Rating: (6) / Nonfiction
- -I enjoyed reading this collection of meditations on Stoic -philosophy. It is a fairly quick read; I read each of the twelve books -before sleeping over the course of two weeks. Toward the end of the -collection things get a bit topically repetetive (e.g. acting -according to the nature of man is reflected upon over and over), but -each repetition looks at the topic in a slightly different light. A -number of passages I found quite inspiring, and scratched them down in -my notebook to ponder further.
- - - -Blake is my favorite of the English poets. His -unique use of relief etching and watercoloring makes for very -interesting Illuminated works. There is a very high quality -complete archive of Blake's works online -with high resolution plate scans and full transcriptions among other -things.
- -Rating: (10) / Fiction
- -The unfinished manuscript of Blake's longest apocalypse. The -Four Zoas divide from Albion and rage through the ages of dismal woe -to bring about the end of the cycle of Ulro and restore the cycle of -Beulah.
- - -Rating: (10) / Fiction
- -The finest of Blake's Illuminated works.
- - - -Former teacher and now author-activist.
- -Rating: (9) / Nonfiction
- -An interesting underground history of the American education -system. Available -online for free.
- - - -Kahlil Gibran is fairly interesting; his earlier works do not -agree with my æsthetic sense (blah blah), but The Madman onward are -all rather nice. A few of his works are -online, but I recommend scouting used book -stores for old hardcover editions. The (late 90s onward at least) -hardcover versions from Alfred A. Knopf are in fact permabound -paperbacks with a hardcasing, and are of seriously inferior quality to -the editions from the 50s and 60s (and cost quite a bit more, -naturally).
+ +Rating: (8) / Fiction
+ + + + + +Rating: (6) / Fiction
+ + + + + + +Rating: (10) / Fiction
+ + + + + +Rating: (9) / Fiction
+ + + + + +Rating: (8) / Fiction
+ + + + + + +The author of the rather amazing Scary Go Round. +I highly recommend procuring the printed collections; the printing +quality is superb (full color on glossy paper), and the long story +arcs are much easier to read.
+ +Fiction
+ + + + + +Fiction
+ + + + + +Fiction
+ + + + + +Fiction
+ + + + + +Fiction
+ + + + + +Fiction
+ + + + + +Fiction
+ + + + + +Fiction
+ + + + + + +Fiction
+ + + + + + +Fiction
+ + + + + +Fiction
+ + + + + +Fiction
+ + + + + + +Nonfiction
+ + + + + +Nonfiction
+ + + + + +Nonfiction
+ + + + + +Nonfiction
+ + + + + + +Rating: (4) / Nonfiction
+ +At the time, I enjoyed reading this collection of meditations on +Stoic philosophy, and it was a fairly quick read (fifteen minutes a +day over the course of two weeks for me). Nowadays I've read +Epictetus, and I suggest reading his Discourses instead.
+ + + + +Blake is my favorite of the English poets. His +unique use of relief etching and watercoloring makes for very +interesting Illuminated works. There is a very high quality +complete archive of Blake's works online +with high resolution plate scans and full transcriptions among other +things.
+ +Rating: (10) / Fiction
+ +The unfinished manuscript of Blake's longest apocalypse. The +Four Zoas divide from Albion and rage through the ages of dismal woe +to bring about the end of the cycle of Ulro and restore the cycle of +Beulah.
+ + + +Rating: (10) / Fiction
+ +The finest of Blake's Illuminated works.
+ + + + +Fiction
+ + + + + + +Rating: (6) / Fiction
+ +Of the Sandman spinoffs, Lucifer stands out as the best for +the first half, but then the writer appears to take on far too great a +task, and, with the introduction of some disagreeable character +relations, fails to execute the story as well as it could have +been. Still, it was worth reading to the end even though most of the +stories after issue 35 or so were merely ok. If you like Kierkegaard I +suggest issues 2, 3, and 62—they show the form of the incommensurable +relation of the single individual to the absolute perfectly.
+ + + + +Nonfiction
+ + + + + + +Rating: (10) / Fiction
+ +Perhaps the best comic book series of all time; I would say The +Sandman as a whole ranks higher than anything even Alan Moore has +written.
+ + + +Rating: (8) / Fiction
+ +A friend of a friend decided one evening that I needed to read +so-called normal people books, and so she lent me Good Omens. It +was an enjoyable read and unearthed vague memories of comic book +magazines I read when I was small and the name Sandman; thus through +one book I found something far greater.
+ + + +Rating: (6) / Fiction
+ +Entertaining, but the end was a bit much rushed.
+ + + + +Former teacher and now author-activist.
+ +Rating: (9) / Nonfiction
+ +An interesting underground history of the American education +system. Available +online for free.
+ + + + +Kahlil Gibran is fairly interesting; his earlier works do not +agree with my æsthetic sense (blah blah), but The Madman onward are +all rather nice. A few of his works are +online, but I recommend scouting used book +stores for old hardcover editions. The (late 90s onward at least) +hardcover versions from Alfred A. Knopf are in fact permabound +paperbacks with a hardcasing, and are of seriously inferior quality to +the editions from the 50s and 60s (and cost quite a bit more, +naturally).
+ +Rating: (3) / Fiction
+ +One of Kahlil Gibran's earlier works, I did not much like A +Tear and a Smile excepting the last poem ("A Poet's Voice").
+ + + +Rating: (9) / Fiction
+ + + + + +Rating: (7) / Fiction
+ +An interesting little book of aphorisms.
+ + + +Rating: (8) / Fiction
+ + + + + + +Rating: (10) / Fiction
+ + + + + + +Perhaps the most overrated modern writer. Other people have written +everything he has to write better and many years before he got around +to it.
+ +Rating: (0) / Nonfiction
+ +Huxley stains the name of Blake by naming this horrible +pseudo-scientific and pseudo-poetic essay after a line from The +Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Subjectivity and objectivity are +incommensurable; his attempt and being subjectively objective is +utterly worthless.
+ + + +Rating: (0) / Nonfiction
+ +Blah blah LSD blah blah Mushrooms blah blah Peyote blah blah I'm +Aldous Huxley I'm a pretentious jerk. Don't bother.
+ + + +Rating: (7) / Fiction
+ +A nice light read; the story is obvious and by the hundreth page +the ending is clear, but it provided a bit of a break from heavier +reading for me. I must say that anyone who has read Brave New World +and does not despise modern society has the intellectual capacity of +an Epsilon. 1984 is perhaps easily misread, but Brave New World +is very clear with its message and is a bit like being smacked upside +the head with a hammer.
-Rating: (3) / Fiction
-One of Kahlil Gibran's earlier works, I did not much like A -Tear and a Smile excepting the last poem ("A Poet's Voice").
+Rating: (9) / Fiction
+Rating: (7) / Nonfiction
+A partially finished extended summary
-Rating: (7) / Fiction
-An interesting little book of aphorisms.
+Nonfiction
-++ -+America is thus as a nation rapidly drifting towards a state of things +in which no man of science or letters will be accounted respectable +unless some kind of badge or diploma is stamped upon him, and in which +bare personality will be a mark of outcast estate. It seems to me high +time to rouse ourselves to consciousness, and to cast a critical eye +upon this decidedly grotesque tendency. Other nations suffer terribly +from the Mandarin disease. Are we doomed to suffer like the rest?
-Rating: (8) / Fiction
+
The novelist brother of William James; I've not read many (read: +one) of his books, but what I did was decent.
+Rating: (7) / Fiction
-Rating: (7) / Nonfiction
+A short novella about a man who maintained an altar in a church +for all of his lost loved ones on the surface, but something a bit +more beneath.
-A partially finished extended summary
-Rating: (10) / Nonfiction
+Rating: (10) / Nonfiction
AMOP is useful as a reference to the CLOS MOP (although less so with the online MOP spec), but the true value of the book lies in the first @@ -297,17 +1106,18 @@ make mapping decisions customizable.
-Kierkegaard was a master of style and philosophy; his writing is interesting even if one finds the theistic extentialism espoused disagreeable.
-Rating: (10) / Nonfiction
+Rating: (10) / Nonfiction
I purchased this when I was looking through books at a store after being unable to find the book I really wanted, and I must say that it @@ -320,10 +1130,11 @@ reflected in every aspect of the work, and the method of presentation forces reflection.
-Rating: (10) / Nonfiction
+Rating: (10) / Nonfiction
Composed of two portions, Either/Or is a rather lengthy but rewarding read. The first book is a series of essays and a diary of a @@ -333,15 +1144,147 @@ conflict between the views.
-Nonfiction
+ +An interesting dialectical lyric contrasting Despair and Faith.
+ + + +Rating: (10) / Nonfiction
+ +He who despairs of esthetic repetition gets none; he who despairs +of ethical repetition receieves the esthetic. Is it true then that no +repetition exists? Is transition all one can hope for?
+ + + +Rating: (7) / Nonfiction
+ +...Very clearly an early work of Kierkegaard. It is rather formal +and difficult to get through. I'd recommend reading a lot of other +Kierkegaard before this.
+ + + + +Rating: (8) / Fiction
+ + + + + + +Rating: (8) / Nonfiction
+ +After learning Scheme, I read Successful Lisp and was able to +pick up Common Lisp fairly easily.
+ + + + +Nonfiction
+ + + + + + +Rating: (10) / Fiction
+ + + + + + +Rating: (10) / Fiction
+ + + + + + +Rating: (8) / Fiction
+ + + + + +Rating: (10) / Fiction
+ + + + + + +Rating: (7) / Fiction
+Rating: (7) / Fiction
I read most of Utopia in high school with the TI-89 ebook reader, but the way the book was split up made it a bit difficult to grasp the @@ -354,7 +1297,8 @@ social customs.
-A bit acerbic and esoteric, Nietzsche is for me a good secular @@ -365,39 +1309,166 @@ by being read by far too many angsty teenagers who see (and relay) only Nietzsche the asshole rather than Nietzsche the master of the polemic.
-Rating: (8) / Fiction
+ +A masterpiece of indirect communication depsite the occasional +flaw and overly dramatic passage. Certainly a book worth reading many +times over the course of one's life.
+ + + +Rating: (8) / Nonfiction
+Rating: (8) / Nonfiction
A somewhat more comprehensible, if a bit less aesthetically pleasing, presentation of much of the philosophy found in Thus Spoke -Zarathustra. The final chapters are very important (not to detract -from the value of the rest of the work) if one wishes to understand -On the Genealogy of Morals.
+Zarathustra in the negative form. The final chapters are very +important (not to detract from the value of the rest of the work) if +one wishes to understand On the Genealogy of Morals. -Rating: (9) / Nonfiction
+Rating: (9) / Nonfiction
On the Geneaology of Morals is a wonderful book of three -polemical essays on the origin of moral/ethic valuations, and the +polemical essays on the origin of moral/ethical valuations, and the blindness of modern philosphers whose very thinking is tainted by these valuations unknowingly.
-Rating: (7) / Nonfiction
+ +Ecce Homo is Nietzsche's very strange autobiography and +explanation of his own works. At points it is clear that it could have +used a bit more editing (prevented by Nietzsche ... falling into a +catatonic state and all), but is still a very useful book to read as +Nietzsche explains the overall structure of his works.
+ + + + +Rating: (10) / Fiction
+ + + + + +Fiction
+ + + + + + +Fiction
+ + + + + +Fiction
+ + + + + +Nonfiction
+ + + + + +Fiction
+ + + + + +Rating: (10) / Nonfiction
+ + + + + +Fiction
+ + + + + + +ULTRAGOTHIK
+ +Rating: (6) / Fiction
+ +This is when I learned that I still don't really like late 1800s +American literature all that much. Some of the tales were worth +reading, but most of it was not in a style I like all that much.
+ + + + +Rating: (7) / Fiction
+Rating: (7) / Fiction
@@ -422,15 +1493,16 @@ difficult to put down, and was read in under a week of spare time.
-+ +
Neal Stephenson
-+
Snow Crash
-Rating: (9) / Fiction
+Rating: (9) / Fiction
As one must read the Bible to understand English literature, so one must read Snow Crash today to be a nerd. In the realm of modern pop @@ -441,10 +1513,11 @@ accurate) political and social commentary that makes it worth reading as more than mere cyberpunk fiction.
-+ +
Cryptonomicon
-Rating: (8) / Fiction
+Rating: (8) / Fiction
I read Cryptonomicon when it was new, and at the time I thought it was good. It could have lost a hundred or so pages without detracting from @@ -457,6 +1530,120 @@ Stephenson novel.
+ ++Bjarne Stroustrup
+ + + ++The C++ Programming Language (3rd edition)
+ +Nonfiction
+ +Once upon a time I was fifteen and I read this book. It was more +or less what taught me how to write programs just large enough to do +useful things, and so shall forever be remembered by me. A year and a +half later I stumbled upon a little language called Scheme and fell +down the rabbit hole.
+ + + + ++JRR Tolkien
+ + + ++The Lord of the Rings
+ +Rating: (9) / Fiction
+ + + + + ++The Silmarillion
+ +Rating: (10) / Fiction
+ + + + + ++The Lost Tales
+ +Rating: (7) / Fiction
+ + + + + + ++Kurt Vonnegut
+ + + ++Cat's Cradle
+ +Rating: (9) / Fiction
+ +There are few books that I have started to read before sleeping +and found myself watching the sun rise after finishing. Cat's Cradle +is definitely required nerd reading.
+ + + + ++H.G. Wells
+ + + ++The Island of Dr Moreau
+ +Rating: (7) / Fiction
+ + + + + + ++Robert Anton Wilson
+ +Or rather, Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea (but my book script +updating thing doesn't do multiple authors
+ ++The Illuminatus! Trilogy
+ +Rating: (10) / Nonfiction
+ +e-cash MP5K-SD Adriatic Bellcore Lon Horiuchi 9705 Samford Road +jihad New World Order AVN FTS2000 ANZUS subversive SAPO PET Armani
+ + + + ++Yevgeny Zamyatin
+ + + ++We
+ +Fiction
+ + + - + November 5, 2010