3 ("Watchmen" :fiction
8)
4 ("V for Vendetta" :fiction
10))
7 ("The Sandman (series)"
9 "Perhaps the best comic book series of all time; I would say *The
10 Sandman* as a whole ranks higher than anything even Alan Moore has
14 "A friend of a friend decided one evening that I needed to read
15 so-called *normal people books*, and so she lent me *Good Omens*. It
16 was an enjoyable read and unearthed vague memories of comic book
17 magazines I read when I was small and the name *Sandman*; thus through
18 one book I found something far greater."))
20 "Blake is my [[William Blake][favorite]] of the English poets. His
21 unique use of relief etching and watercoloring makes for very
22 interesting Illuminated works. There is a very high quality
23 [[http://blakearchive.org][complete archive of Blake's works]] online
24 with high resolution plate scans and full transcriptions among other
28 "The unfinished manuscript of Blake's longest apocalypse. The
29 Four Zoas divide from Albion and rage through the ages of dismal woe
30 to bring about the end of the cycle of Ulro and restore the cycle of
32 ("Jerusalem" :fiction
10 "The finest of Blake's Illuminated works."))
34 "Kahlil Gibran is fairly interesting; his earlier works do not
35 agree with my æsthetic sense (blah blah), but *The Madman* onward are
36 all rather nice. A few of his works are
37 [[http://leb.net/~mira/][online]], but I recommend scouting used book
38 stores for old hardcover editions. The (late 90s onward at least)
39 *hardcover* versions from *Alfred A. Knopf* are in fact permabound
40 paperbacks with a hardcasing, and are of seriously inferior quality to
41 the editions from the 50s and 60s (and cost quite a bit more,
45 "One of Kahlil Gibran's earlier works, I did not much like *A
46 Tear and a Smile* excepting the last poem (\"A Poet's Voice\").")
47 ("The Prophet" :fiction
9)
48 ("Sand and Foam" :fiction
7 "An interesting little book of aphorisms.")
49 ("The Madman" :fiction
8))
50 ((|John| |Taylor| |Gatto|
)
51 "Former teacher and now author-activist."
52 ("Underground History of American Education"
54 "An interesting *underground* history of the American education
56 [[http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/][online for free]]."))
57 ((|Luke| |Rhinehardt|
)
62 And it's his illusions about what
63 constitutes the real world which are
65 His reality, his reason, his society
66 ...these are what must be destroyed
69 A quotation from one of my [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slaughter_of_the_Soul][favorite metal songs]] inspired me to grab
70 this book; at worst it would be a waste of time. Much reward was found
71 in this random stab in the dark. The book is framed as an
72 autobiography of the author as a psychoanalyst, and his progression
73 through life as a Dice Man after deciding to live his life through
76 The style, plot, and content are equally neurotic; part comedy, part
77 attack on psychoanalysis, and part deep philosophy. It was often
78 difficult to put down, and was read in under a week of spare time."))
79 ((|Neal| |Stephenson|
)
83 "As one must read the *Bible* to understand English literature, so one
84 must read *Snow Crash* today to be a nerd. In the realm of modern pop
85 fiction this is one of the better books I've read; it was devoured in
86 a mere four nights. Neal Stepheson may not be Milton, but he does come
87 up with enganging tales. *Snow Crash* has a nice undertone of (quite
88 accurate) political and social commentary that makes it worth reading
89 as more than mere cyberpunk fiction.")
92 "I read *Cryptonomicon* when it was new, and at the time I thought it was
93 good. It could have lost a hundred or so pages without detracting from
94 the plot, but it was easy reading and didn't take very long to
95 finish. The story was enganging, and the continual switching between
96 the 1940s and present day slowly unravelled the tale in a nice way.
98 I'd still have to recommend *Snow Crash* if one wished to read only one
100 ((|Marcus| |Aurelius|
)
104 "At the time, I enjoyed reading this collection of meditations on
105 Stoic philosophy, and it was a fairly quick read (fifteen minutes a
106 day over the course of two weeks for me). Nowadays I've read
107 Epictetus, and I suggest reading his *Discourses* instead."))
108 ((|Søren| |Kierkegaard|
)
109 "Kierkegaard was a master of style and philosophy; his writing is
110 interesting even if one finds the theistic extentialism espoused
112 ("Sickness Unto Death"
114 "I purchased this when I was looking through books at a store after
115 being unable to find the book I really wanted, and I must say that it
116 was better for me to have found this one.
118 Contained within is a beautiful analysis of despair in the context of
119 Christianity (really theism in general). Even if the argument offends,
120 the presentation cannot. The dialectical nature of despair is
121 reflected in every aspect of the work, and the method of presentation
125 "Composed of two portions, *Either/Or* is a rather lengthy but
126 rewarding read. The first book is a series of essays and a diary of a
127 young esthetician; the second is a pair of long letters from an older
128 ethicist friend to this esthetician. You are then left to resolve the
129 conflict between the views.")
130 ("Fear and Trembling"
132 "An interesting dialectical lyric contrasting Despair and Faith.")
135 "He who despairs of esthetic repetition gets none; he who despairs
136 of ethical repetition receieves the esthetic. Is it true then that no
137 repetition exists? Is transition all one can hope for?"))
142 "I read most of Utopia in high school with the TI-89 ebook reader, but
143 the way the book was split up made it a bit difficult to grasp the
144 overall structure. I found a copy at a used book store one day, and so
145 I read it again, and found it much more comprehensible. It is a quick
146 read, and decent piece of literature. The interesting social system
147 espoused resembles resembles state communism (even if perhaps as a
148 negative ideal), but with an strange blend of 14th century European
152 ("The Varieties of Religious Experience"
154 "[[William James - The Varieties of Religious Experience][A partially finished extended summary]]")
158 America is thus as a nation rapidly drifting towards a state of things
159 in which no man of science or letters will be accounted respectable
160 unless some kind of badge or diploma is stamped upon him, and in which
161 bare personality will be a mark of outcast estate. It seems to me high
162 time to rouse ourselves to consciousness, and to cast a critical eye
163 upon this decidedly grotesque tendency. Other nations suffer terribly
164 from the Mandarin disease. Are we doomed to suffer like the rest?
167 [[William James - The PhD Octopus][Full Text]]"))
169 "The novelist brother of William James; I've not read many (read:
170 one) of his books, but what I did was decent."
171 ("The Altar of the Dead"
173 "A short novella about a man who maintained an altar in a church
174 for all of his lost loved ones on the surface, but something a bit
176 ((|Gregor| |Kiczales|
)
178 ("The Art of the Metaobject Protocol"
180 "AMOP is useful as a reference to the CLOS MOP (although less so with
181 the online MOP spec), but the true value of the book lies in the first
182 half of the book. It presents the design of the CLOS MOP through a
183 series of revisions that fix limitations of earlier implementations
184 and gradually work toward a generic and well designed MOP for
185 CLOS. Through that process one is made more aware of a few general
186 object protocol design skills, and gains insight into how to cleanly
187 make mapping decisions customizable."))
188 ((|Friedrich| |Nietzsche|
)
189 "A bit acerbic and esoteric, Nietzsche is for me a good *secular*
190 counterpart to Kierkegaard's theistic philosophy. Nietzsche's
191 polemical works raise important questions for anyone who reads works
192 on ethics. As such it is a shame that he has gotten a bad reputation
193 by being read by far too many angsty teenagers who see (and relay)
194 only Nietzsche the asshole rather than Nietzsche the master of the
196 ("Thus Spoke Zarathustra"
198 "A masterpiece of indirect communication depsite the occasional
199 flaw and overly dramatic passage. Certainly a book worth reading many
200 times over the course of one's life.")
201 ("Beyond Good and Evil"
203 "A somewhat more comprehensible, if a bit less aesthetically
204 pleasing, presentation of much of the philosophy found in *Thus Spoke
205 Zarathustra* in the negative form. The final chapters are very
206 important (not to detract from the value of the rest of the work) if
207 one wishes to understand *On the Genealogy of Morals*.")
208 ("On the Geneaology of Morals"
210 "*On the Geneaology of Morals* is a wonderful book of three
211 polemical essays on the origin of moral/ethical valuations, and the
212 blindness of modern philosphers whose very thinking is tainted by
213 these valuations unknowingly.")
216 "*Ecce Homo* is Nietzsche's very strange autobiography and
217 explanation of his own works. At points it is clear that it could have
218 used a bit more editing (prevented by Nietzsche ... falling into a
219 catatonic state and all), but is still a very useful book to read as
220 Nietzsche explains the overall structure of his works."))
229 ;;; ("Prior Analytics"
231 ;;; "*Prior Analytics* is essential reading if one wishes to understand
232 ;;; [[Term Logic][traditional logic]]. Given that traditional logic is
233 ;;; used by most philosophers prior to the mid-1800s it is a *bit*
234 ;;; important. Luckily *Prior Analytics* is
235 ;;; [[http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/a/aristotle/a8pra/index.html][available online for free]] and is fairly short.")
240 ("The Frogs" :fiction nil
)
241 ("The Clouds" :fiction nil
)
242 ("Ecclesiazusae" :fiction nil
))
245 ("Symposium" :fiction nil
)
246 ("Euthyphro" :fiction nil
)
247 ("Apology" :nonfiction nil
)
248 ("Crito" :fiction nil
)
249 ("Phaedo" :nonfiction
10)
250 ("Protagoras" :fiction nil
))
253 ("Oresteia":fiction
10)
254 ("Prometheus Bound" :fiction
9)
255 ("The Persians" :fiction
8))
258 ("The Odyssey" :fiction
10))
262 ("Animal Farm" :fiction nil
))
264 "Perhaps the most overrated modern writer. Other people have written
265 everything he has to write better and many years before he got around
267 ("The Doors of Perception"
269 "Huxley stains the name of Blake by naming this horrible
270 pseudo-scientific and pseudo-poetic essay after a line from *The
271 Marriage of Heaven and Hell*. Subjectivity and objectivity are
272 incommensurable; his attempt and being subjectively objective is
276 "Blah blah LSD blah blah Mushrooms blah blah Peyote blah blah I'm
277 Aldous Huxley I'm a pretentious jerk. Don't bother."))
280 ("Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy (collected)" :fiction
8)
281 ("The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul" :fiction
6))
284 ("The Island of Dr Moreau" :fiction
7))
287 ("The Lord of the Rings" :fiction
9)
288 ("The Silmarillion" :fiction
10)
289 ("The Lost Tales" :fiction
7))
290 ((|Bjarne| |Stroustrup|
)
292 ("The C++ Programming Language (3rd edition)"
294 "Once upon a time I was fifteen and I read this book. It was more
295 or less what taught me how to write programs just large enough to do
296 useful things, and so shall forever be remembered by me. A year and a
297 half later I stumbled upon a little language called Scheme and fell
298 down the rabbit hole."))
301 ("Analects" :nonfiction nil
))
304 ("Mencius" :nonfiction nil
))
307 ("A Canticle for Leibowitz" :fiction
10))
312 "After learning Scheme, I read *Successful Lisp* and was able to
313 pick up Common Lisp fairly easily."))
315 "The author of the rather amazing [[http://scarygoround.com][Scary Go Round]].
316 I highly recommend procuring the printed collections; the printing
317 quality is superb (full color on glossy paper), and the long story
318 arcs are much easier to read."
319 ("Looks, Brains and Everything" :fiction nil
)
320 ("Blame the Sky" :fiction nil
)
321 ("Skellington" :fiction nil
)
322 ("The Retribution Index" :fiction nil
)
323 ("Great Aches" :fiction nil
)
324 ("Ahoy Hoy!" :fiction nil
)
325 ("Heavy Metal Hearts and Flowers" :fiction nil
)
326 ("Ghosts" :fiction nil
))
331 "Of the *Sandman* spinoffs, *Lucifer* stands out as the best for
332 the first half, but then the writer appears to take on far too great a
333 task, and, with the introduction of some disagreeable character
334 relations, fails to execute the story as well as it could have
335 been. Still, it was worth reading to the end even though most of the
336 stories after issue 35 or so were merely ok. If you like Kierkegaard I
337 suggest issues 2, 3, and 62--they show the form of the incommensurable
338 relation of the single individual to the absolute perfectly."))
341 ("Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz" :fiction nil
))
344 ("Destiny: A Chronicle of Deaths Foretold" :fiction
8))
347 ("Paradise Lost" :fiction
10))
348 ((|Yevgeny| |Zamyatin|
)