Metal Reviews

Finished Mary Shelley's The Last Man. Severely grim, and probably the first example of the "post-apocalypse everybody is dead" genre that I know of. Enjoyed it overall but fucking hell if there weren't hundreds and hundreds of pages of long winded "and then this happened and then that happened". She has this incredibly flowery, descriptive writing style that can be really beautiful and can be a massive, massive pain in the arse to read.

Started Zola's The Debacle, which seems like it might be good.

Also, bravely venturing into the final 100 pages of Capital (abridged version).

Will soon start Tickling The English, by Dara O Briain.

I've essentially been forced to put Yevgeny Zamyatin's "We" on hold due to school starting up again. I just read "The Thin Man" by Dashiell Hammett, and will be starting "Tender is the Night" by F. Scott Fitzgerald either tonight or tomorrow. I'm also working on finishing A Midsummer Night's Dream, as well as working through a textbook on Roman history and the Marx-Engels Reader. I think that's all for now.

Is Stieg Larsson any good? I've got Girl With The Dragon Tattoo lying around somewhere, should I make the time to read it?

If you're into mainstream stuff knock yourself up. I only saw the film and would not even touch the book with a ten foot pole after that
But don't take only my word for it, I'm not really into that detective/drama genre and I'm feed up with the Swedes fascination about it.


But whatttoo I know. I'm reading a book, yes a book, for the first time in months(year?) and of course if it isn't doomsday-themed Zombie Survival Guide or I Am Legend (both awesome) it's another one like em, yet different. The End of Faith that is.
I like it a lot. Cocky mother-flippin Sam Harris huh. Much of what he writes just makes too much sense and he makes many good points. Looking forward to finishing it, reading some of the response he got, and then getting onto A Letter to a Christian Nation.

The End of Faith is awesome and Harris is like a serial killer when he argues. Cold, calm, calculating, and oh-so-precise.

Currently reading, among a slew of text books, a manga called Guru Guru Pon-Chan. A retardedly adorable manga about a dog that can turn into a girl. Hilarity ensues.

Yeah whatever. He really sounds like a super guy when he says "fuck liberties torture 'em; your stupid internalized moral codes prevent us from saving lives." It's not moral codes, idiot; it's the value of human lives and the natural rights which Western society has come to give individuals. That's from The End of Belief, anyways, I need to stop channeling Zizek.

Now reading:
-A bunch of books on David Hume
-A bunch of books on race, one being Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould
-Secondary text on Adorno's Negative Dialectics by O'Connor
-Some classical social theory like Locke, Rousseau, Wollstonecraft for a sociological theory class soon to be delving into some Marx.
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picked up "Vedis Mathematics", which has a bunch of techniques to simplify calculations in your head and on paper and John Kenneth Galbraith's "The Affluent Society".

still reading On The Road though, so far so good.

My reading for the semester has already reached critical mass and it's....week two. Three? I don't know. It's early.

Ooh, if you can give me a brief summary in comprehensible English when you're done that would be super.

Steven Erikson- Dust of Dreams

So far it's understand Hegel, Kant and Lukacs at a professional scholarly level and Adorno might become more comprehensible if you're lucky. Oh and critical theory is an epistemological endeavor.

We should rename this thread 'Philosophy and History' or something.

CR:

Blergh. Much like vampires, I'm getting overloaded on zombies. People ('people' in general; not aimed at anyone in particular) seem to be losing their critical faculties when it comes to things featuring zombies, and are willing to buy them for the sole fact that they have zombies in them, losing sight of the fact that this doesn't make the property, be it comic, movie, book, whatever, actually good. I am not opposed to "good" things that have zombies in them, but I believe that there is too much out there for the majority of these things to be of quality. Again, see vampires. The draw should be the quality of the product, not the specific content.

That being said, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies could be good, but oh, I am wary.

I know exactly what you mean, heh. My first zombie book in a while though, saw it in the library and decided to give it a go, barely started it.

Hm, I don't think I understand any of those people at a scholarly level, really

Robert Ferguson - The Vikings: A History

Looking forward to this. Haven't really read any history since I graduated last May. Seems that 4 years of reading history books wore me down a bit. I will say, it's nice to be able to choose what you want to read rather than being forced to try and get through a gazillion books, only a few of which really hold your interest.

I think that's the trick to it all. Maybe you just can't understand him? I think he basically draws on Lukacs' emphasis of reification insofar as people don't critically look at their surrounding, Kant's transcedental idealism provides the groundwork for how our surrounding synthesize with what we are experiencinga and Hegel provides the dialectic to fill in Kant's gaps. This all creates a "critical rationality". What all this means for Marxism I have no clue.

@Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: the zombies make the original story more interesting as much as the bourgeoisie/lower class love story can actually be interesting. I should say tolerable rather than interesting.

Does it not matter that P&P was written before Marx was even born, then?