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.
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.
+
+
+
+
+
+William Blake
+
+
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.
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.
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.
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.
+
+Analects
-
-William Blake
+
Nonfiction
-
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.
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.
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.
An interesting underground history of the American education
system. Available
@@ -228,7 +825,8 @@ system. Available
-
+
+
Kahlil Gibran
Kahlil Gibran is fairly interesting; his earlier works do not
@@ -241,54 +839,105 @@ 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).
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.
@@ -304,20 +953,22 @@ upon this decidedly grotesque tendency. Other nations suffer terribly
from the Mandarin disease. Are we doomed to suffer like the rest?
-Full Text
+
+
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
@@ -325,15 +976,16 @@ more beneath.
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
@@ -346,17 +998,18 @@ make mapping decisions customizable.
-
+
+
Søren Kierkegaard
Kierkegaard was a master of style and philosophy; his writing is
interesting even if one finds the theistic extentialism espoused
disagreeable.
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
@@ -369,10 +1022,11 @@ reflected in every aspect of the work, and the method of presentation
forces reflection.
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
@@ -382,15 +1036,121 @@ conflict between the views.
-
+
+Fear and Trembling
+
+
Nonfiction
+
+
An interesting dialectical lyric contrasting Despair and Faith.
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?
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
@@ -403,7 +1163,8 @@ social customs.
-
+
+
Friedrich Nietzsche
A bit acerbic and esoteric, Nietzsche is for me a good secular
@@ -414,39 +1175,138 @@ 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.
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.
-
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.
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.
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
@@ -490,10 +1351,11 @@ accurate) political and social commentary that makes it worth reading
as more than mere cyberpunk 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
@@ -506,36 +1368,100 @@ 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.
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