The Currently-Reading Thread

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Postby §ê¢rꆧ » Sat Jun 21, 2008 11:16 pm

Well, I needed a break from trying to parse all the nonfictional data and read some quality fiction ...

The Road by Cormac McCarthy because it was recommended here, and looked interesting. I couldn't put this down! The laptop got so hot it burned my stomach as I read well past my bed-time. The dystopia presented here is very harsh and overwhelming, but the triumph in the tale is the human capacity for hope.

Spook Country by William Gibson I didn't enjoy this as much as The Road (above), or other Gibson titles, but it did keep me turning the page. Something about the way it ends, with everything getting all tied up neatly, struck me as unfinished. There were many subplots and such that I wish he'd have explored more. Not his best work by any means, but fans will find plenty in here to enjoy. I particularly enjoyed the Milgrim character, and his juxtaposition with his 'men in black'-type kidnapper.

Evasion A Crimethinc memoir of young vegan/freegan jumping freights, dumpster diving and stealing from Walmat across the country. This book has a lot of urgency and energy, and just thrilled me, in a way I haven't been thrilled in a long time. I did put this one down for a night, just so that I could have a little more of the inpiration-sensation tonight, when I'll probably finish it. You can download Evasion free here, and it's all right, because the author says:

Excluding all corporations, the text from this book may be reproduced without permission in any form and quantity by any means necessary.


on edit: the Evasion book is collection of stories told by a few different writers, loosely assembled into a cohesive narrative.

Highly recommended! You can also buy it on Crimethinc's website.

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Postby Ziggin' and a Zaggin' » Mon Aug 25, 2008 10:44 am

The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross: A Study of the Nature and Origins of Christianity within the Fertility Cults of the Ancient Near East - John M. Allegro

I decided to read this book after watching the video called "The Pharmacratic Inquisition" which was mentioned here by either Professor Pan or Op_Ed (I tried to find the link but this site's - RI - search function isn't very good at all). The video refers to several authors, Allegro being one of them. I'm about half-way through and I find it a somewhat difficult read not being a specialist in philology. As a non-expert, I'm not readily convinced by many of Allegro's connections between sumerian and other ancient language words. The ubiquitous references to penis, "volva", semen, menstrual blood, etc. do get a little tiresome although expected since Allegro's theory is based on fertility cults. I feel like I need to take a shower after every five pages I've read. :)

I'll try to get my hands on The Sacred Mushrooms of Mexico: Assorted Texts by Brian P. Akers which should be more in line with what I had in mind: a multidisciplinary look into sacred mushroom rituals and culture.
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currently reading

Postby waugs » Fri Sep 05, 2008 4:08 pm

i have way too many books going right now...but, fortunately, they have some overlapping subject matter:

rereading Unholy Alliance

Acid Dreams

Facts and Fascism

Killing Hope
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Postby Hugh Manatee Wins » Thu Sep 18, 2008 11:24 pm

A few from the pile, just light reading-

> 'A Farewell to Justice: Jim Garrison, JFK's Assassination, and the Case that Should Have Changed History'
by Joan Mellen
...a bit scattershot but most of the cast of characters gets a mention...

> 'Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill,'
by Lt. Col. David Grossman and Gloria DiGaetano
...for decades studies have proven that violent media cause violence. And it is absolutely intentional....

> 'The Negro Revolt,'
by Louis Lomax
...an early history of the Civil Rights movement written during JFK's time...

> 'Cross-Cultural Psychology,'
edited by Albert Gaw
...a survey of general personality and norm variations in ethnic groups circa 1979...

> 'The Politics of Despair,'
by Hadley Cantril
...classic Cold War study of why oh why poor people would embrace leftist views...

> 'Age of Propaganda: The Everyday Use and Abuse of Persuasion,'
by Anthony Pratkanis and Elliot Aronson
...early Clinton-era academic treatment of persuasion. Today Pratkanis is assisting the USG in selling fascism...

>'Subliminal Seduction,'
by Wilson Bryan Key
...a late sixties overview of how subliminal sex is used in commerce, barely any politics...

> 'The Decline and Fall of Public Broadcasting,'
by David Barsamian
...just noticing that the CIA Left gatekeeping channels are getting more and more lame...
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Postby chiggerbit » Fri Sep 19, 2008 8:48 pm

The Guardians By Geoffrey M. Kabaservice

While I've always had a high regard for the subject of the book, it's hard not to notice the incestuousness of the privileged class that spit out the leaders of the left and right of the middle of the twentieth century in the US. They were all wallowing in the same pool of privilege, and had more in common with each other than with the rest of us.
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Postby zhivkov » Tue Oct 07, 2008 12:48 am

Thanks to all of you for this wonderful thread and thanks to the people I pm'd for book suggestions. I am an extremely shy person in "real life" whatever that is-hehe and thought the online connection from my residence might be going out for good last night and just wanted to get suggestions of things to read as I have been unemployed for a long time due to disability. I have found some jobs under the table so to speak-but they pay very little and am in a great deal of pain a lot of the time so find myself with a lot of time on my hands. My brother is going to order Jeff's books for me and those are probably the last books that I will be able to purchase(bought for me of course)
Some books I have read and am currently reading that I have enjoyed are Greg Egan's sci fi books, Permutation City and Diaspora. The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot. You are Being Lied To edited by Russ Kick (conspiracy research -many contributors) available as a free ebook download on scribd.com. Any book by Jacques Vallee is great for UFO and Fortean research. Any book by Dostoevsky for literature-me anyway. Solzhenitsyn's The First Circle. Thanks again for this thread and suggestions. I am interested in almost everything here discussed here on RI and even if my online connection is lost completely from my place, I am glad I can access the site from other locations.
"you gave me in secret one thing to perceive, the tall blue starry strangeness of being here at all"-Franz Wright
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Postby Raamin » Thu Dec 04, 2008 11:09 pm

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The Demon's Sermon on the Martial Arts

The Demon said to the swordsman, "Fundamentally, man's mind is not without good. It is simply that from the moment he has life, he is always being brought up with perversity. Thus, having no idea that he has gotten used to being soaked in it, he harms his self-nature and falls into evil. Human desire is the root of this perversity."
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Re: The Currently-Reading Thread

Postby surfaceskimmer » Thu Sep 30, 2010 1:03 am

Recently read:
Cognitive Infiltration by Griffin;
The Secret Surrender by Allen Dulles;
JFK and the Unspeakable, and Resistance and Contemplation, by James Douglass;
Epiphanies: Where Science and Miracles Meet by Ann Jauregui, Ph.D.

Partially read but set aside for the moment in favor of more interesting stuff:
The Return of the Perennial Philosophy, by John Holman;
In Pursuit of Silence, Listening for Meaning in a World of Noise;
Six Frames for Thinking About Information, by Edward De Bono.

Currently being read:
Extraordinary Knowing: Science, Skepticism and the Inexplicable Powers of the Human Mind, by Elizabeth Lloyd Mater, Ph.D.;
The Last Circle, by Cheri Seymour.

On the waiting shelf:
Mary Magdalene: Christianity's Hidden Goddess, Lynn Picknett;
Care of the Soul in Medicine: Healing Guidance for Patients, Families and the People Who Care for Them, Thomas Moore;
Spirit, Mind and Brain: A Psychoanalytic Examination of Spirituality and Religion, by Mortimer Ostow;
The American Transcendentalists (Essential Writing), ed. by Lawrence Buell;
House of Wits: An Intimate Portrait of the James Family (William, Henry and Alice), by Paul Fisher;
Qigong Teachings of a Taoist Immortal: The Eight Essential Exercises of Master Li Ching Yun, by Stuart Alve Olson;
Shaolin Qi Gong: Energy in Motion, by Shi Xinggui;
Parapsychology, Philosophy and Spirituality: A Postmodern Exploration by David Ray Griffin (I think I am saving that for last because it really is heavy stuff);
All Governments Lie: The Life and Times of Rebel Journalist I. F. Stone, by Myra MacPherson; and
A Terrible Mistake by H, P. Albarelli.

I am now unemployed, disabled and apparently retired and I buy mostly 'remainders' through Daedalus Books in Baltimore, or used books through Amazon. I have always read voraciously but now I have the time to challenge Johnny Five for input, and I am getting ready in case the Internet is radically reduced or restructured. I have an extensive library of jazz and other music, 80 other books in spirituality, 150 books on performance psychology, and a bunch of other stuff in the realm of somatic psychology.
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Re: The Currently-Reading Thread

Postby Occult Means Hidden » Sat Nov 13, 2010 1:14 am

I just finished reading 'The Trickster and the Paranormal' by George Hansen that I saw cited in a rigint blog post awhile back. Very interesting academic but wide-ranging book.
Rage against the ever vicious downward spiral.
Time to get back to basics. [url=http://zmag.org/zmi/readlabor.htm]Worker Control of Industry![/url]
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Re: The Currently-Reading Thread

Postby Hammer of Los » Sat Nov 13, 2010 8:25 am

Wow surface skimmer!

That list of books looks like a smashing read from where I'm sitting! I think I would like to read them all, especially the David Ray Griffin ones, oh and that The Return of the Perennial Philosophy sounds interesting.

I'm supposed to be reading the second draft of my brother's sci fi novel.

Instead I've been reading a commentary on William James and his work. Sadly, the commentator is irritating me, so I might just go back and reread James himself. Not that I have the leisure to read extensively:

This thing all things devours, birds, beasts, trees, flowers..

My problem is.. time! Time!

If I had but world enough and time..

Time and space are the deepest mysteries.

Oh well, I can meditate on same while I go and scrub a pile of white school shirts in cold water. Brrr! My poor washday hands!
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Re: The Currently-Reading Thread

Postby §ê¢rꆧ » Sun Nov 14, 2010 5:50 pm

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Shadow Masters: An International Network of Governments and Secret-Service Agencies Working Together with Drugs Dealers and Terrorists for Mutual Benefit and Profit

Russo-centric but fascinating.
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Re: The Currently-Reading Thread

Postby stefano » Fri Dec 03, 2010 6:32 am

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Terrific, as you'd expect.

Britain is suffering under the recession, and a young couple – a leftish academic and his girlfriend (who is in the legal profession) – escape a depressed UK for a leisurely break on the Caribbean island of Antigua. But a meeting with a Russian millionaire by the name of Dima plunges the couple down the rabbit hole in a dizzying, picaresque odyssey in which the worlds of the City of London and the shadowy corridors of espionage collide.

Updated spy stuff, not-too-subtly referencing Mediterranean meetups between Osborne, Rothschild and Deripaska. As always Le Carré is outstanding in his portrayals of the human motivations and concerns of the people operating in the shadows, juxtaposing their family lives with the work they do. He's also particularly good, I think, at writing from a woman's perspective, which not a lot of male writers get right. While his older stuff was primarily concerned with the game and its players, this one, like The constant gardener, shows his compassion with the victims of the system.

And some of his sentences are just perfect:

His jaw is set in refusal although nobody has asked anything of him that needs to be refused, except for Gail, whose expression as she stares at him is one of dignified entreaty - or so she hopes, but maybe she's just giving him the hairy eyeball, because she's not sure any more what facial signals she's emitting.

Perry Makepiece my Heaven-sent lover and purblind innocent is about to wrap himself in the sacrificial flag for his Orwellian love of lost England, his admirable quest for Connection with a capital C - connection with what? for Christ's sake - or his homebrewed brand of inverted, puritanical vanity.

Probably he was speaking the truth when the told Matlock that Longrigg bored him, for it was an essential pillar of his thesis that the men and women he was pursuing were by definition bores: mediocre, banal, insensitive, lacklustre, to be distinguished from other bores only by their covert support for one another and their insatiable greed.
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Re: The Currently-Reading Thread

Postby Montag » Fri Dec 03, 2010 2:17 pm

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Re: The Currently-Reading Thread

Postby barracuda » Sat Feb 12, 2011 6:33 pm

On the recommendation of Jeff Wells:

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And now I can't wait for the movie.
The most dangerous traps are the ones you set for yourself. - Phillip Marlowe
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