's Mines". This is an old book, one of the first to popularise the lost world/adventure genre in the english language. I thought it was okay, by today's standards it is quite average, but at the time I can see how it was quite ground breaking.

It is a proper boys adventure novel, just pure fun and adventure, no sex or excessive swearing that I've come to loathe in modern novels, and it is kind of a product of its time though I'm not bothered by that. You can see how it could have influenced future adventure writers, including Tolkien.

My biggest gripe about it is how little the characters prepare. For example, they knew they were going to cross a vast desert and the supplies they packed were a huge amount of guns and ammo and two days worth of water. How the hell was that a good idea to the leader who has spent most of his life hunting in the wilderness? Is this another product of its time thing when the Victorians believed in Divine Providence, or is it a lesson the reader is meant to pick up on themselves or what? Either way, I enjoyed it, a fun and easy read, a simple story but plenty of action packed into 250ish pages.

I'm reading Star Trek Vanguard, for now it's a ok reading, liking so far.