What are you reading right now?

[semper occultus]

http://innovationpatterns.blogspot.com/

.....just picked up Rise of the Vulcans for buttons on Amazon last week......always thought it was Robert Parry for some reason....also a fairly rare & non-cheap book on the Greek colonels coup of 1967 - suitably prompted by Mae Brussel's frequent reference to these events in her mid-70's era pod-casts......there's virtually nothing in english published about it....

[DrEvil]

Some recent books (all fiction, I'm not as high brow as you lot ):

The Last Plague trilogy by Rich Hawkins (The Last Plague, The Last Outpost, The Last Soldier). Very well written zombie apocalypse meets The Thing with a light sprinkling of Lovecraft, and about as cheerful as 'The Road'.

'Into Everywhere' by Paul J. McAuley. Great scifi, follow-up to 'Something Coming Through'. Humans have been contacted and gifted 15 worlds to colonize, but we're not the first clients. All the planets are full of alien ruins and ancient artifacts that are way beyond human understanding. Plots ensue.

'Man With No Name' by Laird Barron. Yakuza meets weird fiction. Very good (like everything by Barron).

'The Nameless Dark' by T.E. Grau. Weird/horror short story collection. Again, very good if you like that sort of thing.

'Chimera' by T.C. McCarthy. Book three of the Subterrene War trilogy. Not your usual RARAH bullshit, reads more like Apocalypse Now in the future. The world is fucked and war is ugly. People go insane, die from disease and use way too much drugs. First book is about a reporter who goes on a drug-fueled tour of the frontlines of the latest resource war. Book two is about two genetically engineered female super soldiers who desert (the male versions had a tendency to go berserk and kill everyone, including allies, so they were discontinued) and book three is about a sociopathic operative who hunts deserters and ends up on the receiving end of a Chinese invasion of Thailand.

[Wombaticus Rex]

I got a copy of Barry Moser's woodcut bible, a hardcover, a bit dinged up but still shrinkwrapped, from a book sale under a tent here in Vermont. Force of habit: if there's enough books laid out, I still stop at any yard sale I drive by.

Funny how many families here thought it was necessary to own the entire Larry McMurtry catalog; you can't even trade those for phone books now.

Anyway, the bible? USD $5. I threw in a couple WWII / Korean War history books and gave them $20 since it was, bizarrely, a fundraiser for the local library. It was late on a Saturday afternoon, so when I went to the library it was closed.

I really wanted to see if they actually had a copy of the book they'd sold me. I'm going to go back at some point this week and I may have to donate that book to them, if my Catholic Guilt Programming wins out. I'm pretty sure it will not, since I know damn well it would just wind up on sale under a tent next year.

I think I would rather live in a literate culture that knows what the fuck to value, than keep getting great deals on used books. I don't have enough disciples to do that whole Canticle for Leibowitz thing.

[norton ash]

Library fundraisers are most often sales of books that don't circulate often enough, so they likely no longer have a copy of the book they sold you... because it's the book they sold you. I've scored some fine titles at library sales, but felt sad that I got 'em because nobody was borrowing them. Survival of the most popular once again, even at the library.

[Wombaticus Rex]

Too true, too true. I lost my entire book collection twice in my life; I've been rebuilding since returning to Vermont in 2012. Aside from a couple serious gems -- Paul Laffoley hardcovers, Jung's Red Book, some astounding and non-replaceable late 18th century texts, most especially a huge 1892 copy of Morals & Dogma I liberated down south -- I've been able to replace most of it. Further, I've replaced much of it in pristine hardcover edition, usually for less than $10. Alexandria is definitely burning, but I'm not gonna complain too much.

In related news, I am, obviously, re-reading the entire Bible this summer. Genesis was much better than I remembered, Exodus is boring as fuck.

[semper occultus]

some astounding and non-replaceable late 18th century texts, most especially a huge 1892 copy of Morals & Dogma I liberated down south....

...that's 19th century...

In related news, I am, obviously, re-reading the entire Bible this summer.

...what version...?

[PufPuf93]

I got a copy of Barry Moser's woodcut bible, a hardcover, a bit dinged up but still shrinkwrapped, from a book sale under a tent here in Vermont. Force of habit: if there's enough books laid out, I still stop at any yard sale I drive by.

Funny how many families here thought it was necessary to own the entire Larry McMurtry catalog; you can't even trade those for phone books now.

Anyway, the bible? USD $5. I threw in a couple WWII / Korean War history books and gave them $20 since it was, bizarrely, a fundraiser for the local library. It was late on a Saturday afternoon, so when I went to the library it was closed.

I really wanted to see if they actually had a copy of the book they'd sold me. I'm going to go back at some point this week and I may have to donate that book to them, if my Catholic Guilt Programming wins out. I'm pretty sure it will not, since I know damn well it would just wind up on sale under a tent next year.

I think I would rather live in a literate culture that knows what the fuck to value, than keep getting great deals on used books. I don't have enough disciples to do that whole Canticle for Leibowitz thing.

I would recommend Crumb's Book of Genesis for part of your Bible reading.

I really liked Larry McMurtry at one time. Read every work up to Lonesome Dove which I bought but failed to ever get far into.

Also read Zeke and Ned and the last 3 novels following up on Last Picture Show and Texasville and Some Can Whistle and The Evening Star, also follow ups of early novels in 2014 as they reside in the Karuk library.

I still bought Anything for Billy and Buffalo Girls when new but didn't actually read them until 2014 when had no TV nor internet access.

McMurtry was never more to me than light reading and my first awareness and reason for read was that he was mentioned in Electric Koolaid Acid Test as a fellow Stanford Writers Group member and acquaintance of Ken Kesey.

My favorite McMurtry is Leaving Cheyenne

[Cordelia]

Tell me a story.

In this century, and moment, of mania,
Tell me a story.

Make it a story of great distances, and starlight.

The name of the story will be Time,
But you must not pronounce its name.

Tell me a story of deep delight.

~ Robert Penn Warren ~

[Karmamatterz]

Browsing through this too.

[Cordelia]

Checked out a battered, spine-broken, dog-eared copy from the library and hope it holds up long enough to finish reading because what a ride!

[Freitag]

Mysteries: An Investigation Into the Occult, the Paranormal, and the Supernatural by Colin Wilson



I'm starting a deep-dive into the Occult that will inform some works of fiction I plan to write.

[Wombaticus Rex]

Spent the weekend on a lake and wrapped up a few humdingers:

1) The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light, William Irwin Thompson. Having read this over the course of over a year, I couldn't tell you what it's about. I know he goes on a lot of hypothetical / thought experiment excursions and I was rolling my eyes at some points. I know I also learned a hell of a lot about a hell of a lot of things while reading it -- kind of a James-Burke style treatment of human myth and pre-history. Gorgeous-ass sentences, too. Pretty great.

2) Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA, Terry Reed and John Cummings. Read this shortly after high school, didn't do much for me, but a couple circles round the sun later and this blew me away. Which is high praise since it's a horribly, horribly written book. Terry Reed is pretty convincing and the book itself is abundantly documented. Got about 7 pages of notes out of it for further research. Anyone who's been here over a year should probably read it.

3) Against Our Better Judgement: The Hidden History of How the US Was Used to Create Israel, Alison Weir. Short paperback, the book itself is shorter than the voluminous footnotes. I was riveted, though - Weir does a thorough job of proving her points and almost nothing is drawn from prejudiced, or even second-hand, sources: mostly direct quotes. In this sense it very much reminded me of H. Montgomery Hyde's Room 3603, a jubilantly self-satisfied account of how British Intelligence worked with traitors inside the US government to operate a massive, multi-year psyops campaign to convince American citizens to support entering WWII.

[0_0]

http://www.caam.rice.edu/~yad1/miscella ... s/Other/(E)%20Anatoly_Fomenko_History_Fiction_or_Science_1.pdf

^ don't know how legal this link is, but it's educational & i'm planning on buying the book (sometime in the future (lol))

it's a scientific and critical approach to something most of us probably take as a given: the validity of our chronology of historic events. i just started to read it at work today and i'm absolutely fascinated by it. Not believing in the moonlandings ( http://www.checktheevidence.com/pdf/Dav ... Doggie.pdf ) already seems like child's play to me!

[Freitag]

This bad boy just arrived today:

[DrEvil]

Just finished 'Calculating God' by Robert J. Sawyer. Aliens land in Toronto and demand to see a paleontologist. They claim to have evidence for Intelligent Design and that God is real. Lots of food for thought.

(One really, really disturbing thing he mentions, which is not related to the plot and that I pray to God he just made up, is that some of the drugs used during surgery aren't anesthetics but paralytics that prevent you from moving and messes with your memories so you can't remember the surgery. )