Anything, as long as it is good and interests me at the time.

Currently reading: "Patterns of Culture" by Ruth Benedict

Latest reads: "East, West" by Salman Rushdie, "Cryptonomicon" by Neal Stephenson, "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu, "Lady Chatterley's Lover" by D. H. Lawrence, "Music" by Hermann Hesse, "The Bible" (for the N'th time and no, I'm not religious).

My favorite genre is Sci-Fi, but as I said, I'll read anything that's good.

ESR reads a whole lot of stuff apparently

Big book thread #1
Big book thread #2

I'm pretty sure there was another even bigger but I can't find it.

So I guess this is the 2013 update?
I'm currently reading Henry Millers Sexus and it's been rather dull so far. Struggling to get over with it so I can move to something more interesting

ill just make it the 2013 version :D

Is there anyone that recommend good books about conspiracy theories? I'm into that stuff.

well im a little into ufos. it is not conspiracy or myth if you stick to plain facts but you really need to watch out what you read about it, there is a lot of bs out there. the most academic and legit book about it is possibly "beyond top secret" by timothy good which is basically a collection of official military reports world wide.

ps: dont get a wrong picture due to the catchy title, I'm pretty sure he used it to get the mainstream crowd buying it.

If you're into UFO's and similar you should check out books written by Eric von Danican. I haven't read them myself yet but I am going to. My dad recommended them to me. He said that you can't take everything he is writing literally, but his books makes you think in a different angle of things. Should be a good read :)

i've read daniken when i was younger and much more into all this ufo stuff...

most of his books are very well written, and interesting... but some are just bad, and its really hard to finish them... good example of that is "Journey to Kiribati" where he basiclly talks about his vacation :D

Well then, I'm skipping his journey-journal then. Thank :D

Erich von Däniken
I read few his books many years ago. They aren't about UFO. He tries to support his theory that intelligence and civilisation were actually seeded on earth by extraterrestial "gods". He tries to achieve this by reinterpretating classical ancient mythologies and artifacts.
Recall space odyssey.

I doubt he was first but his books were wildly popular in 70s and one can still see their influence in western culture.

Books themselves are combination of essays, history and travel literature as far as I remember. I enjoyed reading them back then (not in 70s :D).

If you're not american then it may not do much for you, but if you are then Behold a Pale Horse is the end all be all of conspiracy theory books.

The illuminatus trilogy by Shea and Wilson ?

sci-fi, autobiographies and travel books are what I enjoy the most.

Recent recommended reads:

sci-fi: The Ascendant Stars by Michael Cobley
autobio: Mr. Nice by Howard Marks
travel: The Dark Tourist by Dom Joly

I want to contribute aswell ofc. I am a classic reader.

At the moment I'm on "the importance of being earnest" by Oscar Wilde. it is incredibly hilarious. (just a short roleplay in 3 tiers, also free for kindle on amazon )

Also I have finished Moby Dick a couple of days ago. Well what to say about Moby Dick. It is arguable the most important piece of modern literature. But that doesnt make it a good read automatically. The English used is maybe the most sophisticated you will ever find and the parables drawn are deep enough to built life long philosophy around it. In my opinion it is just like the bible, (i dont have any good words for religion though) the book is a symbol, the peak of English language and a painstaking description of whale hunting.

my recommendations:

the great gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
anything charles dickens - that dude kicks ass
a movable feast - ernest hemingway

Harry Potter
Game of Thrones

/thread

I hope you're trolling.

i guess he is it`s ESR but nethertheless i fucking enjoyed harry potter. it is a good read.period.

Yeah Harry Potter books are a good read (if you're a kid...).

I've heard about academic presentations going deep on symbolism in the HP universe. a book is a kid`s book if you read it like one.

Don't get me wrong, I read the first four HP books when I was a kid and I enjoyed them, they were well written, great characters, a great plot along with some clever unexpected twists... but I can't imagine myself enjoying them even half as much if I read them for the first time now in my late-20's.

And as for symbolism in books and movies, I tend to ignore it because it's just pseudo-intellectual pretentious wank most of the time, and superstitious wank the rest of the time. Sometimes it's like the author just can't resist cramming as much symbolism into each chapter as possible, or maybe the editorial chief flipped through it and says.. "yeah we'll print it... but it needs more symbolism dontcha think?".

I'd rather a book or movie make me think and ask myself questions directly through the plot or character's thoughts or dialogues instead of retarded "symbols" everywhere trying to make the reader or viewer supposedly raise an eyebrow and go "ah-ha! I see the connection between this and X event / ideology in real life, how clever! and how clever I am too for making the connection! I must totally tell my friends about the deep symbolism I noticed in this book / movie! hey, did you ever realize that Neo is called Thomas Anderson, a name carries several homages to Christian theology/mythology. "Anderson" literally means "son of man" - which is how Jesus primarily referred to himself in the Gospels! "Thomas" is the name of Jesus' disciple who infamously doubted the truth of the risen Christ. In The Matrix, Thomas Anderson sheds his disbelief and comes to accept that the Matrix is real and he is thereby "born again," and is referred to as "Neo." Just like jesus!" ... lol, in fact the matrix is just one constant stream of pretentious symbolism from start to finish, almost every scene has some fucktarded symbolism attached to it... completely ruins it. I know it's a movie, it's easier to ignore with a book.

that is one way to read for sure. but be aware , if every book would be plain obvious, without carrying symbols, literature would be dead. xD Most reads would be dull and great visual authors would just be writing weird things. i know where you go with pseudo-intellectual though, you can cross borders in this field easily.

as long as it's not overdone...

I agree with you, but i guess one can also enjoy some "easy" reading as HP: you still get some bits about how the writer sees the world, perceives his/her main values, etc...

and... sure it's better than reading "50 shades of gray" or bs like "harmony" :)

or twilight......

Don't forget Twilight and The Hunger Games.

harry potter is crap

right now marc greif: 'bluescreen'. for summer reading i'm already hoarding more culture novels (scifi) by ian m. banks and thinking about reading something by zizek, probably 'in defense of lost causes'.

Does anyone know some educational books on psychology for beginners?

Some years ago I read "Two Short Accounts of Psychoanalysis" by Sigmund Freud, and although it's probably a bit outdated, it is a good starting poing.

nah fuck Freud, terrible to read. Also Freud is so one sided, there is a good deal of psychological approaches advanced, contrary and completely different to him. I would recommend more general literature. You might check out what is used for freshmen

envious of Freud's penis?
:D

honey, i never said im male

did you actually read freud? penis envy is something he attributes to females, not males :/

if you were male, it would have been the fear of castration.

in this context he referred to my penis being inferior to freud`s not to freud`s theory of venerial lost and envy.also this aspect of freud's theory on development got passed some time ago by a newer theorist who i cant remember.

oh, it got passed by another theorist, shame i didn't notice. what did said theorist do, 'prove' freud wrong? :D

in all seriousness, i dislike the underlying concept of knowledge there. not something i can say i share with you.

its been years sry, cannot punch you in the face with striking evidence now :D but afair some rookie came up with a more fitting concept which is used in mainstream child therapy nowadays, 30 years ago or something. never was into that stuff anyway, might be mistaken aswell

Freud never delivered scientific evidence himself, that's the problem ;)

that's not a problem (to me), you seem to want something different, go read a book on neuroscience or whatever :d

I assume that you read his stuff as comedy then?

sure, same thing with your stuff. after all, how am i supposed to take you serious? :)

well, I'm not hyped by thousands of people worldwide who still believe in that Freudian psychoanalytical bs and never actually scrutinize anything.. does that count as difference? :)

na, i'm fine with anyone not into freud, i'm not exactly his biggest fan myself ;)

claiming the problem with freud was his lack of 'scientific evidence' makes you look a bit stupid though :C on the contrary i'm quite bored with most of what is currently part of the standart curriculum for psychology majors.

how exactly does that make me look a bit stupid? Don't be as vague as Freud please ;)

need to be on cocaine to understand what zealot posts, just like how freud and his pals were when releasing all that crap

just for the record, there is barely any scientific evidence in human psychology overall. literature, psychology and philosophy are scientific fields with hardly any grip :)

define "scientific evidence"

scientific work can be done in a lot of ways:

evidence won through experiments under scientific circumstances (as few sources of error as possible)

evidence based on theories based on axioms, supported by relatively error-free argumentation.

problem with the fields above is, they are about human beings, these are fortunately infinitely complex and therefor unique. good luck finding laws of nature or repetative patterns in this steaming piece of 7 billion :D

There is hardly any "hard evidence" compared to what you can find when studying physics for example, that's true. But still, there is evidence for numerous repetitive patterns, as you call it. Us humans don't differentiate from each other as much as we would think (or like :) ) we do. For example, every time you visit a supermarket, you turn on the tv, you read a newspaper etc you are manipulated in some way which is based on observed patterns on how humans behave.

yeah but that`s just "pocket" tricks and instinctive patterns originated in evolution, yet you are right. but we were talking about the deep freudian shit, 2 people same disorders going to a therapist stuff, anyway i am actually not interested in it that much lets end this^^

Not really, there are many models that focus on environmental factors, e.g. Bandura's social cognitive theory to name a famous one. But fine, let's end this.

yeah but environment is just another ...no, good night everyone

have a look at Karl Popper and his theory of falsifiability.
It's a great way to dinstiguish between what is science and what is not, in my opinion.

That's a classic ofc :)

Case study of a man he cured (sort of) doesn't count as scientific evidence? (I'm talking about "The Wolfman").

It's mainly his interpretation which doesn't stand as evidence on its own but should be used to set up testable hypotheses. He focuses a lot on dreams though and it's difficult to find a common ground there among different people.

one cure is not evidence of having found the cure

also jung, ~1920 iirc.

even better because Freud thinks females have penis envy
(well it was a joke in a reference so......)

oh it was ! well my apologies thinking of you as a premature scoundrel then :D

he never said u are. maybe ur a shemale? Freud did coke anyway...

Actually, I didn't find it that bad at the time, but I agree that it is a bit old (as I mentioned).

Some years ago Freud was also outdated.
Pretty much all of his psycho-analysis has been shown to be complete BS. Although his views did give a starting point for a lot of research.

contrary to what someone above wrote, freud is rather easy to read and fun too, atleast sometimes :)

the easiest way to start is to read his lectures on the 'introduction to psychoanalysis' (1916-1933), as that was obviously intented for his students. get the hardcopy version though, as it should be 600+ pages.

if you want to blow your brains out, read lacan.

I'd like to point you to lectures of sociology 150A from Robb Willer which have been posted online by berkeley ( http://www.youtube.com/course?list=PLBFB989AB.../Sociology ).
I really enjoyed that and it is mainly introductional and goes through a lot of the "need to know" things about psychology / sociology.

(in total they do take up quite some time though)

also this: http://oyc.yale.edu/psychology/psyc-110 (click on youtube logo for video lectures!)
It's actually fun to watch thanks to Paul Bloom :)

I'll have a look at it once I have some more time again :)

Check the latest edition of this one out.

http://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Eighth-Henry...0393932508

Fifty Shades of Grey

Anything by Maxime Chattam :)

no time to read, due to time i spend @ uni

but i love good fantasy... also russian classics like master and margarita....

"Master and Margarita" is fantasy :-)
Bulgakov is considered as one of the fantasy precursors.

Aczel - Fermat's last theorem
It spans maths history from pre-babylon culture up to now, for showing how one of the simplest math theorems hasn't been proven until 1994. easy to read and quite funny.

Surely you're joking, mr. Feynman.
biography of the nobel prize winner Richard Feynman. no physics/maths/..., just hilarious.

I've been reading Johnathan Franzen lately.

Finished Freedom, on with The Corrections. Really good modern epics, in the tradition of great american novels

John Dies at the End by David Wong.

His second book just came out, haven't read it yet, but heard it's good: This Book is Full of Spiders (click for Youtube trailer).

Edit: In addition, his first book was made into a movie that just came out as well. Trailers #1 and #2 here and here.

currently beginning my foray into David Foster Wallace with "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" cuz I'm a huge faggit. its very good though

The Count of Monte Cristo is hard currency.

love this book

Andromeda Strain. M Crichton.

Consider Phlebas. I M Banks.

Particularly enjoyed them out of all their sci-fi works.

Need to pick up reading again, been so busy with work :( Giving Von Danicken a shot upon my mothers insistence, some interesting perspectives, however I'm too literally minded to read his books with ease.

Go and read the other threads, some lovely recommendations there.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to fix flash player woes :(

Currently reading Steppenwolf by Hesse once again, and some short stories by Kafka when bored. Also the nefilim saga by Cahal Armstrong (rather unknown German sci-fi).

and some short stories by Kafka when bored.

Have you read "Mole" yet? I love this one.

Yes that one is pretty famous, I like it too.

I read ESR

wtf? no.. wait.. u can't! what the.. can't compute!

not good enough if you don't read jamerio

Wittgenstein - Philosophical Investigations
Soren Kierkegaard - Fear and Trembling

I'm currently procrastinating to start with Prousts "In Search of Lost Time" :|

currently reading He4rTL3sS's "about powaah a.k.a. serious" - what a great thing ( a bestseller btw)

To be honest this sequel was a bit of a let down for me. I liked his first book in the saga "POWAAH AND JEWRO CHEATING" much more.

the more I read his new books, the more I start to dislike them... And yes, "POWAAH AND JEWRO CHEATING" was his best book.

reading is for faggots, especially in 2013

rereading the entire Wheel of Time series atm (robert jordan, brandon sanderson last 3 books) since the final book just got released

The Emperor of Lies by Sandberg

Currently reading Frankenstein for school.

Just finished going through Lord of the Rings, now I am starting on The Silmarillion.

I read the silmarillion when I was 15 and just learned english, my brain hurt :D

Razzle!

I'm not reading anything (except uni stuff) right now but I have to recommend this :
http://aspexplorer.pagesperso-orange.fr/kalonbrw.htm

It's in French though. It's a very good read if you love Heroic Fantasy and humor.
There's a PDF version if anyone's interested.

In The Shadow of The Valley of Death :p
by Proust

fun-lecture: No Easy Day and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

I read good books dunno about you

everyone else reads evil ones..

burn 'em all...

cereal boxes

My favorite books are:


Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (don't watch the movie, if you've seen the movie pretend you haven't)

The Great and Secret Show - Clive Barker

Illusions - Richard Bach

A Brief History of Everything - Ken Wilber

Be Here Now - Ram Dass

The Book - Alan Watts

The Prophet - Kahlil Gibran

Be Here Now - Ram Dass

The Book - Alan Watts

wait.. are you actually by any chance hUZUBU or friends with him somehow? odd seeing these particular things here. some pretty good choices, though.

Have you seen the BBC TV series (released 1981) about h2g2 ?

yes

Khalil Gibran, we used to read those books when we were in elementary school, but it is nice to see non-arab people read that.

Just finished Vladimir Nabokov's "Pale Fire". Fantastic early example of meta-fiction, and one of the most interesting literary puzzles of the 20th century; just check out this article: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/boydpf1.htm

It's also wonderfully written, engaging and suspenseful on the surface, but offers a lot to anyone inclined to sink deeper into the murk of literary criticism.

Atm Forge of darkness by steven erikson and a book about gandhi.

About to finish the third of the A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones) series, loving it. Takes me so fucking long to read a book though, especially these huge things! Wanted to read something by Bukowski for a long time too, and this just came.. Might read it between the 3rd and 4th books.

post your opinion afterwards

That song is what first interested me, though only now am I getting round to him.

you animated me, bought it, will read it once im done with hemingway

Remember to drink while you read the book. :D

The Magus by John Fowles

Memory of light - last book in Wheel of Time series. decent, not great.

currently doing some Asimov - Currents of Space, currently working on The Gods Themselves.

thinking of hitting up bookstore to continue ringworld series, finished first one, haven't gone any further.

Currently re-reading Ender's Game - It is even better than I remembered!

If you can read spanish I'd encouragely recommend the magazine Orsai. Great literature there, every piece is worth it.

Just finished:

The Road - Cormack McCarthy

I read ESR.

http://www.esreality.com/post/2372825/what-do...pid2373020

no more plusses for u. ;)

**I Don't read ESR

ok

i just finished james joyce's Ulyssis. My new favorite and one of its kind. It is a challenging read, would not recommend for mediocre english speakers

well there are always translations :)

I dont know man, I dont really believe in translations, no translation will ever catch IT the way the author did. Ofc even translated some books are amazing but it feels fake for me.

well, the only book I've read in both English and Polish is, shame on me, Harry Potter and to be honest the translation was even better than the original (language comprehension might be a factor here though). Now I'm too lazy or too indifferent to read the same book twice, so its either English or Polish. And I've read a bit of Lem (internationally acclaimed polish sci-fi author in case you dont know) translated to English and it wasn't bad either.

So all in all I would say a properly and carefully prepared translation is perfectly acceptable. On the other hand a bad translation can easily ruin even the greatest masterpiece.

No reader will ever catch IT the way the author did. Not even the way other readers did.

perception and altering the text are 2 different pairs of shoes. i claim languages have different beauties and different qualities and i believe when you translate you can hurt the natural flow of the language because both original and translated language wont play by the same rules. or this is just random bullshit from a rather excentric smart ass. hope i could explain it acceptably

The onion book of known knowledge

Not exactly reading material, but I like skimming through it.

Geese
pronounciation

coloring books and parking tickets esr read must