The Bookworm Corner

florduh

Well-Known Member
I am currently working my way through chapter 3, section 9 of Deleuze and Guattari's Anti Oedipus

Your excellent write-up convinced me to look up this book. The original title is, Capitalisme et schizophrénie. L'anti-Œdipe. Honestly, America should replace "e pluribus unum" on our money with "Capitalism and Schizophrenia". Perfectly explains our country.


But I do wonder what you disagree with.

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Bazinga

Well-Known Member
Your excellent write-up convinced me to look up this book. The original title is, Capitalisme et schizophrénie. L'anti-Œdipe. Honestly, America should replace "e pluribus unum" on our money with "Capitalism and Schizophrenia". Perfectly explains our country.




FlR5l5B.png
Who is that in the car?
 
Bazinga,

el sargantano

Well-Known Member
I just didn't know about this Galactic Empire prequel written by Isaac Asimov himself.
He didn't add it officially to the main lore of robots, empires & foundations, but it rings some bells on future subjects developed on the next books he wrote:


I'll pick it up from the public library during summertime and review it here soon after.
 
el sargantano,

im not a robot

Well-Known Member
oh i had no idea this thread existed. how nice.
honestly digital media has kept me more from reading than id like to admit. i periodically make resolutions to change this.
few books in recent memory have touched me as much as remainder by tom maccarthy
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and annihilation by jeff vandermeer
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neither one is exactly a hidden gem, both were turned into movies. but i think they are both brilliant.

oh and in terms of nonfiction, entangled life by merlin sheldrake also a great read. i wonder if this got referenced in the mushroom thread here...
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i also really enjoyed the expanse series. however i got distracted midway through babylon's ashes, and now i lost the plot. my memory is terrible. i guess i should rerstart it. in your opinion @florduh - is this worth the effort, does the quality keep up with the earlier volumes?
 

Green420

Well-Known Member
Just read around 20 pages of Max Planck's the New Science, chapter 2 of "Where is Science Going" called "Is the External World Real?" It was a fascinating description of logical positivism, basically saying that the positivists do not understand how the works of Faraday and electromagnetism are possible from a positivistic view, seems to imply this and does not elaborate so I don't know why Faraday is not understandable from a purely sensory abstraction point of view. But that is what Planck is trying to say, is that the world breaks down at a quantum level, so the idea that there's just a non contradictory list of facts about the world, which excludes all aesthetic or ethical conclusions, is based on the idea that the external world is simply unknowable. We can make statements about it, but these statements as raw scientific data do not lead to new discoveries. Planck lays a logical contradiction in logical positivist thought out at the end of chapter, which is very clear and does not require background knowledge to understand - it's a contradiction to say that there's both an external world which is real, and an external world which is unknowable. How do you know it's real if it's unknowable is Planck's proposition.

Planck was anti fascist, in a way which he believed was the best he could do. He privately hated Hitler and the Nazis, but he kept his post because he believed it was good to uphold the law, according the introduction. Planck is still the sort of author who seems to separate facts from values, thinks there is a definite external world which has laws "independent" of the instruments of science as he describes, which is why the instruments cannot always be trusted. But he does not believe that ethics plays no role in what we do, he derides the positivists for their view that ethics and aesthetic conclusions are not part of the conclusions of scientific study. He goes through a brief history of modern science in the beginning which is nice if you already know a lot of the stuff like the Michaelson Morley experiment and the workings of Relativity. It's a crash course kind of thing, but when he gets more into the meat of the book later it becomes a real treat to listen to some of his descriptions of positivist, and hearing about the whole history of modern science in brief is not bad, it gives you an idea of some of the names which are worth having in your library, like Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Einstein, Bohr (Bohr I don't have), etc. And Planck doesn't use any logical notation to describe what he has to say, which I think is a mark of someone who understands what they say well enough to explain it simply.
 
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florduh

Well-Known Member
i lost the plot. my memory is terrible. i guess i should rerstart it. in your opinion @florduh - is this worth the effort, does the quality keep up with the earlier volumes?

I'm sorry I just saw this!

I just finished the 8th and penultimate novel, Tiamat's Wrath. It might be the best of the series!

Babylon's Ashes was also a bit tough for me too. I despise Marcos Inaros. But a lot of the plots that begin in the early novels pay off in the final trilogy. I'm starting the final installment, Leviathan Falls, this week and am starting to feel sad about saying goodbye to this universe. I think it's worth giving it another shot from the top.
 

GetLeft

Well-Known Member
We loved the Expanse tv series. Came across it on Sci Fi and quickly got addicted. The tv story led me to read some of the books. While conceptually the story and characters are compelling, the long, drawn out novels, mostly identical in structure, were tedious to me to the point of making me give up.
 

florduh

Well-Known Member
We loved the Expanse tv series.

It is pretty shocking how closely they were able to follow the books with a limited budget. In part, it's because 90% of the series takes place in a room or hallway ("doors and corners, kid"). There are no windows on any of the spaceships. The first chapter of Leviathan Wakes remarks that the bridge of the Canterbury looks like any accounting office.

I still like the books a lot better, though it might depend on what you encountered first. As mentioned before, there is a 30 year time gap between where the TV series ends and the 7th book begins. You could pick it up there if you want to know how the story ends up :shrug:

They're putting out a video game that makes me want to see an animated series.


Two things about the TV series drove me crazy. Short Martians and Belters. And gravity. Ceres Station had 1/3 Earth's gravity. But everyone in the show walked normally. It wasn't the show's fault, but it still drove me nuts.
 
florduh,
Who is that in the car?
My friend, that is one of the greatest criminal masterminds of the 20th century -- Walter White (played by Bryan Cranston). This particular pic is from near the end of the series (because of course, all criminals are caught, right? At least in TV land ?)

Seriously, though... it's not a book (so slightly off topic here), but it's one of the best written crime series for TV, EVER. I didn't discover it until about 2yrs after the whole thing ended. So now I can carry it forward to someone else who's not familiar with it.

'Breaking Bad' is available on Netflix and AMC's specialized 'rerun channels', and I'm sure other places, too.
 
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im not a robot

Well-Known Member
I'm sorry I just saw this!

I just finished the 8th and penultimate novel, Tiamat's Wrath. It might be the best of the series!

Babylon's Ashes was also a bit tough for me too. I despise Marcos Inaros. But a lot of the plots that begin in the early novels pay off in the final trilogy. I'm starting the final installment, Leviathan Falls, this week and am starting to feel sad about saying goodbye to this universe. I think it's worth giving it another shot from the top.
thanks! i will absolutely put in the effort then. honestly i have not had that much fun reading anything in a good long while, so happy to hear it stays on course. i have not yet watched the series, wanted to finish the books first.
 
im not a robot,
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Drsoapp

1008
I highly recommend everyone to read The science of Self realization by Ac Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada

Allso Bhagavad Gita AS IT IS !

These 2 absolutely changed my understanding of the universe and life
 
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florduh

Well-Known Member
Excerpt from The Expanse:

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Important note! Do not draw any comparisons between this passage and current events or you will be deported to El Salvador!
 

florduh

Well-Known Member
Another Sci-Fi rec from the author of The Martian, Andy Weir. Project Hail Mary. They're making a movie about it next year.


Like The Martian, PHM is a life affirming tale about how a positive mental attitude combined with the problem solving method known as "science" can create seeming miracles. Beautiful book.
 
florduh,

Green420

Well-Known Member
Have been reading Klossowski's Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle. Just finished chapter 1 yesterday. It's basically about how philosophers try to reify their impulses as ontology in Nietzsche's eyes. This author cites Deleuze and Guattari, which is very exciting, writing at the same time as Derrida and Deleuze and Guattari, in the late 60s I think. The book wrestles between spirit, which compels guilt, and Nietzsche, who is a very Stirnerian figure, but goes even further and seems to reject all contemplation about truth and the nature of reality. Klossowski's raises the question of how ethics is possible if this is the case, but doesn't seem to offer a defense of ethics in the first chapter. Klossowski seems to imply that individualism is not possible without society. And that makes sense, as if you're raised in the wilderness there has been documented cases of not even being able to learn a language after you don't generate the neural pathways early in life.


 

Green420

Well-Known Member
I highly recommend everyone to read The science of Self realization by Ac Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada

Allso Bhagavad Gita AS IT IS !

These 2 absolutely changed my understanding of the universe and life
I've read the Bhagavad Gita twice, a beautiful book. Didn't read any of the commentary like the As It Is one, my professor told me to just read the books themselves as opposed to the secondaries at first, but we did read a secondary on it I believe eventually in class. Great to see the origin of the "I am become death, destroyer of worlds" quote from Oppenheimer (a movie I didn't see, but Oppenheimer is recorded saying the words irl). It's also nice to see a positive account of the mind which is pan-psychist, implying an omnipresent mind in my interpretation at least. Brahma creates and is everything, Vishnu preserves, and Shiva is creativity and destruction. Deleuze and Guattari and many continental philosophers have a pan-psychist view of the world, that there is a sort of interpenetrating consciousness that is in all things. Derrida seems to think this. A beautiful book. Not that I like caste systems.
 
Green420,
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Drsoapp

1008
I've read the Bhagavad Gita twice, a beautiful book. Didn't read any of the commentary like the As It Is one, my professor told me to just read the books themselves as opposed to the secondaries at first, but we did read a secondary on it I believe eventually in class. Great to see the origin of the "I am become death, destroyer of worlds" quote from Oppenheimer (a movie I didn't see, but Oppenheimer is recorded saying the words irl). It's also nice to see a positive account of the mind which is pan-psychist, implying an omnipresent mind in my interpretation at least. Brahma creates and is everything, Vishnu preserves, and Shiva is creativity and destruction. Deleuze and Guattari and many continental philosophers have a pan-psychist view of the world, that there is a sort of interpenetrating consciousness that is in all things. Derrida seems to think this. A beautiful book. Not that I like caste systems.
You should definitely try Gita As it is too. The purports By HG AC Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada are the key to understanding the deep meaning of the verses.🙏
 
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Pistol Pete

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Wow, I'm glad to see people reading paper books! Especially with the digital world that we live in today. I highly recommend this book, or handbook. Over 600 pages of not only growing but so many other interesting topics imo. This is the latest edition with the newest technology, for example LED lights vs CFL, HPS and CMH.

It starts off with The Cannabis User's Bill Of Rights and The Tomato Model. Any grower needs to educate themselves with this info!!! SERIOUSLY
 
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Green420

Well-Known Member
Wow, I'm glad to see people reading paper books! Especially with the digital world that we live in today. I highly recommend this book, or handbook. Over 600 pages of not only growing but so many other interesting topics imo. This is the latest edition with the newest technology, for example LED lights vs CFL, HPS and CMH.

It starts off with The Cannabis User's Bill Of Rights and The Tomato Model. Any grower needs to educate themselves with this info!!! SERIOUSLY
Digital is weird, very much the feeling of the tablet gets in the way of the experience. It fatigues the eyes after a long time, it needs to be charged, it's harder to access pages without bookmarks where you can just pick up the bookmark and put it in. Also, screens before bed = shallow sleep. A book for an hour, a few before bed, deep sleep, granted no caffeine or shocking incidents.

I have more physical books than I have digital files, I believe; I have not even posted my best ones, only my recent ones. I collect libertarian communist works, various strands of anarchism like the "individualist" proto-post structuralist Max Stirner from the 1800s, America's Mother Earth writers with Emma Goldman, from the turn of/mid century, among other things.

First editions are something I generally tend to favor, in hardcover, the quality and presentation of a book matter, besides the fact that if the content isn't good it won't be in my house in any format. I'm rambling, but books, especially physical ones, are my life, my career, my obsession, and boy is looking profitless XD But it's proven by science, God, the law, and the gods of rock and roll, that one should vape weed and read every day 🤘
 
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