/hob/ - Hobbies

>>64926
Hey anon, nice to hear from you again. I finished the first 2 volumes of Proust's Recherche and moved on. For now. I must admit I pushed too hard with Proust and got a minor burnout as a result. I intend to go back soon. Aftwards I read a bunch of different things, a short novel and some tales by Luigi Pirandello: One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand and a selection from Stories for the Years. Then I read Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubaz and The Facetious Nights of Straparola, the latter I liked a lot. This period of literature when the authors were more willing to be elegantly lighthearted and suddenly turning to grotesque and/or farcical at the drop of a hat and back to palatial tastes and whims again is fascinating. There's a charm to it that is hard to find anywhere else. Makes me wonder how different life was for them in order for literature of this kind to be produced. It's funny how optimistic the text feels, especially when you know some of those writers actually saw the plague ravaging the cities they lived in. There's an odd joie de vivre in those stories, hard to describe.

By the way, I recently found out there's a book called The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia! A full 2 volumes work of scholarship dedicated to the Nights in the English language. I couldn't believe this was published almost 20 years ago and just recently I became aware of it. It begins with 14 essays by scholars talking about a lot of different topics relating to the book, from literary style, to oral traditions and its impact on the text, the poetry, the manuscript tradition and even goes on about movie adaptations and the impact it has in modern media. The bulk of the work is an entry for 551 stories contained in various manuscripts, along with a summary of the content of each tale, followed by a condensed survey of research relating to the tale concerned. I just skimmed through it but intend to go deeper sometime soon. It's quite the work. The set goes for over 200 usd at amazon but you can find it for the cheap price of free on libgen, you didn't hear from me.

Anyway, good luck with your move and your literary journey! I would never attempt to read The Canterbury Tales in Middle English, I feel like Escher when he said "It takes too much time and effort for someone who rightfully or wrongly believes he has no time to waste." Actually I don't think reading the book the way the author wrote it is a waste of time at all but you know what I mean. I'll be long dead before I'm able to read all the literature I want to read. The second part of this year I would like to focus on a book called Ocean of the Streams of Stories and other Hindu literature, it's untapped territory for me.

>>64933
I've done a decent amount of reading this year. I've read Beckett's three novels, Auerbach's Mimesis, some Cormac McCarthy, The Castle by Kafka (these are the big items). I think the Middle English has a beauty to it, and so I consider it worth the effort in of itself. Seeing the morphology of English, and connecting it to contemporary English is quite fun.
I know Proust is dense, but I hope to read all of Recherche before leaving. If I dedicate a certain amount of time to him, I hope it'll work out.

Heyo. I'm an avid reader and taking time off the world to focus on myself. Meaning reading, writing, composition, study.

Anyway, I don't have anybody to talk books with. I have a big booklog on neocities, and I've interacted with exactly one person who reads reasonably in 2 years. I'd started a neighborhood reading club, but there's only one other member, and she's not too focus, and has been missing last month.

So, the question:
Would (You) consider participating in a mailing list? Emails chains would be threads: "What have you been reading this week (or month)?", "I read X by Y and thought Z. Has anybody read it, or anything similar or related to it?" and so on.

Im reading elric the necromancer and kafkas novels

>>64932
How do I learn to enjoy reading, as a lot of wizards do, I have pretty bad anxiety and ADD so this makes engaging in non-immersive mediums like books quite difficult.

Also a big thing that bothers me is that I don't enjoy fiction really that much. I feel like fiction is a bit antiquated with the new types of emerging mediums. I know video games and VNs aren't the most "high culture" but If they to, they can be.

I'd appreciate any advice on this matter.

>>64941
If you haven't always had a way with language/been the type to plow through books then why bother? Stick with your video games.

>>64932
Reading this Thai novel at the moment. It’s interesting; about a bad boy who is sent away to a Buddhist monastery. Very good insight into Thai society.

>>64952
Whoops forgot to post that novel.
It is called the Brotherhood of Kaeng Khoi.

Nice book so far.

>>64941
Good question. Start with simple books. Even Harry Potter. See it like physical training like lifting a weight; you are training your attention, working memory and imagination just like someone in the gym gets stronger.

Set yourself a goal reading Harry Potter and the Philosophers stone in one day without stopping. Then increase the difficulty of the book. Just like working out, eventually it gets less difficult and even becomes fun like playing sports is fun to people who are fit enough.

>>64939
No takers? I'd write the majority of non-lurkers as disinterested and or unwilling to exert themselves, but they've enough bile to spit at an oddball.
https://godcock.neocities.org/lit.html hit me up if you you want

>>64946
Bad advice. Nobody's born great at anything. If you practice anything (smartly, that is focusing on improving rather than rote, out of context memorization like all Anki users (spaced repetition is great, how you go about is it isn't trivial though)).

>>64941
I'd recommend form your preferences by trying of everything and jotting down all you notice. Not strictly 'good' and 'bad' however you may define those, really anything you notice by itself (as a phrase, sentence, a paragraph, a chapter, a character, a motif, an idea, a notion, and so on) and through comparison with the rest of the sentence, paragraph, chapter, book; ante- and postceding works by same author; works of same genre; other works you've read; other works you've familiar with (in the sense of know roughly others' opinion of it and its place in the literary landscape).

You should also flesh out why exactly it is you are reading. For 'fun'? To get lost, be subsumed, immersed? For knowledge? And so on. With those answered, among other possible question, you can facilely sieve out what you should read next. Not every book is to be completed, and not every is the best choice for a given person with their set of goals.

Open up a file and write a bit. There's books that are tedium pagified and 1.6e5 word ones you can't and don't want to stop leaving through. (Leafing through sounds wrong!)

>>64946
I will probably still play video games, i enjoy them so why not?

>>64957
You should also flesh out why exactly it is you are reading. For 'fun'? To get lost, be subsumed, immersed? For knowledge? And so on. With those answered, among other possible question, you can facilely sieve out what you should read next. Not every book is to be completed, and not every is the best choice for a given person with their set of goals.

Good question. Getting immersed and liking the world would be my biggest priority. I can't really tell apart how well written a book is(unless its horribly written) so if a book doesn't use the craziest most flowery language its ok for me.
Also I'm ESL and that's maybe why i can't really get into reading, fuck translations lol.

>>64958
Your proficiency plays a small role, sure. If you can only do Czech or Tamil, many translations will never even be considered, let alone be published and be able to with time trickle down to file-sharing.

Everything I said in the first post goes for all reading. Libraries exist too, if you prefer physical media and wouldn't rather not study/improve your English or would just be comfortable with your native tongue. Also, not all translations are bad. Some languages are hard to translate to others, like Japanese into English, without significant loses in nuance, density, tone. Whereas Chinese into English is easier, at least as a reader of works that are supposed to be 'good'. You won't be able to learn more than, say, 20 languages to a conversational level, so you'll always have to contend with translations if you're not content with the authorship of your own state.

Give it some thought, make a choice and read, assess your choice later, think again, and so on.
https://youtu.be/RRoP_u_1SpM?=9


I'm reading:
Travels in Siberia. Ian Frazier.
The Tatami Galaxy. Morimi Tomihiko, Emily Balistrieri (tr.) (actually very good translation from JP for once, tonally accurate and precise to the anime and manga (read only some panels))
Popisho. Leone Ross.

Yesterday did
American Drug Addict. Brett Douglas.
Was real nice, others lives unraveling, burning and crashing, wholesome experience.

Today finished
Ancient Fables. Wu Min.
Chinese fables, kind of like Aesop's. Really really similar actually. The same morals are likely common throughout civilizations with written histories. Fables are sweet though, and very succinct.

And have much more I want to read.

>>64939
I'd be down to join. I didn't know you were godcock. I've been following your neocities for a while. In fact, when you said "neocities" I thought of the booklog you have.

> Time Regained, Marcel Proust

Ok, this was the final volume of In Search of Lost Time. After five years since I picked Swann's Way I finally completed the whole thing. This final volume definetely left me a good sensation and served well to close the work and reward me.

In this volume we are following our narrator in the Paris of WWI. The life in the city somehow keeps going and some old characters like Charlus have fallen from grace and lead an even more degenerate life. Some narrator's friends succumb to war. The atmosphere of this volume is kind of nostalgic: France amid the war, the beloved things to our narrator are either begone or dying. Yet life keeps his course and new elements are appearing in the great world to the surprise of our already old narrator. He is not the novelty anymore, he is an old friend. Also to his own surprise, he has the somewhat uncomfortable realization of being old.

In certain routinary party the narrator attends, he and we experience the moment of ecstasy that closes this work. For a long time, Marcel, our narrator, has wanted to make a work of an art but he never really decided to do so and was finally considering that he lacks talent. However, a sudden and strong need to write strikes him. After having one of those involuntary memory moments, he realizes that all the material to write about is inside him and if he dies all those treasures will be lost. All those deared moments: the flowers he saw in the countryside, the succubi he met at the shore, the toys he had as child, the anguish he felt while awaiting from his mother's kiss, the mutiple characters of the great world, the love he experienced, etc; all of this will be lost after his death. He and only him is the only witness and treasurer of all these begone moments. They exist inside him. It is his duty to make art with them, to immortalize them but time is short,he is sick and death is looming. He frenzily begins to write…

Thus concludes this work. It was beautiful. Some of the volumes were really a drag but overall it was rewarding and the final message can be applied to the life of anyone. If you are the sensitive type, you can't be left untouched by the small details of your life and you dearly appreciate and remember them. They are not dead you treasure them

>>64966
Thank you for being forthright.

Onboarding would be the biggest challenge. I know of several reading 'communities' or groups: librarything.com has a similar population of non-lurkers, say 20–150, lonely, old(-er), cat-lady-likes who steadily read; 4chan's /lit/ is brimfilled with Marxist babies, ones going with majority opinion, ones going with the charts from 05–15 years ago; users of shit like bookwyrm are mostly a no-no; aaand so on.

I'll read up on what if anything simple can be set up.
Otherwise, it'd be just replying, which isn't necessarily bad, but mixing of plain text and HTML, and irrelvant with relevant replies, would quickly make it obtuse. Non-compliance (with agreed upon or by me set-out rules (of thumb)) and non-participation would also be unhelpful.

Starting _somewhere_ with a non-negative amount of members is key.

>>64986
Congratulations on being able to traverse Proust's web all the way to the other side anon. I'm currently at the beginning of vol 3. Did you ever read Walter Benjamin's essay on Proust called "The Image of Proust"? You can find a translation of it in a book called Illuminations: Essays and Reflections. Since you just finished reading the whole thing, would you be so kind as to make a comment on this passage Benjamin wrote about the work?

>What was it that Proust sought so frenetically? What was at the bottom of these infinite efforts? Can we say that all lives, works, and deeds that matter were never anything but the undisturbed unfolding of the most banal, most fleeting, most sentimental, weakest hour in the life of the one to whom they pertain? When Proust in a well-known passage described the hour that was most his own, he did it in such a way that everyone can find it in his own existence. We might almost call it an everyday hour; it comes with the night, a lost twittering of birds, or a breath drawn at the sill of an open vindow. And there is no telling what encounters would be in store for us if we were less inclined to give in to sleep. Proust did not give in to sleep. And yet, or, rather, precisely for this reason Jean Cocteau was able to say in a beautiful essay that the intonation of Proust's voice obeyed the laws of night and honey. By submitting to these laws he conquered the hopeless sadness within him ("the incurable imperfection in the very essence of the present moment."), and from the honeycombs of memory he built a house far the swarm of his thoughts. Cocteau recognized what really should have been the major concern of all readers of Proust and yet has served no one as the pivotal point of his reflections or his affection. He recognized Proust's blind, senseless, frenzied quest for happiness.It shone from his eyes; they were not happy, but in them there lay fortune as it lies in gambling or in love. Nor is it hard to say why this paralyzing, explosive will to happiness which pervades Proust's writings is so seldom comprehended by his readers.

Did Proust's book strikes you as a quest for happiness? I always thought his "quest", if there is one, is the idea of holding onto a treasure that's about to be lost through literature. But then again, Walter Benjamin does warn this 'will to happiness' is seldom comprehended by the readers. I don't know what to make of it. I would very much like to hear your opinion on this.

>>64994
> Walter Benjamin's essay on Proust called "The Image of Proust"
Interesting, I will have to read this

> Did Proust's book strikes you as a quest for happiness?

I don't know, I didn't exactly perceive it as a quest for hapiness. It is not there or I might not be as insightful as Benjamin and Cocteau.
Proust, certainly, was a very sensitive and prone to illness person. This special sensitivity of course took a major place in moving him to write. Was some malady tormenting him? Given his quirks and troublesome behaviour, that's highly probable. We can't also forget his privileged material conditions that allowed him to first live a life of leisure and finally to fully dedicate himself to write. Somebody like Tolstoy that regarded country side life as the best and deemed bourgeois life as empty and sick, would probably consider Proust as some spoiled bourgeois kid that did nothing of value with this life but dwell on useless feminine sensitivity.

That said, I don't know if Proust was searching for happiness of what he wanted to reach exactly but he was indeed troubled and sensitive and these qualities explain this massive work. When you are satisfied with your life or busy with the every day routine, you don't feel a need to write a monument like this.

> When Proust in a well-known passage described the hour that was most his own, he did it in such a way that everyone can find it in his own existence

This is so true. I trash talked him a bit but he was undoubtedly a genius. He was a master of conveying the feelings of the small details. And those small details are everything we have and everything we were. Did he capture "soul" or he merely is playing with sensations to evoke nostalgia ? I think he was onto something and his art is akin to Schopenhauer's principles of art: extract the eternal (in this case our "soul") from the relentless and brutal flow of time and death

>>64994
>>64992
When you say Marxist "babies," do you mean they're babies because they are Marxists, or that they are immature in their Marxism (and are undeveloped/under-read?)
I can join as long as I don't have to download a whole app or something. I try to keep my devices uncluttered and have been compressing/amputating/clearing out different things I have running so as to simplify life. My quality of living has improved drastically as a result.
Do you expect us all to read the same books (like a club) or more just discuss present reading? The latter gives me more flexibility, since I already have reading-obligations on top of my personal reading, and adding more "obligated" reading to my schedule would cut out my fun-reading.
>>64994
Not that guy but I'm glad to see you discuss Illuminations. I am preparing to read the essays, but need to start/finish In Search of Lost Time before I engage with his writing. It appears very accessible and my friends highly recommend Illuminations. How do you feel about the work as a whole? I'm curious.

>>65026
Mostly the first since more important; also I'd argue it's correlation, not causation. The second is true of nearly all of them anecdotally at least (E.g., they can't trace each movement or ideology to its contributors; why and when they diverged from its parent or the main branch; can't distinguish between historically close or related ones.).

I wouldn't want to use a separate program either. Just about everybody has an email address, which is why I wanted a mailing list. I haven't a server, nor spare computer currently. You know, to manage subscriptions of and resend emails to less than 5 peeps. But the email protocol allow for arbitrarily long texts, whereas IM clients, whatever the client, incentivize rapid-fire, short ones. I'm open to ideas.

I have two email addresses on my neocities page. Either of you: >>64966 >>65026 (if not same person) or whoever else is willing can send me something so I can at least have a list. It would be shared with all members, until a centralized solution steps in. Since most email (web-)clients don't support sending to groups, none that I use at least, likely to combat spam, one'd have to select all members for every new subject. Thankfully, that can be editted without recipients being removed.

It'd be like a reading or literature club in the everybody would discuss what they've read, opine upon others' shared thoughts (e.g., "well I didn't so because X, Y, Z", "you might prefer X by Y to that—it's more Z and less of Q", "how do you reconcile this with that?", "but what do you think about X?", and so). Because we're not 60-year-old grannies in a small flyover town, agreeing on 1 book would be harder than just on an author or a topic. The latter would be choisen either democratically (suboptimal to impossible with so few voters), or sequentially by all, a daisy-chain. And if you don't want to, fine, just talk about what you've read, if at all, or ask others about whatever they have. I'd be interested in hearing others thoughts so long as they be thorough, or incisive, or novel (to me facts or opinions). Two other book club type things failed for me already, maybe third time's the charm?

Example just came to mind, I've Proust's In Search of Lost Time in my log, was added even quite early, probably from here? He's not been mentioned more than 3–4 times in the books I've read so far, but I added it in. If one of you would be finishing it, if it not too-too long (like Ancient Evenings' 3e6 words, fuck me) I'd read it to join in on ensuing discussion.

It wouldn't be crowded nor shallow.

>>65032
I'd very much like to read Proust. I plan to start him next month, actually, once my schedule clears up.

>>65032
Finished Travels in Siberia. Apparaently the circuit's been done by at least 15 different Ohioans within some decades of the the its writing. As well as as far back as the 13 or 16 century from various other explorers and travelers. Dude did his research and included a bibliography, so muchos kudos for that. Too often long-winded. The Russophilic aspect grates me so obscenely that I'd attached an 'annoying' mark to my rating of 'above mediocre but not quite decent either'. The history of region, that is, the history of the politics of monarchical Russian from its establishment to dissolution was included. In more detail than needed, I'd say. Not much in the way of fun or whimsy or share-worthy-around-the-camp-fire. Plain observation from a guy in his 50s, rarely interspersed with profound or naïve or American. Eh. At 1.8e5, roughly 2 novels' length, could have been decocted into something more potent. The genre of travelog(ue) is—, or rather has been too commercialized in the past few 5-ish decade. This is from 2001, so 1 post-collapse. The ones done by George Kennan aroun 1870 should be much more interesting, both are to be found at archive.dot in not great scanned condition. The TTS output is gonna be garbage.

Gave up on Popisho. I'm fucking hating succubi or anything vaguely feminine, so judging over 4 characters, emotions, and shit being unrealistic, impossible even is inacceptable, and the Jamacian cant is fucking annoying me since the reader of the audiobook varies her speed from 1x to 3x. I'll give the other half a shot in a few weeks, but the flite-version rather that the reader. Fuck me.

Going to finish Ambrose Bierce's "The Devil's Dictionary" and start Chester Himes' "If He Hollers Let Him Go". Have the next to last of his better contributions to literature. After that Maria Adelmann's "succubi of a Certain Age" since it may be about rape, or something, and her other book "How to be Eaten" was very mature and surreal at times, where metaphor and mundane mingled and you didn't really know the exact facts. Only the results and feels. Hope she doesn't disappoint. Like they all eventually do. Fucking succubi. "All snakes!" like my one grandmother says.

>>64999
Thanks for the response anon. I think you would enjoy the essay, it's less than 20 pages long. You can find it on libgen as usual.
>>65026
>How do you feel about the work as a whole? I'm curious.
Walter Benjamin introduced me to Robert Walser and I always feel very inclined to praise him because of that, so take my opinion with more than a grain of salt. That said I think his essays are very good indeed. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction is a brilliant look at objects of art and what they are. To be honest though, his cultural criticism, valid as they are, don't appeal to me. Benjamin looked at art to remember about societies, their machinations and conflicts, I look at art to forget. We're opposites in that regard.

My very favorite essay in that book is the one called Theses on the Philosophy of History. There are so many beautiful thoughts in there. Many weird ones, even bizarre, where his critical theories, his romanticism, his German and Jewish roots make for a sublime and ghastly piece of text. I believe he's one of the great thinkers when it comes to analyse literature and art in the Western world. My absolute favorite piece in the book:

>A Klee painting named "Angelus Novus" shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.

I think this paragraph is the exact moment where his artistic sensibilities, his religious compulsions, his fears and his talent as a writer culminate in a beautiful, frightening and fascinating image. To define human history that way and see it whole in a painting like that. I never looked at any paintings the same way ever again after knowing what he saw in Angelus Novus. In fact I began studying mathematics not long after reading that. Texts like these have a very chaotic nature, it feels like a religion in many ways. My brain began to fight intensively to keep some form of order and logic in itself. The solution was learning algebra.

>>65049
I officially got fired today finally. Woot. Now I have to dispute it and wait another month probably. Anywho

The Devil's Dicitonary
Ambrose Bierc
A compilation of his casual-remarks-turned-wittisms on imbued meanings of and connotations in everyday words during his years as a columnist for periodicals. It's short and sweet. A mild bitterness, bad-faith, despondency in humanity I notice. Cynicism perhaps? But uncalled for, too much of it. Up to the letter M, for example, there wasn't one "hey, people can be nice too". The exaggeration is neither subdued, nor cartoonishly overdone, it's half-way between snide and sarcasm.

The Third Generation
Chester Himes
I'm not sure what Chester Himes was attempting with this novel. He was a black American author born at the start of the 20. century, celebrated for his hard-boileds, and ones with commentary on the racial tensions and dynamics within and without his 'black' race. The Harlem Detective series didn't strike me as engaging, given the choice I have at hand, but his "Lonely Crusade" was, to repeat myself, poignant. Precise and accurate to what would happen. Fifth publication starts off describing a marriage, a family. The female is where the action stems from, thinking herself nobler, better, and than the rest of her race, because she is only some ratio black. An actual word from the novel 'octoroon' that was at the time of the novel, early 1900–1925, used reminds me of the miscegenation laws National Socialists drafted, accepted, issued about what—, that is, who exactly counts as a Jew. I wouldn't have waste a third the pages to say, slightly black succubus bitching about everything and unhappy with being back and having everything. Makes her appear to the reader as the ginormous, ingrateful cunt that she is. Sure, that sentence can be extended to a paragraph, a chapter, but it was meandering withtout the plot furthering. Sure, time passed, but what of it? I don't know where he was going with this. Maybe she becomes accepting of her race..? Maybe she helps others..? Maybe it's actually about the children who when I'd dropped it were illegally fleeing the state emotionally blackmailed and dragged by their mother to comfit her in that that'll be raised white(-r), or something like that. Requires severe editting by the author.

10 Books that Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn't Help
Benjamin Wiker
A bad-faith, bland, benefiting from present-day, first-world hindsight top 10 list by one of those American faggots that thinks having a Ph.D. next to one's name is a stamp of correctness. Offers nothing new, offers nothing really. A stupid, unread religidrone may like this? Misrepresents as a child would positively impactful, key to the human development scientists,philosophers, economists to pat himself on the back for reassuring himself about his close—, or rather absent-minded, dogmatic, and predictable to a T 'faith'. Can't see being his nose.

The Stainless Steel Rat
Harry Harrison
Found it in a scifi dir. Fuck me this is bad writing. Gary Stu in robotic form. Why would anybody read this? In 1963, the concept of robots wasn't new?


Finally got around to starting the first of the below two, it's pretty good for something round 2500 years in age, did about half. The latter is also starting out pretty swell. I'll finish the chink tomorrow and continue with some other lighter bullshit.

Tao Te Ching
Lao Tzu, Ursula K. LeGuin

The Crystal Child: A Story of the Buried Life
Theodore Roszak

>>65066
This Theodore Roszak? It makes me want to re-read The Cult of Information.

>>65091
Yes, the scholar, not the sculptor. There are many .pdf's in libgen, and of those many are probably scans, but still stuff is missing. The Crystal Child is well-researched and a good novel, I'll do a write-up, but the first half at least mostly explores (male only?) sexuality and disease(-s). His other work's definitely interesting, one of the more intelligent and eloquent people that aren't just lel drugs.

Currently reading the Upanishads. Very strange text. Beautiful metaphors and imagery describing the transmigration of Atman (soul?) in rebirth and eventual reunion with Brahman.

The graphic and strange metaphors of sex with succubi are off putting but also sort of interesting.

You're being exiled to a desert island and you can only bring 5 books. Which 5 would you take?

>>65114
-wikipedia in book form
-printouts of all the hentai and porn i like, bound into book form
-the bible
-world's largest hand-made book (physical size, not page count. it would become my house)
-something like the low-tech magazine book (ideally the no-tech book, but that doesn't exist yet)

>>65114
Silmarillion, Srimad Bhagavatam, Disquisitiones arithmeticae, Zhuangzi, Boruto next generation

I'm reading Genesis 6 Giants by Quayle, very interesting read. I don't agree with everything he writes, but he makes some compelling points. We're clearly being lied to about history.

>>65114
5 Bible books so if I spoil one, I'll have others

>>65114
1001 Nights
Dream of the Red Chamber
Srednicki's Quantum Field Theory
Anatomy of Melancholy
Pali Canon

>>65137
You really pushed the envelope there. How about 5 books you can order from Amazon or Barnes & Noble? There's a house there for you to live in. They airlift supplies once a month.
>>65143
>Disquisitiones arithmeticae
>Boruto next generation
Teenage ninjas and number theory? Didn't see that coming.
>>65152
If you lose or ruin your book they airlift another copy for you by the end of the month. You can pick 4 other titles without that particular concern. I know they do that because I'm the one who posed the question and just right now I came up with this airlift idea so you can add another 4 books to your collection.

I was looking for science fiction that doesn't have any human characters. Turns out this is much harder to find than I thought. What you do have is a lot of thinly veiled humans: it doesn't have humans characters but the aliens behave pretty much like humans or the robots behave like humans, etc. Seems like no fiction really removes the human element, say, like a geometry book for example, or a book about noble gases, or a book about insect behavior. There are many non-fiction books out there where the human element is absent but fiction writers doesn't seem to find that interesting at all.

>>65114
In Search of Lost Time
The Man without Qualities
The Recognitions
The Tunnel
The Books of Jacob

>What you do have is a lot of thinly veiled humans: it doesn't have humans characters but the aliens behave pretty much like humans or the robots behave like humans
You can only imagine what you already know. Beyond that is pure abstraction. When you imagine extraterrastrials, they are necessarily somewhat terrestrials, to some degree. When you imagine a thinking thing, it can only be human-like.

>>65176
Yes but we know about other animals besides humans. We know about things like chemistry and mathematics as well. I couldn't find a single novel where the author tries to make a story focusing on an alien based on ants or viruses, the main characters are always thinly veiled humans. How about making a story solely talking about an alien based on bacteria? I'm not saying it would be an exciting story but I'm very surprised to find out there's not a single novel out there that goes beyond placing humans in silly masks as the main focus of the plot.

Can't wait for these lined up after I'm finished with the first two thirds of a book that's technically longer than all of these combined.

>>65177
You should just read H.P. Lovecraft's stories, or even Thomas Ligotti. Lovecraft is really one of the few writers to captuere what you want

>>65186
I really enjoyed The succubus in A Swing, all of Adams' books are excellent

>>64932
I'm really liking T.S. Eliot, gonna memorize The Waste Land and some of his other poems

>>301571
you can download "otaku; japan's database animals" on here;
https://www.pdfdrive.com/otaku-japans-database-animals-e20915838.html

i would have gladly shared the pdf directly with all of you but for an unknown reason i can't seem to download anything from this site lately..
anyone else having this problem?

> What is Art? Leo Tolstoy

Interesting work by Leo Tolstoy. While I agree with all of his main points, I found his heavy moralistic tone difficult to follow.

As the title says, this work is the inquiry of Tolstoy regarding art. He is concerned with all the movement,all the manpower, the studies, the education, the endless seas of ink, the countless critics, etc… all the massive effort that is put over the production of art in our society. While many consider this effort to be the pinnacle of civilization and the main objective of the noble and well-nurtured souls, Tolstoy believes that something is missing.

With his astounding clarity, Tolstoy examines what is considered as art in modern times. A thoroughly revision of the available literature concerning aesthetics of the time, bring him the conclusion that art and beauty are being seen as either some abstract or metaphysical thing or simple biological pleasure derived from something.

Both things are wrong to Tolstoy and he opts for a simpler but more powerful definition: art is the transmission of the common feelings of humanity and the more infectious this transmissions, the better is the art.

In the modern exercise of art, he mostly sees false attempts: imitation of common motifs, useless obscurity just for the sake of it, trying to exalt the feelings with shoc|king or corny scenes. Additionally, Tolstoy believes that the institutionalization of an art canon and the professionalization of the art world are detrimental. Art has to be sincere and spontaneous for it to produce any infectious feeling, otherwise it is just senseless drudgery, mere replication of common and accepted motifs.

How did art end in this state? Tolstoy argues that this is the result of the loss of meaning of life in the bourgeois elite. The religious conciousness of the time forms the basis of the art produced by any society. In the case of Europe, christianism and his doctrines (all men are equal, brotherhood of men, all encompassing god love) were the main material used to produce art. At some point, the elite of the society started to lose faith in the christian religion. With the new discoveries of science and the evidence that church was a corrupt institution, the elite was unable to keep believing in the old dogma. But what to make art from then? Believing in nothing, the elite decided that art are beautiful and curious things that produce us pleasure. This was a turning point, and as the elite were in power, it was not difficult for them to propagate this new definition of art throughout society

A colossal effort is being made in modern times to produce curious things to amuse bored people. That's preposterous to Tolstoy.

So far I think this art definition is masterful and I agree with it but then Tolstoy proceeds to say that the main objective of the art of our times should be the propagation of the christian feeling and the brotherhood of all men. Anything deviating from this should not be considered as art today. Dark and hopeless feelings must be avoided.

I disagree here, with the loss of the christian conciousness, a ton of very interesting artists began to explore the human condition with a profoundity that was never tried before, Tolstoy being one of them

For example Tolstoy trashed Baudelaire for the degeneration of his thoughts and his lack of clarity. I love the darkness of Baudelaire and I think the ennui and nihilism he conveys in some of his poems is a common feeling of the modern citizen.

That being said, this was very interesting. I take Tolstoy art definition as mostly correct: art has to be spontaneous, sincere, contagious and has to convey common and profound human experiences

>>65236
I never read that but it sure sounds very interesting, I'm going to give it a try sometime. I'm not surprised that's what he thinks art should be, in Confession he talks about Christianity and how it was of all things in this world the thought that ultimately saved him. It's a very naive thought to believe the thing that saves us is the thing that must also ultimately save everyone, but then again for Christianity to work as intended it must be true to everybody.

I think it's undeniable that art and religion are very close, in fact I don't think they were a separate thing for most of human history. From the Lion-man sculpture to the pyramids and Michelangelo's David art seems to focus on the magical side of human experience. I think religion might be an organized form of our dreams and fears and is the one to solidify those feelings. It's funny going into a museum and realizing if you remove the things that can be considered "religious artefacts" there would be pretty much nothing left in the art sections all the way up to the 20th century. So when Tolstoi says art should be religion, he's not asking for anything weird.

I agree with you on Baudelaire. There's still beauty beyond the Gods, the works of M. C. Escher comes to mind, though neither Baudelaire or Escher will save you from the thought of death like a religion would, nor I don't think art will be able to have that assurance about life ever again, unless is becomes religious. I think that's where religion will always have the upper hand.

>>65236
Thought I thoroughly dislike most Russian literature, especially the so-called classics, greats, I will give this a shot, because of the subject. Reminds of Schopenhauer's "The Art of Literature", among quite a few other books about read, bibliophilia, libraries, and so on (I have a running list). So thank you.

My main two reads ast of last 2 weeks (very slow, because mentally convalescing (slowly, with repeated interruption)) are:
The Gates of Janus (Extended Edition)
Ian Brady

Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life
Adam Phillips

Both are great, both sub- and objectively. The former is a human being who perceives others similar to me, share thoughts and emotions, so I there is a connection, which for me is rather rare. Insightful if you never thought about the matter yourself in bredth and depth, and to me, connecting, or just soothing in a "hey, you're not really that alone"-kind of way. The latter is a heavy-hitter, the first part of the 6 I read 3 times before continuing, the the other parts warrant it another as well. The talk of frustration, frameworks of psychoanalysts and psychologists help define the problems many of us experience as people. I would recommend it any male in trouble, however defined in whatever domain. I'll revisit it again later again.

Otherwise have been reading small bullshit trash. The 'fun' one present is "Bad Motherfucker" by Gavin Edwards, about actor Samuel Jackson.

Anywho.

>>65241
Are you >>65066, >>65049?
You've been contributing a lot to this thread and I always want to make a comment on your reads but time and time again I never even heard of the stuff you're reading, it's a rather unusual taste you have. Anyway I just want to let anons posting itt that I appreciate it and I read every post even when I don't make a direct response.

>>65242
Oui. The unread part of my booklog is comprised of last 3 years' entries in audiobookbay; references in anything I've read; the compliment of work already enjoyed by authors, or just past or just future.

Plenty of great stuff exists, and some I've access to, I know authors' and titles' names. That would lead to some desensitization, which could like to a crash afterward, when (of if, if I, say, learn to appreciate beautify (or the like) in everything else) depleted. So I intersperse with weak or mediocre books, which also allow one to better contrast, to better define what it is about the others that one likes.

>>65114
Michel de Montaigne's Complete Essays
The Book of Disquiet by Pessoa
Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft
The Complete One Thousand and One Nights
The World as Will and Representation by Arthur Schopenhauer

>>65241
>Thought I thoroughly dislike most Russian literature, especially the so-called classics
Saying this in a literature thread should be considered a bannable offense.

>>65263
I agree with him. I find it too miserabilist and philosophical in the most grating, heavy-handed ways.

>>65263
Being somewhat to more than a bit familiar with, though no scholar of, Slavic culture and Eastern Orthodox Christianity, having watched, percevied, engaged with supposed classics or greats: plays, movies, series, games, music, etc. most artic media, most genres therein, I notice a vast repetition of the same themes, a predictability of the characters. They like how in majority of Japanese media—literature, movies, anime, manga that I've sampled or 'consumed'—, there are too many copy-pastes that bring nothing new, and that I find predictable, and hence unenjoyable. If you've had better luck, great for you, write about. I'm willing to give chances, less so secondary and subsequent, but I'm willing to be wrong and to find a gem, than to wholesale paint 'em all the same shade of shit.

It's not that there isn't good. There is not as much as some would like to have me believe, or would claim objectively as good.

Don't be absolute. 'Bout nuttin'.

>>65264
So true bro! Unlike my German philosophy which is full of composed words that made me feel intelligent!

>>65266
You sound like one of those very obnoxious non-fictions readers from /lit/ that believe themselves smart because they waste their time reading essays from the 20th century onward.

Don't read fiction if you don't like it but don't present yourself as acknowledged about it.

>>65275
We try our best to keep this thread civil and free of personal attacks, anon.

>>65275
I dabbled in lit only for a few months after starting reading 2019.12.xx. >=95% of posts are middle-school-tier, try-hard attempts trying to pass off as witticism, convincing at best other similarly stupid (be it low IQ, or vastly unread, or just underage) users.

Slightly past 1000 titles in my booklog, I calculated the ratio of fiction to non-fiction, regardless of completion state (.05 or 1; though the average wasy .7–.8, don't recall) to be ~65:35. I don't believe myself especially 'smart'. Everybody else, all too often out of emotion, prefer to show their rather daft, dull colors.

Schürsenkel and Schornsteinfeger were some of my first memrorized German words. Why you'd attack German's capability to compound nouns is beyond me. It obviates need to import or coin new words, which is helpful for the natural sciences. Look to Arabic for a language that's mostly unchanged for 1.5e3 years. It and Japanese just use calques for all foreign concepts and ideas: laser in Arabic, kiss in Japanese; compare with Chinese 互联网 lit. mutual couplet net(work), which is used for (the) internet.

>>65277
/lit/ is some of the stupidest tryhards on 4, an urchin subcommunity of humanities undergrads who want to do the edgy left philosophy but can't stand pol

This video https://yewtu.be/g0nfnmO6nLY speaks on what I was getting at with stereotypical Japanese and Russian literature, the first 4' specifically, the rest is details. She coincidentally picked 4 books I know of, 3 of which I've read or tried reading. One ineluctable flaw is that she is half-Japanese, grew up there; she knows the culture, norms, the context, the milieu; and she read them in Japanese, which is the trivial solution to the problem. Linguistically, Russian and English are far closer than than Japanese and any European language. I should have said that I dislike the translations of Japanese that I've read, thought who many translators must one go through before concluding, the language is the issue not its recasting. From 9' to the end, she gives an example of these differences. I don't think these differences are reconcilable, a meaningful translation would necessitate changing the content, I think.

Anyway, reading. Lonely.

> The Philosophy of Redemption by Philipp Mainländer

I was deeply impressed by this work. Although I couldn't read the original German version since I don't know the language, I managed to get a good sense of Mainländer's genius through an incomplete Spanish translation.

Mainländer follows in the footsteps of Kant and Schopenhauer, but he presents his own original ideas that lead to different and highly interesting conclusions. He likely had a profound impact on Nietzsche, who decided to diverge from Schopenhauer and pessimism after reading Mainländer's work.

In each section of this work, Mainländer tackles different topics and, in a way, constructs a system. The sections are as follows: Analytic of Cognition, Physics, Aesthetics, Ethics, Politics, and Metaphysics.

> Analytic of Cognition
Mainländer is a natural heir to the systems of Kant and Schopenhauer, and therefore, he doesn't deviate significantly from them. He agrees with Kant on various aspects such as the a priori/a posteriori division in relation to human experience, the establishment of limits to human experience, and the abandonment of transcendent knowledge beyond human experience in favor of immanent knowledge derived from immediate human experience. Additionally, Mainländer considers the introspective discovery of the will as the thing-in-itself as an essential advancement, following Schopenhauer's teachings. What Mainländer does is attempt to purify these systems further from any transcendental residue and bring them closer to realism and human experience. For example, while Mainländer acknowledges the existence of a priori structures within us necessary for constructing our experience, he abandons the notions of space, time, and causality as complete a priori elements. According to Mainländer, while our innate a priori concepts encompass "point-space" and "point-time," the complete ideas of space and time emerge as a posteriori constructs formed through the integration of diverse experiential snapshots. By doing so, Mainländer's effort is directed toward assigning more value to the external world as a source of knowledge, while also emphasizing that there is a "thing-in-itself" in the external world, although he never entirely discards a priori notions.

> Physics
In this section, Mainländer closely aligns with Schopenhauer. The essence of nature, according to Mainländer, is will and movement. Every element of nature, be it atoms, molecules, plants, or human beings, exhibits this inherent tendency. However, while Schopenhauer views the will as singular and eternal, Mainländer argues that we inhabit a world of multiple wills interconnected in a "dynamic connection." When it comes to animals and, more importantly, human beings, Mainländer emphasizes the division between will/body/blood/organs/demon and spirit/mind/consciousness. Spirit is not an entirely new element but rather a new manifestation of the will. Through this new element, we gain greater insight into time and can momentarily disconnect from the "demon."

>>65451
> Aesthetics
Mainländer goes into explaining what constitutes beauty (proportions, impressions, harmony, etc) beauty in each art (painting, sculture, music, poetry, etc). The general idea is that beauty emerges when our spirit disconnects from the demon. When we manage to perceive the world while disconnected from the demon's desires, we enter an artistic state, a sublime state. Clearly, Mainländer is influenced by Schopenhauer's ideas in this regard.

> Ethics
According to Mainländer, the ethical path involves renouncing the will, aligning with Schopenhauer's perspective. However, Mainländer posits that complete selfless acts are impossible and that such a definition is, in fact, contradictory. To be alive means to have motives, as this world is in continuous movement. The moment something ceases to have motives and stops moving, it is dead. Thus, Mainländer's pessimism begins to emerge: the most moral thing is death and nothingness. Christianity and Buddhism concur with this notion.

> Politics
Up until now, Mainländer has mainly added comments and made adjustments to Kant and Schopenhauer's systems. However, his most original ideas appear in this section and in Metaphysics. As far as I know, Kant wasn't extensively involved with politics, while Schopenhauer held disdain for socialist movements and leaned toward a reactionary/conservative stance. He viewed the proletariat's struggle with contempt and deemed it pointless since the will and its demands are eternal (in a socialist utopia, people would kill themselves out of boredom). Mainländer, on the other hand, diverges from his mentor and appreciates the idea of socialism. In this section, he constructs his own "philosophy of history": the history of human civilization entails the gradual reduction of human vitality. This can be observed by studying how each civilization transitions through different forms of organization. The death of a civilization is marked by a loss of the will to live and an intensification of the spirit's activity. The process may appear cyclical since civilizations seem to die and grow throughout history, but Mainländer posits that the movement is akin to a spiral. Ultimately, all human civilizations are destined to die. The rise of a global human civilization serves as proof of this. With the expansion of European colonialism and the advent of mass production, the movement of civilization has reached unprecedented speed and all-encompassing nature. Civilization is now unstoppable and will reach every corner of the earth. To Mainländer, offering knowledge and education to all humans was the crucial step toward redemption. For this reason, he sympathized with socialism. Education brings the knowledge that life is suffering and not worth living, and that is redemption. In a profound sense, Mainländer states that "civilization kills." Mainländer also examines the progression of religion: humanity has transitioned from religions venerating nature due to fear of the unknown to religions exalting death and nothingness as the supreme state (Christianity, Buddhism).

> Metaphysics
In the Politics section, Mainländer viewed the loss of the will to live caused by civilization as a positive development and considered it the path to redemption for all humans. However, does this principle apply to the entire universe? Will we be alive again somewhere, sometime? According to Mainländer, the entire universe follows the same principle of decay. In Physics, he stated that we exist in a universe of multiple interconnected wills, where continuous movement and inherent tendencies explain the causality governing the world. Everything that exists is interconnected, and causality can be understood through this "struggle" between multiple wills. While it is impossible to reach the beginning of time through our representations, which Kant has proven, Mainländer speculates using the interconnected nature of reality as an argument. Although we can never reach the beginning of time, if there was one, by following the traces offered by our perceptions, one could suggest that everything that exists is "one" in some way. Since speculation about the origin of time falls beyond experience, any attempt to describe it can only be done negatively: atemporal, non-spatial, yet unique, as everything that exists now is interconnected. Mainländer constructs his metaphysics in this manner: there was an atemporal, non-spatial, eternal unity in the past, but it no longer exists. We now inhabit a universe of multiple wills engaged in conflict. What happened? Once again, human reasoning cannot provide any insight into atemporal, non-spatial matters, but we can utilize our own will as a regulative tool. Why did this unity cease to exist? It was overwhelmed by its own existence and chose to disappear, i.e., committed suicide. Why didn't this unity vanished completely in one instant? This unity could desire to be anything except non-being, as that would contradict its own essence. The death of the unity marks the beginning of our time, and everything that exists in this time is consequently marked by the original desire for death. Mainländer argues that Schopenhauer's will to live is partially correct; at its core lies the will to die. The continuous movement of the universe implies a loss or reduction of "energy." Gases strive to expand endlessly, liquids seek dispersion, solids tend to fall towards the center of the Earth, and human civilization is a gradual loss of human vitality, among other examples. Everything yearns to crumble. Additionally, against Schopenhauer's will to live, Mainländer asserts that if things wither and die, it is because they are "programmed" to do so; it is inherent to their essence; otherwise, they wouldn't perish. Modern scientific theories such as the Big Bang and entropy align to some extent with Mainländer's cosmic vision. The universe itself will be redeemed.
Mainländer also tries to connect his system with Buddhism, Brahmanism, and Christianity. He sees a certain inclination in these religions towards valuing either the world or the individual (Buddhism: individualism; Brahmanism: the world, disregarding the individual; Christianity: a somewhat middle ground). Mainländer considers them all to be correct, but he believes his system resolves the contradictions between the world and the individual, the transcendental and the immanent: the transcendental lies before the dawn of time, it did exist, but it no longer does; we now reside in a world of multiple interconnected wills that we apprehend through our immanent human reasoning.

*flaps lips with finger*

>>65539
Try Norman Mailer's Ancient Evenings, >3e6 words, about 4 novels' worth, if you want something too long. Not prosaic, but it does read like three loosely tied together pieces; only first was worth it, but that's subjective.

>>65540
I-read-much-have-a-neocities-page-and-wanted-to-start-a-mailing-list anon here. Framasoft offers software to manage small mailing lists. None of you less than 8 posters in this thread wrote me when I'd asked. Not even with a throw-away, single-use email address. So either y'all've different priorities than me, or y'all're real shy, anxious, etc. Right? This thread gets a weekly soliloquotious bump, but it's dead. Maybe I just have too much (free) time? I get that priorities differ, but this is, and what I've been doing in my remarks and reviews on books on my site, seems unfullfilling because of the lack of refinement borne of diffraction through others and reflection upon them.

I still want to talk to actual fucking people, in this case with regards to discussion and literature, books, (Tai Lopez voice) nahlej. If you'd like something similar rather than emphemeral unacknowledged writings on wizchan, where the context, I'd argue, isn't great, say so. If daily-ish mailing ain't your cuppa or you don't read and don't want to/can't make the time, then I'll not create the ml.
Excuse the desperation seeping thru the cracks.

What happened to that mailing list idea? It would be nice, but it seems it went nowhere.

>>65547
>>65556
I expected interested parties to mail my public, neocities email address (which now is deleted, though I did make a new one; it'ss just not on the page) to get the ball rolling. Nobody wrote. Two showed lukewarm excitement.

I'll create it using the aforementioned https://framalistes.org/abc/en/ and write back

>>65557
Tried registering with a webkit2 and ungoogled chromium browsers. Either upon password request an actual french fuck has to issue it (long past working hours), or I'm failing somewhere, or their shit's fucked. I'll look again to see if other non-local solution exist. And if not, I may try with GNU mailman.

>>65558
"Framalistes is full! The service does not close, but is restricted: you can continue to manage your lists as usual, but it is no longer possible to create new ones.
We are opening Framagroupes, an equivalent ethical discussion list service, on a new server. If you want to create a new list, go to framagroupes.org!"

>>65559
Thank you.
(exaggerated) Oooh, they want at least 3. party cooties enabled…
some.readers@framagroupes.org now exists. I don't know if you can request submission by mailing to it

>>65560
I think one has to visit the page of the mailing to subscribe, because I'm not find sth like: 'send to this address with this subject to subscribe'
It's currently open to all and anybody can write it. The translation work on sympa or frama is roughshod, I'll look it over in daylight.
I'm currently writing reviews on shit books. Then finishing up Santa Steps Out.

The mailing list works. Sign up and trash, fawn over, whine the written word! This is a reading thread, but it'd be more about discussion of art. I can't talk much about sculpture or leatherworking, but I'd gladly read of another's thoughts and possibly opine. Games and anime would fall in here too so long as it's good-faith discussion, deep and broad.

>>65566
I wanted to join because it's a book discussion, if you are going to talk about random topics, I already have wizchan for that. I dislike how people always need to talk about off-topic stuff, as if there was not enough places to do so.

>>65567
You dissuade yourself. To me, all art is connected. Philosophy is not literature. Should that be excluded? Nitpickery is missing the point: what exactly is a 'book', 'literature', and so on. Join or don't, it's only me in there. If there's no other subscriptors (subscribees?) I might as well just post to my site as I've done for the past 2 years.

>>65568
>Philosophy is not literature
Book discussion implies talking about book. If we are talking about some book that talks about anime or art, sure, but it's not talking about art itself. There are books wrote by philosophers. I have no idea why you went with literature when I said a book. If you are also unable to define a book, I have no idea what you even want to do. But consider me out, anyway.

Completed reading all YA and adult novel of phase 2 of Star Wars High Republic, pretty fun reading, now reading all adults book of phase 1, for now is a fun reading too, rising storm is bit of drag right now.

>All the demons and sorcerers came together in a great army, with the black demon as their leader, and their roars ascended to the heavens. But Tahmures suddenly confronted them, and the war did not last long; two-thirds of the demons he subdued by spells, and the other third by his heavy mace. He dragged them wounded and in chains in the dust, and they pleaded for their lives, saying, “Don’t kill us, we can teach you something new and highly profitable.” The king granted them their lives on condition that they reveal their secrets to him, and when he had freed them from their chains they had no choice but to obey him. They taught the king how to write, and his heart glowed like the sun with this knowledge.

I think it's the first time I see a mythical origin of the written word where instead of a benevolent god or entity teaching humans how to read and write it's actually malevolent demons. Pretty interesting. The book is called Shahnameh btw.

I have finished reading the complete Brothers Grimm fairy tales. Dear God, it was a pain to get through, the stories were repetitive, the characters were unlikeable, the plots were nonsensical. It really makes you appreciate how far literature has advanced since the days of telling this crap around a campfire.

>>65581
You didn't like Pied Piper of Hamelin? What about Rumpelstiltskin?

C# indepth
C++ primer
OpenGL Superbible
How to talk to anyone - 92 Little Tricks for Big Success in Relationships

>>65583
C# indepth is absolutely terrible, redditors recommended me this and it makes sense since the author sounds like he's a redditors himself. Retarded formulations and unclear unprecise descriptions. As if the guy learned how to write technical literature from reading reddit posts

>>65588
>The sultans are always wise and just [..] the princes are always strong and handsome […] Named characters are always so beautiful and skilled and virtuous […]
>Do you think that’s a difference between the abridged and full version?

I think it's more like the reviewer read a re-written version for children. One does not need to read more than the very first story to know that's not true. In fact, you don't need to know more than the basic premise to know that's not true. The entire plot of Arabian Nights hinges on the fact there's a murderous, unjust sultan (Shah Zaman) raping and killing succubi nightly, until Shahrazad is forced to intervene. An unwise, unjust sultan is the very reason the stories are being told in the first place and the main focus of the plot. Many stories have princes and other named characters being immoral and murderous and that's how they get in trouble in the first place. You have princes killing the favorite concubine of the sultan by accident and having to run from the palace, you have sultans throwing just men inside wells. There are so many instances of injustice and lack of wisdom perpetrated by the protagonists it's hard to go through more than a single story without finding an example that contradicts that statement. I can confidently say that reviewer, whatever book he may have read, it was not Arabian Nights.

>Also according to that guy medieval Arabs had a massive BBC fetish. Do you think that’s exaggerated?

I think it is since it happens to just a couple of characters in the book. There are more instances of succubi cheating on their husbands with demons, Ifrits and Jinns than with other humans. There's also instances of succubi cheating on their husbands with monkeys. It felt obvious to me the goal was to describe a perceived female immoral behavior, not a fetish. In the context you can tell they're going for the lowest, most disgusting things they could could think of succubi doing. "Prostitute for black slaves" is a particularly injurious epithet to call a succubus in that society, it shows that you could not be in a lower societal position. Most black slaves were domestic servants, so they didn't even enjoy the good fame of the Mamluks, the warrior slave class (most of those guys were from Eastern Europe and Turkey I think).

>>65582
Was the pied Piper a Grimm's story? It isn't in my book, but either way, the mayor is an asshole. In Rumpelstiltskin, the father is an asshole for screwing over his daughter like that, the prince for being so unreasonable, and finally the daughter for not keeping her promise.

>>65599
Sorry, I just realized it's not on the more well known collection which is a pity, it's by far my favorite story they published. You can read their version of the story on a book called German Legends of the Brothers Grimm, you can find it on libgen if you want. It's called Children of Hamelin. This particular collection was published in English in the early 80s and there was never a reprint. They have a more scholarly approach in there and try to stay closer to the original tales and legends they collected, sometimes it's just a fragment of a story, I guess that's why it's not as popular but imo it's their best work.

What are the books you have upcoming on your reading list? I think I can go through these before the year is over.
The Satyricon
The Republic (re-reading)
The Golden Ass
The Five-and-Twenty Tales of the Genie
The Epic of Gilgamesh (re-reading)
Thirty-Two Tales of the Throne of Vikramaditya
Le Morte D'Arthur
A Tale of Four Dervishes

I think I'll start with Le Morte D'Arthur, a book I've been planning to read for over a decade.

>>65602
> The Epic of Gilgamesh

does reading something from 2000 BC make you feel in touch with something primal from man's origins?

>>65603
Not at all. Gilgamesh feels very much the product of an advanced civilization. The story is well structured, there's character development, it's not that different of a modern novel and is in fact better than most modern novels. Conflicts are used to great dramatic effect and the feelings and troubles those characters go through are not alien at all to the modern readers.

I think the moment you have the written word and people are living in cities, you lose access to whatever primal nature man might have had. And the writers of Gilgamesh were urban dwellers of a very well established and advanced civilization. In fact that's a major theme in the story. Gilgamesh befriends a wild man called Enkidu. Enkidu is a primal man, a man before the raise of civilizations. He can talk to birds, trees and he can sleep out in the open without clothing.

I don't want to give any spoilers, but the process he goes through to be civilized will make you chuckle. It's a worthy read wiz, very short to, you can finish it in a single sitting. You can find the book on libgen if you're interested.

>>65604
A very wizardly process, to be sure.

My reading list consists mainly of books on society:
* The collapse of complex societies
* The sources of social power
* The breakdown of nations
* Principles of dealing with the changing world order

>>64932
What is the meaning of the "MAster Words" in the Jungle Book? What was Kipling attempting to represent?

Mowgli says the Master Words, and they compel the Jungle-People to act in a certain manner, like a social contract.

READING WITH BOOKWORMWIZ

Hey wizards, I'm planning to read a monumentally important work from Western literature called Bibliotheca of Pseudo-Apollodorus. It's one of the most relevant primary sources for Greek Mythology that managed to survive from antiquity. It's long overdue for me to become familiar with this book and I want to invite all of you to read it with me. It's the perfect title to do so. It's short, straightforward, written in a very accessible language and is culturally significant.

I've perused the book ahead and divided it into chunks of 20 to 30 pages each. We'll be reading one portion daily. I believe 20 to 30 pages a day is a comfortable enough pace that anyone interested will be able to keep it up. A lot of wizards out there complain of wasting time, I think this is the perfect opportunity to do something interesting, or at least different. So please join me in this adventure through Greek Mythology.

The Bibliotheca is an ancient myth compendium. It begins with the birth of the Gods, their struggles, eventual secession and the Titan wars resulting from it. It covers Zeus' ascension to power and the transition to the heroic age. We'll be reading the tales of Hercules, Theseus, Perseus, the Argonauts, all the heroes from the Iliad, the Odyssey and many others, their own struggles and ultimate fates.

By the end of each day I'll make a post commenting on the parts I liked and/or found particularly interesting, thus inviting a very informal conversation about what we just read. I'l also be reading a couple of related texts on the side and might make comparisons or commentary about them related to the Bibliotheca. Of course you're free to post your own opinions before I post something myself. It's a very informal thing. You can choose to participate in the conversation or simply follow the reading schedule as a lurker. It works both ways.

Pic related is the reading chart. As you can see, it will take us 15 days to read the entire book. It will start slowly, with 2 days to go through the introductory portion of the volume. This is intended so that any latecomers can easily catch up if they're interested. Then, on the third day, we begin with the actual Bibliotheca. You start with the chapter indicated on the left column (Begin at) and continue to the one on the right (Stop at). Please notice you only stop after reading the chapter indicated on the right. Easy enough, I'm sure!

I don't have a starting date yet. I'll let this post simmer for a couple of days, see if anyone is interested. After a few days I'll post again setting a starting date, probably the day after, with or without participants. You're welcome to join at any point of the reading process. Once I begin I'll be following the schedule all the way to the end of the book.

We'll be reading the translation released in 2008 by Oxford University Press which has a long tradition of publishing classical texts. I found two formats available, PDF and EPUB.
The PDF format can be found on libgen here:
https://libgen.rocks/ads.php?md5=F9AB90EB79A20F29EE6CB6FEED4C8562
The EPUB format I found on Z-Library, I think you need an account to access zlib now so I uploaded to anonfiles for easy access, here:
https://anonfiles.com/h7v211y6z5/The_Library_of_Greek_Mythology_Apollodorus_Robin_Hard_Z_Library_epub
If you have problems fetching any of those files let me know and I'll try to upload somewhere else for you.

And I think that's it for now. I hope I managed to make you interested in this undertaking. If you have any questions about it let me know and I'll try to respond to the best of my abilities. See you soon!

>>65632
This is dope, I wish I could join you. I'll be looking forward to your updates, who knows, maybe I give it a shot.

>>65633
You can if you wish. You can also drop at any time, it's all up to you really. Take a quick look on the book, you can download it through one of the links I posted. See if looks like the type of thing you would be interested in.

>>65632
this reminds me of the curriculum of schools in the early 20th century, basically just ancient and classical stuff. must have been awesome back in the day

Good news is I finished reading the first part of IQ84.
ALL 936 pages (felt like only yesterday that I was halfway there >>40358), loosely gave me some vibes of the aforementioned Mardones song throughout the final 1%.

Bad news is although I'm gonna take a break before continuing with the next book I won't be able to express my sentiment here Cos I'm still banned.

Cheers anyway.

Picked up A Tale of Four Dervishes after ditching Le Morte d'Arthur. The Arthurian narrative is so ungainly and coarse I couldn't go on. Four Dervishes on the other hand I found it to have that quaint quality one usually finds in narratives from medieval India and the Near East. Beautiful gardens, wandering fools at the mercy of wondrous and mysterious powers, palaces, treasures and precious gems of all colors and shapes. I feel like Western fantasy never quite got at the level of delicacy and poetry of those stories, being so fixed in heroes as it usually is, it misses the more inebriating nature and savory aspects of fantasy altogether.

I finished in two days, it's not a long book. It's in the frame narrative style of so many works of the medieval Orient. You have a king that fears old age and ends up secluding himself in deep melancholy. He leaves for a walk one night and sees four dervishes sitting in a graveyard, telling stories to each other. As the king hides behind a grave to hear the tales, the narrative takes us to all sorts of places, from gardens to subterranean palaces, to the high seas and ethereal kingdoms. The stories are usually short which helps to keep them fresh, light and entertaining. I loved it. Can't recommend it enough, specially for its brevity and colorful stories.

>>65632
I guess I gave enough time for people to join. Since nobody is interested, I'll be reading it at my own pace. Maybe I'll try again with another book, we'll see.

i liked these

Flatland was nice. Characters in the story live in a two dimensional world. Published in 1884.

>>65665
>I guess I gave enough time for people to join. Since nobody is interested, I'll be reading it at my own pace.
I've been coming over expecting your first post on the subject. I did read the introduction.
I couldn't really join you at 30 pages a day because I already read about 30 pages a day of other books. But I was thinking maybe I'd get inspired enough to try and keep up.

the file attached is a book about the collective unconscious and how ideas (memes) spread, adapt and evolve in this invisible realm and how it modifies human behavior

>>65689
this is called culture and cultural influence and has been discussed to death already

I'm reading Mark Twain "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" right now. Some wiz reviewed it and I figured I'd give it a try. This book is great and it's kinda trippy, I love it! Before this I read "The Sound and the Fury" by Faulkner

>>65691
i started reading that in between breaks at work last in 2021. cool to see others also reading it unexpectedly

having gotten used to isekai in anime, it was funny

>>65691
Ah yes, good, old Mark Twain, he had a heart in the right place.

>>65692
it makes me laugh and smile a lot. good book

>>65693
this is the first book of his i've read

>>65694
interesting, are you american? i had to read huckleberry finn

>>65695
Yes I'm american

>>65696
maybe it's an east coast thing to read twain in grade school. i remember the scenery from the book matching where i lived and all the adventures and so on being relatable

>>65697
I live on the west coast and I read huckleberry finn. I think they started phasing it out though cause it had nigger everywhere.

>>65657
I began the second part not too long ago.
Felt might be *stagnating* to have started another book in the process and read them simultaneously at first.
But the second part is 500+ pages, and this book is roughly 200, give or take.

How bad is you eyesight?
Mine got really bad in the last couple of years. Nowadays I just download ebooks and have a TTS engine read them for me.

Anyone know where I can find a pdf of this book or something? I'm curious but there's no way I'm buying it or getting it from a library.

>>65714
Any feminist who discovered /pol/ a week ago would write that. I want to know if there was any thinking behind it or if it just continues on like that for 400 pages. So no, that doesn't contain everything I need to know.

Am I right in thinking that he can't be *too* wizardly because he got published? I've read several fragments but need an opinion of someone with a bigger picture.

>>65716
idk who that is, but when i ask gpt to quote a random pessimistic writer, gpt seems to like him

>>65716
You've been reading Book of Disquiet and that's your concern? If the author fits an internet meme? I read the whole book and several of his poems and my bigger picture opinion for you is stop using the internet asap.

>>65712
https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=085669E06A4BFDAD44E0BC2663784D5A

It's in .epub format. You can read it with software like calibre on your computer if you don't have an e-reader or whatever.

Go to libgen.rs if you're ever looking for more books.

>>65719
thank you friend

>>65716
keep reading, it's a masterpiece

Reading now the Star Wars the original trilogy, is 570ish pages in total, from episode IV to VI.

16/07/2023 - start reading

Let see when I'm gonna end the book.

>>65712
>I'm curious but there's no way I'm buying it

based. i haven't read it. however i bet it's some used up post wall roastie bitchin about men that don't simp; so called low value men (as if all succubi weren't low value); and a litany of sexist slurs for virgins

>>65747
is there a good link to pirate the old dark horse star wars comics. i think the eu is much better than the globohomo squels we got

Finished Connecticut Yankee today, 10/10 book. Will take it easy for a few days then start a new book. I'm leaning towards Larry McMurtry's "Lonesome Dove"

>>65748
no you're based

>>65670
Sorry, just noticed you responded to my post. It's hard to bother with wizchan anymore and I gave up on this thread as well. I wish you good fun in your readings. Good bye.

About halfway through The Lost Weekend by Charles Jackson and loving it, by far the most realistic and painfully relatable portrayal of alcoholism I've seen in any media.

“They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” that they made a movie about in the 60s

Good books about crabs and wizards?

>>65613
I am interested in this, can you give some recommendations/examples?

Finished Reading Star Wars IV New Hope. Pretty cool and fun story, nothing mind blowing, but a well done sci fi story, could see why became so popular and why people hated the prequels and sequels, there story actually make sense and follow logical sequence and sense, reading Empire Strike Back next, after reading the Original Trilogy I wonder if I should read Legends books or the new Canon books.

>>65855
Shadows Of The Empire is a good side-story for Empire Strikes Back

Tecically listening to the audiobooks but have been listening too/reading the Elric Saga by Michael Moorcock.
Up to The Weird of the White Wolf so far. It's really good. Multiverse and brooding angsty protagonist done right.

>>65856
Gonna read after finishing up the original trilogy.

Finished this recently.
Simply the best novel I've ever read. And I thought Crime & Punishment couldn't be surpassed. Dostoevsky is a genius.

i fukin hate books. i prefer prank videos. check out smooth sanchez the modern day diogenes not these gay ass boring ass niggas in these dusty ass books

>>65969
I don't know much about the guy, but I aspire to care as little as he does. Being able to act that unhinged without caring what anyone thinks is true freedom.

anyone read on an android device? any app you can recommend for .pdf .epub and so on?

>>66008
for epubs i use lithium

>>65969
>watch this zoomer crustacean instead

no, go away

>>66008
>>66009
Buy an e-reader

>>65719
The book can be found as pdf on oceanofpdf, I won't link it here for reasons

>>66011
i've considered it but i am not sure i want to have another gizmo in my room
what would you recommend anyway? i might look into it in the future

>>66011
Seems I was part of some rangeban that some other fucking retarded wizard caught me into that expired March of next year.

Alright, here's my take on e-readers, now that I can post.
Definitely get either a Kobo or a Kindle Paperwhite. Even the basic Kindle does it. Get it used. Adjustable fonts and backlight that isn't hard on the eyes like a regular tablet's, along with the battery, makes it a great choice.
Just make sure you get one with a "sunken" screen for max comfy, flush screens look more aesthetic but they reflect a bit with the sun.

The cons? Depending on your choice you will be converting .epub to .mobi with each new ebook. Also, if you're planning to read mostly PDFs? Don't bother and buy a Walmart tablet or the cheapest Fire tablet.

>>66011
I miss this sunken screen

https://www.collegexpress.com/lists/list/top-50-largest-college-libraries/747/

After the world ends, and I'm the last man left alive, I will journey to one of these campuses. without the annoying humans to distract me from wizdom.

What are some /essential/ readings for a wiz?

>>66169
I'm not a pedophile (they should be hanged on a public square), bro.

>>66170
Which is why you'll relate to the main character so well. Especially in Kodomo No Jikan.

>>66170
It's well written so even if you aren't a pedo/lolicon it's still decent.

Finished reading "The futurology congress" by Stanislaw Lem. If anyone watched the movie, I can say the book is a lot more fun, and while the movie is not 100% faithful to the book it sticks to it for the most important parts. The whole arc with the actress being scanned and his retarded son is not at all present, and there is no cartoonish world either, well, not explicitly.
I want to read Wallerstein's "The modern world order", I also want to retake Michael Mann's "The sources of social power", I have a fancy for bit multi-tomed books.

> Book of Disquiet, Fernando Pessoa

Due to the fragmentary nature of the work, reading this book can be tedious and monotonous but otherwise this is a painful yet beatiful reading.

A man with no convictions. All the philosophic, religious, scientific, whatever projects have been rebunked. No redemption in heaven, no material progress and improvement of mankind, nothing. Bernando Soares, whose diary we are reading, is man whose only conviction are his own sensations. And he is a master in tasting and analyzing his own sensations. He is capable of looking at them from behind, from beside, from everywhere, give them profundity and texture. A small stimulus can result in cascade of ideas. Bernando Soares, a scientist dissecting his own soul.

Being only aware of the own sensations, has, however, profound metaphysical implications. What is real? the city and all its movement? my own dreams and fantasies ? They hold the same value according to Bernando Soares. Any dream is a door to another vast and completely real universe. At the corner of some painting, at the drawings in some pot, lies the infinite. Yet the nature of our day-to-day word can't be ignored and is also source of amazement. Why is all of that here? Why are all these creatures here waking up every day, working hard, struggling, fighting? Is there any meaning in their lives ? What is Lisboa doing under the sky everyday ? Some God put everything here (a bored kid perhaps). We are just here, helpless and under the mercy of destiny. Just lying and rejoicing in our sensations, like cats under the sun, like maids weaving clothes out of boredom, that's Soares/Pessoa recommendation.

Despite that somewhat ascetic approach, there is a duality in how Soares values the world. There are fragments of utter desdain of the world affairs: wars, history, struggle, human suffering are just noise outside, insignificant details when compared with the only reality: our sensations. There are fragments of compassion and nostalgy: the worker passing by the street that Soares watched everyday and someday stopped watching; that's a source of profound sadness to Soares; where is he? what does he do? what does he think? aren't we all in the end that same man walking the streets and that some day dissapeared like a ghost?

Soares is also conscious of his own incompetence for life. Imagining how he is seen by others causes him great disgust. What does the others think of him? How can the others hold such confidence and vanity? Don't they realize the futility of everything ?

What else to do? look at the colors of the sky over Lisboa until destiny take us … but the horror doesn't go away, the horror of being here, here being whatever it is …

>>66287
That's a must-read book for all wizards. Many of us have read it already.

>>66288
> And then I feel an overwhelming, absurd desire for a kind of Satanism before Satan, a desire that one day - a day without time or substance - an escape leading outside of God will be discovered, and our deepest selves will somehow cease participating in being and non-being.
How does he even come up with such analogies? That guy was a genius.