X-Git-Url: http://git.hcoop.net/clinton/website/site/unknownlamer.org.git/blobdiff_plain/87b56e82fc9f8651d19617643da5255fb3359e19..3c59982c0ad4e4a9ac7a9a72ce7fed507bf232f0:/Book%20List.html diff --git a/Book List.html b/Book List.html index 9d2a04c..3941c03 100644 --- a/Book List.html +++ b/Book List.html @@ -7,156 +7,453 @@ - + + +
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+ + + + + + + (8) / FictionThe 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.
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+ + (4) / NonfictionAt 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) / FictionThe 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) / FictionThe finest of Blake's Illuminated works.
+ + +Rating:
- (6) / NonfictionI 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.
+Rating:
+ (6) / FictionOf 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.
-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) / FictionThe 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.
-Nonfiction
-Rating:
- (10) / FictionThe finest of Blake's Illuminated works.
-Rating:
+ + (10) / FictionPerhaps 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) / FictionA 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.
+ + + + +Former teacher and now author-activist.
-Rating:
+ (9) / NonfictionRating:
(9) / NonfictionAn interesting underground history of the American education system. Available @@ -231,7 +822,8 @@ system. Available -
Kahlil Gibran is fairly interesting; his earlier works do not @@ -244,54 +836,105 @@ 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).
-Rating:
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(3) / FictionOne of Kahlil Gibran's earlier works, I did not much like A Tear and a Smile excepting the last poem ("A Poet's Voice").
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+ (7) / FictionRating:
(7) / FictionAn interesting little book of aphorisms.
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+ + + + + + + (10) / FictionPerhaps the most overrated modern writer. Other people have written +everything he has to write better and many years before he got around +to it.
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+ (0) / NonfictionHuxley 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.
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+ + (0) / NonfictionBlah blah LSD blah blah Mushrooms blah blah Peyote blah blah I'm +Aldous Huxley I'm a pretentious jerk. Don't bother.
+ + + + +Rating:
+ (7) / NonfictionRating:
(7) / NonfictionA partially finished extended summary
-Nonfiction
@@ -312,16 +955,17 @@ from the Mandarin disease. Are we doomed to suffer like the rest? -The novelist brother of William James; I've not read many (read: one) of his books, but what I did was decent.
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+ (7) / FictionRating:
(7) / FictionA 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 @@ -329,15 +973,16 @@ more beneath.
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+ (10) / NonfictionRating:
(10) / NonfictionAMOP 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 @@ -350,17 +995,18 @@ 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.
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+ (10) / NonfictionRating:
(10) / NonfictionI 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 @@ -373,10 +1019,11 @@ reflected in every aspect of the work, and the method of presentation forces reflection.
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+ (10) / NonfictionRating:
(10) / NonfictionComposed 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 @@ -386,15 +1033,121 @@ conflict between the views.
-Nonfiction
+ +An interesting dialectical lyric contrasting Despair and Faith.
+ + + +Rating:
+ + (10) / NonfictionHe 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:
+ + + + + + + (8) / FictionRating:
+ + (8) / NonfictionAfter learning Scheme, I read Successful Lisp and was able to +pick up Common Lisp fairly easily.
+ + + + +Nonfiction
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(7) / FictionI 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 @@ -407,7 +1160,8 @@ social customs.
-A bit acerbic and esoteric, Nietzsche is for me a good secular @@ -418,10 +1172,10 @@ 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.
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+ (8) / NonfictionRating:
(8) / NonfictionA somewhat more comprehensible, if a bit less aesthetically pleasing, presentation of much of the philosophy found in Thus Spoke @@ -430,21 +1184,23 @@ important (not to detract from the value of the rest of the work) if one wishes to understand On the Genealogy of Morals.
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+ (9) / NonfictionRating:
(9) / NonfictionOn 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.
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+ (7) / NonfictionRating:
(7) / NonfictionEcce Homo is Nietzsche's very strange autobiography and explanation of his own works. At points it is clear that it could have @@ -454,15 +1210,100 @@ Nietzsche explains the overall structure of his works.
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(7) / Fiction@@ -487,15 +1328,16 @@ difficult to put down, and was read in under a week of spare time.
-+ +
Neal Stephenson
-+
Snow Crash
-Rating:
+ (9) / FictionRating:
(9) / FictionAs 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 @@ -506,10 +1348,11 @@ accurate) political and social commentary that makes it worth reading as more than mere cyberpunk fiction.
-+ +
Cryptonomicon
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+ (8) / FictionRating:
(8) / FictionI 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 @@ -522,37 +1365,101 @@ 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+H.G. Wells
+ + + ++The Island of Dr Moreau
+ +Rating:
+ + + (7) / Fiction - + May 9, 2019