What Are You Currently Reading?

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Re: What Are You Currently Reading?

Postby cmsellers » Mon Dec 28, 2020 1:21 am

I've started reading The Black Swan, which is an interesting book written by a fellow with a wide range of interests and a dry sense of humor. It was credited by many people after-the-fact with predicting the 2008 financial crisis, and it's interesting reading it in 2020 to see the author casually mention that our planning around healthcare doesn't take pandemics into account.
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Re: What Are You Currently Reading?

Postby JamishT » Tue Dec 29, 2020 7:17 pm

cmsellers wrote:I've started reading The Black Swan, which is an interesting book written by a fellow with a wide range of interests and a dry sense of humor. It was credited by many people after-the-fact with predicting the 2008 financial crisis, and it's interesting reading it in 2020 to see the author casually mention that our planning around healthcare doesn't take pandemics into account.


When do the ballerinas get involved?
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Re: What Are You Currently Reading?

Postby Malfeasinator » Wed Jan 06, 2021 10:37 am

I'm starting to incorporate reading back into my regular rotation of doing things. I thought I'd start off light, with some Terry Pratchett. I'd read some of his books in the past but I would just grab something from a used book shop, since I was told they were all kind of out of order anyway.

I'd picked up "The Color of Magic" and it ended on a cliffhanger. So now I'm halfway through "The Light Fantastic."

edit: of course it's hilarious, all Pratchett shit is just great, I feel like everyone knows that so I didn't really review anything here.

My next books are going to be "books I've been meaning to read for years but haven't got around to, just yet." I'll let you know how it goes.
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Re: What Are You Currently Reading?

Postby cmsellers » Wed Jan 06, 2021 5:44 pm

I was going to say "Oh no, for the love of god don't start with The Color of Magic, that's his worst book!" But it sounds like you enjoyed it anyways. I, OTOH, made that mistake and believed for over a decade I didn't like Pratchett until someone here (I think it was Carrie) told me to read the Death and Night Watch books instead.
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Re: What Are You Currently Reading?

Postby Malfeasinator » Thu Jan 07, 2021 10:41 am

I think my first was "Small Gods." It was given to me as a gift. What was funny to me was that about a year later, the same person gave me the same book. It had a different cover. I passed it on to a friend. After that it was "Moving Pictures", I believe. Both were awesome.
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Re: What Are You Currently Reading?

Postby jbobsully11 » Sat Feb 27, 2021 7:23 pm

I finally started reading Terry Pratchett's Guards! Guards! yesterday, and I'm about 1/5 of the way through. *kicks self for not starting sooner*
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Crimson847 wrote:In other words, transgender-friendly privacy laws don't molest people, people molest people.

(Presumably, the only way to stop a bad guy with a transgender-friendly privacy law is a good guy with a transgender-friendly privacy law, and thus transgender-friendly privacy law rights need to be enshrined in the Constitution as well)
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Re: What Are You Currently Reading?

Postby Krashlia » Mon Mar 01, 2021 6:11 am

I'm kinda reading that booklet from, possibly, The Last Psychiatrist, Watch What You Hear.
It might just be pornography, according to his specific, non-sex related, definition of the term. But its interesting pornography at least.
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Re: What Are You Currently Reading?

Postby jbobsully11 » Fri May 28, 2021 2:00 am

I got two short not-really-kids-books a while ago, All My Friends Are Dead and No Reading Allowed. The former is dark but hilarious, imo (because I'm a terrible person); the latter is the sequel to P is for Pterodactyl. I don't like this one as much as the first, but it's not bad.
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Crimson847 wrote:In other words, transgender-friendly privacy laws don't molest people, people molest people.

(Presumably, the only way to stop a bad guy with a transgender-friendly privacy law is a good guy with a transgender-friendly privacy law, and thus transgender-friendly privacy law rights need to be enshrined in the Constitution as well)
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Re: What Are You Currently Reading?

Postby Pedgerow » Tue Jul 20, 2021 1:24 am

The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer. It's the full thing, in proper ye-olde-Englishe but with occasional notes to explain what words like "yclept" mean. Reading it feels like agony, although I think it just feels like torture and actually isn't as bad as it feels. Imagine reading 750 straight pages of Scottish Twitter; that's the best way I can describe it.
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Re: What Are You Currently Reading?

Postby jbobsully11 » Fri Dec 24, 2021 1:46 am

I started reading a book called The Winter Girl, which I had heard about a while ago, but it seems incredibly dull (1.5 chapters in), so I think I'll stop.
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Crimson847 wrote:In other words, transgender-friendly privacy laws don't molest people, people molest people.

(Presumably, the only way to stop a bad guy with a transgender-friendly privacy law is a good guy with a transgender-friendly privacy law, and thus transgender-friendly privacy law rights need to be enshrined in the Constitution as well)
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Re: What Are You Currently Reading?

Postby NathanLoiselle » Fri Dec 24, 2021 6:21 pm

I'm reading about how hippos are really space aliens. True story.
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Re: What Are You Currently Reading?

Postby jbobsully11 » Sat Feb 26, 2022 9:54 pm

I was looking up sci-fi stories where humans are the monsters, and I found this list. I just finished the first one ("The Things", by Peter Watts), and I thought it was pretty good.
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Crimson847 wrote:In other words, transgender-friendly privacy laws don't molest people, people molest people.

(Presumably, the only way to stop a bad guy with a transgender-friendly privacy law is a good guy with a transgender-friendly privacy law, and thus transgender-friendly privacy law rights need to be enshrined in the Constitution as well)
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Re: What Are You Currently Reading?

Postby Pedgerow » Sat Mar 19, 2022 5:44 pm

Stephen King's Dark Tower books -
The first couple, I read about 15 years ago so I have no recollection of whether they're good or not. I don't think they were great.
The middle ones: amazing. They're brilliant. Wholly recommended.
The sixth one: disappointing after the good ones.

The last one, which is the one I'm reading now: it's terrible. I'm a little under a quarter of the way through, but it's formulaic to the point of self-parody. At this current stage, I hate it. Maybe it gets better, but it's the writing style I can't stand so I suspect not. It's one of the worst cases of Stephen King's self-indulgent folksy Americana, which just gets more grating with each book it appears in. And that's usually acceptable, because a lot of his books get bought at the airport by people who quite possibly haven't read any others. But this is The Dark Tower, Book VII: The Dark Tower. You must have read at least six other books by Stephen King to reach this point. Damn it, Steve. Make a little more effort. Make something happen. The pacing is completely off; the entire book so far feels like the breathless final act of any other book of his. But it's still just "and then he met a farmer, and the farmer is from Maine, and here are some dad-rock songs from the 1970s all about farming" for over 100 pages. And I still have over 500 pages left to go. Damn it, Steve.
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Re: What Are You Currently Reading?

Postby Pedgerow » Wed Mar 30, 2022 7:56 pm

As soon as I had posted the above, the book got better. But it still took me nearly two more weeks to finish it. I just couldn't get into it, even though it picked up a lot. The ending is awful too, though.
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Re: What Are You Currently Reading?

Postby jbobsully11 » Sun Mar 10, 2024 12:11 am

Robotics Through Science Fiction: Artificial Intelligence Explained Through Six Classic Robot Short Stories

I got this book a while ago but just started it last week. Each chapter starts with a discussion of some principle of AI or robotics, then introduces a short story and asks the reader to think about how different things were presented. I really liked the story Long Shot, by Verner Vinge about a robotic spaceship operating with long-term autonomy (without giving anything away).
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Crimson847 wrote:In other words, transgender-friendly privacy laws don't molest people, people molest people.

(Presumably, the only way to stop a bad guy with a transgender-friendly privacy law is a good guy with a transgender-friendly privacy law, and thus transgender-friendly privacy law rights need to be enshrined in the Constitution as well)
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