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The Resistance 2014-08-25 07:15:20 No.315 [View All]

Every literature board has a bump while reading thread.

Currently reading:
-New Testament
-The Wealth of Nations (book V)
-Gravity's Rainbow

64 posts and 10 image replies omitted. Click reply to view.

Anonymous 2015-04-05 12:28:06 No.1108

>>1105
>>1106
Reading Great expectations as well.

Anonymous 2015-04-22 16:15:26 No.1177

Walter John Williams: Voice of the Whirlwind

It's a soft scifi work and the story contains aliens, but I like it very much so far, great atmosphere and non-silly non-lame story despite a reincarnated protagonist with missing memories. Core cyberpunk of course.

Anonymous 2015-05-31 17:21:25 No.1339

Right now I'm reading:
- Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
- Sternstunden by Wolfang Seidel (Basically a book about the history of cartography and geography)

Anonymous 2015-06-03 07:24:43 No.1360

Stanlislaw Lem - The Cyberiad
Robot fairy tales, what's not to love?

Anonymous 2015-06-03 16:18:30 No.1363

I am reading Brisingr currently.

Anonymous 2015-06-03 16:36:06 No.1364

The Sound of Waves by Mishima

It's a lot more str8forward than Golden Pavilion/Confessions of a Mask

His nature descriptions are on point
Unfortunately, the story gives me feels

Anonymous 2015-06-03 21:36:29 No.1369

A book about Greco-Roman mysteries. It's not what I expected, I thought it was going more 'pop-science like' instead it was made for students who already know about this stuff because it's a collection of texts with a comment. I don't mind it though, it's still interesting.

Anonymous 2015-06-07 01:33:44 No.1407

The Gulag Archipelago
The Stranger

Anonymous 2015-06-12 19:41:50 No.1440

the 36 stratagems reinterpreted by peter taylor

Anonymous 2015-06-13 03:50:35 No.1441

Just finished The Complete works of H. P. Lovecraft
Reading Asimov's Foundation Trilogy(currently Foundation and Empire)
Rereading Homeland by Cory Doctorow
Just started The Great Gatsby

Anonymous 2015-06-13 15:55:36 No.1442

Reading "Six Days War"

Pretty nice book, still on the first section (not chapter)

Anonymous 2015-06-13 20:30:49 No.1443

>>1442
Is it about Israel?

Anonymous 2015-06-13 21:00:37 No.1445

Just finished reading the endless war, a fantastic sci fi book. Now I'm gonna read the Dispossessed and the Manga Guide to the Universe

Anonymous 2015-06-13 22:36:35 No.1446

Currently reading Midnight's Children, Kafka By the Shore, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, and a bit of The Tain and the Poetic Edda every once in a while.

Anonymous 2015-07-06 12:13:43 No.1564

Reading House of Leaves, I got to the point where I am now a few years ago but stopped.
I'm really enjoying the Navidson Record plot, but I don't really like the old man's digressions and sometimes I just skip entire pages of the edgelord's crazy soykaf. It's not a really enjoyable read at times but it's really good when it is and I keep reading for those moments.

Anonymous 2015-07-11 23:18:52 No.1597

Currently reading: The Count of Monte Cristo, The Design of Everyday Things.

Count of Monte Cristo is really good. I'd somehow managed to go into it without much prior knowledge of the plot, and it's really gripping me. Only got a hundred or so pages left now, everything is wrapping up and, oh!, what a wrap-up.

The Design of Everyday Things is a good read, it's making me much more conscious of interfaces I come across in my day-to-day life. Whilst the title says "everyday things", it's all fairly generic and applicable to software as well (in fact, software examples and anecdotes are frequent).

Next up: Flowers for Algernon, or Fall of the Roman Republic.

I've decided I like having one fiction and one non-fiction book on the go at the same time.

Anonymous 2015-07-18 08:03:19 No.1625

I'm reading Neuromancer. I really like Gibson's style but I find it sort of hard to follow sometimes, not being a native english speaker and everything.

Anonymous 2015-07-19 03:35:31 No.1629

>>1625
I personally preferred the later books in the sprawl trilogy. Count Zero was my favorite, although the jumping between characters was slightly jarring, at first.

I just got done reading the Takeshi Kovacs series of novels. They're pretty good, less cyberpunk, and more sci-fi, although the last book brings in quite a few cyberpunk elements. His sex scenes feel a little crammed in, but they're short. I probably would have enjoyed them more if I weren't reading on the bus. I just wish there were more books, to be honest. I personally liked the last book, best. The second had a great ending, though, and the first one is pretty nice, as an introduction to the world. A lot of neat ideas in those books.

Right now I'm reading Dune, for fun, and "The Open Secret", by Lesslie Newbigin, for my book club.

Anonymous 2015-07-25 22:35:36 No.1658

File: 1437863736662.epub (796.86 KB, Gates of Fire An Epic Nov….epub)

Finally knocked this one off the reading list. It was surprisingly engrossing, not what I expected.

Anonymous 2015-08-03 04:24:30 No.1686

Got High-Rise by J G Ballard lined up at the moment, along with some technical books. Might re-read some stuff on my bookshelf after that.

Anonymous 2015-09-04 04:33:31 No.1940

Reading The Wind-up Bird Chronicle

Been a slow read, but I've enjoyed it all so far. Finally about 50 pages from the end.

Anonymous 2015-09-04 07:42:25 No.1941

>>1625
I re-read these for the first time in about 7 years and was really impressed with how elegant the style is and how it synergises with the themes of the novels. I find Neuromancer a bit juvenile but Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive are top lit snob tier imo

Anonymous 2015-09-11 00:19:35 No.1985

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>>1407
Nice. How's The Gulag Archipelago? Read a bit of Solzhy but not that yet.

Myself, I'm reading this glorious fuarrrking thing.
It's fantastic. Completely fantastic.
I find that a good way of explaining how that is is contrasting it with, say, Vonnegut, since both are thought of as essentially satiric dark comedic drama. Well, this is a lot easier to take seriously. There's less of a feeling of insignificance; there's less impotence and powerlessness in the protagonist. But it still hits hard, feels absolutely real in the sense that dying a day away from being the first in your family to graduate college then getting run over by a bus is real. Its language is elegant then crude in the best way, then unimaginably brutal as you get shelled and it switches to imagery of being swallowed by flame, becoming chaotic, unseeing, unfeeling nothing flung about like trash beside the dead flesh of your comrades.

.. It's really good, basically.

Anonymous 2015-09-11 01:27:42 No.1986

>>435
It's a metaphor.

Him turning into a bug is him becoming a shut in who feels alienated.

Anonymous 2015-09-11 01:29:25 No.1987

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Anonymous 2015-09-11 12:54:58 No.1988

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Anonymous 2015-09-11 13:48:53 No.1989

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Reading:
The Essential Difference: Men, Women and the Extreme Male Brain - Simon Baron-Cohen

Audiobooking:
The Martian - Andy Weir

Anonymous 2015-09-11 17:13:36 No.1991

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Diary notes from Ernst Jünger. I couldn't ask for something better, as it blend personal thoughts, dreams report, gardening tips, opinions on literature, botanical and zoological research logs and chronicles from the end of the Third Reich by a man who's a war hero and a highly intelligent and sensible man and writer.

Anonymous 2015-09-16 05:07:20 No.2029

struggling through Neal Stephensons' Reamde

Anonymous 2015-09-16 18:48:44 No.2030

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every month till i drop dead

Anonymous 2015-09-17 02:35:32 No.2032

I'm on the last 10 pages of Das Schloss, it's been good, as is all of Kafka's work, but I don't know how I feel about including his notes as a 'final chapter' of sorts. It does nothing but introduce another layer of uncertainty to the previous events.

I'll probably start The Illiad later today; I've had it and The Odyssey sitting on my shelf, waiting to be read, for over a year now.

Anonymous 2015-09-20 02:27:14 No.2059

>>315
Red Sorghum-Mo Yan
for a class, but I can't read more than a few pages at a time. The most disturbing book I have read. Even Blood Meridian only had me this way in some scenes.

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Liking the language, but I feel like the Catholic guilt is rubbing off so I only read in snippets.

Anonymous 2015-09-25 11:25:49 No.2121

Currently reading a compilation of Kierkegaard's works, and Amusing Ourselves to Death.

Former is great if you're and existentialist and/or a Christian, and is good for understanding a philosophical point of view anyway.

The latter is an incredibly good discourse on the decline of society due to modern entertainment; in other words, that Huxley was right.

Anonymous 2015-09-28 03:24:18 No.2138

Just finished reading As I Lay Dying, about to start The Stranger

As I Lay Dying was very interesting, especially once they had been on the journey a few days and everyone's internal thought process started getting more and more incoherent and difficult to understand without context. The chapters from other people's point of view (Peabody, Armstid) were placed very well and did a really good job at giving the reader an outsiders perspective on the family. Just really well written overall.

I've read The Stranger before, but it's been years, so before reading The Fall and the Plague, I'm reading it again. Loved it the first time, expect to love it again.

Anonymous 2015-10-04 12:05:59 No.2176

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Just finished "...And the Angel with Television Eyes" by John Shirley. Now starting "Street Lethal" by Steven Barnes. Thinking about re-reading the sprawl trilogy.

This is a nice board.

Anonymous 2015-10-04 12:16:58 No.2177

>>315
i have been reading Gravity's Rainbow for 10 years Present Day, Present Time! AHAHAHAHAHA!

currently reading the baroque cycle, not /cyb/, but pretty good

Anonymous 2015-10-11 05:20:32 No.2203

Currently reading:
Debt: The First 5000 Years by David Graeber
Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software by Charles Petzold
Being and Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

I have difficulty concentrating as a result of my depression, which I try to combat by keeping my mind occupied on different topics as I can muster up a bit of motivation to study them.
I'll read a section or two of one of these books, and then put it down as soon as I start losing interest. Thus far it's worked relatively well in keeping my mind active, but I should really start working on increasing the amount of time I can focus on any particular thing.

Anonymous 2015-10-11 07:52:02 No.2204

>>315
J-just my college textbooks right now. ;_;

Anonymous 2015-10-11 08:23:23 No.2205

>>2203
Nice taste. I just started reading Nausea and SICP. Got Nineteen Eighty Four and The Stranger on my desk for when I finish

Anonymous 2015-10-11 09:36:30 No.2206

>>2204
Nothing wrong with that readying intro to computer security and the fedora/red hat enterprise books for school. I'm enjoying it

Anonymous 2015-10-13 10:03:48 No.2209

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Just finished the second volume of My Struggle by Karl Ove Knausgaard. He's been called the Norwegian Proust,
I've never read Proust but I imagine them as being quite similar - he writes about his own life ("struggle") in exact detail, switching back and forth from childhood to the present day in a way that reflects the way memories pop up in your mind.

It sounds dull but the way it's written makes it riveting. You can't wait to find out what happens next, and the intimacy of sharing someone else's life and thoughts makes finding out what happens next really affecting.

Waiting for my dole cheque so I can get the next volume :B

Anonymous 2015-10-13 21:36:34 No.2210

Flat earth news

If you didn't trust mainstream news already, you will after reading this book.

Anonymous 2015-10-14 08:03:40 No.2211

>>2209
Besides length, the similarities between Knausgård and Proust are almost nil both as people and as authors. Definitely worth the read though as you say.

For those who want a taste, read the last chapter of his A Time To Purpose Under Every Heaven.

Anonymous 2015-10-14 21:41:58 No.2212

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Reading:
• Marcus Aurelius - Meditations
• The UNIX Haters Handbook

Anonymous 2015-10-15 04:39:32 No.2221

File: 1444883972019.pdf (5.86 MB, intothewild.pdf)

Currently reading Into the Wild by John Krakauer

Anonymous 2015-10-19 02:25:00 No.2233

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-Gravity's Rainbow
-The Great Shark Hunt
-Heart of Darkness' historical appendices (Conrad's journals and such)

Recently finished all of beloved Vonnegut's novels except Galápagos, which I'll have to order online. Looking for other writers in the same vein.

>>315
I'm roughly a quarter of the way through Gravity's Rainbow and loving it, but I find it hard to keep track of all the characters without a "cast" sheet attaching faces to names. Are Pynchon's other works in similar style, and do they all have so many characters?

Anonymous 2015-10-20 09:51:59 No.2244

Currently reading Grimm's fairy tales. Who could have guessed Disney got it all so wrong?

Anonymous 2015-10-20 17:15:21 No.2249

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File: 1445361321669-1.epub (290.97 KB, [Greg_Bear]_Blood_Music(B….epub)

I'm reading Blood Music.

Description: In the tradition of the greatest cyberpunk novels, Blood Music explores the imminent destruction of mankind and the fear of mass destruction by technological advancements. The novel follows present-day events in which the fears concerning the nuclear annihilation of the world subsided after the Cold War and the fear of chemical warfare spilled over into the empty void it left behind. An amazing breakthrough in genetic engineering made by Vergil Ulam is considered too dangerous for further research, but rather than destroy his work, he injects himself with his creation and walks out of his lab, unaware of just how his actions will change the world. Author Greg Bear’s treatment of the traditional tale of scientific hubris is both suspenseful and a compelling portrait of a new intelligence emerging amongst us, irrevocably changing our world.

Anonymous 2015-11-02 01:28:39 No.2347

Finished Camus's The Stranger.
Reading McCarthy's No Country for Old Men.

I think I'll read some more Poe and Lovecraft soon. Probably The Gold Bug first, since it's about cryptography.

Anonymous 2015-11-03 19:23:39 No.2355

>>355
>Beginners Guide to Jungian Psychology
How are you liking it? I've only looked over Jungian concepts on Wikipedia but I'm planning to put books about it on my backlog.

>>2138
I'm about half way through As I Lay Dying. Faulkner is incredible at capturing the country aesthetic.

currently reading:
As I Lay Dying
The Picture of Dorian Gray
A Princess of Mars
Bird By Bird (writers guide)
and re-reading Madame Bovary