What are you reading?

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Madrigal
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Re: What are you reading?

Post by Madrigal » Thu Nov 25, 2021 7:38 pm

Whatcha readin, Osito?

Finished Our Man in Havana and now I'm reading some Dostoyevsky.

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elfsprin
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Re: What are you reading?

Post by elfsprin » Thu Nov 25, 2021 9:29 pm

Madrigal wrote:
Thu Nov 25, 2021 7:38 pm
Whatcha readin, Osito?

Finished Our Man in Havana and now I'm reading some Dostoyevsky.
Which Fyodor?
Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity - Simone Weil

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Madrigal
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Re: What are you reading?

Post by Madrigal » Thu Nov 25, 2021 11:17 pm

elfsprin wrote:
Thu Nov 25, 2021 9:29 pm
Madrigal wrote:
Thu Nov 25, 2021 7:38 pm
Whatcha readin, Osito?

Finished Our Man in Havana and now I'm reading some Dostoyevsky.
Which Fyodor?
The Eternal Husband, though I've yet to read everything else. :D Do you have a favorite? I'm basically reading what's on the shelf but I have to buy more books soon.

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elfsprin
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Re: What are you reading?

Post by elfsprin » Fri Nov 26, 2021 12:00 am

The Idiot is my favorite.

The premise is that a perfectly virtuous human would fail in life/cause endless negative effects around them.

We had to read Brothers K and Crime & Punishment in high school, those are also great.

I know I’m posting way to much lol but I’m going to keep going!

So when I was like 11-12, I used to have a sequence of books I re-read every year. It was like a touchstone on my personal development, plus it felt soothing. At the time it was Bleak House, Little Dorrit, The Old Curiously Shop, The Lottery (Shirley J), and the Labyrinths collection by Borges.

The comfort in reading Dickens centered around a belief that enduring suffering and being kind/self-sacrificing would lead to palpable good in the world (<— raised catholic plus had/still works through feelings of worthiness due to trauma).

I tried reading The Idiot at like 10 and I just couldn’t do it. I tried again at maybe 15-16 and it was a revelation. I super identify with the main character (the idiot), and this book was instrumental with my journey towards divorcing concepts of virtue and goodness from religion, as well as helping me change my own worldview regarding how I wanted to exist in the world, and why I want to do so.

For well over a decade, I re-read it every year. Each year I would gain a new understanding of something in it. I’ve never encountered a book before that could do that for me/be repeatedly beyond me in that way.

I haven’t read it in a few years now I should get on that and see what new things I find.
Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity - Simone Weil

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Autochthonic
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Re: What are you reading?

Post by Autochthonic » Fri Nov 26, 2021 2:59 am

Madrigal wrote:
Thu Nov 25, 2021 7:38 pm
Whatcha readin, Osito?
A book about Cognitive Processing Therapy for PTSD. It's one of those medical textbook kinds of books with lots of study citations and whatnot. For some reason, the writer of this book is pretty accessible though and I'm "getting it" more just reading this book than when I took a class about it. I'm the organizer for a support group for this sort of thing, and I'm doing some current reading on the subject matter.

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Re: What are you reading?

Post by djm » Sat Nov 27, 2021 8:04 pm

Autochthonic wrote:
Thu Nov 25, 2021 7:19 pm
djm wrote:
Sat Nov 20, 2021 1:39 am
Weird as it it may seem I am working my way back through the King James Bible.

I am not especially religious, however I think you can't properly appreciate he canon of English literature and Western culture in general without having a working knowledge of he bible, Shakespeare and Plato.
I've always liked Young's Literal Translation of the Bible. The King James Bible strays a bit from the original author's intentions in a number of ways that are significant if you care about the original intended message of the Bible.

Why Plato specifically? Socrates, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius or Diogenes could be just as illuminating depending on what you want from your philosopher.
The huge amount of references to their work and ideas both literally and in essence throughout Western literature and art is hard to ignore. If you do not have a working knowledge of them then much of the canon is lost on the reader.

It is not a comment on quality, or significance of the work, just the near ubiquitous level of reference and influence from them.

I imagine one would miss a lot reading works from the Islamic world without a working knowledge of the Koran and the hadiths also. There are of course parallels in film, whereby if you haven't watched a handful of seminal movies much of the references are lost to viewers of modern cinema (not that there has been much worth watching in the last 30 years).

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Catoptric
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Re: What are you reading?

Post by Catoptric » Sat Nov 27, 2021 8:56 pm

The Myth of Wild Bill Hickok
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40624485

'McCanles Gang' was made up to "justify" the murder of a man that (either/or) agreed to sell a rest stop for the Pony Express, and who confronted them about their debt and told to return the next day by the wife of the purchaser when the payments stopped coming in, and while his unarmed hired hand, cousin and 12-year old son remained outside in a barn/stable, and during this time Hickok shot at him and then preceded to target the two older accomplices who entered, and were fired upon when they started running away, chased and shot from behind by both Hickok, and the owner or another worker who had a shotgun and his wife who apparently used a garden hoe to hack at one of them like some snake (according to wikipedia. . . which if true sounds like something from Resident Evil) Only the 12-year-old escaped. It's possible that it really was that Hickok had been having some relation with McCanles' mistress as Hickok would later give her $35 as an apology, but it might have been that he realized what a dick he had been by killing them in cold blood, and how this managed to be considered self-defense I have no idea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCanles_Gang

Bill Hickok also shot at a "mama" bear with her cubs when she was in the way of his stagecoach caravan, and as the bullet ricocheted off her skull it allowed her to lunge at him and collapsing onto him while mawing his arm, which he then used his other hand to get a bowie knife to sever her throat. He was bed-ridden for 4 months.

It doesn't make me feel so bad that Bill Hickok was shot in his head from behind.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Bill_Hickok

The Original Saloon no. 10 he was shot at
https://goo.gl/maps/bF2AZTCtRM7vNvAb8

Down the road, a 'Green Door' brothel was in operation for 100 more years until the Feds closed it down.
https://goo.gl/maps/oU1f9U4T7EydyNxSA

The Rock Creek Station of notoriety also was the location of Kit Carson John Fremont about 20 years earlier when they were exploring the western frontier. You can find inscriptions all over the western territory detailed in Freemont's account (Kit Carson was illiterate but could inscribe his name.)
https://goo.gl/maps/BPodv1ctdCVpBHEx7

Here is better information on the background of the creek station where McCanles set up, which apparently the Oregon Trail would popularly go through during the gold fever period, and accessing a bridge that was laid to cross over made it much easier to pass the terrain. It also appears that McCanles had a rifle when he entered the cabin to confront them about not paying, which would then be used on the accomplices.
https://www.lasr.net/travel/city.php?%2 ... 0a004&VA=Y

Book
https://www.liveauctioneers.com/en-gb/i ... ians-sioux

Rock inscriptions
https://rockartblog.blogspot.com/2015/0 ... son_2.html

Kit Carson has a similar reputation to Andrew Jackson, and was responsible for the death of many Navajo.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-his ... he-indians



*******************

Unrelated 'Amazon Is Destroying My Favorite Things!'
https://www.peterbrownstudio.com/amazon ... te-things/
Societal egress and ennui
Hello / Goodbye / Just a moment / Nothing / Cosmic / Man / Dream / Civilization / Open / Contact / Tremble / Gas / Memory / Transcend / ^2

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Madrigal
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Re: What are you reading?

Post by Madrigal » Sun Nov 28, 2021 2:06 am

elfsprin wrote:
Fri Nov 26, 2021 12:00 am
The Idiot is my favorite.

The premise is that a perfectly virtuous human would fail in life/cause endless negative effects around them.

We had to read Brothers K and Crime & Punishment in high school, those are also great.

I know I’m posting way to much lol but I’m going to keep going!

So when I was like 11-12, I used to have a sequence of books I re-read every year. It was like a touchstone on my personal development, plus it felt soothing. At the time it was Bleak House, Little Dorrit, The Old Curiously Shop, The Lottery (Shirley J), and the Labyrinths collection by Borges.

The comfort in reading Dickens centered around a belief that enduring suffering and being kind/self-sacrificing would lead to palpable good in the world (<— raised catholic plus had/still works through feelings of worthiness due to trauma).

I tried reading The Idiot at like 10 and I just couldn’t do it. I tried again at maybe 15-16 and it was a revelation. I super identify with the main character (the idiot), and this book was instrumental with my journey towards divorcing concepts of virtue and goodness from religion, as well as helping me change my own worldview regarding how I wanted to exist in the world, and why I want to do so.

For well over a decade, I re-read it every year. Each year I would gain a new understanding of something in it. I’ve never encountered a book before that could do that for me/be repeatedly beyond me in that way.

I haven’t read it in a few years now I should get on that and see what new things I find.
I will surely try getting those Dostoyevsky books at some point. As for the comfort in reading Dickens, I totally agree but I never analyzed why. I think there is comfort in reading Victorian literature in general, be it the classics or just pulp/weird/fantasy/horror fiction. It's like a balm, something you'll pick up on a rainy day, in bed, while drinking tea.

I don't have books I read every year. There are two books I've read several times over the years though, and that's The Art of War and The Little Prince.

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Roger Mexico
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Re: What are you reading?

Post by Roger Mexico » Sun Nov 28, 2021 7:06 am

I always forget--is Notes From Underground Dostoyevsky?

I read it for a class in college and really enjoyed it, but I've never read anything else by the same author.

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elfsprin
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Re: What are you reading?

Post by elfsprin » Sun Nov 28, 2021 7:09 am

Roger Mexico wrote:
Sun Nov 28, 2021 7:06 am
I always forget--is Notes From Underground Dostoyevsky?
Ya
Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity - Simone Weil

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