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 Posted: Wed Apr 07, 2010 8:01 am
At the tail end of "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand.
Will be starting "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu next.
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Posted: Fri Apr 09, 2010 1:10 am
Took a really long break from "Trainspotting" by Irvine Welsh. I take eternities for this one since the accent and reading it in the original language doesn't make it any more convenient.
After that, likely "the three stigmata of Palmer Eldritch" by Philip K. d**k, "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand OR "Dorfpunks" by Rocko Schamoni. No idea.
Also read "Das Erdbeben in Chili" by Heinrich von Kleist recently. I feel I'll HAVE to read something else by him for school, like "Die Marquis von O.", but I don't really look forward to that too much. I am not the biggest fan of his writing style.
Also, I still got a ton of unread books lying around, "Fight Club" amongst them.
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Posted: Fri Apr 09, 2010 4:08 am
Couldn't finish Problem of Evil. Sick of theodicies now. It's the same stuff with different terminology, and the same criticisms with different terminology. Everyone uses their own definition of certain terms which magically render another's argument void because -gasp- that's not the definition they used. Fff whatever.
Anyway, starting Nietzsche's Twilight of the Idols just to break the relentless analytical logic of the last book (half of it is devoted to stuff like P -> A, PB -> C therefore AB -> C, just pages and pages and pages of simple equations they could have expressed in words).
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Posted: Mon Apr 12, 2010 10:31 pm
Finished Descartes' Meditations. The sixth one threw me for a whirl, I may re-read it at some point to try and understand it better.
I've been getting more into Foma Gordeyev by Maxim Gorky. Really, really great/fun book to read so far. I'm impressed that every Russian author I take on is as good if not better than the last, and I've more or less done a survey of like 70% of their 19th century literature. Gorky's work closes the century up, and it's been...a very interesting ride. From the poor vagabonds of society to the wealthy bourgeoisie, the timeline is almost consistent. As you get closer to the 1900s, the richer protagonists tend to be.
Anyway, dsfjhasjkdfh excited.
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Posted: Wed Apr 21, 2010 12:55 am
So apparently my russian survey isn't ending.
i picked up The Seven That Were Hanged by Leonid Andreyev, he's early 20th century. i'm excited to dig into that, Foma Gordeyev turned out to be a way too enthralling novel.
i also picked up Sickness Unto Death by Kierkegaard, I'll also start that at some point...hopefully.
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Posted: Wed May 12, 2010 11:55 pm
I finished the Seven That Were Hanged. It was good, short. Lacked a plot, and was just the different perspectives of seven people approaching a hanging. I thought it was one of the most powerful pieces concerning death I've ever read, until I just finished The Death of Ivan Ilyitch.
It's a short story by Tolstoy (68 pages), and my first forray into his writing (other than a really really short piece by him I read sometime last year). I can't judge his writing style until I get a more legitimate translation of his work (the book I have is one of those old soul ones), but it was a really good read. He's repetitive with words, phrases, and the emotions he wants to jerk out of you and way more moralistic (bluntly so) than I might have liked, but if he didn't capture death well (and more optimistically than Andreyev did), then I'll be damned.
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Posted: Thu May 13, 2010 9:27 am
Got distracted reading Memoirs of a Geisha.
Again.
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Posted: Thu May 13, 2010 9:36 am
This thread needs more fiction. Can't stand all that philosophical phooey.
Just started reading the novel version of Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane. Pretty good.
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Posted: Thu May 13, 2010 12:09 pm
Currently reading Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges. A collection of his short stories. Modernism is very hit or miss for me (e.g. I like T.S. Eliot but can't stand Ezra Pound), but I really like what I've read so far.
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Posted: Thu May 13, 2010 3:00 pm
Don't like modernism and post modernism, but I should give them more of a chance.
EDIT: Well, until I read more, my judgment of them is limited. I've just been so involved with romaticism/realism.
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Posted: Sat May 15, 2010 6:27 am
"Atonement" by.... I don't know who it's by.
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Posted: Sat May 15, 2010 8:55 am
LOL shutterBUG "Atonement" by.... I don't know who it's by. Ian McEwan Also, one of my least favourite books in terms of plot (I wanted Briony to go die in a fire every page). For postmodernist ideas though, it's a cakewalk. @John - It's very hit or miss for me. I think a lot of modernism overdoes it, like Ezra Pound, but T.S. Eliot has those ideas in just the right amount. Also now that I've read more of Jorge Luis Borges, I don't like it so much as a piece of literature; it's too obviously philosophical. The plots are too contrived and they're purely invented for the sake of the philosophical idea. For example, I just read one story which dealt with a philosophical idea (mostly about time, but I don't know the technical term for that) by inventing an alien race which just so happened to subscribe to this philosophical concept. Then the story was just extracts from an encyclopaedia about this alien race that believed the philosophy. I kinda feel like it's just a series of rather obvious thought experiments, rather than fiction.
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Posted: Sat May 15, 2010 12:05 pm
going to start We by Yevgeny Zamyatin soon. basically, it's russian dystopian literature and apparently it's what Orwell got the inspiration for 1984 from and Huxley (though he wouldn't admit it) ripped it off for a Brave New World. Just what I've heard though.
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Posted: Sat May 15, 2010 1:19 pm
The Gay Science Nietzsche
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Posted: Sat May 15, 2010 6:20 pm
Vitamin Crack LOL shutterBUG "Atonement" by.... I don't know who it's by. Ian McEwan Also, one of my least favourite books in terms of plot (I wanted Briony to go die in a fire every page). For postmodernist ideas though, it's a cakewalk. @John - It's very hit or miss for me. I think a lot of modernism overdoes it, like Ezra Pound, but T.S. Eliot has those ideas in just the right amount. Also now that I've read more of Jorge Luis Borges, I don't like it so much as a piece of literature; it's too obviously philosophical. The plots are too contrived and they're purely invented for the sake of the philosophical idea. For example, I just read one story which dealt with a philosophical idea (mostly about time, but I don't know the technical term for that) by inventing an alien race which just so happened to subscribe to this philosophical concept. Then the story was just extracts from an encyclopaedia about this alien race that believed the philosophy. I kinda feel like it's just a series of rather obvious thought experiments, rather than fiction.
And I'm only like... 80 pages in.
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